Historical Materialism K (WIP)

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Historical Materialism
Historical Materialism K
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***NEG***
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--1NCs
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1NC (Short)
The affirmatives account of surveillance trades off with a material
institutional analysis they constrain alternatives to shallow reforms by
rejecting the basis of overarching structural change of social
organization.
Smith, 2014
(R.C., author and executive director of Heathwood Institute a non-profit devoted to advancing
radical democratic alternatives, POWER, CAPITAL & THE RISE OF THE MASS SURVEILLANCE
STATE: ON THE ABSENCE OF DEMOCRACY, ETHICS, DISENCHANTMENT & CRITICAL THEORY,
Heathwood Press, April 24, Online: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/power-capital-the-rise-of-themass-surveillance-state-on-the-absence-of-democracy-ethics-disenchantment-critical-theory/)
In a previous paper on why mass surveillance is a direct product of modern society, I commented that Edward Snowden was absolutely correct to
the biggest worry as a result of his leaks was that nothing would change.[1] In
terms of public debate and political movement on a grassroots and policy level in the
U.S. (as well as in a number of other countries throughout Europe and Latin America), there have been notable challenges
about whether mass surveillance programmes are constitutional, about the
systematic erosion of civil liberties, and about a range of other phenomena such as
the U.S. drone programme[2], covert surveillance targeting Wikileaks, its supporters and even charitable and
leftist organisations.[3] But to what extent popular debate challenges the fundamental
social, political and economic system, which fostered the conditions in which mass
surveillance programmes might exist in the first place this is the question that we
must ask ourselves. One pressing issue, moreover, is that majority of the popular movements that have
emerged in response to the Snowden leaks appear to be reformist in character. As a
result, the discourse isnt so much about fundamental system change; rather it
becomes crafted into making mass surveillance less repulsive and more socially
acceptable, even marketable. (Consider, for instance, the latest reforms proposed by President Barack
Obama). For Adorno, this reformist inclination can be explained in part through an analysis
of the logic of the system of capital. We read in Adorno how under modernity i.e., capitalism human
beings are treated as commodities[4] and the political-economy, which is principled on
concentrations of power (i.e., contradictory recognition[5]), goes over the head of the individual,
particularly as coercive society aims to shape people on behalf of the economic,
social and political status quo.[6] The system of capital, along with the instrumental use of Enlightenment ideals
to promote a rational, efficient system[7] have laid a foundation for society wherein the politicaleconomy influences individuals and manufactures consent .[8] Accordingly, people are
seen as substitutable entities valued merely for their instrumental uses or ability to
command market resources, and even where commodification is resisted, the
overriding pull of society is toward the status quo and those forms that are valued by
society. [9] As Kate Schick writes: The mind thus shapes itself into socially acceptable, marketable forms and freedom becomes an illusion, made
suggest that
all the more dangerous and difficult to resist because of the appearance of freedom. This is not the fault of Enlightenment ideals as such, but the
instrumental use of these ideals in the promotion of a rational, efficient system: The network of the whole is drawn ever tighter, modelled after the act
Present in the logic of the system of capital itself is not an

emancipatory reason that aims toward universal guiding principles of an actually
egalitarian democracy i.e., Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice, Rights, etc. Rather, in modern capitalism, with its
instrumental reason and positivist logic, such concepts lose their meaning.[11] The social narrative no
longer accommodates these fundamental principles or judges them to be delusions,
because all concepts must be strictly functional in order to be considered reasonable.[12] In turn, the
ideals of a good society, for example ideals toward an actual egalitarian democracy,
become dependent on the interests of the dominant and governing system, which
of exchange (Adorno 1981: 21).[10]
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produces and reproduces the epistemic context of its own validity .[13] While poststructuralist accounts completely fail to penetrate the core of the matter, as they
have a deep tendency to lose sight of the universal and therefore also a fundamental
theory of contemporary society as a whole which aims toward understanding the
entirety of the social[-historical] process,[14] the majority of social movements and protest groups that
specifically focus on protesting against state sponsored mass surveillance
programmes also seem to lack a sufficient theoretical framework and tend toward
maintaining the status quo. Consider Glenn Greenwalds The Intercept project for example: If Elias Groll [15]is right that The
Intercept is about tipping the scales of power away from the intelligence community , Jerome Roos is
also right that it must consider broader social critique .[16] The Intercept, although criticised for its source of funding, has
done some fantastic reporting on the NSA/GCHQ and issues revolving around the Snowden leaks. But Roos is entirely correct to suggest that it
seems to lack sufficient awareness of a fundamental critique of political-economy .[17]
As a result, while the reports published by The Intercept reveal a lot about the mass surveillance
state, the overall project tends to remain awfully isolated almost compartmentalised
from a broader structural critique of modern society and therefore loses its
revolutionary potential or, in the very least, its potential to supplement grassroots efforts
for social transformation. Perhaps more so than The intercept project, such popular movements as The
Day We Fight Back campaign seem content to issue demands for reform without
explicitly linking the problem of the mass surveillance state to the crisis of capitalism.
Rather than being a function of critical theory and challenging the very sociohistorical context in which the existence of the security state is justified as a
reasonable social phenomenon and in which mass surveillance programmes are
employed, the reformist character of many popular movements ultimately end up
reproducing those dominant forms of social activity . Remaining unaware of the ways in which the very problem
of mass surveillance is bound together with fundamental social processes, these movements fail to see that they too are involved in social processes of
production and reproduction insofar that they are fundamentally conformist, uncritically submitting to the dominant instrumental, quantitative, and
They exist, in other words, as a function of traditional theory.

As such, these movements, while critical of the existence of state sponsored
surveillance programmes, are extensions of the status quo insofar that their reformist
project is designed not toward revolutionary social change and the fundamental
transformation of coercive state practice, but to reduce such coercive activity so that
it aligns with the value of productivity and functioning of the world as it presently
exists.[20]
capitalist values[18] of the modern social dynamic.
[19]
<Additional links>
Capitalisms exploitation of labor and resources will collapse modern
civilizationradical redistribution of resources is necessary to avert
extinction.
Ahmed 14
Nafeez Ahmed. Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development. March 14 2014. NASA-funded study: industrial civilization headed
for irreversible collapse? The Guardian.
global industrial civilisation could

collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and
increasingly unequal wealth distribution. Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study
attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is
actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational
disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite
common." The independent research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa
A new study partly-sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that
Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center , in association with a team of natural and social
scientists. The HANDY model was created using a minor Nasa grant, but the study based on it was conducted independently. The study based on the HANDY model has been
UTNIF 2015
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advanced, complex
civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of
modern civilisation: "The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan,
and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that
advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and
impermanent." By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which
explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy. These factors
can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the
stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity";
and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or
"Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the
character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five
thousand years." Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to
overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries
responsible for both: "... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout
society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while
producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just
above subsistence levels." The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:
"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource
consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in
consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use ."
Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has
come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains
over the same period. Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharrei and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely
reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In
accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics. It finds that according to the historical record even
the first of these scenarios, civilisation: ".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small
Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among

Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society . It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to
number of Elites, the
an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature." Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that
"with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster , while the Elites are still
thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites." In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that
they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse
until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual'
despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses
were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic
trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)." Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that: "While some members
of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their
the
worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural
changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation. The two key solutions are to
reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources , and to dramatically
reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth: " Collapse can be avoided and population
can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a
reasonably equitable fashion."
supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing." However, the scientists point out that
Voting negative refuses the affirmative in favor of Historical Materialist

Pedagogy as a method for understanding both society and waste.
Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary moment.
Only a focus on the structural antagonisms produced by capitalism can
lead to transformative politics.
Ebert 9 [Teresa, Associate Professor of English, State University of New York at Albany, THE TASK OF CULTURAL CRITIQUE, pp. 92-95]
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materialist critique aims

a t ending class rule. It goes beyond description and explains the working of wage
labor and the abstract structures that cannot be experienced directly but underwrite
it. Materialist critique unpacks the philosophical and theoretical arguments that
provide concepts for legitimizing wage labor and marks the textual representations that make it seem a normal part of life. In
short, instead of focusing on micropractices (prison, gender, education, war, literature, and so on ) in local and
Unlike these rewritings, which reaffirm in a somewhat new language the system of wage labor with only minor internal reforms,
regional terms,
materialist critique relates these practices to the macrostructures of
capitalism and provides the knowledges necessary to put an end to exploitation. At the
center of these knowledges is class critique. Pedagogy of critique is a class critique of social relations and
the knowledges they produce . Its subject is wage labor, not the body without organs . An exemplary lesson in pedagogy of critique is provided by
Marx, who concludes chapter 6 of Capital, " The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, " by addressing the sphere within which wages are exchanged for labor power and the way
this exchange is represented in the legal, philosophical, and representational apparatuses of capitalism as equal . He provides knowledge of the structures of wage labor and the
theoretical discourses that sustain it. I have quoted this passage before and will refer to it again and again. Here is the full version: We now know how the value paid by the
purchaser to the possessor of this peculiar commodity, labour-power, is determined. The use-value which the former gets in exchange, manifests itself only in the actual usufruct,
in the consumption of the labour-power. The money-owner buys everything necessary for this purpose, such as raw material, in the market, and pays for it at its full value . The
consumption of labourpower is at one and the same time the production of commodities and of surplus-value. The consumption of labour-power is completed, as is the case of
every other commodity, outside the limits of the market or the sphere of circulation. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take
leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose
threshold there stares us in the face "No admittance except on business . " Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force
the secret of profit making. This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights
of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their
own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each
enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own.
And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private
interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony
of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all. On leaving this sphere of
simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the "Free-trader vulgaris" with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on
capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the
possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his
Materialist critique is fundamental to a transformative feminist

politics. Through critique the subject develops historical knowledges of the social
totality: she acquires, in other words, an understanding of how the existing social
institutions (motherhood, child care, love, paternity, taxation, family, . . . and so on ) are part of the social relations of
production, how they are located in exploitative relations of difference, and how they
can be changed. Materialist critique, in other words, is that knowledge practice that
historically situates the conditions of possibility of what empirically exists under
capitalist relations of class difference-particularly the division of labor-and, more important, points to what is suppressed by the
empirically existing: what could be, instead of what actually is. Critique indicates, in other words, that what exists is not
necessarily real or true but only the actuality under wage labor. The role of critique in
pedagogy is exactly this: the production of historical know ledges and class
consciousness of the social relations, knowledges that mark the transformability of
existing social arrangements and the possibility of a different social organization --one that
is free from necessity. Quite simply then, the pedagogy of critique is a mode of social knowing that inquires
into what is not said, into the silences and the suppressed or the missing , in order to unconceal
operations of economic and political power underlying the myriad concrete details and seemingly disparate events and representations of our lives . It shows how
apparently disconnected zones of culture are in fact linked by the highly
differentiated and dispersed operation of the systematic, abstract logic of the exploitation of the
own hide to market and has nothing to expect but-a hiding.
division of labor that informs all the practices of culture and society. It reveals how seemingly unique concrete experiences are in fact the common effect of social relations of
production in wage labor capitalism. In sum, materialist critique both disrupts that which represents itself as natural and thus as inevitable and explains how it is materially
Critique, in other words, enables us to explain how social differences, specifically gender,
race, sexuality, and class, have been systematically produced and continue to operate within
regimes of exploitation-namely, the international division of labor in global
capitalism-so we can change them. It is the means for producing politically effective and transformative knowledges . The claim of affective
produced.
pedagogy is that it sets the subject free by making available to her or him the unruly force of pleasure and the unrestrained flows of desire, thereby turning her or him into an
oppositional subject who cuts through established representations and codings to find access to a deterritorialized subjectivity. But the radicality of this self, at its most volatile
moment, is the radicality of the class politics of the ruling class, a class for whom the question of poverty no longer exists. The only question left for it, as I have already indicated,
is the question of liberty as the freedom of desire. Yet this is a liberty acquired at the expense of the poverty of others. The pedagogy of critique engages these issues by situating
The core
of the pedagogy of critique is that education is not simply for enlightening the
itself not in the space of the self, not in the space of desire, not in the space of liberation, but in the revolutionary site of collectivity, need, and emancipation.
individual to see through the arbitrariness of signification and the violence of

established representations . It recognizes that it is a historical practice and, as
such, it is always part of the larger forces of production and relations of production. It
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understands that all pedagogies are, in one way or the other, aimed at producing an
efficient labor force. Unlike the pedagogy of desire, the pedagogy of critique does not simply teach that knowledge is another name for power, nor does it
marginalize knowledge as a detour of desire. It acknowledges the fissures in social practices-including its
own-but it demonstrates that they are historical and not textual or epistemological . It,
therefore, does not retreat into mysticism by declaring the task of teaching to be the teaching of the impossible and, in doing so, legitimate the way things are. Instead, the
pedagogy of critique is a worldly teaching of the worldly.
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1NC (Long)
Capitalism drove the creation of the modern surveillance apparatus its
a symptom of the ruling class drive to protect itself by developing a
coercive society.
Smith, 2014
In late-capitalist society, with its intense economic (capital) expansion, these aspects of modernity converge and form the definitions of reason and rationality[33] i.e., what is qualified on behalf of the ideology of
a rationally administered world[34] and the result is the disenchantment of the world which drains from human experience sources of meaning and significance that anchor ethical practice.[35] To put it
differently, Elliot Sperber has a nice way of describing how society (especially one holding itself out as a just society) has an actual duty of care to supply [conditions necessary for human flourishing] directly. If one
We have to
see the problem of the NSA and the rise of the mass surveillance state as a systemic
problem, one which coincides and indeed exists directly in relation with the list of
injustices that already define the scope of a society that has failed to satisfy its duty
of care. Upon the advent of the industrial revolution and the dawn of modern
technology, we have not so much witnessed the use of technology in support of an
emancipatory politics but as an enabler for capital to pervade even deeper into all
facets of human life. In other words, we have seen technology become an instrument of
coercive society. Technical rationalism or, rather, technical domination has ensured that though basic
inventions such as electric lights [which] allow people to see at night, they also enabled the world of work to colonize what
once was outside its domain. Though computers may drastically increase productivity, this increase is not accompanied by any corresponding diminution in work. The
accepts the argument that a society has such a duty of care, a societys failure to supply such conditions amounts to a breach of this duty, and to a forfeiture of its legitimacy.[36]
demands only increase.[37] This describes the practical, empirical basis for Horkheimers observation when he comments that the advance of technical facilities is accompanied by a process of dehumanisation:
progress threatens to nullify its very goal.[38] Rather than the advance of
communicative technologies being a source for the greater democratic empowerment
of people, they are seen as threat by the state, a way for people to mobilise, and are
therefore exploited for the benefit of greater social control and maintenance of the
status quo. Indeed, while it seems that technological advancements in general have, to some capacity, expanded the horizon of human thought and activity, of individual autonomy, and the human
ability to resist the growing apparatus of mass manipulation, the human power of imagination, of independent judgement appears to be reduced.[39] In this context, we can
say that the NSA as a product or instrument of the social totality or what Adorno would describe as administered
society, which, in different terms, we might consider as reference to the systemic structure of society primarily defined by the Marxian critique of political economy[40] fits perfectly as a
link between the increasing power of capital over all aspects of social life and the
development of new forms of social control.[41] Indeed, it is not surprising to read that the
NSA has been accused of spying on governments and parties involved in key
international economic agreements[42], on protest movements and leaders, charities
and non-profit organisations. But the real worry is how these phenomena are slowly
becoming legitimatised. Similar to Horkheimers analysis of Nazi power in Germany, all dominant social systems irrespective of their particularity and also what they share in
thus
common in terms of the historical conditions or processes behind the vicissitudes of their development[43] the agenda, the ideology, is made to appear reasonable.[44] As Horkheimer writes: the idea that an
aim can be reasonable for its own sake on the basis of virtues that insight reveals it to have in itself without reference to some kind of subjective gain or advantage becomes alien to an instrumental conception
of rationality.[45] The very notion of reasonableness under its modern instrumental conception implies subservience. If it is true that human beings should be considered as the best judges of their own interests,
today it is important to consider that the interests of humankind are largely framed within the coercive context by markets and the absence of democracy.[46] If emancipatory reasoning about the direction of
society is discarded, not for the betterment of humanity but for the benefit of maintaining the status quo, not only can such egalitarian concepts as social-historical progress become justifiers for the advancement
of inverted society[47] on behalf of a positivist notion of progress[48], but democracy, too, as we witness today, can be justified only by the fact that it exists (as a mere distillate).[49] And by this standard
tyranny can be justified just as readily.[50] Instead of the function of emancipatory reason which identifies universal guiding principles of an actually egalitarian democracy i.e., Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice,
Rights, etc. in modern capitalism, with its instrumental reason and positivist logic, such concepts lose their meaning.[51] The social narrative no longer accommodates these fundamental principles or judges them
the ideals of a good society, for

example ideals toward an actual egalitarian democracy, become dependent on the
interests of the dominant and governing system, which produces and reproduces
the epistemic context of its own validity.[53] Therefore we frequently hear justifications for the
use of mass surveillance technology on behalf of the ambiguous notion of national
security or for the benefit of economic gain, all the while witnessing the actual
corrosion of civil rights and liberties. On my reading of Horkheimers Eclipse of Reason (2013), the transformation of reason into an instrument of power calls
to be delusions, because all concepts must be strictly functional in order to be considered reasonable.[52] In turn,
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for attempts to resurrect a form of reason capable of judging the ethical criteria and categories of modern society. Against the poststructural inclination to acquiesce in the loss of critical or emanicpatory reasoning
about the fundamental guiding principles of an actual egalitarian democracy, Horkheimer laments its demise and argues on the importance of critical theory to address the emasculated, neutralized, impotent
reason that rules society and is unable to confront power. (Power, in this sense, is not only institutional or rooted in the system of capital and the function of coercive state forces, but it also exists today throughout
The fact that the mass surveillance state could

emerge in the 21st Century as an accepted condition of modern society in the midst of all the frequently
championed measures of rational discourse and the deep scientific traditions celebrated in contemporary culture suggests that the dialectic of
enlightenment has come front and centre: reason has become irrational .[55] There is a failure of culture[56]
much of the contemporary political spectrum and a function of bourgeois subjectivity[54]).
but also a general presence of untruth in the field of cultural experience, where positivism now reigns, demonstrating, above all, the lack of autonomy of reason, wherein facts are reduced unequivocally to
In politics, the
rationalisation of the irrational deploys only the material aspects present within the
horizon of contemporary society, so that the system of capital can be evaluated within
the strict rigidity of the dominant mode of capital relations. All suffering at the hands
of the system takes on the measure of reform, which is now seen as a valid
democratic response to urgent ethical matters. Separated and isolated from the despair and burning agony of actual needless suffering,
capitalism has turned the notion of democracy into a symbol of ideology as opposed
to an egalitarian and emancipatory political orientation which in practice continues
to manifest the barbarism that many self-titled modern democrats claim to implore.
rationalisations and self-legitimisations of the present social order that, in terms of the field of sociology, defines the very basis of all factual content.

organization.
Smith, 2014
suggest that
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exists.[20]
[19]
<Additional links>
UTNIF 2015
K
GRIPES
Capitalisms exploitation of labor and resources will collapse modern

civilizationradical redistribution of resources is necessary to avert
extinction.
Ahmed 14
Nafeez Ahmed. Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development. March 14 2014. NASA-funded study: industrial civilization headed
for irreversible collapse? The Guardian.
global industrial civilisation could

collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and
increasingly unequal wealth distribution. Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study
attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is
actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational
disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite
common." The independent research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa
A new study partly-sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that
Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center , in association with a team of natural and social
scientists. The HANDY model was created using a minor Nasa grant, but the study based on it was conducted independently. The study based on the HANDY model has been
advanced, complex
civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of
modern civilisation: "The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan,
and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that
advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and
impermanent." By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which
explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy. These factors
can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features: "the
stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity";
and "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or
"Commoners") [poor]" These social phenomena have played "a central role in the
character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five
thousand years." Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to
overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries
responsible for both: "... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout
society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while
producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just
above subsistence levels." The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:
"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource
consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in
consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use ."
Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has
come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains
over the same period. Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharrei and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely
reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In
accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics. It finds that according to the historical record even
the first of these scenarios, civilisation: ".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small
Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among

Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society . It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to
number of Elites, the
an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature." Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that
"with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster , while the Elites are still
thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites." In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that
they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse
until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual'
despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses
were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic
trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)." Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that: "While some members
of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their
supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing." However, the scientists point out that
the
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worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural
changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation. The two key solutions are to
reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources , and to dramatically
reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth: " Collapse can be avoided and population
can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a
reasonably equitable fashion."
Voting negative refuses the affirmative in favor of Historical Materialist

Pedagogy as a method for understanding both society and waste.
Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary moment.
Only a focus on the structural antagonisms produced by capitalism can
lead to transformative politics.
Ebert 9 [Teresa, Associate Professor of English, State University of New York at Albany, THE TASK OF CULTURAL CRITIQUE, pp. 92-95]
materialist critique aims
a t ending class rule. It goes beyond description and explains the working of wage
labor and the abstract structures that cannot be experienced directly but underwrite
it. Materialist critique unpacks the philosophical and theoretical arguments that
provide concepts for legitimizing wage labor and marks the textual representations that make it seem a normal part of life. In
short, instead of focusing on micropractices (prison, gender, education, war, literature, and so on ) in local and
Unlike these rewritings, which reaffirm in a somewhat new language the system of wage labor with only minor internal reforms,
regional terms,
materialist critique relates these practices to the macrostructures of
capitalism and provides the knowledges necessary to put an end to exploitation. At the
center of these knowledges is class critique. Pedagogy of critique is a class critique of social relations and
the knowledges they produce . Its subject is wage labor, not the body without organs . An exemplary lesson in pedagogy of critique is provided by
Marx, who concludes chapter 6 of Capital, " The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power, " by addressing the sphere within which wages are exchanged for labor power and the way
this exchange is represented in the legal, philosophical, and representational apparatuses of capitalism as equal . He provides knowledge of the structures of wage labor and the
theoretical discourses that sustain it. I have quoted this passage before and will refer to it again and again. Here is the full version: We now know how the value paid by the
purchaser to the possessor of this peculiar commodity, labour-power, is determined. The use-value which the former gets in exchange, manifests itself only in the actual usufruct,
in the consumption of the labour-power. The money-owner buys everything necessary for this purpose, such as raw material, in the market, and pays for it at its full value . The
consumption of labourpower is at one and the same time the production of commodities and of surplus-value. The consumption of labour-power is completed, as is the case of
every other commodity, outside the limits of the market or the sphere of circulation. Accompanied by Mr. Moneybags and by the possessor of labour-power, we therefore take
leave for a time of this noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in view of all men, and follow them both into the hidden abode of production, on whose
threshold there stares us in the face "No admittance except on business . " Here we shall see, not only how capital produces, but how capital is produced. We shall at last force
the secret of profit making. This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights
of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their
own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each
enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own.
And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private
interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony
of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all. On leaving this sphere of
simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the "Free-trader vulgaris" with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on
capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the
possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his
Materialist critique is fundamental to a transformative feminist

politics. Through critique the subject develops historical knowledges of the social
totality: she acquires, in other words, an understanding of how the existing social
institutions (motherhood, child care, love, paternity, taxation, family, . . . and so on ) are part of the social relations of
production, how they are located in exploitative relations of difference, and how they
can be changed. Materialist critique, in other words, is that knowledge practice that
historically situates the conditions of possibility of what empirically exists under
capitalist relations of class difference-particularly the division of labor-and, more important, points to what is suppressed by the
empirically existing: what could be, instead of what actually is. Critique indicates, in other words, that what exists is not
necessarily real or true but only the actuality under wage labor. The role of critique in
pedagogy is exactly this: the production of historical know ledges and class
consciousness of the social relations, knowledges that mark the transformability of
existing social arrangements and the possibility of a different social organization --one that
is free from necessity. Quite simply then, the pedagogy of critique is a mode of social knowing that inquires
into what is not said, into the silences and the suppressed or the missing , in order to unconceal
own hide to market and has nothing to expect but-a hiding.
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It shows how
apparently disconnected zones of culture are in fact linked by the highly
differentiated and dispersed operation of the systematic, abstract logic of the exploitation of the
operations of economic and political power underlying the myriad concrete details and seemingly disparate events and representations of our lives .
division of labor that informs all the practices of culture and society. It reveals how seemingly unique concrete experiences are in fact the common effect of social relations of
production in wage labor capitalism. In sum, materialist critique both disrupts that which represents itself as natural and thus as inevitable and explains how it is materially
Critique, in other words, enables us to explain how social differences, specifically gender,
have been systematically produced and continue to operate within
regimes of exploitation-namely, the international division of labor in global
capitalism-so we can change them. It is the means for producing politically effective and transformative knowledges . The claim of affective
produced.
race, sexuality, and class,
pedagogy is that it sets the subject free by making available to her or him the unruly force of pleasure and the unrestrained flows of desire, thereby turning her or him into an
oppositional subject who cuts through established representations and codings to find access to a deterritorialized subjectivity. But the radicality of this self, at its most volatile
moment, is the radicality of the class politics of the ruling class, a class for whom the question of poverty no longer exists. The only question left for it, as I have already indicated,
is the question of liberty as the freedom of desire. Yet this is a liberty acquired at the expense of the poverty of others. The pedagogy of critique engages these issues by situating
The core
of the pedagogy of critique is that education is not simply for enlightening the
itself not in the space of the self, not in the space of desire, not in the space of liberation, but in the revolutionary site of collectivity, need, and emancipation.
individual to see through the arbitrariness of signification and the violence of

established representations . It recognizes that it is a historical practice and, as
such, it is always part of the larger forces of production and relations of production. It
understands that all pedagogies are, in one way or the other, aimed at producing an
efficient labor force. Unlike the pedagogy of desire, the pedagogy of critique does not simply teach that knowledge is another name for power, nor does it
marginalize knowledge as a detour of desire. It acknowledges the fissures in social practices-including its
own-but it demonstrates that they are historical and not textual or epistemological . It,
therefore, does not retreat into mysticism by declaring the task of teaching to be the teaching of the impossible and, in doing so, legitimate the way things are. Instead, the
pedagogy of critique is a worldly teaching of the worldly.
Its try or die for the alternative impending environmental collapse and
militarization of all life resulting from capitalist hegemony make
extinction inevitable in the status quo all other impacts take a back
seat.
Dean, 2015
(Jodi, professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Red, Black, and
Green, Rethinking Marxism, 27:3, July 16, Taylor and Francis)
The absence of a powerful Left enables the political Right (in part by shifting what had been the
center). The intensified inequality of the last forty years of neoliberalism testifies to the
impact of left political defeat.3 Neoliberalisms subjection of all of society to its
economic criteria of efficiency and competitiveness has been carried out as a political
project.4 The political system has been the instrument through which neoliberalism has dismantled the achievements of the
welfare state, installed competition in ever more domains, expanded the finance sector, and imposed austerity. This is the
setting, then, for my appeal to the Left to assemble itself into a party. Key determinants of
our lives occur behind our backscurrency valuations, monetary policies, trade
agreements, energy concessions, data harvesting. To insist on a politics focused on
isolating and archiving singular micropractices abstracted from their global capitalist
context obscures the workings of state and economy as a capitalist system, hinders
the identification of this system as the site of ongoing harm (exploitation,
expropriation, and injustice), and disperses political energies that could be more
effective if concentrated. More fundamentally, in treating economic practices as the primary
locus of left politics, such an insistence effaces the gap between politics and
economics such that questions of strategy, of how to win, are displaced . Morrow and Brault
supply a striking example of this effacement when they ask, What is communism for, if not to improve our everyday lives?
Communism, which previous generations rendered as the world-historical struggle of

the proletariat, diminishes into yet another option for individual self-improvement;
the abolition of exploitation, expropriation, and injustice replaced by economic
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determinations of immediate satisfaction. As Ramsey rightly notes, Healy similarly substitutes economic
alternatives for political antagonism. 1 Two ideas voiced in the present discussion impress the
urgency of the need for a left party oriented toward communism: racism (Buck 2015) and
the Anthropocene (Healy 2015). Given anthropogenic climate change, the stakes of
contemporary politics are almost unimaginably high. They range from the continued
investment in extractive industries and fossil fuels constitutive of the carboncombustion complex (see Oreskes and Conway 2014), to the dislocations accompanying mass
migration in the wake of floods and droughts to the racist response of states outside what
Christian Parenti (2011, 9) calls the Tropic of Chaos (the band around the belt of economically and politically battered post-colonial
all the way to human

extinction. That one city, state, or country brings carbon emissions under control
while certainly a step in the right directionmay be irrelevant from the standpoint of
overall warming. Perhaps its carbon-emitting industries were shipped elsewhere. Perhaps another country chose to expand
its own drilling operations. Climate change forces us to acknowledge that we cant build new
worlds (Helepololei). We live in one world, the heating up of which threatens humans and
other species. Not all communities, economies, or ways of life are compatible. Those
premised on industries and practices that continue to contribute to planetary
warming have to change significantly, and soon. Forcing that change is the political
challenge of our time. Given the persistence of racialized violence and the operation
of the state as an instrument for the maintenance not only of capitalist modes of
production but also and concomitantly of racialized hierarchy, the challenges of
organizing politically across issues and identities are almost insurmountably daunting .
No wonder the Left resorts to moralism and self-care instead. Its easier to catalog difference than it is to
build up a Left strong enough to exercise power, especially given the traversal of
state power by transnational corporations, trade, and treaties. Its also easier to go
along with the dominant ideology of individualism, which enjoins us first and foremost
to look after ourselves, than it is to put ourselves aside and focus on formulating a
strategy for using collective power to occupy, reconfigure, and redirect institutions at
multiple levels. Here again, not every vision of community is compatible with every other.
Those premised on fantasies of racial, religious, ethnic, or linguistic purity directly
oppose those premised on diversity. Those premised on reproducing structures of class hierarchy directly oppose
those insisting on equality. If something like a party of the radical Left can stretch beyond Greece and Spain, if it can be
imagined in North America, it will only be possible as a combination of communism,
antiracism, and climate activism. I use red, black, and green as a heuristic for the coalition of concerns necessary
for such a party. I invoke the heuristic here to double down against critics who prefer a thousand alternatives to the party form. A
thousand alternatives (see Healy 2015) is no alternative. It leaves the political system we
havethe one that puts all its force behind the preservation of capitalist class
interestsintact. Some ideas need to be chosen, systematized into a program, and
defended. Consciously reiterating the colors of the Black Liberation Flag, the red, black, and green heuristic positions itself
states girding the planets mid-latitudes, where climate change is beginning to hit hard),
within the histories of communist, peoples, and anticolonial struggles. Left Unity in the UK uses red, black, and green in their logo to
suggest a similar constellation. The colors dont have a fixed meaning; they have appeared differently in the histories of
emancipatory egalitarian struggle. In recent struggles, red suggests a politics against debt, austerity, and corporate personhood and
anticapitalism and communism as well. Black pays tribute to the IWW, anarchists, black power, and
movements against aggressive policing, incarceration, and the murder of African
Americans. Green points to climate justice, an approach to climate change that exceeds capitalist emphases on carbon
allies with
markets and green commodities to encompass the dismantling of the carbon-based economy and the global redistribution of wealth.
should not be read as three separate issues or groups. They should rather be
understood as a kind of mutually supporting and inflecting scaffold . An equitable response to the
The three colors
changing climate, for example, is incompatible with the continuation of capitalism. A communism anchored in extractive industry is
Antiracism directs our attention to those

most likely to be exploited and sacrificed in market-driven schemes to address
climate change. It also marks the fact of the history of divisions within the Left that
have stood in the way of our forging collective counterpower. Here and now,
movements are pushing the organizational convergence of communist, climate, and
incompatible with the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.
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race politics. Moral Mondays, the ongoing protests in North Carolina, bring together an array of political concerns around racial
justice, cuts to public services, and the environment. These protests include marches and acts of civil disobedience. The
heartbreaking reminder that Black lives matter calls for the abolition of structures
of institutionalized power that continue to impoverish, imprison, and kill black people
everywhere. Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown, have turned the
spotlight on the militarization of the police and the buildup of state forces for the
defense of the wealthy and white against the proletarianizedpoor, brown, and black .
Similar buildups of police borders in the United States and abroad attempt to push back the many on the move in response to the
The demand for

climate justice places the economic inequalities accompanying and constitutive of
capitalist development at the center of global discussions of climate change . Images
catastrophic convergence of decades of violent expropriation and climate change (Parenti 2011).
from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and terms like sacrifice zones help articulate the two. Every time an activist reminds us
the Left is
instructing itself to make connections and formulate a politics capable of grasping
complexity and of changing the world. The party is a form for that connecting. It
provides a location where we see and relate to ourselves as comrades, as solidary
members of a fighting collective.
that issues cant be considered in isolation or every time a student repeats the mantra of intersectionality,
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--LINKS
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Link Surveillance Topic K Affs

organization.
Smith, 2014
suggest that

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exists.[20]
[19]
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Link Policy Reform of Surveillance

Policy reforms of the NSA will fail we need a structural overhaul
starting with a re-evaluation of what led to development of surveillance
in first place: the impulse to secure conditions of exploitation
Smith, 2013
radical democratic alternatives, AUTHORITARIANISM AND THE NSA: WHY MASS SURVEILLANCE IS
A DIRECT PRODUCT OF MODERN (IDEOLOGICAL) SOCIETY, Heathwood Press, June 9, Online:
http://www.heathwoodpress.com/authoritarianism-and-the-nsa-why-mass-surveillance-is-anatural-product-of-modern-society/)
A lot has been said already about the recent revelations regarding the National
Security Agency (NSA). Since the Guardian leaked a few days ago that the NSA is currently collecting the telephone
records of millions of US citizens under a top secret court order issued in April,[1] there has been a wave of commentary and analysis
in the media around the NSA surveillance operations and the direct violation of rights and liberties associated with these shadow
government programmes. Even Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the US Patriot Act, which the present US administration has relied on to
justify the monitoring phone calls and the collecting of digital communication of millions of American citizens, has condemned the
But what hasnt been discussed or engaged with yet, at least

is the actual causes for and origin of such ideologically driven
NSA programmes as an abuse of that law.

not on a critical philosophical level
phenomena. There are not only several fundamentally critical points that need to be addressed here, and which seem to be
overlooked in much of mainstream discourse; but the fact is that in the context of the history of modern
society the entire NSA scandal feels unsurprising and even calculable, and this is
whats perhaps most philosophically worrisome. Further, if there is one truly critical philosophical question that we need
to ask ourselves here, it is whether we feel truly surprised that in the context of modern society, with its ever-present violent
oppression, its subjugating of honest democratic protest and systematic forms of censorship (such as that which Franke James will be
are we really surprised that the government is violating our civil

liberties and, if not, what does this truly mean in terms of the state of modern
democracy? As others have commented in the past from Noam Chomsky to Slavoj Zizek it was only a matter of
time that the very social circumstance in which we find ourselves that which is
principled on a distinctly coercive structure would eventually reveal such systematic
institutional methods of authoritarianism and subordination with regards to the civil
rights and liberties of the social masses. In other words, the very concept of the secret
collection of public communications or global data collection and information
surveillance programmes didnt just emerge from out of nowhere . As Adorno would say, there is a
writing about later this month)
grain of insanity in the very existence of such social phenomena, and this grain of insanity resides not only in the very nature and
impetus of the (ideological) systems and organisations that support the NSA and its operation, but also in the very historical process
The existence of the NSA as an organisation and its secretive,

undemocractic operations are of course being justified by the present administration
in the US as state necessity because, in some respects, the very structure of our modern
state-of-affairs seems inherently driven toward establishing the appropriate context
for the institutional legitimacy of the systematic corrosion of civil rights and liberties.
In the name of national security is the usual turn-of-phrase often used today to
support such institutions as the NSA, which exist outside the democratic model. But when we start to dissect the
of their justification.
double-speak we learn that what were basically being told is that: under the image of (false) security you must give up some more
of your liberties in order that we achieve greater state power and control. Next year new threats may emerge and more liberties may
be eroded, but its ultimately for your benefit. History has shown us that the best way to exercise institutionally legitimising
processes of domination and control is through fear. As with most forms of right-wing populism, the best way to simultaneously
present the image of democracy and the erosion of civil rights and liberties is to actively mobilise people through fear (i.e., fear of the
Other, fear of terror, fear of crime, fear of impending economic scarcity). By coercing and persuading the will of the people through
fear, Western democratic governments can justify and administer through institutional means their movement toward a system of
increasing authoritarianism.[2] This paradigm of fear and domination, which has been unfolding ever since the predominant form of
state power in Western society became a depoliticised expert administration, where governments increasingly operate outside of
their direct democratic mandate, is symbolic of the coordination of ideologically driven interests.[3] As Edward Snowden, the
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whistleblower behind the revelations of NSA surveillance recently said: the biggest concern now as an outcome of these disclosures is
that nothing will change. But in order for things to change, we must address that the lengths so-called democratic governments will
go to grant themselves power outside of the existing democratic model is a direct product of the present architecture of oppression
If change is going to happen, it has to begin by challenging the

recent disclosures on a fundamental, structural level and not simply through policy.
We must come to understand, in other words, that the systematic elimination of civil rights
and freedoms is not the mark of rational progress of human society, but the natural progression of a social
order that is primarily driven toward implicit and explicit forms of domination. As I wrote
under contemporary capitalism.[4]
in Consciousness and Revolt: ..as much as I fundamentally disagree with the entire premise of Ayn Rands philosophy, she was right
free market capitalism, with its concept of universal exchange,

historically takes the place of direct domination. But it doesnt completely do without domination
about at least one thing:
altogether, it only makes it more socially acceptable. Instead of a lashing across the back, one is coerced by the constant threat of
impending economic scarcity and the manifesting chaos of unbridled power relations.[4] The NSA emerged in history as an
institutional apparatus or, better yet, as the totality of means of the modern system of domination. As a product of the ideological
architecture of modern society, the very existence of the NSA serves as a direct exemplification of the inherently antagonistic
structure of our present-day social context of increasingly coercive and dominating forces, coupled with the authoritarian
Never mind the

threat of terror, the NSA serves as a designated function which is both implicitly and
explicitly about control and about the present institutional structures maintaining and
expanding power over the public body. If the grain of insanity that Adorno identified is the tendency towards
domination historically, which, in terms of the genesis of capitalist society characterises modern thought that
seeks to dominate unfettered nature (internally and externally), the result today is a system of
domination of some human beings over other human beings, and of an everdeepening paradigm constituted by power struggle, international conflict, violence,
state repression and espionage. In coming to understand the concept of change in
light of the NSA scandal, we should begin by recognising that this paradigm has its
place in history: From the ideological processes of prehistory which were exemplified
in the interests of the ruling parties through to the ideological processes of modern
society which are now exemplified by the interests of global capitalism, the history of
ideology and domination has always coincided with emergence of / the unfreedom of
others.
development of positivism in the form of scientism and technicism and its logic of instrumental reason.
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Link Curtail Surveillance (Surveillance Can be Good)

Surveillance should be reclaimed for the common good our goal should
not be the reduction of surveillance, but rather a reclamation of
surveillance tools for the benefit of all by destroying capitalism.
Fuchs, 2011
(Christian, Dept Chair of Informatics and Media Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden,
Towards an alternative concept of privacy, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in
Society, 9:4, Online: http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/uploads/JICES.pdf)
Privacy in capitalism protects the rich, companies, and the wealthy. The anonymity of
wealth, high incomes, and profits makes income and wealth gaps between the rich
and the poor secrets and thereby ideologically helps legitimatizing and upholding
these gaps. It can therefore be considered an ideological mechanism that helps
reproducing and deepening inequality. It would nonetheless be a mistake to fully
cancel off privacy rights and to dismiss them as bourgeois values. I argue for going beyond a bourgeois
notion of privacy and to advance a socialist notion of privacy that tries to strengthen
the protection of consumers and citizens from corporate surveillance. Economic
privacy is therefore posited as undesirable in those cases, where it protects the rich
and capital from public accountability, but as desirable, where it tries to protect
citizens from corporate surveillance. Public surveillance of the income of the rich and
of companies and public mechanisms that make their wealth transparent are
desirable for making wealth and income gaps in capitalism visible, whereas privacy
protection for workers and consumers from corporate surveillance is also important.
In a socialist privacy concept, existing liberal privacy values have therefore to be
reversed. Whereas today we mainly find surveillance of the poor and of citizens who are not
capital owners, a socialist privacy concept focuses on surveillance of capital and the rich in
order to increase transparency and privacy protection of consumers and workers. A socialist privacy
concept conceives privacy as collective right of dominated and exploited groups that
need to be protected from corporate domination that aims at gathering information
about workers and consumers for accumulating capital, disciplining workers and
consumers, and for increasing the productivity of capitalist production and
advertising. The liberal conception and reality of privacy as individual right within capitalism protects the rich and the
accumulation of ever more wealth from public knowledge. A socialist privacy concept as collective right of workers and consumers
The question therefore is: privacy for

whom? Privacy for dominant groups in regard to secrecy of wealth and power can be
problematic, whereas privacy at the bottom of the power pyramid for consumers and
normal citizens can be a protection from dominant interests. Privacy rights should therefore be
can protect humans from the misuse of their data by companies.
differentiated according to the position people and groups occupy in the power structure. The socialist privacy concept is a form of
the RALC because it provides different zones of privacy for different kind of actors. The differentiation of privacy rights is based on the
assumption that the powerless need to be protected from the powerful. Example measures for socialist privacy protection in the area
of Internet policies are legal requirements that online advertising must always be based on opt-in options, the implementation and
public support of corporate watchdog platforms, the advancement and public support of alternative non-commercial Internet
platforms (Fuchs, 2011b). Helen Nissenbaum (2010) defines privacy as contextual integrity, which is a heuristic that analyzes
changes of information processes in specific contexts and flags departures from entrenched privacy practices as violations of
contextual integrity. It then analyzes if these new practices have moral superiority and if the privacy violation is therefore morally
legitimate (Nissenbaum, 2010, pp. 164, 182f). In relation to the economy, the concept of contextual integrity helps understanding
that privacy plays another role in a context like friendship than in an employment relationship: sharing information about very
personal details about your life (like intimacy, sexuality, health, etc.) with a partner or close friends must be judged with other norms
than the sharing of the same information with a boss because the first relation is based on close affinity, trust and feelings of
belonging together, whereas the second is based on an economic power relationship. Differentiated values are therefore needed for
assessing privacy in both contexts. The concept of
socialist privacy is a specific contextualization of
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privacy within the economic context it is a contextualized privacy context, a double contextualization of privacy:
On the one hand it takes into account the power relationships of the economy and on the other
hand it must in the context of the modern economy take into account class relationships, i.e. the asymmetric power
structure of the capitalist economy, in which employers and companies have the
power to determine and control many aspects of the lives of workers and consumers .
Given the power of companies in the capitalist economy, economic privacy needs to be contextualized in a
way that protects consumers and workers from capitalist control and at the same time
makes corporate interests and corporate power transparent.
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Link Curtail Surveillance (Privatization)

Curtailing surveillance only masks neoliberalism, maintaining the shift to
privatized surveillance
Bernd 15 (Candice, Truthout, 4/28/15, The Rise of Privatized Policing: How Crisis Capitalism Created Crisis Cops, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30467-the-riseof-privatized-policing-in-the-us-how-crisis-capitalism-created-crisis-cops, aps)
Private entities are working in concert with the

mostly privatized, "quasi-surveillance state"
DPD [Detroit
Police
Department]
to create a
in downtown Detroit. The city, while not technically a defendant in the suit, is
representing the DPD officer who backed up the security guard, and introduced the new rules to help settle the case, which has not yet been dismissed. Officers and private
With the
continued privatization of government functions in Detroit and throughout the country, we thought it was critical to establish
the principle that our constitutional rights cannot be outsourced out of existence ," said Michael Steinberg, the ACLU of Michigan's
security guards will now reportedly be trained to enforce rules allowing groups to gather, leaflet and demonstrate at all the city's public parks. "
legal director who represented the activists in the case. Steinberg said that private entities such as Detroit 300 Conservancy and Guardsmark are working in concert with
Gilbert's Rock Ventures subsidiaries and the DPD to create a mostly privatized, "quasi-surveillance state" in downtown Detroit - setting up a "frightening" situation for dissenters in
the area. An ongoing series of crises in Detroit fueled by the city's state-imposed bankruptcy filing in 2013, including most recently the devastating water shutoffs and the
looming possibility of water privatization, has created an intense sequence of neoliberal shocks on Detroit's populace, and provide a cogent example of author Naomi Klein's
neoconservatives exploit crises to advance

neoliberal policies as the public remains too distraught and caught up with disasters
to effectively resist such policies. Detroit's desperate, increased reliance on private
security and a private-public surveillance partnership in monitoring dissenters
provides a model backdrop to the kind of crisis capitalism at work not just in Detroit, but across
the United States, as the ranks of privatized police forces continue to surge since the September 11,
2001, attacks, now dwarfing the public sector as budgets for police departments experience cuts throughout
the nation. However, the policing cuts haven't happened uniformly across the country since the economic downturn of 2008. A 2013 report from the Police Executive
"shock doctrine" theory at its worst. Her theory describes a strategy in which
Research Forum (PERF) found that police department budgets nationally have been recovering since 2010. Of the 416 police agencies that responded to two PERF surveys in 2010
cuts haven't resulted in less policing; rather, they've resulted in an

overall shift to private policing. Steinberg says he expects to see more cases involving private security firms
infringing on constitutionally protected activity as the numbers of security guards continue to
climb. "Unfortunately, I think it's going to take more cases like our Campus Martius case to establish limits [on private police]," he told Truthout. While many on the
libertarian-right have hailed private police as a solution to systemic police violence because the security industry is "driven by
efficiency and threats from liability," a closer look at the industry reveals that guards
receive only a fraction of the training required for municipal cops. Plus, shootings by private armed guards
are rarely reported and investigated, and citizens' legal protections in encounters with guards remain unclear. The private security industry is
and 2012, 51 percent reported budget cuts, down from 78 percent in 2010. But such
so
poorly regulated , in fact, that only about a dozen state regulatory agencies require security guards to file firearm discharge reports.
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Link Focus on State Privacy Violations

Focusing on a reduction of state power misdiagnoses the problem
private entities collect infinite amounts of data. Only the class
perspective of the alternative can resolve private surveillance and
reclaim these tools in the name of the working class.
Fuchs, 2011
liberal privacy concepts typically focus on privacy invasions by the
state, but ignore privacy invasions by companies. The contemporary undermining of
public goods by overstressing privacy rights would not be caused by the state, but
rather stem: [. . .] from the quest for profit by some private companies . Indeed, I find that
these corporations now regularly amass detailed accounts about many aspects of the
personal lives of millions of individuals, profiles of the kind that until just a few years
ago could be compiled only by the likes of the East German Stasi . [. . .] Consumers, employees,
Etzioni (1999) stresses that
even patients and children have little protection from marketeers, insurance companies, bankers, and corporate surveillance (Etzioni,
The task of a socialist privacy conception is to go beyond the focus of privacy

concepts as protection from state interference into private spheres, but to identify
those cases, where political regulation is needed for the protection of the rights of
consumers and workers. It is time to break with the liberal tradition in privacy studies
and to think about alternatives. The Swedish socialist philosopher Torbjorn Tannsjo (2010) stresses that liberal
privacy concepts imply that one cannot only own self and personal things, but also
means of production and that the consequence is a very closed society, clogged
because of the idea of business secret, bank privacy, etc. (Tannsjo, 2010, p. 186). Tannsjo argues
that power structures should be made transparent and not be able to hide themselves
and operate secretly protected by privacy rights. He imagines based on utopian socialist ideas an open
society that is democratic and fosters equality so that (Tannsjo, 2010, pp. 191-8) in a democratic socialist society,
there is, as Tannsjo indicates, no need for keeping power structures secret and therefore no
need for a liberal concept of privacy. However, this does in my view not mean that in a society
that is shaped by participatory democracy, all forms of privacy vanish . There are some human
1999, p. 9f).
acts and situations, such as defecation (Moore, 1984), in which humans tend to want to be alone. Many humans would both in a
capitalist and a socialist society feel embarrassed having to defecate next to others, for example by using toilets that are arranged
next to each other without separating walls. So solitude is not a pure ideology, but to a certain desire also a human need that should
it is necessary to
question the liberal-capitalist privacy ideology, to struggle today for socialist privacy
that protects workers and consumers, limits the right and possibility of keeping
power structures secret and makes these structures transparent. In a qualitatively
different society, we require a qualitatively different concept of privacy, but not the
end of privacy. Torbjorn Tannsjos work is a powerful reminder that it is necessary not to idealize
privacy, but to think about its contradictions and its relation to private property.
be guaranteed as long as it does not result in power structures that harm others. This means that
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Link Drones
Drone surveillance is only an extension of neoliberal risk management
the imperialism of neoliberal reason constitutes the foundation for
drones use and the affirmative obfuscates this basis
Witham 13 (Ben, University of Reading, April 2013, A Neoliberal Way of War? The diffusion of market ideology in discourse of state violence,
pp. 16-19, aps)
War as risk management Concomitant to the focus on the post-Cold War order as an order characterised by globalisation and global threat networks,
The concept of risk management, which has

become central to the various risk discourses in the West, is very much an expression of what Bourdieu and
Wacquant call the new planetary vulgate of neoliberalism. 48 The term risk management also predates the rise
of neoliberalism (though it certainly emerged from the world of business and finance), but its increasing ubiquity
and its application to a variety of political(rather than business) issues are a function of its place in
the neoliberal nomenclature and of the imperialism of neoliberal reason. 49 There is, moreover, a connection between the general
emphasis placed on flexibility by neoliberal ideology and the concern with managing and pre-empting risks in a market-based society. It is the
potentiality of risk that necessitates flexibility , an approach characterised by Aradau and Van Munster as
there is, in many British policy texts, an emphasis on risk management.
precautionary risk.50 This connection can be seen in the way the present British governments Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR)
describes planned changes to the organisation and functions of the UK Armed Forces: [T]o respond to growing uncertainty about longer-term risks and
threats, we will pursue an over-arching approach which:-identifies and manages risks before they materialize in the UK, with a focus on preventing
conflicts and building local capacity to deal with problems []- ensures those capabilities have in-built flexibility to adjust to changing future
requirements The SDSR also re-iterates the aims of the National Security Strategy instituted by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, the second
clear objective of, which is, the SDSR says: [T]o shape a stable world, by acting to reduce the likelihood of risks affecting the UK or our interests
overseas, and applying our instruments of power and influence to shape the global environment and tackle potential risks at source And this strategy, in
This
amounts to an approach to deploying state violence in liberal societies which is based
more on a notion of pre-emptive immunity from risks a strategy previously specific
to the financial sector in the form of such things as insurance policies than on a notion of
turn, apparently leads to a National Security Council policy which: Identifies and manages risks before they materialize in the UK
resolving, perpetuating or otherwise enacting political conflicts. This point is sharply apparent in the use of financial metaphor in the SDSR and many
other policy papers. For example, the SDSR states that: We will retain and renew our independent nuclear deterrent the United Kingdoms ultimate
To reduce the continuous manufacture of nuclear weapons,

to an insurance policy to couch this activity in the terms of the market is to
attempt to depoliticise it, so that, in the very next sentence, the text can speak, without irony, of our commitment vigorously to
insurance policy in this age of uncertainty.
weapons of mass destruction (WMD),
pursue multilateral global disarmament. Multilateral global disarmament is a political goal, whereas retaining and renewing a nuclear deterrent is a
market rationality, a strategy of risk management, an insurance policy. We can also see here how it is specifically liberal state violence which is subject
to neoliberal ideology, whereas the manufacture of WMD in non-liberal rogue states like Saddam Husseins Iraq, Iran under the presidency of Mahmoud
Ahmendinejad, or in nominally communist North Korea, is very much politicised in the discourse of Western policy papers in the hands of such
regimes WMD become a risk precisely because of the ideological (as opposed to post-ideological/depoliticised/managerial) nature of their
The language of risk management is pervasive in not only the policies of

political parties and government, but also the agencies tasked with deploying state
violence. In the UK, the Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), a Ministry of Defence funded policy unit based at the Defence
governments.
Academy in Shrivenham, has been charged, since 2006, with the defence authority for doctrinal, conceptual and futures work for Army, Air Force and
Navy. In DCDCs British Defence Doctrine (BDD hereafter), required reading for officers across the British Armed Forces, a chapter dedicated to outlining
This
statement, with its strong epistemic modality, seeks to explicitly define the nature of
The British Way of War includes the definitive claim that by its very nature, military activity is about understanding and managing risk. 51
war for officers in training, and yet it does so in a rather surprising way. Let us consider, for a moment, some of the alternative
concepts that might have been deployed to reflect the nature or essence of war. The
distilled nature of war might be the defence or expansion of territory, religion or
culture, perhaps, or the co-constitution of political communities via what Carl Schmitt calls the
distinction between friend and enemy. 52 Like Lenin, we might view war in a historical materialist sense as a historically specific affair, without a
military activity is, in a Macchiavellian sense, really about

disciplining, controlling and winning over a populationthe subjects of the sovereign
power. 54 But of all the attempts to pinpoint what war is really about, one figure continues to tower above all others in the minds of Western (and
discernible or timeless nature. 53 We might even simply suggest that
especially European) strategists and officers planning and fighting wars today: the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz. Indeed, the British Defence
Doctrine opens with a foreword which quotes Clausewitz extensively, explaining that the aim of this document is to provide precisely the same sort of
guide to war that Clausewitz had intended On War to be. 55 Clausewitzs most famous dictum, from Book I of On War is that war is nothing more than
the continuation of politics or policy by other means. 56 Though sometimes misinterpreted as a cynical militarism legitimising the casual use of force,
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this statement was actually intended to highlight, as Louise Willmot notes, the central role of politics in war, so that war should never be waged for its
own sake, but rather for the sake of specific political objectives.57 This Clausewitzian conception of war as an intrinsically political arena seems at odds
Management is necessarily apolitical, a term

designating the maintenance of a system, rather than its (potential) contestation .
Beyond the purely textual level, it is also possible to ascertain the causal influence of
depoliticisation on more material elements of state practice. The discourse of risk
management also shapes military and policing technologies in the War on Terror . The
extensive use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, and for that matter earlier guided or smart weapons
including cruise missiles, is not only a convenient means for reducing military casualties on the
side deploying them, and arguably civilian casualties at the receiving end, but is an expression of the desire
to pre-empt threats and manage risks in todays wars. As Tyler Wall and Torin Monahan have noted: While
with the concept of war as risk management described in the BDD.
drones appear to affirm the primacy of visual modalities of surveillance, their

underlying rationalities are more nuanced and problematic . As complex technological
systems, drones are both predicated upon and productive of an actuarial form of
surveillance. They are employed to amass data about risk probabilities and then
manage populations or eliminate network nodes considered to exceed acceptable risk
thresholds. 58 The innovation of drones is a step toward globalizing this depoliticised,
risk management form of warfare, based on the identification of suspicious
behaviour and improper conduct. The drone , with its selective disregard for
sovereignty and ability to quite literally transcend state borders, is the weapon of
globalisation par excellence. The increasingly routine deployment of such weapons is
unsurprising given the policymakers view of the world as a globalised, marketised
arena of risk . Just as investment firms expend time and money on managing and mitigating, say, currency exchange risks, so governments
attempt to manage security risks. Furthermore, many of the state practices employed in prosecuting the domestic War on Terror can also be at least
partly explained by reference to the risk management discourse. The use of control orders in the UK, whereby the Home Office is able to detain
individuals considered terror suspects, but against whom no criminal charges could realistically in fact be brought, under indefinite conditions of house
arrest and intense surveillance, is clearly a form of risk management. Similarly, the use of detention without charge for terror suspects is predicated on
this notion that the suspension of habeas corpus is a reasonable price to pay for insurance against risk.
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Link Government Accountability

State practices are consistently defined by a protection of ruling class
interests reforms lend legitimacy to a corrupt apparatus that has
empirically refused any meaningful restraint on its power.
Tigar, 2014
(Michael, emeritus professor of the Duke Law School and American University, Washington
College of Law, The National Security State: The End of Separation of Powers, Monthly Review,
66:3, July/August, http://monthlyreview.org/2014/07/01/the-national-security-state/)
No one could sensibly claim that these principles of transparency and accountability were
uniformly applied in the decades after they were first formulated . These were promises that the new regime
made to the people generally. As promises, they were hedged about with limitations and conditions at
the outset, and then in practice proved to be difficult to enforce . These were promises
fashioned as instruments of bourgeois state power, setting out an idea that the state
would stand as neutral guardian of principle, when in fact it was prepared to act as an
instrument of social control. But while the promises could never be wholly realized,
keeping them gave state power its perceived legitimacy. That, in general terms, is the way of
parliamentary democracy. Organs of state power remain open to influence; a set of declared
rights is more or less guaranteed. It is not, therefore, surprising that Chief Justice Marshall himself
wrote the Supreme Court opinions that denied judicial review to Native Americans and African
slaves. After all, the Constitution itself accepted the institution of slavery and provided that: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned
among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the
whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
That is, a slave was threefifths of a person for the purpose of allocating Congressional seats, though without a vote or any of the political rights defined
in the Constitution. Native Americans did not exist for purposes of taxes and representation, although the Congress would certainly legislate as to their
status. In the early nineteenth century, Native Americans sought to assert their rights. As I wrote in Law & the Rise of Capitalism: The Cherokee Nation of
Georgia adopted a written constitution and asserted sovereignty over its land. The Georgia legislature responded by declaring Cherokee laws and
customs void and opening Cherokee land to settlement. The federal Congress, at the urging of President Andrew Jackson, passed legislation seeking to
compel Native Americans to give up and move westward. Georgia authorities arrested, tried, and hanged a Cherokee for an offense allegedly committed
on Cherokee territory. The Cherokee Nation sought relief in the courts. They were, after all, a nation. They sought to restrain the enforcement of Georgia
laws which go directly to annihilate the Cherokees as a political society, and to seize, for the use of Georgia, the lands of the nation which have been
assured to them by the United States in solemn treaties repeatedly made and still in force. The Cherokees lawyer invoked the Supreme Courts power,
saying that the lawsuit was between a foreign nationthe Cherokee and the state of Georgia. Under the United States Constitution, the Supreme Court
could exercise its original jurisdiction over such a lawsuit without waiting for lower courts to decide it and then hearing the case on appeal. Chief Justice
Marshall looked to the constitutional grant to Congress of the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with
the Indian tribes. He found the Cherokee to be a domestic, dependent nation that was in a state of pupilage, like that of a ward to his guardian. It
was not, he said, for the Court a true foreign nation. Thus, the Cherokee Nation had no legal existence. It could not even come to a federal court to
vindicate its treaty rights. The Supreme Court decided Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1830, over the dissents of Justices Story and Thompson. Two years
later, in Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice Marshall retreated a bit, and held that Georgia did not have the right to regulate activities on the Cherokee
lands. He did not reach this result by recognizing the position of the Cherokee Nation, but by denying the right of a state such as Georgia to interfere in
matters that are essentially federal. That is, the national government had the constitutional power to deal with Native Americans and the states had only
a limited role to play. Marshall spoke for the Supreme Court on the issue of slavery in an 1825 case, The Antelope. The Constitution had forbidden
Congress to regulate importation of persons until 1808. In a statute that took effect January 1, 1808, the Congress prohibited importation of slaves.
Nonetheless, the slave trade continued, and in 1820, a U.S. coast guard vessel boarded and seized a ship, The Antelope, that was carrying 225 African
slaves. The Antelope was taken into port on suspicion that the slaves were destined to be imported into the United States. Here was a chance for
Marshall, who acknowledged that slavery was contrary to the laws of nature, to translate this sense of injustice into a judicial command. However, he
noted that Christian and civilized nations still engaged in the slave trade and that it could not therefore be said to be unlawful; the slaves were not to
be set free but rather returned to their owners. Marshalls failure to find controlling international law is the more surprising because the United States
For Marshall and his colleagues on

the Supreme Court, Native Americans did not exist as holders or bearers of rights,
and the status of slavery was not an issue that the law could address . To complete the story, one
had agreed in the 1814 Treaty of Ghent to seek an end to the international slave trade.
must note the Courts 1841 decision in The Amistad. Between 1825 and 1841, treaties and customary international law had shifted the legal landscape.
The Amistad was a Spanish ship carrying fortynine slaves. The slaves took command of the ship, which eventually anchored off Long Island. The legal
proceedings eventually reached the Supreme Court. The Spanish and British governments tried to exercise influence on the case: the British said that
the capture of the slaves in Africa violated a treaty between Britain and Spain. Spain said the slaves were property and should be returned. The Supreme
Court argument, led by John Quincy Adams, stressed that judicial review and not executive branch concerns should be the guiding principle of decision.
On March 9, 1841, Justice Story delivered the Supreme Courts opinion holding that the slaves must be freed. Any hope that was kindled by the Amistad
The Supreme Courts decision that Dred Scott was

not entitled to freedom from slavery despite having been taken into free territory was
based upon an assertion that echoed the rationale of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia.
decision was extinguished by the Dred Scott decision in 1857.
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African slaves and their descendants could not be citizens of any state and were
therefore not entitled to be heard in federal court. They were, the Court said, beings of an
inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or
political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was
bound to respect. That is, it was not only the political institution of slavery that forbade
judicial review, but a theory that those of African descent were inferior beings
destined to be ruled without voice as to their condition. Chief Justice Taney, who wrote the majority opinion,
and President James Buchanan, who was given advance notice of what the Court would do, thought that the Dred Scott decision would end the
Thus, in 1857, for white

male citizens, judicial review of governmental action was presumptively available.
However, judicial review stopped short when a litigant challenged a system of social
relations. The conquest and subjugation of Native Americans was a fundamental tenet of British, French, Spanish, and then U.S. occupation of the
controversy about slavery. Of course, it did nothing of the kind, but rather made a military solution inevitable.
Eastern seaboard and then of Westward expansion. By definition Native Americans were not to be considered as bearers of rights that could be enforced
against the state. And Taneys statement came at the end of a long pseudohistorical analysis that justified the institution of slavery as a part of the
social fabric. T h e S e p a r a t i o n o f P o w e r s A f t e r 1 8 5 7 The Civil War amendments to the Constitution abolished slavery and provided for equal
protection of the laws. It would be nearly a century before the promise of those amendments began to be fulfilled by the Supreme Court. For African
Americans, the Courts ruling in Brown v. Board of Education recognized the promise that the 14th Amendment equal protection clause indisputably
made. The MarburyGilchristBurr model, as limited in Cherokee Nation and Dred Scott, posits a right of access to review of governmental action.
Presumptively, the courts will provide review. In a narrow class of cases, that review must be obtained through a political process. Nobody can rationally
claim that either of these avenues of redress is efficient. Most of the significant cases about rights have been brought and litigated by labor, civil
those who wind up in

court testing their rights as criminal defendants will have counsel provided but the
deficiencies of that system are wellknown. The electoral political process is
dominated by money, and is in many ways impossibly corrupt . The point, however, is that
the state has assiduously maintained the fiction that both of these avenues of redress are
in fact viable. In order for this fiction to have any semblance of credibility, the
institutions of redress must be seen to have some utility. The lawyer for the
oppressed points to the promises and principles in the legal ideology of the dominant
class, and argues for their application in ways that may contradict the interests of
that class. Significant victories have been won for workers, women, people of color,
political dissidents, and gay and lesbian peoplein the judicial, executive, and
legislative arenas. The courtroom battles for these rights produced significant victories in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and helped to
empower movements for social change. In the midst of these battles, there were disturbing signs that
rights, and civil liberties organizationsthe cost of what passes for justice is too great for most people. Of course,
Patrick Henrys forebodingsa President at the head of an army, and therefore indisposed to heed the commands of a Chief Justicewould be realized.
And what if a Presidents refusal to do what Mr. Chief Justice will order him was a problem compounded by Mr. Chief Justices timidity and moral
obliquity? That is, what if Mr. Chief Justicein the pattern of Marshall in Cherokee Nation or Taney in Dred Scottwere to acquiesce in declaring a no
the structure of separation of powers

might crumble, not by conquestbut by surrender. By way of example, the Supreme Court
upheld the internment of JapaneseAmericans during the Second World War, yielding
to an exercise of Presidential power that was later held to have been improper and based upon false assumptions. Some of
law zone because of the character of a claim or of the claimant? In such a case,
the Courts decisions on freedom of expression and association during the Cold War period failed to respect freedoms of speech and association. Yet,
The years since

September 11, 2001, have witnessed a significant shift in the role of the executive
and judicial branches. In the militarized national security state, the dismantling of the
constitutional separation of powers has largely come to pass. We can see how this has happened, as a
matter of state power and legal ideology. Two legal devices have been deployed to shut off
accountability for governmental wrongdoing. The first of these is a judicially created
doctrine of nondecisionthe political question doctrine. The second is the state
secrets privilege, the invocation of which forestalls all accountability because the
rationale and details of government conduct are hidden from public view . Let us examine these
there were bright spots, as when the Supreme Court upheld the academic freedom of Monthly Review editor Paul Sweezy.
in turn.
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Link State Action
The political process has become completely divorced from the interests
of the proletariat the only way to imagine meaningful progress is
through a withering away of the state and a consolidation of
revolutionary praxis in non-parliamentary forms
Meszaros, 2008
(Istvan, prof emeritus @ U of Sussex, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time, pg. 327-8)
Since the vital issue on which everything else hinges is that "the objective conditions of labor do not appear as subsumed under the
no meaningful change is feasible without

addressing this issue both in a form of politics capable of matching capital's extraparliamentary powers and modes of action, and in the domain of material
reproduction. Thus, the only challenge that could affect the power of capital, in a
sustainable manner, is one which would simultaneously aim at assuming the system's
key productive functions, and at acquiring control over the corresponding political
decision making processes in all spheres, instead of being hopelessly constrained by
the circular confinement of institutionally legitimated political action to parliamentary
legislation.56 There is a great deal of critique of formerly leftwing political figures and of their now fully accommodating parties
in the political debates of the last decades. However, what is problematic about such debates is that by
overemphasizing the role of personal ambition and failure, they often continue to
envisage remedying the situation within the same political institutional framework
that, in fact, greatly favors the criticized "personal betrayals" and the painful "party
derailments." Unfortunately, though, the advocated and hoped for personnel and
government changes tend to reproduce the same deplorable results. All this should
not be very surprising. The reason why the now established political institutions
successfully resist significant change for the better is because they are themselves
part of the problem and not of the solution. For in their immanent nature they are the
embodiment of the underlying structural determinations and contradictions through
which the modern capitalist statewith its ubiquitous network of bureaucratic
constituentshas been articulated and stabilized in the course of the last four
hundred years. Naturally, the state was formed not as a one-sided mechanical result
but through its necessary reciprocal interrelationship to the material ground of
capital's historical unfolding, as not only being shaped by the latter but also actively shaping it as much as historically
worker" but, on the contrary, "he appears as subsumed under them,"
feasible under the prevailingand precisely through that interrelationship also changingcircumstances. Given the insuperably
centrifugal determination of capital's productive microcosms, even at the level of the giant quasi-monopolistic transnational
only the modern state could assume and fulfill the required function of being
the overall command structure of the capital system. Inevitably, that meant the
complete alienation of the power of overall decision making from the producers. Even
the "particular personifications of capital" were strictly mandated to act in accord
with the structural imperatives of their system. Indeed the modern state, as
constituted on the material ground of the capital system, is the paradigm of
alienation as regards the power of comprehensive decision making. It would be
therefore extremely naive to imagine that the capitalist state could willingly hand
over the alienated power of systemic decision making to any rival actor who operates
within the legislative framework of parliament. Thus, in order to envisage a
meaningful and historically sustainable societal change, it is necessary to submit to a
radical critique both the material reproductive and the political inter-determinations
of the entire system, and not simply some of the contingent and limited political
practices. The combined totality of the material reproductive determinations and the all-embracing political command structure
corporations,
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of the state together constitute the overpowering reality of the capital system. In this sense, in view of the unavoidable question
arising from the challenge of systemic determinations, with regard to both socioeconomic reproduction and the state ,
the need
for a comprehensive political transformationin close conjunction to the meaningful
exercise of society's vital productive functions without which far-reaching and lasting
political change is inconceivablebecomes inseparable from the problem
characterized as the withering away of the state. Accordingly, in the historic task of accomplishing "the
withering away of the state," self-management through full participation, and the permanently
sustainable overcoming of parliamentarism by a positive form of substantive decisionmaking are inseparable. This is a vital concern and not "romantic faithfulness to Marx's unrealizable dream," as some
people try to discredit and dismiss it. In truth, the "withering away of the state" refers to nothing
mysterious or remote but to a perfectly tangible process that must be initiated right
in our own historical time. It means, in plain language, the progressive reacquisition
of the alienated power of political decision making by the individuals in their
enterprise of moving toward a genuine socialist society. Without the reacquisition of
this powerto which not only the capitalist state but also the paralyzing inertia of the structurally well-entrenched material
reproductive practices are fundamentally opposedneither the new mode of political control of society
as a whole by its individuals is conceivable, nor indeed the nonadversarial and
thereby cohesive and plannable everyday operation of the particular productive and
distributive units by the self-managing freely associated producers. Radically superseding
adversariality, and thereby securing the material and political ground of globally viable planningan absolute must for the very
survival of humanity, not to mention the potentially enriched self-realization of its individual membersis synonymous with the
a transformation of this magnitude

cannot be accomplished without the conscious dedication of a revolutionary
movement to the most challenging historic task of all, capable of being sustained
against all adversity, since engaging in it is bound to rouse the fierce hostility of all
major forces of the capital system. For this reason the movement in question cannot
be simply a political party oriented toward securing parliamentary concessions, which
as a rule turn out to be nullified sooner or later by the extra-parliamentary vested
interests of the established order prevailing also in parliament. The socialist
movement cannot succeed in the face of the hostility of such forces unless it is
rearticulated as a revolutionary mass movement, consciously active in all forms of
political and social struggle: local, countrywide, and global/international, fully utilizing the parliamentary opportunities
when available, limited though they might be, and above all not shirking back from asserting the necessary
demands of defiant extra-parliamentary action. The development of this movement is
very important for the future of humanity at the present juncture of history. For
without a strategically oriented and sustained extra-parliamentary challenge the
parties alternating in government can continue to function as convenient reciprocal
alibis for the necessary structural failure of the system toward labor, thus effectively
confining the role of class opposition to its present position as an inconvenient but
marginal afterthought in capital's parliamentary system. Thus, in relation to both the material
reproductive and the political domain, the constitution of a strategically viable socialist extraparliamentary mass movementin conjunction with the traditional forms of labor's, at present hopelessly derailed,
political organizations, which badly need the radicalizing pressure and support of such extra-parliamentary forcesis a vital
precondition for countering the massive extra-parliamentary power of capital. The
role of a revolutionary extra-parliamentary movement is twofold. On the one hand, it
has to formulate and organizationally defend the strategic interests of labor as a
comprehensive social metabolic alternative. The success of that role is feasible only if
the organized forces of labor consciously confront and forcefully negate in practical
terms the structural determinations of the established material reproductive order as
manifest in the capital-relation and in the concomitant subordination of labor in the
socioeconomic process, instead of helping to re-stabilize capital in periods of crisis, as
invariably happened at important junctures of the reformist past. At the same time,
on the other hand, the open or concealed political power of capital which now prevails
in parliament needs to be, and can be, challengedeven if only to a limited degree
withering away of the state as an ongoing historical enterprise. Obviously,
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through the pressure which extra-parliamentary forms of action can exercise on the
legislative and the executive. Extra-parliamentary action can be effective only if it
consciously addresses the central aspects and systemic determinations of capital,
cutting through the maze of fetishistic appearances through which they dominate
society. For the established order materially asserts its power primarily in and through the capital relation, perpetuated on the
basis of the mystifying inversion of the actual productive relationship of the hegemonic alternative classes in capitalist society. As
mentioned already, this inversion enables capital to usurp the role of the "producer;" who in Marx's words, "employs labor," thanks to
the baffling "personification of things and the reification of persons," and thereby legitimates itself as the unalterable precondition for
realizing the "interest of all." Since the concept of the "interest of all" really matters, even if it is now fraudulently used to camouflage
the total denial of its substance to the overwhelming majority of the people by the formal and legal pretences of "justice and
equality," there can be no meaningful and historically sustainable alternative to the established social order without radically
overcoming the all-embracing capital relation itself. This systemic demand cannot be postponed. Partial demands can be and should
be advocated by socialists if they have a direct or indirect bearing on the absolutely fundamental demand of overcoming the capital
relation, which goes to the heart of the matter. This demand is in sharp contrast to what is now allowed to the forces of opposition by
capital's faithful ideologists and political figures. Their major criterion for ruling out the possibility of even the important partial
demands of labor is precisely whether they have a potential for negatively affecting the stability of the system. Thus, for instance,
even local "politically motivated industrial action" is categorically excluded (even outlawed) "in a democratic society," because its
The role of reformist parties, by

contrast, is welcome, because their demands either help to re-stabilize the system in
difficult timesthrough wage-restraining industrial intervention (with the slogan of the "necessity of tightening the belt") and
trade-union-curbing political and legislative agreementsand thus they contribute to the dynamics of renewed capital expansion, or
are at least "neutral" in the sense that at some point in the future, even if not at the
moment of their first formulation, they can be integrated into the stipulated
framework of "normality."
pursuit might have negative implications for the normal functioning of the system.
The modern state is incompatible with the formation of historical

materialism
Walker 13 (Gavin Walker, Assistant Professor of History and East Asian Studies at McGill
University, Theory & Event volume 16 issue 4 2013,The Body of Politics: On the Concept of the
Party, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae.16.4.html)
it is almost commonplace to hear that the supposedly vertical, top down,
autocratic form of the party has been superseded by the horizontal, grass roots, democratic form of the broad movement. This substitution is the theoretical center of numerous
political positions today, but what is troubling about this tendency is the seeming ease with
which the question contained in the partyform and its persistence has been conflated
with the historical experience of particular parties and thus simply dismissed with no attention paid to Marxs careful
understanding of this question. We must emphasize too, that the contemporary rethinking of the
party cannot be reduced to the Russian questions, neither to the outdated opposition between Marx
and Bakunin (expressed in the Conspectus on Bakunins Statehood and Anarchy ), nor to the debates in the Second
International (reform vs. revolution Lenin vs. Luxemburg), nor still to the long and unresolved
relationship of tension between the Marxist tradition and the anarchist tradition . Today,
Today
we see more and more how outmoded and pointless this opposition is: if it still expresses anything of a political nature, it is certainly
not centered on the question of the belief in the state. In our current moment of austerity on a worldscale, ruthless expropriation of
the poor, legal and statist legitimations of land seizures, reinvigorated imperial war, and economic crisis used as a lever to force its
burdens from the side of capital to the backs of the people ,
it is virtually impossible to believe that the

stateform is capable of any affirmative developments. Today we are more and more exposed to a
situation in which we are explicitly shown that liberal democracy and its parliamentarism are not contentless, adaptable or applicable
Liberal democracy is the ideological field that corresponds to the

domination of capital. It is part of capital. It is this basic aspect of politics that is
missed by the nostalgic bleatings for the high period of the welfare state, the imagination
toany purpose.
that a social state can somehow hold back a capitalist world. This is why we have to forcefully remember that when we deal with the
form of the state, we are dealing with a personification and institutional concentration of capitals tendencies and functions. Refusing
the state in this context is not simply a question of withdrawal or abstentionism. It is an exhortation to remember our inherent
political distance from capital after all, it is us, we, the defective commoditybeings, 42 in the phrasing of Yutaka Nagahara, who
provide capital with its selfconscious instrument of production. But this also provides us the openings of politics: to keep our
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distance from the state means nothing less than the reopening of a new epoch of struggle, of politics, of intervention, of a new
The tendency today to merely enact a weak and defensive

legitimation of the last vestiges of the postwar welfare state is not just an
anachronistic and historically outmoded position it is a position that denies the very
reality of political struggle today , in which the states function as personification of capital the stateform
as the actual total capitalist (wirklicher Gesammtkapitalist) 43 in Engels terms is coming more and
more to the forefront of the accumulation process.
signification for the seizure of power.
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Link Privacy Rights

Privacy rights developed out of the historical development of capitalism
it is a bourgeois concept that facilitates capital accumulation at the
cost of social welfare.
Fuchs, 2011
Privacy has been characterized as a value that is typical for liberal worldviews
(Bennett
and Raab, 2006, pp. 4, 17; Etzioni, 1999; Moore, 1984, p. 75f). It is therefore no surprise that John Stuart Mill has in his political
economy introduced the notion of privacy in relation to private property. When discussing the conditions under which land should be
allowed to be transformed into private property, he speaks of the necessity of the owners privacy against invasion (Mill, 1965, p.
232). Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels worked out an early critique of liberal privacy concepts. This critique contains four central
elements. The critique of privacy by Marx and Engels has not been covered in the literature in any detail. Therefore, the outline of this
critique is deliberately strongly quotation-based in order to make their critique available in the form of a comprehensive overview: (1)
There is no pure individual existence. All human existence is socially conditioned . By
conceiving privacy as individual right, liberal privacy conceptions fail to grasp the social existence of humans. Marx described the
position of the relation of the private and the general in the theories of bourgeois political economists: The economists express this as
follows: Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general
interest, without willing or knowing it. [. . .] The point is rather that private interest is itself already a socially determined interest,
which can be achieved only within the conditions laid down by society and with the means provided by (Marx, 1857/1858, p. 156).
the notion of the private in classical political economy is individualistic

and neglects that all individual actions take place within and are conditioned by
society. (2) The individualism advanced by liberal privacy theories results in egoism
that harms the public good. Marx furthermore stresses that modern society is not only based on
individualism, but also on egoism (Marx, 1843b, pp. 235-7, 240). Liberty in bourgeois society is
is the liberty of man viewed as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself . [. . .] The
Marx argues that
practical application of the right of liberty is the right of private property (Marx, 1843b, p. 235). Modern societys constitution would
The right of private property in the means of

production and to accumulate as much capital as one pleases, would harm the
community and the social welfare of others who are by this process deprived of
wealth: The right of property is thus the right to enjoy and dispose ones
possessions as one wills, without regard for other men and independently of society. It is the right of
self-interest (Marx, 1843b, p. 236). Thus, none of the so-called rights of men goes beyond the egoistic man, the man
be the constitution of private property (Marx, 1843a, p. 166).
withdrawn into himself, his private interest and his private choice, and separated from the community as a member of civil society
the private accumulation of capital results in the

concentration of capital and thereby of wealth: Accumulation, where private
property prevails, is the concentration of capital in the hands of a few (Marx, 1844, p. 41). (3)
David Lyon notes that the liberal: [. . .] conception of privacy connects neatly with private
property. Mills sovereign individual were characterized by freedom to pursue their
own interests without interference [. . .]. This presupposes a highly competitive
environment, in which one persons freedom would impinge on anothers, hence the
need to balance values like privacy with others (Lyon, 1994, p. 186). Crawford Macpherson (1962) has
termed this Marxian critique of liberalism the critique of possessive individualism . Possessive individualism is the
conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or
capacities, owing nothing to society for them (Macpherson, 1962, p. 3). According to Macpherson, it is the
(Marx, 1843b, p. 236f). Marx further criticizes that
underlying worldview of liberal-democratic theory since John Locke and John Stuart Mill. The problem of the liberal notion of privacy
relatively unhindered private accumulation of wealth, as the

neoliberal regime of accumulation has shown since the 1970s, comes into conflict with
social justice and is likely to result in strong socio-economic inequality. The ultimate
result of Mills understanding of privacy is an extreme unequal distribution of wealth. So his
and the private sphere is that
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privacy concept privileges the rich owning class at the expense of the non-owners of
private property in the means of production. (4) The concepts of privacy and the
private sphere are ideological foundations of the modern class structure . Marx says that
capitalisms principle of individualism and a constitution of state and society that
guarantees the existence of classes is the attempt to plunge man back into the
limitations of his private sphere (Marx, 1843a, p. 147) and to thereby make him a private
human being (Marx, 1843a, p. 148). If the private sphere in modern society is connected to the notion of private property,
then it is an inherent foundation of the class antagonism between capital and work:
But labor, the subjective essence of private property as exclusion of property, and
capital, objective labor as exclusion of labor, constitute private property as its developed state of
contradiction-hence a dynamic relationship moving inexorably to its resolution (Marx,
1844, p. 99).
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Link Ethics
Ethics mystify capitalism and make the Other a given in society.
Boer 13
(Roland Boer (2013) Professor in School of Humanities and Social Science University Newcastle Australia Toward Unethical
Insurgency, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, Volume 25 Issue 1, pages 38-51,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08935696.2013.741268#abstract,)
Ethics may be defined as the means of greasing or oiling social relations so that they work more
smoothly. More specifically, ethics assumes multiple others with whom and between whom social relations are problematic, thereby seeing its
task as overcoming those problems in order to make social relations operate in an improved manner. By defining this as greasing social relations, it
Marx, for whom ethics is a mystifying

ideology that justifies the status quo and keeps the ruling class in position .1 That suspicion is
should be clear that I am profoundly suspicious of ethics, a suspicion shared by
aroused further by those on the Left writing on ethics: Gayatri Spivak, Luce Irigaray, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Terry Eagleton, Slavoj Zizek, and
Alain Badiou are some of those crowding the scene. Above all, my suspicions focus on the framework of ethics, which has a distinctly ruling class
pedigree. 1. Law,
morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in
ambush just as many bourgeois interests (Marx and Engels 1848, 490; see also 505). In what follows, I begin with some
definitions and then critique one of the two forms ethics takes today*relations to the other, the stranger or the neighbor (Butler and Eagleton).2
From there I draw out my criticisms, using as a springboard Badious dismissal of the ethical ideology of the other as an apology for the state of the
situation*for the way things are*and using Zizeks exacerbation of the others alien nature by smashing his way through the imaginary and symbolic
ethics easily becomes

moralizing, offering advice about how to live* but I take a different track. My critique begins by asking a preliminary
question: how is the other, so often a given in ethics, produced in the first place? The answer is that the
discourse of ethics does so, but in the process it obfuscates its arrogation of other discourses
that also produce others and conceals the socioeconomic connections that enable
such productions. The result is that ethics gives the impression that the other is a given upon
which ethics may set to work. However, this concealment requires further interrogation, specifically
in terms of its class dimensions. In order to do so, I turn to Aristotle, arguably the founder of the classical philosophical tradition
other to the unknowable, traumatic, and obscene other. I share their suspicions of ethics* especially as
of ethics. Not only was Aristotle clear that ethics pertains only to the male ruling class elite (ethics are simply not appropriate for the herds), but also the
very terminology of ta ethika bears those class assumptions. Thus, the Greek ethos and Latin mos ( the
basis of ethics and morals)

refer to custom, habit, the known status quo in terms of social relations. They certainly should not
be disrupted, particularly if you happen to belong to the ruling, propertied class. In response to these
structurally inescapable connections, I ask whether the term can be appropriated, emptied, and refilled by those opposed to
ruling classes. In the end that may be impossible, so I suggest that a position opposed to ruling class custom and
habit be pursued--ae the s and praeter morem, unethical and unmoral. That is, I seek not an amoral position,
which dispenses with ethics, but one that seizes ruling class ideology and turns it against itself. In the
end, even these terms should be understood as place-holders, for an entirely other terminology may be more appropriate.3
There is no ability to change how ethics operate. They will always have a
ruling class framework.
Boer 13
The other produced by ethics has taken on a somewhat different shape, especially when the class, economic, and gendered
connections of that discourse are brought to light. Perhaps ethics has good reason to
conceal these connections; or rather, in a universalizing move characteristic of ruling ideologies, it
systematically effaces its specific location and claims to apply to everyone. So what is to be done
with ethics? One option is to divest the term of its pernicious class associations and then fill it with new content. This has been the preferred option for those who wish to maintain
Ethics would then be

appropriated for very different purposes. The trap here is that one cannot distinguish form and
content so easily, for a form inevitably trails the dust of its former associations . That is, the
enmeshment of form and content ensures that a term such as ethics is never quite free of its ruling class dimensions. To put
the term for feminist ethics, environmental ethics, queer ethics, or indeed working class, revolutionary, or Marxist ethics.
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it slightly differently, the framework of ethics as it has been classically conceived sets the terms of
debate, and one cannot simply divest a term such as ethics from that ruling class
framework. For those reasons, I suggest a focus on what is opposed to the class assumptions of the semantic cluster of
ethics--ethikos, ethos, ethika, mos, mores. That entails deploying the terminology of ae the s (or ae theia), what is unaccustomed, unusual,
unwonted, and unexpected--unethical. Or, in its Latin form, I prefer what is praeter morem, contrary to custom, and sine more,
against custom*in short, unmoral. Undesirable terms in classical writers such as Thucydides, Aeschylus, Euripides, Virgil, and Terence, but this is precisely why the
terms are so appealing, for they voice the position of those outside the restricted zone of ruling
class ethics. Note carefully: I do not argue for an amoral position, beyond ethics. The universe may well be amoral, for there is nothing good or bad about a piece of
rock floating in space, as Darko Suvin once put it (1979, 2). It may be objected that these terms too are part of ruling class discourse, designating the class other, and that they
are still within the framework. In response, I suggest that the valorization of the realm of those opposed to the ruling class then becomes an act of subverting the very discourse
of ethics and its class associations. That is, such a position may be regarded as a taking of sides, for these terms indicate what is disruptive, unwelcome, what shakes up the
customary and comfortable social order*an unethical and unmoral politics. Of course, if the masses silenced in the elite literature of ethics were to be asked, they might offer a
very different terminology.
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Link Discursive Ethics

The affs discursive ethics doesnt render class as the basis of
oppression means they hide what actually produces the Other and
exploitation.
Boer 13
the connectedness of discourse concerns its relations with its socioeconomic

context. At this point I need to introduce what may be called the discursive link. By discursive link I mean the connection between a
discourse and its socioeconomic context, which the traditional Marxist category of ideology renders
explicit. Here the discourse of class is instructive, for the production of class takes place
at the intersection between socioeconomic and discursive factors . That is, the various
others of class--working class and bourgeoisie, serf and lord, slave and master--never emerge without the interaction of
socioeconomic conditions and discourses (or, more traditionally, ideologies) that enables both the
discourses themselves and the production of class others. Or to use traditional Marxist terminology, objective and subjective
A further aspect of
conditions are both necessary for the production of these others. Another example is the construction of sexual identities. As Peter Drucker has argued (2011), the construction of older lesbian and gay
identities cannot be understood without the development of capitalism , as also the more recent rise of
alternative sexual identities among disadvantaged and working- class young people--known as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) or queer--has taken place with the unwinding of Fordism and the
such a discourse as a political discourse , a term that also applies to postcolonial, feminist,
insofar as they are explicitly aware of the discursive link in the process of
producing others. The question remains as to why the ethical proposals from the Left that I have considered do not make explicit
this process of the production of alterity, preferring either to assume the other as a given or
borrow its production from another discourse? I would suggest that the fault lies with ethics itself, for
it systematically conceals both its relations with other discourses , arrogating their others, and the
discursive link with its socioeconomic contexts. And the reason is the distinctly logocentric focus of ethical discourse. Two factors have played a
role in this matter: the Foucauldian shift from ideology to discourse , a shift that was meant to breathe life into the supposedly tired category of ideology but had
the effect of effacing ideologys connectedness with socioeconomic factors ; the linguistic turn in
which language becomes the prime factor and discourse becomes logocentric. The outcome was that the Marxist heritage, which
provided the springboard for such analysis, was discarded. That is, the ladder which enabled
discursive construction was kicked away, so much so that any mention of Marxist
analyses of class, gender, or sexuality is dismissed as so much essentialism.13 Ethics thereby conceals its
own process of producing the other, giving the impression that others are givens , so
that ethics may get to work.
dominance of neoliberal economic practices. One may designate
and environmental discourses
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Link Rights
Human rights are nothing but the rights of the bourgeois. Only
Communism can save human rights.
Douzinas 10
(Costas Douzinas is Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London and Pro-Vice
Master for International Links and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities., 30 November 2010, Adikia: On Communism
and Rights, Critical Legal Thinking, http://criticallegalthinking.com/2010/11/30/adikia-on-communism-and-rights/)
the end of history bragging of liberal capitalists and the revisionist histories of the French Revolution, which
emphasized its failures, terror and totalitarianism. It was a time of defeat and
demoralization for the left. All that has been solid in radical thinking started melting in the air. This period of defeat, introspection and penance came
It coincided with
to an end with the financial and economic crisis. The return of radical theory and politics revived the suspicion towards the facile moralism and humanitarianism of liberal
democracy and postmodern cultures abandonment of universalism. Alain Badiou dismissed the humanism of rights in Ethics,2 Slavoj Zizek questioned the emancipatory potential
of human rights after some wavering,3 while Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri see human rights as an indispensable tool of empire.4 The rejection of the earlier rights revisionism
Universalism is the rallying cry of liberal

humanitarians. The defence of the sans papiers, a major campaign of Badious organization politique, cannot avoid some version of rightstalk. Hardt and Negris
is almost complete. Yet, this rejection is somewhat problematic.
recipe for turning the claims of empires into radical multitudes expression takes the form of social rights. Jacques Ranciere finds in human rights a good example of the radical
politics he espouses. An embarrassed flirtation between the left and rights has been renewed in a direction which combines the defence of universalism with the rejection of
communist practice was a denial

of liberal rights, can the philosophical idea of communism save (human) rights? 2. The history of
human rights has been characterized by a conflict between liberal celebration and
rejection by Marxism and communitarianism. Human rights are Januslike, they have only paradoxes to offer.
They can emancipate and dominate, protect and control.6 This ambiguous attitude
permeated the radical theory of rights until recently with the negative side more pronounced. Marxs writings on
rights were part of his wider critique of capitalism . In feudalism, political power, economic wealth and social status
coincided. The political dominance of the rising bourgeoisie , on the other hand, could be ensured
precisely through the apparent loss of direct political power . The rights of man removed politics from society and
human rights ideology.5 This is the time to revisit rights history and theory in the context of late capitalism. If
ended the identification of economic dominance with political leadership. Politics became confined into the separate domain of the state. At the same time, property and religion,
the main safeguards of class dominance, were turned into private institutions located in civil society and protected from state intervention through the operation of natural rights.
the main aim of

natural rights was to remove politics from society and depoliticise the economy. After the separation, the
state is presented as (politically) dominant, while real (economic) power lies in capitalist
society. The bourgeois abandonment of the direct political power of feudal lords and kings was
the precondition for the ascendancy of bourgeois society and the triumph of its
capitalist principles. In this bourgeois hall of mirrors, natural rights support selfishness and private
profit. Politics and the state, on the other hand, replace religion and the church and become a terrestrial quasiheaven in which social divisions are temporarily forgotten as
This demotion to the private realm made property more effective and guaranteed its continued dominance. In this dialectical formulation,
the citizens participate in limited formal democracy. The liberal subject lives a double life: a daily life of strife in pursuit of personal economic interest and a second which, like a
In reality, a clear hierarchy subordinates the

political rights of the ethereal citizen to the concrete interests of the capitalist, presented
in the form of natural rights. Marxs attack on natural rights inaugurated the various strands of ideology critique. First,
equality and liberty are ideological fictions emanating from the state and sustaining a
society of inequality, oppression and exploitation. While natural rights (and today human rights) are
hailed as symbols of universal humanity, they were at the same time powerful weapons in
the hands of the particular (bourgeoisie). Ideologies, class interests and egotistical concerns appear natural,
eternal, in the public good when glossed in the rights vocabulary. Second, rights turn real people into abstract
ciphers. The abstract man of the declarations has no history or tradition, gender or sexuality, colour or
ethnicity, those elements that make people real. All content is sacrificed at the altar of abstract
humanity. This gesture of universalisation conceals however their real subject: an humanalltoohuman,
wealthy, white, heterosexual, male bourgeois standing in for universal humanity who
combines the dignity of humanity with the privileges of the elite. The emancipation of
universal man subjects real people to a very concrete rule: the rights of man as distinct
from the rights of the citizen are nothing but the rights of the member of bourgeois
society, i.e. egotistic man, man separated from other man and the community.7
metaphorical Sabbath, is devoted to political activity and the common good.
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All current rights are just to protect capital not the people.
Douzinas 10
rights follow national belonging. While proclaimed on behalf of

universal humanity beyond local or historical factors only national citizens get their full protection. The gap
between universal man and national citizen is populated by millions of refugees, migrants,
stateless, moving and nomadic people, the inhabitants of camps and internment centres, the homines sacri who belong to
humanity but have few if any rights because they do not enjoy state protection . Third, formal
equality (the legal entitlement to have property) treats unequals equally as a matter of right and
fairness. This turns equality into an ideological construct; it also promotes material
inequality, poverty and destitution and undermines close human relationships. Right by its very nature can
consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would
not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal point of view, are taken from
one definite side only...One worker is married, another not; one has more children than another and so on and so forth... To avoid all
these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal .8 Finally, Marxs
critique of specific rights was scathing. They proclaim a negative freedom based on a
society of isolated monads who see each other as threats. The right to ownership is nothing
more than the protection of private property on the means of production . Freedom of
opinion and expression is the spiritual equivalent of private property, a claim fully
validated in the era of Murdoch, Turner and Gates. Anticipating the recent biopolitical turn, Marx argues that the right to
A related argument emphasizes the statism of rights. Effective
security is the only real right. It constructs artificial links between (fearful) individuals and the state and promotes the ultimate social value, law and
Policing, the supreme concept of bourgeois society, the insurance for [bourgeois] egoism,9 undertakes to keep
social peace and public order in a conflictual society.
order.
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Link Human Rights

Rights promotions fail to create effective change because they arent
radical enough and they lead to increased surveillance and domination
of others.
Douzinas 10
attempt to save human rights for radical politics is ingenious but problematic. Rights have become
evolution of rights from inscriptions of constituent power to
central expressions of the established juridicopolitical order has all but removed their radical
edge. They stabilise intersubjective relations by giving minimum recognition to multiple identities;
they codify the liberal ideology of limited freedom and formal equality; they express and promote individual desire
turning them into the litmus test of freedom (of choice). Most right claims reinforce the established social order. First,
they accept the established balance and aim to admit peripherally new claims or claimants. Secondly, they turn law into
the gatekeeper and protector of the social order transforming the political claim into a
demand for admission to the law. Law transforms social and political conflict into a set of
technical problems regulated by rules and hands them over to rule experts . In this sense,
rights express and promote established political arrangements and socio economic
distributions and belong to domain of police. The rights claimant is the opposite of Rancieres political subject whose task is to transform
radically the overall balance. Successful human rights struggles marginally re arrange social
hierarchies and mildly redistribute the social product. Rightclaims bring to the surface the exclusion, domination and
exploitation and the inescapable strife that permeates social life. But at the same time, they conceal the deep roots of strife and
domination by framing struggle and resistance in the terms of legal and individual
remedies which, if successful, lead to small improvements and marginal re arrangements of the social edifice. Ranciere seems to agree that these liberties each person has are the liberties, that is the domination, of those who
possess the immanent powers of society. It is the empire of the law of the accumulation of wealth .37 Human
rights promote choice contra freedom, conformism versus imagination. Children are given rights
against their parents, patients, students and welfare recipients are termed
customers and are offered consumer rights and fake choices. In western capitalist
societies, freedom and choice have become the mantra of politics. Rights have
become rewards for accepting the dominant order but they are of little use to those
who challenges it. Rancieres excessive subjects, who stand for the universal from a position of
exclusion, have been replaced by identity and social groups seeking recognition and
limited redistribution. The excluded have no access to rights which is foreclosed by
political, legal and military means. Economic migrants, refugees, prisoners in the war on terror, torture
victims, inhabitants of African camps, these one use humans attest to the inhuman in the midst of humanity. They are the indispensable precondition and proof
of the impossibility of human rights. The law not only cannot understand the surplus
subject, its operation prevents its emergence. At that point we send them abroad along
medicines and clothes, to people deprived of medicine, clothes and rights.38 As Wendy Brown put it, rights not only mask
by depoliticising the social power of institutions such as private property or the
family, they organise mass populations for exploitation and regulation .39 The dark side
of rights leads to the inexorable rise in surveillance, classification and control of
Rancieres
the main stake and tool in the routine politics of consensus Ranciere denounces. The
individuals and populations.
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Link Hegemony
US hegemony is synonymous with global capitalistic domination
directing the world towards nuclear war and ecological destruction
Foster 5 (John, Professor of Sociology @ the University of Oregon, Editor of the Monthly Review, PhD in Political Science @ York
University, September 2005, Monthly Review, Naked Imperialism, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0905jbf.htm)
The unprecedented dangers of this new global disorder are revealed in the twin
cataclysms to which the world is heading at present : nuclear proliferation and hence increased chances
of the outbreak of nuclear war, and planetary ecological destruction . These are symbolized by the Bush
administrations refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the
Kyoto Protocol as a first step in controlling global warming. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense (in the Kennedy and Johnson
administrations) Robert McNamara stated in an article entitled Apocalypse Soon in the MayJune 2005 issue of Foreign Policy: The
United States has never endorsed the policy of no first use, not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been and
remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weaponsby the decision of one person, the presidentagainst either a nuclear or
The nation with the greatest conventional

military force and the willingness to use it unilaterally to enlarge its global power is
also the nation with the greatest nuclear force and the readiness to use it whenever it sees fitsetting the
nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is in our interest to do so.
whole world on edge. The nation that contributes more to carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming than any other
(representing approximately a quarter of the worlds total) has become the greatest obstacle to addressing global warming and the
worlds growing environmental problemsraising
the possibility of the collapse of civilization itself if

present trends continue. The United States is seeking to exercise sovereign authority
over the planet during a time of widening global crisis: economic stagnation, increasing polarization
between the global rich and the global poor, weakening U.S. economic hegemony, growing nuclear threats,
and deepening ecological decline. The result is a heightening of international instability. Other potential forces are emerging in the
world, such as the European Community and China, that could eventually challenge U.S. power, regionally and even globally. Third
world revolutions, far from ceasing, are beginning to gain momentum again, symbolized by Venezuelas Bolivarian Revolution under
Hugo Chvez. U.S. attempts to tighten its imperial grip on the Middle East and its oil have had to cope with a fierce, seemingly
unstoppable, Iraqi resistance, generating conditions of imperial overstretch. With the United States brandishing its nuclear arsenal
and refusing to support international agreements on the control of such weapons, nuclear proliferation is continuing. New nations,
Terrorist blowback from

imperialist wars in the third world is now a well-recognized reality , generating rising fear of
further terrorist attacks in New York, London, and elsewhere. Such vast and overlapping historical
contradictions, rooted in the combined and uneven development of the global
capitalist economy along with the U.S. drive for planetary domination, foreshadow what is potentially the most
dangerous period in the history of imperialism. The course on which U.S and world capitalism
is now headed points to global barbarismor worse. Yet it is important to remember that nothing
in the development of human history is inevitable. There still remains an alternative paththe
global struggle for a humane, egalitarian, democratic, and sustainable society.
such as North Korea, are entering or can be expected soon to enter the nuclear club.
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Link Economy
The aff aims to satisfy capitalism's urge for limitless growth - causes
exploitation, destruction of democracies, and destroys value to life while
trying to stave off the inevitable collapse
Clark 12 (Richard, OpEd News, 8/28/12, republished by WPF 4/3/14, " How and Why Is Global Corporate Capitalism Obsolete?",
http://wpfdc.org/blog/economics/19049-how-and-why-is-global-corporate-capitalism-obsolete)
Commanding an implacable and steady increase of toptier individual and corporate wealth is the core principle of global corporate capitalism . Meanwhile,
recognition of any social concern, or relationship-to-the-natural-world , that transcends the
goal of increasing capital accumulation for the few, does not occur. Why not? It's because it is extrinsic to the
system, and must therefore be ignored. Four critical problems must then be recognized: Dependence on
growth: Global corporate capitalism relies on limitless growth -- but the natural resources
essential to wealth production are finite, i.e. limited. Super-exploitation of resources is
exhausting those resources and destroying the ecosystems with which they are associated, thereby
jeopardizing human survival as well as that of other species . Propensity to war: Since the only
goal of the power elite is to accumulate (rather than more fairly distribute) wealth, the limited and
shrinking resources that are essential to producing that wealth must and will be fought over, and will
be owned and controlled by the winners. For this reason, high-tech, super-deadly
warfare becomes inevitable. Intrinsic & growing inequity, and the consequently inevitable
disappearance of democracy: Without any constraining outside force or internalized principle of
social equity, capital accumulation leads almost exclusively to ever more accumulation by
the few, which is to say that ever larger amounts of capital are thereby concentrated in ever fewer hands. Problem is,
democracies are corruptible: so this ever greater concentration of wealth allows the
purchase of the legal and political representation it needs to get laws passed that
facilitate the further accumulation and concentration of wealth in the hands of the moneyed and
powerful few. This means that as the concentration of wealth increases, democracy is degraded
and ultimately destroyed. Ironically, extreme capital accumulation is actually unproductive of
real happiness: Human happiness and wellbeing are demonstrably and empirically
tied to factors other than capital accumulation. The extreme poverty that results, for some,
from this lopsided accumulation, is clearly unproductive of happiness ; but after a certain point of
accumulation, so is wealth itself unproductive of ever more happiness. This happens just as soon as wealth goes
What lies at the heart of this insanity? It is this:
past a relatively modest level. This is not speculation: Through much study and gathering of data, sociologists have found that
happiness, contentment and human fulfillment are most widespread in those societies
where: a) there are guarantees that basic needs will be met for all, b) wealth is more equitably distributed,
and c) bonds between people and the natural environment remain stronger than the desire to accumulate wealth.
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Link Free Trade

The affirmatives 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 warsincluding most 19thand 20th-century imperial warshave been
fought over fundamentally economic concerns. Likewise, one only has to read the reflections of one of Americas 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 19091912. 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
todays American war-making has been undertaken in a much more open,

systematic, globally ambitious, and quasicorporate economic style . Al Capones 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,
previous fin-de-sicle,
partly a war about securing American control over Iraqi oil. Russias Lukoil and Frances TotalFinaElf will thereby lose out vis--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 warincluding, for example, Kellogg Brown and Root, a
subsidiary of Vice President Dick Cheneys Halliburton that, having helped the Pentagon orchestrate the destruction of Iraqi infrastructure, is now
receiving generous contracts to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure using proceeds from Iraqs liberated oil sales. But these classically imperial aspects of the
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 Butlers 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 reconnectionor, as Friedman (2003:A27) put it in an upbeat postwar column, aggressive
hostilities are not our main focus here. Instead, our central concern is with how
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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 to concerns
with networking and flexibility to mental maps of the planet predicated on a oneworld vision of interdependency. Thomas Barnett merely represents one particularly audacious and influential embodiment of
this trend.
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Link International Law/Credibility

International law recreates a public/private divide that perpetuates
capitalism their legal reforms exist solely to protect disputed capital
interests
Chimni 99 (B.S., legal scholar, February 1999, Marxism and International Law: A Contemporary Analysis, Economic and political weekly, vol.
34 no. 6, pp. 337-349)
the global commons have been subjected to the process of privatisation. Consider
the developments in the Law of the Sea which regulates the use of the oceans. In 1982, after
Fourth,
a decade of negotiations. the Third United Nations Conference adopted the Law of the Sea Convention. It was widely welcomed by the international community - despite the
. Under the convention the principle of

common heritage of (hu)mankind applies to the non-living resources of the ocean
floor and its subsoil beyond the limits of the Exclusive Economic Zone (extending to 200 miles) and the Continental Shelf. It is to be operationalised through
scepticism of some of us - as a legal regime which was fair to all the participants
a parallel regime which requires (vide Article 153) every exploitable site to be divided into two parts, one for the mi nng company that has made a claim, and the other for UN's
the revolutionary
concept of comnmon heritage of mankind harbored reactionary content as it essentially envisaged the private exploitation of the resources of the seabed beyond
national jurisdiction [Chimni 1982:407-12]. But such criticism was rejected as the parallel regime
envisaged the transferof technology from private mining consortiums to the
enterprise. In 1994, through a subsequent agreement, the obligations relating to the transfer of technology were however dropped [Schrijver 1997: 191]. What is more
the operations of the Enterprise have been constrained in other ways.24 Thus, as one observer puts it, "the ... international law with respect to
the global commons remains dominated by tlle rights of corporate property" [Teeple 1997:32].
Enterprise, the operational arm of the International Sea-Bed Authority established by the convention. Writing in 1982 we had contended that
Fifth, the idea of the global commons is sought to be extended by the indus- tlialised world to the environment, including resources (e g. forests) which are located within the
territory of third world countries [Imber 1994:58ff]. In addressing the issue intertemporal considerations are not given due weight implying a change in the distribution of property
rights to the detriment of the third world countries. For "as industrial countries developed, global private rights were granted to polluters; now, developing countries are asked to
agree to a redistribution of those property rights without compensation for already depleted resources" [Uimonen and WVhalley 1997:66]. This 'redistribution' of course goes hand
there is a push to universalise

northern regulatory norms since they promote the interests of transnational capital: the
leading 50 environmental corporations in the world are located in the advanced capitalist countries [for details see Pratt and Montgomery 1997: 75-96]. Sixth, there
have been established alternative dispute settlement mechanisms which seek to
eliminate the role of national courts in resolving disputes between TNCs and the
state. Today, international commercial arbitration is the preferred mode of settling
disputes for TNCs. Since the l;tte 1970s there has been a tremendous growth in the number of arbitration centres, arbitrators and arbitrations [Dezelay and Garth 1996].
in hand with an IPR regime which makes environment friendly technology costly to access. On the other hand,
"By the mid-1980s", according to a close observer, "it had become recognised that arbitration was tle normal way of settlement of international commercial disputes" [Lalive
International commercial arbitration
1995:2].
, it needs to be underlined, is essentially a private interests regime in which parties have
'autonomy' in terms of the selection of the arbitrators, the substantial law to be applied, and the place of arbitration. Support for it rests on a certain assumption of the proper
reproduces the public/private divide in international law
sphere of state activities. In fact it

. Community policy comes
into play only at the time of enforcement of an award and that too in the exceptional circumstance that the 'public policy' of a state has been violated, a concept increasingly
narrowly interpreted. While, without doubt, international commercial arbitration has a significant role to play in routine cases involving international business transactions, it is
not a suitable method for resolving disputes in core areas of national economic life like, for example, the ex- ploration and exploitation of natural resources [Sornarajah 1991:79].
For despite claims to the 'autonomy'

of parties only a select and elite group of individuals serve as international
arbitrators and the law applied is invariably traditional (colonial and imperialist) international law
with its clear bias in favour of capital (ibid). But institutions pursuing the interests
of capital (the World Bank and the International Chamber of Commerce, for example) have relentlessly promoted
international commercial arbitration.25 'he increasing competition in recent years between third world countries to promote foreign direct
Third world countries were therefore for long suspicious of international commercial arbitration (ibid).
investment has helped this effort as it has pressurised them to accept the preferences of TNCs in dispute resolution.
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Link Welfare
Welfare is a holding mechanism to delay the structural crisis of mass
poverty and unemployment despite their best intentions the aff just
expands eligibility for who can be bought off.
Wildcat Germany, 2015
(Wildcat, official German branch of communist party (aka Wildcats), Press Release Reforming the Welfare State for Saving Capitalism, Critical Legal Thinking, 6/13, Online:
http://criticallegalthinking.com/2015/06/13/reforming-the-welfare-state-for-saving-capitalism/)
assumptions about the welfare state in the
debate about the guaranteed income derive first of all from personal experience with using welfare benefits.
The welfare state is not judged by its relation to the class relationship and class
struggle neither historically nor in daily political activities but by personal opportunities to live with as
little work as possible. After the failure of the proletarian struggles of the 1970s, the tendency of
collective struggles against work was replaced by the individual behaviour and lifestyle of the
4. Illusions regarding the welfare state and class society The
refusal of work. Collecting welfare benefits gave the subjects of the new social movements enough free time for their political
connections to the struggle against work in the production process became

severed. Autonomous became an expression of the separation from conflicts in the workplace. Apart from the hassle in the
benefits offices, the welfare state was seen as quite an agreeable institution. This corresponds to
two familiar ideas: welfare benefits are income without work, and this is possible because the welfare state
is an achievement of the workers movement. These ideas reproduce the exact same
illusions with which the welfare state veils the fundamental class relationship.
Historically, the welfare state was first of all a bulwark against the threat of revolution. Since the
early 19th century, when the dangerous classes threatened the social order, the
bourgeoise talked about the social question. This term theoretically defused the class
antagonism and assumed that it could in principle be solved by social reform. State run
social security was to guarantee that proletarians would permanently offer their
labour power to capitalwithout revolting and without starving to death. On the other hand the workers
activities. But
movement also established its own social security funds to help solidarity among workers. They criticised the introduction of social
insurance schemes by the state as a kind of expropriation of their selforganised funds. While Bismarck in Germany established a
purely statal social insurance system which was aimed openly against the workers movement, in other countries the state subsidized
served to integrate the workers movement

into the bourgeois state; but the consciousness of the opposition between the working class and state regulated
reproduction was still alive, because the workers movement maintained control over its own funds. The introduction of
any social benefit has always meant more control and surveillance of individual
proletarians: People asking for social benefits must be registered nationstate citizens,
disclose their employment and education history, etc. The achievements of the welfare state
are meant to suppress awareness of our own strength and collective struggles. Our own
selfactivity is replaced by the state, we are atomised by bourgeois law and individual
monetary payments. Capitalism is based on the fact that we are constantly being separated
from the wealth we have produced by our own social co operation. The welfare state
makes sure we accept this fact and behave as individuals. The welfare state has completed
the project of the nation. At first, proletarians did not have a fatherland indeedthen the claim to social benefits from
the self organised funds of the trade unions. That move also
their state turned them into national citizens. German trade unions were finally fully recognised by the state in World War I when
they were involved in the administration of the national economy and took on the responsibility of disciplining the workers. Where
selforganised funds of the workers movement still existed in other European countries they were handed over to the state under Nazi
Anyone making appeals to the welfare state today cannot avoid an affirmative
approach to the nation state.
occupation.
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Welfare is a pressure release valve for capitalism we should reject

state handouts and take control of capital on our own terms instead.
unemployment and employment often assume these categories to be two
groups of society: One group has a regular income and one group is excluded from the labour market
and has to be supported by the state. This image has little to do with real people and their biographies. A lot of people do not
work but are not unemployed (pupils, retired people etc.), others are unemployed and work (off the books), others are not employed but still work (housework,
raising children etc.), still others are available to be exploited by capital but wait abroad and therefore do not
count as unemployed. The statistics do not tell us how capital exploits living labour power . You should keep this in
mind when you read the following sketch of class relations (in Germany). We will only understand the important changes if we get
involved. After World War II the unemployment rate went down to less than 1 per cent only from 1961. 1975, with its annual average of 1 million unemployed, marks the end of the short dream of full
Debates about
employment. Modern unemployment is not forever for individual proletarians, but means changing jobs with interruptions. Statistically, 4.6 million workers were unemployed once in 1975, but unemployment lasted
For the first time in capitalist history the state was forced to pay
unemployed workers an income which covered their reproduction, in order to maintain industrial peace. Unemployment no
longer functioned as a wagedepressing industrial reserve army. The proletariat quickly discovered the pleasant sides of
unemployment. Many used the dole or requalification schemes to get out of the factory which everyone hated. The revolutionary left talked of the happy unemployed. After the defeat of the
only an average of 12 weeks.
open struggles, unemployment became a reservoir especially for many of the conflictual workers. Real wages kept rising and the first experiments with reorganising production failed. The attempt to use immigrant
workers from South Europe as a mobile reserve of labour power was a failure as well. There was a significant rise of the immigrant resident population after the official end to the employment of new immigrant
Half of those who had found new

jobs after being unemployed lost their new jobs again after a while. This indicated a rise of casual and
insecure forms of exploitation. The 1985 Employment Promotion Act (Beschaftigungsforderungsgesetz) opened the door for an extended use of fixedterm contracts and temporary
work agencies. The reduction of working time by trade union agreements became a Trojan horse for the
flexibilisation and intensification of work. Benefit payments were subject to several policy changes. For instance when, in the mid 1980s, benefit cuts had led to a sinking rate of
workers in 1973. During the next crisis, 1980 2, unemployment rose to over 2 million, speeding up turnover in the job market.
eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits, the state raised payments for the older unemployed again. Between 1985 and 1992, three million new jobs were created. Because of the immigration from Eastern
manufacturing jobs and poorly paying jobs could be filled with

immigrants. Still there was new shopfloor conflict shortly before German reunification. Employers in the metal industries tried to meet wage demands with one off bonus payments; a workers
Europe, which rapidly grew after 1987,
mobilisation in hospitals across West Germany led to improved working conditions and significant pay raises. In the euphoric political climate of reunification, the government was not able to uphold austerity and
welfare cuts but resorted to giant public debts thereby further fuelling economic growth. The worldwide crisis which set in in 1990 was delayed by two years by this special boom in Germany. The crisis came in
1992 3 and it was deeper than all the previous ones. Massive cuts in employment had already cut East German jobs from 10 to 6 million by 1992 raising allGerman unemployment to 3 million. In the crisis it rose to
over 4 million, and the cyclical upswing since has marked a sharp break with former trends: Jobs: In spite of the recovery, unemployment rose continually until 1997 while the number of regular jobs [2] sank
For the first time, real

wages have sunk without rising again. They also sank in relation to productivity, i.e. wage per unit costs sank. Benefits: Due to drastic
benefit cuts more and more unemployed have lost their unemployment insurance
entitlements and have had to claim social assistance. The separation between insurance and meanstested benefits is beginning to
correspondingly. Statistically, only irregular new jobs were created: selfemployment, work off the books, social insurancefree jobs [3] etc. Wages:
break down. Unions: There has been a breakthrough for capital in big companies: Trade unions and factory councils pledged to assist in costcutting programmes, wage components were made dependent on the
development of productivity and the sickrate, factory councils [4] signed company agreements below valid collective agreements signed by the same unions. East Germany: East German
production has been completely restructured, serving as a testing ground for new
strategies of exploitation. Instead of raising wages to the West German level, as had been promised in 1990, collective agreements froze wages at a permanently lower level.
At the same time, wages and conditions have been below existing collective agreements to an extent unknown in West Germany. The crisis of 1992 3 marked a turning
point in the discussion about the crisis and reform of the welfare state. More than 20 years
of unemployment were finally to act as a pressure to radically intensify exploitation . At
the same time, the working class too has left the ideal of lifelong fulltime employment behind. Workers are looking for individual ways out . Self-
employment and work off the books are a result not only of unemployment but also of many proletarians illusionary hopes to get away from the drugdery of work. When Kohls government was re elected in 1994 it
the government was

serving the interests of the employers, so the reforms ran up against a brick wall . In
was not able to take this mixture of fear and hope and turn it into the legitimation for a radical restructuring of the welfare state. It was too obvious that
contrast, the restructuring plans of the new red/green government, which were immediately announced in the name of the unemployed and economic prosperity, are much more dramatic. 3. Restructuring the
welfare state: shoring up the new class relations Today the programmes of all political parties in Germany demand some kind of guaranteed minimum income (ranging from negative income tax models to a civil
right for income). This is a response to the fact that more and more people in new forms of employment are no longer covered by the traditional safety nets of the welfare state. On the other hand, they all agree
debate is not about the absolute costs

of the welfare state but about its effectiveness in securing exploitation. In capitals logic, higher
costs in some fields (like early retirement schemes or a guaranteed income) may be okay because they led to a
growth of the total mass of labour and surplus value . Even longterm payments to a few troublemakers may result in higher productivity
of society as a whole. The chancellors chief adviser Hombach says what the restructuring plans are all about: So far politicians have tried to adjust employment
relations to the welfare system. Now the welfare system will have to adjust to the
that the only way of increasing employment is the creation of more of these new jobs because they mean lower wage costs and more worker flexibility. The
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labour markets new realities: All attempts at productively using flexibilisation at the bottom end of the labour market will be in vain if we cannot disconnect the social security system from the
assumption that normality means lifelong full time employment and the normal family, with a working father, a house wife and children. (...) And we will only be able to use irregular employment to build bridges
into the labour market if we do not punish social assistance claimants for working. Instead of taking away every penny they earn we should turn additional earnings into incentives.
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Link Immigration
Promoting migration is a capitalist goal, which has lead to increases in
inequality and exploitation of immigrants.
Sell 2012
(Hannah Sell, leading member of the Socialist Party and its predecessor since the 1980s, Currently on the Socialist Party's Executive
Committee, Socialism Today 160 - July/August 2012, Capitalism, globalisation and migration,
http://www.socialismtoday.org/160/migration.html)
AS BOTH THE Tory party, and now Labour leader Ed Miliband, talk tough on immigration, this book puts the other side of capitalisms two-sided attitude
Historically, the capitalist world market developed in a contradictory fashion,

from the nation state. At some stages, the importance for capitalism of freedom of trade was to the fore. At others, the importance of
national barriers. Today the productive forces have long outgrown nation states, and yet still
remain partially constrained by them. Capitalisms attitude to migration reflects this
contradiction. Written by three Oxbridge academics, Exceptional People argues on the side of freedom, specifically for
"the idea of freer movement". They summarise their case: "Even modest increases in the rate of
migration would produce significant gains for the global economy . Both rich and poor countries would
to this issue.
benefit from increased migration, with developing countries benefiting the most. As increased migration has a more dramatic impact on the incomes of
poor countries, it serves to reduce inequality between countries". In a chilling condemnation of the inequality created by capitalism they point out that
250 years ago, "the income gap between the richest and poorest countries was about five
to one, whereas today it is around 400 to one". However, that increased migration narrows the
gap is not backed up by the facts they give. They describe the last 30 years as "a dynamic age of global
integration" including a significant increase in migration, with 33 million more people moving
from developing to developed countries between 1990 and 2005 alone. Yet they also show that
"inequality between countries has risen by about 20% since 1978", while "it remained relatively stable between
1960 and the mid-1970s".
Under cap, immigration will always be used to exploit.

Sell 2012(Hannah Sell, leading member of the Socialist Party and its predecessor since the 1980s, Currently on the Socialist
Party's Executive Committee, Socialism Today 160 - July/August 2012, Capitalism, globalisation and migration,
Under capitalism, immigration will always be a tool of the capitalists to maximise

their profits. This has not always taken the form of encouraging freer movement. Sometimes it has meant the opposite. For example, in
Capital, Karl Marx refers to the Lancashire cotton manufacturers successfully preventing starving cotton workers from emigrating to the colonies, to keep
the extent to which

the capitalists can succeed in using immigration policy to lower wages depends on the
strength of working-class organisation. On London Underground, the militancy of the RMT union meant that the
predominantly migrant cleaning workers won the London living wage of 8.30 an hour. Potentially, a powerful workers movement
could successfully demand the right of democratically-elected committees to scrutinise the governments
immigration procedures, to try and limit or at least expose abuse by the gang-masters, racist practises, and so on. However,
as long as the capitalists hold power, immigration laws, like other aspects of the state, will
ultimately remain a tool for the capitalists interests. The struggle against the race to the
bottom, therefore, is intrinsically linked to the struggle for socialism. This requires unifying the disparate elements of
the working class skilled and unskilled, young and old, black and white around a common socialist
programme. What should such a programme put forward on immigration? It has to stand in defence of the most oppressed sections of the
them as a reserve army of labour and thereby hold down wages. (Capital, Volume 1, chapter 13) As already stated,
working class, including migrant workers and other immigrants. It has to staunchly oppose racism. It has to defend the right to asylum, and argue for the
end of repressive measures like detention centres. Crucially, it has to argue for the rate for the job for all workers, regardless of what corner of the world
they originate from.
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Link Open Borders

Pushes for more open borders are capitalist and hurt the poorer
countries the most.
Sell 2012
(Hannah Sell, leading member of the Socialist Party and its predecessor since the 1980s, Currently on the Socialist Party's Executive
Committee, Socialism Today 160 - July/August 2012, Capitalism, globalisation and migration,
THE FREER MOVEMENT of labour is one aspect of

globalisation. It is the freedom of capitalism to increase exploitation through a race to
the bottom, maximising profits by holding down wages. Other campaigners for freer labour are more honest
and crude about this than the authors of Exceptional People. The Economist, for example, evangelises for open borders,
bluntly arguing that increased immigration means lower wages. In 2002, its survey on migration
Consequences in the neo-colonial world...
stated: "The gap between labours rewards in the poor and the rich countries, even for something as menial as clearing tables, dwarfs
The potential gains [profits] from

liberalising migration therefore dwarf those from removing barriers to world trade ".
No capitalist government has implemented completely open borders , which would be too
politically destabilising for them to contemplate. However, while severe repression of asylum seekers and
undocumented migrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America remains the norm in every advanced capitalist country, many
have also consciously loosened border controls, in most cases covertly. For migrant workers it is a very limited
the gap between the prices of traded goods from different parts of the world.
freedom to be able to travel the globe if that is the only way to feed your family. What kind of freedom is it to hand your familys
savings to people smugglers and then, if you are lucky, after an often dangerous journey, end up working without papers for less than
authors of Exceptional People accept that migration is not a painless process. They liken it to the
any problems, they assert, are largely
short-term or secondary, with the long-term consequences overwhelmingly positive for
migrants, and for the countries they move to and leave. However, the statistics in the book do
more to prove the destruction than the creation. The argument that increased migration benefits migrants
countries of origin is repeatedly undermined. The exodus leaves some of the poorest countries completely
denuded of skilled workers: "More than 70% of university graduates from Guyana and Jamaica move
to developed countries, and other countries have similarly high percentages of graduates leaving". Malawi, a
particularly horrendous example, "lost more than half its nursing staff to emigration over a recent
period of just four years, leaving only 336 nurses to serve a population of 12 million. Meanwhile vacancy rates stand at 85%
for surgeons and 92% for paediatricians". Nor can the authors argue that remittances (money sent home to family and
friends) develop the economies of migrant workers countries of origin. Remittances have grown dramatically "from
the minimum wage? The
economist Joseph Schumpeters description of capitalisms creative destruction. But
about $31.1 billion in 1990, they are estimated to have reached $316 billion by 2009". While they can have a major effect on the lives
of individuals and communities, Exceptional People concedes that " there
are a very small number of

countries, however, for which remittance flows are substantial relative to GDP, and in only eleven
countries are remittances larger than merchandise exports".
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Link - Micropolitics
Communism is best alt fragmented struggles cede the state to the
right and will be absorbed into capitalism.
Dean, 2015
Green, Rethinking Marxism, 27:3, Taylor and Francis)
Rather than
persisting in an understanding of left politics that is little more than a liberal
emphasis on individual choice, participation, and pluralization (and arguably less than this, insofar
as liberals at least recognize the role of law and the state), communists need to think and act in terms of
building and exercising political power. For too long, left politics in the United States,
UK, and EU has mirrored neoliberal economics, urging decentralization, flexibility, and
innovation. Even the neoliberal push to privatize is reflected in left politics: not only
do we hear ad infinitum that the personal is political, but the micropolitics of
selftransformation and DIY takes the place of building and occupying institutions with duration.
In this vein, some on the left have abandoned social change entirely. Wary of totalizing
visions (Helepololei), they cede society and the state to a capitalist class that acts as a
global political class intent on extending its reach into and strengthening its hold
over our lives and futures. Fortunately, here and now, we are seeing left political advances
as ever more segments on the left come together in a struggle for political power . The
success of Syriza in Greece, the rise of Podemos in Spain, and the efforts of Die Linke in Germany and Left Unity in the
UK indicate that the party remains a viable form for thinking and acting politically .
Indeed, these achievements attest to the vitality of the party form as a site of political
experimentation. Stathis Kouvelakis describes Syriza as a hybrid party, a synthesis party, with one foot in the tradition of
In The Party and Communist Solidarity, I urge communists to take up again the political form of the party.
the Greek Communist movement and its other foot in the novel forms of radicalism that have emerged in this new period (Budgen
and Kouvelakis 2015). Far removed from the rigid, unitary fantasy to which some in this symposium remain fearfully attached (see
Miller 2015), the party is a flexible organization of political struggle. Mimmo Porcaro (2012), Jan
Rehmann (2013), and Peter Thomas (2013) offer varying but related theses regarding this creative dimension of the party.1 An insight
they share concerns the partys reemergence in the context of the limits of movements and how movements themselves reformat the
The party returns as a question when the Left realizes that neither resistance nor
prefiguration nor multiplication is sufficient for breaking the hold of capitalist state
power and producing a new emancipatory egalitarian social arrangement. No class
simply relinquishes power. And no assortment of disconnected enterprises no matter
how communalconverges automatically into communism. Whatever poses a threat to
capital and the state can expect to encounter absorption or repression or , most likely,
both. How, then, should the Left respond? Through scattershot initiatives that leave the
basic structures intact while hoping for some kind of magical convergence? Or
through organized action that connects multiple efforts into common struggle? I
emphasize the party because the party pushes communists to strategize: what does winning
look like, and what does it take to win? A defining characteristic of capitalism is the differentiation between
party.
state and economy.2 More than an economic system for the production and circulation of value, capitalism refers to a form of society
(Marx 2008, 14). In contrast with, say, feudalism, capitalist society relies on the differentiation of the economic system from the
political system. That state and economy are differentiated does not mean that they are separate from one another. States are deeply
involved in economic life: they issue and maintain currencies, create and preserve property and markets, devise and extend the
policy infrastructure of global trade, and so on. The differentiation between state and economy also does not imply complete
independence, as if states themselves were not economic actors with, for example, massive purchasing, employing, and investing
power. Rather, under capitalism the differentiation between state and economy points to different relations to capital accumulation,
with the state focused generally on the terms and conditions of accumulation and the economy focused on the circulatory processes
Political
are irreducible to economic
of accumulation itself. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2012, 4) speak of the relative autonomy of capitalist states.
logics, rationalities, or governmentalities
(to use Foucaults term)
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considerations. Capitalist states have capacities to act on behalf of the system as a
wholecapacities anchored in an array of institutions, laws, and policies. At the same
time, they are constrained by their dependence on capital accumulation . States secure
and reproduce capitalism, whether by protecting capitalists from themselves through
taxes and regulatory oversight, protecting capitalists from the people through
aggressive policing and surveillance, or protecting people from capitalists in those
increasingly frequent emergency responses that have taken the place of planning and
social welfare. The stateparticularly in its contemporary extended, decentralized, and networked form gives
capitalism its durability. It responds to capitalisms inevitable crises, keeping the
system running even when its components break down. Under globalized capitalism, an international
policy architecture aimed at securing capital flow provides massive advantages to multinational banks and corporations. The
structural adjustment policies and austerity measures
imposed by the IMF, World Bank, European

Central Bank, and U.S. Treasury determine (although not fully or exclusively) the lives of billions of people, impacting basic social
structures such as education and medical care, property, markets for agricultural products, transportation, currency value, energy,
The viability of communism, as an egalitarian political and

economic arrangement anchored in the sovereignty of the people and in production
based on need, depends on seizing, dismantling, or redirecting this system.
and the availability of potable water.
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Link Micropolitics
Identity & micropolitics are symptomatic of how capitalism splits
struggles precludes return to dialectical struggle aimed at overthrow
of capitalism
Dean, 2015
(Jodi, professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The Party and
Communist Solidarity, Rethinking Marxism, 27:3, Taylor and Francis)
In this essay I defend the idea of the party by setting out the conditions that make it necessary. I am not imagining a national, mass-electoral party but
Against left realists who claim that the party is an

outmoded or fully saturated political form and that we are relegated to momentary
acts of resistance or small reforms that leave the capitalist system intact , I argue that our
conditions push us to rethink and renew that form of political organization through
which communists think collectively about political power, act together in order to
generate it, and inspire one another to use it for the collective determination of the
world we produce in common. Capitalism pushes us apart. Left politics should not do
the same. Instead of emphasizing difference, it should assert and build commonality.
The party is a form for this assertion. For over two decades, scholars associated with Rethinking Marxism have developed
rather a solidary, militant, international organization.
new ways to think about economic activity, production, distribution, and accumulation. They have investigated multiple micropractices in a variety of
domains, expanding our sense of what is economically possible.1 Yet whom is the work for? I do not mean this cynically. My point is not about getting
tenure or rising in the academy. In my experience, most of us doing radical, Marxist, and communist work are disciplinarily marginal. I ask whom the
Creative economic
alternatives are rendered as choices for small groups, initiatives some might take .
They are thereby depoliticized into lifestyle choices and are therefore difficult to
disentangle from a fetishization of the local that, in its repression of commonality, is
simply a lower-cost version of the 1 percents privatization, personalization, and
enclaving. There are good ideas on the Left. When they are disconnected from
organized militant politics, however, they become absorbed into the flows of communicative
capitalismin Mimmo Porcaros (2012, 94) words, into an indeterminate mass of contradictory
affirmations. They are not oppositional; they do not provide an alternative. Without
political power behind them, they are just possibilities without possibility, just
something else for consumers to choose. Over the last thirty odd years (at least since 1989), a left realism has taken
hold of a certain northern, western, U.S.-European Left. At the site of a rethought humanist, culturalist, and
poststructuralist post-Marxism is the foreclosure of revolution and the reduction of
politics to critique, resignification, subversion, reform, resistance, and work on the self. Underlying continued
aspirations for equality and real opposition to imperialism, racism, sexism, and
homophobia is the sense that our working class is privileged, included, complacent.
work is for because it appears to me to be for anyone who wants it, for anyone who wants to try something new.
Radical politics involves other places, other subjects. Thus, during the same period that neoliberalism consolidated itself as a political-economic
formation (or in Foucaults terms, a governmentality),
most activists and intellectuals
associated with the Left
rejected
not just specific Communist parties but the very idea of the party as a form for radical political action .2
Although some of these rejections repeat arguments against centralism found already in the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as part of a
councilist or ultraleft political current, others situate themselves in a line of criticism prominent in the late sixties and early seventies. Rightly frustrated
various voices on the Left began to

amplify one another as they targeted their critical energies on the mediating
institutions of capitalist society: family, union, party, university. Insofar as these institutions made capitalism possiblethat is,
secured for it an adequate workforce and compliant citizenrytheir abolition made seeming sense as a
revolutionary goal. The party is but one of the institutions through which political energies are co-opted into the maintenance of the status
with a system whose components buttress rather than undermine capitalism,
quoa critique leveled at the Communist Party USA during the years of the Popular Front and also directed toward the French Communist party in 1968,
to give but two examples. Now, in the second decade of the new millennium, the mediating institutions of civil society have changed significantly. More
Because of
decades of antisexist and antihomophobic struggle, even the mainstream accepts a
people live alone than in any time in U.S. history (Henderson 2014). Fewer U.S. children live in two-parent families (Livingston 2014).
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wider array of living arrangements than were permitted thirty years ago . Union membership in
the United States is at its lowest level in a century (Greenhouse 2013). Wages have correspondingly stagnated and declined, decreasing the likelihood
Left political parties have

either collapsed or compromised. Max Elbaums (2002, 293) account of the new communist movement of the seventies tells
that blue-collar, service-sector, and minimumwage jobs can lead to a middle-class standard of living.
this story particularly well as it documents the setbacks facing U.S. party builders at the time, with their inability to regroup in the eighties and the
broadly demobilizing effects of the end of state socialism on activists who had been anchors of popular movements. The situation of the university is
less easy to summarize, although it is clear, first, that as political commitment to public education (education as a recognized social good) has declined,
Our current conjuncture differs from

that of the sixties and early seventies in that individuals are now more likely to
encounter state and market directly, without the protections of mediating
institutions. Instead of what liberalism renders as the force of law, individuals
encounter force as law, whether directly as police or directly as market. Communicative capitalist
student debt has soared, and second, that education is a key front in todays class war.
ideology presents this immediacy as direct conversations between individual and company, as entrepreneurialism, as flexible contract-based work. It
mystifies immediacy as personal responsibility, choice, DIY, prosumption (the producer as consumer), and as the opportunity for creative input.3
Privatization, offshoring, precarity, and the decline of unions have contributed to the loss of working-class jobs capable of sustaining a middle-class
An effect has been the dismantling of the wide array of associations formerly
part of working-class culture. Not only is the working class not a revolutionary class,
in the United States it is barely conscious of itself as a class a result, paradoxically, of the success of
organized labor in fighting for collective bargaining and higher wages. U.S. culture is no longer mass culture . From
quality of life.
personalized networked media to eight-hundred-channel cable television to the proliferation of sub- and microcultural consumption opportunities in the
long tail of music, video, and writing available on the Internet, communicative capitalist culture offers multiple and innumerable possibilities for
Our politics is likewise no longer mass

politics. Mainstream electoral politics focuses so exclusively on fundraising that the
more poor people support a policy the less likely their representatives are to support
it (Hacker and Pierson 2011, 111). Left politics has also shed the mass dimension of the twentieth century. Configured through
contemporary capitalisms push to customize, specify, and individuate, left issue and
identity politics reduces action to raising awareness in the hope of generating an
emotional response intense enough to inspire people to find out more for themselves,
get involved, and make their opinions known. The Left has mimicked and repeated in
its politics the fragmentation, localization, and pluralization crucial to neoliberalisms
dismantling of the welfare state. Even as capital has consolidated its class power and pursued a long-term strategy hostile to
expression, increasingly few of which register to any significant degree (Dean 2009).
the rest of us, the Left has accepted and augmented its own dispersion into singularized individuals. The few categories that make belonging explicit
have attempted at the same time to disavow collectivity: the consumer over the producers, the taxpayer over the public.
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Link Identity Politics

Identity is an unproductive starting point for change it rules out class
as a point of self-identification for oppressed groups like women and
people of color
Gimenez 01
(Martha Gimenez, Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, MARXISM AND CLASS, GENDER AND RACE:
RETHINKING THE TRILOGY, Published (2001) in RACE, GENDER & CLASS, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 2333, special issue on Marxism and Race,
Gender & Class, http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/work/cgr.html,)
To postulate an isomorphic relation between structural location whether location is conceptualized singly or intersectionally makes no difference and
identity or identities entails a structural determinism similar to that imputed to "orthodox

Marxism." While it is true, as it could not be otherwise, that all members of a given society are simultaneously located
in a number of structures which, together, shape their experiences and opportunity structures, structural location does not
necessarily entail awareness of being thus located or the automatic development of identities corresponding to those locations. It cannot be
assumed, then, that everyone has a race/gender/class identity, as Collins argues, though it is true that
everyone, by definition, is located at the intersection of class, gender, and racial/ethnic structures. That most
individuals in this country are more likely to adopt and selfconsciously display gender and
racial/ethnic rather than class identities is not an automatic reflection of their structural
locations but the combined effect of many factors such as, for example, the heritage of
slavery, the presence of colonized minorities, the composition of past and current immigration flows, McCarthysm,
the balance of power between classes and characteristics of the class struggle and, last but not least, the effects of the 1960s
social movements and dominant ideologies defining the limits of political discourse. RGC
thinking conflates objective location in the intersection of structures of inequality and
oppression with identities; i.e., individuals' subjective understanding of who they really are, and this conflation opens the way to the
ethnomethodological solution to "intersectionality," which assumes that everyone deploys those identities in the course of social interaction, so that all
social exchanges are "raced," "gendered," and "classed" (and the list could go on; "aged "ethnicized," "nationalitized," etc.). As most
institutional settings are characterized by hierarchical structures which distribute

people in locations associated with different statuses, power, privilege, etc, it is likely that,
whatever individuals' conception of who they really are might be, their behavior is
routinely interpreted in different terms by their peers and by those who are located high in
the hierarchical structure, in positions that give them the power to make decisions
affecting other people's lives. Identities are a contested terrain, both a product of individuals'
spontaneous, common sense selfunderstanding and political choices that help them make sense of their existence, and a
product of labeling from above (e.g., by employers and by the state) or by their peers; i.e., the effects of acts
of power. It is important, therefore, to differentiate between "legitimating identities," which are the product of dominant institutions and groups,
and "resistance identities," which emerge from the grassroots (Castells, 1997). How "intersectionality" is experienced, then, is itself a
thoroughly political process that raises questions about the possibility that what once were "resistance
identities," when linked to social movements, might in time become "legitimating identities," when
harnessed by the state to narrow legal and political boundaries that rule out other forms of
political self understanding.
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Link Intersectionality
The affirmatives prioritization of sexism / racism breaks testimony of
class oppression away from class consciousness, yielding incremental
reforms within a still-capitalist society the most effective response is
to code experience of sexism and racism in terms of class totality.
Gimenez 01
importance of learning from the experience of all groups, especially those

who have been silenced by oppression and exclusion and by the effects of ideologies that mystify their
actual conditions of existence. To learn how people describe their understanding of
their lives is very illuminating, for "ideas are the conscious expression real or illusory
of (our) actual relations and activities" (Marx, 1994: 111), because "social existence determines
consciousness" (Marx, 1994: 211). Given that our existence is shaped by the capitalist mode of production,
experience, to be fully understood in its broader social and political implications, has to be
situated in the context of the capitalist forces and relations that produce it .
Experience in itself, however, is suspect because, dialectically, it is a unity of opposites; it is,
at the same time, unique, personal, insightful and revealing and, at the same time, thoroughly social, partial,
mystifying, itself the product of historical forces about which individuals may know little
or nothing about (for a critical assessment of experience as a source of knowledge see Sherry Gorelick, "Contradictions of feminist methodology," in Chow,
I agree with the
Wilkinson, and Baca Zinn, 1996; applicable to the role of experience in contemporary RGC and feminist research is Jacoby's critique of the 1960s politics of subjectivity: Jacoby,
Given the emancipatory goals of the RGC perspective, it is through the analytical tools of
Marxist theory that it can move forward, beyond the impasse revealed by the constant reiteration of variations
on the "interlocking" metaphor. This would require, however, a) a rethinking and modification of the postulated
relationships between race, class and gender, and b) a reconsideration of the notion that, because everyone is located at the
intersection of these structures, all social relations and interactions are "raced," "classed," and "gendered." In the RGC perspective, race, gender and class
are presented as equivalent systems of oppression with extremely negative
consequences for the oppressed. It is also asserted that the theorization of the connections between these systems require "a working
1973: 37 49).
hypothesis of equivalency" (Collins, 1997:74). Whether or not it is possible to view class as just another system of oppression depends on the theoretical framework within class is
defined. If defined within the traditional sociology of stratification perspective, in terms of a gradation perspective, class refers simply to strata or population aggregates ranked
on the basis of standard SES indicators (income, occupation, and education) (for an excellent discussion of the difference between gradational and relational concepts of class,
Class in this nonrelational, descriptive sense has no claims to being more

fundamental than gender or racial oppression; it simply refers to the set of individual attributes that place individuals within an
see Ossowski, 1963).
aggregate or strata arbitrarily defined by the researcher (i.e., depending on their data and research purposes, anywhere from three or four to twelve "classes" can be identified).
Marxist theory, however, class is qualitatively different from gender and race and cannot be
considered just another system of oppression. As Eagleton points out, whereas racism and sexism are
unremittingly bad, class is not entirely a "bad thing" even though socialists would like
to abolish it. The bourgeoisie in its revolutionary stage was instrumental in ushering a new era in historical development, one which liberated
the average person from the oppressions of feudalism and put forth the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Today, however, it
has an unquestionably negative role to play as it expands and deepens the rule of
capital over the entire globe. The working class, on the other hand, is pivotally located to wage the final struggle against capital and, consequently,
it is "an excellent thing" (Eagleton, 1996: 57). While racism and sexism have no redeeming feature, class
relations are, dialectically, a unity of opposites; both a site of exploitation and,
objectively, a site where the potential agents of social change are forged. To argue
that the working class is the fundamental agent of change does not entail the notion
that it is the only agent of change. The working class is of course composed of women
and men who belong to different races, ethnicities, national origins, cultures, and so
forth, so that gender and racial/ethnic struggles have the potential of fueling class struggles because, given the patterns of wealth ownership and income distribution in this
From the standpoint of
and all capitalist countries, those who raise the banners of gender and racial struggles are overwhelmingly propertyless workers, technically members of the working class, people
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vision of a
mobilized working class where gender and racial struggles are not subsumed but are
nevertheless related requires a class conscious effort to link RGC studies to the Marxist
analysis of historical change. In so far as the "class" in RGC remains a neutral concept, open to any and all theoretical
meanings, just one oppression among others, intersectionality will not realize its
revolutionary potential.
who need to work for economic survival whether it is for a wage or a salary, for whom racism, sexism and class exploitation matter. But this
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Link Biopolitics
The 1ACs biopolitical focus masks ongoing material struggles that
define lifethat mitigates criticism of capitalist structures that are the
root of their impacts
Comaroff 7
(Jean, Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard
University, 2007, Beyond Bare Life: AIDS, (Bio)Politics, and the Neoliberal Order, http://www.henryagiroux.com/links/Beyond%20Bare%20Life
%20Camaroff.pdf)
But the very attraction of this mode of argumentation raises theoretical questions. For one thing, it moves by way of a very limited set of archetypes and metaphorsthe ban as
the production of bare life as the threshold from nature to culture, the camp as hidden matrixto which the
making of all modern politics is reduced. For another, it hovers ambiguously
between oversimplification; it blurs precisely what demands specification in the quest to plumb the
shifting political significance of AIDS in contemporary Africa, for example. What is more, it is unclear what kind of historical
justification Agamben might offer for his contention that naked life , life shorn of civic and political
rights, has become the sole preoccupation of modern sovereignty; unclear in com-parison
with the views, say, of Arendt (1958), who links the mounting obsession with "life itself" to
the decline of homo faber, of the civic-minded worker, turned inward by the
privatizing thrust of capitalism. If, for Agamben, a fixation on bio-politics is the
defining feature of modernity tout court, how are we to account for the struggles currently
underway over the definition of life itself, over the ways that it is mediated, interpreted, abstracted, patented? These
struggles are critical to understanding the power play that surrounds AIDS in Africa and elsewhere: power
linked to the rise of the life sciences, for instance, whose engagement with
biotechnology and capital have had a significant impact on the characterization of
human existence and the control of its valueand on the shape of biopolitics . And just how
originary political act,
useful, in confronting these issues, is the concept of bare life, spoken of in terms of pure subjection and gross biological being, meaningful only as a sign of sovereign power?
The question is crucial if we are to take seriously Agamben's own exhortation to

engage in a politics that recuperates civic being.
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Link Anxiety
The affirmative dehistoricizes anxiety by isolating it from its
development as a tool of capitalist value extraction their grasp for
authenticity will manifest in a withdrawal from mass movements against
social injustice.
Zimmerman 90 (Michael E. May 2. Professor of Philosophy and Director
of the Center for Humanities and the Arts at CU, Boulder Heidegger's
Confrontation with Modernity Pg. 24-26.)
Then, was of the inauthentic everydayness of urban life, which volhisch authors also decried. Heidegger sometimes spoke as if
everydayness and inauthenticity were identical, but elsewhere he spoke as if inauthenticity were an aggravated version of the
everyday tendency toward falling. Undifferentiated
everydayness involves a certain drifting

into prevailing customs, traditions, aspirations, and norms. Presumably even peasants are caught in
this drift. When it becomes a plunge, however, then one has moved into inauthenticitythe craving for distractions to conceal
one's mortality. Anxiety (Angst), which according to Heidegger is the most basic of all moods, reveals the ground- lessness of the
In the face of anxiety, one can either accept ones mortal existence
becoming authentic, eigentlicli, owned") or else flee into distractions (thereby becoming
inauthentic, uneigcntlich, disowned"). Heidegger's account of anxiety, which is much indebted to Kierkegaard, has proved
to be valuable in the field of psychotherapy. Some critics have remarked, however, that Being and Time's discussion
of anxiety resembles the psychotic experience of complete depersonalization , an
anyone self and its culture.
(thereby
experience with which Heidegger seems to have been threatened much like his heroes, Holderlin and Nietzsche. Marxist critics have
such depersonalization resulted not from psychological but from economic

factors associated with monopoly capital and its anonymous corporations. According to
Coletti, for example, even Heidegger's account of everydayness was shaped by his experience
with life in capitalist society: Sein und Zeit is a work upon which are indelibly stamped the signs of the crisis of the
German society of the period [. . .] The "enterprise" takes on an independent life, as if it belonged to
no one-the becomes the subject, and the subject becomes the object of its object. The
argued that
uncontrolled forces of society exacerbate to the extreme the nature of those forces extensively analyzed by Marx, which oper ate
behind men's backs with the peremptory necessity of natural events. Similarly, Theodor Adomo maintains that socially,
the feeling of meannglessness [or anxiety] is a reaction to the wide-reaching freeing

from work which takes place under conditions of continuing social unfreedom [under
capitalism|." Marxists argue that Heidegger's description of depersonalized life in the modern world
was accurate; his mistake lay in his failing to see the economic explanation for that
depersonalization. Like many reactionary thinkers, he regarded as reductionistic the Marxist argument that
depersonalization, and alienation resulted from economic factors such as class struggle. Accord-ing to Heidegger, economic analysis,
whether liberal or socialist, could shed no light on the modem rootlessness because such analysis was itself a product of modemiry!
Heidegger maintained that depersonalization was an ontological condition arising

from Daseins tendency toward falling, a tendency which had become aggravated in modern times. Par from
being the result of economic- material causes, then, depersonalization resulted from the human fallenness which itself made
possible a world dominated by (inauthentic) economic and material concems. Later Heidegger would claim that human rootlessness
was not a result of the individuals or humanitys flight from the truth, but instead the result of the self-concealment of that truth
from humanity. Marxists were not the only ones to criticize early Heidegger's account of anxiety. Max Scheler, for example, also
anxiety was a historical, not an essential, feature of human existence.

since Judaism and Christianity defined Westem
man, he has lived under a disproportionately greater burden of anxiety than any
other type of man in the world. . . [T]his weight of anxiety in great measure conditions
[modern man's| enormous world-activity, his hunger for power and his never- ending thirst for
"progress" and technological transformation in the world ; and furthermore that this anxiety has
argued that
Commenting on Being and Time, he remarked, I am convinced that ever
emerged in a very peculiar and strong way in Protestantism. ' ' Later, in his account, of the history of productionist metaphysics,
Heideg- ger was to agree with Scheler and Weber that the Protestant yearning for certainty in
regard to salvation helped to form the control-oriented and calcu- lating personality
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structure necessary for the emergence of capitalism and industrial technology. The drive by
modem homo economicus to control all things in order to maximize profit was a
hopeless attempt to reduce the anxiety and meaninglessness of life in a world from
which the gods had fled. Similarly, early Heidegger regarded as pointless all political
attempts to improve the social order within the context of the Weimar Republic. That republic
itself, in his view, was a manifestation of the spiritual emptiness of life in modern
industrial "democracies." The drive by modem homo economicus to control all things
in order to maximize profit was a hopeless attempt to reduce the anxiety and
meaninglessness of life in a world from which the gods had fled . Similarly, early Heidegger
regarded as pointless all political attempts to improve the social order within the context of the Weimar Republic. That republic
itself, in his view, was a manifestation of the spiritual emptiness of life in modern industrial "democracies." According to Winfried
Being and Time appealed to conservative intellectuals because it addressed

them theoretically, personally, and existentially without calling upon them to do
anything specific. It let them think of themselves as "insiders" with regard to the sorry state of
German culture, and it also permitted them and even encouraged them to remain
"outsiders" with no obligation to help improve the existing situation . Indeed, in Being and
Time, total secession was commended as a possibility of self-assertion . Publicness,
politics, society were held here not only as beside the point, but also as corrupting.
Franzen,
With this the insecure subject, feeling powerless, could best identify itself: evil could be placed abstractly on society, without
Being and Time, then, condemned the

existing society and in effect called for a radical break from it, although that book did not draw the
thereby deriving the necessity of improving the current social order.
outlines of the altemative. Heidegger concluded only that that upon which one was to resolve could be decided only by the factical
circumstances in which one found oneself. As Franzen remarks, A mere decade after Thomas Mann's Reflections of an Unpolitical
Man (I918). existential ontology could be read as the emphatic theory of anti-political existence, and indeed without having to
characterize itself as such." While Being and Time praised the resolute individual and condemned the impersonality of mass culture
authentic individual would seem

to be unpolitical, at least in the unacceptable political context of Weimar. In Being and Time, Heidegger spoke as if he
in a way that would at first seem consistent with liberal-democratic ideals, the
awaited the moment when, in solidarity with other members of the existential elite, he could form an alternative to the decadent
state of affairs. Indeed, when he wrote of the necessity of achieving an authentic "repetition" (Wiederholung) of Germany's
historical possibilities, many of his readers understood that he had in mind something like the radical social transformation
envisaged by members of the conservative revolution."
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Link Authenticity
The affs version of authenticity results in apathy in the face of global
injustice.
Zizek 2001 (Slavoj. A philosopher and a researcher at Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut in
Vienna. From Western Marxism to Western Buddhism
http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/2/western.php)
The ultimate postmodern irony of today is the strange exchange between Europe and Asia: at the very moment when European
capitalism are triumphing worldwide at the level of the economic

infrastructure, the Judeo-Christian legacy is threatened at the level of ideological superstructure in
the European space itself by New Age Asiatic thought, which, in its different guises ranging from Western
Buddhism to different Taos, is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global
capitalism.1 Therein resides the highest speculative identity of opposites in todays global civilization: although Western
Buddhism presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of capitalist
dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain inner peace and Gelassenheit, it actually
functions as its perfect ideological supplement . One should mention here the well-known concept of
future shock that describes how people are no longer psychologically able to cope
with the dazzling rhythm of technological development and the social changes that
accompany it. Things simply move too fast, and before one can accustom oneself to an invention, it has already been
technology and
supplanted by a new one, so that one more and more lacks the most elementary cognitive mapping. The recourse to Taoism or
Instead
of trying to cope with the accelerating rhythm of techno-logical progress and social
changes, one should rather renounce the very endeavor to retain control over what
goes on, rejecting it as the expression of the modern logic of domination . One should,
instead, let oneself go, drift along, while retaining an inner distance and
indifference toward the mad dance of accelerated process, a distance based on the insight that all
Buddhism offers a way out of this predicament that definitely works better than the desperate escape into old traditions.
this social and technological upheaval is ultimately just a non-substantial proliferation of semblances that do not really concern the
innermost kernel of our being. One is almost tempted to resuscitate the old infamous Marxist clich of religion as the opium of the
meditative stance is arguably

the most efficient way for us to fully participate in capitalist dynamics while retaining
the appearance of mental sanity. If Max Weber were alive today, he would definitely write a second, supplementary,
people, as the imaginary supplement to terrestrial misery. The Western Buddhist
volume to his Protestant Ethic, entitled The Taoist Ethic and the Spirit of Global Capitalism.2 Western Buddhism thus fits perfectly
the fetishist mode of ideology in our allegedly post-ideological era, as opposed to its traditional symptomal mode in which the
ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by symptomsqua returns of the repressed, cracks in the fabric
of the ideological lie. The fetish is effectively a kind of symptom in reverse. That is to say, the symptom is the exception which
disturbs the surface of the false appearance, the point at which the repressed Other Scene erupts, while t he
fetish is the
embodiment of the Lie which enables us to sustain the unbearable truth . Let us take the case
of the death of a beloved person. In the case of a symptom, I repress this death and try not to think about it, but the repressed
trauma returns in the symptom. In the case of a fetish, on the contrary, I rationally fully accept this death, and yet I cling to the
fetish, to some feature that embodies for me the disavowal of this death. In this sense, a fetish can play a very constructive role in
allowing us to cope with the harsh reality. Fetishists are not dreamers lost in their private worlds. They are thorough realists capable
of accepting the way things effectively are, given that they have their fetish to which they can cling in order to cancel the full impact
of reality. In Nevil Shutes melodramatic World War II novel Requiem for a WREN, the heroine survives her lovers death without any
visible traumas. She goes on with her life and is even able to talk rationally about her lovers death because she still has the dog that
was the lovers favored pet. When, some time after, the dog is accidentally run over by a truck, she collapses and her entire world
disintegrates.3 Sometimes, the line between fetish and symptom is almost indiscernible. An object can function as the symptom (of
a repressed desire) and almost simultaneously as a fetish (embodying the belief which we officially renounce). A leftover of the dead
person, a piece of his/her clothes, can function both as a fetish (insofar as the dead person magically continues to live in it) and as a
symptom (functioning as the disturbing detail that brings to mind his/her death). Is this ambiguous tension not homologous to that
between the phobic and the fetishist object? The structural role is in both cases the same: If this exceptional element is disturbed, the
whole system collapses. Not only does the subjects false universe collapse if he is forced to confront the meaning of his symptom;
the opposite also holds, insofar as the subjects rational acceptance of the way things are dissolves when his fetish is taken away
from him. So, when we are bombarded by claims that in our post-ideological cynical era nobody believes in the proclaimed ideals,
when we encounter a person who claims he is cured of any beliefs and accepts social reality the way it really is, one should always
counter such claims with the question OK, but where is the fetish that enables you to (pretend to) accept reality the way it is?
Western Buddhism is such a fetish.
It enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the
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capitalist game while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it; that you
are well aware of how worthless this spectacle is; and that what really matters to you
is the peace of the inner Self to which you know you can always with-draw. In a further
specification, one should note that the fetish can function in two opposite ways: either its
role remains unconsciousas in the case of Shutes heroine who was unaware of the fetish-role of the dogor you think
that the fetish is that which really matters, as in the case of a Western Buddhist unaware that the truth of his existence is in fact the
social involvement which he tends to dismiss as a mere game. Nowhere is this fetishist logic more evident than apropos of Tibet, one
of the central references of the post-Christian spiritual imaginary. Today, Tibet more and more plays the role of such a fantasmatic
Thing, of a jewel which, when one approaches it too much, turns into the excremental object. It is a commonplace to claim that the
fascination exerted by Tibet on the Western imagination, especially on the broad public in the US, provides an exemplary case of the
colonization of the imaginary. It reduces the actual Tibet to a screen for the projection of Western ideological fantasies. Indeed, the
very inconsistency of this image of Tibet, with its direct coincidences of opposites, seems to bear witness to its fantasmatic status.
Tibetans are portrayed as people leading the simple life of spiritual satisfaction, fully accepting their fate, liberated from the
excessive cravings of the Westerner who is always searching for more, and as a bunch of filthy, cheating, cruel, sexually promiscuous
primitives. Lhasa itself becomes a version of Franz Kafkas Castle: sublime and majestic when first seen from afar, but then changing
into the paradise of filth, a gigantic pile of shit, as soon as one actually enters the city. Potala, the central palace towering over
Lhasa, is a kind of heavenly residence on earth, magically floating in the air and a labyrinth of stale seedy rooms and corridors full of
monks engaged in obscure magic rituals, including sexual perversions. The social order is presented as the model of organic harmony
and as the tyranny of the cruel corrupted theocracy keeping ordinary people ignorant. The Tibetan Buddhism itself is simultaneously
hailed as the most spiritual of all religions, the last shelter of ancient Wisdom, and as the utmost primitive superstition, relying on
praying wheels and similar cheap magic tricks. This oscillation between jewel and shit is not the oscillation between the idealized
ethereal fantasy and raw reality: in such an oscillation, both extremes are fantasmatic, i.e. the fantasmatic space is the very space of
this immediate passage from one extreme to the other. The first antidote against this topos of the raped jewel, of the isolated place
of people who just wanted to be left alone but were repeatedly penetrated by foreigners, is to remind ourselves that Tibet was
already in itself an antagonistic, split society, not an organic Whole whose harmony was disturbed only by external intruders. Tibetan
unity and independence were themselves imposed from the outside. Tibet emerged as a unified country in the ninth century when it
established a patron-priest relationship with the Mongols. The Mongols protected the Tibetans, who in turn pro-vided spiritual
guidance to Mongolia. (The very name Dalai Lama is of Mongol origins and was conferred on Tibetan religious leader by the
Mongols.) Events took the same turn in the 17th century when the Fifth Lama, the greatest of them all, established the Tibet we know
todayagain, through benevolent foreign patronageand started the construction of Potala. What followed was the long tradition of
factional struggles, in which, as a rule, the winners won by inviting foreigners (Mongols, Chinese) to intervene. This story culminates
in the recent partial shift of the Chinese strategy. Rather than use sheer military coercion, the Chinese now rely on ethnic and
economic colonization, rapidly transforming Lhasa into a Chinese version of the capitalist Wild West with karaoke bars intermingled
with the Disney-like Buddhist theme parks for Western tourists. In short, what the media image of the brutal Chinese soldiers and
policemen terrorizing the Buddhist monks conceals is the much more effective, American-style socioeconomic transformation. In a
decade or two, the Tibetans will be reduced to the status of the Native Americans in the United States. The second antidote is
therefore the opposite one: to denounce the split nature of the Western image of Tibet as a reflexive determination of the split
attitude of the West itself, combining violent penetration and respectful sacralization. Colonel Francis Younghusband, who in 1904 led
the English regiment of 1,200 men that reached Lhasa and forced trade agreements on the Tibetans, and was a true precursor of the
late Chinese invasion. He mercilessly ordered the machine gun slaughter of hundreds of Tibetan soldiers armed only with swords and
lances and thus forced his way to Lhasa. However, this same person experienced in his last day in Lhasa a true epiphany: Never
again could I think of evil, or ever again be at enmity with any man. All nature and all humanity were bathed in a rosy glowing
radiancy; and life for the future seemed nought but buoyancy and light.4 The same went for his commander-in-chief, the infamous
Lord Curzon, who justified Younghusbands expedition thus: The Tibetans are a weak and cowardly people, their very pusillanimity
rendering them readily submissive to any powerful military authority who entering their country should forthwith give a sharp lesson
and a wholesome dread of offending.5 Yet this same Curzon, who insisted how nothing can or will be done with the Tibetans until
they are frightened, declared in a speech at an Old Etonian banquet: The East is a university in which the scholar never takes his
degree. It is a temple where the suppliant adores but never catches sight of the object of his devotion. It is a journey the goal of
which is always in sight but is never attained.6 What was and is absolutely foreign to Tibet is this Western logic of desire to
penetrate the inaccessible object beyond a limit, through a great ordeal and against natural obstacles and vigilant patrols. In his
travelogue To Lhasa in Disguise, published in 1924, William McGovern raised the tantalizing question: What provokes a man to risk
so much on such an arduous, dangerous, and unnecessary journey to a place that is so manifestly unappealing when he at last gets
there? To the Tibetans, at least, such a useless trek seemed nonsensical. McGovern wrote of his efforts to explain his motives to an
incredulous Tibetan official in Lhasa: It was impossible to get him to understand the pleasures of undertaking an adventure and
dangerous journey. Had I talked about anthropological research he would have thought me mad.7 The lesson to our followers of
Tibetan Wisdom is thus that if we want to be Tibetans, we should forget about Tibet and do ithere. Therein resides the ultimate
paradox: The more Europeans try to penetrate the true Tibet, the more the very form of their endeavor undermines their goal. We
should appreciate the full scope of this paradox, especially with regard to Eurocentrism. The Tibetans were extremely self-centered:
To them, Tibet was the center of the world, the heart of civilization.8 What characterizes European civilization, on the contrary, is
precisely its ex-centered characterthe notion that the ultimate pillarof Wisdom, the secret agalma, the spiritual treasure, the lost
object-cause of desire, which we in the West long ago betrayed, could be recuperated out there in the forbidden exotic place.
Colonization
was never simply the imposition of Western values, the assimilation of

the Oriental and other Others to European Sameness; it was always also the search
for the lost spiritual innocence of our own civilization. This story begins at the very dawn of Western
civilization, in Ancient Greece. For the Greeks, Egypt was such a mythic place of lost ancient wisdom. And the same holds today in
our own societies.
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Link Discourse
1AC perpetuates capitalism their focus on discourse trades off with a
material focus on labor relations
Eagleton 97 (Terry, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, Professor of Cultural Theory at the National
University of Ireland and Distinguished Visiting Professor of English Literature at The University of Notre Dame, 1997, Where do Postmodernists Come
from?, In Defense of History)
Imagine a radical movement that had suffered an emphatic defeat. So emphatic, in

fact, that it seemed unlikely to resurface for the length of a lifetime, if at all. As time wore on, the beliefs of this movement might
begin to seem less false or ineffectual than simply irrelevant. For its opponents, it would be less a matter of hotly contesting these doctrines than of contemplating them with
Radicals might
come to find themselves less overwhelmed or out-argued than simply washed up, speaking
a language so quaintly out of tune with their era that, as with the language of Platonism or courtly love, nobody even bothered any longer to ask whether it was true. What
would be the likely response of the left to such a dire condition? Many, no doubt, would drift either cynically
something of the mild antiquarian interest one might have previously reserved for Ptolemaic cosmology or the scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas.
or sincerely to the right, regretting their earlier views as infantile idealism. Others might keep the faith purely out of habit, anxiety, or nostalgia, clinging to an imaginary identity
and risking the neurosis that that may bring. A small clutch of left triumphalists, incurably hopeful, would no doubt carry on detecting the stirrings of the revolution in the faintest
the ruling assumption

of this period would be that the system was, at least for the moment, unbreachable;
and a great many of the lefts conclusions could be seen to flow from this glum
supposition. One might expect, for example, that there would be an upsurge of
interest in the margins and crevices of the systemin those ambiguous, indeterminate places where its power seemed less
secure. If the system could not be breached, one might at least look to those forces which
might momentarily transgress, subvert, or give it the slip. There would be, one might predict, much
celebration of the marginalbut this would be partly making a virtue out of necessity, since the left would itself
have been rudely displaced from the mainstream, and might thus come, conveniently enough, to suspect all talk of centrality as suspect. At its crudest, this cult of
marginality would come down to a simpleminded assumption that minorities were
positive and majorities oppressive. .Just how minorities like fascist groups, Ulst Unionists, or the international bourgeoisie fitted into this
flicker of militancy. In others, the radical impulse would persist, but would be forced to migrate elsewhere. One can imagine that
picture would not be entirely clear. Nor is it obvious how such a position could cope with a previously marginal movementthe ANC, for examplebecoming p 0]jtj cally dominant,
The historical basis for this way of thinking would

be the fact that political movements that were at once mass, central, and creative
were by and large no longer in business. Indeed, the idea of a movement that was at once
central and subversive would now appear something of a contradic tion in terms. It
would therefore seem natural to demonize the mass dominant, and consensual, and
romanticize whatever happened to deviate from them. It would be, above all, the attitude
given its formalist prejudice that dominance was undesirable as such.
of those younger dissidents who had nothing much, politically speaking, to

remember, who had no actual memory or experience of mass radical politics, but a
good deal of experience of drearily oppressive majorities.
If the system really did seem to have canceled all
opposition to itself, then it would not be hard to generalize from this to the vaguely anarchistic belief that system is oppressive as such. Since there were almost no examples of
The only genuine criticism could be one

launched from outside the system altogether; and one would expect, therefore, a
certain fetishizing of otherness in such a period. There would be enormous interest in anything that seemed alien, deviant,
attractive political systems around, the claim would seem distinctly plausible.
exotic, unincorporable, all the way from aard- varks to Alpha Centauri, a passion for whatever gave us a tantalizing glimpse of something beyond the logic of the system
But this romantic ultra-leftism would coexist, curiously enough, with a brittle pessimism
for the fact is that if the system is all-powerful, then there can be by definition
nothing beyond it, any more than there can be anything beyond the infinite curvature of cosmic space. If there were something outside the system, then it
altogether.
would be entirely unknowable and thus incapable of saving us; but if we could draw it into the orbit of the system, so that it could gain some effective foothold there, its otherness
Whatever negates the system in theory

would thus be logically incapable of doing so in practice . Anything we can understand can by definition not be radical,
would be instantly contaminated and its subversive power would thus dwindle to nothing.
since it must be within itself; but anything which escapes the system could be heard by thC ^no more than a mysterious murmur. llS ,S.| thinking has abandoned the whole notion of
a system which is nally contradictorywhich has that installed at its heart which can ' !lter tially undo it. Instead, it thinks in the rigid oppositions of inside and u tside where to
The typical style of thought of such a period,

then, might be described as libertarian pessimism libertarian, because one would not have given up on the dream of
something quite other than what we have; pessimism, because one would be much too bleakly conscious of the om be on the inside is to be complicit and to be on the outside to be impotent.
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nipotence of law and power to believe that such a dream could ever be realized. If one still
believed in subversion, but not in the existence of any flesh-and-blood agents of it, then it might be possible to imagine that the system in some way subverted itself,
deconstructed its own logic, which would then allow you to combine a certain radicalism with a certain skepticism. If the system is everywhere, then it would seem, like the
Almighty himself, to be visible at no particular point; and it would therefore become possible to believe, paradoxically enough, that whatever was out there was not in fact a
system at all. It is only a short step from claiming that the system is too complex to be represented to declaring that it does not exist. In the period we are imagining, then,
some would no doubt be found clamoring against what they saw as the tyranny of a
real social totality, whereas others would be busy deconstructing the whole idea of
totality and claiming that it existed only in our minds. It would not be hard to see this
as, at least in part, a compensation in theory for the fact that the social totality was proving
difficult to crack in practice. If no very ambitious form of political action seems for the
moment possible, if so-called micropolitics seem the order of the day, it is always tempting
to convert this necessity into a virtueto console oneself with the thought that ones
political limitations have a kind of objective ground in reality, in the fact that social
totality is in any case just an illusion. (Metaphysical illusion makes your position
sound rather more imposing.) It does not matter if there is no political agent at hand
to transform the whole, because there is in fact no whole to be transformed . It is as though,
having mislaid the breadknife, one declares the loaf to be already sliced. But totality might also seem something of an
illusion because there would be no very obvious political agent for whom society
might present itself as a totality. There are those who need to grasp how it stands with them in order to be free, and who find that they can do
this only by grasping something of the overall structure with which their own immediate situation intersects. Local and universal are not, here, simple opposites or theoretical
options, as they might be for those intellectuals who prefer to think big and those more modest academics who like to keep it concrete But if some of those traditional political
agents are in trouble, then so will be the concept of social totality, since it is those agents need of it that gives it its force. Grasping a complex totality involves some rigorous
analysis; so it is not surprising that such strenuously systematic thought should be out of fash- x ion, dismissed as phallic, scientistic, or what have you, in the sort of period Cf J
When there is nothing in particular in it for you to find out how you standif
you are a professor in Ithaca or Irvine, for example you can afford to be ambiguous,
elusive, deliciously indeterminate. You are also quite likely , in such circumstances, to wax idealist
though in some suitably newfangled rather than tediously old-fashioned sense . For one
we are imagining.
primary way in which we know the world is, of course, through practice; and if any very ambitious practice is denied us, it will not be long before we catch ourselves wondering
whether there is anything out there at all. One would expect, then, that in such an era a belief in reality as something that resists us (History is what hurts, as Fredric Jameson
This, in turn, would no doubt go hand in hand with a fullblooded culturalism which underestimated what men and women had in common as
material human creatures, and suspected all talk of nature as an insidious mystification. It would tend not to realize that such culturalism is just as
has put it) will give way to a belief in the constructed nature of the world.
reductive as, say, econo- mism or biologism. Cognitive and realist accounts of human consciousness would yield ground to various kinds of pragmatism and relativism, partly
Everything would become an

interpretation, including that statement itself. And what would also gradually
implode, along with reasonably certain knowledge, would be the idea of a human
subject centered and unified enough to take significant action . For such significant
action would now seem in short supply; and the result, once more, would be to make a virtue
out of necessity by singing the praises of the diffuse , decentered, schizoid human subjecta subject who
might well not be together enough to topple a bottle off a wall, let alone bring
down the state, but who could nevertheless be presented as hair-raisingly avantgarde in trast to the smugly centered subjects of an older, more classical phase pitalism. To put it another way: the
subject as producer (coherent, disciplined, self-determining) would have yielded ground to the subject as
consumer (mobile, ephemeral, constituted by insatiable desire). If the left orthodoxies of such a period were pragmatist, relativist, pluralistic, deconstructive, then one
might well see such thought-forms as dangerously radical. For does not capitalism need sure foundations, stable
identities, absolute authority, metaphysical certainties, in order to survive? And
wouldnt the kind of thought we are imagining put the skids under all this? The
answer, feebly enough, is both yes and no. It is true that capitalism, so far anyway, has felt the need to underpin its authority with
because there didnt any longer seem much politically at stake in knowing how it stood with you.
c0
unimpeachable moral foundations. Look, for example, at the remarkable tenacity of religious belief in North America. On the other hand, look at the British, who are a notably
godless bunch. No British politician could cause anything other than acute embarrassment by invoking the Supreme Being in public, and the British talk much less about
It is not clear, in other words, exactly

how much metaphysical talk the advanced capitalist system really requires ; and it is certainly true
that its relentlessly secularizing, rationalizing operations threaten to undercut its own metaphysical claims. It is clear, however, that without
pragmatism and plurality the system could not survive at all. Difference, hybridity,
heterogeneity, restless mobility are native to the capitalist mode of production, and
thus by no means inherently radical phenomena. So if these ways of thinking put the
skids under the system at one level, they reproduce its logic at another. If an
oppressive system seems to regulate everything, then one will naturally look around
for some enclave of which this is less truesome place where a degree of freedom or
metaphysical abstractions like Britain than those in the United States do about something called the United States.
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randomness or pleasure still precariously survives. Perhaps you might call this desire,
or discourse, or the body, or the unconscious. One might predict in this period a
quickening of interest in psychoanalysisfor psychoanalysis is not only the thinking
persons sensationalism, blending intellectual rigor with the most lurid materials, but it exudes a general exciting
air of radicalism without being particularly so politically. If the more abstract
questions of state, mode of production, and civil society seem for the moment too
hard to resolve, then one might shift ones political attention to something more
intimate and immediate, more living and fleshly, like the body . Conference papers entitled Putting the Anus
Back into Coriolanus would attract eager crowds who had never heard of the bourgeoisie but who knew all about buggery. This state of affairs would no doubt be particularly
marked in those societies which in any case lacked strong socialist traditions; indeed, one could imagine much of the style of thought in question, for all its suspiciousness of the
Such a concern with bodiliness and sexuality

would represent, one imagines, an enormous political deepening and enrichment, at the same time as it would signify a thoroughgoing
displacement. And no doubt just the same could be said if one were to witness an increasing
obsession with language and culturetopics where the intellectual is in any case
more likely to feel at home than in the realm of material production. One might
expect that some, true to the pessimism of the period, would stress how discourses
are policed, regulated, heavy with power, while others would proclaim in more libertarian spirit how the thrills and spills of the signifier
can give the slip to the system. Either way, one would no doubt witness an immense linguistic inflation, as
what appeared no longer conceivable in political reality was still just about possible in
the areas of discourse or signs or textuality. The freedom of text or language would
come to compensate for the unfreedom of the system as a whole. There would still be
a kind of utopian vision, but its name now would be increasingly poetry. And it would even be
universal, as no more than a spurious universalizing of such specific political conditions.
possible to imagine, in an extremist variant of this style of thought, that the future was here and nowthat utopia had already arrived in the shape of the pleasurable
History would then most certainly

have come to an endan end already implicit in the blocking of radical political
action. For if no such collective action seemed generally possible, then history would
indeed appear as random and directionless, and to claim that there was no longer any
grand narrative would be, among other things, a way of saying that we no longer
knew how to construct one effectively in these conditions. For this kind of thought, history would have ended
intensities, multiple selfhoods, and exhilarating exchanges of the marketplace and the shopping mall.
because freedom would finally have been achieved; for Marxism, the achievement of freedom would be the beginning of history and the end of all we have known to date: those
boring prehisto- rical grand narratives which are really just the same old recycled story of scarcity, suffering, and struggle. (17-22)
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Link Giroux
Giroux turns politics into symbolic contestation over culture they
reduce class to inequality, instead of a structural antagonism between
labor and capital at the point of production
Red Critique 6 (Winter/Spring 2006, The Opportunism of the Transpatriotic Left,
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/printversions/theopportunismofthetranspatrioticleftprint.htm)
The new post-9/11 U.S. "left" has grown "wise", has denounced militancy, and has
become a faith-based network of hospitality devoted to what Lenin has called
"yielding and getting on with everyone" (One Step Forward, Two Steps Back). It has, to paraphrase Lenin
again, ceased to be ashamed of the praises lavished on it by liberals who have turned
opportunism into a way of life. Left used to mean "radical", when radical meant
grasping things by the root. In its cultural critique it argued that the binaries of
gender and race in which the representations of women, people of color, and gays
were systematically devalued were necessitated by class relations, capital
accumulation, and the search for profits. Capital needed such cultural hierarchies to
legitimate the exploitation of labor in production . The left argued that exploitation is
justified by capital by its naturalizing of differences. The critique of culture was
necessary, therefore, to expose the ideologies of capital and unify the exploited
and oppressed peoples of the world to fight back against the monopolists and
owners. Culture was a way of knowingnot avoidingthe class dynamics of
capitalism. Now the left cultural critique has become a diversion from class. The
very idea of class itself has, in fact, been turned into a trope of opportunity and
opportunism. In the conciliationist idioms of the left class has come to mean
nothing more than a "lifestyle"not inequality at the point of production but
pleasures in the shopping malls. What is amusing is, of course, that the left writers (George Yudice, The
Expediency of Culture) now claim that shopping, which actually helps to prevent the fall of the rate of profit of capital itself, is the
Culture
as resistance assumes that social inequalities are not at root class questions that
have to be dealt with at the point of production, but questions of the ethics of
distribution which is really a trope for consumption and its "surprising" effects of
power. These unforeseen results of power caused by the proliferation of signifiers
is what Henry Giroux ("Cultural Studies in Dark Times") celebrates as resistance to inequalities
which he regards to be the effect of lack of access to discourse. For him, democracy
is unfettered access to discourse which is his translation of the bourgeois freedom
of speech. He presupposes that material forces do not produce material effects because they must be mediated through
culture which has its own autonomous laws that disrupt objective causality. Culture, Giroux claims, "offers a
site where common concerns, new solidarities, and public dialogue refigure the
fundamental elements of democracy". The cultural in Giroux's writings dissolves
politics into the shifting terrain of symbolic contestation. Such an understanding
of culture is itself deeply complicitous with capitalism because it turns culture into
a self-agency free of class forces. Without such a concept of the material basis of
culture in class relations there can be no "reconfiguration" of the fundamental
elements of democracy and the status quo is maintained through the practices of
mere resistance. Nothing represents the contemporary left and the complexities of its shifting opportunism more clearly
place of resistance since, according to them, revolution is a thing of the past. All that we now have is consumption.
than Lars von Trier's latest film, Manderlay. The film is, in the left vocabularies, "radical". Its radicalism, however, is a
transpatriotic radicalism whose loyalty is not to any particular nation or state but to capital itself (Hardt and Negri, Multitude).
When this left talks about "anti-capitalism", it actually means anti-corporationism.

It has no problem with capitalism itself. Even left socialism is a market socialism.
Through various cultural relays and affective displacements the transpatriotic left
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obscures the material inequality among people with a libertarian abstract freedom
and, in effect, legitimates the free market.
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Link Deleuze & Guattari

Deleuze, Foucault, and other theories of difference reject the coherence
and static nature of any concept. This fractured resistance is no
different than the rampant individualism that has allowed capitalism to
expand rapidly-only members of the upper class benefit from such
resistance, as they are already in a position of privilege.
Zavarzadeh, 1995
(Masud, professor at Syracuse, post-ality: Marxism and postmodernism, post-ality the
(dis)simulations of cybercapitalism, 4-5)
Similarly Daniel Bell, who draws upon the traditional sociological protocols and research programs, opposes "totality" as vociferously,
in his positivist idiom, as Derrida, Lyotard and postmarxists. Moreover, the pop theorists of cybercapitalism, Alvin Toffler and Heidi
Toffler, have reproduced and widely disseminated the theories of differance in such books as the Future Shock, The third Wave,
Powershift, Creating a New Civilization, and through their popular pedagogy of congeniality and anecdotesespecially influencing the
corporate elite, their petit bourgeois allies and the Republican Party apparatchiks (whose main function has historically been to build
an alliance between the ruling class and petit bourgeoisie by suturing their conflicting economic interests through stabilizing cultural
values). In other words,
differance not only underlies the postmarxist notion of "radical

democracy" put forth by Laclau and Mouffe in their adaptation of Derridean
deconstruction (and popularized in the knowledge industry by Stanley Aronowitz), but it is also the founding
concept of the new aggressive cult of the individual and entrepre neurship that marks
both the new "wave" (to use Toffler's metaphor for historical change) conservativism of the 1990's and
the rejection of representative democracy by the Tofflers, who would like to replace it with a more or less
direct self-representational electronic democracy. The Tofflers' notion that representational democracy
is the residue of the Enlightenment and cannot serve the "Third Wave" civil society
(Powershift 235-369) is rooted in the same philosophical/ideological theories of the
sign that has led such ludic- theories as Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault (in their
own rhizomatic versions of difference) to denounce the possibility of any
representation and instead advocate self-representation. No one, ac cording to this
end-of-representation theory, can speak for the other (Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory 206)-each must speak for him or herself. This post-al representation is the informing
principle of both the Foucault-Laclau Mouffe notion of radical democracy and the Tofflers' idea
of direct democracy based on the electronic plebiscite. Deleuze and Guattari's rhizomatic democracy of
differance is the same as the Tofflers' electronic activism (Powers/rift 356-358): both are "rooted"
in a post-majoritarian hegemonic democracy of pulsations and lines of flights and
"traces" of individual energies. Electronic activism provides the ideological effects
needed by cybercapitalism because it substitutes direct, experiential, affective
democracy for a rational critique-al democracy: it is politics without concepts. The
rejection of critique (shared by the left postmodernists such as Fredric Jameson and right-wing Third Wavists like Newt
Gingrich) serves the purpose of this post-al plebiscitary democ racy of direct "reactions,"
Far from being a "radical" and avant-garde view that definitely marks the
"outdatedness" of collectivity, the "war on totality," is the dominant ideology of
cybercapitalism in its war against the working class the collective subject of labor and
revolution; the builder of democratic centralism. The anti-totality differance, in short, which
grounds the political theories of Derrida, Lyotard, Laclau, Mouffe . , . Toftlers, is the
theory of decentralization, privatization and devolution of any collectivity that
attempts to provide for the common "needs"- putting in its place the self-articulating
"desires" of those whose needs have already been met through class exploitation. There
is, thus, a direct connection between the notion of hegemonic coalition and electronic plebiscitary democracy; between Ernesto
Laclau and Newt Gingrich in their attempts to render the economic interests of an old ruling class as the radically new interests of an
emerging cyber civil society.
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Link Placating Racial Struggle

Violence as a strategy to combat racialized capitalism is a necessity
appeals to community building legitimize the violence employed against
working class people of color.
Conatz, 2015
(Juan, member of Twin Cities IWW, Riots, Race, and Capitalism, LibCom, July 25, Online)
Law and order and the sanctity of property these are the rallying cries of those who
would crush the outburst in Baltimore, just as in Ferguson, or L.A. In response to what
cannot be understood, the capitalist press, and all the forces of capitalist society are
marshaled against what can only be represented as an irrational and almost weather like
phenomenon. Local newsman report on the temperament of the crowd from the only place where such an assessment can be
made the ground. And on the ground, one imperative is stressed safety. Safety for who? In
Baltimore: Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of
brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15yearold boy riding a dirt bike, a 26yearold pregnant accountant who had
witnessed a beating, a 50yearold woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65yearold church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87yearold
Here we cannot avoid race and class. The crowd in

Baltimore, as in Ferguson, is made up of working class people, mostly black and
latino. The councilmen, the NGO presidents, the statesmen and the property owners
are not being gunned down by thugs in uniform. And those same capitalist
sycophants turn out in droves to bemoan the reckless behavior of protesters . There
are two essential sides to the same pacifying coin: Capitalist Disgust, and Pacifist
Condemnation. The capitalist disgust tends to simply reject the people engaged in rioting
whole cloth as thugs, criminals, gangsters, violent, always holding up the sanctity of
property. The pacifying agents of the community work to prop up the abstract
humanity of protesters (They are not thugs! They are our children!) while
simultaneously being unable to genuinely support their children against capitalism.
The failure here is partly in taking the black community as such. Instead of
recognizing the dividing role played by classes, those who would engage protestors
do so along the lines of representing the community which in this case is composed
primarily of property owners, in the name of black unity. At this point, in order to
represent the black community (and to whom are they representing the black community?) would be
leaders must first, before anything, declare the sanctity of property over life. The
old capitalist tradition of stamping out human life for the rights of property holders is
alive and well. Think about it: Monday April 27, after having planned something of a protest over the weekend prior, students
grandmother aiding her wounded grandson.
were preempted by police in an attempt to disperse them. The method the police applied? By many accounts they were stopping
buses, snatching off students and teachers and forcing them to walk home, after being dumped out of schools early. Surrounded and
hounded by cops, the students fought back, as can be seen from various videos online. As the protesters continued, they ransacked a
the capitalists want to tell you that they are thugs, they are criminals,
savages, animals. Bullshit. They were making good on the promise all too often spit out by leftist sycophants: No justice, no
CVS and a 711. And
peace. Your property isnt worth shit. Facing their unfreedom, in the form of pigs decked out in blue and black with shinning badges
and triggerhappy hooves, the Baltimore kids revolted. In the ensuing days we cant be mislead by the potential arrest of officers
responsible for Freddies death, or any community spectacle, invoking the need for peace between working class youth and cops.
As communists we ought to:
1. Find ways to practically support young working class people in revolt. Help them avoid
police capture, help them with legal defense. This will be difficult from afar, which is why it is still necessary for national level
Support the formation of working class elements in

Baltimore and elsewhere in practical struggle against white supremacy in the form of
police brutality, job discrimination and more. This means working to build solidarity
among diverse elements of the class, encouraging education on race and capitalism,
and building a direct action movement centered on concrete demands. This means
aiding in the development of effective tactics and strategy. We dont have all the
fraternization between communist groups 2.
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answers. But engaging with working class elements on those terms is the first step to
finding solutions. 3. Cops are not workers. They are wageearners whove joined the
other team. Somebody who seeks to daily crack the skull of the working class, to break
the hands of some hungry soul stealing a slurpee is no friend of the working class. Workers need to defend themselves against this
With black workers being the most targeted by police in the United States, all
workers have a stake in supporting them to fight back and avoid police brutality .
menace.
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Link Leftist Nostalgia

Calls to return to a previous revolutionary moment prioritize
introspection and memory over action undermines revolutionary
change.
Thill, 2008
(Brian, professor of English at Bronx Community College/CUNY, "Black Power and the New Left:
The Dialectics of Liberation, 1967." Mediations, 23:2,
http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/blackpowerandthenewleft)
But I want to close by suggesting something else about the potential dangers of transforming historical crises to tropes and figures
for understanding contemporary crises. It would be easy to fault Marcuse and Carmichael for their recourse to the ideological
what we are confronted with in our present

moment, four decades after the Dialectics of Liberation conference and now exactly four decades since the flashpoint of 1968,
is the possibility of repeating that very gesture, only now with the New Left or 1968
on the receiving end of this form of figuration. What remains to be reckoned with
right now is the allure and attraction of the familiar totemic images of the New Left
and the specter of 1968. From our present moment of apathy and crisis, the evidence
suggests that we are being seduced into the same kinds of dangerous transferences that
beset the figures of the New Left themselves. Like Frederick Douglass and the figure of the
slave in decades past, 1968 and its satellite figures now seem to tempt many of us to
the same kinds of figuration and synecdoche. While commemoration is important, we
could be seeing in this new century the first signs of a dangerous form of intellectual
ossification, reducing the New Left and its multifaceted legacy to manageable
parameters for easier hagiography, while simultaneously bearing silent witness to (or indeed actively taking part
in) the inward or reflective turn that claims to be made in service of the present
moment but can in fact serve as a distraction from it. Is the New Left and the spirit of
1968 part of a new and damaging metaphor, a new destructive figure of nostalgia? We
shorthand of slavery or the totemic figure of Douglass. But
need to be thinking much more about this question, as well as the consequences of not confronting it with sufficient rigor and
they were driven to do

so by an array of contemporary crises. Millions of people worldwide were suffering
and dying because they were unable to meet their basic material needs the
decimation and commodification of the environment was proceeding with increasing
haste in the relentless drive for the globalization of industry and consumption
anticolonial efforts were being met with the full force of state violence . And, of course, the
United States was engaged in an extremely unpopular and unwinnable imperialist
war. If this sounds at all familiar to those of living in 2008, it may serve us well to
resist the impulse to draw parallels, since points of connection, when not read
critically, can all too often turn us toward reflection rather than revolution .
commitment. When the conveners of the Dialectics of Liberation conference planned their event,
Reject calls to return to legacies of previous revolutionary moments

they turn critical energies inward towards nostalgia, diverting action.
Thill, 2008
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The formulation of a viable leftist position has always been a dialectical process , its
specific character most immediately differentiated from its past and future variants by the pressing social
crises of its historical moment. This was the case with the heterogeneous New Left,
and remains the case today. At the same time, every committed leftist is necessarily interested in the genealogy of
leftism: its key figures and concepts its historical traditions of protest, revolution, and liberation and its accounts of the complex
While there are many positive attributes of this

archaeological dimension of leftist thought, there is also a very real danger involved.
Particularly in times of great political crisis, the legacies of leftist history can be
transformed from meaningful engagements with the real conditions of existence to a
small collection of precious shopworn artifacts, familiar touchstones that come to
stand in for the far richer and more complex legacy of leftist efforts at social action
and commitment. As major anniversaries lead us to more and more encounters with
reflections on the historical legacies of the New Left (sometimes now even more narrowly
identified by the increasingly burdened signifier of 1968), the impulse can be to fall
prey to figuration, converting historical realities into occasions for leftist nostalgia
and simplification. Part of the project of left history should be to seek out those
moments and scrutinize the social and political forces that brought that figuration and
simplification into being so that we are perhaps less likely to fall prey to those same
impulses in our current moment of danger.
relationship between theory and praxis.
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Link Immediate Action/Individual Action

Your demand for action now and focus the individual trades off with an
institutional analysis and leads to prescriptions can leave the oppressed
worse off
Kuper 2 Andrew Kuper Debate: Global Poverity Relief More Than Charity: Cosmopolitian Alternatives to the Singer Solution
Ethics & International Affairs 16, no 2 http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/about/2002----.pdf
It is not enough to say that all persons have equal moral claims on us; we
need to ask how best to organize ourselves politically and economically to meet
those claims. Which combinations of rules and institutions of governance are most effective? What roles ought we to playas individuals in
respect of the primary agents of aid and justice? Analogies to ethical decisions by an individual in a
hermetically sealed case actually obscure all these problems and questions. For while it is
Here's the rub:
true that we often act as individuals, the causal relevance or impact of our actions depends on the positions we occupy within complex social systems.
Singer conflates issues of practical reason-our

obligations to the vulnerable judgment-the obligations of the relatively rich to the
poor in the particular case of the world in which we live. If we are to make judgments of how to act in this
world, we should not confuse abstract with practical requirements. From the fact that
we have an abstract obligation of aid or charity, it does not follow that we are
practically obliged to donate to the poor. How we address poverty is a matter of judgment: understanding the relevant
Philosophers may want me to put the point a little more technically:
features of a social system or situation; considering which principles are relevant, whether they present competing demands in practice, and how other
agents are likely to act; and finally, adjudicating on a contextual course of action. Nothing in the principle of aid or charity determines that the right
All-too-quick recommendations are not just a leap from

principle to action, they are symptomatic of an implicitly apolitical outlook that does
not take the real demands of contextual judgment seriously. Singer might say that analogies are merely
action in any or all contexts is donation.
designed to show that we do have an 'extensive obligation of charity. But this is no answer. His analogies and other arguments abstract from the causal
dynamics of poverty and opportunity, and from the mediated and indirect nature of social relations at a global scale. This leads to a serious
Indeed, it leads to a failure to

see that, in making judgments about poverty relief, knowledge of institutions and
awareness of roles must frame thinking about individuals. Even aggressively laissez-faire
underestimation of the complexities of the remedies and the diversity of roles available to us.
capitalists maintain that their actions are best for the poor. That is, what is at stake
most of the time is not how much we should sacrifice, but whether and which uses of
resources and what kinds of agencies make a positive difference, and how. POLITICAL
JUDGMENT IN CONTEXT Lest I seem to sound like a neoliberal apologist, or a defeatist, it is helpful to see how much more informative is the theoretical
the first step in approaching political struggle and

producing change is a structural analysis of the dynamic causes of impoverishment
and immiseration. A theory that does not include a contextual and institutional
analysis (in the broadest sense) is condemned to recommending brief symptomatic
orientation of Karl Marx. Marx understood that
relief, or even damaging and counterproductive action.
This is not a peculiarly Marxist point, and one does
not have to sympathize with Marxists to think that telling the bourgeoisie to be more charitable as individual actors is unlikely to produce deep
There is, ironically, a quasi-Calvinist strand to the individualist approach to

development: an insistence that one can never do enough, never be as moral as one
ought to be; and an emphasis on individual conscience rather than effective collective
moral norms and political institutions. Yet the well-documented failure of relief
efforts in recent decades is a powerful indicator that a structure-sensitive approach
to development is indispensable to any wise, humane program or philosophy of right
action. Consider, most starkly, the perpetuation and intensification of the Rwandan
conflict and the human misery aggravated by aid agencies that sustained refugee
camps. In spite of the camps becoming bases for militiamen and incubators for
cholera, the prospect of international NGO aid encouraged people not to return to
their homes even when it was safer to do so, thus intensifying and prolonging the
conflict. Consider also the "food relief" of the 1970S that so damaged the sit-uation
changes.
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of developing world farmers and their dependents. It is hardly an unfamiliar thought that things can
always get worse: consider Shakespeare's King Lear on the Heath, or Titus Andronicus. Development experts will be highly aware of
countless recent examples that we can only wish were fictional.
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Link Anti-Imperialism Affs

The affirmatives characterization of the international system by
inequalities in imperial power overlooks historical materialist conditions
underlying militarism and war
Lapointe 7 (Thierry, 2/28/07, "Beyond an Historicism Without Subject: Agency and the Elusive Genealogies of State Sovereignty",
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p180176_index.html)
hierarchical relations of power in the international system may not

solely rest on objective inequalities in military might as has been contended. As
critical approaches generally argue, these hierarchical relations are themselves
shaped through and conditioned by various institutionalised structures of power
material and discursivethat reproduce social relations of domination and
subordination between human subjects across time and space . The question of their historical conditions of
It becomes clearer, in this context, that
emergence and transformation appears to be the fundamental one for any critical approach in IR that seeks to avoid what John M. Hobson calls the fallacy of tempo-centrism and
How to
problematise the historical conditions of emergence of discourses and practices of
state sovereignty remains a question that still needs to be debated . In this regard, it exists a
fundamental line of fracture dividing Poststructuralism and Historical Materialism in
their respective ways to theorise the articulation of power relations/dynamics of
power with social discourses and social institutions across time and space . This paper seeks to
chronofetishism (Hobson 2002). Critical scholarship remains deeply divided on the way in which they problematize the relation between power and sovereignty.
critically explore the way in which Post-Structuralist scholars in IR have approached the question of the historicity of state sovereignty. While acknowledging their contributions in
the central weakness of

Poststructuralism is that by understanding formation and transformation in state
sovereignty as expression of shifting discursive paradigms, it tends to evacuate the
specific, uneven and differentiated social relations that create the historical
conditions for such discourses to emerge. It will be argued that Poststructuralism magnifies the internal coherence
of an epistemic paradigmdiscursive rules of an historical eraand downplays the variety of ways in which specific
discourses can be mobilized to produce, reproduce and transform different sets of
social relations of power by human agents across space in a given historical period.
Thus, I argue that Poststructuralism eschews an analysis of the historical process of formation
and transformation of forms of knowledge/social power in relations with
differentiated forms of institutionalized social practices.
critiquing the a-historical and essentialist foundations of mainstream IR scholarship, it will be argued that
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Link Boring HS Student Appropriations of Nihilism

The bland nihilism of the affirmative is symptomatic of capitalist
ideologies foreclosure of perceived avenues for structural change it
short circuits the development of a revolutionary thought that will
reclaim a meaningful existence.
Smith, 2012
radical democratic alternatives, The Global Capitalist Totality and its Law of Insignificance as
Post-Structuralist Farce, Heathwood Press, Feb 10, Online: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/theglobal-capitalist-totality-and-its-law-of-insignificance/)
But when global capitalism inevitably fails to fulfill its promise, what else might be
left for us to believe besides the undeniable suffering of today and the possibility of
intrinsic meaninglessness? Perhaps this explains why there are even theories being
developed today theories which are entirely symptomatic of the liberal democratic totality that hypothesize
the very Law of Insignificance. In this work, we are told quite simply that given enough
time everything becomes insignificant. The basis for such a claim is almost entirely the extreme negation of the
historical continuity of phenomena, both social and natural. Surely it is difficult to argue against ones
feeling that two hundred years from now ones bones will be forgotten dust, and
therefore what is the point? And to this extent, in this limited perspective, all would
and does seem insignificant for the individual. On the other hand, the theme of insignificance, in this way,
only abstractly indicates a part, without a professed consistency in itself, of a false concrete universal. And this wavering already
We as individuals (as subjects)

in the limitation of our respective individual consciousness as the author puts it are
insignificant only on the basis that we are not made of the stuff of history. But is it
not a concrete aspect of our our efficacy as human beings to continue to make
history? Indeed, it is history that engenders the vital traditions which I have come to recognize in
my lifethe renunciation of these traditions, of the effects we have on human history,
amounts to nothing more than the thought which seeks to deny or to silence the
things in the history of the world which cannot be assimilated [into their] doctrines. It
is just such a denial that characterizes liberal democratic capitalism and its nihilistic
brand of thought; a brand of thought that necessarily negates the continuity of phenomena on behalf of its one-dimensional
allows me to throw light on the confusion of such an inherently nihilistic attitude.
view of life. When this totality structure collapses, when holes begin to permeate its [1] ideological canopy, the foundation of life as a
late-capitalist conception shakes its way into impending existential crisis. Moreover, let us consider the hypothesis of insignificance
which I take to be a concrete expression of our rotten state of affairs, when it states very plainly: in the Idea (or signification) we find
the expression of human interest (of wanting things to be the way one wishes them to be), rather than any clear exegesis into the
ideal nature of the Idea; and that, for instance, things may well be different when it comes to the Idea, because what one may
signify may not be the same as another signifies (Saussure). We may hope that what we translate is the same idea, the same
signification as the author intended, but we have no way of knowing to be sure, thus we are apparently beyond that moment of
signification and now in a moment of decision. Surely this merely precludes that there is no such thing as a mediating subjectivity
and, in such preclusion this is a comprehensible thought. However, the truth involved in these statements, I am told, is that there is
no truth because from its objectivistic perspective significations are broken into scattered and isolated pieces and prove
fundamentally insignificant over an extended period of time. But here, I know already that the fundamental absurdity involved in
these statements as both incoherent and socially affected. These reflections or beliefs are more psychological than concrete in
nature. To say that we merely hope that what we translate is the same idea, the same signification as the author intended, but we
never have a way of knowing to be sure, because we are beyond that moment of signification and therefore there is no guarantee
that what we choose is what the author intended (Derrida), derails the subject stability that we do experience. Moreover, this plain of
intelligence confuses the experiential nature of things in which we concretely testify to the interests that reality can offeralbeit as
our subjective constitution is mediated in history whilst it is continuously unfoldingfor a lack of ontology which therefore amounts to
the extreme conclusion that human history has no significance whatsoever. The absurdity of Western culture which is spiralling out in
state of anxiety toward a reprisal of historical nihilism has never been more blunt. For the thought that preaches such a law of
insignificance there is a truth as well as a bitterness that all aspects of concrete experience can never be nailed-down or woven into
an ontological fabric. And it mistakes this concrete truth of experience with the conclusion that we should always exist in the present
moment, as anything beyond that moment soon loses its significance. On this point, the argument is not far from my own approach in
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Book I of the Consciousness and Revolt series. The truly experiential moment in the process of experience is privileged. But what
makes our experience a privilege is the very sociohistorical stuff that saturates a persons facticity, and the organic nature in the
unfolding of this privileged moment between my conscious intent and the intimacy I share with a phenomenon. In another way, it is
not impractical to concede that what constitutes a present moment is the springboard of our histories, which already implies a
fundamental sense of historical significance. Thus the negation of history in the end does no more of an injustice to the present
moment than the opposite totalizing conception of history: namely that history is static and determined. And this is precisely the
The failure of premature post-modern thought, which is an expression post-structuralism at its most
is this: it becomes lost in an endless death of truth and subsequently plunges the
individual (subject) with much energy and vigour into the vile desert of a totally
administered late-capitalism. But the paradoxical belief that there is no truth that
endless death of metaphysics while preaching from the tongue a doctrine so absolutely this is
certainly a characteristic of the deep confusion of our present-age. The tragedy of our
times, indeed, does take on the role that concrete change of our particular and albeit more
general sociohistorical-cultural situations cannot happen. The belief in the abstract
universal of insignificance, in terms of both history and our concrete experiential means as living and breathing
point.
rotten,
subjects, is a symptom of the subject who parallels the movement of his or her increasing hegemonic abstract socioeconomic
structure. That is, it
is a symptom of a subject who has fallen into a pit of hopelessness.
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--IMPACT SCENARIOS
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Impact Extinction
American capitalism attempts to maintain hegemonic control to protect
patterns of economic growth-this makes extinction inevitable
Foster, prof of sociology at U of Oregon, Sept 2005
(John Bellamy, Naked Imperialism, Monthly Review Vol 57 Iss 4, Proquest)

From the longer view offered by a historical-materialist critique of capitalism, the direction that would be taken by U.S. imperialism
Capitalism by its very logic is a globally

expansive system. The contradiction between its transnational economic aspirations
and the fact that politically it remains rooted in particular nation states is
insurmountable for the system. Yet, ill-fated attempts by individual states to
overcome this contradiction are just as much a part of its fundamental logic. In
present world circumstances, when one capitalist state has a virtual monopoly of the
means of destruction, the temptation for that state to attempt to seize full-spectrum
dominance and to transform itself into the de facto global state governing the world
economy is irresistible. As the noted Marxian philosopher Istvn Mszros observed in Socialism or Barbarism? (2001)following the fall of the Soviet Union was never in doubt.
written, significantly, before George W. Bush became president: "(W)hat is at stake today is not the control of a particular part of the
planet-no matter how large-putting at a disadvantage but still tolerating the independent actions of some rivals, but the control of its
totality by one hegemonic economic and military superpower, with all means-even the most extreme authoritarian and, if needed,
The unprecedented dangers of this new global disorder are

revealed in the twin cataclysms to which the world is heading at present: nuclear
proliferation and hence increased chances of the outbreak of nuclear war, and
planetary ecological destruction. These are symbolized by the Bush administration's refusal to sign the
violent military ones-at its disposal."
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol as a first step in
controlling global warming. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense (in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) Robert McNamara
stated in an article entitled "Apocalypse Soon" in the May-June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy. "The United States has never endorsed
the policy of 'no first use,' not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been and remain prepared to initiate the use of
nuclear weapons-by the decision of one person, the president-against either a nuclear or nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is
in our interest to do so."
The nation with the greatest conventional military force and the
willingness to use it unilaterally to enlarge its global power is also the nation with the
greatest nuclear force and the readiness to use it whenever it sees fit-setting the
whole world on edge. The nation that contributes more to carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming than any
other (representing approximately a quarter of the world's total) has become the greatest obstacle to addressing global warming and
The
United States is seeking to exercise sovereign authority over the planet during a time
of widening global crisis: economic stagnation, increasing polarization between the
global rich and the global poor, weakening U.S. economic hegemony, growing nuclear
threats, and deepening ecological decline. The result is a heightening of international
instability. Other potential forces are emerging in the world, such as the European
Community and China, that could eventually challenge U.S. power, regionally and
even globally. Third world revolutions, far from ceasing, are beginning to gain
momentum again, symbolized by Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution under Hugo Chvez. U.S. attempts to tighten its
the world's growing environmental problems-raising the possibility of the collapse of civilization itself if present trends continue.
imperial grip on the Middle East and its oil have had to cope with a fierce, seemingly unstoppable, Iraqi resistance, generating
conditions of imperial overstretch. With the United States brandishing its nuclear arsenal and refusing to support international
nuclear proliferation is continuing. New nations, such as

North Korea, are entering or can be expected soon to enter the "nuclear club."
Terrorist blowback from imperialist wars in the third world is now a well-recognized
reality, generating rising fear of further terrorist attacks in New York, London, and
elsewhere. Such vast and overlapping historical contradictions, rooted in the
combined and uneven development of the global capitalist economy along with the
U.S. drive for planetary domination, foreshadow what is potentially the most
agreements on the control of such weapons,
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dangerous period in the history of imperialism. The course on which U.S and world
capitalism is now headed points to global barbarism-or worse. Yet it is important to
remember that nothing in the development of human history is inevitable. There still
remains an alternative paththe global struggle for a humane, egalitarian,
democratic, and sustainable society. The classic name for such a society is socialism. Such a renewed struggle
for a world of substantive human equality must begin by addressing the systems weakest link and at the same time the worlds most
pressing needsby organizing a global resistance movement against the new naked imperialism.
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Impact Extinction
Capitalism is creating multiple scenarios for extinctionwe must
confront centralization of power within the economic elite to stop bandaid solutions to these massive problems
Shrivastava, Ph D in Economics at Univ of Massachusetts, 2006
(Aseem, Tyranny, Empire, and the End of the World as We Know It?,
http://www.stateofnature.org/tyrannyEmpire1.html)
we live today in a world in which nobody has to die of hunger or
curable diseases. All hunger and most of child and infant mortality are man-made.
Moreover, all the millions of victims of wars of choice are actually victims of the
entirely avoidable human lust for power. We are invited to feel (rightly) indignant at the hundreds of lives lost to terrorism
every week, but there is a stunning, numbed silence over the quiet genocides that have
become routine in this cowardly old world, for which educated, privileged humanity is collectively, squarely responsible.
No shame is felt by our species when we are collectively culpable for crimes of a
magnitude incomparably greater in scale than the undoubted damage being done by
bloodthirsty terrorists. Our thinking and moral sense has been corrupted by the
distortion of our audio-visual capacities: the sensational damage done by terrorists is
shown to us every evening on our TV screens, but the colossal murderous routine of
hunger and disease falls below the threshold of media sensation . This auto-censorship is also because
those who bring us the news are also perhaps aware, at the back of their minds, that the reigning world order is to be held
responsible for such crimes against humanity. In this sense, we are all like the "good
Germans" of the early 1940s, looking the other way from obvious crimes, when we know better. This essay has
No serious person doubts that
sought to draw a detailed political map of the world as it appears today to a concerned observer. In conclusion, I would only like to draw attention to
something which has escaped mention thus far: the force of cultural hegemony. We live under the dispensations of the US Empire today. And yet this
empire is uniquely different from every other in history, in that while geography is still quite central to it, its decisive advantage, apart from being
market-based, comes from the cultural hegemony it exercises over how diverse peoples right across the world conceive and assess their way of life.
For no matter where one looks today, "the American way of life" of expressways and
supermarkets, skyscrapers and giant corporations has become the very norm for
evaluating everything else. It is this, backed and underwritten by the rapidly
encroaching institutions of state corporate capitalism, that everyday reinforces
American dominance and what is arguably, the most predatory and ultimately selfdestructive style of life known to humanity. Moreover, it is precisely this fact which
accounts for the rise of consensual tyranny and the decline of substantive democrac y.
Will the American Empire collapse at some point in the not too distant future? No reading of history can miss the mortality of empires. So this one shall have its end too. There is a
sharply accelerating convergence of crises, too many to go into here. But there is a saying in India that "even a dead elephant is worth a million bucks." It may well turn out that
the American Empire, like a wounded tiger, kicks and screams its way to a slow death in the human jungle, bringing down much else besides itself. Maybe that is precisely what is
beginning to happen before our eyes since the dawn of the present century. (After all, the golden age of US capitalism, by common agreement amongst economists, ended in the
1970s, best symbolized by the breakdown of the Bretton-Woods system.) Humanity has often been threatened in the past by the cumulative consequences of its own follies, as
these two forces of destruction are increasingly enhanced

by the historically unprecedented powers of destructive technology, driving us
collectively towards an abyss of perhaps historic proportions. It is fair to say that
humanity is threatened with extinction from multiple sources of its own making . And the
peril is heightened especially since cowboys are writing a "what can we get away with" foreign policy for the superpower. There is the
looming threat of unprecedented crises and possible species extinction on account of
the changes in climate and other natural disasters that ongoing industrial revolutions
are precipitating. If China and India succeed even half-way in achieving American standards of living, there is assuredly no planet left.
Then of course, we may wipe ourselves out through nuclear war, a more distinct
possibility today than perhaps at any point during the days of the Cold War, when American enemies could be more precisely located and
much as by natural causes. What is new today is that
targeted, and the fear of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) kept the superpowers well-behaved, a predicament which has changed substantially now.
there is the danger of public health catastrophes not excluding public outbreaks
of madness in a globalized world. All of this raises political temperatures around the
Finally,
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globe and makes conflict between and within societies ever more likely. This makes
physical security a matter of the highest concern for most people, a fact that
governments are always good at manipulating to their political advantage,
exaggerating threats as and when necessary for their narrow purposes, often acting
on them in order to retain the credibility of threats. This exacerbates the prevailing conflicts further, especially
because of the growing speed and precision of technologies of destruction. Propaganda through action, one might call it. [61] To face these
crises-ridden times with courage and to make room for fresh hopes and new visions of
human freedom, the manifold hypocrisies of the rulers of the world must be
repeatedly shown up. Their compassion is selective, their morality cosmetic. Perhaps they
should be reminded of a verse from William Blake every time they set about seeking to fix some wrong in an oil-producing nation: Oer my sins thou sit and moan: Hast thou no
sins of thy own? Oer my sins thou sit and weep, And lull thy own sins fast asleep. You can't be serious about bringing freedom and prosperity to others while torturing and killing
people in your own prisons or letting your own people die in hurricanes. Freedom for the world is already there if America is free. The tragedy of our world is that it is, alas,
confusing its power with its freedom. It is this confusion which has to be brought before the public eye for moral intelligence to be provoked and a new world to be sought.
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Impact Short Laundry List

Capitalism causes extinction 3 reasons
Mszros 11
(Istvn Mszros is one of the greatest philosophers that the historical materialist tradition has produced. His work stands alone today in the depth of its analysis of Marxs theory
of alienation, the structural crisis of capital, and the necessary conditions of the transition to socialism. He is professor emeritus at the University of Sussex, where he held the
Chair of Philosophy for fifteen years. Monthly Review, Volume 63, Issue 01 (May) 2011, The Dialectic of Structure and History: An Introduction,
http://monthlyreview.org/2011/05/01/the-dialectic-of-structure-and-history-an-introduction/ , )
threepronged destructiveness of the capital system (1) in the military

field, with capital's interminable wars since the onset of monopolistic imperialism in the final decades of the nineteenth
century, and its ever more devastating weapons of mass destruction in the last sixty years; (2) through the
intensification of capital's obvious destructive impact on ecology directly affecting and
endangering by now the elementary natural foundation of human existence itself; and (3) in the domain of
material production and everincreasing waste, due to the advancement of "destructive
production" in place of the once eulogized "creative" or "productive destruction" is the necessary consequence of this narrowing margin.
Disconcertingly for capital, however, neither the perilously growing destructiveness nor the consensusgenerating
hybridization of the established antagonistic system a hybridization that has been used for a long time for the purpose of displacing capital's
The now painfully obvious
antagonisms in the capitalistically most powerful countries, and it will be used in that way for as long as its economic and political viability is not
undermined by the intensifying structural crisis
narrowing margin.
can offer any longterm solution to the objectively
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Impact Public Sphere

Capitalism destroys public engagement the ideology of privacy results
in alienation and conditions participation on material prosperity: if you
dont have capital, you dont have time to be politically engaged.
Fuchs, 2011
The capitalist mode of production is on the one hand based on the socialization of
labour and socially exploited and therefore communal means of production (Marx,
1867, p. 928). This social dimension of capitalism is circumvented by private ownership of the means of production: Private
property, as the antithesis to social, collective property, exists only where the means of labour and the
external conditions of labour belong to private individuals (Marx, 1867, p. 927): But modern
bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of
producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the
exploitation of the many by the few (Marx and Engels, 1846, p. 484). (5) There is an inherent
connection of privacy, private property, and the patriarchal family. Engels (1891, pp. 474, 480)
has stressed the inherent connection of the private sphere with private property and the patriarchal family. The Marxian analysis of
the political economy of privacy was partly reflected in the works of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt. Marx stresses that
capitalism is based on a separation of the state and bourgeois society. The latter
would be based on private property. Man: [. . .] leads a double life. [. . .] In the political community he regards
himself as communal being; but in civil society he is active as a private individual, treats other men as means, reduces himself to a
means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers (Marx, 1843b, p. 225; see also: Marx, 1843a, p. 90). This Marxian moment of
During the course of the development of

capitalism since the nineteenth century, the world of work and organization became a
distinct sphere. With the rise of wage labour, industrialism, and the factory, the
economy became to a certain degree disembedded from the private household
(Habermas, 1989, pp. 152, 154; see also: Arendt, 1958, pp. 47, 68). Consumption became a central role of the
private sphere: On the other hand, the family now evolved even more into a consumer
of income and leisure time, into the recipient of publicly guaranteed compensations
and support services. Private autonomy was maintained not so much in functions of control as in functions of consumption
(Habermas, 1989, p. 156). Therefore, privacy is for Habermas an illusionary ideology pseudo-privacy (Habermas,
1989, p. 157) that in reality functions as community of consumers: there arose the
illusion of an intensified privacy in an interior domain whose scope had shrunk to
compromise the conjugal family only insofar as it constituted a community of
consumers (Habermas, 1989, p. 156). A central role of the private sphere in capitalism is also
that it is a sphere of leisure: Leisure behavior supplies the key to the floodlit privacy of the new sphere, to the
analysis is a crucial element in Habermas theory of the public sphere.
externalization of what is declared to be the inner life (Habermas, 1989, p. 159). Expressed in other words, one can say that the role
of the private sphere in capitalism as sphere of leisure and consumption that Habermas identifies is that it guarantees the
reproduction of labour power so that it remains vital, productive, and exploitable. Habermas (1989, pp. 124-9) stresses that for Marx
the inherent principle of universal accessibility of the public sphere is undermined by

the facts that in capitalism private property of the means of production is controlled
by capitalists and workers are excluded from this ownership. The separation of the
private from the public realm obstructs what the idea of the bourgeois public sphere
promised (Habermas, 1989, p. 125). Hannah Arendt (1958) reflects in her work the Marxian notion that the liberal privacy
concept is atomistic and alienates humans from their social essence . She stresses that
sociality is a fundamental human condition. Privacy is for her in modern society a sphere of intimacy
(Arendt, 1958, p. 38). For Arendt, the public realm is a sphere, where everything can be seen and heard by everybody (Arendt, 1958,
p. 50). It is the common world that gathers us together and yet prevents our falling over each other (Arendt, 1958, p. 52).
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Privacy would be a sphere of deprivation, where humans are deprived of social
relations and the possibility of achieving something more permanent than life itself
(Arendt, 1958, p. 58). The privation of privacy lies in the absence of others (Arendt, 1958, p. 58). Arendt says that the relation
between private and public is manifest in its most elementary level in the question of private property (Arendt, 1958, p. 61).
In
modern society, as a result of private property the public would have become a
function of the private and the private the only common concern left, a flight from the
outer world into intimacy (Arendt, 1958, p. 69). Labour and economic production, formerly
part of private households, would have become public by being integrated into
capitalist production.
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Impact Ethics
Capitalism leverages incredible amounts of suffering, poverty,
environmental destruction only ethical action is to front-load this
previously-lost underside and implement a new system altogether
Smith, 2014
a dialectical approach that works toward a sufficient, holistic and
stable representation of truth, allows for us to discern what objective social
conditions have brought about a conception of the mass surveillance state aimed at
maintaining the status quo. While in Adornos original analysis he explores several conditions that might have
From an Adornian perspective,
facilitated the rise of fascist Germany, I argue that basic themes he outlines seem to repeat themselves throughout the larger history
economic insecurity, combined with a need to

conform to the status quo to preserve what little security individuals had, served to
prevent citizens from becoming autonomous, politically mature agents who sought to
hold their leaders accountable.[58] In terms of late-capitalist society, the notion of
insecurity is entirely applicable. In fact, one might say that this is what makes capitalism so powerful: it
creates conditions which unceasingly threaten the individual with the possibility of
economic scarcity, creating a pressurised and instrumental dynamic of experience, a
rigidity in action, as one better toe-the-line or else risk suffering at the hands of an
indifferent economic system. This insecurity, combined with the all-pervasive, all-encompassing culture
industry, means that autonomous thought let alone the notion of the liberated subject
often buckle under the weight of intense coercion. In this sense, while modern democracy
promised freedom and happiness in the place of unfreedom, this has been proven untrue,
particularly as the ideals behind the contemporary notion of democracy do not
match concrete reality.[59] And yet the necessity to adapt to unjust political-economy remains, as Adorno writes: The
necessity of such adaption [to the given circumstances], to the point of identifying with the status quo,
with the given, with power as such, creates the potential for totalitarianism, and is reinforced by
the dissatisfaction and rage which that forced adaption itself produces and
reproduces. Because reality doesnt provide the autonomy or, finally, the possible happiness
that the concept of democracy actually promises, people are indifferent to democracy,
where they dont secretly hate it.[60] In the presence of such conformity to the point of
identifying with the status quo, with the modern system of power and domination, with a politicaleconomic vision principled on injustice and the manufacturing of systemic levels of
inequality, imperialism and endless war, the absence of a critical ethical criteria
becomes all the more pressing. Following a similar line of thought, Adorno argued after the Second World War toward
a normative ethics on the basis of a critical and revolutionary rationale that emphasised the need for a new
categorical imperative, which demands of us to arrange our thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat
itself.[61] Against rationalisation and denial i.e., the coldness of bourgeois subjectivity
Adorno pushes, as Schick notes, for remembrance and reflection, arguing that what is repressed or unconscious
of coercive society.[57] Adorno argues, moreover, that
will do much more damage than that which is made conscious.[62] He argues that effective remembrance is extraordinarily
difficult; it does not begin and end with reproach, but requires one to [endure] the horror through a certain strength that
comprehends even the incomprehensible.[63] This new categorical imperative coincides with the need to continue to reach
towards a conception of the whole truth by attending not only to particular suffering but also to the historical and social antecedents
of suffering.[64] Such an attempt is not a hubris-filled attempt to solve the worlds ills, but an always incomplete and imperfect
reaching towards a world in which Auschwitz might not happen again. It is a form of working through that will never be complete but
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that always holds before it the hope that moral learning, however fragile, might take place.[65] While for Adorno the need for a new
categorical imperative arose directly as a result of the indescribable suffering of Auschwitz and the question of the continuing
relevance of metaphysics, I argue that we can nevertheless take from Adornos fundamental thesis a point that remains highly
applicable with regards to most ethical (social) dilemmas after Auschwitz[66], including issues surrounding the mass surveillance
the people of Western democratic society face serious problems

that not only have to do with undemocratic nature of mass surveillance programmes
and the systematic erosion of civil liberties and all of that which is implied by their
consequence. Serious issues of climate change, which should be considered both a crime against humanity
and the natural world[67], along with growing inequality, deepening forms of needless social
suffering and continuation of violent state conflicts, the commodification of education
and the intensification of capital, are but a few dimensions of the crisis of the 21st
Century. In the face of these pressing issues there is little doubt around the urgency
of the need for the public to work out the principles of humanity, of ethical norms, not
in line with the shallow liberal ethics of democratic-capitalism, of social naturalism, of Hobbes
naturalistic ends, or of abstract and instrumental guides of moral authority[68], but ethical criteria that exist as
the very material of the experience of suffering, where there is neither a moral outside, a superstate. At the moment of writing,
categorical ought, nor a functional demand and natural outside that might be, so to speak, satisfied by our matter of fact adopting
ethical practices which could easily resort to justifying the lie of ethical life for the sake of safeguarding its (empty) appearance.[69]
In an age where there is a universal feeling of fear and disillusionment[70], the idea
of a normative ethical criterion rooted in a phenomenological (lived) ethics that is informed
by negative dialectics emerged from out of the experience of suffering [71], from out
the categorical imperative, demands of an approach that works from the insideout[72] and the formulation of a range of categories that challenge the validity of
the present social order. From an Adornian perspective, in terms of the far-reaching barbarism and needless social
suffering that defines the historical and social unfolding of the history of human society, this new categorical
imperative implies a break from the social and historical antecedents of that
suffering a break in the (trans)historic pattern or trend or systemic paradigm of
dominant, coercive society. Not only is the new categorical imperative directed at
ensuring that the atrocities of Auschwitz i.e., the climax of modernity never happen
again, but it also underpins an alternative vision of how we might move forward and
navigate society toward a better path or an actual egalitarian democracy .
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Impact Environmental Collapse

Capitalism is quickly approaching an ecological Armageddon a global
environmental crisis manifesting in uncontrollable climate change, ocean
acidification, water shortages, all culminating in planetary extinction
Foster & Clark 12 (John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at University of Oregon, and Brett Clark, assistant professor of
sociology at the University of Utah., The Planetary Emergency, Monthly Review, December 2012, vol. 64, issue 7)
Capitalism today is caught in a seemingly endless crisis, with economic stagnation and
upheaval circling the globe.1 But while the world has been fixated on the economic
problem, global environmental conditions have been rapidly worsening, confronting
humanity with its ultimate crisis: one of long-term survival. The common source of
both of these crises resides in the process of capital accumulation. Likewise the common solution is to be
sought in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, going beyond the regime of capital.2 It is still possible for humanity to
avert what economist Robert Heilbroner once called ecological Armageddon.3 The means for the creation of a just and sustainable world
currently exist, and are to be found lying hidden in the growing gap between what could be achieved with the resources already available to us, and what the prevailing social
order allows us to accomplish. It is this latent potential for a quite different human metabolism with nature that offers the master-key to a workable ecological exit strategy. The
Science today tells us that we have a generation at most in which to

carry out a radical transformation in our economic relations, and our relations with
the earth, if we want to avoid a major tipping point or point of no return, after which vast
changes in the earths climate will likely be beyond our ability to prevent and will be irreversible.4 At that point it will be impossible to
stop the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland from continuing to melt, and thus the
sea level from rising by as much as tens of meters. 5 Nor will we be able to prevent the Arctic
sea ice from vanishing completely in the summer months, or carbon dioxide and methane from being
massively released by the decay of organic matter currently trapped beneath the permafrostboth of which would represent
positive feedbacks dangerously accelerating climate change. Extreme weather events
will become more and more frequent and destructive . An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Approaching Ecological Precipice
demonstrated that the record-breaking heat wave that hit the Moscow area in 2010 with disastrous effect was made five times more likely, in the decade ending in that year as
compared with earlier decades, due to the warming trend, implying an approximate 80% probability that it would not have occurred without climate warming. Other instances
of extreme weather such as the deadly European heat wave in 2003 and the serious drought in Oklahoma and Texas in 2011, have been shown to be connected to earth warming.
Hurricane Sandy, which devastated much of New York and New Jersey at the end of October 2012, was impacted and amplified
to a considerable extent by climate change.6 The point of irreversible climate change is usually thought of as a 2C (3.6F) increase
in global average temperature, which has been described as equivalent at the planetary level to the cutting down of the last palm tree on Easter Island. An increase of 2C in
global average temperature coincides roughly with cumulative carbon emissions of around one trillion metric tons. Based on past emissions trends it is predicted by climate
scientists at Oxford University that we will hit the one trillion metric ton mark in 2043, or thirty-one years from now. We could avoid emitting the trillionth metric ton if we were to
reduce our carbon emissions beginning immediately by an annual rate of 2.4 percent a year.7 To be sure, climate science is not exact enough to pinpoint precisely how much
all the recent indications are that if we want to avoid

planetary disaster we need to stay considerably below 2C. As a result, almost all governments have signed on to
warming will push us past a planetary tipping point.8 But
staying below 2C as a goal at the urging of the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. More and more, 2C has come to symbolize the reality of a planetary point of
no return. In this sense, all the discussions of what the climate will be like if the world warms to 3C, or all the way to 6C, are relatively meaningless.9 Before such temperatures
are attained, we will have already reached the limits of our ability to control the climate- change process, and we will then be left with the task of adapting to apocalyptic
ecological conditions. Already Arctic sea ice experienced a record melt in the summer of 2012 with some scientists predicting an ice-free Arctic in the summer as early as 2016
2020. In the words of James Hansen, the worlds leading climatologist, we are facing a planetary emergencysince if we approach 2C we will have started a process that is
out of humanitys control.10 Given all of this, actually aiming for the one trillion metric ton mark in cumulative carbon emissions, or a 2C increase in global temperature, would
be courting long-term disaster. Some prominent climate analysts have proposed a target of staying below 750 billion cumulative metric tons of carbonestimated to provide a 75
percent chance of staying below the climate-change tipping point. At current rates of carbon emissions it is calculated that we will reach the 750 billion metric tons mark in 2028,
or sixteen years. We could avoid emitting the 750 billionth metric ton if we were to reduce our carbon emissions beginning immediately at an average annual rate of 5.3
percent.11 To get some perspective on this, the Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change issued by the British government in 2007, which is generally seen as
representing the progressive side of the carbon debate, argued that a reduction in emissions of more than a 1 percent annual rate would generate a severe crisis for the capitalist
any thought that the Great Financial Crisis would result in a

sharp curtailment of carbon emissions, helping to limit global warming. Carbon emissions dipped by
1.4 percent in 2009, but this brief decline was more than offset by a record 5.9 percent growth of carbon
emissions in 2010, even as the world economy as a whole continued to stagnate. This rapid increase has
economy and hence was unthinkable.12 M
been attributed primarily to the increasing fossil-fuel intensity of the world economy, and to the continued expansion of emerging economies, notably China.13 In an influential
York used data for over 150

countries between 1960 and 2008 to demonstrate that carbon dioxide emissions do not decline
in the same proportion in an economic downturn as they increase in an economic
upturn. Thus for each 1 percent in the growth of GDP per capita, carbon emissions grew by 0.733 percent, whereas for each 1 percent drop in GDP, carbon emissions fell
article published in Nature Climate Change, Asymmetric Effects of Economic Decline on CO2 Emissions, Richard
by only 0.430 percent. These asymmetric effects can be attributed to built-in infrastructural conditionsfactories, transportation networks, and homesmeaning that these
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structures do not disappear during recessions and continue to influence fossil-fuel consumption.
It follows of necessity that a boom-
and-bust economic system cannot reduce carbon emissions; that can only be
achieved by an economy that reduces such emissions on a steady basis along with
changes in the infrastructure of production and society in general. 14 Indeed, there is reason to believe that
there is a strong pull on capitalism in its current monopoly-finance phase to seek out more fossil-fuel
intensive forms of production the more deeply it falls into the stagnation trap, resulting in repeated attempts
to restart the growth engine by, in effect, giving it more gas. According to the Low Carbon Index, the carbon intensity of
world production fell by 0.8 percent in 2009, and by 0.7 percent in 2010. However, in 2011 the carbon intensity of world production rose by 0.6 percent. The
economic recovery, where it has occurred, has been dirty.15 The notion that a stagnant-prone capitalist growth economy (what Herman Daly
calls a failed growth economy) would be even more intensively destructive of the environment was a thesis advanced as early as 1976 by the pioneering Marxist environmental
as the threat of stagnation mounts, so does the need for

throughput in order to maintain tolerable growth rates. 16 The hope of many that peak crude oil production and the
sociologist Charles H. Anderson. As Anderson put it,
end of cheap oil would serve to limit carbon emissions has also proven false. It is clear that in the age of enhanced worldwide coal production, fracking, and tar sands oil there is
days known stocks of oil, coal, and gas reserves are at

least five times the planets remaining carbon budget, amounting to 2.8 gigatons in
carbon potential, and the signs are that the capitalist system intends to burn it all. 17 As
no shortage of carbon with which to heat up the planet. To
Bill McKibben observed in relation to these fossil-fuel reserves: Yes, this coal and oil is still technically in the soil. But its already economically aboveground.18
Corporations and governments count these carbon resources as financial assets,

which means they are intended for exploitation. Not too long ago environmentalists were worried about the world running out
of fossil fuels (especially crude oil); now this has been inverted by climate-change concerns. As bad as the climate crisis is, however, it is
important to understand that it is only a part of the larger global ecological crisis since
climate change is merely one among a number of dangerous rifts in planetary boundaries
arising from human transformations of the earth. Ocean acidification, destruction of
the ozone layer, species extinction, the disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus
cycles, growing fresh water shortages, land-cover change, and chemical pollution all
represent global ecological transformations/crises. Already we have crossed the planetary
boundaries (designated by scientists based on departure from Holocene conditions) not only in relation to climate change, but also with respect to species extinction
and the nitrogen cycle. Species extinction is occurring at about a thousand times the background
rate, a phenomenon known as the sixth extinction (referring back to the five previous periods of mass extinctions in earth historythe most recent of which, 65 million
years ago, resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs). Nitrogen pollution now constitutes a major cause of dead
zones in oceans. Other developing planetary rifts, such as ocean acidification (known as the evil twin of climate change since it is also
caused by carbon emissions), and chronic loss of freshwater supplies, which is driving the global privatization of water, are of
growing concern. All of this raises basic questions of survival: the ultimate crisis
confronting humanity.19 The Ultimate Crisis The scale and speed of the emerging ecological
challenge, manifested not only in climate change but also in numerous other planetary rifts, constitutes irrefutable evidence that
the root cause of the environmental problem lies in our socioeconomic system, and
particularly in the dynamic of capital accumulation. Faced with such intractable problems, the response of
the dominant interests has always been that technology , supplemented by market magic and population control,
can solve all problems, allowing for unending capital accumulation and economic growth without undue ecological effects by means of an absolute
decoupling of growth from environmental throughput. Thus, when asked about the problems posed by fossil fuels
(including tar sands oil, shale oil and gas, and coal) President Obama responded: All of us are going to have to work
together in an effective way to figure out how we balance the imperative of economic
growth with very real concerns about the effect were having on our planet. And
ultimately I think this can be solved with technology. 20 Yet, the dream that technology
alone, considered in some abstract sense, can solve the environmental problem, allowing for unending economic growth without
undue ecological effects through an absolute decoupling of one from the other , is quickly fading.21 Not only are technological
solutions limited by the laws of physics, namely the second law of thermodynamics (which tells us, for example, that energy is partially
dissipated upon use), but they are also subject to the laws of capitalism itself .22 Technological
change under the present system routinely brings about relative efficiency gains in energy use, reducing the energy and raw
material input per unit of output. Yet, this seldom results in absolute decreases in environmental
throughput at the aggregate level; rather the tendency is toward the ever-greater use
of energy and materials. This is captured by the well-known Jevons paradox, named after the nineteenth-century economist William Stanley Jevons.
Jevons pointed out that gains in energy efficiency almost invariably increase the absolute amount of energy used, since such efficiency feeds economic expansion. Jevons
highlighted how each new steam engine from Watts famous engine on was more efficient in its use of coal than the one before, yet the introduction of each improved steam
engine nonetheless resulted in a greater absolute use of coal.23
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Impact Race
Capitalism must be the starting pointrace is only an indicator of
exploitation, used to fragment the working class. Race-based criticisms
are rooted in the philosophical traditions of the bourgeois elite
Young 2006 (Robert, Former Associate Professor of English at the University of Alabama. Putting Materialism Back into Race Theory, Red Critique,
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm)
This essay advances a materialist theory of race. In my view, race oppression dialectically
intersects with the exploitative logic of advanced capitalism, a regime that deploys
race in the interest of surplus accumulation. Thus, race operates at the (economic) base
and produces cultural and ideological effects at the superstructure ; in turn, these effectsin
very historically specific waysinteract with and ideologically justify the operations at the economic
base.1 In a sense, then, race encodes the totality of contemporary capitalist social relations, which is why race cuts across a range of seemingly disparate social sites in contemporary U.S. society. For
instance, one can mark race difference and its discriminatory effects in such diverse sites as health care, housing/real estate, education, law, the job market, and many other social sites. Unlike many commentators
, I do not isolate these social sites and view race as a local problem,
which would lead to reformist measures along the lines of either legal reform or a cultural-ideological battle to win the hearts and minds of people
and thus keep the existing socioeconomic arrangements intact; instead, I foreground
the relationality of these sites within the exchange mechanism of multinational
capitalism. Consequently, l believe, the eradication of race oppression also requires a totalizing
who engage race matters, however
political project: the transformation of existing capitalism -a system that produces

difference (the racial/gender division of labor) and accompanying ideological
narratives that justify the resulting social inequality. Hence, my project articulates a transformative theory of race-a theory that reclaims revolutionary class politics in the interests of contributing to a
postracist society. In other words, the transformation from actually existing capitalism into socialism constitutes the condition of possibility for a postracist society-a society free from racial and all other forms of
I theorize freedom as a
material effect of emancipated economic forms. I foreground my (materialist) understanding of race as a way to contest contemporary
accounts of race, which erase any determinate connection to economics. For instance , humanism and poststructuralism represent two
dominant views on race in the contemporary academy. Even though they articulate
very different theoretical positions, they produce similar ideological effects: the
suppression of economics. They collude in redirecting attention away from the logic of
capitalist exploitation and point us to the cultural questions of sameness (humanism) or
difference (poststructuralism). In developing my project, I critique the ideological assumptions of some exemplary instances of humanist and poststructuralist accounts of race, especially those
accounts that also attempt to displace Marxism, and in doing so I foreground the historically determinate link between race
and exploitation. It is this link that forms the core of what I am calling a transformative theory of race. The transformation of race from a sign of exploitation to one of democratic
multiculturalism ultimately requires the transformation of capitalism. Within contemporary black humanist discourses, the
focus remains on the subject. Hence, diverse intellectual inquiries such as Afrocentricism (Molefi Kete Asante), black feminism (Patricia Hill
Collins), and neoconservative culturalism (Shelby Steele) share a philosophical-ideological commitment to the subject. As
oppression. By freedom, I do not simply mean a legal or cultural articulation of individual rights, as proposed by bourgeois race theorists. Instead,
Asante once put it in a representative formulation, Afrocentricism presents "the African as subject rather than object" ("Multiculturalism" 270). The preoccupation with the subject highlights Asante's rather
conservative humanist philosophical position, a position powerfully critiqued by Louis Althusser.2 In reifying the subject, Asante abstracts the (African) subject from history and posits an "essentialized" identity
within an "essentialized" historical period that is unproblematically recuperable through an Afrocentric paradigm. Asante takes the essence of the subject for a universal quality, and as Althusser argues, this means
that concrete subjects must exist as an absolute given, which implies an empiricism of the subject (For Marx 218). Furthermore, Althusser continues. If the concrete subject is to be a subject, then each must carry
the entire essence in himself or herself, and this implies an idealism of the essence (Pbr Marx 228), Thus, Asante's philosophical location provides the basis for the transcendental subject: the always already (self)
present black subject, from ancient Egypt to the modern black American. What one needs, quite simply, is an Afrocentric methodology, and this Asante grounds in an idealist metaphysic. As in Eurocentric practices,
project occludes the historical contradictions constitutive of any social formation

and, far from advancing a distinctive Afrocentric epistemology, Asante's humanism
puts him squarely within the dominant bourgeois philosophical tradition , and his discourse produces
similar effects. Under the guise of the transcendental subject , class divisions within the black community are suppressed,
and this, in turn, advances the class interests of the elites, whose interests are silently embedded in the project. As in
Asante`s
Eurocentric historical narratives, Afrocentricism reclaims the history of the (African) elites. In this way, Afrocentric discourse is knowledge for middle- and upper-class blacks, since it naturalizes their class privilege;
Bourgeois philosophical
assumptions haunt the Afrocentric project and, in the domain of black feminist theory, Patricia Hill Collins
for which other class could afford to see "symbol imperialism" (Asante, Ahofentrif Idea, 56) as the major problem confronting multicultural societies?
provides an instructive example of this intersection. In Black Feminist Thought, Collins posits the "special angle of vision" that black women bring to the knowledge production process (21), and this "unique angle"
(22) provides the "standpoint" for Afrocentric feminism, a feminism that she equates with humanism (37). As in the experiential metaphysics of black women's standpoint theory, Collins situates Afrocentric feminist
epistemology "in the everyday experiences of African-American women" (207). Consequently, Collins suggests that "concrete experience" constitutes a criterion of meaning (208). But the experiential, the "real,"
does not equate to the "truth," as Collins implies. Collins rejects the "Eurocentric Masculinist Knowledge Validation Process" for its positivism but, in turn, she offers empiricism as the grounds for validating
experience. Hence, the validity of experiential claims is adjudicated by reference to the experience. Not only is her argument circular, but it also undermines one of her key claims. If race, class, gender, and the
accompanying ideological apparatuses are interlocking systems of oppression, as Collins suggests, then the experiential is not the site for the "true" but rather the site for the articulation of dominant ideology. On
what basis, then, could the experiential provide grounds for a historical understanding of the structures that make experience itself possible as experience? Asante and Collins assume that experience is selfintelligible and, in their discourse, it functions as the limit text of the real. I believe, however, that
experience is a highly mediated frame of
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understanding. Though it is true that a person of color experiences oppression, this
experience is not self-explanatory and, therefore, it needs to be situated in relation to
other social practices. Experience seems local, but it is, like all cultural and political practices, interrelated to other practices
and experiences. Thus, its explanation comes from its "outside." Theory, specifically Marxist
theory, provides an explanation of this outside. Experience does not bespeak the real, but rather it is the site of contradictions and, hence, in
need of conceptual elaboration to break from cultural common sense, which is a conduit for the dominant ideology. It is this outside that has come under attack by black humanist scholars through the invocation of
the black transcendental subject. Indeed, the discourse of the subject operates as an ideological strategy for fetishizing the black experience and, consequently, it positions black subjectivity beyond the reach of
Marxism. For example, in The Afrocentric Idea, Asante dismisses Marxism because it is Eurocentric (8); but are the core concepts of Marxism, such as class and mode of production, relevant only for European social
formations? Are African and African American social histories/relations unshaped by class structures? Asante assumes that class hierarchies do not structure African or the African American social experiences, and
this reveals the class politics of Afrocentricity: It makes class invisible. Asante`s assumption, which erases materialism, enables Asante to offer the idealist formulation that the "word creates reality" (Afroccntric Idea
70). The political translation of such idealism is, not surprisingly, very conservative. Asante directs us away from critiquing capitalist institutions, in a manner similar to the ideological protocol of the Million Man
March, and calls for vigilance against symbolic oppression. As Asante tellingly puts it, "symbol imperialism, rather than institutional racism, is the major social problem facing multicultural societies" (Afrocentric Idea
56). In the realm of African American philosophy, Howard McGary Jr. also deploys the discourse of the (black) subject to mark the limits of Marxism. For instance, in a recent interview, McGary offers this humanist
rejection of Marxism: "l don't think that the levels of alienation experienced by Black people are rooted primarily in economic relations" (Interview 90). For McGary, black alienation exceeds the logic of Marxist theory
idealist assertion that "the sense of alienation experienced by Black people in

the U.S. is also rooted in the whole idea of what it means to be a human being and
how that has been understood" (Interview 90). McGary confuses causes and effects and then
misreads Marxism as a descriptive modality. Marxism is not as concerned with
descriptive accounts, the effects, as it is with explanatory accounts; that is, it is concerned with the cause of social
alienation because such an explanatory account acts as a guide for praxis . Social
alienation is a historical effect, and its explanation does not reside in the experience
itself; therefore, it needs explanation and such an explanation emerges from the
transpersonal space of concepts. In theorizing the specificity of black alienation, McGary reveals his contradictory ideological coordinates. First, he argues that black
and thus McGary's
alienation results from cultural "beliefs." Then, he suggests that these cultural "norms" and "practices" develop from slavery and Jim Crow, which are fundamentally economic relations for the historically specific
exploitation of black people. If these cultural norms endogenously emerge from the economic systems of slavery and Jim Crow, as McGary correctly suggests, then and contrary to McGary's expressed position,
black alienation is very much rooted in economic relations .
McGary's desire to place black subjectivity beyond Marxism
creates contradictions in his text. McGary asserts that the economic structures of slavery and Jim Crow shape cultural norms. Thus, in a postslavery, post-Jim Crow era, there would still be an economic structure
maintaining contemporary oppressive norms-from McGary's logic this must be the case. McGary remains silent, however, on the contemporary economic system structuring black alienation: capitalism. Apparently,
it is legitimate to foreground and critique the historical connection between economics and alienation but any inquiry into the present-day connection between economics and alienation is off limits. This other
economic structure-capitalism-remains the unsaid in McGary`s discourse, and consequently McGary provides ideological support for capitalism-the exploitative infrastructure that produces and maintains alienation
for blacks as well as for all working people. ln a very revealing moment. a moment that confirms my reading of McGarys procapitalist position, McGary asserts that "it is possible for African-Americans to combat or
the ideological connection

between the superstructure (philosophy) and the base (capitalism). Philosophy
provides ideological support for capitalism, and in this instance, we can also see how
philosophy carries out class politics at the level of theory (Althusser, Lenin, 18). McGary points out "that Black
people have been used in ways that white people have not" (Interview 91). McGary's observation may be true, but it does not
mean that whites have not also been "used"; yes, whites maybe "used" differently, but they are still "used" because
that is the logic of exploitative regimes-people are "used," that is to say, their labor is commodified and exchanged for profit. McGary's interview signals
what I call an isolationist view. This view disconnects black alienation from other social relations; hence,
it ultimately reifies race and, in doing so, suppresses materialist inquiries into the
class logic of race. That is to say that the meaning of race is not to be found within its own internal dynamics but rather in dialectical relation to and as an ideological justification of the
overcome this form of alienation described by recent writers without overthrowing capitalism" (Ran: 10), Here, in a most lucid way, we see
exploitative wage-labor economy. This isolationist position finds a fuller, and no less problematic, articulation in Charles W. Millss Racial Contract, a text that undermines the possibility for a transracial
transformative political project. Mills evinces the ideological assumptions and consequent politics of the isolationist view in a long endnote to chapter 1. Mills privileges race oppression, but, in doing so, he must
suppress other forms of oppression, such as gender and class oppression. Mills acknowledges that there are gender and class relations within the white population, but he still privileges race, as if the black
community is not similarly divided along gender and class lines, Hence, the ideological necessity for Mills to execute a double move: He must marginalize class difference within the white community and suppress it
within the black community. Consequently, Mills removes the possibility of connecting white supremacy, a political-cultural structure, to its underlying economic base. Mills's empiricist framework mystifies our
understanding of race. If "white racial solidarity has overridden class and gender solidarity" (138), as Mills proposes, then what is needed is an explanation of this racial formation. If race is the "identity around
which whites have usually closed ranks" (Mills 138), then why is this the case? Without an explanation, it seems as if white solidarity reflects some kind of metaphysical alliance. White racial solidarity is a historical
articulation that operates to defuse class antagonism within white society, and it is maintained and reproduced through discourses of ideology. The race contract provides whites with an imaginary resolution of
actual social contradictions, which are not caused by blacks but by an exploitative economic structure. The race contract enables whites to scapegoat blacks, and such an ideological operation displaces any
understanding of the exploitative machinery. Hence, the race contract provides a political cover that ensures the ideological reproduction of the conditions of exploitation, and this reproduction further deepens the
social contradictions-the economic position of whites becomes more and more depressed by the very same economic system that they help to ideologically reproduce. Mills points out that the Racial Contract aims
at economic exploitation of black people, and this is certainly the case, but it also exploits all working people-a notion suppressed within Mills`s black nationalist problematic, From Mills`s logic,it seems that all
whites (materially) benefit from the Racial Contract, but if this is true, then how does he account for the class structure within the white community? His argument rests upon glossing over class divisions within
American and European communities, and I believe this signals the theoretical and political limits of his position. The vast majority of white Europeans are workers and therefore subjected to capitalist exploitation
through the extraction of surplus value, and this structural relationship operates irrespective of race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality. In other words, neither whiteness nor the Race Contract places whites outside the
logic of exploitation. Indeed, the possibility for transracial collective praxis emerges in the contradiction between the (ideological) promise of whiteness and the actual oppressed material conditions of most whites.
The class blindness in Mills is surprising because he situates his discourse within "the best tradition of oppositional materialist critique" (129), but that tradition foregrounds political economy. Mills undermines his
materialism through the silent reinscription of idealism. For example, he argues that "The Racial Contract is an exploitation contract that creates global European economic domination and national white privilege"
(31). Indeed, for Mills "the globally-coded distribution of wealth and poverty has been produced by the Racial Contract" (37). The "Racial Contract" does not create global European economic domination, this results
from control of capital by the international ruling class, but the RacialContract ideologically legitimates the "color-coded distribution of wealth and poverty." Thus, the race contract effectively naturalizes a racial
division of labor, and of course this operation fractures (multiracial) class solidarity. As Cheryl I. Harris insightfully puts it, "It is through the concept of whiteness that class-consciousness among white workers is
if whites organize around race, as Mills asserts, then

this is only because of an always already ideological interpellation (to "whiteness") and not a
divine (racial) mandate, even though it has the appearance of obviousness. Indeed, the very aim of ideology is to produce
cultural obviousnesses; hence the project of materialist analysis involves a critique of
subordinated and attention is diverted from class oppression" (286), Therefore,
ideology and not the reification of common sense . Contrary to Mills, I believe a more effective
materialist class analysis foregrounds exploitative social-economic structures and the consequent
class struggle between the international ruling class and the international proletariat. My project situates race in relation to the international division of labor . Race emerges
historically and within specific political-economic coordinates. These coordinates link
the logic of race to the logic of capitalist exploitation. In other words, race is
implicated in the historic and ongoing (class) struggle to determine the ratio of surplus value. For me, then, race
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signals a marking for exploitation, and this economic assignment, in turn, generates an accompanying ideological machinery to justify and increase that
exploitation. Any understanding of this economic assignment, which represents a historically
objective positionality, has been removed from the contemporary intellectual scene.
Race represents not just a cultural or political category, as many critics attest, but it represents a
historic apparatus for the production, maintenance, and legitimation of the
inequalities of wage labor. As in other modes of social difference, like gender and sexuality, race participates in naturalizing
asymmetrical social relations .
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Impact Warming
Capitalism makes meaningful greenhouse gas emission reduction
impossible increased economic growth is incompatible with stopping
warming
Smith 2014 [Richard, economic historian, University of California at Los Angeles, Green Capitalism: The God That Failed, http://truthout.org/news/item/21060-green-capitalism-the-god-that-failed]
The science, however, sharply contradicts such optimistic scenarios. Stern's Review has been criticized on many grounds, not least for overestimating the mitigation potentials of renewables and underestimating
science clearly demonstrates that perpetual growth

is unsustainable. (33) For a start, when the Stern Review claims that the cost of reducing greenhouse gas emissions
to three-quarters of current levels by 2050 will cost around $1 trillion or roughly 1.0
percent of GDP in that year, it says this is to stabilize CO2 emissions at between 500 and 550 ppm (which would
cause average temperatures to increase at least 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels). (34) But this target is well above what
climate scientists consider safe. In 2008, Hansen and his colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies wrote that: "If humanity
wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to
which most life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate
change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350ppm."(35) Climate scientists, including the IPCC,
rising future demands in a misguided effort to support perpetual growth when the
have been lobbying governments strenuously to do everything possible to keep CO2 emissions below 400 ppm (with 450 ppm the absolute maximum), while Hansen and his colleagues at NASA have even gone
farther and argued for pushing them back below 350 ppm, because climate scientists fear that once if they climb into the 400s, this could set off all sorts of positive feedback loops, breaching critical tipping points
that could accelerate global warming by releasing the huge quantities of methane trapped in the frozen tundra of Siberia and in the methane hydrates in the bottom of the Arctic Ocean, with catastrophic
implications.(36) In his powerful book Storms of My Grandchildren, Hansen, generally considered the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, writes that the speed of climate change, especially the speed of
temperature increase in relation to CO2 ppm levels and the shocking speed of Arctic and Antarctic melting, has taken even climate scientists by surprise such that they have had to their revise worst-case scenarios
scientists used to think that we could tolerate warming up to 2

degrees Celsius without too much damage, "Unfortunately, what has since become
clear is that a 2-degree Celsius global warming, or even a 1.7 degree warming, is a
disaster scenario." Hansen now believes that we have to have "a carbon dioxide target of no more than 350 ppm" to avoid ice sheet disintegration, massive species extinction, loss of
of only a few years ago, in 2007. Whereas
mountain glaciers and freshwater supplies, expansion of the subtropics, increasingly extreme forest fires and floods, and destruction of the great biodiversity of coral reefs. (37) CO2 levels of 400 ppm or 450 ppm
will drive temperatures to 2 degrees or 3 degrees warmer than today. That is not a world we want to see: The last time the Earth was 2 or 3 degrees warmer than today, which means the Middle Pliocene, about
three million years ago, it was a rather different planet. Sea level was about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today. Florida was under water. About a billion people now live at elevations less than 25 meters. It may
take a long time for such large a sea level rise to be completed - but if we are foolish enough to start the planet down that road, ice sheet disintegration likely will continue out of our control. (38) Given the
enormous dangers that such a high target implies, critics have asked why Stern is so reluctant to aim for a safer target? Marxist ecologist John Bellamy Foster and his colleagues suggest that the answer is to be
found in Stern's economics, not the science: The Stern Review is very explicit, however, that such
a radical mitigation of the problem should not
be attempted. The costs to the world economy of ensuring that atmospheric CO

stabilized at present levels or below would be prohibitive, destabilizing capitalism
itself. " Paths requiring very rapid emissions cuts ," we are told, " are unlikely to be
economically viable. " If global greenhouse gas emissions peaked in 2010, the annual emissions reduction rate necessary to stabilize CO2e at 450 ppm, the Stern Review suggests,
would be 7 percent, with emissions dropping by about 70 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. This is viewed as economically insupportable. (39) Stern asserted, "The world does not have to choose between
But if the science is right that we need to keep emissions

below 400 ppm, or even get them back below 350 ppm, then more growth is out of
the question. Indeed, we would have to make radically deeper cuts in GDP than even the 7 percent reduction per year that Stern calculates would be necessary just to get us down to 450 ppm.
Because, under capitalism, a contraction of economic output on anything like that scale
would mean economic collapse and depression, it is difficult to see how we can make
the reductions in greenhouse gases we have to make to avoid climate catastrophe
unless we abandon capitalism. This is the dilemma. So far most scientists have tended to avoid getting into the contentious economic side of the question. But
with respect to the issue of growth, the science is unequivocal: Never-ending growth
means the end of civilization, if not humanity itself - and in the not-so-distant future.
For a summary of the peer-reviewed science on this subject, read a few chapters of Mark Lynas' harrowing Six Degrees. (41) Global warming is surely the most
urgent threat we face, but it is far from the only driver of global ecological collapse.
For even if we switched to clean renewable electric power tomorrow, this would not
stop the overconsumption of forests, fish, minerals, fresh water. It would not stop
pollution or solve the garbage crisis or stop the changes in ocean chemistry. Indeed, the advent of
cheap, clean energy could even accelerate these trends. (42) Numerous credible scientific and environmental researchers
back up what the climate scientists have been telling us, to demonstrate why
perpetual growth is the road to collective social suicide. For example:
averting climate change and promoting growth and development."(40)
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Impact Terrorism
Capitalism is the root cause of terror
Slater 6 [Philip, author of the bestseller, The Pursuit of Loneliness, and nine other nonfiction books, The Root Causes of Terrorism and Why No
One Wants to End Them, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater/the-root-causes-of-terror_b_32466.html]
For of all capitalist enterprises, the extractive industries are probably the most
deserving of the abuse heaped on them over the years . The possessors of the earth's
treasures believe, apparently, that the luck, wealth, or political corruption that
allowed them to own land containing such riches is a sign of divine favor, while the
poverty of those around them indicates celestial disgust. Terrorists are people who
have lost hope--hope for the possibility of peacefully creating a better world . They may be middle-class
and educated, as many terrorist leaders are, but their despair is one of empathy for the plight of their people
as a whole. The root causes of terrorism are pathological inequalities in wealth --not just in
Saudi Arabia but all over the Third World. Even in our own country Republican policies have in
recent decades created inequalities so extreme that while a few have literally more
money than they can possibly use, the vast majority are struggling to get by. A
society that impoverishes most of its population in order to enrich a few neurotically
greedy individuals is a sick society. As Jared Diamond has shown, societies in which a few plunder the
environment at the expense of the many are headed for collapse . Fundamentalist
religions and radical ideologies are the common refuge of people without hope.
Christianity has played this role for centuries. The rich encourage the poor to accept
the misery of this world as a passport to heaven, despite the fact that according to
Jesus they don't have a prayer of getting in themselves. This isn't really surprising. The rich
wouldn't be caught dead in a place where they let poor people in. Islamic fundamentalism is the latest drug
being offered the poor and desperate. It has the added appeal that you can not only get into heaven but also take vengeance at the same time. Terrorism will
never end until caps are placed on inequality. At this point Republicans usually start screaming about communism and destroying
'freedom'. But no one's talking about ending capitalism. Capitalism is here to stay, but like any system it will selfdestruct without limits. Pure greed is not a sufficient basis for a viable social system, and a pure free market system will self-destruct as surely as pure
communism. As Lewis Mumford pointed out years ago, no system can survive without contradictions, because
humans are much more complex than their ideologies. A completely pure, unrestrained free market, for example, would
end by poisoning its consumers, starving its workers to death, exhausting all the earth's resources, and turning into a single giant monopoly that no longer had anything to sell, no
one to make its product, and no one who could afford to buy it--perhaps no one even alive on an uninhabitable planet. Government regulation exists not only to protect the
consumer, the worker, and the environment, it exists also to protect capitalism from destroying itself. For there is absolutely nothing in free market ideology that provides for longrange thinking. Capitalism is the most dynamic and powerful force in the world today. The only political question is what to do with its tendency to get into positive feedback loops
and self-destruct. Republicans tend to act in ways to heighten this tendency, to feed those loops and help it along the path to self-destruction. Democrats tend to act to curb its
Placing caps on wealth through taxation or other means--an idea that

provokes screams of horror from Republicans--is absolutely necessary for our survival .
Not because it's obscene for some people to have incomes of a million dollars a day while millions of equally able--but less neurotic--people
are a single hospital stay away from homelessness. Not because excess wealth can't buy
anything except power--the ability to corrupt the political process and destroy
democracy, as it already largely has in the United States. But because it tends to stifle
creativity, suck money from the future (the education of children) to the present (short-term profits for the already
wealthy), and decimate the middle class. In other words, to kill hope.
self-destructiveness.
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Impact Racism/Police Brutality

Neoliberalism exacerbates racism, police brutality, and boosts the
carceral systemturns case
Wacquant 1 (Loic, prof of sociology @ UC Berkeley, Deadly Symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh,
http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/DEADLYSYMBIOSISPRISONGHETTO.pdf)
This marked lowering and homogenization of the social composition of the ghetto makes it akin
to the monotonous class recruitment of the carceral institution, dominated as the
latter is by the most precarious fractions of the urban proletariat of the unemployed,
the casually employed, and the uneducated. Fully 36 percent of the half-million
detainees housed by US jails in 1991 were jobless at the time of their arrest and another 15
percent worked only part-time or irregularly. One-half had not finished high school and two-thirds earned less than a thousand dollars a month that year; in addition, every other
Residents of the hyperghetto and

clients of the carceral institution thus present germane profiles in economic
marginality and social dis-integration. 2. Loss of a positive economic function The transformed class
structure of the hyperghetto is a direct product of its evolving position in the new
inmate had been raised in a home receiving welfare and a paltry 16 percent were married (Harlow, 1998).
urban political economy ushered by post-Fordism . We have seen that, from the Great Migration of the interwar years to the
1960s, the dark ghetto served a positive economic function as reservoir of cheap and
pliable labor for the citys factories. During that period, it was directly exploited by outside economic
interests, and it provide[d] a dumping ground for the human residuals created by
economic change . These economic conditions [we]re stabilized by transfer payments
that preserve[d] the ghetto in a poverty that recreate[d] itself from generation to
generation, ensuring the ready availability of a low-cost workforce (Fusfeld and Bates, 1982: 236). By
the 1970s, this was no longer true as the engine of the metropolitan economy passed
from manufacturing to business and knowledge-based services, and factories
relocated from the central city to the mushrooming industrial parks of the suburbs and exurbs, as well as to anti-union states in the South and to
foreign countries. Between 1954 and 1982, the number of manufacturing establishments in Chicago plunged from 10,288 to 5,203, while the number of production workers sank
The demand for black labor plummeted accordingly, rocking the

entire black class structure (Wacquant, 1989: 51011), given that half of all employed African Americans in Chicago were blue-collar wage earners at
the close of World War II. Just as mechanization had enabled Southern agriculture to dispense with black labor a generation earlier, automation and
suburban relocation created a crisis of tragic dimension for unskilled black workers in
the North, as for the first time in American history, the African American was no longer needed in the economic system of the metropolis (Rifkin, 1995: 79; also
from nearly half a million to a mere 172,000.
Sugrue, 1995: 12552). The effects of technological upgrading and postindustrialization were intensified by (1) unflinching residential segregation, (2) the breakdown of public
schools, and (3) the renewal of working-class immigration from Latin America and Asia to consign the vast majority of uneducated blacks to economic redundancy. At best,
the
hyperghetto now serves the negative economic function of storage of a surplus

population devoid of market utility, in which respect it also increasingly resembles the
prison system. <Continues> The contemporary prison system and the ghetto not only
display a similarly skewed recruitment and composition in terms of class and caste. The former
also duplicates the authority structure characteristic of the latter in that it places a
population of poor blacks under the direct supervision of whites albeit, in this case, lower-class whites. In
the communal ghetto of the postwar, black residents chaffed under the rule of white landlords, white employers, white unions, white social workers and white policemen (Clark,
1965). Likewise, at centurys end, the convicts of New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago, who are overwhelming African-American, serve their
sentence in establishments staffed by officers who are overwhelmingly white (see Figure 1). In Illinois, for instance, two-thirds of the states 41,000 inmates are blacks who live
With the proliferation of detention facilities in rural

areas, perversely, the economic stability and social welfare of lower-class whites from
the declining hinterland has come to hinge on the continued socioeconomic
marginality and penal restraint of ever-larger numbers of subproletarian blacks from
the urban core. The convergent changes that have prisonized the ghetto and ghettoized the prison in the aftermath of the Civil Rights revolution suggest that
under the watch of a 8,400 uniformed force that is 84 percent white.
the inordinate and mounting over-representation of blacks behind bars does not stem simply from the discriminatory targeting of specific penal policies such as the War on Drugs,
as proposed by Tonry (1995), or from the sheer destabilizing effects of the increased penetration of ghetto neighborhoods by the penal state, as Miller argues (1997). Not that
these two factors are not at work, for clearly they are deeply involved in the hyper-incarceration of African Americans. But they fail to capture the precise nature and the full
magnitude of the transformations that have interlocked the prison and the (hyper)ghetto via a relation of functional equivalency (they serve one and the same purpose, the
coercive confinement of a stigmatized population) and structural homology (they comprise and comfort the same type of social relations and authority pattern) to form a single
institutional mesh suited to fulfil anew the mission historically imparted to Americas peculiar institutions. The thesis of the structural-functional coupling of the remnants of the
ghetto with the carceral system is supported by the timing of racial transition: with a lag of about a dozen years, the
blackening of the carceral
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population has followed closely on the heels of the demise of the Black Belt as a viable
instrument of caste containment in the urban industrial settting , just as, a century earlier, the sudden penal
repression of African Americans had helped to shore up the walls of white supremacy as the South moved from an era of racial bondage to one of racial caste (Oshinsky, 1996:
57). It is also verified by the geographic patterning of racial disproportionality and its evolution: outside of the South which for obvious historical reasons requires a separate
analysis the black-white gap in incarceration is more pronounced and has increased faster in those states of the Midwest and Northeast that are the historic cradle of the
Northern ghetto (Mauer, 1997). The intertwining of the urban Black Belt and the carceral system is further evidenced, and in turn powerfully abetted, by the fusion of ghetto and
prison culture, as vividly expressed in the lyrics of gangsta rap singers and hip hop artists (Cross, 1993), in graffitti and tattooing (Phillips, 1999: 15267), and in the
dissemination, to the urban core and beyond, of language, dress, and interaction patterns innovated inside of jails and penitentiaries. The advent of hyper-incarceration for lowerclass blacks and Latinos has in effect rendered moot the classic dispute, among scholars of imprisonment, between the deprivation thesis, canonized by Gresham Sykes, and the
importation thesis, proposed in response by John Irwin and Donald Cressey. This alternative has been transcended by the melting of street and carceral symbolism, with the
resulting mix being re-exported to the ghetto and diffused throughout society via the commercial circuits catering to the teenage consumer market, professional sports, and even
the mainstream media.34Witness the widespread adolescent fashion of baggy pants worn with the crotch down to mid-thigh and the resurgent popularity of body art featuring
prison themes and icons more often than not unbeknownst to those who wear them. HOW PRISON IS REMAKING RACE AND RESHAPING THE CITIZENRY I indicated earlier
Jim Crow system and the ghetto are race making institutions, which is to say
that they do not simply process an ethnoracial division that would somehow exist
outside of and independently from them. Rather, each produces (or co-produces) this
division (anew) out of inherited demarcations and disparities of group power and inscribes it at
every epoch in a distinctive constellation of material and symbolic forms .35 And all have
consistently racialized the arbitrary boundary setting African Americans apart from all
others in the United States by actively denying its cultural origin in history, ascribing it
that slavery, the
instead to the fictitious necessity of biology . The highly particular conception of race that America has invented, virtually
unique in the world for its rigidity and consequentiality, is a direct outcome of the momentous collision between slavery and democracy as modes of organization of social life
after bondage had been established as the major form of labor conscription and control in a underpopulated colony home to a precapitalist system of production (Fields, 1982).
racialized boundary between slave and free into a rigid caste separation between whites and Negros comprising all
infected every crevice of the postbellum social system in the South (Powdermaker,
1939). The ghetto, in turn, imprinted this dichotomy onto the spatial makeup and institutional schemas of the industrial metropolis. So much so that, in the wake
of the urban riots of the 1960s, which in truth were uprisings against intersecting caste
and class subordination, urban and black became near-synonymous in policy making as well as
The Jim Crow regime reworked the
persons of known African ancestry, no matter how minimal that
everyday parlance. And the crisis of the city came to stand for the enduring contradiction between the individualistic and competitive tenor of American life, on the one hand,
the fourth peculiar institution born of

the adjoining of the hyperghetto with the carceral system to remould the social
meaning and significance of race in accordance with the dictates of the deregulated
and the continued seclusion of African Americans from it, on the other.3 As a new century dawns, it is up to
economy and the post-Keynesian state . Now, the penal apparatus has long served as an
accessory to ethnoracial domination by helping to stabilize a regime under attack or bridge
the hiatus between successive regimes: thus the Black Codes of Reconstruction
served to keep African-American labor in place following the demise of slavery while
the criminalization of civil rights protests in the South in the 1950s aimed to retard
the agony of Jim Crow. But the role of the carceral institution today is different in that, for the first time in US history, it has been elevated to the rank of
main machine for race making. Among the manifold effects of the wedding of ghetto and prison into an extended carceral mesh, perhaps the most consequential is the
practical revivification and official solidification of the centuries-old association of blackness with criminality and devious violence. Along with the return of Lombroso-style
mythologies about criminal atavism and the wide diffusion of bestial metaphors in the journalistic and political field (where mentions of superpredators, wolf-packs, animals
and the like are commonplace), the massive over-incarceration of blacks has supplied a powerful common-sense warrant for using color as a proxy for dangerousness (Kennedy,
1997: 136). In recent years, the courts have consistently authorized the police to employ race as a negative signal of increased risk of criminality and legal scholars have rushed
to endorse it as a rational adaptation to the demographics of crime, made salient and verified, as it were, by the blackening of the prison population, even though such practice
entails major inconsistencies from the standpoint of constitutional law (Kennedy, 1997: 143, 146). Throughout the urban criminal justice system, the formula Young + Black +
Male is now openly equated with probable cause justifying the arrest, questioning,bodily search and detention of millions of African-American males every year (Gaynes, 1993).
In the era of racially targetted law-and-order policies and their socio-logical pendant, racially skewed mass imprisonment, the reigning public image of the criminal is not just
that of a monstruum a being whose features are inherently different from ours (Melossi 2000: 311), but that of a black monster, as young African-American men from the inner
city have come to personify the explosive mix of moral degeneracy and mayhem.37
The conflation of blackness and crime
representation and government policy (the other side of this equation being the conflation of blackness and welfare) thus
reactivates race
in collective
by giving a
legitimate outlet to the expression of anti-black animus in the form of the public vituperation of criminals and prisoners. As writer John Edgar Wideman (1995: 504) points out, Its
respectable to tar and feather criminals, to advocate locking them up and throwing away the key. Its not racist to be against crime, even though the archetypal criminal in the
media and the public imagination almost always wears Willie Hortons face. Gradually, urban and ghetto have become code words for terrible places where only blacks reside.
Prison is rapidly being re-lexified in the same segregated fashion. Indeed, when to be a man of color of a certain economic class and milieu is equivalent in the public eye to
being a criminal, being processed by the penal system is tantamount to being made black, and doing time behind bars is at the same time marking race (Wideman, 1995:
505).38 A second major effect of the penalization of the race question via the hypertrophic expansion of the prison system has been to thoroughly depoliticize it. For reframing
the problems posed by the maintenance of ethnoracial division in the wake of the ghettos demise as issues of law enforcement automatically delegitimates any attempt at
collective resistance and redress. Established organizations of civic voice for African Americans cannot confront head on the crisis of hyperincarceration in their community for
fear that this would seem to validate the very conflation of blackness and crime in public perception that fuels this crisis. Thus the courteous silence of the NAACP, the Urban
League, the Black Congressional Caucus, and black churches on the topic, even as the penal tutelage of African Americans has escalated to heights experienced by no other
group in history, even under the most repressive authoritarian regimes and in Soviet-style societies. This reticence is further reinforced by the fact, noted long ago by W.E.B.
DuBois, that the tenuous position of the black bourgeoisie in the socioracial hierarchy rests critically on its ability to distance itself from its unruly lower-class brethen: to offset the
symbolic disability of blackness, middle-class African Americans must forcefully communicate to whites that they have absolutely no sympathy and no known connections with
any black man who has committed a crime (DuBois cited in Christianson, 1998: 228). Even riots, the last weapon of protest left to an urban subproletariat spurned by a political
system thoroughly dominated by the white suburban electorate and corporations, have been rendered purposeless by mass penal confinement. It is commonly believed that race
riots in the United States crested in the 1960s and then vanished, save for anomalous outbursts such as in Miami in 1980 and Los Angeles in 1992. In reality, the ghetto uprisings
of 19631968 have been succeeded by a rolling wave of upheavals inside of prisons, from Attica and Soledad to facilities throughout Michigan, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Illinois, West
Virginia, and Pennsylvania, among others (Morris, 1995: 2489; Useem and Kimball, 1989). But, by moving from the open stage of the streets to the closed perimeter of
penitentiaries, these outbursts differed from their predecessors of the 1960s in three important ways. First, ghetto riots were highly visible and, through the media, interpellated
the highest authorities in the land. Carceral riots, on the contrary, were never conspicuous to start with (unless they caused major destruction), and they have rapidly grown less
and less perceptible to the point of virtually disappearing from the public scene.39 Next, they have received administrative responses from within the correctional bureaucracy in
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lieu of political responses from without, and these responses have only compounded the problem: the approach of the state to inmate belligerence in the 1950s was to intensify
the therapeutic thrust in prisons (Rotman, 1995: 189); thirty years later, it is to intensify the drive to classify, separate, and isolate (Irwin, 1980: 228), to toughen discipline,
routinize the use of lockdown, and to multiply special housing units and supermax facilities. A third difference between the uproarious ghetto riots of decades past and the
diffuse, muffled, carceral riots that have replaced them is that they typically pit, not blacks against whites, but one subordinate ethnic group against another, such as blacks
versus Mexicans, thereby further diminishing the likelihood that they will receive a broad sociopolitical interpretation connecting them to the transformed ethnoracial order on the
By entombing poor blacks in the concrete walls of the prison, then, the penal
state has effectively smothered and silenced subproletarian revolt . By assuming a
central role in the post-Keynesian government of race and poverty, at the crossroads
of the deregulated low-wage labor market, a revamped welfare-workfare apparatus
designed to support casual employment, and the vestiges of the ghetto, the
overgrown carceral system of the United States has become a major engine of symbolic
production in its own right.41 It is not only the preeminent institution for signifying and enforcing blackness, much as slavery was during the first three centuries of US
history. Just as bondage effected the social death of imported African captives and their descendants on American soil (Patterson, 1982), mass incarceration
also induces the civic death of those it ensnares by extruding them from the social compact. Todays inmates are thus the target of a threefold
outside.40
movement of exclusionary closure: Prisoners are denied access to valued cultural capital: just as university credentials are becoming a prerequisite for employment in the
(semi-)protected sector of the labor market, inmates have been expelled from higher education by being made ineligible for Pell Grants, starting with drug offenders in 1988,
continuing with convicts sentenced to death or lifelong imprisonment without the possibility of parole in 1992, and ending with all remaining state and federal prisoners in 1994.
This expulsion was voted by Congress for the sole purpose of accentuating the symbolic divide between criminals and law-abiding citizens in spite of overwhelming evidence
that prison educational programs drastically cut recividism as well as help to maintain carceral order (Page, 2000). 2. Prisoners are systematically excluded from social
redistribution and public aid in an age when work insecurity makes access to such programs more vital than ever for those dwelling in the lower regions of social space. Laws
deny welfare payments, veterans benefits and food stamps to anyone in detention for more than 60 days. The Work Opportunity and Personal Responsibility Act of 1996 further
banishes most ex-convicts from Medicaid, public housing, Section 8 vouchers, and related forms of assistance. In spring of 1998, President Clinton denounced as intolerable fraud
and abuse perpetrated against working families who play by the rules the fact that some prisoners (or their households) continued to get public payments due to lax
bureaucratic enforcement of these prohibitions. And he proudly launched unprecedented federal, state, and local co-operation as well as new, innovative incentive programs
using the latest high-tech tools to weed out any inmate who still received benefits (Clinton, 1998), including the disbursement of bounties to counties who promptly turn in
identifying information on their jail detainees to the Social Security administration. 3. Convicts are banned from political participation via criminal disenfranchisement practiced
on a scale and with a vigor unimagined in any other country. All but four members of the Union deny the vote to mentally competent adults held in detention facilities; 39 states
forbid convicts placed on probation from exercising their political rights and 32 states also interdict parolees. In 14 states, ex-felons are barred from voting even when they are no
longer under criminal justice supervision for life in ten of these states. The result is that nearly 4 million Americans have temporarily or permanently lost the ability to cast a
ballot, including 1.47 million who are not behind bars and another 1.39 million who served their sentence in full (Fellner and Mauer, 1998). A mere quarter of a century after
acceding to full voting rights, one black man in seven nationwide is banned from the electoral booth through penal disenfranchisement and seven states permanently deny the
this triple exclusion, the prison, and the criminal justice system more broadly,
contribute to the ongoing reconstruction of the imagined community of Americans
around the polar opposition between praiseworthy working families - implicitly
white, suburban, and deserving and the despicable underclass of criminals, loafers, and leeches, a twoheaded antisocial hydra personified by the dissolute teenage welfare mother on the female side and the dangerous street gang banger on the male side by
definition darkskinned, urban, and undeserving . The former are exalted as the living incarnation of genuine American values, self-control,
vote to more than one fourth of their black male residents. Through
deferred gratification, subservience of life to labor;42 the latter is vituperated as the loathsome embodiment of their abject desecration, the dark side of the American dream of
affluence and opportunity for all believed to flow from morality anchored in conjugality and work. And the line that divides them is increasingly being drawn, materially and
symbolically, by the prison. On the other side of that line lies an institutional setting unlike any other. Building on his celebrated analyses of Ancient Greece, classical historian
genuine slave societies. In the former, slavery is but one of

enslaved labor is
epicentral to both economic production and class structure , and the slave-master relation provides the pattern
after which all other social relations are built or distorted, such that no corner of culture, society and self is left untouched by it . The astronomical
overrepresentation of blacks in houses of penal confinement and the increasingly tight
meshing of the hyperghetto with the carceral system suggests that, owing to Americas
adoption of mass incarceration as a queer social policy designed to discipline the poor and
contain the dishonored, lower-class African Americans now dwell, not in a society with prisons as their white compatriots do, but in the
Moses Finley (1968) has introduced a fruitful distinction between societies with slaves and
several modes of labor control and the division between slave and free is neither impermeable nor axial to the entire social order. In the latter,
first genuine prison society of history.
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Turns Case Domestic Surveillance

Capitalism propagates the need for surveillance and makes expansion of
the police state inevitableturns case
Foster* and McChesney** 14 (John Bellamy, prof of sociology @ univ of Oregon, Robert W.**, prof @ univ of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, July-August 2014, Surveillance Capitalism: Monopoly-Finance Capital, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the Digital Age,
http://monthlyreview.org/2014/07/01/surveillance-capitalism/, aps)
suFinancializationor the long-term growth of speculation on financial assets relative to GDPmeant the intrusion of finance into all aspects of life, requiring new extensions of
As the economy became more financialized, it

became increasingly vulnerable to financial meltdowns, increasing risk perceptions on the part of investors and the perceived need for risk
management, encryption of data, and security. Today the fears of cyberwar aimed at financial institutions , the
entire financial system, and the military system, is at the top of national security concerns. McConnell, who had left his job at Booz Allen to
surveillance and information control as forms of financial risk management.
become director of national intelligence in 2007 under George W. Bush, informed the president that, If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single U.S. bank through
cyberattack, and it had been successful, it would have had an order of magnitude greater impact on the U.S. economy than the physical attack. Secretary of the Treasury Henry
Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, agreed. Bush was so alarmed that within a short time the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (2008) was in place, which
greatly expanded the NSAs authority to carry out surveillance on the Internet domestically, leading to the construction of its $1.5 billion data center in Utah.53 Leon Panetta, U.S.
defense secretary under Obama, warned that a cyberattack on the U.S. financial system might be the next Pearl Harbor. In July 2011 Barack Obama signed an executive order
declaring that the infiltration of financial markets by transnational criminal organizations constituted a national emergency. Symantec, a cybersecurity firm, estimated in 2010 that
three-quarters of phishing attacks designed to get people to give up financial data were not aimed at individuals but were directed at the financial sector.54 In addition to
hackers breaking into databases, large scale attacks on entire security systems are feared. The sudden drop in the stock market on May 6, 2010, attributed to high speed
algorithmic trading, was thought to prefigure a new possible form of cyberwar aimed at dragging reeling markets down further using short-selling, options, and swapsa kind of
force multiplier in military-speak. Hackers using malicious codes to crash or jam whole networks can mobilize Botnets or robotic networks of hundreds of thousands of machines.
According to Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman and editor-in-chief of U.S. News and World Report, writing in the Wall Street Journal, digitalized systems are extraordinarily vulnerable
to attack: the average [offensive] malware has about 175 lines of code, which can attack defense software using between 5 million and 10 million lines of code. The U.S./Israelideveloped Stutnex worm aimed at Iran, which reportedly infiltrated the computers controlling Iranian nuclear centrifuge facilities, is seen as an indication of the scale and
precision with which cyberattacks can now demobilize whole systems.55 The Internet and Monopoly Capital ARPANET was connected only to those universities and their
computer science departments that had Department of Defense funding and security clearances. With the success of the system, computer science departments at universities
and private industry were all eager to be connected to the network. This resulted in the creation by the National Science Foundation of the Computer Science Research Network
(CSNET), which consisted of ARPANET, a Telenet system, and PhoneNet for email. Soon other, private internets were created. In 1985 the National Science Foundation constructed
five supercomputers across the country to be the backbone of a larger NSFNET, which brought universities in general and private corporations into what had merged into a much
wider Internet with a common protocol, resulting in a massive growth of users who could access it through personal computers, via Internet Service Providers. ARPANET ceased
operations in 1989. In the early 1990s the World Wide Web was developed, leading to an astronomical increase in users, and the rapid commercialization of the Internet. Three
key developments followed: (1) In 1995 NSFNET was privatized, and NSFNET itself decommissioned, with the backbone of the system being controlled by private Internet Service
Providers;56 (2) the Telecommunications Act of 1996 introduced a massive deregulation of telecommunications and media, setting the stage for further concentration and
cenoentralization of capital in these industries;57 (3) the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, promoted by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers under the Clinton administration, deregulated the financial sector in an attempt to feed the financial
bubble that was developing.58 These three elements coalesced into one of the biggest merger waves in history, known as the dot-com or New Economy bubble. The ongoing
concentration of capital was thus given a huge boost in the technology and finance sectors, leading to ever greater levels of monopoly power. The dot-com bubble burst in 2000.
the
Internet had come to play a central role in capital accumulation , and the firms that ruled the Internet were
But by that time a virtual Internet cartel had emerged, despite all the rhetoric of friction-free capitalism by Bill Gates and others.59 By the end of the decade
almost all monopolies, by the way economists use the term. This did not mean that these firms sold 100 percent of an industrys output, but rather that they sold a sufficient
amount to control the price of the product and how much competition they would have. (Even John D. Rockefellers Standard Oil monopoly at its peak controlled just over 80
percent of the market.) By 2014, three of the four largest U.S. corporations in market valuationApple, Microsoft, and Googlewere Internet monopolies. Twelve of the thirty most
These
firms used network effects, technical standards, patent law, and good old-fashioned
barriers-to-entry to lock in their market power, and they used their monopoly gushers
to broaden their digital empires. With this economic power comes immense political power, such that these firms face no threat from regulators
in Washington. To the contrary, the U.S. government is little short of a private army for the Internet giants as they pursue their global ambitions.60 The major
means of wealth generation on the Internet and through proprietary platforms such
as apps is the surveillance of the population, allowing for a handful of firms to reap
the lions share of the gains from the enormous sales effort in the U.S. economy. The
digitalization of surveillance has radically changed the nature of advertising. The old system of
valuable U.S. corporations were media giants and/or Internet monopolies, including Verizon, Amazon, Disney, Comcast, Intel, Facebook, Qualcomm, and Oracle.
advertisers purchasing ad space or time in media with the hope of getting the media user to notice the advertisement while she sought out news or entertainment is becoming
pass. Advertisers no longer need to subsidize journalism or media content production to reach their target audiences. Instead, they can pinpoint their desired audience to a
The premise of the

system is that there is no effective privacy. The consequences are that the commercial system of media content production,
especially journalism, is in collapse, with nothing in the wings to replace it. These monopolistic corporate entities readily
cooperate with the repressive arm of the state in the form of its military, intelligence, and police
functions. The result is to enhance enormously the secret national security state,
relative to the government as a whole. Edward Snowdens revelations of the NSAs Prism program, together with other leaks, have shown
person and locate them wherever they are online (and often where they are in physical space) due to ubiquitous surveillance.
a pattern of a tight interweaving of the military with giant computer-Internet corporations, creating what has been called a military-digital complex.61 Indeed, Beatrice Edwards,
the executive director of the Government Accountability Project, argues that
what has emerged is a government-corporate
surveillance complex. 62 This extends beyond the vast private contractor network to secret collaboration with the main Internet and telecom
companies.63 Notable examples of partly cooperative, partly legally coerced sharing of data include: A 2009 report by the NSAs inspector general leaked by Snowden stated
the NSA has built collaborative relationships with over 100 companies.
that
64 Microsoft provided
the NSA with pre-encryption back door access to its popular Outlook.com email portal, to its Skype Internet phone calls and chat (with its 663 million global users), and to
SkyDrive, Microsofts cloud storage system (which has 250 million users). The Snowden files show that Microsoft actively collaborated with the NSA. Glenn Greenwald writes:
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Microsoft spent many months working to provide the government easy access to that [the SkyDrive] data. The same was the case for Skype, while in the case of Outlook.com
The NSA paid $10 million to

the computer security company RSA to promote a back door to encryption products.
The NSA devised a flawed formula for generating random numbers for encryption with
RSA inserting it into its software tool Bsafe, which had been designed to enhance security in personal computers and other digital products.66
it took only a few months for the Microsoft and the NSA working together to ensure the NSAs complete access.65
AT&T voluntarily sold metadata on phone calls to the CIA for over $10 million a year in connection with the latters counterterrorism investigations.67 Verizon (and likely AT&T
and Sprint as well) provided the NSA with metadata on all calls in its (their) systems, both within the United States and between the United States and other countries. Such
metadata has been supplied to the NSA under both the Bush and Obama administrations.68 Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Facebook turned over the data from tens of thousands
of their accounts on individuals every six months to the NSA and other intelligence agencies, with a rapid rise in the number of accounts turned over to the secret
government.69 In 2012 DARPA Director Regina Dugan left her position to join Google. During her period as director, DARPA had been at the forefront of drone research,
presenting the first prototype demonstrations in the early 1990s. However, the outgrowth of this in the deployment of General Atomic Aeronautical Systems Predator drones in
warfare did not occur until the late 1990s in the Kosovo War, with Clark as the Supreme Allied Commander. The first use of such drones for global, extra-territorial assassination,
outside a field of warnow a staple of Obamas anti-terrorism strategytook place in 2002.70 In the opening years of this century DARPA extended its research to developing
drones that could be used for mobile wi-fi capabilities. Dugans switch to Google in the private sectorat a time when she was under governmental investigation for giving hefty
DARPA contracts to RedX, a bomb-detection corporation that she had co-founded and partly ownedwas connected to Googles interest in developing high-altitude drones with
wi-fi delivering capabilities. In 2014 Google announced that it was buying Titan Aerospace, a U.S.-based start-up company for building drones which cruise at the very edge of the
atmosphere. Facebook meanwhile bought the UK corporation, Ascenta, which specializes in making high-altitude solar drones. Such drones would allow the spread of the Internet
to new areas. The goal was to capitalize on a new military technology and create larger global Internet monopolies, while expanding the military-digital complex.71 By 2005
2007 broad estimates suggested that U.S. marketing expenditures (defined fairly narrowly) were running at about $1 trillion a year; real (both acknowledged and
unacknowledged) military expenditures at about $1 trillion annually; and FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) expenditures at approximately $2.5 trillion.72 In the digital
age, these three sectors of the political economy, each of which arose parasitically on the production base of the economy, were increasingly connected in a web of technology
and data sharing. As the most advanced technologies (usually military developed) went private, many of those involved in the warfare economy, such as DARPAs Dugan, were in
a position to exploit the knowledge and connections that they had accumulated by shifting to the private sector, crossing fairly easily from one system of security and surveillance
A kind of linguistic convergence mirrored the centralized structure of monopolyfinance capital in the age of digital surveillance with securitization increasingly
standing simultaneously for a world dominated by: (1) financial derivatives trading,
(2) a network of public and private surveillance, (3) the militarization of securitycontrol systems, and (4) the removal of judicial processes from effective civilian control.
to another.
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--ALTERNATIVE
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2NC Must Read: Try or Die

Its try or die for the alt: progress towards communism should be the
first priority micropolitics cedes institutions to the right, accelerating
racist violence and environmental extinction.
Dean, 2015
Green, July 16, Rethinking Marxism, 27:3, Taylor and Francis)
The absence of a powerful Left enables the political Right (in part by shifting what had been the
center). The intensified inequality of the last forty years of neoliberalism testifies to the
impact of left political defeat.3 Neoliberalisms subjection of all of society to its
economic criteria of efficiency and competitiveness has been carried out as a political
project.4 The political system has been the instrument through which neoliberalism has dismantled the achievements of the
welfare state, installed competition in ever more domains, expanded the finance sector, and imposed austerity. This is the
setting, then, for my appeal to the Left to assemble itself into a party. Key determinants of
our lives occur behind our backscurrency valuations, monetary policies, trade
agreements, energy concessions, data harvesting. To insist on a politics focused on
isolating and archiving singular micropractices abstracted from their global capitalist
context obscures the workings of state and economy as a capitalist system, hinders
the identification of this system as the site of ongoing harm (exploitation,
expropriation, and injustice), and disperses political energies that could be more
effective if concentrated. More fundamentally, in treating economic practices as the primary
locus of left politics, such an insistence effaces the gap between politics and
economics such that questions of strategy, of how to win, are displaced . Morrow and Brault
supply a striking example of this effacement when they ask, What is communism for, if not to improve our everyday lives?
Communism, which previous generations rendered as the world-historical struggle of

the proletariat, diminishes into yet another option for individual self-improvement;
the abolition of exploitation, expropriation, and injustice replaced by economic
determinations of immediate satisfaction. As Ramsey rightly notes, Healy similarly substitutes economic
alternatives for political antagonism. 1 Two ideas voiced in the present discussion impress the
urgency of the need for a left party oriented toward communism: racism (Buck 2015) and
the Anthropocene (Healy 2015). Given anthropogenic climate change, the stakes of
contemporary politics are almost unimaginably high. They range from the continued
investment in extractive industries and fossil fuels constitutive of the carboncombustion complex (see Oreskes and Conway 2014), to the dislocations accompanying mass
migration in the wake of floods and droughts to the racist response of states outside what
Christian Parenti (2011, 9) calls the Tropic of Chaos (the band around the belt of economically and politically battered post-colonial
all the way to human

extinction. That one city, state, or country brings carbon emissions under control
while certainly a step in the right directionmay be irrelevant from the standpoint of
overall warming. Perhaps its carbon-emitting industries were shipped elsewhere. Perhaps another country chose to expand
its own drilling operations. Climate change forces us to acknowledge that we cant build new
worlds (Helepololei). We live in one world, the heating up of which threatens humans and
other species. Not all communities, economies, or ways of life are compatible. Those
premised on industries and practices that continue to contribute to planetary
warming have to change significantly, and soon. Forcing that change is the political
challenge of our time. Given the persistence of racialized violence and the operation
of the state as an instrument for the maintenance not only of capitalist modes of
production but also and concomitantly of racialized hierarchy, the challenges of
states girding the planets mid-latitudes, where climate change is beginning to hit hard),
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organizing politically across issues and identities are almost insurmountably daunting .
No wonder the Left resorts to moralism and self-care instead. Its easier to catalog difference than it is to
build up a Left strong enough to exercise power, especially given the traversal of
state power by transnational corporations, trade, and treaties. Its also easier to go
along with the dominant ideology of individualism, which enjoins us first and foremost
to look after ourselves, than it is to put ourselves aside and focus on formulating a
strategy for using collective power to occupy, reconfigure, and redirect institutions at
multiple levels. Here again, not every vision of community is compatible with every other.
Those premised on fantasies of racial, religious, ethnic, or linguistic purity directly
oppose those premised on diversity. Those premised on reproducing structures of class hierarchy directly oppose
those insisting on equality. If something like a party of the radical Left can stretch beyond Greece and Spain, if it can be
imagined in North America, it will only be possible as a combination of communism,
antiracism, and climate activism. I use red, black, and green as a heuristic for the coalition of concerns necessary
for such a party. I invoke the heuristic here to double down against critics who prefer a thousand alternatives to the party form. A
thousand alternatives (see Healy 2015) is no alternative. It leaves the political system we
havethe one that puts all its force behind the preservation of capitalist class
interestsintact. Some ideas need to be chosen, systematized into a program, and
defended. Consciously reiterating the colors of the Black Liberation Flag, the red, black, and green heuristic positions itself
within the histories of communist, peoples, and anticolonial struggles. Left Unity in the UK uses red, black, and green in their logo to
suggest a similar constellation. The colors dont have a fixed meaning; they have appeared differently in the histories of
emancipatory egalitarian struggle. In recent struggles, red suggests a politics against debt, austerity, and corporate personhood and
anticapitalism and communism as well. Black pays tribute to the IWW, anarchists, black power, and
movements against aggressive policing, incarceration, and the murder of African
Americans. Green points to climate justice, an approach to climate change that exceeds capitalist emphases on carbon
allies with
markets and green commodities to encompass the dismantling of the carbon-based economy and the global redistribution of wealth.
should not be read as three separate issues or groups. They should rather be
understood as a kind of mutually supporting and inflecting scaffold . An equitable response to the
The three colors
changing climate, for example, is incompatible with the continuation of capitalism. A communism anchored in extractive industry is
Antiracism directs our attention to those

most likely to be exploited and sacrificed in market-driven schemes to address
climate change. It also marks the fact of the history of divisions within the Left that
have stood in the way of our forging collective counterpower. Here and now,
movements are pushing the organizational convergence of communist, climate, and
race politics. Moral Mondays, the ongoing protests in North Carolina, bring together an array of political concerns around racial
justice, cuts to public services, and the environment. These protests include marches and acts of civil disobedience. The
heartbreaking reminder that Black lives matter calls for the abolition of structures
of institutionalized power that continue to impoverish, imprison, and kill black people
everywhere. Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the murder of Michael Brown, have turned the
spotlight on the militarization of the police and the buildup of state forces for the
defense of the wealthy and white against the proletarianizedpoor, brown, and black .
incompatible with the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change.
Similar buildups of police borders in the United States and abroad attempt to push back the many on the move in response to the
The demand for

climate justice places the economic inequalities accompanying and constitutive of
capitalist development at the center of global discussions of climate change . Images
catastrophic convergence of decades of violent expropriation and climate change (Parenti 2011).
from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and terms like sacrifice zones help articulate the two. Every time an activist reminds us
the Left is
instructing itself to make connections and formulate a politics capable of grasping
complexity and of changing the world. The party is a form for that connecting. It
provides a location where we see and relate to ourselves as comrades, as solidary
members of a fighting collective.
that issues cant be considered in isolation or every time a student repeats the mantra of intersectionality,
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Alt Class Focus

Reject the affirmative in favor of an investigation into the dialectical
relationship between structure and history in capitalism.
Mszros 11
investigation of the dialectical relationship between structure and history is essential

for a proper understanding of the nature and the defining characteristics of any social formation in which
sustainable solutions are being sought to the encountered problems. This is particularly important in the
case of capital's social formation, with its inexorable tendency toward an allembracing, structurally embedded determination of all aspects of
The
societal reproduction and the feasible for the first time ever global domination implicit in that form of development. It is therefore by no means accidental that, in the interest of
Marx had to focus critical attention on the concept of social structure
the required structural change,

, in
the historical period of crises and revolutionary explosions of the 1840s when he articulated his own radically new conception of history. In his first great synthesizing work, the
the course of modern historical development, natural science,

had become in an alienated form the basis
of social life; a circumstance considered by Marx "a priori a lie."1 In his view this had to be rectified by extricating science itself from its alienating
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx put into relief that, in
through its close integration with the material practices of capitalist industrial production,
integument. At the same time science had to be retained, in a qualitatively modified form, remade as "the science of man"2 in its inseparability from "the science of history" the
to achieve this fundamental transformation, it was absolutely

necessary to understand and lay bare the deepseated structural determinations through which the creative
potentiality of human labor, including the scientific endeavor of the social individuals, had been
subjugated by the alienating imperatives of fetishistic/uncontrollable capital expansion and accumulation. For this reason the category of social structure had to acquire a seminal importance in the Marxian vision in a
completely tangible form. Contrary to the speculative philosophical approaches to these problems dominant at the time,
there could be nothing mysterious about the required analysis of the social structure.
Nor could political vested interests be allowed to obfuscate the issues at stake in the
interest of speculatively transubstantiated stateapologetics. As far back as 1845 Marx forcefully underscored, in his contribution to the book
written with Engels, The German Ideology, that, in the envisaged theoretical analysis, all of the relevant factors were amenable to
empirical observation and rational assessment. For the overall conceptual framework of explanation had to be made fully
enriching and gratifying basis of actual human life. But
intelligible on the basis of the ongoing practices of societal reproduction in which the particular human beings happened to be constantly engaged in their daily life. In this sense
the only valid theoretical investigation was a type capable of bringing to the
fore, "without any mystification and speculation the connection of the social and political
structure with production. The social structure and the state are constantly evolving out of the lifeprocess of difinite individuals."3 This demystifying
theoretical approach, which concerned not only the conditions of Marx's own time but had a general validity as a structurally anchored historical
explanation for the past as well as for the future , served a radical emancipatory purpose under the circumstances of the
revolutionary explosions of the 1840s. And it continues to have a vital emancipatory mandate ever since that time. By
focusing attention on the actual lifeprocess of the social individuals who were engaged in
capitalistically alienating industrial production, it became possible to perceive, in Marx's words, "the necessity, and at the same time the
condition, of a transformation both of industry and the social structure."4 That is to say, it became possible to see both the necessity
of a profound transformation itself and the objective nature of the conditions that had to be changed.
And the latter corresponded to the structurally determined characteristics of social life ,
highlighting at the same time the deepening severity of the crisis itself. For it was the innermost structural determination of these
Marx insisted that
objective conditions themselves that called for the tangible and farreaching practical leverage indicated by Marx. Due to the inherent characteristics of the encountered problems,
required leverage for successfully overcoming the historical crisis could not be other than
the radical transformation of industry and the social structure. This is why, in Marx's view, a change
in the political circumstances alone could not match the magnitude of the historic task. What
was really needed was nothing less than a qualitative structural change capable of embracing the
fundamental modality of societal reproduction in its entirety. Naturally, that kind of change had to include the political
domain, with all of its general legislative as well as more limited local regulatory institutions. But it could not be confined to the political
field. For, in their traditional way, even the greatest political upheavals of the past tended to change only the ruling
personnel of society while leaving the exploitative structural framework of material
and cultural reproduction in its hierarchical class articulation standing.
the
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Alt Class Focus

We endorse a historical materialist method.
Tumino, 2001
(Stephen, professor of english at Pitt, What is Orthodox Marxism and Why it Matters Now More
than Ever,
Any effective political theory will have to do at least two things: it will have to offer
an integrated understanding of social practices and, based on such an interrelated
knowledge, offer a guideline for praxis. My main argument here is that among all contesting social theories now,
only Orthodox Marxism has been able to produce an integrated knowledge of the
existing social totality and provide lines of praxis that will lead to building a society
free from necessity. But first I must clarify what I mean by Orthodox Marxism. Like all other modes and forms of political
theory, the very theoretical identity of Orthodox Marxism is itself contestednot just from non-and anti-Marxists who question the
very "real" (by which they mean the "practical" as under free-market criteria) existence of any kind of Marxism now but, perhaps
more tellingly, from within the Marxist tradition itself. I will, therefore, first say what I regard to be the distinguishing marks of
Orthodox Marxism and then outline a short polemical map of contestation over Orthodox Marxism within the Marxist theories now. I
will end by arguing for its effectivity in bringing about a new society based not on human rights but on freedom from necessity. I will
to know contemporary societyand to be able to act on such knowledgeone

has to first of all know what makes the existing social totality . I will argue that the
dominant social totality is based on inequalitynot just inequality of power but
inequality of economic access (which then determines access to health care, education, housing, diet, transportation,
. . . ). This systematic inequality cannot be explained by gender, race, sexuality,
disability, ethnicity, or nationality. These are all secondary contradictions and are all
determined by the fundamental contradiction of capitalism which is inscribed in the relation of
capital and labor. All modes of Marxism now explain social inequalities primarily on the basis
of these secondary contradictions and in doing soand this is my main argumentlegitimate
capitalism. Why? Because such arguments authorize capitalism without gender, race,
discrimination and thus accept economic inequality as an integral part of human
societies. They accept a sunny capitalisma capitalism beyond capitalism. Such a
society, based on cultural equality but economic inequality, has always been the notso-hidden agenda of the bourgeois leftwhether it has been called "new left,"
"postmarxism," or "radical democracy." This is, by the way, the main reason for its popularity in the culture
argue that
industryfrom the academy (Jameson, Harvey, Haraway, Butler,. . . ) to daily politics (Michael Harrington, Ralph Nader, Jesse
For all, capitalism is here to stay and the best that can be done is to
make its cruelties more tolerable, more humane. This humanization (not eradication)
of capitalism is the sole goal of ALL contemporary lefts (marxism, feminism, anti-racism,
queeries, . . . ). Such an understanding of social inequality is based on the fundamental
understanding that the source of wealth is human knowledge and not human labor.
That is, wealth is produced by the human mind and is thus free from the actual objective conditions
that shape the historical relations of labor and capital. Only Orthodox Marxism
recognizes the historicity of labor and its primacy as the source of all human wealth . In
this paper I argue that any emancipatory theory has to be founded on recognition of the
priority of Marx's labor theory of value and not repeat the technological determinism
of corporate theory ("knowledge work") that masquerades as social theory.
Jackson,. . . ) to. . . .
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Alt Communist Party / Alt System Key

The alternative is the formation of a historical materialist workers party
Walker 13
(Gavin Walker, Assistant Professor of History and East Asian Studies at McGill University, Theory
& Event volume 16 issue 4 2013,The Body of Politics: On the Concept of the Party,
http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/journals/theory_and_event/toc/tae.16.4.html)
The importance of the party lies in the fact that it is a consistency that allows us to wager on this
fundamental statement: politics is possible we can break with this order . The instability of
capitals own dream, its volatility, shows us the force and potential of its outside : Capitalism beheads
the working class, aiming ultimately at a form of automaton naked labor power. Socialist construction begins by giving the working class its head. 44
This head is the necessary party, the proletarian consistency that shoulders the event of politics, which bears the burden of the proletarian decision,
This necessary party reasserts itself as the core of

consistency that upholds and furnishes the body that incarnates a new discipline, that
critically subordinates the politics of the worldview the fantasy of unity on the basis of correct ideas to the
the organizational cut of this volatile degree zero.
broad and affirmative project of achieving hegemony over the total forces of society, that forms out of the eclecticists of the social movements the
This conception of the

necessary party is not a deferred or futural possibility, nor is it a regulative idea: it is an invariant form of life
that is already being forced into existence in a dense parallax movement with the movement of history itself. In
proletarian consistency, the force of suppression that can sustain a consistency into the future.
other words, the necessary party that remains the burning question of our time, this necessary party which is the ultimate political horizon, is not
engaged in the determination of correct ideas. Unlike our twentiethcentury experience of the partyform as a small formation practicing
substitutionism, 45 dedicated to miniscule ideological differences and their purity, the necessary party as the ground of a new politics and a new
as a form of life, the necessary party springing up

from the ground of modern society of which Marx speaks emerges across the
landscape of the continent of history, it emerges at capitals degree zero, its limit point or zenith, the void site
wherein the proletariat composes itself and disperses itself. The necessary party is the form of organization or
political implement that the hazardous proletarian existence, always on the edge of the void, holds
within itself as a consistency, a fidelity, a discipline, against the vampirism of capital .
discipline is indifferent to this sort of action. Rather,
The great Italian theorist and militant Lucio Magri, in revisiting aspects of Gramscis concept of the party as a collective intellectual, 46 has produced
for us a series of crucial remarks that must be taken into account in any contemporary understanding of the concept and possibilities of the party today.
Because Magri deals not only with the party as a concept, but also the party as a concrete form of cultural life, with a concrete history and a concrete
experience, his work provides precious insights: Today then it is necessary to distinguish between party and institutions to emphasize the party as an
Such a party would

represent not only a form of organization as such, but more broadly, the fusion of
values, analysis, and transformative projects that bestows on politics its profound
significance, and which, day in, day out, serves as an instrument for the criticism and
transformation of personal life. An ethical, not only intellectual, foundation . 48 This ethical
foundation that the theory of the partyform must take up also indicates a new and possible internal culture of party organization: one that is
not based on correct ideas but instead on the collective construction of a real
alternative to capital and the state, a real alternative to the institutional forms within
which we live. Such a party would never give up on its historical background, the long history of the workers movement and liberation
movements, but it would be a refusal of the prepackaged political inheritances that miniscule
political formations today insist are their sources of legitimation , as if a particular speech of
Luxemburg or Lenin could solve the organizational question in 2013. It is here that we must insist on the party form
as a central question for a new anticapitalist politics, one that would be indivisible
into conflicts on the basis of line and program, but that would be devoted instead to
the positive, affirmative collective building of new social forms .
agent and organizer of society, whose role is to promote struggle and stimulate intellectual and moral reform. 47
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Alt Totalizing Theory

Its important to solve totality of oppression
Smith, 2014
the aim of 21st
Century critical theory must not only be to formulate fundamental critique of latecapitalist society, but also to theorise a fundamental reconceptualisation of the
political-economic system one that would foster the type of social relations that encourage Zuidervaarts societal
principles. But this cannot be done without normative awareness of the need for radical
democratic alternatives that would help support and coincide with (prefiguratively speaking)
the free-flourishing subject.[113] In discerning ethical criteria to assist in guiding this state of affairs, moral
One cannot, in this day and age, consider ethical criteria as that which must be implemented. Indeed,
principles must in other words be an extension of the efficacious agent (i.e., the mediating subject[114]) in action, and, as a
consequence, inclusive to a phenomenological (lived) ethics. In themselves, then, societal principles social ethics are not
explanations for or dictations of action, as this is a misguided framing of the study of ethics. The authority of norms, moreover, is
As such, the grounds of action in the midst of

an ethical predicament is predicated on negative dialectics (i.e., to give priority to the object or
situational and intersubjective that is, mutually recognitive.
phenomenon) and experiential coherence[115]. In return to Adorno: as for the specific approach of working constantly toward the
object of suffering so that we might direct a certain line of questioning toward the status of ethical concepts and hence human
conceptuality[116] this must be seen as being entangled with or enmeshed in the transformation from contradictory recognition to
Through our normative awareness of needless social suffering, of its

fundamental antecedents i.e., Adornos new categorical imperative might we gain an insight into
(acquire knowledge of) our ethical predicament that cannot be had in any other way.[118] It is precisely
within this critical theoretical framework or within the critical theoretical scope of ethical criteria introduced
in this paper that we might begin to deal with such pressing ethical predicaments as
mass surveillance, particularly by understanding the definition of ethics as a mode
for expressing ethical concepts that adequately acknowledges them as principles of
material inference.[119]
mutual recognition.[117]
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Alt Unflinching
Only an uncompromising rejection of capitalism solves movements
against capitalisms and its attendant conflicts and environmental
destruction are developing now we should seize onto them
Williams 13 (Chris Williams, 5/13/13, What is ecosocialism and how do we get there?, International Socialist Review Issue #89: Features)
to expect this system to solve the crisis that it manufactured is utopian . The
only rational way out of this crisis is to get rid of the system , and this slogansystem change, not climate
changehas resonance all across the world; it originated in Copenhagen in 2009 as a way of expressing the fact that whether youre anticapitalist
or not you recognize, particularly after 2008, and the ongoing economic crisis that there are deep, structural,
fundamental problems about this economic system, which are not just destroying our
lives individually, but destroying the entire planet on which we ultimately depend. This is
I would argue that
something that evades completely the thought processes of mainstream economists. I picked this up just the other day, wasted some money, but the National Reviewthe cover
clearly the power of the oceans the

the power of scientific rationality is not enough to get capitalism to change
of the National Review is Wonderland: The Miracle of Canadas tar sands. Its not a joke. Where do you go with that? Because
power of tides,
course. In fact, you can bury one of the most iconic cities in the world under a thirteen-foot wall of water, and you still dont get the problem mentioned by the two people
running for president. In other words, Hurricane Sandy does not get mentioned, climate change does not get mentioned, even though New York City was under several feet of
water, people were homeless, theres no running water, theres no transportation system, but we can carry on. We can continue to extract fossil fuels, etc. The distortions that go
on under capitalism are so obscene its hard to wrap your head around it sometimes, on a micro level as well as a macro level. I was riding on the subway and I took a couple of
trains and I was looking at the ads. The average American sees about 3,000 ads a day. One ad was for a credit card, and this is the slogan for the credit cardLess plastic, more
humanDiscover it is human. Discover is the card that they were advertising. In other words, you can actually be more human by having this type of credit card. Another ad, and
this gets to the quality of life, that I pass by was about online delivery of foodhow you can order online instead of having to phone somebodyand the ad read, Youve
perfected the odds of getting to third base faster. Food delivery date night. The obscenity and depravity of capitalism knows no depths to which it will not plumb. This is
something that Karl Marx talked about quite a bit. He was speaking at the anniversary of the Peoples Paper in 1856, and I think this resonates far more with us now than it did
there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no
epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist
symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire. That kind of sense of decay
pervades our world as it is currently structured. He goes on: In our days, everything seems
pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying
human labor, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of
wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character. At
the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other
men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and
progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a
material force. This antagonism between modern science and industry on the one
hand, and social misery and disillusion on the other hand is the epoch that we are
currently living through. Actually theres a debate going on that has been going on for a little while among scientists and geologists about whether we
have entered a new geological epoch. This will take a while to resolve, but scientists are starting to lean towards the idea that the answer
is yes. This is a big decision for science, because a geological epoch is measured in tens of thousands of years. You have to have a way of
measuring the impact of human society over not just a few hundred years, but hundreds of thousands
of years. What would be the impact on that kind of scale? Civilization collapses, all the buildings disappear under sand
even in his time. On the one hand,
and dirt and erosion and whatever else, and whats left? We are currently living in the Holocene, or have been since the last ice age. It is being argued that we are now entering a
new epoch of the Anthropocenethe age of manbecause we cause such a level of disruption to the environment. How are we going to measure where we start the
Anthropocene? Geologists and scientists congregate around the year 1945, because thats when the atom bombs dropped and the testing started and we will be able to measure
the difference in the isotopic fractionation of the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. So the most long-lived legacy of this so-called civilization might be the irradiation of the
atmosphere. How despicable is that as a testament to the human race. Clearly we have to have a real alternative. Can you guess who the only ones planning for climate change
in this country are? The Pentagon. The Pentagon is actively planning for climate change and theyve got answers. Major General Michael Lehnert, who was part of the Marine
Corps and who operated on a few different bases (he has worked at Guantnamohe must be a nice guy), he says, A country worth defending is a country worth preserving.
Environmentalists need large open expanses of space where endangered species can recover and thrive. The military needs large open expanses of space so they can train.
What can possibly go wrong having a nature reserve thats also a bombing range? Of course they could coexist. Why is the navy in particularwhich is about to sail a so-called
great green fleet on the basis of bio-fueled and nuclear-powered warshipswhy are they so invested in it? Where are naval bases? On the coastline. They know they are going to
be under water, so theyve got to take evasive action, as it were. The navy, along with the army, is taking this very seriously. The navys new slogan is A global force for good.
They found out through some research that trying to sign young people up to What do you want to do with your lifego kill people in large numbers was not a good selling
point, so they changed it to A global force for good. We need to ask ourselves much broader questions. To quote Carolyn Merchant about how consumer capitalism envisions
The twentieth-century Garden of Eden is the enclosed shopping mall

decorated with trees, flowers, and fountains in which people can shop for nature at the Nature Company, purchase natural clothing at
nature and the environment:
Esprit, sample organic foods and rainforest crunch in kitchen gardens, buy twenty-first-century products at Sharper Image, and play virtual reality games in which SimEve is
reinvented in Cyberspace. . . . The mall, enclosed by the desert of the parking lots surrounding it, is covered by glass domes reaching to heaven, accessed by spiral staircases and
With their engineered spaces and commodity fetishes,

they epitomize consumer capitalisms vision of the recovery from the Fall. We need a much bigger
escalators affording a vista over the whole garden of shops. . . .
vision. To quote James Baldwinhe had an argument in the 1950s with William Faulkner about whether they should go slow and be patient on the question of civil rights. He wrote
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Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always
known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a
moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring
forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to
surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set freehe has set himself freefor higher dreams, for greater privileges. We
need to fight on every front available to us. We are engaged in a struggle to stop the Keystone XL. Its not like we havent won
an essay from which Ill quote:
some things with regard to that fight. If we hadnt already been fighting the Keystone XL in Canada and here, it would already have been approved. Weve already delayed that
decision, and the demonstration in Washington, DC was another way of delaying it further. Obama is trying to get his ducks in a row to make sure they can sell the sellout to
enough liberal organizations to get them to hum and hah, and I think thats where we need to go as a real left wing and argue that we are going to call a demonstration
immediately if he approves it, and organize to build it as widely as possible and march on the White House. The divestment campaignis it everything we want? Obviously not.
But its a campaign and we should join it and be involved to the fullest extent that we can. Because, as I mentioned in another workshop, and as people are probably well aware,
we need to win some victories to buy ourselves some time. We also need to win some victories to gain confidence that we can win more things and build our organizations.
Because if its the one thing that we lack, its the question of organization and how do we strengthen the networksin this city, between cities, between countriesto build a
One way of seeing capitalismapart from insaneis as a global simplification project.

What works best for capitalism is massive economies of scale, a huge concentration
of wealth, and ever-larger multinational and transnational corporations, to the extent that
biodiversity is viewed as an impediment to capital accumulation . Its much better if
they have monocultures vast acres of monocultures. Its much better for capitalists if we live off four animals or four grains or four fish . Its
much more efficient from a capitalist perspective, and efficiency for capitalism means
only the fastest accumulation of money possible. What is the alternative? There was a recent article in Scientific
better future.
American by Mark Jacobson, a professor at Stanford, which cited a report saying by 2030 we could have the whole world powered by wind, water, and solar power. He has come
up with a new plan for New York State for how we can do the same thing by 2030. We would be reducing energy consumption by 37 percent, because it is more efficient to use
renewable than fossil fuels. There would be 4,000 fewer mortalities in New York State in a year, because we wouldnt be breathing the stuff we are currently breathing. There
would be more people at work, and we would save $33-billion a year. He was asked in a recent interview what the main obstacles are for achieving this. He says, Im not an
advocate, Im a scientist, this is what I do. But he said the main obstacles are political and socialgetting politicians on board. There are always local zoning issues. I am sure
there will be a big push by the gas lobby and the oil lobby against this. If society is going to do it, at least we know its technically and economically feasible. Whether it actually
happens depends on the political will. I dont know whether people saw it, there was a recent article in Time magazine titled "The revenge of Marx." They keep announcing him
dead and somehow he keeps magically coming back. The article starts off, and this is in the business world finance section of Time, Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and
political and
economic events are being shaped by escalating tensions between capital and labor
to a degree unseen since the communist revolutions of the twentieth century. How
this struggle plays out will influence the direction of global economic policy, the
future of the welfare state, political stability in China, and who governs from Washington to Rome.
buried. Thats how it begins. But then it goes on: From the floor of the U.S. Congress to the streets of Athens to the assembly lines of Southern China,
Thats Time magazine a couple of weeks ago. They quote a couple of different Chinese workers, one of whom says, The way the rich get money is through exploiting the workers.
There is clearly a new

mood in the world, and I think were heading into a new period. We have really been in one since 2011 with the Arab Spring
and Wisconsin and Occupy, and all the things that weve been fighting for, in particular since 2009. There is clearly a new era that were into,
which is an era of revolt, rebellion, and revolution. What is it that we really want to fight for? Going back to that study that I
Communism is what we are looking forward to. Another worker says, Workers will organize more. All the workers should be united.
quoted on how New York State could be wind, water, and solar powered in 20 years time. The author takes everything that currently exists and assumes that it will still exist and
We wont be
taking any other measures; we will be just changing one form of supplying energy for
a less polluting form of supplying energy. I think we need a much ,much bigger vision. Because as one
he still thinks its possible. In other words, the transportation will still remain based on private transportation and not public transportation.
of the speakers in the food panel mentioned, what it means to put wind turbines in Mexico is an increase in poverty, because they kick people off the land in order to put in the
Were
not going to get positive ecological change without some positive social change, which
means putting front and center questions of fighting racism,
sexism, and
homophobia, along with rearranging the social and political policies. The pendulum of
power has swung so far to one side that we need to urgently form a movement to pull
it back, and ultimately get rid of the entire pendulum , if that analogy really works. Marx had quite a lot to say about the
lack of time, and about the concept of ownership. The concept of yours versus mine is one of the most
distorting and alienating concepts that we currently have to live withthe possession
and ownership of things and the way we see our basic human fulfillment through the
prism of ownership of things. I can feel more fulfilled if I can only buy more stuff and get the next generation of iPhone or whatever it is, and I would
wind turbines. So we have to talk about not just changing energy systems, but about changing the social and political power in this country and around the world.
fighting
fighting
be feeling more human than I did before once Ive acquired this. If you have the ability to do that, you very quickly find yourself unfulfilled, empty. As J. K. Galbraith said,
capitalism is the production of manufactured discontent. We are continually unhappy

in our distorted lives, and we obviously have no idea what it means to be fully human in any real sense. This is really a 10,000-year
struggle the culmination of which is to privatize the entire planet. Thats really what its aboutto the
extent that they have now managed to privatize even words. McDonalds has a patent on 114 different words and phrases in the English language. Or think about patenting genes
how do we
go back and via revolution open up such questions of sexuality, gender, our
relationships to each other, and our relationship to nature? These are questions I think, very large questions, that
we need to address. What we really are talking about is changing our relationship to each other
and all the rest of it. One of the first things they privatized 10,000 years or so ago at the beginning of civilization, class society, was the female body. So
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and the planet. Were not talking about in relationship to things, which is deeply
alienating, were talking about our relationship to each other and the planet , and how we form a
movement that would be for those things. So its not just a question of energy ; its not just a question of public ownership or public
transportationalthough we want all those things. Its a question of what Marx talked aboutovercoming the metabolic rift
where were completely separated off from nature. In fact there are three real separations, because capitalism
has put animals in one place, crops and plants in another, humans somewhere else ,
and then created this insanely energy-intensive, water- intensive pollution system which is
entirely linear: waste comes out at every point. And as far as the capitalists are concerned, that doesnt really matter. Do we
really need to own anything? I think this is one of the limitations of talking about how we change our consumption patterns, because its clearly not about
changing just our consumption. If we see ourselves as just buying different things , then
we actually fall into the trap laid by capitalism, because we start to see ourselves as
consumers as opposed to producers, as opposed to valuable human beings. You have to own your own individual washing machine,
dryer, any number of other thingsthat could all be socialized and, as Joel Koval was saying, held in common. Because the future is about holding
things together, in common, and producing things for what we need, not for what
makes money. In fact, expanding on that, we dont even need money. You dont actually need money. In a society
based on cooperation and real democracy, and producing things that you need, then you can cooperate
and coordinate in order to exchange those things without the need for money,
without the constant expansion that is inherent to capitalism. How can we just make the things that we need so
that everybody is satisfied, and we are not working every God-given hour in order to do so? We are actually reversing the equation that is capitalismreplacing people with
machinesand thinking about how we can have a much more meaningful way of living by working a lot, lot less. Why do you need lines on maps called countries? Ultimately why
Why cant we organize cooperatively

and collectively to solve the problems that are bequeathed to us by capitalism, and
move forward in a way that is truly human and worthy of the kind of immense , amazing
cultural things that weve managed to do even under capitalism or under feudalism, and other forms of class
society? How can we take deep ecological insights of indigenous cultures around the world and connect those
to some of the technological know-how that weve accumulated at the same time, and take the best from both
arent we living in a world where there are no nation states, in fact there are no states as such?
worlds in order to make sure that we can have ecological farming on a human scale, that is putting our species and other species at the forefront of everything that we do? This
was a concept that Martin Luther King, Jr was coming to towards the end of his life. Having won political rights, the next question for him was, what about economic rights? The
right to vote obviously is important, and people died just to get the right to vote. But once wed won the right to vote, where do we go from there? And this is what he said in 1967
We must honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of
restructuring the whole of American society. There are 40-million poor people here [now thats 50-million], and one day we must
ask the question: why are there 40-million poor people in America? And when you ask that
question you are raising a question about the economic system , about a broader distribution of wealth. When
you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy . And you see my friends, when you deal with this, you
in his speech, Where Do We Go From Here?:
begin to ask the question: who owns the oil? You begin to ask the question: who owns the iron ore? You begin to ask the question: why is it that people have to pay water bills in a
world thats two-thirds water? Marx talked a lot about how ownership distorts us. He also talked a lot about time, and how one of the major aspects of living in a truly human
societyone based on cooperation, real democracy, and production for needis the immense amounts of time we will have to develop ourselves spiritually, intellectually, and
culturally. The word spirit from the Latin means to breathe. If we are going to really breathe on this planet, we are going to need every kind of awakening possible in order to
Warfare is endemic to capitalism;

racism is endemic to capitalism; and so is sexism. If we are going to live in a completely different
world without those things, we need to get rid of capitalism . We need to fight for
reforms right now, but we also need a vision of a completely different world , where were living in
equality and freedom, and we have the time and the energy to replant our crops, rethink how we live, reimagine what food is and our relationships,
not in terms of the things that we can accumulate, but the ways in which we can accumulate
friends, relationships, and investigate nature. Capitalism posits that there is a fundamental
separation between humans and the environment. Thats why they use the word environment, because it sees the
environment as somewhere else and we are humans. If you talk about ecology, then you talk about what humans
really are. We are as much a part of nature as anything else is, and our investigation
of nature is about uncovering something about ourselves . Our ability to investigate and find things out shouldnt be
fight for a movement, because theres no sense in which they are going to turn around, the 1%.
just based on, as it primarily is under capitalism: What can we use it for? What is it good for? How much money can I make from it? But purely for the sense of serene beauty that
we get from knowing the universe better because by knowing the universe in nature better we actually know ourselves better. That is the dialect of nature. And to follow off from
Epicurus, the kind of age, or epoch, that I would like to go into is the Oikeiotocene, which doesnt sound too sexy, and is a little difficult to pronounce. It is the age of conformity
to nature, and that is the age that I think we urgently need to fight for. Im very, very happy to be part of a movement that is growing, and that there is an emerging left wing as
we can go on to win some victories and slow down the capitalist death train that is leading us
over the carbon cliff, to ultimately derail it, and get rid of the idea that we need to be hurtling towards oblivion at a faster and faster place,
accumulating more and more stuff. Then we can start to find out years and generations post-revolution how we can
recognize and live as fully human beings in a world that we are not exterminating, but
of which we see ourselves as beneficiaries, as bona pater familias, tenders of the household, as Marx called it, for future generations.
part of it, and I think
And I think that is the kind of vision that we need in order to go forward
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Alt Revolution
Every push for freedom and justice builds the strength of the anticapitalist movement the struggle against capitalism creates the class
to overthrow it
Lebowitz, 12
(Michael A. Lebowitz is professor emeritus of economics at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. What Makes the Working Class a Revolutionary
Subject? http://monthlyreview.org/2012/12/01/what-makes-the-working-class-a-revolutionary-subject)
What makes the working class a revolutionary subject? Not Hegelian mysticismthat
it is the universal class or the vulgar copy of the Absolute Spirit. Nor is the working class a revolutionary
subject because of its physical locationthat it is strategically placed to stop the
wheels of industry. From the sublime to the crudethere can be little surprise that these explanations convince few. Of course, there are some
who had better explanations as to why the working class was revolutionary but who
now say that the working classs time has come and gone . For instance, some suggest that
once upon a time, capital concentrated workers, allowed them to come together and
to organize and struggle; today, though, capital has decentralized workers and turns
them against each other in a way that prevents them from struggling together. Once upon a time, the working
class had nothing to lose but its chains but now it has been absorbed within
capitalism, is a prisoner of consumerism and its articles of consumption own and consume it. Those who conclude that the
working class is not a revolutionary subject because capitalism has changed the
working class reveal that they do not understand the ABCs of Marxism. The working
class makes itself a revolutionary subject through its strugglesit transforms itself .
That was always the position of Marxhis concept of revolutionary practice, which is the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change. The working
class changes itself through its struggles. It makes itself fit to create the new world . But
why do workers struggle? Underlying all the struggles of workers is what Marx called the workers
own need for development. We know that Marx understood that wage struggles in themselves were inadequate. But not to engage in them, he
recognized, would leave workers apathetic, thoughtless, more or less well fed instruments of production. In the absence of struggle, Marx argued that the workers would be a
Struggles are a process of production: they produce a

different kind of worker, a worker who produces herself or himself as someone whose
capacity has grown, whose confidence develops, whose ability to organize and unite
expands. But why should we think this is limited to wage struggles? Every struggle in which people assert
themselves, every struggle in which they push for social justice, every struggle to
realize their own potential and their need for self-development, builds the capacities of the actors. And,
those struggles bring us up against capital. Why? Because capital is the barrier that stands
between us and our own development. And it is so because capital has captured the fruits of all civilization, is the owner of all the
products of the social brain and the social hand, and it turns our products and the products of workers before us
against usfor one sole purpose, which is its own gain, profit. If we are to satisfy our
needs, if we are to be able to develop our potential, we must struggle against capital and, in doing so, we
working people create ourselves as revolutionary subjects . But who are we? What is this working class that is the
revolutionary subject? You will not find the answer in Das Kapital. Marxs Capital was not about the working classexcept insofar as the working class was an object. What
Capital explains is the nature of capital, its goals and its dynamics . But it only tells us about the working
heartbroken, a weak minded, a worn-out, unresisting mass.
class insofar as capital acts against the working class. And, insofar as it does not present the working class as subject, it also does not focus on the way in which capital struggles
against this subject. So, we have to look elsewhere in Marx for his comments about how the capitalist class maintains its power by dividing and separating workers (specifically
Irish and English workers). And, although Marx explicitly commented that the contemporary power of capital rests upon the creation of new needs for workers, there is no place
the answers will not be

found in a book. We must develop the answers ourselves. Who is not-capital today? Who
where he explored this question. Thus, this critical question of the nature of the contemporary working class is one for which
is separated from the means of production and must approach capital as a supplicant in order to survive? Surely, it is not only those who sell their labor power to capital but also
surely, it includes those who, in the

context of a massive reserve army of the unemployed, work within the sphere of
circulation of capital but are compelled to bear the risks themselves i.e., those who struggle to survive
those unable to sell their labor power to capitalnot only the exploited but the excluded. And
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in the informal sector. They may not correspond to that stereotype of the working class as male
factory worker, but that stereotype was always wrong.
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Alt Key to: Spillover

The alternative is a historic materialism critique that reveals the
capitalist underpinning of social relations and institutionalized forms of
violence. This pedagogy provides an educational base for constructive
change for ending all forms of exploitation the starting point for mass
social movements is creating a common understanding of what
structures oppression for the bulk of humanity
McLaren et al 4 (Peter is a prof and Gregory Marlin and Nathalia Jaramillo are doctoral students, Division of Urban Schooling of the Graduate School of
Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Ramin Farahmandpur is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy,
Foundations, and Administrative Studies at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, Winter 2004, Teaching in and against the Empire: Critical Pedagogy as Revolutionary
Praxis, Teacher Education Quarterly)
Acknowledging that capitalist education acts as a drag on the development of

"critical' or "class' consciousness by presenting a lifeless world empty of
contradictions, we argue for a Marxist theory of the "big picture, which enables people to translate their
daily free-floating frustrations with the "system' into a set of ideas, beliefs and practices that provide the basis not only for coherence and explanation but also action
the challenge over the last several decades has been to

humanize the classroom environment and to create pedagogical spaces for linking
education to the praxiological dimensions of social justice initiatives and to that end
we are indebted to critical pedagogy. Yet, faced with the urgency for change,
approaching social transformation through the optic of revolutionary critical
pedagogy ratchets up the struggle ahead. Revolutionary critical pedagogy dilates the
aperture that critical pedagogy has struggled to provide teachers and students over
the last several decades by further opening up the pedagogical encounter to its
embeddedness in globalized social relations of exploitation and also to the revolutionary potential of a
(Zavarzadeh & Morton, 1994, p. 3). Against tremendous odds,
transnational, gender-balanced, multiracial, anti-imperialist struggle. A revolutionary critical pedagogy raises the following questions for consideration by teachers, students, and
other cultural workers: how can we liberate the use value of human beings from their subordination to exchange-value? How can we convent what is least functional about
ourselves as far as the abstract utilitarian logic of capitalist society is concerned ~ our self-realizing, sensuous, species-being - into our major instrument of self-definition? How
can we make what we represent to capital - replaceable commodities subordinate to who we have also become as critical social agents of history? How can we make critical selfreflexivity a demarcating principle of who we are and critical global citizenship the substance of what we want to become? How can we make the cultivation of a politics of hope
and possibility a radical end in itself? How can we de-commodify our subjectivities? How can we materialize our self-activity as a revolutionary force and struggle for the selfdetermination of free and equal citizens in a just system of appropriation and distribution of social wealth? How can we make and remake our own nature within historically
specific conventions of capitalist society such that we can make this self-activity a revolutionary force to dismantle capitalism itself and create the conditions for the development
of our full human potential? How can we confront our "producers' (i.e.. social relations of production, the corporate media, cultural formations and institutional structures) as an
Completely revolutionizing education does not depend upon the great white
men that capitalist education teaches us are our presidents, heroes and role models.
It relies upon the broad masses of people recognizing that the whole system is
worthless and must be transformed to reflect their interests. This is the strength of a
revolutionary critical pedagogy, that it is an orientation of fighting for the interests of the multi-racial, gendered working class and indigenous
peoples all the way through. It seeks to transform schools into political and cultural centers, where crucial questions - from international
independent power?
affairs to education policy -~ are debated and struggled over openly . It is a pedagogy
that not only conjures up the audacious urges of the oppressed but also enables them
to fight back against the system's repeated attacks by raising people`s understanding
of their political opponents and developing their organization and fighting position. It
is a call to battle, a challenge to change this monstrous system that wages permanent warfare against the world and the planet, from cost-effectiveness state
terror in the "homeland, to the dumping of toxic chemicals on Native American lands and communities of color and the devastating bombing campaigns against sovereign
It is a pedagogy of hope that is grounded in the unfashionable "reality,' history,

and optimism of oppressed peoples and nations inside and outside of this country. It
is a pedagogy against empire . Because of this, we will settle for nothing less.
nations.
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Alt Key to: Environment

Solutions animated by capital lock in serial policy failure by playing into
internal contradictions a complete break is key to resolve the
metabolic rift
Zhang 2013 (Yonghong, associate professor of sociology at Sun Yat-sen University, People's Republic of China "Capitalism and Ecological Crisis." Journal of
Sustainable Society 2.3 (2013): 69-73)
The global reach of capital is creating an ecological crisis all over the world. But,
capitalism can't solve this problem by itself. Just as Brett Clark and Richard York (2008) clearly revealed: A
fundamental structural crisis cannot be remedied within the operations of the
system. This is because that capital shows no signs of slowing down, given its rapacious character. The current ecological crisis has been in the making for a long time
and the most serious effects of continuing with business as usual will not fall on present but rather future generations. Capitalism is incapable of
regulating its social metabolism with nature in an environmentally sustainable
manner. Its very operations violate the laws of restitution and metabolic restoration.
The solution to each environmental problem generates new environmental problems (while often not
curtailing the old ones). One crisis follows another, in an endless succession of failure, stemming
from the internal contradictions of the system . In this case, if we are to solve our environmental crises, we need
to go to the root of the problem: the social relation of capital itself , given that this social metabolic order
undermines the vital conditions of existence. Brett Clark and Richard York, then, came to a conclusion that to resolve the ecological crisis
requires a complete break with the logic of capital and the social metabolic order it
creates.
They are not alone in this conclusion. Professor Fred Magdoff (2013) stated more categorically that capitalism, the system of the accumulation of capital,
must gosooner rather than later. He further pointed out: just radically transcending a system that harms the environment and many of the worlds people is not enough. In its
place people must create a socio-economic system that has as its very purpose the meeting of everyones basic material and nonmaterial needs, which, of course, includes
healthy local, regional, and global ecosystems. This system, without doubt, will has the creation of a harmonious civilization as its goal; it will get rid of all the troubles and
problems capitalism causes. In Fred Magdoff's opinion (2012), the harmonious civilization exactly consists in socialism, in which economy and politics are under social control. Its
characteristic of this civilization and socialism that communities strive for self regulation by meaningful democratic processes; self sufficiency for critical life needs; economic
equality in which everyone has their basic human material needsbut no moremet; and application of ecological approaches to production, living, and transportation. In
construction of a harmonious civilization, to correctly handle the relationship between [hu]man[s] and nature is closely related to human survival and development, and also
One of the main problems of the highly developed western countries

is that they can't effectively handle the conflict between the boundless demands of [hu]man[s] and the
environmental carrying capacity and the finiteness of natural resources. Only by properly handling the relationship
involves the country's sustainable economic development.
between[hu]man[s]and nature, and scientific development and planned control, could we find a way out for the future. This, indeed, is the very reason why humans take socialism
as the necessary and inevitable alternative to capitalism. Conclusion
Contemporary ecological crisis has caused a series
of serious global problems: global warming, ozone depletion, acid rain, water shortages, soil degradation, solid waste pollution, species extinction,
loss of forests and so on; All these problems have threatened human survival and development. The harsh reality forces people to reexamine the relationship between [hu]man[s] and nature, rethink the behavior of
human beings, to explore the root causes of the ecological crisis. The appearance of
the ecological crisis is not only linked with natural relations in practice, but also with social relations. In the primitive
communist society, people lived in the original relationship of equality and there was no interest differentiation. People worked together and enjoyed things together. In this social
relationship, antihuman phenomenon generally didn't occur in nature, so there existed no ecological crisis. With the emergence of private ownership, the society split up into a
variety of social classes, strata and groups, and each person could do anything for his own interests, thus inevitably strengthening nature's anti-human tendency and leading to
By its very nature, capitalism is an expansive

system, so capitalism's pursuit of capital and value accumulation is limitless. To
eliminate the ecological crisis, human beings must try to eliminate private ownership,
class divisions, and interest antagonism. In such a social relationship, all the people's activities will be aimed at human free and all
ecological crisis. This situation has developed to its peak under capitalism.
around development, resulting in a harmonious relationship between [hu]man[s] and nature, and in the long run, the ecological crisis will be controlled and overcome.
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Alt Key to: Warming

Communism key to solving for global warming- centrally planned
economies more sustainable than the free-market
RCP 10 [Revolutionary Communist Party. Communism and Ecology: How Revolution
Opens the Way for Humanity to Confront the Environmental Crisis and to Become the Caretakers
of the Planet. Revolution #199, April 18, 2010]
Under capitalism, social production and economic calculation are governed by profit.
Under socialism, this will no longer be the case. A socialist society and economy will be consciously working
to promote and advance the world revolution towards a communist world. Economic decision-making and
accounting will be governed by planned and rational productionand by the
deployment of societys skills, resources, and capabilitiesto serve what is useful and
important for the betterment of world humanity. As a point of orientation, socialist
society has to be proceeding, first and foremost, from the long-term interests of
humanity and the planet. Preserving and protecting ecosystems requires taking the
long viewlooking ahead over many decades and generations. This is something
that capitalist society, with its get-rich-quick mode of operating and the necessity
imposed by expand-or-die competition, cannot do and which has led to the situation
we are now facing. By contrast, socialism makes it possible to take such a long
view. It allows for a whole new philosophy and way of doing things. To give some
examples: Economic calculation in the new socialist society will be guided by broad
criteria and goals: uprooting the inequalities carried over from the old society;
environmental sustainability; achieving rational balances between industry and
agriculture; seeking new ways to integrate town and country; overcoming the division
between mental and manual labor. Funds and resources can be transferred from one sector, or from one region, to
another in order to address such problems. Planning under socialism will be integrated and multidimensional. It will take in issues of
health and the alienation from work that people might experience; it will forge new relations of community and cooperation. Attention
will be paid to issues of cost and efficiency, but this will no longer be in the interest and pursuit of profit. This will be a unified socialist
economy. There has to be centralization: overall leadership and coordination, and an overall guiding sense of where things have to
go. Unified and centralized socialist planning is essential to establish key priorities, such as overcoming the legacy of racism; to
establish key requirements in production and technology; and to spread knowledge and breakthroughs in practice. But centralization
has to be combined with extensive decentralization: with local management, with grassroots initiative, with all kinds of incredible
experimentation and discovery throughout society. All of this has to be summed up and learned from. There have to be all kinds of
flows of information and experience. This is part of the dynamism of socialist society.
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Alt Key to: Democracy

Deconstruction not enough need to supplement with a new system of
social and economic organization that ensures such structures cannot be
used against the people
Smith, 2014
the rise of the mass surveillance state must be
questioned precisely according to the vision of what kind of society we want in the
first place. Secondly, if the above analysis is accurate we can see that if it is determined that the existence of state
sanctioned mass surveillance programmes the very concept of the security state does not align
with the vision of an actual egalitarian democracy[109], then not only is the abolishment
of such programmes necessary but so too must we challenge the social and historical
antecedents i.e., the fundamental, systemic conditions that fostered the very rise
of the mass surveillance state in the first place. Policy and reform does not suffice
here. The narrative of resistance against mass surveillance must be rooted in a
greater narrative of resistance against the false whole of society and its
fundamental transformation. When it comes to contemporary debate about the NSA,
it is this scope of ethical criteria set against the backdrop of a critique of power,
capital and domination that is not only demanded of us but also vital to the hope of
the possibility of radical (egalitarian) democracy in the future . As Arnold de Graaff reflects,
what is demanded of us is a radically alternative praxis that needs to be
In this context or within the context of this discussion
grounded in different, fundamentally alternative vision of life . Moreover, de Graaff argues that
a new direction for our actions requires a different view of human existence, of social
interaction, of knowledge, of human history and of the earth. In other words, a new
direction for political and social action (and discourse) needs a new foundation.
Undoubtedly contained in this argument is a critique of political-economy and the
awareness for the need of a fundamental reconceptualisation of society, from politics
and economics through to the state and most basic systems of social organisation . To
assist in the formulation of a new philosophy of life, which should underline all forms of contemporary protest, we should use the
examples of alternatives at our disposal. There are so many presently practicing examples ranging from alternative communities to
alternative educational environments that do exhibit a much more integral, critical and experientially coherent vision of life and
politics. But as, Zuidervaart rightly argues, and to return my basic argument ,
there is a need to develop a social

philosophy to normatively guide this vision. He considers very seriously the new categorical
imperative that Adorno advocates in Negative Dialectics and the principle ethical criteria within
which society should be founded in the 21st Century: that Auschwitz not be repeated in the future. Within this
context, Zuidervaart introduces his own theory of social democracy, which draws heavily upon John Deweys three concepts of
freedom, participation, and recognition, as well as Hauke Brunkhorsts book Solidarity (2005), and the social vision of Rebecca Todd
Peters, especially her In Search of the Good Life: The Ethics of Globalization (2004). It is here that Zuidervaart describes a series of
fundamental societal principles Freedom, Justice, Resourcefulness, Solidarity, and so on as he aims to counter what he perceives
as the increasingly antidemocratic turbocapitalist economy with a
fully fledged theory of social

democracy.[110] Throughout this section of text, Zuidervaart reflects on Peters project which advocates
democratized power sharing, caring for the planet, and the social well-being of all
people, and as a normative framework for evaluating stances toward
globalization.[111] In turn, these principles convey the overall message of Zuidervaarts thesis: i.e.,
the need for a social democratic politics of global transformation , which answers the question of
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the autonomous individual, critical art practice, grassroots democratic empowerment, and the concrete potential of a radical vision of
change.:
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Alt Key to: Political Engagement

A shift towards equality is key to maintain meaningful and engaged
politics
Issacharoff 14 (Samuel Issacharoff, May 30th, 2014, Professor of Constitutional Law at New
York University., Preliminary Thoughts on Participation and Citizen Equality,

http://thedemocracypapers.ssrc.org/preliminary-thoughts-on-participation-and-citizen-equality/)
In 1964, as it entered the modern era of judicial review of the political process, the U.S. Supreme Court proclaimed that its
As framed by the
Court, representative government is in essence self-government through the medium of elected representatives of the people,
and each and every citizen has an inalienable right to full and effective participation in
the political processes of his State's legislative bodies. This proclamation, coming in Reynolds v Sims, accompanied the
Courts embrace of the equipopulation rule of apportionment as demanding one-person, one-vote. Equality was the
touchstone of the Courts early foray into politics. Baker v. Carr, the case which opened the modern era,
constitutional objective was to provide each citizen a fair and equal opportunity for political participation.
rejected rooting its constitutional principles in seemingly more structural provisions of the Constitution, such as the republican
guarantee clause or the privileges and immunities of citizenship. Instead, Baker rooted the new constitutional concern for the
functioning of democracy in the equal protection clause. Baker even proclaimed the commands of equal protection in this domain to
Much of the struggling law of democracy

around the world reproduces this theme. After WWII, individual legal claims,
enshrined as human rights, found ready entry into the national and supranational
court structures. In some cases, as with the German Constitutional Court, the individual rights decree is the formal source of
be well-established and familiar, though in truth they were neither.
court jurisdiction. But for all courts confronted with claims of dysfunction in the democratic process, issues of discrimination or other
lack of individual equality remain the entry path of least resistance. While equality is a fundamental value in democratic societies, it
does little on its own to define what the Supreme Court identified as a right of full and effective participation. The claim of equality is
insufficient to guarantee effective participation in democratic politics. While equality of participation is one fundamental value in
the law of democracy, in the U.S. and abroad, demands an

equal measure of guaranteed liberty from state interference in the terms and
condition of effective political participation. The commands of liberty and equality are not coterminous, as
reflected in the persistent conflict in the field of campaign finance. Beyond the confines of legal doctrine on
permissible regulation of contributions and expenditures in political campaigns lies a
deeper conflict between liberty and equality. The founding conception of American democracy envisioned a
defining democracy, it is not alone. Most of
state checked by separation of powers along federal/state and institutional divisions and a citizenry periodically consulted through
representatives in office. The Constitution announced no vision of democratic politics and the writings of the founding generation
spoke only of republicanism as a process of governance by representatives, a buffer against the momentary passions of the masses.
Missing in the American constitution, something that reflects its age and sets it apart from more modern constitutions, is a
commitment to intermediary organizations, most notably political parties. Much of the liberty strain of constitutional law dealing with
The formal
commitments to equality expressed either by the early expansion of the franchise beyond the English inheritance or
later in the one-person, one-vote command do not address how the citizens will realize any form of
political participation. Much as the American constitution was famously a constitution against faction, reality proved
democratic governance has addressed this original gap in the American conception of self-governance.
otherwise. The resulting law on liberty of association and organizational participation in politics provides a necessary corrective that
has allowed for meaningful political engagement through associations ranging from the major political parties to the NAACP to more
marginal third parties. Concerns about inequality in citizen participation in democracy abound.
Turnout remains stuck in the 60 percent range for the most high-profile elections, campaign finance gravitates to a small donor class,
institutions like the winner-take-all feature of the Electoral College center elections around a handful of states with predictable
sectional issues, the list could go on.
Just as central, however, is the failure of intermediary
political institutions. America has long been a nation of joiners, noted across the generations from Toqueville and Putnam.
But the institutions of engagement are failing. Political parties have been hollowed out and now exist
mostly as fundraising operations centered around a few candidates. Trade unions, civic
associations and other civil society institutions that transmitted member preferences into the organizational life of politics have
likewise atrophied. Inequality may result, but it is not the inequality of one individual versus another. In the absence of intermediary
institutions, politics becomes increasingly a series of demands by individuals or trade interests with narrow, usually monetary,
demands on the political class. The perceived inequality is not so much the immediate reflection of the stratification of society but the
The
messiness of democratic politics exists in a world somewhere between pluralism and
loss of responsible political institutions that provide the intermediation between masses of individuals and government.
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public choice. Interest groups compete for state attention and the benefits of connections to the political elite. But the
hollowing out of political institutions leaves less politics and more connections, a
world increasingly resembling the public choice vision of concentrated interests
having sway. The question of inequality is always present, but is exacerbated by the
failure of institutions offering means of engagement.
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Alt Key to: Political Engagement

Current decline yielding neo-conservatism must reclaim direction of
economic dissatisfaction
Derbyshire 14
(Jonathan, managing editor of Prospect, April 11, The contradictions of capitalism: an interview
with David Harvey, http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/blogs/jonathan-derbyshire/thecontradictions-of-capitalism-an-interview-with-david-harvey, AMD Lab)
David Harvey is a professor of anthropology and geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He has
been teaching classes on Marxs Capital for more than 40 years, and is the author of a two-volume Companion to Marxs magnum
opus. That close reading of Capital is based on a series of 13 lectures, videos of which Harvey has made available online. His
latest book is Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. It begins from an insight of Marxsthat periodic crisis is
endemic to capitalist economiesand goes on to attempt to offer an analysis of the current historical conjuncture. I spoke to Harvey
in London last week. JD: At the beginning of the book, you observe, as many others have, that theres something unusual about the
most recent crisis of capitalism, the global financial crisis of 2008. There should, you write, by now be competing diagnoses of
what is wrong and a proliferation of proposals for putting things right. What is astonishing is the paucity of new thinking or policies.
the huge concentration of class power right now is

such as to raise the question why they [the capitalist class] would want to see any
new thinking. The situation, while its disruptive to the economy, is not necessarily disruptive to their capacity to assemble
Why do you think that is? DH: One hypothesis is that
more wealth and power. So theres a vested interest in keeping things as they are. What is curious, of course, is that there was surely
a vested interest in keeping things as they were back in the 1930s, but that was overwhelmed by Roosevelt, Keynesian thinking and
The problem of aggregate demand, which was at the centre of thinking in the
1930s, is a realisation problem in Marxist terms. People answered that question and then ran into a
the like.
production problem, which got answered by monetarism and supply side economics. And right now the world is divided between
supply siders who want to go further with austerity and othersChina, Turkey and most of the developing economieswho are taking
the Keynesian line. But it looks as if there are only two answerstheres no third way. Therefore, within the ambit of capitalism, the
possibilities are limited. The only way in which you could find another answer is to go outside of capitalism, and of course nobody
wants to hear that! That said, you do concede in the book that there are elements in the capitalist class, in the intellectual class, who
do acknowledge the threat posed by what you call the contradictions of capitalism.
A notable example is the
discussion of the problem of inequality.
I credit the Occupy movement with sparking that new conversation.

The fact that we now have a mayor in New York who is completely different from his predecessor and who has said hes going to do
all he can about inequality, that change of conversation is something that came out of the Occupy movement. Its interesting that
everybody knows what youre talking about when you mention the one per cent. The issue of the one per cent is now on the
agenda and given depth by studies like that of Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Joseph Sitglitz has a
book on inequality, too, and several other economists are talking about it. Even the IMF is now saying that there is a danger that
follows when inequality reaches a certain level. Even Obamas saying it! But Obama wouldnt have said it if Occupy hadnt done so
first. But who is doing anything about it and in what way is it actually being changed? When you look at actual policies, you see that
theyre deepening inequalities. Theres a rhetorical recognition [of the problem], but not a political one, in terms of active policies and
active redistribution. You mention Occupy. In the book, youre quite critical of what you describe as the remains of the radical left,
which you see as predominantly libertarian and anti-statist. I have a rough and ready rule of thumb which is that any dominant mode
of production and its political articulation creates the form of its own opposition. In the same way that the big factories and large
corporationsGeneral Motors, Ford and so oncreated an opposition that was grounded in the labour movement and social
democratic political parties, so the breakup of all of that, and what were in now, has created this kind of dispersed opposition that
can only use certain languages to make its claims. The left has not understood that much of what it is saying is consistent with the
neoliberal ethic, rather than being profoundly oppositional. Part of the anti-statism which you find on the left now locks into the antistatism of corporate capital. Im very concerned that theres not a lot of thinking on the left which says, Lets step back and look at
the picture as a whole. I hope my book might contribute to having that conversation. The book ends in an interesting placewith
something like a programme, 17 ideas for political praxis. But what goes unasked, though its possibly implied in what youve just
said, is the question of what the appropriate vehicle to realise such a programme might be. Its not obvious where wed find it. One of
the things we should accept is that a new way of doing politics is emerging. At the moment, its largely spontaneous, ephemeral,
voluntaristic, with a certain reluctance to institutionalise itself. How it might get institutionalised is, I think, an open question. And I
dont have an answer to it. Though clearly it has to do so. But there are new political parties emergingSyriza in Greece, for example.
a state of mass alienation is being capitalised

upon largely by the right. So there is some urgency for the left to address the
question of how we institutionalise ourselves as a political force, both to resist the
rightward turn and to capture a lot of the discontent thats out there and move it in a
progressive direction, rather than in a neo-fascist direction. You describe the book as an attempt to
What concerns me is that what I describe in the book as
unravel the contradictions not of capitalism but of capital. Could you explain that distinction? This comes from my reading of
Marx. Its often thought that Marx somehow created this totalistic understanding of capitalism, but in fact he didnt do that at all. He
stuck very much with political economy and confined his arguments to the way in which the economic engine of a capitalist economy
works. If you isolate the economic engine, you can see what the problems with that economy might be. Which is not to say that there
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arent all sort of other problems in a capitalist societyclearly there are also questions of racism, gender discrimination, gepolitical
problems. But [I was concerned with a narrower question]: how does this engine of capital accumulation work? Its been pretty clear
since the blowup of 2007/8 that theres something wrong with the engine. Therefore, dissecting whats wrong with it is one step
towards a broader politics. That economic engine turns out to be rather complicated. And Marx provided a way of understanding that
economic engine through ideas such as contradiction and crisis-formation. Another question of definition: whats capital? Its a
process of money being put to use to get more money. But you have to be careful of just talking about money, because in Marx
theres a complicated relationship, as I point out in the book, between value and money. Its value-seeking to create and appropriate
more valuethats the process. That process, however, does take different formsthe money form, goods and commodities,
production processes, land. So it has physical, thing-like manifestations, but, foundationally, its not a thing, its a process. Lets turn
to the notion of contradiction, which is the central analytical category in the book. You make a distinction between the external
shocks that a capitalist economy might undergo (wars, for example) and contradictions in your sense. So, by definition, contradictions
If you want to redesign the mode of production, then you

have to answer the questions posed by internal contradictions. You identify three classes of
are internal to the capitalist system? Yes.
contradiction, which you call the foundational, the moving and the dangerous. Lets start with the first category: what makes
foundational contradictions foundational? No matter where you encounter capitalism, and the capitalist mode of production, you will
find these contradictions at work. So in any economywhether were looking at contemporary China, Chile or the USthe question of
use value and exchange value, for example, is always going to be there. There are certain contradictions that are permanent features
of how the economic engine is set up. And then there are some which are constantly changing over time. So I wanted to distinguish
those which are relatively permanent and those which are much more dynamic. Are some foundational contradictions more
foundational than others? One of the striking things about the book is that everything in your analytical framework seems to derive,
ultimately, from the distinction between exchange value and use value. Well, thats the starting point of the analysis. It struck me
that Marx spent a lot of time to figure out where to start his analysis and he decided to start there because it was the most universal
starting point. But the thing that impressed meand Ive been working on Marx for a long timeis how closely interlinked his
contradictions are. You realise that this distinction between use value and exchange value presupposes something about private
property and the state, for instance. Another of your foundational contradictions is that between private property and the capitalist
state. That is, the tension or contradiction between individual property rights and the coercive power of the state. Now, one can
imagine someone like Robert Nozick, someone raised in the liberal, Lockean tradition, saying that this isnt a contradiction. On the
contrary, the role of the minimal state just is to uphold private property. One of the things I say about contradictions is that they are
the existence of a contradiction doesnt necessarily give rise to crisis. It

does so only under certain circumstances. Therefore, it is possible to construct
theoretically the idea that all a nightwatchman state does is protect private
property. But we know that a nightwatchman state actually has to do rather more than that. There are externalities
in the market that need to be controlled, there are public good that need to provided
so very soon the state has to get involved in all sorts of things other than simply
setting the legal framework of contract and private property rights. You deny that theres any
always latent. So
necessary connection between capitalism and democracy. Could you explain why? The question of democracy depends very much on
definitions. We supposedly have democracy in the United States, but its clear that its a bit of a charadeits a democracy of money
power, not people power. In my view, since the 1970s, the Supreme Court have legalised corruption of the political process by money
power. Theres one aspect of state power that moved centre-stage during the recent crisis and its aftermath, particularly during the
Eurozone debt crisis, and thats the power of central banks. Do you think the function of central banks has changed in any significant
ways during the era of the bailout? It clearly has. The history of central banking is itself terribly interesting. Im not sure what the
Federal Reserve did during the crisis had any legal basis. The European Central Bank, on the other hand, is a classic case of what
Marx talked about when he talked about the Bank Act of 1844 which in his view had the effect of extending and deepening the crisis
of 1847-8 in Britain. But in both cases, that of the Fed and the ECB, what weve seen is a kind of seat-of-the-pants adjustment of
major institutions and the emergence of policies that could be only be justified after the fact. So theres definitely been movement on
the central bank front. Theres one concept to which you return to again and again in the book, and thats commodification.
Capital is about the production of commodities. If there is terrain that is noncommodified, then capital cant circulate through it. One of the easiest ways for
capital to find a way through it is for the state to set up a system of privatisation,
even to the extent of privatising something that is fictional. Take carbon trading, for
examplethe trading of pollution rights is an excellent example of setting up fictional
commodities that have very real effects in terms of the volume of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere and so on. Creating markets where there have been none before is
one of the ways in which, historically, capital has expanded. Youre heavily influenced by the work of
Karl Polanyi in this area arent you? Specifically, his masterpiece, The Great Transformation. Polanyi wasnt a Marxist, but he
understood, as Marx did, the idea that land, labour and capital are not commodities in the ordinary sense but that they assume a
commodity form. One of the most impressive, even moving, aspects of the book is your account of the human costs of
commodificationspecifically, the commodification of those areas of human experience that were previously not part of the cash
nexus. This is connected to what you call universal alienation. What do you mean by that? We ve
lived in a world in
which capital has constantly struggled to diminish labour, its power, by increasing
productivity, removing the mental aspect of jobs. When you live in society of that kind the question arises
as to how anyone can have any kind of meaning in their lives, given what they do in the workplace. For example, 70 per cent
of the population of the United States either hates going to work or are totally
indifferent to the work they do. In a world of that kind, people have to find some
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identity for themselves that is not based on the work experience. If thats the case, then the
question arises as to what kind of identity they can assume. One of the answers is consumption. Then we get a kind of
mindless consumerism which tries to compensate for absent meaning in a world in
which there are very few meaningful jobs. I get very irritated when I hear politicians saying weve got to create
more jobs. But what kind of jobs? Alienation stems, I think, from a feeling that we have the capacity and power to be someone very
different from what our possibilities define. Then the question arises, to what degree is political power sensitive to the creation of
other possibilities? People look at the political parties and say, Theres nothing there. So theres an alienation from the political
process, which is expressed in falling turnout at elections, theres alienation from the commodity culture, which creates a longing for
a different kind of freedom. The periodic eruptions were seeing around the worldGezi Park in Istanbul, protests in Brazil, the riots in
London in 2011pose the question whether alienation can become a positive political force. And the answer is yes, there is a
possibility, but its not there in the political parties or movements. Youve seen elements of it in the way the Occupy movement or the
Indignados in Spain tried to mobilise, but its ephemeral; it hasnt coalesced into something substantial. That said, theres a lot of
ferment in dissident cultural fields; there is something in motion out there that is the source of some hope. When you discuss the
dangerous contradictions, you offer what looks to me like a version of Marxs historical materialism. That is, you do think, as Marx
did, that the present is pregnant with the future, though you dont construe that in an inevitabilitarian wayand in fact you also dont
think Marx himself construed it like that, do you? No. There are people who think Marx said that capital will collapse under the weight
of its own contradictions and that he had a mechanical theory of capitalist crisis. But I cant find anywhere where he says that! What
he did say is that contradictions are at the heart of crises and crises are moments of opportunity. He also said that human beings can
create their history, but that they dont do so under conditions of their own choosing. So there is to my mind a Marx who, if hes not a
libertarian, is saying that human beings are capable of deciding, collectively, to take things in one direction rather than another. Marx
was critical of utopian socialism because he thought it didnt deal with where you were. Marx said you had to analyse where you are,
see whats available to you and then try to construct something radically different.
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Alt Key to: Human Rights

Only the alt can actually solve for human rights.
Douzinas 10
communist revolution will realise the universal promise of rights by negating moralistic
idealist content. Freedom will stop being negative and defensive and will become a positive power of
each in union with others. Equality will no longer mean the abstract comparison of
unequal individuals but catholic and full participation in a strong community. Property will cease being the limitation of each to a
portion of wealth to the exclusion of all others and will become common. Real freedom and equality look to the concrete
person in community, abandon the formal definitions of social distribution and inscribe on their
banners the principle from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. For this to happen the political revolution
symbolized by the rights of man must be superceded by a social revolution which will lead to the
emancipation of humanity. 3. The Marxist philosopher who mostly emphasised the paradoxical action of rights is Ernst Bloch.11 Bloch retains the
main elements of Marxs critique of rights but discovers in the tradition of natural law the historically variable but
eternal human trait to resist domination and oppression and to imagine, fight and achieve a society in which man will walk upright. There can be no real
foundation of human rights without an end to exploitation and no real end to
exploitation without respect for rights. Blochs criticisms of the illusions of bourgeois natural law are devastating. But human rights
The
form and
hail also from the tradition of critique of power, convention and law and have developed in two directions. Initially, rights were associated with dominium, possession and
Human rights emerged from

right to property but were adopted in a quite different way by the exploited and oppressed,
the humiliated and degraded. It is precisely this that appears in its incomparable second sense as the subjective catchword of the revolutionary
struggle and actively as the subjective factor of this struggle.13 Bloch concludes that a historically enduring sense of resistance
and rebellion shows the human intention of freeing themselves from oppression and
installing human dignity, at least since the time of the Greeks. But only this will is immutable, and not...man and his socalled eternal right. 14
property, the legal dominance over things and people and were invented in order to protect creditors from debtors.12
this early
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Alt Key to: Legal Protections / Accountability

Legal reforms fail and only make capitalist exploitation worse.
Grear 11
(Anna Grear, founder and co-editor in chief of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment, Professor of Law at the University of
Waikato, New Zealand; Invited Professor at the Westminster Centre for Law and Theory; Global Affiliate to the Vulnerability and
Human Condition Collaboration, Emory University USA and Dahrendorf Visiting Fellow 2013, Grantham Research Institute, Capitalism
& Legal Subjectivity in the Age of Globalisation, 9 May 2011, Critical Legal Thinking,
http://criticallegalthinking.com/2011/05/09/capitalism-legal-subjectivity-in-the-age-of-globalisation/)
legal subjectivity, as currently constituted, has a

distinctive ideological tilt one illsuited to the protection of animals and complex ecosystemic concerns but ideally suited to the juridical
advantage of the corporate form. Given the effective domination of the world order by
corporations to the proven detriment of humans, animals and environment alike, it
seems most important when theorising legal subjectivity to be alert to any continuities with the (effective)
nacropolitics of laws existing inclusions and exclusions, patterns that could map themselves almost
seamlessly into new formulations of legal subjectivity. While it is clear, in relation to this point, that
excluded human beings, animals and ecosystems are especially vulnerable and in need of legal
protection from the excesses of globalised capitalism and its side effects, it is likely to be the case,
It should be noted, related to this, and perhaps as an element of such an approach, that
also, that posthuman entities such as artificial intelligences and robots can and will be conceived of as vulnerable. But while we should note, as a conceptual matter, that
vulnerability itself is not a monolithic value and nor are entities monolithic in their
identity/identification for the purpose of describing them as vulnerable or worthy of an ethical concern responsive to vulnerability, there remains,
arguably, a vital political need to construct a critical faultline attending putative posthuman rights claimants, in particular. This fault line, in line with the argument
already made, is intended to reflect an ethically and politically important distinction between
liberal law/capitalisms insiders (those with unhampered access to both the legal process and to a strong degree of fit with the
ideological structure of liberal law a category including quintessentially the corporation) and those people and collectivities who are, along with animals and the
environment, liberal law/capitalisms outsiders and likely to remain so even if and when animals, the environment and
posthuman entities are granted legal subjectivity. Historically, and contemporaneously, laws outsiders, according to a range of critical accounts, are the
(some would doubtless want to say predictable) historical (and contemporary) recipients of discursive and physical violence
those who disproportionately bear the costs of a capitalistic technorationality: the global poor, women,
children, other nondominant humans such as racially nondominant groups and the disabled along with animals, sensitive eco system habitats and the environment as a whole.
group of outsider subjectivities/(and objects) have long provided the plundered, exploited
bodies in the service of capitalist appropriation and also often the bodies in the way of capital. Haunting and instructive
This
examples, such as Bhopal, stand as mournful casestudies highly revealing symbols of the worst of the fallout from toxic capitalism and equally symbolic of the
juridical failure
that
deepens capitalist injustice, rather than alleviating it. When we
start to reflect upon legal subjectivity and the case for its expansion, keeping a vivid
focus upon the background of globalisation and the tragedies littering the history of
the relationship between law and capital, is essential
for it is highly likely that many post human and/or techno-
entities will share the advantages of the corporate domination and marketisation of the social spheres as insiders to the capitalistic technoeconomy. This point, however, should
not be monolithically read, for it is feasible to anticipate that some posthuman beings will, as the products of capitalist investment, be placed in a highly doubleedged position,
one requiring a critical ethical attentiveness. (Consider the case of, say, a future cyborg whose legs, arms and lungs, say, are corporately owned as a breakthrough in science
and whose life is controlled by a mesh of contractual limitations and the rights reserved by the inventing company, including, perhaps, the right to remove the corporatelyowned
body parts should it be required for reasons beyond the individual?s later control or agreement.) Notwithstanding this possibility and its implications,
c ertainty that the

systems)
inconvenient and
traditionally excluded subjectivities
it is a
virtual
(objectified people, animals and natural
linked to traditional and contemporaneous injustices of the capitalist juridical order will retain , no
matter how complexly,
a quintessentially outsider status
(that is,
unless the entire worldorder moves from
its existing ideological foundations ). This virtual guarantee of continuing and perhaps even deepening
outsider status is a matter that ought to be placed front and centre of reflection upon the
extension of legal subjectivity to posthuman entities not in order to render extending legal subjectivity inherently problematic, but in order to
render problematic the current reality of capitalistic laws dark fallout
in that context.
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Alt Key to: Poverty/Welfare

Use of the welfare state covers up worker struggle and build up the
walls of global capitalism.
Todays proposal to organize around a central demand is
informed by the same understanding of the relation between proletarian movement
and political organization. But we know that new movements will hardly emerge on the (casual and flexibilised)
shopfloor. The only place where they can still really constitute themselves is concrete political
struggles where solidarity is experienced in the common project (and not on the shopfloor as in
Conclusion: Selfemancipation vs. Politics
earlier days). [9] It starts from the certainty that, in the face of postfordism and the diffuse factory, autonomous struggles can
their affirmative stance towards

capitalist development, they are used as a theoretical clich in order to justify the necessity of mobilizing
and uniting the atomised subjects from above. The demands do not start from real struggles
but are deduced from an abstract consideration about state and income . Therefore
they can only see themselves as representatives and politicians. Interventions starting from
the assumption that the proletariat can emancipate itself have always been met with
the objection that the proletariat is so extremely fragmented that only a central political
project from the outside could overcome that fragmentation. In 1973, the group Arbeitersache Munchen
no longer exist. Instead of questioning the theories of postfordism and criticising
wrote about its political work with immigrant workers: Many comrades have objections to this approach because the foreign workers
this is not a disadvantage but an advantage. If

workers will be able to develop patterns of struggle and behaviour then we also
think that any spreading of these experiences through mobility will push ahead the
class struggle. And we are convinced that all these contradictions will produce more and
more struggles in which our task will be one of generalisation and synthesis. Thinking that the readiness to fight must be
often change their jobs and do not remain steadily in one place. We say:
we think that the
the result of doing subversive work in one department of a factory for ten years completely ignores the reality of todays large plants.
it implies that the proletariat does not have a knowledge of forms of struggle
but has to be taught these in a long process. This is not truethis knowledge exists but it is
covered by many veils. And we are contributing to uncovering them. [10] That is pretty much how we might
Moreover
describe our own tasks today. Ironically, the same autonomous groups who were always critical of the unions reproduce traditional
trade unionist conceptions about the evolutionary development of struggles (e.g. long education of workers in one factory
department) as evidence that in postfordist structures of production proletarians can no longer struggle. Todays changes in the
labour market are usually called casualisation as if this explained anything. Most talk about casualisation only refers to a
departure from normal employment as defined by labour law regulations, but does not start from the role of living labour and its cooperation inside the process of production. Therefore this point of view misses completely how the process of casualisation has
workers
struggles and power are not based on legal regulations but on workers collectively
appropriating their own co operation by fighting against capital. Communism as a
real movement exists in proletarian struggles which today are based on a much
greater societalisation of production on a global scale. Ironically, the debates about a
guaranteed income quite rightly assume that communism, i.e. life without coercion to
work, is possible today, but draw the worst conceivable conclusion from that
assumption: instead of tearing down the crumbling walls of the global workhouse
they propose to repair them!
expanded social cooperationa development which politically appears as the atomization of workers. However,
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Alt Key to: Gender/Race

Capitalism is the fundamental determinant of peoples lives and Marxism
has the tools to tackle all oppressions.
Gimenez 01
Marxism does contain the analytical tools necessary to theorize and

deepen our understanding of class, gender and race. I intend critically to examine, from the standpoint of Marxist theory,
In this essay, I intend to argue that
the arguments for race, gender and class studies offered by some of their main proponents, assessing their strengths and limitations and demonstrating, in the process, that
Marxism is theoretically and politically necessary if the study of class, gender and
race is to achieve more than the endless documentation of variations in their relative salience and combined effects in
very specific contexts and experiences. Race, Gender & Class as a Social Science Perspective Long before the popularization of the Race, Gender & Class (RGC) perspective, I
suspect that most Marxist sociologists teaching social stratification were already adept practitioners. For many years, for example, the Section on Marxist sociology of the
called my students' attention, in

social stratification and other subjects in which inequality matters, to the fact that everybody's
lives are affected by class, gender and race/ethnic structures (in addition to age and other sources of inequality). We
are, in Marx's terms, "an ensemble of social relations" (Marx, 1994: 100, emphasis added), and we live our lives at the core of the
intersection of a number of unequal social relations based on hierarchically interrelated structures
which, together, define the historical specificity of the capitalist modes of production and
reproduction and underlay their observable manifestations . I also routinely called students' attention to the
American Sociological Association included in its annual program a session on Class, Gender and Race. I certainly
twenty nine years of teaching
problems inherent in the widespread practice of assuming the existence of common interests, ideologies, politics, and experiences based on gender, race and ethnicity because
class location, and socioeconomic status differences within classes, divide those population aggregates into classes and strata with contradictory and conflicting interests. In turn,
aggregates sharing the same class location, or similar socioeconomic characteristics within a class, are themselves
divided by gender, race and ethnicity so that it is problematic to assume that they might
spontaneously coalesce into class or status self conscious, organized groups. This is why, in the late sixties and early
1970s, I was critical of feminist theories which ignored class, racial and ethnic divisions among women and men, and theories of patriarchy that
ignored how most men under capitalism are relatively powerless (Gimenez, 1975). Later on, I published a
critical assessment of the "feminization of poverty" thesis because it was not sensitive to the effects of class, socioeconomic status, racial and ethnic divisions among men and
women; it neglected the connections between the poverty of women and the poverty of men and overlooked the significance of this thesis as a powerful indicator of the
most sociologists do not take

Marxism seriously and that theorists of gender and racial oppression have been, on the whole, hostile to
Marxism's alleged reductionisms. More importantly, this is a country where class is not part of the common sense understanding of the world
and remains conspicuously absent from the vocabulary of politicians and most mass media pundits. This is why, despite the U.S. history of labor
struggles, today people are more likely to understand their social and economic
grievances in gender, racial and ethnic terms, rather than in class terms , despite the
fact that class is an ineradicable dimension of everybody's lives. I am not arguing that racial and gender based grievances are
immiseration of the lower strata within the U.S. working class (Gimenez, 1990). I am aware, however, that
less important nor that they are a form of "false consciousness;" in the present historical conjuncture in the U.S. it has become increasingly difficult, exceptions notwithstanding,
ideological and political struggles against

"class reductionism" have succeeded too well, as Kandal (1995) pointed out, resulting in what amounts to
gender and race/ethnic reductionisms. This situation does not indicate the demise of class as a
fundamental determinant of peoples' lives, but that the relationship between structural changes, class formations and political
consciousness is more complex than what simplistic versions of Marxism would suggest. It is an important principle of historical
materialism that it is necessary to differentiate between material or objective processes
of economic change and the ideological (e.g., legal, political, philosophical, etc.) ways in which people become conscious of these
processes of transformations and conflicts and fight them out (Marx, [1859] 1970: 21). This is why I welcomed the emergence of the RGC
perspective because, I thought, it would contribute to raise awareness about the reality and
the importance of class and the extent to which neithe r racial nor gender oppression can be
understood in isolation from the realities of class exploitation . My expectations, however, were misplaced: the
to articulate class grievances separately from gender and racial/ethnic grievances. The
location of class in the RGC trilogy, at the end, replicates its relative significance within this approach; class is "the weak link in the chain" (Kandal, 1995: 143). But altering the
RGC perspective erases the qualitative differences between

class and other sources of inequality and oppression, an erasure grounded in its essentially
atheoretical nature.
place of class in the trilogy would not matter, for the
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Alt Key to: Feminism

Resistance to capitalism is the pre-requisite to gender equality.
Carlin 14
(Matthew Carlin, teaches and works in Mexico and New York City. His work revolves around questions concerning politics in Latin America, with specific attention given to the
relationship between material and visual culture, the State, and social change. He is part of the faculty at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology
(CIESAS), Theory & Event, Volume 17, Issue 3, 2014, The Exploitation of Women, Social Reproduction, and the Struggle against Global Capital,
http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v017/17.3.carlin.html)
In this interview the work of philosopher and activist Silvia Federici is discussed, Topics include: primitive accumulation and the exploitation of women; domestic work; the concept
in order to effectively resist the

continued exploitation of women and the devaluation of the activities by which our lives and laborforce are reproduced, we must
of reproduction; and resistance to global capitalism. Among many things, Federici argues that
create new forms of communalization that not only establish some distance between ourselves and the market/state nexus, but allow us to create the kinds of solidarity
reappropriat
the resources that we reproduce.
necessary for
ing
Introduction Silvia Federici is a feminist. However, her work is
located at the intersection of a number of different theoretical trajectories, including Marxism, Italian Operaism, anticolonial theory, which prohibit any simple reduction of her
work to any one person or political movement. It is certainly true that her research and thought stand alone. However, what makes her presence in academic circles particularly
activism and political work dedicated to the defense of collective and communal forms of life that resist
the violent and catastrophic effects of neoliberal capitalism. At the forefront of much of her early writings and activism was
important today is not merely her writing but also her
the question of domestic work that, she argued, is the central site for the reproduction of the basic conditions of everyday life an issue whose importance to anticapitalist
struggle achieved a critical visibility with the Wages for Housework Movement (WFH) of the 1970s which Federici helped to found. Most frequently identified with the work of
the roots of womens

oppression are to be found in womens position in the capitalist organization of work as unpaid
domestic workers, and in the unequal sexual division of labor constructed on the differential
between waged and unwaged work. Most important, WFH argued that domestic work (including childraising, sexual work)
deemed ancillary by the Left is necessary to the maintenance and reproduction of capitalist social
relations because it is work that produces laborpower. At the crux of the WFH reinterpretation of labor was also a new
analysis of the wage relation, focusing on the differential between waged and unwaged labor as the root of the labor
hierarchies in capitalism. The politics of WFH, then, were in stark contrast with those of Socialist Feminism, which traced gender based discrimination to
Selma James and Maria Della Costa, the Wages for Housework Movement of the 1970s was founded on the assumption that
the exclusion of women from industrial labor. It was her confrontation with the question of reproduction and her own life experience, growing up in Italy in the post WWII period,
that provided the impetus for the development of Federicis political and intellectual work. Theoretically, Federicis interest in reproduction also resulted from her engagement
with Marx and with the Italian Operaist movement. However, Federicis indebtedness to both should not be overstated as much of her work criticizes the Marxist tradition for its
privileging of industrial labor and the industrial proletariat as the terrain and subject of revolutionary activity. Also of importance in Silvias growth as a philosopher and activist
was her coming to the United States in the late 60s, and her activism in the student movement where she was introduced to the civil right movement and the struggle for black
power. Federicis interest in the reproduction of labor power is not unique being shared, as we have seen, with other members of WFH. However, what is unique in Federicis
accumulation which, in her

includes not only the expropriation of workers from their land but the expropriation, capture and use of womens bodies
by capital and the state in the process of capitalist development. In other words, for Federici, the enclosure
approach is that she has applied the analysis of reproduction forged by WFH to a reinterpretation of Marxs concept of primitive
account,
of the communal lands, at the dawn of capitalist development, was accompanied by the enclosure, i.e. the expropriation, of womens bodies, which turned women into machines
capitalism turned womens bodies into means of

production of a global workforce is most concisely developed in her most famous work: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive
for the production of labor power. Federicis discussion of the ways in which
Accumulation, a book that makes us reconsider the entire history of capitalism. Here the history of the hundreds of thousands of women tortured and burned as witches at the
the demonization of womens

control over their reproductive capacity, and the subsequent violence unleashed
against them, was absolutely necessary for global capitalism to emerge. This work also forces us to
reconsider the history of biopolitics and the significance that Michel Foucault granted to the 18th century as the time of the
emergence of new forms of population control. As Federici points out, it is startling to consider that a scholar so attuned
to the workings of power on the body and the development of disciplinary regimes could have been so
blind to one of the most deliberate, sustained, and horrific attacks on the body that had ever
occurred in any part of the world : the European witchhunt. Federicis work, then, shows how women and men have had different
histories in the development of capitalism. Instead of focusing on the conditions that gave rise to the creation of a waged labor force
hands of church and state during the 15th to 18th centuries takes on a renewed significance. It demonstrates how
made up primarily of men, it shows that women were never liberated to the wage, that primitive accumulation began with a major attack on womens bodies, and to a new
their
structural devaluation of human life, that Federici challenges the Marxian idea that the development of
capitalism and the process of industrialization may serve as a precondition for the liberation of humanity. The
history of women in capitalism she argues like the history of slavery, precludes such assumption, and confirms that first on our political
agenda must be the transcendence of capitalist relations.
patriarchal form which she describes as the patriarchy of the wage, as well as to a new division of labor that completely devalued reproductive work. It is because of
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--ROOT CAUSE
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Root Cause Surveillance

Capitalism necessitates a double standard in the application of privacy
rights: the wealthy benefit from them, while the poor are subjected to
surveillance.
Fuchs, 2011
Privacy is in modern societies an ideal rooted in the Enlightenment. The rise of
capitalism resulted in the idea that the private sphere should be separated from the
public sphere and not accessible for the public and that therefore autonomy and
anonymity of the individual is needed in the private sphere. The rise of the idea of
privacy in modern society is connected to the rise of the central ideal of the freedom
of private ownership. Private ownership is the idea that humans have the right to own
as much wealth as they want, as long as it is inherited or acquired through individual
achievements. There is an antagonism between private ownership and social equity in
modern society. How much and what exactly a person owns is treated as an aspect of privacy in contemporary society. To
keep ownership structures secret is a measure of precaution against the public questioning or the political and individual attack
Capitalism requires anonymity and privacy in order to function. But

full privacy is also not possible in modern society because strangers enter social
relations that require trust or enable exchange. Building trust requires knowing
certain data about other persons. It is therefore checked with the help of surveillance
procedures if a stranger can be trusted. Corporations have the aim of accumulating ever more capital. That is
against private ownership.
why they have an interest in knowing as much as possible about their workers (in order to control them) and the interests, tastes, and
behaviours of their customers. This results in the surveillance of workers and consumers . Because
markets are competitive, companies are also interested in monitoring competitors, which has given rise to the phenomenon of
The ideals of modernity (such as the freedom of ownership) also produce phenomena
such as income and wealth inequality, poverty, unemployment, precarious living and
working conditions. The establishment of trust, socio-economic differences, and
corporate interests are three qualities of modernity that necessitate surveillance .
Therefore, modernity on the one hand advances the ideal of a right to privacy, but on
the other hand it must continuously advance surveillance that threatens to undermine
privacy rights. An antagonism between privacy ideals and surveillance is therefore
constitutive for capitalism. Workplace surveillance harms employees because the slightest misbehaviour and
industrial espionage.
resistance can be recorded and used for trying to lay them off. Consumer surveillance harms consumers because it enables
companies to calculate assumptions about consumers that are error prone, can be used for discriminating between different
consumers (based on, e.g. income or race) (Gandy, 2011), and exploits transaction data and consumer behaviour data that is created
by activities of consumers (such as shopping, credit card use, internet use, etc.) for economic purposes (Fuchs, 2011a). Economic
surveillance is deeply embedded into the antagonisms of capitalism. But also state
surveillance is deeply characteristic for modern society. On the one hand its
prevalence can harm citizens by creating a culture of suspicion and fear, in which
everybody is seen as an actual or potential criminal or terrorist and the likelihood to be mistaken
for engaging in illegal activities is high, on the other hand state surveillance of companies and the
rich could also be used for making power more transparent. Liberalprivacy discourse is highly
individualistic, it is always focused onthe individual and his/her freedoms. It separates public and private spheres. Privacy in
capitalism can best be characterized as an antagonistic value that is on the one side
upheld as a universal value for protecting private property, but is at the same time
permanently undermined by corporate surveillance into the lives of workers and
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consumers for profit purposes. Capitalism protects privacy for the rich and
companies, but at the same time legitimates privacy violations of consumers and
citizens. It thereby undermines its own positing of privacy as universal value .
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Surveillance is part of the capitalist system and only frameworks critical

of cap can solve.
Price, 2014
(David, Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Society and Social Justice at Saint
Martins University, The New Surveillance Normal, Monthly Review, 66:3, Online:
https://monthlyreview.org/2014/07/01/the-new-surveillance-normal/)
the NSA is dependent on private corporate services for the
outsourced collection of data, and where the NSA is increasingly reliant on corporate owned data farms where the storage and analysis of the data
occurs. In the neoliberal United States , Amazon and other private firms lease massive cloud server
space to the CIA, under an arrangement where it becomes a share cropper on these scattered data farms. These arrangements present
nebulous security relationships raising questions of role confusion in shifting patronclient relationships; and whatever resistance corporations
like Amazon might have had to assisting NSA, CIA, or intelligence agencies is further compromised by relations of commerce. This creates
relationships of culpability, as Norman Solomon suggests, with Amazons $600 million CIA data farm contract: if Obama orders the CIA to kill a U.S.
Snowdens revelations reveal a world where
Citizen, Amazon will be a partner in assassination.10 Such arrangements diffuse complicity in ways seldom considered by consumers focused on Amazon Primes ability to
The
Internet developed first as a military-communication system ; only later did it evolve
the commercial and recreational uses distant from the initial intent of its Pentagon landlords. Snowdens revelations
reveal how the Internets architecture, a compromised judiciary, and duplexed desires of capitalism and the
national security state are today converging to track our purchases, queries, movements, associations,
allegiances, and desires. The rise of e-commerce, and the soft addictive allure of social media, rapidly transforms U.S.
economic and social formations. Shifts in the base are followed by shifts in the
superstructure, and new generations of e-consumers are socialized to accept phones that track
movements, and game systems that bring cameras into the formerly private refuges of our homes, as part of a new surveillance normal.11 We need to
develop critical frameworks considering how NSA and CIA surveillance programs articulate
not only with the United States domestic and international security apparatus, but with current international
capitalist formations. While secrecy shrouds our understanding of these relationships, CIA
history provides examples of some ways that intelligence operations have supported and informed past U.S.
economic ventures. When these historical patterns are combined with details from Snowdens
disclosures we find continuities of means, motive, and opportunity for neoliberal
abuses of state intelligence for private gains.
speedily deliver a My Little Pony play set for a brony nephews birthday party, not on the companys links to drone attacks on Pakistani wedding parties.
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Surveillance overstep is a symptom of capitalist corruption of social
responsibility to guarantee safety tools coopted to monitor and destroy
dissent
Smith, 2014
In late-capitalist society, with its intense economic (capital) expansion, these aspects of modernity converge and form the definitions of reason and rationality[33] i.e., what is
qualified on behalf of the ideology of a rationally administered world[34] and the result is the disenchantment of the world which drains from human experience sources of
meaning and significance that anchor ethical practice.[35] To put it differently, Elliot Sperber has a nice way of describing how society (especially one holding itself out as a just
society) has an actual duty of care to supply [conditions necessary for human flourishing] directly. If one accepts the argument that a society has such a duty of care, a societys
We have to see the problem of the

NSA and the rise of the mass surveillance state as a systemic problem, one which
coincides and indeed exists directly in relation with the list of injustices that already
define the scope of a society that has failed to satisfy its duty of care . Upon the
advent of the industrial revolution and the dawn of modern technology, we have not
so much witnessed the use of technology in support of an emancipatory politics but
as an enabler for capital to pervade even deeper into all facets of human life. In other words,
we have seen technology become an instrument of coercive society . Technical rationalism or, rather,
technical domination has ensured that though basic inventions such as electric lights [which] allow people
to see at night, they also enabled the world of work to colonize what once was outside its domain.
failure to supply such conditions amounts to a breach of this duty, and to a forfeiture of its legitimacy.[36]
Though computers may drastically increase productivity, this increase is not accompanied by any corresponding diminution in work. The demands only increase.[37] This
describes the practical, empirical basis for Horkheimers observation when he comments that the advance of technical facilities is accompanied by a process of dehumanisation:
progress threatens to nullify its very goal.[38] Rather than the advance of
communicative technologies being a source for the greater democratic empowerment
of people, they are seen as threat by the state, a way for people to mobilise, and are
therefore exploited for the benefit of greater social control and maintenance of the
status quo. Indeed, while it seems that technological advancements in general have, to some capacity, expanded the horizon of human thought and activity, of
thus
individual autonomy, and the human ability to resist the growing apparatus of mass manipulation, the human power of imagination, of independent judgement appears to be
In this context, we can say that the NSA as a product or instrument of the
social totality or what Adorno would describe as administered society, which, in different terms, we might consider as reference to the systemic structure of
society primarily defined by the Marxian critique of political economy[40] fits perfectly as a link between the increasing
power of capital over all aspects of social life and the development of new forms of
social control.[41] Indeed, it is not surprising to read that the NSA has been accused of
spying on governments and parties involved in key international economic
agreements[42], on protest movements and leaders, charities and non-profit
organisations. But the real worry is how these phenomena are slowly becoming
legitimatised. Similar to Horkheimers analysis of Nazi power in Germany, all dominant social systems irrespective of their particularity and also what they share in
reduced.[39]
common in terms of the historical conditions or processes behind the vicissitudes of their development[43] the agenda, the ideology, is made to appear reasonable.[44] As
Horkheimer writes: the idea that an aim can be reasonable for its own sake on the basis of virtues that insight reveals it to have in itself without reference to some kind of
subjective gain or advantage becomes alien to an instrumental conception of rationality.[45] The very notion of reasonableness under its modern instrumental conception
implies subservience. If it is true that human beings should be considered as the best judges of their own interests, today it is important to consider that the interests of
humankind are largely framed within the coercive context by markets and the absence of democracy.[46] If emancipatory reasoning about the direction of society is discarded,
not for the betterment of humanity but for the benefit of maintaining the status quo, not only can such egalitarian concepts as social-historical progress become justifiers for the
advancement of inverted society[47] on behalf of a positivist notion of progress[48], but democracy, too, as we witness today, can be justified only by the fact that it exists
(as a mere distillate).[49] And by this standard tyranny can be justified just as readily.[50] Instead of the function of emancipatory reason which identifies universal guiding
principles of an actually egalitarian democracy i.e., Equality, Egalitarianism, Justice, Rights, etc. in modern capitalism, with its instrumental reason and positivist logic, such
concepts lose their meaning.[51] The social narrative no longer accommodates these fundamental principles or judges them to be delusions, because all concepts must be strictly
the ideals of a good society, for example ideals toward

an actual egalitarian democracy, become dependent on the interests of the
dominant and governing system, which produces and reproduces the epistemic
context of its own validity.[53] Therefore we frequently hear justifications for the use of mass
functional in order to be considered reasonable.[52] In turn,
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surveillance technology on behalf of the ambiguous notion of national security or for
the benefit of economic gain, all the while witnessing the actual corrosion of civil
rights and liberties. On my reading of Horkheimers Eclipse of Reason (2013), the transformation of reason into an instrument of power calls for attempts to
resurrect a form of reason capable of judging the ethical criteria and categories of modern society. Against the poststructural inclination to acquiesce in the loss of critical or
emanicpatory reasoning about the fundamental guiding principles of an actual egalitarian democracy, Horkheimer laments its demise and argues on the importance of critical
theory to address the emasculated, neutralized, impotent reason that rules society and is unable to confront power. (Power, in this sense, is not only institutional or rooted in the
system of capital and the function of coercive state forces, but it also exists today throughout much of the contemporary political spectrum and a function of bourgeois
The fact that the mass surveillance state could emerge in the 21st Century as
an accepted condition of modern society in the midst of all the frequently championed measures of rational discourse and the deep
scientific traditions celebrated in contemporary culture suggests that the dialectic of enlightenment has come
front and centre: reason has become irrational.[55] There is a failure of culture[56] but also a
general presence of untruth in the field of cultural experience, where positivism now reigns, demonstrating, above all, the lack of autonomy of reason, wherein
facts are reduced unequivocally to rationalisations and self-legitimisations of the
present social order that, in terms of the field of sociology, defines the very basis of
all factual content. In politics, the rationalisation of the irrational deploys only the
material aspects present within the horizon of contemporary society, so that the
system of capital can be evaluated within the strict rigidity of the dominant mode of
capital relations. All suffering at the hands of the system takes on the measure of
reform, which is now seen as a valid democratic response to urgent ethical matters.
Separated and isolated from the despair and burning agony of actual needless
suffering, capitalism has turned the notion of democracy into a symbol of ideology
as opposed to an egalitarian and emancipatory political orientation which in practice
continues to manifest the barbarism that many self-titled modern democrats claim to
implore.
subjectivity[54]).
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Root Cause Security State / Panopticism

Cap has co-opted the public sphere, making discourse only productive
when against neo-liberalism.
Grear 11
national state sovereignty stands weakened, but in a highly selective way that
disadvantages the powerless most of all. Nation states have effectively been re constituted
as profoundly porous to global capital (openbordered good host states) while, at the very same time, the
discursive construction of antiterror imperatives and the permanent state of exception in
which we now live ensures that the hard edges of state power are felt with intensifying force
by a states own human population. The same can be said of all those vulnerable noncitizens
whose living, opaque and tangible bodies (in all their vulnerability) press up against the policed and exclusory
borders of the modern state. A series of further, related trends seem to converge in a stifling closure: Surveillance, the
spreading privatisation and increasingly privatised control of public space (see here, here, here
and here) the construction, in short, of a virtual Panopticon reflecting a combination of state and (frequently
corporate) privatised oversight of civic space; the deepening corporatisation of the state itself;
the commodification of the social spheres, these combine to produce a radical contraction
of public space, a contradiction of civil liberties and a concomitant reduction in our ability to resist. Meanwhile,
law (as the institutionally dominant mechanism for the regulation of societal life)
provides an arterial mechanism through which the ideological flow driving these and related
closures find expression in a host of organisational structurations and patterns
offering little in the form of either resistance or critique. At the same time, however, the global
ascendancy of legalrightsdiscourse means that many voices speaking as and for the
excluded and subaltern now turn to law, legal rights and the legal process as part of
an attempt to address injustice and exclusion. One particularly relevant example of this, for the purpose of the present reflection,
The concept of
is the growing contemporary concern for the expansion of legal subjectivity. We witness, for example, increasing calls for the recognition of the potential legal subjectivity of
animals, the environment and elements within it, while at the same time we encounter growing interest in the legal subjectivity of posthuman entities such as artificial
debate is, of course, vitally important. However, if it is to lead to any

form of justice worthy of the name, reflection needs to be placed against the contextual
backdrop of hegemonic globalisation for it is when we place the extension of legal
subjectivity against this that we can identify one particular future challenge of central
importance. There is a need to face up to the challenge of minding the gap (likely to deepen) between
laws outsiders (those currently excluded from the interiority of neo liberal privilege)
and laws insiders (those whose interests and even whose legal subjectivity
emerges from) their virtually seamless fit with the deep commitments that currently
constitute the interior of neoliberal capitalistic technoculture.
intelligences or agents, robots and the like. This
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Root Cause Anxiety

Even if they win anxiety existed in the abstract before capitalism,
capitalism is the largest driver of anxiety in the modern world - it
disposseses workers of the value of their labor this process of ripping
control from the proletariat leaves billions without control over their
lives
Taylor 14
(J.D. Taylor. Anxiety Machines: Neoliberal Capitalism, Depression, and Continuous
connectivity.https://www.academia.edu/1769951/Anxiety_Machines_Neoliberal_Capitalism_Depre
ssion_and_Continuous_Connectivity) Karan
Anxiety and melancholia are increasingly the defining experiences of life and labour in the
contemporary era. Our limbs and lower backs are tense, tired and overworked; our minds stressed by increasing
demands by bosses, friends and lovers to do the impossible: increase our productivity, despite what is
produced being less and less necessary. The demand everywhere is the same: do more, do it quicker!
Never must we act, think or create better. I want to present here an analysis that connects rising UK and US
levels of anxiety disorder to the shift to a neoliberal economic politic in these states. Although this analysis is
not the first to connect ordinary misery and capitalism, it marries together critical theory and medical research into rising
allergies and anxiety disorders to investigate this contemporary condition of anxiety, and how it is
engendered not by individuality and the pap of lifestyle magazines, but by a more fundamental
insecurity in the average citizen's political and working rights, compounded by the need to remain
continuously connected, and hence continuously potentially at work. Psychopharmacology itself, that which records
and manages anxiety with its biochemical boons, is the final cause and harbinger of this new hysteria. The intention is not to depress
the reader with more bad news that drives us back into labour's distractions, but to bring to light an
unexamined mindset of indispensability at the root of anxiety, a drear submission to the inevitability of
current conditions, that the worker can abandon. The graveyards of the world are filled with the
indispensable. Anxiety machines can disconnect from their travails through desperation, humour,
arrogance and cunning. Anxiety and fear are no doubt psychological marks of domination in all social
structures, but a specific anxiety and fear emerges in financial capitalism through the accelerating
demands and pressures of working and living in the neoliberal era. This is facilitated by new
information technologies such as the home PC, the internet, the hand-held network device, and finally
the social networking sites, all of which enable and require the user to be continuously connected and
up-to-date with information streams. Castells and Deleuze both converge in describing our culture as shifting from the 'actual' to the
'virtual', but the virtual itself only explains how culture is present in digitised information.2 Digitisation itself is the fundamental shift
of the contemporary era, as content is abstracted and transformed from analogue formats that allow
works to retain their specificity, to encoded digital information (the film-reel, painting, book and piano
nocturne are replaced and 'remastered' by the .mov, .jpeg, .pdf, .docx and .mp3). This process of
abstraction in digitisation is reflected in the abstraction of cash into credit, and of the community or
association abstracted into a mass of disparate individual agents. The modern individual must work
harder, longer, and with far more distraction in what Virilio calls a 'tele-present' world, where the
immaterial workspace can be entered and work begun from anywhere in the world with
telecommunications coverage.4 Consider the panic of losing a mobile phone at home now, or the leisure of not checking and responding
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to emails over a 24-hour period. Whilst digitised technologies have abstracted and placed many cultural forms on a single homogeneous platform,
The experience of labour is universalised:

whilst this might have lead to greater equality amongst workers and hence a stronger position for
negotiating improved working and social rights, it has instead led to frozen wages and isolation in the
workplace: why aren't you working at midnight on a Friday, or working overtime on your day-off? Where
is your evidence of learning extra 'skills' in your weekends? John and Louise don't stop at weekends! Competition and rivalries among
workers are deliberately fomented, workers are pushed to effectively and entrepreneurially manage
their own human capital, as Ivor Southwood has so brilliantly analysed in his 2011 Non-Stop Inertia,
whilst stress, depression and anxiety increase and depreciate the general experience of the
contemporary era into one of depression, cynicism and anxiety.
personal technologies have the worker connected and potentially labouring at all hours.
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Root Cause Nihilism / Apathy

The material structures of capitalist exploitation shape culture longer
work hours, consumerism, and an absence of meaningful alternatives
produce contemporary nihilism.
Smith, 2012
radical democratic alternatives, The Global Capitalist Totality and its Law of Insignificance as
Post-Structuralist Farce, Heathwood Press, Feb 10, Online: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/theglobal-capitalist-totality-and-its-law-of-insignificance/)
Entwined in the self-deceiving glorification of material production , and praised as significant of
the objective preconditions for humanitys historical progress, capitalist democracy has ultimately created a
social reality which is spinning more and more toward the idea of universal
insignificance. In a twist of irony, the thought of the present epoch supposes on behalf of
democratic ideals, which have long been deceptively discarded for the benefit of the
necessarily horrendous conditions of global capitalism, the negation of social means
which promote human flourishing for the absolute ends of false liberal democratic
utopia. Under these conditions history unfolds from only one point of view that is,
from the basis of a one-dimensional perspective. The ideological fabric of liberal democratic capitalism is
woven into the social body and to the extent that ideology today seems to selfperpetuate through a false vision of culture, which, in
Society,
politics, and our institutions the subject whose is now objectively blinded by the
totality of cultural capitalism has begun to increasingly parallel the movement of
todays hegemonic abstract socioeconomic structure. The hegemonic context of the
global capitalist totality, moreover, represents a sort of social structure which, by its very
nature, promotes a type of distorted perceiving and interacting with life. That is to say
that the very existence of the subject is exploited so as to be subjectively woven into the
ideological fabric of liberal democratic capitalism , and to the extent that ideology today increasingly selfevery sense, is constituted by the deformation of the subject of that social body (individually and collectively).
perpetuates through the very subject of the social body in a form nigh to the subjective end of history. In Book I of the Consciousness
and Revolt series this is what we considered as being one of the most crucial aspects of the fundamental philosophical problem: to
borrow a phrase originally coined by David Sherman (Dialectics of Subjectivity, 2007), it is a matter of the deformation of the subject
(individually and collectively) on behalf of the distorted social context of contemporary ideology. But this is not what I have set out to
say. I simply want to glimpse at the fact that liberal democratic capitalism and its globalizing processes amounts to a sort of deified
We take from
the hegemony of global capitalism what we want on the level of the various
existential and experiential questions and apply them to our situations; but rarely
do we actually question the very framework from which we refer in order to answer
these questions. Rarely do we in the midst of the present-day economic totality
question the very liberal democratic structure that represents the very context of our
rotten socioeconomic-political circumstances, and which also represents the modern realms of science,
education, morality and art that we refer to existentially. In another way, the liberal democratic framework
seems to be increasingly taken as the final, unalterable context of our historical
existences; and this is contemporary ideology at its most pure . And it is also in light of this reality
socioeconomic-political history, and how this has been transplanted as the very historical end of our existences.
that I would like to investigate the deeply permeating feeling within the contemporary social body about the intrinsic
In a social reality which inherently breeds what Camus would describe as the
unillustrious life, filling its increasing void with the unceasing consumption of things,
promoting not enriched subjectivity but violating and superficial modes of temporary
satisfaction, it is no wonder that we postmoderns continue to further slip into the
psychology of a bleak and meaningless existence. In a society where remodelling your
kitchen every spring is considered a meaningful cultural phenomenon, where giving
meaninglessness of life.
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a few dollars to charity or purchasing a pair of fair-trade certified shoes is
considered being a good citizen and is said to redeem ones consumeristic
exploitation of others in a society where labour is increasingly instrumentalized and
most social alternatives are limited to concessions at the lash of the total ideological
whip we are never far from the feeling meaninglessness. It is only logical that the emptiness of our
social reality writ large would trigger such questions toward the bleakness of our existences. As an allegorical response to the
needlessness of suffering, the plight within our present state of affairs, the truth of our social reality does not always provide the
To live in a bad social context which makes dense and

unforgiving the world around us, there is little question that the primitive hostility
of history might therefore become perceived as chaos and an endless source of
destruction which rises up to face us across millennia. Of course for many of us we cease to
understand our situations because for the greater part of the past few economic
centuries (in the very least) our history has been understood solely in the structure and
images and designs that capitalism has attributed to it. The perception of the world today is, for the
quality that renders life desirable.
most part, the capitalist context of the world which is meant to say that the phenomenal world is laid-out to us as a threatening and
chaotic place, one which can be made to feel more secure under the scientistic and technocratic canopy of liberal democratic
capitalism and its skewed image of a historically achievable, economic utopia.
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Root Cause Racism/Sexism

Class is THE a priori issue for any and all forms of oppression. Any other
focus fails, and class focus isnt reductionist.
Gimenez 01
Gender & Class, http://www.colorado.edu/Sociology/gimenez/work/cgr.html, this card is super good and right)
against the notion that class should be considered equivalent to

gender and race. I find the grounds for my argument not only on the crucial role class struggles play
in processes of epochal change but also in the very assumptions of RGC studies and the ethnomethodological insights put forth by
West and Fenstermaker (1994). The assumption of the simultaneity of experienc e (i.e., all interactions are raced,
classed, gendered) together with the ambiguity inherent in the interactions themselves , so that
while one person might think he or she is "doing gender," another might interpret those
"doings" in terms of "doing class," highlight the basic issue that Collins accurately identifies when she argues that ethnomethodology ignores
power relations. Power relations underlie all processes of social interaction and this is why social
facts are constraining upon people. But the pervasiveness of power ought not to
obfuscate the fact that some power relations are more important and consequential
than others. For example, the power that physical attractiveness might confer a woman in her interactions with her less attractive female
supervisor or employer does not match the economic power of the latter over the former. In my view, the flattening or erasure of the
qualitative difference between class, race and gender in the RGC perspective is the foundation for the
recognition that it is important to deal with "basic relations of domination and subordination" which now
appear disembodied, outside class relations. In the effort to reject "class reductionism," by
postulating the equivalence between class and other forms of oppression, the RGC perspective
both negates the fundamental importance of class but it is forced to acknowledge its importance by postulating some
other "basic" structures of domination. Class relations whether we are referring to the relations between capitalist and wage workers, or to
Nevertheless, I want to argue
the relations between workers (salaried and waged) and their managers and supervisors, those who are placed in "contradictory class locations,"
are of paramount importance, for most people's economic survival is determined by

them. Those in dominant class positions do exert power over their employees and subordinates
and a crucial way in which that power is used is through their choosing the identity they impute
their workers. Whatever identity workers might claim or "do," employers can, in turn,
disregard their claims and "read" their "doings" differently as "raced" or "gendered" or
both, rather than as "classed," thus downplaying their class location and the class
nature of their grievances. To argue, then, that class is fundamental is not to "reduce"
gender or racial oppression to class, but to acknowledge that the underlying basic
and "nameless" power at the root of what happens in social interactions grounded in
"intersectionality" is class power. Conclusion As long as the RGC perspective reduces class
to just another form of oppression, and remains theoretically eclectic, so that intersectionality and
interlockings are, in a way, "up for grabs," meaning open to any and all theoretical interpretations, the nature
of those metaphors of division and connection will remain ambiguous and open to
conflicting and even contradictory interpretations. Marxism is not the only macro level theory
that the RGC perspective could link to in order to explore the "basic structures of
domination" but it is, I would argue, the most suitable for RGC's emancipatory political
objectives.
(Wright, 1978)
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Root Cause - Patriarchy

Capitalism exacerbates violence against women.
Carlin and Federici 14
(Matthew Carlin, teaches and works in Mexico and New York City. His work revolves around questions concerning politics in Latin America, with specific attention given to the
relationship between material and visual culture, the State, and social change. He is part of the faculty at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology
(CIESAS), Silvia Federici is Emerita Professor at Hofstra University. She is a feminist activist, teacher, and writer. She was one of the founders of the International Feminist
Collective. Silvia is the author of many essays on political philosophy, feminist theory, cultural studies, and education, Theory & Event, Volume 17, Issue 3, 2014, The Exploitation
of Women, Social Reproduction, and the Struggle against Global Capital, http://muse.jhu.edu.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v017/17.3.carlin.html)
the capitalist desire to

extract profit from every waking hour of our lives, indicate a defeminization of sociocultural life, a further devaluation of womens lives and work. Expanding maquiladora zones in Mexico where the
CARLIN: It seems to me that the increasing commercialization and quantification of everyday life, that are a product of
murders of women have become commonplace, the suicides of women in Niger or Bangladesh who are unable to repay their World Bank loans, and the fact that women are
forced to leave their children in Nairobi, Manila, and Central and South America to find work in European or American cities stand out as examples. Your book Caliban and the
the emergence of capitalism was bound to

the denigration, torture, and murder of women beginning with the witch burnings and the associated formation of a
proletariat in the late middle ages. In what ways do you see a connection between the contemporary violence against
women and the rise of neoliberal capitalism? Is this the product of an overall
defeminization of sociocultural life, or is something else at work here? FEDERICI: I think that different factors are involved, interconnected
and with antecedents in previous periods of primitive accumulation. First (but not necessarily in order of importance) there is the capitalist
need to control womens bodies and reproductive capacity, which are the main force
of productionproduction of laborpower, production of workers. It is important here to remember that the
Witch: Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation explains that, from the getgo,
restructuring of the world economy, that has taken place with the advent of neoliberalism, was a political response to the truly revolutionary cycle of struggle that peaked in the
a key
aspect of this response by international capital has been a program of population control,
attempting to reduce the number of children women in the former colonies procreate.
This population control program has been conducted with a maximum of violence. No effort has been
60s, especially with the anticolonial struggle, that expressed the demand for a new world system and a global redistribution of wealth. Not surprisingly,
spared in the 80s and 90s to sterilize women, to make them use contraceptives they could not control (from DepoProvera to Norplant) no matter how sick they made them. In
international agencies with the complicity of local governments would wait for the months between the
when people could be expected to be starving, to convince women to
accept sterilization in exchange for a handful of grains. That today we see a good part of the
capitalist class especially in the US opposing contraception should not deceive us, nor should it be
many rural regions,
harvesting of crops,
attributed simply to religious motivations. The fact is that the danger of revolution has passed and the world population, especially in the former colonial world, is already
declining because of war, emigration, hunger and disease. Indeed, structural adjustment and the politics of economic liberalization and globalization are a form of sterilization,
life expectancy, for

lowincome people, is declining also in the US and Europe, especially among women. In the US, for
instance, it is calculated that women with low income level s and low levels of formal education can now
expect to live five years less than their mother. Another example of population control in this case camouflaged as concern
as they are causing an immense destruction to human life, of the environment, and are producing a decline of life expectancy. Actually,
for life comes again from the US, where according to a recent report (issued on January 25, 2013, by the Journal of Health Politics, Policies, and Law), being pregnant for low
income/black women is a risky condition, that puts them outside of constitutional boundaries, exposed to the possibility of being arrested for forms of behavior that would never
expose other people to criminalization. Some women, for instance, have been arrested, when in a car accident, after telling the police they were pregnant, presumably for
recklessly exposing the fetus they were carrying to danger. Meanwhile, in Tennessee has become the first state that will jail women and charge them with aggravated assault if
A second cause of institutional violence , less visible but equally damaging,

results from the assault that is being waged on the means of reproduction available
to communities, by the World Bank, the IMF and all forms of corporate capital, through cuts in
employment, in services and other welfare provisions, and through the drive to eliminate subsistence agriculture. In societies
which have been demonetized and, in many instances, live off the remittances sent by those who
have migrated, subsistence farming and trading activities mostly done by women are essential
to the survival of thousands of people. Yet, no effort is being spared to put an end to such
practices. I believe that there is a direct connection between the World Banks drive to privatize communal lands and put an end to and devalue subsistence farming
and the return of witchhunting in several parts of the world, like Africa, India, and more recently, Papua New Guinea a persecution that has
already cost the lives of thousands of women. The attack on peoples means of
subsistence is by itself a form of violence. In most cases it requires the use of direct
physical violence, the use of thugs, death squads, paramilitary organizations, and of
course war and imprisonment. It is also significant that the number of women incarcerated in the US,
from the mid1970s to present, has increased by 700 percent, mainly due to the increase in
economic crimes women have resorted to in order to survive. To the institutional violence against women we
they use drugs during pregnancies.
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Men take out on women their anger for their

loss of economic power, and their reduced capacity to command womens labor and
conduct. They also respond to the fact that women are asserting their autonomy and prefer to live alone and even raise children alone rather than being in a subordinate
must add the violence inflicted on them by individual men, mostly family members.
position. Add that many men use womens bodies as a means to enrich themselves and gain access the commodities market, which requires an immense amount of violence. Key
examples are the phenomenon of the dowry murders in India, the production of snuff and other violent forms of pornography, and the violence that permeates the sex industry.
Violence against women has increased across the world.
We have heard of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of

women who have disappeared and have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez and other towns at the border between the US and Mexico, as well as in Guatemala at the hands of
these are not isolated cases. It is important to add that, as Jules Falquet has noted, the creation of a
state of permanent warfare in much of the world, and the growing militarization of everyday life
have enormously increased the number of men who make a living by the exercise of
violence, as guards, soldiers, paramilitaries, and encouraged the celebration of aggressive forms of
masculinity that have certainly contributed to the violence against women.
dismissed Contra forces. But
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Root Cause Anti-Immigrant Racism

Immigration under capitalism is used to stop any reforms, which leads to
racism from former migrants.
LAVALLEE 11
(MATTHEW LAVALLEE is majoring in American & New England Studies and completed his first year in the College of Arts & Sciences in
2011. Born in Lowell, MA spends his summers working at Lowell National Historical Park, Boston University Arts & Science Program
Issue 3, http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-3/lavallee/)
Still, Lowells capitalists had the last laugh, disinvesting in the mills after the strike and leaving Lowell workers to face unemployment after the mill
closings of the 1920s and 1930s.[29] Dublin writes, It is a story as old as capitalismthe movement of capital often leaves misery in its wake.[30] The
famously high standard of living among the faculty operative at Lowell was gone long before the mills could no longer compete with Southern textile
manufacturers and closed their doors. According to the Annual Statistics of Manufacturing in Lowell, there were 120,737 spindles and looms in the city in
1835 handled by 6,563 workers.[31] By 1888, 960,739 spindles and looms were handled by 21,049 workers. Therefore, in 1835 when Lowell faced little
outside competition in textiles, there were approximately 18 spindles and looms for every worker. However, in 1888 when Lowell was facing great
external competition from the South and immediately surrounding area, there were approximately 45 spindles and looms per worker. This increased
Despite the evident turmoil caused

by the movement of capital, new generations of immigrants turned nativists blamed
new immigrants for their troubles. Throughout Lowells history, various immigrant groups have
faced opposition when coming to the city. Nativists placed the blame for Lowells
economic difficulties on these new immigrants. Ironically, when immigrants in Lowell
once subject to nativist opposition became established in the new society, they often
opposed new immigrants arriving later. This pattern is seen in other northeastern industrial
cities. The competition inherent in industrial capitalism ultimately left Lowells workers
unemployed and impoverished. Frustrations were nonetheless taken out on immigrant
groups that workers blamed for Lowells economic collapse. The aforementioned pre-competition cordial
responsibility and productivity for fewer workers did not come with an increase in wages.
relationship in the 1820s and 1830s between Lowells first Irish immigrants and Yankees raises the question: If external mills from communities in the
South and elsewhere had not competed with Lowells mills, driven profits down, and therefore degraded wages and working conditions in the industrial
utopia, would conflict between the two groups have arisen? Only after conditions worsened for the mill girls, correspondent with growing competition,
did Irish-Yankee relations become strained. Would the Irish have opposed the French Canadians if their working conditions and wages were the same as
the original mill girls? Would these conflicts have existed if Lowells capitalists had not exploited immigrant groups at the expense of labor reform
movements to preserve their profits? Would Lowells mills have remained competitive if mill owners had reinvested in new technologies instead of
fleeing to the non-unionized South? It is arguable that opposition to different immigrants stemmed more from social or religious reasons, as Lowells
Protestants feared the arrival of Irish Catholics. Yet Lowells Protestant leaders actively encouraged Catholic priests to visit the early paddy camps.
Conflict between immigrant groups was economically rooted, stemming from the
constant quest for profit by Lowells capitalists. Workers striving for labor reform disliked
new immigrant groups for their use as strikebreakers, but the need for strikes stems
from poor working conditions and wages brought on by economic pressure under
capitalism. Understanding the reasons behind early anti-immigrant sentiment is
beneficial in understanding nativism in modern Lowell. Still in search of its post-industrial identity and with a population still
struggling with unemployment, Lowell has received new groups of immigrants from Southeast Asia and South America. In a 2011 opinion piece published
in The Lowell Sun, Lowells daily newspaper, an anonymous Lowell resident wrote, Its sad when you have to leave the city you were born and raised in
Over 150
years later, these charges of not sharing supposedly American ideals and being immoral echo the
same charges nativists brought against the Irish in similar times of economic struggle
because it has become a foreign country. All American ideals, heritage and morality has [sic] gone. Its time for me to go.[32]
amid competition for jobs.
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--SUSTAINABILITY
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Unsustainable
The contradictions of capital are too large and too many for capitalism to
be sustainable
Ray 14
(Sankar, staff writer for Hindustan Times, August 31, Book review: Seventeen Contradictions and
the End of Capitalism, http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/book-review-seventeencontradictions-and-the-end-of-capitalism/article1-1258461.aspx, AMD lab)
The history of capitalism is, for David Harvey, an intensely racialised and gendered
history. The social relations of domination, appropriation and exploitation identification marks of capitalism are racialised,
ethnicised, gendered and targeted at culturally, religiously affiliated or supposedly biologically inferior beings. This lends a fresh
insight to the process of alienation, redefined in Marxs The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (EPM). Harvey has
devoted almost four decades of his life to explaining Das Kapital. After The Enigma of Capital, published four years ago, his Seventeen
Contradictions and the End of Capitalism adds to his two-volume A Companion to Marxs Capital (2010, 2013). Anthropologist and
Harveys theme is capital, not capitalism and his

objective is to isolate and analyse the internal contradictions of capital . He looks at
capitalism as a social formation in which processes of capital circulation and accumulation are hegemonic and
dominant in providing and shaping the material, social and intellectual bases for social life. Capital is to be treated as
an independent variable which is functionally related to capitalism , a dependent variable. The
author formulates that the capitalist system is enmeshed in not one, but several
contradictions. He breaks them up into three: the seven foundational, seven moving, and
three dangerous categories. The foundational category is about use value and
exchange value, the social value of labour and its monetary representation, private
property and the capitalist state, private appropriation and common wealth, capital
and labour, capital as a process and the contradictory unity of production and
realisation. The moving category is to do with technology, work and human
disposability, the division of labour, monopoly and competition, uneven geographical
developments and production of space, income and wealth disparities, social
reproduction and freedom and domination. The dangerous category is about endless
compound growth, the capital-nature relationship and the revolt of human nature
linked to universal alienation. The subheads under the foundational category are all inseparably interlinked and are
structural, without which the system becomes dysfunctional. The moving contradictions are evolutionary and discreet. And the
dangerous three are the real face of the progressive degradation of capitalism in
squandering the real wealth of human possibilities in the name of perpetual
augmentation of monetary wealth and the satiation of narrow economic class
interests. Contradictions, Harvey asserts, are not always bad. Yet, once they erupt into a
crisis of capital, they cause moments of creative destruction as contradictions possess a nasty
geographer at the City University of New York,
habit of not being resolved but merely moved around. Expanding the concept of contradictions, Harvey goes beyond Marx. His
analyses are a more formidable defence of Marx as an economist for the 21st century. Marx, he argues was a revolutionary humanist
and not a teleological determinant. This is diametrically opposite to the vulgarisation of Marx by Louis Allthusser, who ridiculed
Marxist humanism as vacuous and politically misleading. Small wonder that the French Marxist discovered a theoretical construct of
the Stalin era. Harvey rightly rejected Althussers inference that Marxs EPM was an epistemological rupture. The author is
somewhat beholden to the Hungarian socialist economic historian and anthropologist Karl Polanyi and his brilliant The Great
Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (1944). Land, labour and money are no commodities for Polanyi who
This is in contrast with

capitals memory bank comprising inter alia land registers, contracts and legal
judgments, each of which is commodified without any fixed limit. Harveys critique of Amartya
stated that The commodity description of labour, land and money is entirely fictitious.
Sen is sound. He doesnt believe in freedom which does not in some way have to deal in the dark arts of domination. The unity of
freedom and domination is, he states, a contradictory unity. Sen perceives freedom as one that creates substantive opportunities
and reposes faith in market forces. Markets, administrations, political parties, NGOs, the media etc, Sen believes, can contribute to
Harvey believes
disapproves of the Nobel laureates silence on the
tense dialectical relations between freedom and domination, the power of private
the process of development precisely through these effects on enhancing and sustaining individual freedoms.
Sens Development of Freedom is an exemplary work, but
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persons to appropriate social wealth, the contradictions of use value and exchange, of
private property and state. Marx is on Harveys side on this issue. Nonetheless, Harvey has some holes in his
Marxian temper. He supports Frantz Fanons assertion on necessary violence. This is in conflict with Engels caution that nothing is
absolute in violence. His statement that Marx wanted to change the world without the necessity of understanding it is a misjudgment
of the thesis: Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
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Unsustainable
Capitalism will inevitably collapse under the weight of its inherent
contradictions environmental abuse, poverty, war, economic decline,
etc
Mszros 11
essential defining characteristics of any antagonistic system that it is

incapable of "resolving its inner contradictions. That is precisely what objectively
defines it as an antagonistic system. Accordingly, such a system must institute other ways of dealing
with or managing for as long as it can its systemic contradictions in the absence of the
possibility or viability of solving or resolving them. For a historically viable and sustainable solution would turn the
It is part of the
structurally
capital system itself into a nonantagonistic way of "doing away with" its de facto structurally entrenched and hierarchically
it as an
insuperably antagonistic societal reproductive order . Unsurprisingly, therefore, by far the most
favored and ubiquitously promoted ideology of capital apologetics is precisely the
elaborate or blatant denial of even the remote possibility of historically created (and
historically supersedable) systemic antagonism, tellingly misrepresented as individual conflict , which
is supposed to be determined forever by "human nature itself." Nevertheless, such denial of
systemic antagonism by the ruling ideology, irrespective of how elaborately camouflaged or cynically blatant
it might be, cannot spirit away the underlying problem itself . Indeed, this problem can only
grow in severity in the time ahead of us, as it has already done under the historical circumstances of the last
few decades, marked by capital's worsening structural crisis . For there are only two ways in
which an antagonistic societal reproductive order can deal with its fundamental systemic
contradictions: (1) by temporarily displacing or exporting them; or indeed (2) by
imposing them with all means at its disposal on its adversary, including the most
violent and destructive ones. In this twofold sense: 1. By displacing the antagonisms, in whichever
way is practicable under the prevailing conditions. As, for instance, in all varieties of exporting the internal contradictions in the form of
exploitative determinations that, contrary to the wishful projection of "people's capitalism," in reality define
the wellknown British Empire "gunboat diplomacy" of socially mystifying, and chauvinistic consensusgenerating imperialist domination, transubstantiated and propagandized as
"the white man's burden." Or, alternatively, by engaging in the practices of the militarily less obvious but economically/politically more effective postSecond World War
"modernizing" global encroachment by "advanced capital" over the less developed areas of the planet31 in agreement with the pretendedly "postimperialist" ideology doing so
for as long as this displacing/exporting modality of the management of capital's systemic antagonisms by the internationally forthetimebeing dominant powers (and, of course,
ruthlessly imposing on the class adversary the

violently repressive imperatives of capital's intensified class rule in situations of
worsening crisis and sharpening class conflict, casting aside in the name of socially required and "justified" states of emergency
only by some of them, at the expense of others) remains feasible; 2. By
even the pretences of "democracy and the rule of law." Or, in the case of interimperialist systemic confrontations, by imposing on the weaker rivals and state antagonists the
including the
weapons of a total war as demonstrated by two world wars in the twentieth century. The trouble for the ruling
order is that neither the exporting displacement of the capital system's antagonistic contradictions through
capital's global encroachment, together with its devastating impact by now even on
nature, which could be sustained with relative ease for a very long time in the past, nor the violent
imposition of the systemic antagonisms on the adversary to be subdued by the ultimate
force of a total war is readily feasible in our time. Today there remain no significant areas of the planet to be encroached upon by the
"nonnegotiable" demands and interests of the most dominant military power or powers and on the widest scale, with all possible means,
dominant capitalist powers. Neither by direct military imperialist invasion nor by newly instituted "modernizing" economic domination. For the global ascemhncy of capital
described by Marx in his earlier mentioned letter to Engels32 has been historically accomplished. In other words, capital's global encroachment is now complete, even if not in the
Capital now dominates and exploits our

entire planet in every way it can, in the increasingly unstable form of its threepronged
destructiveness; but it can neither resolve nor suitably displace its structural
antagonisms and explosive contradictions in the interest of untroubled capitalexpansion
and accumulation.
idyllic form of "globalization"33 glorified by its professional ideologists and "hired prizefighters."
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Unsustainable
Capitalism is unsustainable dependence on state intervention
Carson 12 (Kevin, independent scholar who writes about left-libertarianism, mutualism and
freemarketism, May 25, 2012, Why Corporate Capitalism is Unsustainable, Counterpunch,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/25/why-corporate-capitalism-is-unsustainable/)
These two phrases brilliantly describe the predicament of state-fostered corporate capitalism. Capitalism as an historic system is five
hundred or more years old, and the state was intimately involved in its formation and its ongoing preservation from the very
the state has been far more involved, if such a thing is possible, in the
model of corporate capitalism thats prevailed over the past 150 years. The corporate
titans that dominate our economic and political life could hardly survive for a year
without the continuing intervention of the state in the market to sustain them through subsidies and
monopoly protections. This system is reaching its limits of sustainability . Here are some reasons why: 1)
The monopolies on which it depends are increasingly unenforceable. Especially intellectual
property. 1a) Copyright-based industry has already lost the fight to end file-sharing . 1b)
beginning. But
Industrial patents are only enforceable when oligopoly industry, oligopoly retail chains reduce transaction cost of enforcement
Cheap production tools and

soil-efficient horticulture are 2a) increasing competition from self-employment 2b)
reducing profitable investment opportunities for surplus capital and destroying direct
rate of profit (DROP) 3) State-subsidized production inputs leads to geometrically increasing demand for those inputs,
unenforceable against neighborhood garage factories using pirated CAD/CAM files. 2)
outstripping the states ability to supply and driving it into chronic fiscal crisis. For centuries the state has provided large-scale
capitalist agribusiness with privileged access to land stolen from the laboring classes. For 150 years, it has subsidized inputs like
railroads, airports and highways for long-distance shipping, and irrigation water for factory farming. But as any student of Microecon
101 could tell you, subsidizing something means more and more of it gets consumed. So you get agribusiness thats inefficient in its
use of land and water, and industry that achieves false economies of scale by producing for artificially large market areas. Each year
Worsening tendencies toward

overaccumulation and stagnation increase the amount of chronic deficit spending
necessary for Keynesian aggregate demand management, also worsening the fiscal
crisis. The state has built a massive military-industrial complex and created entire
other industries at state expense to absorb excess investment capital and overcome the
it takes a larger government subsidy to keep this business model profitable. 4)
systems tendency toward surplus production and surplus capital, and sustained larger and larger deficits, just to prevent the collapse
capitalism depends on ever-growing amounts of

state intervention in the market for its survival, and the system is hitting the point
where the teat runs dry. The result is a system in which governments and
corporations are increasingly hollowed out. And meanwhile, growing up within this corporate capitalist
that otherwise would have already occurred. In short,
integument, things like open source software and culture, open-source industrial design, permaculture and low-overhead garage
micromanufacturing eat the corporate-state economy alive. An ever-growing share of labor and production are disappearing into
relocalized resilient economies, self-employment, worker cooperatives and the informal and household economy. In the end,
will skeletonize the corporate dinosaurs like a swarm of piranha .
they
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Unsustainable
Capitalism is fundamentally unsustainable
Knight No date (Alex, organizer, teacher and writer in Philadelphia. Alex has been
developing the theory of the end of capitalism since 2005, when he was studying at Lehigh
University,
1. Is This the End of Capitalism?, End of capitalism, http://endofcapitalism.com/about/1-is-thisthe-end-of-capitalism/)
Capitalism requires growth. A system that requires growth cannot last forever on a
planet that is defined by ecological and social limits. Capitalism is therefore
fundamentally unsustainable sooner or later it will run up against those limits and the system will stop functioning.
At this moment we are in the midst of a crisis which is calling into question the future
of this system. Now is a perfect opportunity to envision a new way of living in the world that can meet human needs while
also respecting the needs of the planet. It is time to build this new world. The current economic crisis which
began in 2007 is unlike any previous crisis faced by global capitalism . In earlier downturns there
remained a way to grow out of it by expanding production there were new resources and energy supplies, new markets, and new
pools of labor to exploit. The system just needed to expand its reach, because there was plenty of money to make outside its existing
If we study what lies at the root of todays crisis, we will discover very real limits
to growth blocking that path this time. From extreme poverty alongside excessive
consumption to exhaustion of resources and ecosystems, the systems capacity for
growth has reached a breaking point. The present economic recession might not be recorded in the history books
grasp.
as the final chapter of capitalism. But the ongoing crisis illustrates that like Humpty-Dumpty, the capitalist system is broken and
theres no sense continuing to use all the Kings horses and all the Kings men to try to put it back together again. It would be wiser to
spend those resources developing an economy that works better for our communities and our planet. Contrary to what may be
reported in the news, this is not merely a financial crisis. Professor Richard Wolff in his excellent video Capitalism Hits the Fan explains
When the corporate media cast

blame for the recession on abstractions like toxic assets, collateralized debt
obligations, credit default swaps, or focus discussion of the problem on the crimes
and errors of individual investors and firms, they obscure the true depth of the crisis.
This is a crisis of the system itself, meaning the only solution is a total change in the
structure of the economy.
that this crisis did not begin in the financial markets and it hasnt ended there.
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Unsustainable
Collapse is coming by 2060most recent data proves
Mason 14 (Paul, The Guardian, 7/7/14, The best of capitalism is over for rich countries and for the poor ones it will be over by 2060,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/07/capitalism-rich-poor-2060-populations-technology-human-rights-inequality)
We, the deluded masses, may have to wait for

decades to find out who the paedophiles in high places are; and which banks are criminal, or bust. But the
elite are supposed to know in real time and on that basis to make accurate
predictions. Just how difficult this has become was shown last week when the OECD
released its predictions for the world economy until 2060 . These are that growth will slow to
around two-thirds its current rate; that inequality will increase massively; and that there is a big
risk that climate change will make things worse. Despite all this, says the OECD, the world will be
four times richer, more productive, more globalised and more highly educated. If you are
struggling to rationalise the two halves of that prediction then don't worry so are
some of the best-qualified economists on earth. World growth will slow to 2.7%, says the Paris-based thinktank,
because the catch-up effects boosting growth in the developing world population growth, education,
urbanisation will peter out. Even before that happens, near-stagnation in advanced
economies means a long-term global average over the next 50 years of just 3%
growth, which is low. The growth of high-skilled jobs and the automation of medium-skilled jobs means, on the central projection, that
inequality will rise by 30%. By 2060 countries such as Sweden will have levels of
inequality currently seen in the USA: think Gary, Indiana, in the suburbs of Stockholm. The whole projection
is overlaid by the risk that the economic effects of climate change begin to destroy
capital, coastal land and agriculture in the first half of the century, shaving up to 2.5% off world GDP
and 6% in south-east Asia. The bleakest part of the OECD report lies not in what it projects but what
it assumes. It assumes, first, a rapid rise in productivity, due to information technology.
Three-quarters of all the growth expected comes from this. However, that assumption is, as
the report states euphemistically, "high compared with recent history ". There is no certainty at all
that the information revolution of the past 20 years will cascade down into ever more highly
productive and value-creating industries. The OECD said last year that, while the internet had probably boosted the US
One of the upsides of having a global elite is that at least they know what's going on.
economy by up to 13%, the wider economic effects were probably bigger, unmeasurable and not captured by the market. The veteran US economist Robert
the productivity boost from info-tech is real but already spent . Either way,
there is a fairly big risk that the meagre 3% growth projected comes closer to 1%. And
then there's the migration problem. To make the central scenario work, Europe and the USA each have to absorb 50 million
Gordon has suggested
migrants between now and 2060, with the rest of the developed world absorbing another 30 million. Without that, the workforce and the tax base shrinks so
The main risk the OECD models is that developing countries improve so
fast that people stop migrating. The more obvious risk as signalled by a 27% vote for the Front National in
France and the riotous crowds haranguing migrants on the California border is that developed-world populations will
not accept it. That, however, is not considered. Now imagine the world of the central
scenario: Los Angeles and Detroit look like Manila abject slums alongside guarded
skyscrapers; the UK workforce is a mixture of old white people and newly arrived young migrants; the middle-income job has
all but disappeared. If born in 2014, then by 2060 you are either a 45-year-old barrister or a 45-year-old barista. There will be not much inbetween. Capitalism will be in its fourth decade of stagnation and then if we've done nothing about
carbon emissions the really serious impacts of climate change are starting to kick in . The
OECD has a clear message for the world: for the rich countries, the best of capitalism is over. For the
poor ones now experiencing the glitter and haze of industrialisation it will be over by 2060. If you want higher growth , says the
OECD, you must accept higher inequality . And vice versa. Even to achieve a meagre average global growth rate of 3% we have to
badly that states go bust.
make labour "more flexible", the economy more globalised. Those migrants scrambling over the fences at the Spanish city of Melilla, next to Morocco, we
have to welcome, en masse, to the tune of maybe two or three million a year into the developed world, for the next 50 years. And we have to achieve this
Oh and there's the tax problem. The report points out that, with the
polarisation between high and low incomes, we will have to move as Thomas Piketty suggests to taxes on
wealth. The problem here, the OECD points out, is that assets whether they be a star racehorse, a secret bank account or
the copyright on a brand's logo tend to be intangible and therefore held in jurisdictions dedicated
to avoiding wealth taxes. The OECD's prescription more globalisation, more
without the global order fragmenting.
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privatisation, more austerity, more migration and a wealth tax if you can pull it off will carry weight. But not
with everybody. The ultimate lesson from the report is that, sooner or later, an alternative programme to
"more of the same" will emerge. Because populations armed with smartphones, and an increased sense of their human rights, will
not accept a future of high inequality and low growth.
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Sustainable
Capitalism is robust and sustainable, it allows for ecological innovation
Bailey 14 (Ronald, award-winning science correspondent for Reason magazine and
Reason.com, where he writes a weekly science and technology column, October 31, 2014, Is
Capitalism Environmentally Unsustainable?, Reason, http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/31/iscapitalism-unsustainable#.ihbxoq:41Xu)
But the notion that economic activity and free markets are antithetical to the
flourishing of the natural world is complicated by the fact that the countries with the
biggest environmental problems today, and the least means and apparent interest in
addressing them, are not the liberalized ones with advanced capitalist economies but
the ones with weak or nonexistent democracies and still-developing economies . So is it
really the case that liberty and the environment are simply opposed? Does the good of one come only at the expense of the other? Or
can liberty and a flourishing natural environment reinforce one another, the good of one encouraging the good of the other? Can
economic activity under a system of liberty be environmentally sustainable in the long run? ... Many of these academicsthough not
market economies on the whole have greatly improved the lot of

humanity over the past few centuries, leading to better standards of living, higher
levels of education, and more civil and political rights . But they argue that the system of liberty
allacknowledge that
produces accumulating externalities that will eventually drive civilization to self-destruction. Either human beings start restructuring
civilization soon, the Ehrlichs warn, or "nature will restructure civilization for us." The Lockean response to these academics' worries is
free-market capitalism is as much about growing inward as outwardabout

learning to derive progressively more value from a finite supply of natural resources,
so that we need not consume ever more of those resources. On this understanding, there need be no
that
contradiction between meeting human material needs and preserving a large portion of the natural environment. So we have two
broad views of the sustainability of the system of liberty, and they could hardly be more opposed: one of steady growth and selfreinforcing gains in the efficient use of natural resources, and one in which this growth may be maintained for a deceptively bountiful
period of human history before it collapses in on itself. ... We can now begin to see the shape of an answer to our initial question of
In early stages of modern economic

development, as liberty is unleashed in open-access orders, people convert relatively
plentiful but unproductive nature into more productive but relatively scarcer human
laborthat is, higher populationand manufactured capital . In those early stages, liberty and the
whether liberty and the natural environment must necessarily be opposed.
environment function as what economists call "substitute goods," with more liberty resulting in less demand for the environment in its
But at
later stages of economic development, human and manufactured capital become so
effective, thanks especially to technological progress, that the environment can be
returned to a more natural state. And since such societies are more prosperous, they
can better afford the costs of environmental regulations, even inefficient ones . ... Free
markets are the most robust mechanism ever devised by humanity for delivering
rapid feedback on how decisions turn out. Profits and losses discipline people to learn
quickly from and fix their mistakes. By contrast, top-down bureaucratization tends to stall innovation and to make
natural state. In such societies, fertility rates remain high and environmental amenities and quality continue to deteriorate.
it more difficult for people and societies to adapt rapidly to changing conditions, economic and ecological. Centrally planned
economies fail; centrally planning the world's ecology will fail as well. Our aim must be to find ways for liberty and the environment to
flourish together, not to sacrifice one in the vain hope of protecting the other.
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Sustainable
Capitalism is sustainable, incentive to stay green and only way to
prevent extinction
Gore and Blood 11 (Al, American politician, advocate and philanthropist, who served as the
45th Vice President of the United States, and David, Co-Founder, Senior Partner, and Managing
Partner at Generation Investment Management LLP. He co-founded the firm in 2004, Dec 14
2011, A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism, Wall Street Journal,
https://www.genfound.org/media/pdf-wsj-manifesto-sustainable-capitalism-14-12-11.pdf)
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, when the United States was preparing its visionary plan for nurturing democratic
Today,
more than 60 years later, that means abandoning short-term economic thinking for
"sustainable capitalism." We are once again facing one of those rare turning points in history when dangerous challenges
and limitless opportunities cry out for clear, long-term thinking. The disruptive threats now facing the planet
are extraordinary: climate change, water scarcity, poverty, disease, growing income inequality, urbanization, massive
economic volatility and more. Businesses cannot be asked to do the job of governments, but
companies and investors will ultimately mobilize most of the capital needed to
overcome the unprecedented challenges we now face. Before the crisis and since, we
and others have called for a more responsible form of capitalism, what we call
sustainable capitalism: a framework that seeks to maximize long- term economic
value by reforming markets to address real needs while integrating environmental,
social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making process . Such
sustainable capitalism applies to the entire investment value chain from entrepreneurial
capitalism abroad, Gen. Omar Bradley said, "It is time to steer by the stars, and not by the lights of each passing ship."
ventures to large public companies, seed-capital providers to institutional investors, employees to CEOs, activists to policy makers. It
transcends borders, industries, asset classes and stakeholders. Those who advocate sustainable capitalism are often challenged to
spell out why sustainability adds value. Yet the question that should be asked instead is: " Why
does an absence of
sustainability not damage companies, investors and society at large?" From BP to
Lehman Brothers, there is a long list of examples proving that it does .
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--A2: ANSWERS
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A2: Roll of Ballot

The primacy goal of educators should be to prioritize a totalizing class analysis.
Zavarzadeh, 2003
(Masud, professor at Syracuse, The Pedagogy of Totality, Red Critique, Fall/Winter,

http://www.redcritique.org/FallWinter2003/thepedagogyoftotality.htm)
To put "class" back into teaching of the "event" is to move beyond dissipating history through "trauma" and anecdotes of affect and
The task of the pedagogy

of totality is to teach the abstract relations that structure the concrete material
reality and not be distracted by the details of appearance because "abstractions reflect nature more deeply,
truly and completely" and bring the student closer to grasping social totality : "the relations of
production in their totality" (Marx, Wage-Labour and Capital, 29), which is constituted by class antagonism,
and therefore its unity is a "unity of opposites" (Lenin, "On the Question of Dialectics", 358). The hostility to conceptual
analysis and particularly to class critique in contemporary pedagogy goes well beyond the
teach-ins on the "event". It is the fundamental dogma of "radical" bourgeois pedagogy. Henry Giroux,
thus put an end to the teaching of savviness, which masquerades as a curing of ignorance.
for example, wipes out class from pedagogy on the grounds that "class" is part of what he calls "totalizing" politics (Impure Acts 2526). To be so totally opposed to totalizing is, of course, itself a totalization. But totalizing in opposing
totalization does not seem to bother Giroux and other anti-totalizing pedagogues because the issue, ultimately, is really not
In contemporary pedagogy "totalizing" is an

epistemological cover for the class cleansing of pedagogy. [] Pedagogy is most
effective when its lessons are situated in the conceptual analysis of objective social
totality and grounded in historical materialist critique. Totalization is essential to
transformative pedagogy because it is through totalization that the studentthe
future workeris enabled to "see society from the center, as a coherent whole" and
therefore "act in such a way as to change reality" (Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, 69).
Changing reality in a sustained way, requires knowing it historically and objectively, that is,
conceptually as a totality in structure and not simply reacting to it as a galaxy of
signifiers (as textualists have done); as the working of power in networks of discourses (Foucault),
or as a spontaneous reality that is available to us in its full immediacy (as activists have done with eclecticism and
sentimentality). Pedagogy, in other words, is always partisan and the only question is whose side
(in the great class struggles) it takes and why: "Who does not know that talk about this or that institution being non-partisan
epistemological ("totalizing") but economic (class).
is generally nothing but the humbug of the ruling classes, who want to gloss over the fact that existing institutions are already
imbued, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, with a very definite political spirit?" (Lenin, "The Tasks of the Revolutionary Youth").
Criticism of totality as a closural space that excludes "difference" and thus leads to
"totalitarianism" is based on an anti-materialist reading of difference as
"contingency" (Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 3-69); as "hybridity" (Homi Bhabha, The Location of
Culture); as "differance"the play of "traces" in the differing and deferral of the sign (Derrida, "Differance"); or the
performativity of identity (Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"). These and other
versions of difference (Anthony Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our Lives) in contemporary pedagogy, are
based on cultural heterogeneities that deflect the difference that makes all the
differences: the social division of labor under capitalism. The pedagogy of totality
writes the foundational difference of class, which explains all these differences, back
into teaching and foregrounds it not as aleatory signs (which is the epistemology of all these differences) but as a
historical necessity for capital, which divides people with rigid clarity in the regime of
wage labor (Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 40-60). Social totality, as I have suggested, is a totality with a
materialist (class) difference. It is a resistance against the ferocity of "contingency", "performativity", "hybridity", and "differance"
which, with the spiritual aroma of religion, have re-written the world in cynicism, in pathos, and ironically but always in the interest of
A pedagogy that understand classas an objectivitywill be able to

contribute to its transformation. Without teaching for ending class, which is possible only
through understanding it as objective, all acts of pedagogy become acts of cultural adjustment to
the transnational bourgeoisie. []
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the dominant social conditionsacts of learning "how power works" (Giroux, Impure Acts, 139)
in order to manipulate it and make it work for them. Giroux calls the arts and crafts of manipulating
power, "critical pedagogy" and call its manipulators "critical citizens". This is a citizenry, however, that is always
concerned with how power works on "them", through "them" and for "them" (not the
collective). It is obsessed with "power" and never concerned with "exploitation". It is ,
in the language of bourgeois stratification, an "upper middle class" citizenry for whom
the question of poverty (exploitation) is non-existent, and the only question is the
question of personal liberty (power), as Giroux makes even more clear in his stories in Breaking into the Movies:
Film and the Culture of Politics; Public Spaces, Private Lives.
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A2: Framework
Their framework is heavily soaked with conservative ideologythe
procedural bracketing out of our alternative of radical structural
change is only meant to safeguard the exploitive conditions of the status
quo.
Meszaros, 1989
(Istvan, Chair of philosophy @ U. of Sussex, The Power of Ideology, p. 232-234)

Nowhere is the myth of ideological neutrality the self-proclaimed Wertfeihert or value neutrality of so-called rigorous social science
in the field of methodology. Indeed, we are often presented with the claim that
the adoption of the advocated methodological framework would automatically exempt
one from all controversy about values, since they are systematically excluded (or
suitably bracketed out) by the scientifically adequate method itself , thereby saving one from
stronger than
unnecessary complication and securing the desired objectivity and uncontestable outcome. Claims and procedures of this kind are, of
course, extremely problematical. For they circularly assume that their enthusiasm for the virtues of methodological neutrality is
bound to yield value neutral solutions with regard to highly contested issues, without first examining the all-important question as to
the conditions of possibility or otherwise of the postulated systematic neutrality at the plane of methodology itself. The
unchallengeable validity of the recommended procedure is supposed to be self-evident on account of its purely methodological
this approach to methodology is heavily loaded with a

conservative ideological substance. Since, however, the plane of methodology (and meta-theory) is said to be in
character. In reality, of course,
principle separated from that of the substantive issues, the methodological circle can be conveniently closed. Whereupon the mere
insistence on the purely methodological character of the criteria laid down is supposed to establish the claim according to which the
approach in question is neutral because everybody can adopt it as the common frame of reference of rational discourse.Yet,
the proposed methodological tenets are so defined that vast areas of vital
social concern are a priori excluded from this rational discourse as metaphysical,
ideological, etc. The effect of circumscribing in this way the scope of the one and
only admissible approach is that it automatically disqualifies, in the name of
methodology itself, all those who do not fit into the stipulated framework of
discourse. As a result, the propounders of the right method are spared the
difficulties that go with acknowledging the real divisions and incompatibilities as they
necessarily arise from the contending social interests at the roots of alternative
approaches and the rival sets of values associated with them.This is where we can see
more clearly the social orientation implicit in the whole procedure. For far from
offering an adequate scope for critical enquiry the advocated general adoption of
the allegedly neutral methodological framework is equivalent, in fact, to consenting
not even to raise the issues that really matter. Instead, the stipulated common methodological procedure
curiously enough,
succeeds in transforming the enterprise of rational discourse into the dubious practice of producing methodology for the sake of
methodology: a tendency more pronounced in the twentieth century than ever before. This practice consists in sharpening the
recommended methodological knife until nothing but the bare handle is left, at which point a new knife is adopted for the same
purpose. For the ideal methodological knife is not meant for cutting, only for sharpening, thereby interposing itself between the
critical intent and the real objects of criticism which it can obliterate for as long as the pseudo-critical activity of knife-sharpening for
its own sake continues to be pursued. And that happens to be precisely its inherent ideological purpose. 6.1.2 Naturally, to speak of a
common methodological framework in which one can resolve the problems of a society torn by irreconcilable social interest and
to
putting into
methodological brackets) the discussion of contending social values reveals the
ideological colour as well as the extreme fallaciousness of the claimed rationality. For
such treatment of the major areas of conflict, under a great variety of forms from the Viennes version of logical positivism
ensuing antagonistic confrontations is delusory, at best, notwithstanding all talk about ideal communication communities. But
define the methodological tenets of all rational discourse by way of transubstantiating into ideal types (or by
to Wittgensteins famous ladder that must be thrown away at the point of confronting the question of values, and from the
inevitably always favours the

established order. And it does so by declaring the fundamental structural parameters
of the given society out of bounds to the potential contestants , on the authority of the ideally
common methodology. However, even on a cursory inspection of the issues at stake it ought to be fairly obvious
advocacy of the Popperian principle of little by little to the emotivist theory of value
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that to consent not to question the fundamental structural framework of the
established order is radically different according to whether one does so as the
beneficiary of that order or from the standpoint of those who find themselves at the
receiving end, exploited and oppressed by the overall determinations (and not just by some
limited and more or less easily corrigible detail ) of that order. Consequently, to establish the common identity of the two,
opposed sides of a structurally safeguarded hierarchical order by means of the reduction of the people who belong to the
contending social forces into fictitious rational interlocutors, extracted from their divided real world and transplanted into a
beneficially shared universe of ideal discourse would be nothing short of a methodological miracle. Contrary to the wishful thinking
the elementary condition of a truly

rational discourse would be to acknowledge the legitimacy of contesting the given
order of society in substantive terms. This would imply the articulation of the relevant
problems not on the plan of self-referential theory and methodology, but as
inherently practical issues whose conditions of solution point towards the necessity of
radical structural changes. In other words, it would require the explicit rejection of all fiction of methodological and
hypostatized as a timeless and socially unspecified rational communality,
meta-theoretical neutrality. But, of course, this would be far too much to expect precisely because the society in which we live is a
deeply divided society. This is why through the dichotomies of fact and value, theory and practice, formal and substantive
rationality, etc., the conflict-transcending methodological miracle is constantly stipulated as the necessary regulative framework of
rational discourse in the humanities and social sciences, in the interest of the ruling ideology. What makes this approach particularly
value-commitments are mediated by methodological precepts to

such a degree that it is virtually impossible to bring them into the focus of the
discussion without openly contesting the framework as a whole. For the conservative sets of
difficult to challenge is that its
values at the roots of such orientation remain several steps removed from the ostensible subject of dispute as defined in
And who would suspect of ideological

bias the impeccable methodologically sanctioned credentials of procedural rules,
models and paradigms? Once, though, such rules and paradigms are adopted as
the common frame of reference of what may or may not be allowed to be considered
the legitimate subject of debate, everything that enters into the accepted parameters
is necessarily constrained not only by the scope of the overall framework, but
simultaneously also by the inexplicit ideological assumptions on the basis of which
the methodological principles themselves were in the first place constituted . This is why the
logico/methodological, formal/structural, and semantic/analytical terms.
allegedly non-ideological ideologies which so successfully conceal and exercise their apologetic function in the guise of neutral
methodology are doubly mystifying. Twentieth-century currents of thought are dominated by approaches that tend to articulate the
social interests and values of the ruling order through complicated at time completely bewildering mediations, on the
methodological plane. Thus, more than ever before, the task of ideological demystification is inseparable from the investigation of the
complex dialectical interrelationship between methods and values which no social theory or philosophy can escape.
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A2: Link Turn / Legal Reform Solves

Legal restrictions of surveillance are useless state and corporate
practices are driven by the ruling economic class, only abolition of class
inequality can solve.
Price, 2014
(David, Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Society and Social Justice at Saint
Martins University, The New Surveillance Normal, Monthly Review, 66:3, Online:
https://monthlyreview.org/2014/07/01/the-new-surveillance-normal/)
Notions of privacy and surveillance are always culturally constructed and are embedded
within economic and social formations of the larger society . Some centralized state-socialist systems,
such as the USSR or East Germany, developed intrusive surveillance systems, an incessant and effective theme of anti-Soviet
propaganda. The democratic-socialist formations, such as those of contemporary northern Europe, have laws that significantly limit
Despite the
significant limitations hindering analysis of the intentionally secret activities of
intelligence agencies operating outside of public accountability and systems of legal accountability,
the documents made available by whistleblowers like Snowden and WikiLeaks, and knowledge of past
intelligence agencies activities, provide information that can help us develop a useful framework
for considering the uses to which these new invasive electronic surveillance
technologies can be put. We need a theory of surveillance that incorporates the
political economy of the U.S. national security state and the corporate interests which
it serves and protects. Such analysis needs an economic foundation and a view that looks
the forms of electronic surveillance and the collection of metadata, compared to Anglo-U.S. practice.
beyond cultural categories separating commerce and state security systems designed to protect capital. The metadata, valuable
NSA programs all produce

information of such a high value that it seems likely some of it will be used in a context of global
capital. It matters little what legal restrictions are in place; in a global, high-tech,
capitalist economy such information is invariably commodified. It is likely to be used
to: facilitate industrial or corporate sabotage operations of the sort inflicted by the Stuxnet worm;
steal either corporate secrets for NSA use, or foreign corporate secrets for U.S. corporate use; make
investments by intelligence agencies financing their own operations; or secure
personal financial gain by individuals working in the intelligence sector. The rise of
new invasive technologies coincides with the decline of ideological resistance to
surveillance and the compilation of metadata. The speed of Americans adoption of
ideologies embracing previously unthinkable levels of corporate and state
surveillance suggests a continued public acceptance of a new surveillance normal will
private corporate data, and fruits of industrial espionage gathered under PRISM and other
continue to develop with little resistance. In a world where the CIA can hack the computers of Senator Feinsteina leader of the one
of the three branches of governmentwith impunity or lack of public outcry, it is difficult to anticipate a deceleration in the pace at
To live a well-adjusted life in contemporary U.S.

society requires the development of rapid memory adjustments and shifting acceptance of corporate and
state intrusions into what were once protective spheres of private life. Like all things in our
society, we can expect these intrusions will themselves be increasingly stratified, as
electronic privacy, or illegibility, will increasingly become a commodity available only
to elites. Today, expensive technologies like GeeksPhones Blackphone with enhanced
PGP encryption, or Boeings self-destructing Black Phone, afford special levels of
privacy for those who can pay. While the United States current state of surveillance acceptance offers little
immediate hope of a social movement limiting corporate or government spying, there are enough historical
instances of post-crises limits being imposed on government surveillance to offer
some hope. Following the Second World War, many European nations reconfigured long-distance billing systems to not record
which NSA and CIA expand their surveillance reach.
specific numbers called, instead only recording billing zonesbecause the Nazis used phone billing records as metadata useful for
identifying members of resistance movements. Following the Arab Spring, Tunisia now reconfigures its Internet with a new info-packet
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system known as mesh networks that hinder governmental monitoringthough USAID support for this project naturally undermines
trust in this system.27 Following the Church and Pike committees congressional investigations of CIA and FBI wrongdoing in the
1970s, the Hughes-Ryan Act brought significant oversight and limits on these groups, limits which decayed over time and whose
Some future crisis may well provide similar

opportunities to regain now lost contours of privacies. Yet hope for immediate change
remains limited. It will be difficult for social reform movements striving to protect
individual privacy to limit state and corporate surveillance. Todays surveillance
complex aligned with an economic base enthralled with the prospects of metadata
appears too strong for meaningful reforms without significant shifts in larger
economic formations. Whatever inherent contradictions exist within the present
surveillance system, and regardless of the objections of privacy advocates of the
liberal left and libertarian right, meaningful restrictions appear presently unlikely
with surveillance formations so closely tied to the current iteration of global
capitalism.
remaining restraints were undone with the USA PATRIOT Act.
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A2: Perm (Reform Fails)

History has taught us that there is no possibility of meaningful state
reform anything but a total, systemic rejection of its political
manifestations amounts to planetary suicide.
Meszaros, 2008
(Istvan, prof emeritus @ U of Sussex, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time, pg. 372-4)
to the domain of the gradual and the piecemeal, so as to
conform to the capital-apologetic prescription of little by little, and to expect from
such procedure the lasting results of social progress, was always a theoretical
absurdity and a practical non-starter. For the "gradual" and "piecemeal" institution of
"little by little," devoid of an appropriate comprehensive frame of reference, makes
no sense at all. This is so because it is totally blind without an envisaged and in the light of ongoing
The attempt to confine historical time
developments suitably modifiable strategic framework, one firmly oriented from its inception toward a radical socialist
We all know, from the bitter experience of the labor movement, that
gradually appending little by little to the result of some former partial moves brings
with it just as easily disaster and self-defeat as the slightest degree of even tactical
and most certainly never strategic improvement. The ubiquitously promoted
propaganda of "reform by slow degrees" advanced by twentieth-century reformism
could in fact amount to nothing more than the preservation and even the
strengthening of the established order. The real intent behind such "evolutionary"
strategiesfrom the Bernsteinian beginnings to their more recent permutationswas
always the crusading hostility against "holism:' that is, against any attempt aimed at
radically instituting and consolidating some badly needed comprehensive changes in
society. Characteristically, the actual record of the whole approach, which once promised the
gradual realization of socialism, was the clamorous defeat and the effective
disenfranchisement of the working class movement through the unreserved
capitulation of its parliamentary political representation to its class adversary. Given the
transformation.
fact that the metabolic control of the social order cannot be fragmented and divided among forces pulling in diametrically opposite
it is unthinkable that capitalstructurally linked to and confronted by labor, as

the subject of emancipatory transformation and therewith the only historically
feasible alternative mode of all-embracing societal controlcould hand over its
hegemonic power of self-expansionary reproduction to its structural antagonist 'little
by little.' Especially since the vital historical stakesin view of the capital system's
deeply entrenched and increasingly more destructive vested interestshave never
been greater than they are in our time. This is why the conflicting determinations of
historical time are set in such a way that the antagonism between the mutually
exclusive hegemonic alternatives of capital and labor must be resolved in the form of
either/ or.' And we have by now a fairly clear view of the fateful implications of their possible "resolution" in favor of capital's
unsustainable social metabolic order. No amount of reformist fantasy or deliberate deception could
alter or nullify these weighty structural and historical determinations. Thus, the only
viable historical alternative to the incurably conservative interests directly emanating
from capital's mode of social metabolic control is the revolutionary restructuring of
the entire social order. The changing political self-definitions of "conservative" and
"liberal" are quite irrelevant in this respect. Once upon a time, "liberalism" and
"utilitarianism" were promising social change through the ènlightenment' of the
mind of the people to whom they addressed their discourse. In its distant origin, Liberalism itself
directions,
was part of the movement of the Enlightenment. However, the social reforming intent of the Enlightenment could not be carried
forward after the antagonisms latent in the heterogeneous formation of the 'Third Estate' broke out into the open after the French
Revolution. As, indeed, they had to break out into the open because of the failure to fulfill pre-revolutionary expectations precisely of
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the more radical social constituents of the Third Estate .
Inevitably, therefore, the liberal discourse

directly addressed to the mind of the enlightened people had to become ever more
problematic. For it wasand had to be on account of the class position of the addresseespremised on the
preservation of the established hierarchical structural relations of capital's social
order. Indeed, as the antagonisms continued to sharpen, expecting their solution
through individual enlightenment became totally unreal. So much so in fact that we could witness in
the second half of the twentieth century the transformation of liberalism into aggressive neoliberalism and worse. Today it would
be most difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the self-professed
"neoliberals" and the "neocons," especially in the United States. Both of these crass
ideological orientations are perfectly happy to go along with the U.S. government's
reckless and adventurist strategy of openly threatening the preemptive use of nuclear weapons even against nonnuclear powers. And in some ways also in Europe, we have been recently presented, in all seriousness, with the influential idea of
imposing on the world a liberal imperialism, grotesquely justifying such project on the basis that only that kind of global inter-state
relationship could properly match the requirements of the "postmodern" conditions.
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A2: Perm (Reform Fails)

The perm creates a hybrid of capitalism that prolongs capitalisms
control. Only complete rejection of the aff can solve.
Mszros 11
the most effective way of postponing the historical "moment of truth" and thereby
prolonging the dominance of capital over human life, despite its growing
destructiveness and deepening structural crisis, is the hybridization of capitalism . This
hybridization in capitalistically advanced countries assumes the form of the massive injection of
public funds into the revitalization of the pretendedly "free market" capitalist enterprises by the direct involvement of the
capitalist state. This trend has been demonstrated already at the time of the subsequently quite easily reversible "nationalization" of large scale capitalist
bankruptcy in several vital economic sectors of Great Britain in 1945 by the Attlee government of the "old" Labour Party, and not by "New Labour." A necessary postwar
rescue operation of British capitalism was characteristically misrepresented as a genuine socialist
achievement.22 This kind of operation is carried out in order to defend and secure the
continuing viability of the established reproductive order, thanks to a great variety of systemapologetic and in that sense politically motivated direct economic contributions by the state (from the funds of general taxation, of course), about which Adam Smith
Perhaps
could not even dream. They range from the astronomical magnitude of the resources put at the disposal of the military/industrial complex on an ongoing basis to the trillions of
dollars of financial rescue funds given to private capitalist banks and insurance companies not only in 2008 and 2009 but also in 2010, accepting liability to the tune of 90 percent
for their future losses. In historical terms this is a relatively recent phenomenon in the development of capitalism. Its potential extent and significance were still very far from
evident in Marx's lifetime. For "in the nineteenth century the possibilities of adjustment for capital as a hybrid' system of control which became fully visible only in the twentieth
systemic hybridization is by now overwhelmingly

important in prolonging the lifespan of the capital system. However, its modality of direct state
involvement in "saving the system"24 through the transfer of immense public funds and even the fullscale "nationalization" of ever more
serious capitalist bankruptcy has its own limits and farreaching implications for future development, and therefore it should not be
imagined as a permanent structural remedy.
century were as yet hidden from theoretical scrutiny."23 To be sure, this
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A2: Perm (Pomo Fails)

Do not buy their celebration of multiplicity the postmodern paradigm
that backs the reading of the 1AC EXCLUDES the material coordinates of
oppression.
Scott, Prof of Post Colonial Lit & Theory @ U Vermont, 2006
(Helen, Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary
Caribbean Womens Literature, Postcolonial Text, 2.1,
http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174)
postmodern paradigms can, ironically, given their habitual celebration of multiplicity
and specificity, lead to formulaic one dimensional, mono-focused, reductive
readings of texts as linguistic, discursive allegories, and exclude multiple possibilities for more
specific, grounded readings. And despite postmodernisms vaunted radicalism, as many of its critics have argued, the
linguistic turn and descent into discourse in postcolonial studies have obscured the material
coordinates of imperialism, arguably depoliticizing a field of study that is from its inception engaged
And yet
with inherently political questions of empire, race, colonialism and their relationship to cultural production.[14] In her study of
Caribbean women writers, Isabel Hoving equates high theory with political criticism and attributes the crisis in postcolonial
studies to weariness with the issues of gender, class and race which is being met with a return to the literary (7). Yet it could be
high theory that insistently pulls us away from concrete histories, lived
experiences of oppression and resistance, and specific artistic movements and works, and leads us
towards monotonous questions of discourse, representation, language, and identity .
argued that it is
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A2: Perm (Welfare Aff)

The aff is guaranteeing income, but this increases exploitation of other
workers. Means the perm fails to solve.
claim that the guaranteed income has an anti capitalist dimension because it is
disconnected from waged work is based on the second illusion of the welfare state: that its
benefits are income without work. For capitalist class relations, it is not so important that each and
every individual is forced to work all their lives but that capital can mobilise enough
work in society as a whole to meet its needs for valorisation. This societal coercion to work has
always depended on the welfare state as a means of dividing the working class and
establishing hierarchical differences among workers . The guaranteed income does not
contradict this logic because it does not stop the alienation of our wealth but only
serves as an income bottom line: a factual minimum wage below which nobody has to work (as the Coordination of Unemployed Groups put
it in January 1999). Anyone who is not satisfied with a mere subsistence guarantee has only one
choice: work! The development of the welfare state has been based on the opposition
of two different principles: insurance and alms. This drew a clear line between workers and paupers. The first have been offered the illusion of
living off their own personal savings in times of unemployment or old age while the latter have been dependent on (state funded) alms. This insurance
fetishism is tied to the wage fetishism, and like the wage fetishism it veils the fact of exploitation. In the
wage, the appropriation of other peoples work by capital appears as a fair exchange of
work and money. [5]
The
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A2: Cede the Political

The prerequisite to political change is to train ourselves to move beyond
institutional engagement and force accountability on our terms
Boggs 2009
(Carl, former 2AC K answers superstar, National University, A Way Forward?, http://www.zcommunications.org/a-way-forward-by-carlboggs, Friday, August 21, 2009)
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
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
Marxist, or post-Marxist discourses.
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
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
water). A strong dose of animal-rights consciousness would not hurt either. 3.
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
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.
that,
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A2: Snobby Marx Doesnt Account for ____

Your indicts come from authors who didnt read Marx Marx is a genius
who predicted major shifts in capitalist value extraction
Fuchs 13
(Christian Fuchs, October 15th 2013 at 17:37, CASTELLS AND JENKINS: THESE APPROACHES ARE TERRIBLY FLAWED: AN
INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTIAN FUCHS, http://fuchs.uti.at/959/, Information Society Technology & Media, Professor of social media at
the University of Westminster, editor of journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique, chair of the European Sociological
Associations Research Network, Vice-Chair of the EU COST Action Dynamics of Virtual Work that brings together scholars who study
unpaid and paid forms of digital labour.)
the writings of Karl Marx. Where do you see the relevance of this 19th century theorist in the 21st
century? I do not terribly like the way you phrased this question because somehow it gives the perception of
Marx as being outdated, old, that society is new and has completely changed through
neoliberalism and so on. This was the point made by Baudrillard who said that we
cannot explain postmodern society through Marx because Marx is a 19th century
theorist and he did not talk about the media and so on. I would however have suggested to Baudrillard that he should
have read Marx more carefully because there is a lot in Marx that helps us understand
the media within the context of society. Quite obviously there is a huge crisis of capitalism,
of the state, imperialism and ideology. It is not only a financial crisis because it goes beyond the financial
sector. In volume three of Capital Marx very thoroughly discussed the mechanisms of
financialization. He also very closely analysed class and class relations and inequalities. Nobody can
claim today that we are not living in a class society. The ruling class enforces austerity measures and
we have deepening inequalities. So these are all social issues . If we look at the media side and the ICTs in this context the
question is can Marx somehow help us? I think that Baudrillard and similarly minded people were and are very
superficial readers of Marx because Marx even anticipated the information society in
his claims about the development of technological productive forces , and that knowledge in
production would become increasingly important. Some also say that Marx did not understand the networked media, but then
again Marx for example analyses the telegraph and its importance for society and how
technology impacts society in the context of the globalization of the economy and communication. I even claim
in my forthcoming book Social Media: A Critical Introduction that Marx invented the Internet in a striking passage of the Grundrisse. He
described in a very anticipatory manner that in the global information system people
inform themselves about others and are creating connections to each other . So the idea
of social networking is there and the idea of networked information and a hypertext of
global information are already there. So actually the World Wide Web was not invented by Tim BernersLee but by
Karl Marx in 1857. Of course the technological foundations did not exist and also the computer did not exist as technology. But I think that,
conceptually, Marx did invent the internet.
3) In your work you rely heavily on
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A2: Cede the Political Inevitable

Public investment in state politics will never recover corporatized
government consistently neglected peoples needs, resulting in a
structural crisis of political participation.
Lerner 14
(MICHAEL LERNER, PhD in philosophy from University of California, Berkeley; PhD in Clinical/Social Psychology from the Wright Institute; professor of philosophy at Trinity College
until 1975; founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, Tikkun Volume: 25 Issue: 3 Pages: 7-11, Updated: 2014-05-25, Liberals and Progressives Need a New Strategy in
the Obama Years)
The Real Issues in American Politics We believe that by this point even the people who cheered on the
Democrats' endless
compromises must be realizing that their accommodationist strategy has not paid off either in new respect or in new
political support. It doesn't matter how many compromises Obama and the Democrats make- none of them will satisfy the Right
the issue? Well, let's start with this: racism, one-sided class war,
and finally the despair,
loneliness, and fear that commercial culture promotes. Racism The racism is not so hard
to locate. Just map which electoral districts opposed desegregation, equal rights
legislation, and policies to provide equal opportunities for African Americans and you
go a long way toward mapping out the core constituencies of Tea Party activists and fans
of Sarah Palin. The sad truth is that racism remains a continuing element defining the political
consciousness of a significant minority of Americans . The level of anger expressed at Obama is in part a
reflection of that racism. But it's not just racism. One-Sided Class War For the past thirty years,
America's corporate elite, the media it controls, and the wealthy people whose disproportionate
funding of political candidates has earned them a high level of loyalty and subservience from
both major political parties have engaged in a sustained and successful struggle to
redistribute wealth from the poor and the middle class to those with the top ten percent of income
in the United States. Meanwhile, trade agreements supported by both parties, coupled with the
because the issues are not the issue. So what is
disappointment with government programs and with the spinelessness of the Democrats,
growing power of multinationals (which can easily relocate to other countries in order to pay lower wages and avoid safety, health,
and environmental constraints on their selfishness) have dramatically weakened unions and their bargaining
power, thereby decreasing union membership and shifting unions from industrial to service industries and to those representing
The cumulative impact has been a

deepening sense of powerlessness that is reality-based. The media have played an
important supportive role in this development by labeling those who challenge the
inequities and disempowering of the working classes in America as themselves generating
"class warfare." Any politician who presents a fullthroated populist perspective is
dismissed as "not serious." Their analyses are rarely presented to the public by the mainstream media. Instead they
public employees, a much smaller percentage of the workforce.
are dismissed as marginal before they even begin to campaign. The same applies to those who advocated for an end to war funding
(which might have freed up funds for domestic projects beneficial to middle-income working people and the poor). For example, we
watched the way that Dennis Kucinich's candidacy was sometimes ignored, sometimes trivialized by the New York Times in both 2004
and 2008, though the positions he articulated were closer to that of the Democratic majority than those politicians who were labeled
"leading candidates" even before any serious campaigning had begun. Similar treatment was given to former Senator Mike Gravel in
There was never a better time to

reverse these dynamics than during the winter and spring of 2009, when a powerful pro-working
class progressive as president could have addressed this issue explicitly and refused to
embrace any economic policy for saving the banks and Wall Street that did not
simultaneously insist on directly and immediately benefiting America's middle class and
poor. Disappointment with Government There is a growing skepticism about the ability of
government to solve any problems, a skepticism that has legitimate foundations in
the actual experience of many people. The desire to "get something passed" through Congress and state
2008 and to Governor Howard Dean and former General Wesley Clark in 2004.
legislatures that shaped the "realistic" and "pragmatic" policies of Democrats for the past eighty years created a series of policies and
Instead of eliminating slums and building decent housing

for the poor, the government built lousy housing that made people living in feel they had been
warehoused, not cared for. * Instead of eliminating joblessness by creating an ongoing jobs program to meet
programs that were deeply deficient. *
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desperately needed social needs (such as the need for adequate and well-trained child care and elderly care, for a rebuilding of our
inner cities, for adequate alternative forms of wind and solar energy, and for workers to carry out a Global Marshall Plan), we
instead provided (often wildly inadequate) welfare or unemployment benefits that affirmed
unemployment as "a fact of life" rather than a blight that could have been
eliminated. * Instead of requiring government employees' tenure to be based in part on how well they treated the public, we
imposed "productivity" restrictions on government employees that made them feel
they would not be rewarded for showing American citizens that the government was put in place as a vehicle to
provide the kind of caring for our neighbors that most of us couldn't fully express because we had to make a living on our own. The
public came to feel disrespected and even abused by government employees , many of
whom would have been much more caring and considerate had their supervisors not pushed them to give less time to caring and
more time to endless reports and paper trails (often to protect themselves from elected officials who sought public recognition
liberals dismissed these

larger plans as Utopian, only to find that the compromises they made also generated
a deep disrespect for government that is blowing up in their faces to the detriment of
everyone.
through attacking government for being bloated and inefficient). * Over and over again the
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A2: Race/Gender Focus Creates Structural Change

Experience or other forms of oppression cannot provide macro
explanation of oppression because they are infinitely regressive and
ambiguous.
Gimenez 01
How are we to understand, at the macro level of analysis, the racialization,

genderization and the placement of people in given class and or socio economic status locations? Are these
and other structures of inequality reproduced simply by "doing difference "? While
empirical research on these matters is important to document the persistence and pervasiveness of gender, class, and race
prejudice and stereotypes that permeate ordinary, day to day interactions, it demonstrates at the same time the limited, descriptive,
nonexplanatory nature of "intersectionality." In the context of Marxist theory, the argument that people are "an
ensemble of social relations," meaning everyone is located at the intersection of numerous social structures, counteracts onesided, abstract, ahistorical
it is also useful to critique dominant stereotypes which

associate poverty, race, and ethnicity with women and with "minority" (i.e., "nonwhite") status,
as if "whites," besides having "culture" (ethnicity being the culture of the relatively powerless) were mostly rich and
male. But this insight, captured in the metaphor of "intersectionality" and having as a referent the multiple locations of individuals in
the structures that make up the social formation as a whole, allows us only a) to map the distribution of the
population in these manifold locations where most individuals occupy "contradictory"
locations; i.e., locations where dominant and subordinate relations intersect (Wright, 1978); and
notions of human nature. As an RGC insight,
b) to investigate empirically the extent to which locations and identities coincide or not, and the patterns of recognition and misrecognition that ensue. A
graphic depiction of several of these intersections, placing individuals and couples in the intersection of wealth ownership, income levels, occupations,
gender, race, ethnicity, age and employment status is the well known "American Profile Poster" accompanying Rose's periodic description of U.S. social
A description, however, no matter how thorough, has meaning only within a

specific theoretical context. Intersectionality in itself, as an account of the multiplicity of
locations effecting individuals experiences, or as a study of the patterned variations in the identities individuals claim
for themselves regardless of those locations, cannot explain either the sources of inequalities or their
reproduction over time; intersectionality must be placed in the "institutional bases of
power shaping race, class and gender" (Collins, 1997: 74). What are these institutional bases of power? How do we identify them? How do
we link intersectionality to its macro level conditions of possibility, those "interlocking" structures of
oppression? It is here that the RGC perspective runs into a theoretical dead end which the
abundance of metaphors (e.g., interlocking, intersecting, etc.) can neither hide nor overcome. Collins postulates the existence of
stratification (Rose, 1992).
a "basic relationship of domination and subordination" within the American political economy which is "shaped" by the "race, class and gender
interlocking system" (Collins, 1993: 29). RGC studies, as Andersen and Collins point out, require the "analysis and criticism of existing systems
of power and privilege" (Andersen and Collins, 1995: xiii). While they postulate the existence of a more fundamental or "basic" structure of unequal
no macro level theoretical perspective is

offered to identify this basic, fundamental structures. It is at this point that the formal nature of the RGC
power relations and privilege which underlies race, gender and class,
perspective becomes clear: race, gender and class have become, for all practical purposes, taken for granted categories of analysis whose meaning
There are many competing theories of race,

gender, class, American society, political economy, power, etc. but no specific theory is invoked to
define how the terms race, gender and class are used, or to identify how they are related to the
rest of the social system. To some extent, race, gender and class and their intersections and interlockings have become a mantra to
apparently remains invariant in all theoretical frameworks and contexts.
be invoked in any and all theoretical contexts, for a tacit agreement about their ubiquitousness and meaning seems to have developed among RGC
studies advocates, so that all that remains to be dome is empirically to document their intersections everywhere, for everything that happens is, by
This pragmatic acceptance of race, gender and class, as

givens, results in the downplaying of theory, and the resort to experience as the
source of knowledge. The emphasis on experience in the construction of knowledge is intended as a corrective to
theories that, presumably, reflect only the experience of the powerful. RGC seems to offer a
subjectivist understanding of theory as simply a reflection of the experience and
definition, raced, classed, and gendered.
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consciousness of the individual theorist, rather than as a body of propositions which is collectively
and systematically produced under historically specific conditions of possibility which
grant them historical validity for as long as those conditions prevail. Instead,
knowledge and theory are pragmatically conceived as the products or reflection of
experience and, as such, unavoidably partial, so that greater accuracy and relative completeness
can be approximated only through gathering the experiential accounts of all groups. Such is
the importance given to the role of experience in the production of knowledge that in the
eight page introduction to the first section of an RGC anthology, the word experience is repeated thirty six times (Andersen and Collins, 1995: 19).
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A2: Alt is Violent

Transition wars are limited and a peaceful transition and cant resolve
capitals internal antagonisms
Mszros 2008 Istvn, Prof Emeritus in Philosophy and Political Theory @ U of Sussex The Challenge and Burden of
Historical Time, 310-311
The second blocked avenue is even more important. It concerns the removal of the possibility of solving the systems aggravating problems through an all-out war, as it was twice
the
system has been decapitated through the removal of its ultimate sanction: an all-out
war on its real or potential adversariesExporting violence is no longer possible on
the required massive scale. Attempts at doing so on a limited scalelike the Vietnam War37
not only are no substitutes for the old mechanism but even accelerate the inevitable
internal explosions of the system. Nor is it possible to get away indefinitely with the
ideological mystification which represented the internal challenge of socialism : the only
possible solution to the present crisis, as an external confrontation: a subversion directed from abroad by a monolithic enemy. For the first time in
history capitalism is globally confronted with its own problems which cannot be
postponed much longer, nor can they be indeed transferred to the military plane in
order to be exported in the form of an all-out war. 38 I added in a note to the last sentence that Of course
such a war can happen, but its actual planning and active preparation in the open
cannot function as a vital internal stabilizer.39 This is so even if the neoconservative vision guys of the Pentagonwhose
theories border on insanity40are more than willing to think the unthinkable. But even such extreme forms of irrationality
cannot undo the far-reaching implications of this blocked avenue . For the underlying
issue is an insoluble contradiction within the reproductive framework of the capital
system. A contradiction manifest, on the one hand, through the ongoing relentless
concentration and centralization of capital on a global scale, and on the other,
through the structurally imposed inability of the capital system to produce the
required political stabilization on a global scale. Even the most aggressive military
interventions of global hegemonic imperialism at present those of the United Statesin different parts of
the planet are bound to fail in this respect. The destructiveness of limited wars, no
matter how many, is very far from being enough for imposing everywhere on a lasting
basis the unchallengeable rule of a single imperialist hegemon and its global governmentthe only thing that would
attempted in the world wars of the twentieth century. I wrote at the time of the onset of capitals structural crisis, toward the end of the Vietnam war that:
befit the logic of capital. Only the socialist hegemonic alternative can show a way out of this destructive contradiction. That is, an organizationally viable alternative that fully
respects the dialectical complementarity of the national and international in our time.
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A2: Tech Solves / Green Capitalism

Perm is a new linkit masks capitalist violence and makes the impact
inevitable
Prudham 2009
(Scott, Department of Geography and Center for Environment, University of Toronto, 2009, Pimping Climate Change: Richard Branson, Global Warming, and the
Performance of Green Capitalism. Environment and Planning A, Vol 41, Pages 1594-1613)
Green capitalism, metabolism, the production of capitalist nature, and accumulation for accumulation's sake I use the term
` green capitalism'
to
refer to a
tightly woven mix of faith in nominally free markets and market-based instruments ,
enclosures of various kinds, and capital investment and entrepreneurial innovation,
all aimed at redressing environmental problems (however defined and measured). The actual term has been used by others (eg Friedmann,
2005; Watts, 2002), but the substantive content of what I mean is much more widely recognized and problematized by critical scholars. In the most abstract rendering, green capitalism
refers to the increasing incorporation and internalization of ecological conditions into
the circuits of capital accumulation via the production, commodification, and even
real subsumption of nature (Boyd et al, 2001; Kloppenburg, 2004; O'Connor, 1998; Prudham, 2005; Smith, 1984). This is attended by forms of calculation, expertise, and
environmental governance. But it also includes the manner in which environmental politics become semiotically and ideologically tethered to the reproduction of the conditions of accumulation, via what Smith 2008
green capitalism comes in many

forms and, like the more general neoliberal turn of which it is one facet, has complex intellectual and political origins.
Under the rubric of green capitalism, for instance, should be included a widespread turn in
recent decades to so-called market-based mechanisms such as tradeable pollution
permits. This approach is now becoming central in climate policy, particularly but not only in the EU (Bailey, 2007a; 2007b; Bailey and Rupp, 2005) in the form of both state-coordinated and voluntary
[1984]) theorizes as the proliferation of the abstract second (produced) nature of exchange value (see also O'Connor, 1993). As such,
offset markets in carbon dioxide emissions (Bumpus and Liverman, 2008). The intellectual foundation of market-based mechanisms, particularly tradable emissions or cap-and-trade systems, in one sense relies
A
closely related idea animates the neoclassical theory of the `backstop technology'.
When full costs are paid, the argument goes, informed entrepreneurs will adjust to
(accurate) price signals by diverting investment away from environmentally damaging
technologies and toward more green technoeconomic strategies (Pearce and Turner, 1990; for critique of price as a
measure of scarcity, see Norgaard, 1990). But deeper foundations lie in an underlying faith in private decision
making: thus, the conservation-privatization connection articulated famously by Hardin (1968), and before him (and more
rigorously) by Gordon (1954). In turn, all of these draw on a lineage of faith in `greed' (bolstered by strong, exclusive private property rights) as
simply on the argument that this is the most economically efficient (ie cheapest) way to achieve given environmental quality objectives (for discussion see Ekins and Barker, 2001; Tietenberg, 1980).
socially desirable. For example, Malthus (1993 [1798]), in addition to his (in)famous embrace of famine and disease as `natural' or what he called `preventive' checks on population growth, also stated that: it
appears, that a society constituted according to the most beautiful form that imagination can conceive, with benevolence for its moving principle, instead of self-love, and with every evil disposition in all its
members corrected by reason and not force, would, from the inevitable laws of nature, and not from any original depravity of man [sic], in a very short period degenerate into a society constructed upon a plan not
essentially different from that which prevails in every known state at present; I mean, a society divided into a class of proprietors, and a class of labourers, and with self-love the main-spring of the great machine
(Malthus, 1993 [1798], pages 64 ^ 65). There is, of course, much more to be said about green capitalism, its origins, and a proliferation of market fundamentalism in contemporary environmental policy making (see
eg Goldman, 2005; Heynen et al, 2007; Krueger and Gibbs, 2007; Liverman, 2004; McAfee, 1999; Mansfield, 2004a; 2004b; 2007). But the point is that markets, more or less accurate prices, enclosures of various
kinds, a faith in the choices of ostensibly independent and rational individuals, and investment of capital by innovative entrepreneurs constitute the ubiquitous tropes of green capitalism. A pithy but by no means
atypical endorsement of the green capitalist approach is encapsulated, for instance, in the following Heritage Foundation energy policy statement: U.S. energy policy should be based on the creativity of free
enterprise. Congress and the Administration should rely on the private sector's research and development capabilities to deliver traditional supplies and viable new energy sources rather than mandates,
This kind of approach to environmental regulation has become

emblematic of a plethora of like-minded think tanks and lobby groups, particularly in
the US. It is consistent with a reinvigorated turn to the mix of utopian economic and
political doctrines of freedom that constitute the rhetorical and ideological core of
neoliberalism (Harvey, 2005), and very consistent with a more general shift in recent decades
from `managerialism to entrepreneurialism' (Harvey, 1989) in social regulation. Green
capitalism thus reflects and reinforces transformations of governance, and specifically environmental governance, with so-called
command-and-control approaches giving way to mechanisms such as `èco-taxes , `best practices' environmental management, green consumer
activism, community-driven environmental regulation, and more collaborative models of environmental governance'' (Watts, 2002, page 1315). Markets, privatization,
commercialization, and outright commodification have become central elements (as opposed to
the objects) of environmental regulation, evident not only in the prescriptions of neoliberal think tanks but also in those of a whole generation of environmental NGOs and
regulations, subsidies, and directed research.'' (1)
government policy makers (Bakker, 2005; Heynen et al, 2007; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004; Mansfield, 2007). So, what does any of this have to do with Richard Branson? In some ways, everything. Despite the fact
that the venerable BBC described Branson's September 2006 announcement as one in which he was pledging US $3 billion to `fight global warming', this is not quite right. Branson did spin it this way, but the
announcement specifically targeted ``schemes to develop new renewable energy technologies'', and to divert profits from Virgin Airlines and Virgin Trains into a financial arm of the Branson empire called,
appropriately enough, Virgin Fuels. Virgin Fuels, in turn, will use these funds as part of its planned investments in the alternative energy sector, investments that already include backing a California company called
Cilion, making ethanol from corn. This is very much consistent with the broader emergence of so-called `biofuels' as an alternative to fossils, a strategy that is garnering considerable momentum thanks to
endorsements by the likes of Al Gore, and to widespread subsidies in the US and elsewhere aimed at pulling farm crop cultivation into the circuits of biofuel production (on US subsidies see Koplow, 2007). It is
consistent with Branson's declared hope that biofuels can displace fossil fuels burned in conventional air and train travel in the foreseeable future. This, too, is quintessentially green capitalism, a technical fix for an
ostensibly technical problem, propelled by an entrepreneur looking to sustain profitability in the context of threats to existing markets. But, if this is green capitalism, examining Branson's approach more closely
points to systematic problems with the green capitalist agenda. A supposed advantage of biofuels is that they promise a less carbon-intensive fuel source for transportation (and other energy-using activities) since
they will drastically reduce net carbon emissions to the atmosphere when burned. The obvious reason for this is that the fuels come from green plants which, in turn, assimilate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
in their growth. While fossil fuel combustion transfers carbon from deep geological storage into the atmosphere in the form of oxides of carbon, and contributes to an enhanced greenhouse effect, biofuels offer a
lower carbon alternative and the possibility of a zero net carbon flux to the atmosphere, provided the plants take up as much or more carbon dioxide when they grow as is released by the biofuels when they burn.
Yet, there are elements of this strategy for offsetting carbon emissions which are not ideal. One is simply that the scheme obscures or deflects attention from growth in the airline industry and in airline travel per se.
Substituting fuels amidst continued growth in the industry means any ecological implications associated with the new fuel cycle will be, all other things being equal, that much more pronounced. And, in the case of
biofuels, there are reasons to be concerned about the substitution of one set of environmental problems for another as expansion in biofuels production offsets current and growing demand for airline fuel. Only
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under highly restrictive and unlikely conditions could the switch to renewable fuels actually be renewable in a robust sense of the term. All of the energy generated from burning biofuels, including efficiency and
processing losses, would have to be offset by the production of energy from photosynthesis in the feed crop. This includes all of the energy inputs in the production process. It sounds feasible, intuitively doable, and
eminently appealing, but life-cycle assessments of intensive crop production regimes, whether for agriculture or for energy production, consistently point to large inputs of energy in the cultivation, harvesting, and
conversion stages, sometimes by many factors more than the energy yielded by the final product (Bayliss-Smith, 1982; Netting, 1986). These inputs include, for instance, fuel used for machinery in cultivation and
processing, chemical inputs such as fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, etc. Will all of these inputs, simultaneously, be converted to renewable sources along with the fuel itself? It seems unlikely. For example,
Pimentel and Patzek (2006) offer some sobering numbers when it comes to one of the most commonly cited `solutions' to the fossil fuel problem, the conversion of corn (either directly or from biomass `waste') into
ethanol. To start, all green plants in the United States take up in one year through photosynthesis about the energy equivalent of half of current annual energy consumption in the US. If the entire US corn crop were
converted into ethanol, it would offset a total of 6% of current US fossil fuel combustion, and that ignores the fact that it takes 29% more energy to produce ethanol than is contained within it; for cellulose
technologies (from high-intensity wood fibre plantations), that number is 50% using current technologies. That energy input has to come from someplace, and it currently comes primarily from fossil fuels. In fact,
the thermodynamics of converting plant biomass to liquid fuels is sobering even using the fastest growing crops such as acacia and eucalyptus (Patzek and Pimentel, 2005). So a substitution to nominally renewable
fuels can disguise important nonrenewable elements of renewable fuel cycles. Moreover, the discourse of converting so-called agricultural `waste' (eg the unused plant material in corn production) into biofuels
ignores the implications of this diversion of nutrients out of ecosystems, which may subsidize short-term energy supplies with long-term soil productivity (Patzek and Pimentel, 2005). In addition, there is a suite of
potentially negative repercussions of converting to biofuels on a large scale, including the diversion of food crops into biofuel production, the appropriation of human and nonhuman forest habitat to intensive and
industrialized crop cultivation regimes, and the production of particulate emissions from biofuel combustion itself. These concerns are becoming increasingly evident, not least via a current international food crisis
whose origins, in substantial measure, lie in rising prices driven by competition for food grains between the food system and the biofuels industry. And they point to the need to think in terms of complex chains of
causation that rework socio-natural relations across scales in the biofuel economy, connections that bring together voracious energy demand (particularly in affluent countries), multinational capital, states and
international development institutions, local and regional dynamics of deforestation, social marginalization and struggle, access to land, and food security (Cooke, 2002; Dennis and Colfer, 2006; McMorrow and
these specific problems with the political ecology of biofuel

substitution exemplify systematic challenges to the green capitalist agenda. Specifically, they
point to systematic ways in which biophysical nature is produced or metabolized in a
capitalist political economy. These particularities include growth dependence, but
also a tendency to continuously transform the relations and conditions of production
(including, importantly, environmental conditions) propelled by the drive to accumulate capital as an end in and of
itselfwhat Marx called àccumulation for accumulation's sake'. At issue here, in part, is that
capitalism is a restless and growth-dependent political economy. And, despite the immediacy of current anxieties
Talip, 2001; Wolford, 2004; see also Monbiot, 2005). I argue that
surrounding climate change and a host of other environmental problems linked to relentless economic growth and transformation, the question as to whether capitalism can or cannot continue to grow ad infinitum
is arguably as old as capitalism itself. It is one of the defining questions of classical political economy taken up variously by the likes of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus, all of whom were generally
pessimistic about long- run raw material availability. By no means has this debate disappeared, and, in fact, it was reinvigorated by the emergence of an increasingly globalist environmentalism in the 1960s and
1970s, and in the specific guise of a neo-Malthusian emphasis on the population-environment nexus (see eg Ehrlich, 1968; Meadows and Club of Rome, 1972). The question of whether or not capitalism is or can be
A
recent contribution to this line of thinking, picked up from some of Marx's more obscure and scattered direct comments on the matter, come
in the guise of the notion of the metabolic rift. This idea is generating some considerable popular and scholarly interest thanks primarily to the
sustainable has also animated debates within the Marxist tradition, with, it must be said, no clear consensus (see eg Altvater, 1993; Benton, 1989; 1996; Leff, 1995; J O'Connor, 1998; M O'Connor, 1994).
work of American sociologist John Bellamy Foster (1999; 2000). But, as Foster clearly indicates, it comes from Marx, who was inspired, in turn, by reading 19th-century agronomy and soil chemistry literature. This
includes the work of German chemist Justus von Liebig, who criticized intensive agronomic practices as forms of robbery. Liebig is thought to be the inspiration for Marx's famous statement in volume 1 of Capital
The idea of a more

systemic metabolic rift between capitalist society and the nonhuman world is based in
part on Marx's general notion that the social relation to nature in all societies is
essentially metabolic, meaning that there is a process of mutual transformation between
human and nonhuman nature through the transfer of matter and energy. As he wrote in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts: Nature is man's [sic] inorganic body
that `àll progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil'' (Marx, 1977, page 638).
that is to say, nature insofar as it is not the human body. Man lives from natureie, nature is his bodyand he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. (2) For Foster (1999), Marx's comments
social metabolism combined with his critique of capitalist agriculture underpin an

argument for a more systemic metabolic rift specific to and constitutive of capitalism .
on
Having first traced the lineage of the metabolism notion as it was picked up by the likes of Kautsky and Bukharin (but also dropped, notably in the Soviet tradition), in his subsequent book Foster (2000) extends the
critique of capitalist agriculture into a more generalized critique of capitalist nature. In their elaboration, Clark and York (2005, page 399) put it as follows:
Capitalism is unable to
maintain the conditions necessary for the recycling of nutrients . In this capitalism
creates a rift in our social metabolism with nature. In fact, the development of capitalism continues to intensify the rift in agriculture and
creates rifts in other realms of the society-nature relationship, such as the introduction of artificial fertilizers.'' In their words, drawing on Foster with a specific eye to theorizing global warming, the: metabolic rift
refers to an ecological rupture in the metabolism of a system.
The natural processes and cycles
(such as the soil nutrient cycle)
are
interrupted . The division between town and country is a particular geographical

manifestation of the metabolic rift, in regards to the soil nutrient cycle. But the essence of a metabolic rift is the rupture or interruption of a natural system''
(page 399). Considerable focus in Foster's work (and in that of Clark and York) is directed at the debate over so-called `dematerialization'that is, the degree to which economic growth and capitalism more
generally can be `decoupled' from energy and material throughput to a sufficient degree to make sustainable capitalism possible. This debate has been central to the emergence of environmental sociology and the
so-called `treadmill of production' theory. Scholars led by Schnaiberg (1980; Schnaiberg and Gould, 1994) have challenged sanguine predictions, typically from economists and ecological modernization advocates,
growth effects tend to swamp efficiency effects with little evidence of any
absolute decline in energy and material requirements even in the most affluent
national economies. Foster draws on the work of 19th-century British political economist William Stanley Jevons in calling this an example of the
Jevons `paradox' (ie that increasing efficiencies can in some ways only encourage
increasing demand, but tend not to lead to decreasing amounts of throughput). The explanation
for this apparent paradox, as Foster as well as Clark and York argue, is the expanding scale of capitalism, founded, in turn, on
the phenomenon of growth or accumulation as ends in and of themselves
(accumulation for accumulation's sake) in the context of a prevailing metabolic rift. The
documenting that
metabolic rift as a critique of green capitalism seems highly germane to the case in hand since, as noted, Branson's announcements at best promise less carbon-intensive development trajectories. Yet, to the extent
that insight is to be drawn from broadly Marxian perspectives on environmental change in a capitalist political economy, the record is mixed. On the one hand, there are those who see capitalism as `the problem' a
la Foster or O'Connor and his second (ecological) contradiction argument (1988; 1998), but, on the other, there are those of a more Promethean disposition (for discussion see Foster, 1999; Goldman and Schurman,
2000). On this, Harvey notes pointedly that `Ìt has ... proven hard to wean Marxism from a rather hubristic view of the domination of nature thesis''; yet, he continues, `ìn those rare instances when Marxists have
taken the material biological and physical conditions of existence as foundational to their materialism, they have either lapsed into some form of environmental determinism ... or into a damaging materialist
pessimism'' (1996, page 193). Geographerswhose cross is also to bear the legacy of environmental determinism and the discipline's colonial historyof a generally Marxist uneven development bent have tended
to downplay strict and static notions of ecological `limits' in favor of the dynamic production of new conditions, the constant revolutionizing of production relations and conditions (Buck, 2007; Harvey, 1974; 1996),
and, in this context, the material and semiotic production of what is experienced as `nature' itself (Smith, 2008 [1984]).(3) It bears noting here too (2008 [1984) that much early political ecology (influenced by and
influential on geographical debates) eschewed simple-minded neo-Malthusianism and the so-called `pressure of population on resources' hypothesis, emphasizing instead unjust rights of resource access and
control; contested meanings and understandings; and the dynamics of commercialization and commodification as key factors propelling environmental degradation (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987; Carney, 1993;
Robbins, 2004; Turner, 1993; Watts, 1983). Limits, per se, were simply no longer the question. As for nature itself, Smith (1996) summed it up rather nicely by noting that `nature' as it is conventionally understood
and talked about is not a very relational and, therefore, Marxist category at all. However, redefining the problem does not make the issue of ècological limits' to capitalism go away entirely. I strongly suspect (in
fact, I know) that many critical geographers simply cringe and look away when they see the phrase ècological limits', and many, I suspect, will have no truck with the notion of a systemic capitalist metabolic rift
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more generally. Maybe they are right. Yet, in the context of various calls to attend to the material action or àgency' of nonhuman beings and processes in our geographical work (for syntheses see Bakker and
Bridge, 2006; Braun, 2005), and as (3) the distinct categories of nature and culture become dissolved in favour of hybrids, assemblages, and socionatures (see eg Castree, 2003; Gandy, 2002; Kaika, 2005; Latour,
1993; Swyngedouw, 1999; Whatmore, 2002), Harvey's challenge in Justice Nature and the Geography of Difference remains noteworthy: What I am proposing is a way of depicting the fundamental physical and
biological conditions and processes that work through all social, cultural, and economic projects to create a tangible historical geography and to do it in such a way as to not render those physical and biological
elements as a banal and passive background to human historical geography'' (1996, page 192). There is a genuine dilemma here: what are we to make of this nonhuman matter which constitutes our geographies?
Harvey's observation remains: on one side is the specter of a rigid, dualistic, and deterministic perspective on the nature-society or nature-culture nexus. On the other, however, is potential complicity with laissezfaire neoclassical optimism, and thus with the green capitalism school itself. One direction to go in emphasizing dynamism, change, and the relentless production of new natures, of course, is to abandon
engagement with ecological conditions per se as a subset of material conditions. But I think this is not necessary or wise, particularly for geographers. The danger is not one of bad theory but of not taking seriously
enough the material conditions of immiseration that characterize the lives of literally millions (if not billions) of people in the contemporary world, and thus the socioecological aspects of uneven development. A way
forward is to emphasize that the problem is not only a quantitative one, but also a qualitative one. Indeed, as Neil Smith noted in Uneven Development (2008 [1984], page 87): ``[C]apital, and the bourgeois society
which nurtures it, usher in not just a quantitative but also a qualitative change in the relation with nature.'' That is, the metabolic rift originates not only from increasing total amounts of material and energy
throughput (as important as these flows may be), but also from the relentless and chaotic transformation of relations and conditions of production (including ecological conditions) in geographically specific ways.
In transforming and redefining material conditions and `limits', capitalism also

transforms, redefines, and produces new `socioecological' temporal and spatial scales
(Robbins and Fraser, 2003; Sayre, 2005). All that is solid may well melt into air. What an interesting phrase in the context of the current discussion! Need we then consider the complex constituents of newly
produced air into which that which was previously solid has now melted? How does it change the valence of this celebrated phrase if we include, for instance, a proliferation of persistent organic pollutants volatized
and dispersed through the atmosphere, condensed disproportionately in colder climes, and bioaccumulated in arctic and Antarctic food webs, to say nothing of the accumulation of greenhouse gases as driving
a whole suite of political ecological relations is caught

up in and reworked in the emerging economy and geography of biofuels and carbon
offsets. Returning again to the pages of Uneven Development, Smith (page 88) goes on to note in a prescient reference to the implications of climate change that ``the industrial production of carbon
forces in the changing composition of the atmosphere? In the case at hand,
dioxide and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere have had very uncontrolled climatic effects ... [t]he most complete and elaborate of human productions, the capitalist system, is at the same time the most
anarchic ... . The production process is quite deliberate, but its immediate goal, profit, is reckoned in terms of exchange-value, not use-value'' (emphasis added). Critically, where green capitalism is concerned, this
must include an account of the role of the entrepreneurial, bourgeois subject propelling accumulation on an expanded scale. For Marx, one of the signature features of capitalism is the central figure presented by
the capitalist, driven to expand the scale and scope of accumulation as an end in and of itself. Marx offers the following striking characterization of the phenomenon of accumulation for accumulation's sake, and its
embodiment in the very identity of the archetypal capitalist (who, it should be noted, Marx unfortunately makes uniquely male): `ìn so far as he is capital personified, his motivating force is not the acquisition and
enjoyment of use-values, but the acquisition and augmentation of exchange-values. He is fanatically intent on the valorization of value; consequently he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production's
sake. In this way he spurs on the development of society's productive forces, and the material conditions of production which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and
free development of every individual forms the ruling principle. Only as a personification of capital is the capitalist respectable. As such, he shares with the miser an absolute drive toward self-enrichment. But what
appears in the miser as the mania of an individual is in the capitalist the effect of a social mechanism in which he is merely a cog. Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes it necessary constantly
to increase the amount of the capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition subordinates every individual capitalist to the immanent laws of capitalist production, as external coercive laws. It
compels him to keep extending his capital, so as to preserve it, but extend by means of progressive accumulation'' (1977, page 729, emphasis added). There is a lot to digest in this quote. For this discussion, I note
four elements of the passage. First, there is certainly at least a hint of the Prometheanism of Marx, his sense that capitalism unleashes productive powers that will eventually lead to a `higher form of society'.
Second, however, the bourgeois subject propels the production of new material conditions, among them new socionatures produced in, through, and even in some cases for commodity production, such as
genetically modified crops in agriculture. This dynamic underpins the production of first and second nature, as crucially redefined by Smith (2008 [1984]), through material transformation but also, more abstractly,
through the proliferation of nature as exchange value (second nature). Third, Marx observes that, while the bourgeois subject is defined by almost fanatically eschewing self-gratification in use-values, this is
somewhat of an imposed compulsion, what Marx calls a `social mechanism'. As is made clear elsewhere in Capital (1977), this compulsion originates in the need to expand the scale of production merely in order to
maintain a constant volume (not rate) of profit for any given individual capitalist; in short, the capitalist must run to stay in place (see also Harvey, 1982). There is, of course, much to be said on these topics. But, for
the purposes of this discussion, note finally that Marx makes the suggestive observation here that maintaining a nondeclining volume of profit (again, based on an expanding scale of production) as capital
personified is the only manner in which the bourgeois subject is validated or made respectable, albeit in relation to a largely presumed wider social and cultural field. In short, this is the capitalist's identity,
compelled to expand even if only to stay in place economically, but also compelled by a politics of cultural recognition in a capitalist society that valorizes his or her social role only through the `valorization of
value'. But now this phrase must be understood in a double sense as both the expansion of value through exploitation of commodified labor power in production, and cultural value or worth attributed to the
capitalist according to his or her ability to oversee this exploitation. If correct, this portrait of the bourgeois entrepreneurial subject presents a sobering problem for green capitalism. If capitalism produces all
manner of potentially progressive and liberating technologies and conditions of production (as seems to be the case), it also produces these according to a logic driven not by meeting those needs per se, but by the
anarchic dynamics of accumulation for accumulation's sake, in turn driven by a nihilistic bourgeois subject whose claim to fame is accumulation in and of itself, and, moreover, whose ability to merely reproduce
himself or herself is predicated on accumulation on an ever expanding scale. While a market-centered discourse of environmentalism fixates on the most efficient ways to meet given environmental targets, it
ignores the systemic production of new environmental problems (new natures) for which there may be no social regulation and no targets, and which leaves unchallenged a political economy whose mantra is
If growth may be required to lift millions if not billions out of grinding

poverty, growth in a capitalist economy is fuelled not by meeting human needs per
growth as an end in itself.
se, but by accumulation for accumulation's sake, and, with it, not just expansion, but anarchic transformation, of social relations, of
This systematically violates any robust version of the precautionary
principle, interpreted generally as `do no harm', since it places society in a position of
reacting ex ante to the changing character of produced nature. To be clear, this is not to say that all forms of socionatural
change produced through accumulation for accumulation's sake are necessarily destructive or undesirable. Rather, it is to say that the production of socionature,
under green capitalism, is subordinated to the will of the entrepreneur whose ethos is
accumulation as an end in itself. Historical examples of the phenomenon may include
numerous beneficial technologies, but they also include the development of a range
of new chemicals for applications in agriculture , industrial processes, and consumer goods, not least in the form of synthetic organics and
technology, and of biophysical nature.
hybrid organic/inorganic chemicals such as polychlorinated and polybrominated biphenyls (Colborn et al, 1996). Rachel Carson (1994) made these the focus of her life's work. Polychlorinated biphenyls, first
manufactured commercially by one of the parent companies of what became
Monsanto, are perhaps the poster child of the
phenomenon , a boon across a range of industrial and commercial applications, but

also at the heart of an almost unparalleled toxic legacy whose implications continue
to unfold. Moreover, and this is the main point I am trying to emphasize here, these and other chemicals are the direct products of innovative capital striving to make use of its formerly wasted byproducts in the absence of knowledge about or regulation of the effects of introducing new substances into commodity circulation, food chains, and the environment more generally. If this is a seldom celebrated
form of ìndustrial ecology', it is also quintessentially green capitalism. I am generally in agreement with and informed by O'Connor (1998) on capitalism's second, ecological, contradiction here except that I am
emphasizing not only the underproduction of the (ecological) conditions of reproduction, but also the systemic production of new ecological conditions that may be (and, indeed, have been) highly destructive to
The
Branson case actually epitomizes and encapsulates this rather well. Here, a private
entrepreneur proposes to invest money from companies he controls into new, private,
profit-seeking ventures which ostensibly redress an existing set of environmental
dilemmas (ie climate-change-inducing effects of fossil fuel combustion) by introducing a new set of fuels for profit-driven transportation services and an attendant set of new environmental problems,
many as yet unspecified or not well known. Hardly an example of the harnessing of capital to the green cause,
Branson's announcement from this perspective exemplifies many of the reasons to be
concerned with the very possibility of or limits to a `green capitalism'. Green capitalism as performance
Green capitalism relies on the role of the entrepreneurial bourgeois subject as a
price-guided innovator propelling more environmentally friendly technoeconomic
development. But the success of green capitalism and the central role of the entrepreneur rests on more than the òbjective' (quantitative and qualitative) characteristics of resulting produced
human and nonhuman life. To advocate the desirability of such outcomes or a faith in the social foundations of their genesis, as green capitalism requires, seems rather perverse indeed.
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the entrepreneur must be seenin political and cultural termsto

be an architect of, rather than an obstacle to, a greener future. On the one hand, this wider social sanction is consistent with the existing status of entrepreneurs
as elites through the cultural worth and politics of recognition ascribed to accumulation for its own sake, as indicated by Marx in the extended quote above. But, on the other hand, it requires
both extension and qualification of the scope of the entrepreneur's expertise into
matters pertaining to environmental change. Specifically, accumulation as an end in itself is no longer (if it ever really was) adequate; rather, the
natures. Rather, green capitalism must also be accepted as legitimate. In order for this to happen,
viability of investment schemes, and with them the legitimacy of the green entrepreneur, turns on the realization of value in a market, which requires some form of social sanction (formal or otherwise) of the
commodities produced by green capitalists. How a politics of worth articulates with commodities in the circulation and realization of value is a complex matter indeed (see eg Henderson, 2004; Sayer, 2003). But,
for green capitalism to `work', environmentalism and capitalism must be understood

not as antagonisms but, rather, as a combatable fusion embodied in technoeconomic
trajectories , as well as in the figure of the bourgeois subject himself or herself. In some ways, this curious combination is the most
remarkable feature of green capitalism as a cultural logic. There are parallels here between green capitalism and aspects of
what have come to be called `neoliberalism'. I have contributed previously to arguments that the reworking of long-standing political and economic variants of liberalism in relation to socionatural relations, the
politics of environmental change, and environmentalism is constitutive of what we have come to understand as neoliberalism (Heynen et al, 2007; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004). But therein lies something of the
we must attend to the specific ways in which what we understand to

be the `core' of neoliberalism comes to articulate with such disparate projects and
outcomes, and how it is that political subjectivities are reworked in ways that
undermine any sense that neoliberalism is simply something that `they' are doing to
ùs' (Larner, 2003). The alternative is to treat these combinations and permutations as selfevident manifestations of an all-encompassing neoliberalism without ever bothering
to even seek explanation for how ìt' happened. As Larner (2000)drawing on Hall (1988)correctly observed, this is exactly a problem of
problem. Both analytically and politically,
hegemony, and thus of exploring how what would seem in some ways odd or counterintuitive comes (eventually) to seem normal and even common sense. This requires engaging in some understanding of the
politics of legitimacy, to see how it is that particular discursive formations, institutional arrangements, social movements, actors, and material practices come to constitute the terrain of consent. Thinking along
neoliberal capitalism as `à

rationality that is expressly amoral at the level of both ends and means'' can be made
to articulate and combine with one ``that is expressly moral and regulatory'' (ie neoconservatism).
similar lines, Brown examines the relationship between neoliberalism and neoconservatism, (2006, page 692) and asks how it is that
The same question pertains to green capitalism. How is it that the entrepreneurial subject, the capitalist, comes to have the foundation of his or her elite status extended beyond the scope of accumulation as an
inherent good, so that expanded rounds of capital accumulation and social decision making led in significant measure by the entrepreneur comes to constitute a pivotal part of the solution in meeting the challenges
of environmental change and environmentalism? This is a political problem for the would-be green capitalist such as Branson; it is also a question for critics of green capitalism to grapple with, more so perhaps than
has been the case to date. Obviously, this is a complex question. Yet, as in Brown's analysis, it points to the need to understand the reworking of political rationalities in relation to state and society, in this context
focusing on how a cultural politics of the green entrepreneurial subject comes to have coherence.
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A2: Tech Solves / Green Capitalism

Small, technological fixes are just band-aid solutions only move crises
around, prolonging and intensifying existing problems
York and Clark 2010 (Richard, Professor, Sociology Department, University of Utah. Brett,
Assistant Professor, Sociology Department, Assistant Professor of Sustainability, Environmental

Humanities Graduate Program and Environmental & Sustainability Studies Program, University of
Utah, 2010, Nothing New Under the Sun? The Old False Promise of New Technology, FOOD,
ENERGY, ENVIRONMENT: CRISIS OF THE MODERN WORLD-SYSTEM, pp. 203-224)
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISES OLD AND NEW: TECHNOLOGICAL FIXES AND ECOLOGICAL RIFTS The social gravity of capitalism has organized social relations on the second tier of time since the "long" sixteenth century.
the economic system has created numerous ecological rifts (or ruptures) in
ecosystems. In response to environmental problems or barriers, capital pursues a
series of shifts and technological fixes. Here an environmental problem is "solved" by
incorporating new resources into the production process, changing location of
production, and/or developing new technologies to increase the efficiency of
production. Shifts and fixes operate on the first tier of time, marking specific changes within a mode of production. The social gravity of capitalism
influences how shifts and fixes are employed. Nevertheless, these "solutions" offer
Throughout this period,
the illusion that the resolution of crises is possible within the existing system , while
often denying that changing the system itself is possible. An important underlying issue is that one problem is often transformed
into anothera shift in the type of ecological rift, such as when products made from wood are replaced with products made from plastic, shifting the environmental impact from one of forest exploitation to one of
waste. The constant drive to accumulate capital demands the

ceaseless exploitation of the physical world. Isolated metabolic rifts increase in scale, becoming generalized ecological rifts, as the capitalist system
threatens to violate planetary ecological boundaries. The persistent shifts, technological fixes, and ecological rifts are
evident when considering the historical development of food and energy production
under capitalism. Increasingly, the ecological crises associated with these two realms are intersecting. Capital has great mobility, which
has allowed it to simply shift around ecological problems rather than addressing
them. One avenue for this is geographic displacement, which occurs when resources in one region of the world are exhausted and
extraction and production are shifted to a different location. Another approach by capital is to "solve," in the short run, an
environmental restriction by changing the type of production process. In this situation, new
environmental problems are often created without actually solving the initial
ecological concern (Clark & York, 2008). For example, attempts to address the loss of soil nutrients
throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries illustrate the ecological rifts and
shifts of capitalism. Drawing upon agricultural studies, Marx recognized that soil required specific nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassiumto maintain its ability to produce
crops, because as crops grow they take up these nutrients. In pre-capitalist societies, these nutrients were often
returned to the soil after consumptionin the form of agricultural, animal, and human
wastemaintaining soil fertility. The enclosure movement and the concentration of
land created a division between town and country, causing the urban population to
grow. Food and fiber were shipped to distant markets, hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles away, transferring the nutrients of the soil from the country to the city where they accumulated as waste,
rather than being returned to the soil. This type of production "disturbs the metabolic interaction between
man and the earth" and "prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements
consumed by man in the form of food and clothing," undermining "the lasting fertility of the soil" (Marx, 1976: 637). As a result, a
fossil fuel dependence and the creation of new forms of
metabolic rift was created in the nutrient cycle (Foster, 2000). The transfer of nutrients and the rift in the soil nutrient cycle was tied to the accumulation process. Intensive agricultural practices, associated with
large-scale agriculture, increased the yield of food and fiber, intensifying this rift, squandering the riches of the soil. One of the attempts to fix the metabolic rift of declining soil fertility in the 1800s was the
development of an international guano/nitrate trade. Guano (bird droppings)from islands, off the coast of Peru, on which were large seabird colonieshad high concentrations of phosphate and nitrogen. At the
time, guano was determined to be one of the best fertilizers, both enriching the soil and increasing crop yields. Millions of tons of guano were dug up by imported Chinese "coolies" in Peru under conditions worse
than slave labor and exported to the United States and European nations, where it was applied widely to enrich soils. The necessity to import fertilizer reflected a problem in capitalist agriculture, but it did not
fundamentally mend the metabolic rift, as the historical background conditions remained in place. As a result, guanoa natural resource that had been used for centuries to enrich the soils of Peruwas distributed
on the global market, rapidly diminishing the reserves on the islands (Clark & Foster, 2009). Guano and nitrates provided a temporary means to replenish lost nutrients, but given the town and country divide and
intensive agricultural production, the loss of soil nutrients was a persistent problem. As a result, soil degradation continued to plague core nations. At the same time, the metabolic rift was extended to the
international level with the further integration of regions into the capitalist world-system. For example, Peru increasingly produced cash crops such as sugar and cotton for the international market, transferring the
nutrients embodied in food and fiber to other nations. Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael (1989) explain that from the 1870s to the 1930s the first food regime was established, which included a geological shift,
whereby food and livestock imports from colonies supported British industrial society. The soil, land, and people in distant regions were exploited; and often a system of monoculture was imposed in accord with the
demands of the core nations (McMichael, 2009). The concept of food regime serves as a means to assess the central role of food in all of its social relationships of production and consumption in the global political
economy. It also highlights the various contradictions associated with food that interrupt periods of relative stability, leading to transformations surrounding the production and circulation of food within the worldsystem. This important concept identifies the major events on the first tier of time that alter everyday practices, trade, and production. The social gravity on the second tier of time persists, ensuring that these
transformations in food regimes in the end facilitate the further accumulation of capital. Furthermore, this conception of food regimes and the transition to new regimes illuminate some of the shifts, technological
Perhaps the most important technological change in

agricultural production for the twentieth century was initiated just before the First
World War, when Fritz Haber devised a process for fixing nitrogen from the air. This innovation
fixes, and ecological rifts that are historically associated with food production.
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e use of inorganic fertilizers and

pesticides helped shape the second food regime from the 1950s to the 1970s (McMichael, 2010). This food regime
involved agricultural subsidies that helped make the United States the breadbasket of
the world, as surplus food was exported to Europe and the Third World. Industrialized agriculturewhich is
fossil fuel intensive served as the model for the Green Revolution that was exported to the global South. As is the norm, technological breakthroughs are
allowed for large quantities of artificial nitrogen fertilizer to be produced to sustain yields. In the following decades, th
frequently presented as the basis to address each and every social and
environmental problem that arises . Often, it is assumed that humans are exempt from
natural constraints and limits, as these proposed solutions allow society to overcome
whatever barriers it confronts without fundamental changes in the organization of
society. For instance, global hunger is often seen as a technical problem, rather than a
distribution problem. Thus, the Green Revolution, initiated in the mid-1900s, was offered as a way to increase global production of food, declaring that this would help stem
international hunger. It was also part of a development project that hoped to undercut revolutionary movements in the Third World. Rather than promoting the
redistribution of land through agrarian reform, to give people access to the means of
production, a technical package was promoted throughout the global South. Highyield varieties of cereal crops, which required massive inputs of fertilizers and
pesticides, and extensive systems of irrigation, were promoted (Shiva, 1991; Weis, 2007). This model imposed the
industrial-agricultural practices of the global North throughout the world. The Green Revolution geared agricultural production to specialization in exports. It furthered the concentration of land within nations, as the
new practices were expensive to operate and maintain. Altogether, the second food regime concentrated economic power within the food sector. Large fertilizer, chemical, and seed companies exerted monopoly
The
Green Revolution did increase global food production at a rate that surpassed
population growth. However, hunger, malnutrition, and famine persisted . This
illustrates the important point that technological fixes rarely solve problems that
have their origin in larger social structures. Obviously, producing enough food for all people
is a necessary condition to avoid hunger, but it is far from a sufficient one. Thus, although society is
control. Vertical and horizontal integration concentrated power along the food chain, as far as butchering, processing, and distribution of food (Heffernan, 1998; Lewontin, 2000; Middendorf et al., 2000).
faced with a technical challenge of producing enough food, high food production will not in and of itself eliminate hunger. Over the course of the twentieth century, famines did not occur due to an absolute shortage
of food (Sen, 1981), which points to the fact that famines and hunger are not fundamentally technical problems, but rather stem from the social order. Famine and hunger are social problems rooted in the unequal
This example illustrates that

regardless of the probleminequality in political involvement, hunger, or environ
mental deteriorationthe same type of solution is proposed, as if technological
innovation will eliminate problems, without necessitating changes to the social order.
distribution of resources, within a system that gives precedence to the accumulation of capital over human well-being (Magdoff, 2008b).
The second food regime enhanced the accumulation of capital, but it did not solve the ecological problems associated with food production. Industrial agriculture progressively separated agricultural animals from
croplands, leading to confined animal feeding operations that are dependent on grain from distant lands and that produce massive amounts of wastes that pollute waterways (Foster & Magdoff, 2000; Marks, 2001).
Here animal waste is not recycled back to the land, further rupturing the circulation of nutrients. Large tracts of land are often cleared for mechanized production of monoculture crops, destroying previously
integrated ecosystems and rupturing natural cycles, such as the hydraulic cycle (Magdoff, 2007). Capitalist agriculture is caught in a complex struggle to shift nutrients around (Mancus, 2007). Given the
continuation of the metabolic rift in the nutrient cycle, inorganic fertilizers are used to sustain agricultural production. Ironically, humans now "con tribute double the natural rate of terrestrial nitrogen fixation....
From 1960 to 2000, the use of nitrogen fertilizers increased" by approximately 800% (Canfield, Glazer & Falkowski, 2010: 195). Scientists indicate that agricultural practices have "drastically disrupted the nitrogen
cycle" (Canfield, Glazer & Falkowski, 2010: 192). Half of current fertilizer use supports wheat, maize, and rice production. These crops use less than 40% of the nitrogen that is applied. Much of the remaining
nitrogen is washed away and contributes to other ecological problems such as "dead zones" in gulfs and seas (Fields, 2004; Glibert et al., 2005). To make matters worse, indus trial fixation of nitrogen increases the
The
industrial "solution" to the soil and food crises has contributed to the climate crisis,
while agricultural land continues to be degraded. The historic pattern with regard to
addressing the depletion of soil nutrients is clear: each "solution" creates new
problems, new ecological rifts, without necessarily solving the old one. McMichael (2009; 2010) proposed
reliance of agriculture on fossil fuel, adding to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In fact, industrial agriculture is responsible for at least a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.
that a third food regime may be emerging. The new regime involves dispossessing peasants from their lands throughout the global South, in order to shift food production toward long "animal protein chains" and
the supply of fresh fruits year round. It also entails the creation of an agrofuel system, under the guise of solving both the energy and climate crises, by reducing carbon emissions through the use of a renewable
resource. Currently between 1 and 2% of the world's arable land is devoted to the production of agrofuels. By 2050, it is estimated that 20% will be employed to this end (Liversage, 2010). It is important to assess
the ecological implications of agrofuel beyond the green veneer that has been attached to this industry. The agrofuel complex is a "quick fix" to maintain "current excessive patterns of energy consumption" that also
provides new investment opportunities for capital (White & Dasgupta, 2010: 595-96). Globally, agrofuel production has encouraged deforestation, which undermines the carbon sequestration of forest ecosystems.
Huge tracts of land are put into production, using unsustainable agricultural practices, such as the application of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, to grow crops to be used as fuel. David Pimentel (2003) points out
that growing corn for ethanol production increases soil erosion and environmental degradation. This system of production continues to create ecological rifts, whether it is in the nutrient, hydraulic, or carbon cycle.
First generation agrofuels pose serious environ mental concerns, as more energy is consumed in the production of the fuel than is produced (Fargione et al., 2008; Pimentel, 2001; 2003; Shattuck, 2009;
Scharlemann & Laurance, 2008; White & Dasgupta, 2010). As a result, the production of agrofuel is actually increasing the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (Ernsting, 2007). Second generation
agrofuel crops promise to be more technologically intensive, presenting further social and eco logical considerations as far as the control of capital. While the third food regime continues to take shape with agrofuels
as part of its reconfiguration, the ecological contradictions generated by the social gravity of the capitalist mode of production continue to manifest themselves, culminating in the ecological rift associated with
Similar patterns of shifts, technological fixes, and ecological rifts in the

capitalist relationship to nature are evident in the development of energy production
technologies. In brief, the long history of energy involves the burning of biomass,
particularly wood, which has been one of the primary energy sources humans have
depended on throughout history. The smelting of metals and other energy-intensive production processes increased the energy demands of societies. Even before
global climate change.
the Industrial Revolution, vast stretches of forests were cleared to feed the fires. The new machinery of the industrial age required increasing amounts of fuel to operate on a growing scale. Wood became scarce.
since capitalists sought further accumulation, which came from energy intensive
industrial production, coal came to serve as the standard fuel of industry. Here capital
sidestepped the fuelwood crisis by incorporating the burning of fossil fuels as a
technological fix to maintain and expand production. Nonetheless, forests continue to fall as
But,
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new demands on this resource emerge, decreasing the carbon sinks available to absorb the carbon dioxide released during the combustion of coal and
other fossil fuels. This technological shift to fossil fuel consumption continues to contribute to
global climate change, acid rain, and air pollution (Smil, 1994; Williams, 2003). In burning coal, natural gas, and oil, capital
broke the solar income budget, releasing massive quantities of carbon dioxide. The
concomitant ecological degradation (e.g., deforestation) that has accompanied economic growth
has reduced available carbon sinks. As a result, the carbon metabolism of the economy has led to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cli
mate change (Clark & York, 2005). The organizing forces on the second tier of time are threatening to cross the planetary boundaries that sustain the conditions of life, creating a global ecological crisis.
public debate is hamstrung by the social gravity of capital. It is clear that human
activities are the primary forces responsible for the warming of the earth's
atmosphere (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007). Yet, today, the same false promises are put forward as
solutions to these problems, without questioning the underlying social relations.
Technological optimism serves as the only legitimate action, which allows for the
social gravity to remain as an organizing force in society. Perhaps nowhere is this technological-fix approach more evident than
Nonetheless,
when considering energy and global climate change. Numerous "novel solutions" are proposed to address the ecological crisis, six of which we mention here. Each is noteworthy for how narrowly it conceives the
advocates extensive geoengineering to

avoid climate change. He proposes injecting sulfur into the stratosphere to increase the albedo of Earth, which would make the atmosphere reflect more of the sun's energy back into
space, countering the warming stemming from the rising concentration of greenhouse gases. Secondly, there have been proposals to engage in
widespread fertilizing of the world's oceans with iron so as to stimulate phytoplankton blooms, which would absorb car bon. Thirdly,
Freeman Dyson (2008), a well-known physicist, argues that one-quarter of the world's forests
should be replaced with genetically engineered carbon-eating trees in order to
increase the absorption capacity of forests. Fourth, it has been proposed that coal-burning
power plants can be designed to capture and store carbon within the earth itself. Fifth, in
order to meet increasing energy demands, nuclear power plants have been given the
green light, assuming that this will facilitate a shift to a sustainable future. This development has come about despite the unresolved concerns about how to store nuclear waste safely for long
periods of time. Sixth, as addressed above, in order to overcome potential restrictions on oil consumption, high-tech agrofuels have been advocated as a "green" alternative. Many of the
aforementioned solutions are rooted in a sincere concern to address climate change.
Each of these "new ideas" to attend to longstanding ecological contradictions are
based on the same approach that capitalism has always used to confront crises frame
each crisis as a technical problem that can be solved through modern technology,
while ignoring the social barriers to adoption and the underlying socio-ecological
contradictions of the capitalist world-system (Carolan, 2009; Li, 2008; York & Clark, 2010). This approach is very dangerous, given that if a problem
problem. First, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen (2006), an important scientist who addressed ozone depletion,
is assumed solvable through technological development, it is also assumed that it is unnecessary to take actions to preserve forests, curtail the burning of fossil fuels, transform agricultural production, and change
the political-economic conditions that have created these problems. Each of the proposed solutions identified above entails numerous unintended ecological consequences and would, therefore, likely set off another
wave of environmental problems that would need to be addressed in the future. For instance, engineering the atmosphere in the manner noted above would generate acid rain. Replacing portions of the world's
forests with genetically engineered trees would have dramatic implications for bio diversity and ecosystems. Iron fertilization would have striking effects on the ecology of the oceans; it is highly impractical, and it
would have little effect on carbon concentration in the atmosphere (Strong et al., 2009). Expanding nuclear power plants generates an increasing stock of nuclear waste, which will remain dangerous for thousands
of years (Smil, 2003). Agrofuels further unsustainable industrial agricultural practices, increasing soil depletion and de forestation, without actually reducing carbon emissions (Fargione et al., 2008; Magdoff, 2008a;
Searchinger et al., 2008). Proposals for power plants that capture carbon and store it underground require technology that is not even in operation, and ignore the ecological destruction associated with extraction of
fossil fuels (Kintisch, 2007; Palmer et al., 2010; Schiermeier, 2006). Furthermore, even proponents acknowledge that there are many technical barriers to widespread development of carbon storage power plants
and, even if successfully implemented on a large scale, it would take decades before these hypothetical power plants played much of a role in reducing carbon emissions to the atmosphere (Haszeldine, 2009).
These solutions fail to recognize the historical background conditions that are
operating, preventing a systematic analysis of the social relations that restrict social
organization and action from genuinely addressing longstanding ecological problems.
Capitalism is inherently anti-ecological as it systematically subordinates nature in its pursuit of endless accumulation. Its appetite is
insatiable, as it attempts to overcome, surmount, and/or conquer whatever social and
natural obstacles it confronts in its development. Even if the proposed solutions were implemented, the social relations driving ecological
degradation are still in place, continuing to generate problems. The adoption of alternative fuels, such as agrofuels, does not necessarily displace the burning of fossil fuels, given the ongoing increase in energy
today's solutions follow the established path, promising

the sky, but offering nothing new. For instance, another popular technological fix to alleviate
global climate change is to improve energy efficiency, which it is suggested will also
address the energy crisis by reducing energy demands. More specifically, it is proposed that the
forces of modernization, such as further economic development, will lead to
technological advances that allow for the dematerialization of society and the
decoupling of the economy from energy and material consumption (Mol, 1997; Leadbeater, 2000). Here, new
consumption to support economic growth (York, 2006; 2007). Thus,
technologies replace old, inefficient ones. Joseph Huber (2009: 334-35) asserts that "technological environmental innovations" such as "fuel-less" energy (e.g., "clean-burn hydro gen" and/or photovoltaics) and
The proposed "weightless society"

has not materialized, in spite of technological development and improvements in
energy efficiency. The constant pursuit of short term profit, the law that currently
operates at the second tier of time, influences social relations, production, and
nanotechnology will "reduce the quantities of resources and sinks used," allowing society to transcend environmental problems.
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technological in novation. In 1865, William Stanley Jevons (1906) explained that as the efficiency of coal use improved, making it more cost effective as an energy source, total
coal consumption increased. Thus, it cannot be assumed that increasing efficiency leads to a decline in the demands placed on resources. According to the Jevons
paradox, greater efficiency in resource use often leads to increased consumption, as
it helps further the expansion of production, potentially outstripping any gains made
in efficiency (Clark & Foster, 2001; Polimeni et al., 2008; York, 2006). This situation is clearly seen in regard to carbon dioxide emissions, as the most affluent nations in the world generally have
economies with much lower carbon intensity (higher efficiency) than developing nations, but they emit much more carbon dioxide per capita (Roberts & Parks, 2007; York, Rosa & Dietz, 2003; 2004). Thus,
"new" solutions offered by capitalism are really the same old failed solutions. For
something new under the sun to emerge, the social gravity operating at the second
tier of time must be transformed, allowing for the development of new social relationships that reorganize the metabolic interchange with nature. Here
metabolic restoration requires sustaining the efficiency of the energy flow through
natural systems, maintaining biodiversity, nourishing the self-sufficiency of
ecosystems, ensuring the self-regulation of ecosystems, and enhancing their
resiliency (Magdoff, 2007). These guiding principles necessitate restructuring agriculture to reintegrate the internal strengths of ecosystems and provide the basis for sharing knowledge throughout
the labor process. When freed from the social gravity of capital, human society can pursue a
social metabolic order that sustains the conditions of life and that begins to mend the
ecological rift (Foster, Clark & York, 2010). MAKING THE FUTURE Capitalism serves as a historical background
condition that exerts social gravity that influences social relations and organizations
on the second tier of time. Its social laws encourage, enhance, and protect the accumulation of capital. In this, its rapacious drive demands the constant exploitation of
nature, creating metabolic rifts in ecosystems, undermining their capacity to
regenerate. When confronted by barriers it shifts to other regions and/or resources,
generating new ecological problems. Technological fixes aid this process, facilitating
the ongoing development of capital. Throughout the centuries, the same solutions, but in novel variations, are offered to address whatever problems arise, such
as within agriculture and energy development. But they offer "nothing new under the sun," as capital interests and needs take precedence. The eco logical rifts are often deepened as capital reproduces itself on an
"What has been done

will be done again" characterizes the operation of capital. But what has been done
could be the undoing of human history, as we know it, given the increasing scale of
ecological problems, as ecosystems are threatened with collapse. Contemporary
environmental problems are similar to those in the past, but today the scale is bigger
and the rifts are deeper. Diamond (2005) illuminates how environmental degradation has contributed to the collapse of numerous societies throughout history. We now
face this threat on a global scale, as the social gravity of capital impinges on the
natural limits of the planet, threatening to undermine the biogeophysical properties
that help sustain the conditions of life.
ever-larger scale. The various crises within capitalism, whether it is the food, energy, or ecological crisis, are interrelated, given the social gravity of the system.
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A2: Race/Gender DAs to Alt

Historical material analysis doesnt exclude questions of racerather it
indicates that capitalist exploitation tends to amplify and construct
racism through the axes of alienation and oppression in order to divide
the working class
Bakan 8 (Abigail B., Marxism and Antiracism: Rethinking the Politics of Difference. Rethinking Marxism: Journal of Economics, Culture & Society (14 March 2008)
20:2,238-256)
Exploitation for Marx is not a relationship between things, in the sense of crude economic measurement, but a social relationship
that is mediated through the process of production. Exploitation therefore interacts
with various types and forms of human difference, which serve to define and redefine
certain human characteristics. As Resnick and Wolff argue, The method of Marxian theory calls for constructing the connecting links between
abstract concepts of class as process and the concrete conjuncture of social relationships, social conflicts, and social change. This method does not collapse these links into the
simplistic view that such relationships, conflicts, and change are the mere phenomena of classes as the ultimate, last instance or final determinant (1987, 115). In the lived
economic and extraeconomic forms of surplus extraction work togeth er.
conditions of capitalism,
Another way to think of this is that the system of capitalist exploitation and the capitalist state arise together; they are mutually dependent upon one another.
Exploitation is not the only factor in the continuation and expansion of capitalism. The
processes that are involved in maintaining a system of capitalist rule, or what Gramsci referred to as
ruling-class hegemony, are not only economic but are also social and political. The economic drive of capitalism
tends to nullify differences among human beings as commodified laborers, but these
commodified laborers interact in a competitive relationship for scarce means of
reproduction and survival. The hegemonic state tends to emphasize differences. The
competitive individual is theorized as the universal man, articulated in liberal democracies through the principle of individual rights and freedoms, and asserting the abstract
individual as citizen (Bakan and Stasiulis 2005). The state in Western democracies has relied upon atomization as part of the way in which systemic relations of exploitation, as
Alienation and oppression are central to the

reproduction of capitalist exploitation. These are other concepts to explain and
understand dynamic forms of differentiation that were also part of Marxs original framework; they explain relationships that
remain central to the ability of capitalism to continue to expand and reproduce itself. Alienation in Marx Alienation, a concept drawn originally from Hegel and the
German school of idealist philosophy, refers to the general distance of humanity from its real potential.
Unlike exploitation, which is, at least theoretically, materially measurable in terms of value production, alienation is not quantifiable. It is,
however, no less real in shaping how humans relate to one another : in ways that are either
solidaristic, which resist alienation, or competitive, which express and exacerbate alienation. For Marx, all those who live in class society any
form of class society, not only capitalismsuffer from alienation. This concept is developed most clearly in the early writings of Marx and Engels in the
well as alienation and oppression, are rendered invisible and reified.
1840s, and later by Marx in the Grundrisse, the notebooks that outline the foundations of Capital (Marx 1963, 1973a). While there has been significant debate regarding the place
of Marxs original theory of alienation in his lifelong intellectual development, it is without question that it was formative to his original contribution to contemporary thought
Marx aimed to challenge the

notion that human sufferingand human alienation, specificallywere natural, the inevitable result of the will of God or a spiritual
being outside the realm of human action. Unlike Hegel, alienation for Marx had material roots in concrete
historical conditions. The contradictions so starkly visible in capitalist societythe immense gap between potential and realityindicate the extent of
human alienation. For Marx, alienation arises from four sources. These are the distance of humanity from the
products of human labor; from the process of labor itself; from fellow human beings,
where antagonisms between classes and, importantly, within classes are endemic; and from what makes human beings unique , or
what Marx called species being. This can be understood through the lens of a politics of difference. For
(Althusser 1969; Althusser and Balibar 1970; Lukacs 1971; Meszaros 1972; Rosdolsky 1977; Thompson 1995).
Marx alienation is rooted in the construction of several levels of contradiction, or difference: between humanity and nature, between humanity as lived reality in specific
historical conditions and humanity as potential, and between some humans and others artificially separated and pitted against one another in the interests of the narrow material
interests of an elite minority class (Cox 1998, 47-51). The centrality of alienation in Marxs thought has received extensive attention in contemporary philosophical explorations. In
regard to debates that address the politics of difference, however, it has received scant notice. Alienation explains another form of human suffering, abstractly distinct from
exploitation though in concrete terms interacting with it. Alienation is expressed in the distance between the sense of self and the sense of other. This is not reducible to the
geographic space of the workplace or the temporal space of the working day. Alienation creates a sense of aloneness and isolation, grounded in a universalized experience of
competition with other human beings. It is not bounded by class or defined by any totalizing laws of motion, but it remains endemic to class society and takes an extreme form in
capitalist society in particular. Competitive relations among individuals, cultivated by the fetishism of the market and the universalization of the commodity form, compel a sense
of alienation of one human being from another, without rational or apparent reason. This approach to the contradictions posed by various forms of difference can explain not only
the sense of distance from the other, but also the potential for the active creation of its opposite: a movement of solidarity and a vision of a world free of human alienation. The
ethos of individualism in bourgeois or liberal democracies combines with the lived, alienated experience of isolation and a sense of separate-ness, or difference, from other
individuals. Alienation, then, is not counterposed to exploitation, but is expressed within and through these other processes. So long as humanity has not achieved its full potential
in a society motivated by the satisfaction of human needwhat Marx considered a world of genuine socialismthen alienation will continue. Moreover, alienation affects all
classes, so that the oppressor and the oppressed alike are considered alienated from the human condition, a condition that for Marx is inherently social and collective. From this
racism can be understood in part as an ideological codification and practical

expression of extreme alienation, affecting not only the oppressed other but the ascribed white hegemonic oppressor as well. Balibar
perspective,
similarly describes racism as an aggravating factor in contributing to a sense of mass insecurity (Balibar 2002, 43). Racism divides human beings from other human beings in
a manner that, as Miles rightly stresses, is entirely unfounded scientifically and in fact random, but it appears, feels, not to be random but meaningful. In Gramscis (1971)
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terms, racism can be seen to be integrated into the process of capitalist hegemony so as
to appear as common sense. Racism provides an organized, ostensibly coherent
ideology, and an institutionally enforced system of us and them, as if to have a rational element.
Racism serves to offer systematization, therefore, at least to some aspects of alienation. It provides a framework, defined by certain
ascribed characteristics of physical or cultural traits, that pits members of the exploited against other members of society, including members of their own class. The impact of
racism in lowering wages, shaping reserve armies of labor, and dividing labor markets is widely recognized (Galabuzi 2005; Agocs 2002; Allen 1994, 1997). At the same time,
racism blurs class distinctions that might otherwise be more visible (Singh 2004). In this sense, racism
can blur one form of differenceclass differencewhile cultivating differences that isolate individuals from potential allies within the same classes. Alienation and Hegemonic
Whiteness There is considerable debate in Marxist historiography regarding the specific nature of the relationship between racism and the rise of capitalism. Though a detailed
a Marxist notion of alienation is useful in

explaining difference and racialization as manifest in globalized processes of the
subjugation of entire sections of humanity through conquest, colonization, and
slavery. Moreover, it is a matter of historical fact that mercantile capitalism and slavery,
and the ideology of scientific racism specifically associated with Atlantic slavery,
develop and advance as part of a single, simultaneous process (Baum 2006). For the purposes of this
discussion, it is important to note simply that the racism of Atlantic slavery was unique in linking the barbaric
trade in human bodies to the capitalist notion of private property; and a specific version of racist ideology
historical elaboration goes beyond the scope of this discussion, it is not hard to see how
emerged in this context that was understood to be compatible with the universal rights of man on the grounds that certain humans, defined by ascribed racial characteristics,
were in fact not to be considered human at all. Slaves, as chattel, were treated like animals that were bought, sold, and tamed in a way similar to or worse than the treatment
of cattle or horses. This ideological expression of extreme inhumanity legitimated the mass brutality and abuse dealt those of black skin and African origin. This is typical of the
period of the dominance in the Americas of the plantation slave system of production, in full ascendance between 1640 and 1715, and continued in the U.S. South until the Civil
War (1861/5). The English and French colonies in particular saw the construction of intensive systems of exploitation .... [based on] newly elaborated social distinctions and
racial identities (Blackburn 1997, 311). With the dehumanization of blackness came the ascendancy of the white elite as defined by race, and exempt from the exploitation
and oppression experienced by the slaves. This separation, or construction of difference, as part of the making of the European ruling class, expressed the development of a
culture, ideology, and mythology of whiteness as part of the origins of capitalist expansion in Europe and throughout the Americas (Ignatiev 1995; Levine-Rasky 2000; Razack
2002; Baum 2006). Whiteness, though apparently neutral, became defined and generalized at the same time and as the development of the other in racialized slavery. Peter
Fryer (1984) traces the development of racism as a scientifically justified ideology specifically in the oral tradition and diaries of the plantocracy of the British Caribbean from the
seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Racism, as one form of systematizing alienation and as a central component of capitalist expansion, arose as part of a single historical
process. Allen identifies the use of whiteness as a means for the development of a system of social control in the antebellum south of the United States. Those who could not
become employers or even long-term leaseholders could be recruited in the interests of social control by being promoted to the white race. This was an elite response
specifically to threatened unity between bond-laborers and the free poor. This is a graphic example of the emergence of hegemonic whiteness, and its interaction with both
exploitation and gender oppression, in the context of alienation. This arrangement was implemented by conferring on the poor European-Americans a set of white-skin privileges;
privileges that did not require their promotion to the class of property owners. Such were the civil rights to possess arms, to plead and testify in legal proceedings, and to move
about freely with the presumption of liberty. Thus, rights that were the birthright of every man in England, were passed off as privileges in America, but privileges that, by the
principle of racial oppression, necessarily excluded any person, free or bond, of any perceptible degree of African ancestry (the one-drop rule). Among these white race
rights, was the right to marry.(The diminishing proportion or European-American bond-laborers, being bound for a limited term of years, had marriage as a prospective right.) This
right, however was denied to the African-American hereditary bond-laborers who, in the eighteenth century, became the main labor force in the plantation colonies. The denial of
coverture to African-American females, contributed to the creation of the absolutely unique American form of male supremacism, the white-male privilege of any EuropeanAmerican male to assume familiarity with any African-American woman or girl. Men of the employing classes have customarily always exercised this privilege with regard to
women of the laboring classes. What the white race did that was unique was to confer that privilege on an entire set of laboring-class men over the women of another set of
laboring people, and underwrote the privilege by making it a capital offense for any African-American man to raise his hand against any white man. (Scott and Meyerson 1998)
Racism has, of course, continued well beyond the period of Atlantic slavery, and has proved
to be an immensely adaptive source of division even in the most democratic phase
of capitalist development (Singh 2004). However, the centrality of the slave trade in the original
expansion of capitalism, and racism as a defining element of how really existing
capitalism has developed, is important in terms of understanding postslavery
cultures of hegemonic whiteness. Racism as a means of codifying and, in Gramscis terms, making sense of alienation, takes varied and
diverse forms in specific moments of capitalist accumulation, not least in colonial and imperialist occupation. Franz Fanons contributions can be understood to be pivotal to our
understanding of this process, though he does not operate in a self-consciously or consistently Marxist framework. In graphic detail, Fanon (1963) articulates the experience of
deep alienation of the colonized, affecting the bodies, thoughts, and feelings of life under imperialist military, political, economic, and social occupation. This could equally well be
applied to the experiences of numerous populations that have been subject to conquest and oppression, the focus of many authors influenced by the politics of difference and
specific racialized relationships within and between classes can

also be more refined than the broad notion of hegemonic whiteness serves to
explain. The complex adjustments of the U.S. ruling class, for example, to resistance to overt racism through limited accommodation to equality, while maintaining
systemic oppression, is traced in detail by Nikhil Pal Singh (2004). If alienation is like the background music, the specific
performances on the stage need to be viewed through a more focused lens. Here, a Marxist
poscolonial studies (Loomba 2005). However,
concept of oppression can prove helpful. Marx on Oppression Marxs ideas regarding exploitation have been amply addressed and debated in the Marxist literature, and his
writings on alienation are well known in Marxist circles, if not normally considered in terms of their relevance to antiracist theorization. Far less attention, however, has been given
to Marxs views regarding processes of oppression. Oppression is the least complete in its theorization of all the forms of human relations that Marx studied. And there is no doubt
that neither Marx nor his lifelong collaborator Frederick Engels was free of certain prejudices of their time. Given that their lives and experiences predated universal suffrage and
the social movements against oppression that have contributed to the common sense of the Left today, this should not be surprising. The point emphasized here, however, is that
significant elements of an anti-oppression framework were nonetheless present in the method developed by Marx. This framework was not produced in a single work, but is
exemplified in various historical and analytical writings addressing slavery in the United States, the Irish question, the Jewish question, women and the family, and such issues as
poverty and suicide (Marx 1972; Anderson 1999; Bakan 2004). A detailed investigation of Marxs writings from the perspective of a theory of oppression cannot be accomplished
in this limited discussion. Generally, however, for Marx oppression includes both ideological and material elements. It is also historically specific, not subject to general, common
laws of motion. Like alienation and unlike exploitation, it defies quantification, but unlike alienation and like exploitation, it is a socially concrete category that can only be studied
Oppression in Marx can be described as taking two distinct

forms: class oppression; and the specific oppression of sections of classes, or what we may call special oppression. Class oppression is the
lived form of the experiences of the exploited, but can include those who are not directly exploited, such as the unemployed.
Marx often referred, for example, to the oppressed classes, meaning the proletariat, the unemployed, the peasantry,
sharecroppers, slaves, serfs, and so on. What can be called special oppression divides
the working class or any other oppressed class within itself and, in turn, obscures
and understood in historically specific conditions.
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class differences by creating new lines of demarcation that are used as a means of subordination. Special oppression is particularly necessary where there is a
threat of unity among the oppressed classes against the hegemonic bloc. Special oppression forces a sense of competition
among the workers and thereby weakens their collective ability to resist. It is particularly important
in conditions of advanced capitalist society, working against the threatened universality of experience imposed by the system. The relations of
production of capitalist society, of exploitation and the drive for profit, by treating
workers as common and unitary as commodified labor power threatens to reduce
difference and forge bonds of solidarity. There are then, regarding oppression, basic contradictory tendencies within capitalism.
Capitalism has tendencies both to divide workers on the grounds of special oppression within the class, and at the same time to press workers into a common experience of
oppression as a class, where their interests are shared. Workers are divided by special oppression, but this also serves to hide, or reify, the lived reality of each individual,
intensifying but also rendering alienation apparently rational. In the Poverty of Philosophy, Marx elaborates a distinction between class oppression, based on the common
experiences of the working class, which provides the basis for the formation of a class in itself, and the act of resisting class oppression, which depends upon the conscious selfemancipation of the working class or becoming a class for itself. His argument, developed as a polemic challenging the views of his contemporary Proudhon, is made in the
context of defending the rights of workers to unite in early forms of trade union associations, or combinations. Marx saw the experience of collective workplace organization as an
exercise in class organization and the development of collective class consciousness, shaped through its conflict with capital. He saw this as a limited and defensive form of
resistance, but also as a necessary and valuable step beyond efforts merely to survive or to resist as individuals rather than collectively. Thus, [e]conomic conditions had first
transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests. The mass is thus
already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. Marx notes the phenomenon of class oppression, a distinct category from exploitation and its particular form in capitalist
society. He notes that [a]n oppressed class is the vital condition for every society founded on the antagonism of classes. The emancipation of the oppressed class thus implies
necessarily the creation of a new society ... Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself (1973b, 173-4). Class oppression
compels the drawing together of workers in common conditions of labor as the system expands. It is organized through the process of labor extraction, or exploitation, but it
entails the vast realm of experiences from both in and away from the workplace. Limited access to employment, poor housing, limited access to education and medical care,
ideologies of elitism, and so forth can all be seen today as aspects of class oppression. The penetration of ruling-class ideology as part of the training and socialization of the
working class is also a feature of class oppression. In The German Ideology, Marx famously wrote that the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class (1970, 64). It is
worth reconsidering this view in the context of racist ideology. Racism, Class Oppression, and Special Oppression As the capitalist system has expanded, there has been a
tendency to universalize class oppression. As industrial expansion took place in Europe and North America, for a period of time this meant a tendency to treat all workers more
like slaves than free laborers. Marx identifies the connection in the ideas of some of the most competitive sections of the capitalist ruling classes. The labour of supervision
and management, Marx writes, was dependent upon the antithesis between labor and capital. And it was justified at least in part by reliance upon the racist ideology and
practices learned by the ruling class in the period of slavery. In the third volume of Capital, he addresses this reliance by citing a specific example to demonstrate how the U.S.
ruling class learned from plantation slavery the importance of class servitude, or class oppression. Marx sarcastically cites one particular champion of slavery in the United
States, a lawyer named OConnor, at a meeting held in New York on December 19, 1859, under the slogan Justice for the South. Quoting OConnor, Marx indicates how the U.S.
capitalist class learned the benefits of wage labor, as the wage-labourer, like the slave, must have a master who puts him to work and rules over him (Marx 1959, 385). The
The commonality of experience as a class is

contradicted by the differentiation imposed by special oppression , where groups within and across classes,
identified by ascribed characteristics, are subjected to specific discriminatory practices. Common class oppression is also
affected by the generalized condition of alienation, which provides the background to
why sections of the oppressed classes are receptive to racist and other oppressive
ideas and practices. The notion of divide and rule was originally used by the Roman Emperor Tiberius in the first century A.D., and has proved useful as a
condition of class oppression is not, however, one-dimensional.
guiding principle of subsequent ruling classes (Callinicos 1993, 39). In an atmosphere of competition, the most successful sections of the bourgeoisie learn to rule by divide-andconquer tactics, where special oppression serves to hide common oppression as a class. Some forms of special oppression precede capitalist development, the oldest and most
Racial oppression has proved to be an effective, and adaptable,

mechanism for advancing capitalist interests. The core elements of the racist ideology
that defined the accumulation of capital during the period of Atlantic slavery, and that
marked the rise of the capitalist system on a global scale, is consistent with the
ruling-class project of the industrial phase of capitalist accumulation. This is not to suggest that racism
enduring being the oppression of women.
has not evolved and changed. However, the elements of the racism of slavery, the racism of colonialism, the racism of immigration controls, and the racism of post/9/11
clashes of civilizations bear more similarities than differences (Alexander 1987; Bakan 2005). Ascribed characteristics of lower status, considered to be universal to a subset of
humanity on the basis of characteristics of birth, whether part of biology or culture associated with land of origin, have defined racialized ideologies over various historical
periods. Though the biological basis of race has been repeatedly demonstrated to be an ideological construct without scientific basis, the real, lived experience of overt and
systemic discrimination grounded in the idea of race, and the commitment to racism, are no less incontrovertible. The twofold nature of oppression for Marx is related to the
contradictory relations associated with exploitation. Capitalism unites the working class in common labor removed from sources of subsistence other than the wage economy, but
it also compels competition among workers. This contradictory, dialectical pattern is described by Marx in his writings on the Irish question. Marx stresses the interplay between
capitalist class interests and the use of anti-Irish racism to divide the working class. Focusing on special oppression, Marx identifies how the ideology of anti-Irish prejudice
projected an artificial, cross-class identity between British workers and the British imperialist state (Callinicos 1993, 34/6). In a letter written 9 April 1870, regarding the relations
of Irish oppression to British capitalism, Marx summarizes how oppressionhere, racist oppression particularlyin combination with nationalism, operates within the capitalist
system. Every industrial and commercial centre in England possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary
English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns
himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national
prejudices against the Irish worker. His attitude is much the same as that of the poor whites to the niggers in the former slave states of the USA. The Irishman pays him back
with interest in his own money. He sees in the English worker at once the accomplice and stupid tool of the English rule in Ireland. This antagonism is artificially kept alive and
intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the English
The
tendency to divide workers in competitive relations with one another takes the form
of differential access to wages and labor rights, and the selective offering of, in the
words of W. E. B. Du Bois, a psychological wage (Du Bois 1969, 700/1). It also affects the lives of workers away from the
site of exploitation, or the workplace, regarding the distribution of the surplus. Discrimination in access to the distribution of
the social wage (affecting services such as medical care, public education, the justice system, etc.) is similarly affected by special
oppression. Oppression is fluid, operating in part to render the exploitation process
opaque, reified, or fetishized, hiding the reality of the ruling classs minority and
exploitative status (Lukacs 1971, 83/222). It is also a means through which certain sections from
among the oppressor group, of the working class, can explain their sense of
alienation from others who are more like them than different but with whom they feel
a sense of competition and distance. Through the perpetuation of constructed ideological and institutional mechanisms of identifying with
working class, despite its organization. It is the secret by which the capitalist maintains its power. And that class is fully aware of it. (in Marx and Engels 1965, 236-7)
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the ruling class, one section of the exploited can come to believe that they are in fact
superior to another section of workers.
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A2: Race/Gender DAs to Alt

Marxism is the ideal lens for approaching racial oppression the
historical materialist lens ensures a radically emancipatory framework
that prevents particular identity struggles from being atomized and
coopted.
Lovato, 2015
(Brian, lecturer at UC Santa Barbara, New Forces of Resistance: Antiessentialist Revolutionary

Subjectivity in Marxist Theory, Rethinking Marxism, 27:3, Taylor and Francis)
It is evident, then, that the Marxism of C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya is of a different variety than that of many other
The Marxism of
James and Dunayevskaya remains firmly grounded in historical analysis through the
Hegelian dialectic yet avoids the problem of class essentialism. In this way, James and
Dunayevskaya represent an alternative that, to quote Olga Domanski (in Dunayevskaya 1996, xii), avoided the
relativizing, demobilizing tendencies of postmodernism but was enabled to reach far
beyond earlier versions of the dialectic. James, by resisting essentialist understandings
of both class and race, points to the fact that dialectical thought rejects a concept of
revolution based on identity and instead concerns itself with positions within a social
totality that serve to undermine the truth of that social totality . Dunayevskaya presses on the
theorists, such as Lenin, Kautsky, or even Althusser, against whom Laclau and Mouffe focus their criticisms.
relationship of the universal and the particular to drive home Jamess point. Further, she expands Jamess vision of autonomous
These
contributions resist the temptation to slide into essentialist discourse by being
consistently grounded in a historical, dialectical framework. This allows for an
analysis of social reality as a constant unfolding of contradictions rather than an
abstract universal concept capable of dealing only in static identities and rigid
determinism. Given this, revolution for James and Dunayevskaya can be understood as a movement
toward truth in a given social order. This does not mean that all attempts at gaining
equal rights, membership, or pay are revolutionary . While there are myriad problems associated with the
revolutionary struggles by highlighting the overlapping forms of oppression experienced by black working-class women.
reform/revolution dichotomy, Dunayevskaya and James hold to the position, first laid out by Marx in Private Property and
revolutionary emancipation is not

concerned with the generalization of property but with its positive transcendence. In
this way, revolution is not concerned with generalizing the goods of a given social order
(despite the fact that this is an uncontestable improvement) but in abolishing that order.11 What both James and
Dunayevskaya saw in the black and womens movements of their time was the radical potential for
highlighting these elements of untruth in order to transcend racialized, gendered
capitalism.12 Even if James and Dunayevskaya are capable of responding to Laclau and Mouffes criticisms of Marxisms failure
Communism (in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844), that
to incorporate agents other than the working class into a theory of revolution, is their writing relevant today? What might two
nonacademic, Marxist intellectuals of the last century have to say to academics concerned with race, gender, class, or revolution in
While some scholarsMichael Omi and Howard Winant (1994, 424), for example
suggest that the Marxist tradition was never fully able to understand race because of
its insistence on reducing race to the national question, it should be clear that
Jamess writings on race represent a step away from this orthodox Marxist position and
one of the biggest steps forward for the Marxist tradition in attempting to grapple with race within the
paradigm of historical materialism. Admittedly, while James never fully articulates a conception of race capable of
competing with the one offered by Omi and Winant, it is not the case that such an articulation is impossible
within a Marxist framework. A more recent attempt to address the issue of race from a historical-materialist
standpoint is found in Joel Olsons (2004) The Abolition of White Democracy. In this work, Olson explains that racial formation
in the United States is the result of particular material practices that produce what he calls
white democracy. This claim allows Olson to talk of a political theory of race, and it distinguishes him from those
the early years of this century?
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scholars who claim that American democratic ideals are either unrealized or at odds with competing white-supremacist ideals.
Furthermore, Olsons book represents one of the best uses of Marxist methodology in the discussion of race in America. By arguing
against the concept of race as prepolitical, Olson lays out the development of race as coconstitutive of capitalism in the United
States. While his work provides a line of argument similar to that of Theodore W. Allen (1994) as well as to that of Pem Davidson Buck
(2001),13 Olson is set apart by his call for an explicitly abolitionist politics that carries echoes of both the original American
abolitionist movement as well as Hegels concept of aufheben (translated not only as overcoming or negation but also often as
abolition). What Olson does not explicitly do in his text is connect the notion of abolition democracy to the broader Marxian project
of total human emancipation. Dunayevskayas and Jamess writings on the subject do just that. Additionally, Olsons account, while
the dialectical relationship between black

subjectivity and the white social order. Dunayevskaya and James, insisting upon the revolutionary character of
masses in motion, argue that this relationship can never simply be one of top-down domination ; instead,
black subjectivity is always involved in shaping white consciousness and the dominant
social vision. Their work on this matter complements and enriches Olsons account of racial formation, fitting together to fill a
markedly materialist, does not adequately emphasize
void in each thinkers writings. The ultimate value of the writings of Dunayevskaya and James is found in their ability to understand
Marxism as something more than a theory of class emancipation in addition to their understanding of black liberation and the
womens movement as more than simple demands for the rights of particular identity groups within a larger social framework.
the element of total revolution that is found in Sojourner

Truths demand that the abolitionist movement engage feminism on its own terms, or
in the demand of black activists for equal rights alongside their white coworkers. These
demands recognize that the existence of multiple sites of oppression requires multiple
responses and multiple struggles for liberation that cannot be ranked hierarchically or
subsumed one under the other. This means that an understanding of Marxisms a
theory of revolution capable of thinking along multiple lines of oppression and across
multiple subject positions is in fact possible. This allows scholars to utilize Marxs
dialectical method without falling into the trap of class reductionism . It also allows
scholars the flexibility of, for instance, Laclau and Mouffes notion of multiple subject positions
without falling into the quietism, relativism, and uncritical pluralism that can be associated with
some strands of poststructuralist thought. For those scholars concerned with theorizing revolutionary
activity, this is a blessing. For activists engaged in these struggles, the availability of
a theoretical framework capable of understanding emerging social movements on
their own terms but within the context of social totality is of great benefit. While
Dunayevskaya and James focused on providing a Marxist analysis of struggles for race and gender equality, the flexibility of
their particular version of Hegelian Marxism makes it capable of incorporating new struggles:
struggles that, as they emerge, are not necessarily tied to conventional notions of an
oppressed subject fighting for emancipation. This capability serves to undermine arguments
from poststructuralists and critical race theorists who see in Marxism a theoretical
framework often bound up in a nineteenth-century conception of revolution and
revolutionary subjectivity. The alternative framework that has been discussed throughout this article
provides a way to understand Marxism as a theory and movement for total
emancipation in a sense that these interlocutors fail to recognize .
Dunayevskaya and James point instead to
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A2: Alt Links to Aff Ks of Squo

Universal concepts, technology, etc are only bad because they act
exclusively in the name of the ruling class alternative reclaims them in
name of proletariat which solves for the aff impacts
Smith, 2014
To be sure, one would imagine that an egalitarian society a radical egalitarian democracy
would work toward banishing coercive, dominant and authoritarian principles of social organisation
and state practice on behalf of the universal notion of mutual recognition.[124] In such a state of affairs , it is not too
far-fetched to suggest that society would employ technology not for the benefit of the
domination of some human beings over others (i.e., Adornos critique of three-tiers of domination), or for
the intensifying of human labour, or as a means of empty satisfaction in terms of completing the cycle between the
capitalist mode of labour and the commodification of leisure. Technologies would be employed in a manner
that would create less work, less domination, less exploitation of the nature world,
and less social control on behalf of increasing democratic empowerment in line with
radically different political-economy.[125] They would be employed, in other words, as
one means for constantly and normatively challenging the status quo . Though, as Elliot
Sperber suggests, a just society requires the presence of certain conditions the conditions of Justice,
Rights, Health, and Egalitarianism for example a just political-economy would create these conditions
directly and foster their continued expansion as a social priority and not as a
more or less incidental outcome of profiteering.[126] In such a radical alternative
political-economy in such a radical alternative society the voice of suffering would be the
condition of all truth.[127] This society would be founded on the awareness , to play on the
words of Adorno, of the normative advocating of the problem of needless suffering and its systematic
elimination. The history of human society, drenched in needless suffering, is perhaps the only real
category that might help us formulate a normative ethics, which, at once, advocates the
situating of bleak reality in historical and social context, not forgetting immediate pain but also
looking beyond this to its complex and often hidden antecedents.[128] That is to say that alongside sensitivity to human suffering,
which urges humanity to forever stride toward a concrete utopian hope in the possibility of reconciliation, toward a sense of future
promise that keeps despair and resignation at bay[129], it is in the creating of space for the communication of bodily and emotional
Basic
social-egalitarian principles as Justice and Health, as Sperber frequently examines, are concepts which, in
a better society, would help define the horizon of social thought and action they would
contribution to the definition of the very cultural basis of experience and of social orientation, and would surely work
toward the elimination of needless suffering. While today such concepts as Justice, Health,
Freedom, Equality, and Resourcefulness are disfigured with their status being almost entirely deformed in the name
of capital, employed in a systemic pursuit that actually creates more suffering it is through negative
dialectics that we can work through these deformations for the benefit of the
concepts themselves. In this approach, we can pursue the concept of freedom, of justice, of
solidarity, in a repressive and oppressive society knowing that they have been
transfigured and that they are now merely distortions, functions of contradictory
recognition.
pain[130] that, as Adorno writes, tells our knowledge that suffering ought not to be, that things should be different.[131]
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A2: Class as Monolith

Class is NOT monolithic it is contingent on how the division of labor,
modes of production, and class antagonisms manifest themselves at
specific historical moments.
San Juan Jr, 2003
(E., 2003, Cultural Logic, Marxism and the Race/Class Problematic: A Re-Articulation,
http://eserver.org/clogic/2003/sanjuan.html)
classes are specific and historically
determinate. They are neither rigid nor immutable. They arise from the complex
dynamics of historical development. There are not just two homogeneous classes , the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie, as the Communist Manifesto proclaimed, but many dependent on the multiple
ramifications of the division of labor and the overdetermined specificity of the modes
of production as well as the historical conjunctures. For example, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
In historicizing the social division of labor, Marx demonstrated that
Bonaparte, Marx described the formation of numerous middle and intermediate strata and various coalitions that formed during the
events of the 1848 revolution. He also later observed that in England "intermediate and transitional strata obscure the class
boundaries" that separate the increasingly polarized bourgeoisie and the proletariat. What is crucial, however, is Marx's view that
classes are formed in the process of class antagonisms. Class struggle, not the relation to the means of
production, are primary in class formation and the coeval crystallization of class consciousness (from class-in-itself to class-for-itself).
This modifies Lenin's doctrinal formulation of class: "Classes are large groups of people, differing from each other by the place they
occupy in an historically determined system of social production, by their role in the social organization of labor and, consequently, by
the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they can dispose and the mode of acquiring it" (quoted in Schmitt 1987, 128).
A fully constituted class was described by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire, (section VII): "In so far as millions of families live under
economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes,
and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these
small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond, and no political organization
among them, they do not form a class." In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels write: "The separate individuals form a class only
insofar as they have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as
competitors. On the other hand, the class in its turn achieves independent existence over against the individuals" (quoted in Schmitt
Classes, groups locked in battle, are thus not unchangeable monolithic formations;
they "are forever changing, developing, differentiating themselves, while at the same
time the common element always comes to the fore and integrates the individual
within the class" (Fischer 1996, 77). Classes undergo a constant process of inner movement
and transformation dependent on the vicissitudes of the class struggle in a
historically specific configuration of the world-system as a complex dynamic whole.
1987, 128).
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A2: Gibson Graham

Postmodern approaches to capital which focus on discourse and
ontology instead of material truth collapse into relativism which makes
confrontation with capital impossible
Poitevin, Assistant Professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized
Study, 2001
(Rene Francisco, The end of ant-capitalism as we knew it, Socialist Review,
http:findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891)
A third feature of J.K. Gibson-Graham's work, in particular, and of the whole radical democracy tradition, in general, is its post-
For postmodern Marxists it is not enough to point out that , as both

Foucault and Habermas argue, we inhabit an intellectual regime characterized by a paradigm shift
from the "philosophy of consciousness" to the "philosophy of language."27 Nor is it good enough for
structuralist extremism.26
postmodern/post-Marxists to recognize the pitfalls embedded in Hegelian epistemology and argue instead, as Spivak does, for
strategic-- uses-of-essentialism as a corrective to the excesses of teleological thinking and fixed notions of class.28 No way .
As far
as postmodern Marxism is concerned, the only way to compensate for constructions
of capitalism that are too totalizing is through the unconditional surrender of the
Marxist project. As J.K. Gibson-Graham themselves make clear, "to even conceive of 'capitalism' as 'capitalisms' is still taking
'capitalism' for granted."29 And to try to redistribute the heavy theoretical and political burden placed
upon the proletariat by reconfiguring political agency through "race-class-gender," as opposed to
just class, is still a futile endeavor: essentialism is still essentialism whether one essentializes
around one or three categories. This strand of post-structuralism, one that once again, can be directly
traced back to Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy,30 is predicated on the faulty
epistemological premise that what really matters is "discourse ." As Laclau and Mouffe clarify, "our
analysis rejects the distinction between discursive and nondiscursive practices. It offirms that every object is constituted as an object
The problem with this approach is that once we enter this world of
epistemological foundationalism predicated on the claim that there is "nothing but
discourse," we enter a world of relativism in which all we can do is "create discursive
fixings," as J.K. Gibson-Graham themselves prescribe, that will guarantee that "any particular analysis will never find the ultimate
cause of events."32 It is this ideological postmodern insistence on reducing all of social reality
to discourse that ultimately overloads its theoretical apparatus and causes it to buckle
beneath them. The Amherst School's "provisional ontology" is incapable of escaping the performative trap of trying to get rid
of essentialism by essentializing all of reality as "discursive." The postmodern Marxist approach to ontology boils
down to substituting in political practice every occurrence of "continuity" with "discontinuity" as
a way to get rid of essentialism and macro-narratives . Even Foucault, the great master of discontinuity, distances
of discourse."31
himself from such mirror-reversal solutions when theorizing the limits of discourse and accounting for the "divergence, the distances,
the oppositions, the differences" that constitute the episteme of a period.33
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A2: No Class Solidarity

Communism awesome prerequisite to solidarity individual struggles
only possible after we dismantle capitalism (because it coopts our ptx)
Dean, 2015
(Jodi, professor of political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, The Party and
Communist Solidarity, Rethinking Marxism, 27:3, Taylor and Francis)
It now seems that its easier to imagine the end of capitalism than it is an organized
Left. Left realists insist that collectivity is undesirable and impossible. Its undesirable
because it excludes possibilities, effaces difference, and enforces discipline. Its
impossible because we are so individuated, so singularized in our needs and
ambitions, that we cant ever come together; coming together, we are told, is itself an
illusion, a myth some use to manipulate others into fighting for their interests . Thus,
today, amid the uncertainties of late neoliberalism, even when we are fully conscious of our own
exploitation and the deep inequity of the system in which we find ourselves , we either dont
feel like we can do anything about it or we find ourselves participating in individuated, localized, or
communicatively mediated activities without momentum, duration, or a capacity for
political memory. People are immiserated and proletarianized and practically confront this immiseration and
proletarianization alone. We have to keep in mind, though, that isolation, immiseration, and
political disorganization also characterized the early decades of radical socialist
movement. Marx, Engels, and Luxemburg all emphasize how competition means that workers tend to remain isolated, to lack
solidarity, and to take a long time uniting. Left realists one-sidedly emphasize the objective dimension of our capitalist setting, failing
to acknowledge the subjective dimension always part of the Marxist tradition. There are nonetheless significant differences between
our time and that of the early years of revolutionary socialism. Rather than a period of working-class advance, ours is one of defeat .
In our extreme capitalist setting, the rollback of the achievements of organized

political struggle means austerity and privatization particularly privatization accompanied by increases
in brutality and exemption, as practices formerly under public authority are turned over to personal power and the market. For us,
authoritarianism is less that of centralized state power than it is of power
decentralized, dispersed, and extended via private contracts, interbank and
interagency cooperation, and the extensive network of treaties, agreements, and
provisions enabling capital flow and global trade. National states act as the police
force protecting the global capitalist class. So we encounter the fragmentation, dissolution, and
decomposition of some elements of the state and the concentration and intermeshing of other elements of states and markets, as
with finance, security, and media. Capital as a class has worked to smash the bureaucratic state machine for us, to convince us that it
is useless, even as it strengthens parts of that machine for its own ends. We confront an uneven mix of centralizing and
decentralizing forces in various combinations of state use of the market and market reliance on the state. The states operation as an
instrument of class rule is tempered less by concessions forced on it by working-class struggle than it was forty years ago (although
the social-democratic class compromise was itself not without political cost). Capital, resurgent, has reclaimed a great deal of ground,
but that doesnt erase the fact of the prior struggles. Indeed, our situation is particularly difficult because there has been a time in
which basics such as housing, education, health, food, and work were understood and treated as rights. Unfortunately, now is not that
time. Although the Left failed in 2008, new possibilities emerged as academics and activists turned again to the idea of communism.
These possibilities have been amplified by the new cycle of struggles weve seen in Wisconsin, Canada, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Turkey,
Part of the new appeal of the idea of communism is that

communism is the one word we have that bodes no compromise with capital and
that also asserts a powerful alternative. Linked to class struggle, the smashing of the
bourgeois state, and the abolition of capitalists as a class, communism is more than
social-democratic compromise, poststructuralist pluralization, and anarchist
insurrection. Instead of a politics thought primarily in terms of resistance, playful and
momentary aesthetic disruptions, the immediate specificity of local projects , and struggles
for hegemony within a democratic milieu, the horizon of communism impresses on us the necessity
of eliminating capitalism and creating global practices and institutions of egalitarian
cooperation. It turns us away from lifestyle changes, general inclusion, and
and with the Occupy movement.
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momentary calls for awareness and toward militant opposition, tight organizational
forms, and coordinated strategies for securing the peoples control of the means of
production. In contrast with anarchisms insistence on individuality, communism
prioritizes solidarity. For Marx, proletariat names capitalisms self-creation of what destroys it. This what that destroys
capitalism is a collective subject, a force no longer dispersed in individual and local acts of smashing, sabotage, and disruption but
concentrated in solidarity. But how does this collective subject abolish capitalism? It cant be through destruction alone. The normal
operation of the capitalist system is characterized by uncertainty and instability, a series of periods of moderate activity,
prosperity, over-production, crisis and stagnation (Marx 2008, 275). Contemporary capitalism has refined its capacity for wealth
destruction: over $34 trillion of market value was lost in the financial crisis of 2008. In the course of the recession that followed, the
rich got richer and the poor got poorer: the top 1 percent captured 121 percent of the income gains made between 2009 and 2011
(Kavoussi 2013). Not only was the 1 percent better able to weather the crisis than the rest of us but it was also able to increase its
share. According to Marx, the capitalist cycle of creative destruction is brought to an end by the proletariat, but not by the working
class organized as workersthey are already organized as workers in the factory, which enables them to become conscious of their
The abolition of capitalism depends on the

organization of the class as a party, a solidary political association that cuts across
workplace, sector, region, and nation. The working class, as a class, is implicated in the success or
material conditions and the need to combine into unions.
stability of capitalism; capitalism configures its struggles with the bourgeoisie. The party, however, takes as its horizon capitalisms
superseding by communism. The party is necessary because class struggle is not simply economic struggle; its political struggle.
Consider the famous passage from The German Ideology: We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state
of affairs (Marx and Engels 1994, 120). How should we understand this? Not as immediate insurrection or as prefiguration but rather
as the expansion of voluntary cooperation. I say this because Marx explains that the conditions of this movement [we call
communism] result from premises now in existence. The premises he is discussing involve the multiplication of productive force
through the cooperation of different individuals as this cooperation is determined by the division of labor and not as an effect of
peoples own united power. Abolishing determination by the division of labor is a matter of self-conscious collective action wherein
cooperation is not forcedis not out of our controlbut is instead willed commonly. Cooperation and concentration become selfconscious and willed rather than unconscious and determined. As the movement that abolishes the present state of affairs,
In capitalist society this expansion of voluntary as

opposed to compulsory cooperation happens through the party. An organization
premised on solidarity, the party holds open a political space for the production of a
common political will, a will irreducible to the capitalist conditions in which the
majority of people find themselves forced to sell their labor power . Where work is
obligatory and determined, membership in the party is voluntary , the willed formation of united
power. Among its members, the party replaces competition with solidarity. That class struggle is
communism expands voluntary cooperation.
political means that it exceeds the affirmation of people as workers with particular interests and extends to the critical assessment of
this position as itself the result of inequality and exploitation. Differently put, the working class is a subject of capitalism. It is
constrained within a field or discourse configured by and for capitalists as a class; it gets its position from within this field. So it might
refuse and resist, sabotage and strike, but all these actions are still confined within a field given by capital, configured for its interests
and on its behalf. To be another kind of subjectthe subject of another field, discourse, or politics requires a break or twist, a shift
to another field, the field of the party.6 The party is more than an outgrowth or extension of labor unions (this much at least should be
uncontroversial, given the importance of the peasantry in Communist parties as well as the wide variety of groups founded by
The party is a form for abolishing capitalism and ushering in

communism; it occupies the place of division, holding it open for a new collective
political subject (for classical Marxism this was the proletariat; in The Communist Horizon I argue for the people as the rest
of usin each instance, though, subjectification is a possibility, not an empirical given). At different
Communist parties).
points over the past hundred years, the party has attempted to abolish capitalism and usher in communism in various ways: by the
revolutionary seizure of the state, participation in parliamentary processes, the training of cadres, and the education of the masses in
The Communist party has never been an organization for

simply achieving a set of economic reforms aimed at restraining capitalisms
extremes and providing workers with welfare guarantees . That this is the case is clear when we note
order to be prepared when the time comes.
the justified sense of betrayal voiced by communists when their parties have compromised and retreated. They feel betrayed
because the party gave way on communist desire.
The party is necessary because the people are split.
We are split by the way we are
givenpositionedwithin capitalism. We are situated within a field

that tells us who we are and what we can be, that establishes the matrix of our desire (ieks definition of ideology), but that
represses the truth of this field in class struggle.7 The party asserts this truth: it speaks from the position of this truth and offers
In contrast and in opposition to

capitalist desire, the party opens up a terrain for the desire of another subjecta
collective, political subject. The party doesnt know everything; it provides a form for
the knowledge we gain through experience and that we analyze from the perspective
of the communist horizon. This is rather abstract and probably pretty unsatisfying to people who want to know what the
another field of possibilities, a discourse for another subject (iek 2002, 1879).
kind of party I have in mind will look like, how it will be organized, and how such organization could in any way be adequate to our
circumstances, given the way global capitalism is organized as a global financial system. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2013) are
helpful here, as they make explicit the inextricably political dimension of our current tasks:
we cant change the world
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without taking political power. All we can do is pursue small experiments, the left version of the 1 percents gating
themselves off. We cant take political power if we lack political form . For the most part, our
problem is less one of organizational details than it is solidary political will. As the will
emerges, people will figure out the structure in light of the challenges we face:
expanding militant pressure in ways that inspire and educate cadres while at the
same time straining the resources of the state and breaking the confidence of the
financial sector; abolishing private property and the capitalist banking system while
advancing international coordination in an uneven environment; increasing popular
support and developing a program for addressing common concerns over the
environment, health, transportation, communication, food, housing, and education . A
five- or ten-year plan for getting from here to there could be helpful. An alliance of the radical Left or, better, a new Communist party
could grow out of the concentrated forces of already existing groups, from militants skilled at direct action to artists adept with
symbols and slogans to parties experienced at organizing to issue groups knowledgeable about specific areas of concern. Such a
concentration would provide people who want to be engaged in radical politics but who arent sure what to do with a place to go, a
At a minimal level, if we are to have a chance of taking power, of

reformatting the basic conditions under which we live and work, we have to share a
name in common as a fundamental marker of division. If not, our names will be given
to us by capital, which will seek to fragment and distract us. In the movements of the last few years,
place to start.
weve seen recognitions of the power and the need for a name in common as a marker of divisionOccupy is a clear example, yet
across the spectrum of the Left, people disavow it.
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A2: No Alternative/Inevitable
There is only no alternative if we think under capitalism and accept it
this mindset locks us into the inevitability of capitalisms destructive
tendencies.
Meszaros, 2007
(Istvan, Prof Emeritus of Philosophy @ U of Sussex, The Only Viable Economy The Monthly
Review Vol. 58.11 April)
It is not at all accidental or surprising that the proposition of there is no alternative
occupies such a prominent place in the socioeconomic and political conceptions
formulated from capitals standpoint. Not even the greatest thinkers of the bourgeoisielike Adam Smith and
Hegelcould be exceptions in this respect. For it is absolutely true that the bourgeois order either succeeds in
asserting itself in the form of dynamic capital expansion, or it is condemned to
ultimate failure. There can be really no conceivable alternative to endless capital
expansion from capitals standpoint, determining thereby the vision of all those who
adopt it. But the adoption of this standpoint also means that the question of what price must be paid for uncontrollable capital
expansion beyond a certain point in timeonce the ascendant phase of the systems development is left behindcannot enter into
consideration at all. The violation of historical time is therefore the necessary consequence of adopting capitals standpoint by
internalizing the systems expansionary imperative as its most fundamental and absolutely unalterable determinant. Even in the
conceptions of the greatest bourgeois thinkers this position must prevail. There can be no alternative future social order whose
defining characteristics would be significantly different from the already established one. This is why even Hegel, who formulated by
far the most profound historical conception up to his own time, must also arbitrarily bring history to an end in capitals unalterable
present, idealizing the capitalist nation state11 as the insuperable climax of all conceivable historical development, despite his sharp
there can be no alternative to

decreeing the pernicious dogma of no alternative in bourgeois thought. But it is
totally absurd for socialists to adopt the position of endless (and by its nature
uncontrollable) capital expansion. For the corollary idealization ofagain
characteristically unqualifiedconsumption ignores the elementary truth that from
capitals uncritical self-expansionary vantage point there can be no difference
between destruction and consumption. One is as good as the other for the required
purpose. This is so because the commercial transaction in the capital relationeven of the most destructive kind, embodied in
perception of the destructive implications of the whole system of nation states. Thus,
the ware of the military/industrial complex and the use to which it is put in its inhuman warssuccessfully completes the cycle of
capitals enlarged self-reproduction, so as to be able to open a new cycle. This is the only thing that really matters to capital, no
when socialists internalize the

imperative of capital expansion as the necessary ground of the advocated growth,
they do not simply accept an isolated tenet but a whole package deal. Knowingly or
not, they accept at the same time all of the false alternativeslike growth or nogrowththat can be derived from the uncritical advocacy of necessary capital
expansion. The false alternative of no growth must be rejected by us not only because
its adoption would perpetuate the most gruesome misery and inequality now
dominating the world, with struggle and destructiveness inseparable from it. The
radical negation of that approach can only be a necessary point of departure. The
inherently positive dimension of our vision involves the fundamental redefinition of
wealth itself as known to us. Under capitals social metabolic order we are confronted
by the alienating rule of wealth over society, directly affecting every aspect of life,
from the narrowly economic to the cultural and spiritual domains. Consequently, we
cannot get out of capitals vicious circle, with all of its ultimately destructive
determinations and false alternatives, without fully turning around that vital
relationship. Namely, without making societythe society of freely associated
individualsrule over wealth, redefining at the same time also their relation to time
and to the kind of use to which the products of human labor are put.
matter how unsustainable might be the consequences. Consequently,
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A2: No Alternative/Inevitable
Capitalisms drive for production spawns hellish inequality and
structural violence
Wilson 14
(David, staff writer for South China Morning Post, April 13, Book review: Seventeen
Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, by David Harvey,
http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/books/article/1476056/book-review-seventeen-contradictions-andend-capitalism-david-harvey, AMD lab)
If you're sick of capitalism, here's some good news. The dogma that has become
default could yet collapse in the face of growing popular loathing, according to David Harvey,
a distinguished professor at the City University of New York, who highlights "episodic volcanic eruptions of
popular anger", in London (2011), Stockholm (2013), Istanbul (2013) and a hundred Brazilian cities (2013). "The
discontent does not simply focus on the technical failings of capital to deliver on its
promises of a consumer paradise and employment for all, but increasingly objects to
the degrading consequences for anyone and everyone who has to submit to the
dehumanising social rules and codes that capital and an increasingly autocratic
capitalist state dictate," writes Harvey, 78. His thrust is that capitalism strives to accumulate
capital to an insane degree, deploying the cheapest cost-cutting production methods.
Consequently, poorly paid workers lack the means to keep fuelling consumption.
Nonetheless, rampant development continues, driving nature towards extinction. Worse
still, according to the anthropologist, those combined tensions bolster mass unemployment, fuelling the decline of Europe and Japan
capitalism is worse than dysfunctional dystopian - and should be scrapped for all the cited reasons, compounded with
another overarching one: the abysmal inequality it spawns in countries including China. In
China, the top 10 per cent now take home almost 60 per cent of the income . Its inequality
levels resemble those in South Africa, where incomes are much more skewed than at the end of apartheid, he notes. So much
for communism. Globally, the root of the woe is the spread of paramilitary policebacked neo-liberal austerity. Read: mandatory self-denial for the masses while the banks
are bailed out when they blunder, he writes. If only his writing had the sharp, smart charm of his lectures. Harvey
yet buoying China's unsure stabs at progress. To Harvey,
can be painfully ponderous and cryptic: prone towards bracketed digressions. His style feels more suited to academics than the
the eruption of billionaires in countries such as

and Mexico against a backdrop of dire poverty is vile . In spurts, Harvey
seems inspired, fired by his erudite disgust. As he says, unfettered capitalism is just degrading. So brace
for a social earthquake that will make the post-colonial revolutionary struggles of the
1960s look like child's play, he says. We shall see.
average reader. Still, only a cynic could fault his premise:
China,
Russia, India, Brazil
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***AFF***
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No Root Cause
Cap not root cause
Aberdeen 3
activist and founder, Aberdeen Foundation (Richard, The Way,

http://richardaberdeen.com/uncommonsense/theway.html)
A view shared by many modern activists is that capitalism, free enterprise, multi-national corporations and globalization are the
primary cause of the current global Human Rights problem and that by striving to change or eliminate
these, the root problem of what ills the modern world is being addressed. This is a rather
unfortunate and historically myopic view, reminiscent of early class struggle Marxists who
soon resorted to violence as a means to achieve rather questionable ends. And like these often
brutal early Marxists, modern anarchists who resort to violence to solve the problem are walking
upside down and backwards, adding to rather than correcting, both the immediate and long-term Human Rights problem. Violent
revolution, including our own American revolution, becomes a breeding ground for poverty,
disease, starvation and often mass oppression leading to future violence. Large, publicly traded corporations are
created by individuals or groups of individuals, operated by individuals and made up of individual and/or group investors. These business enterprises are deliberately structured to
be empowered by individual (or group) investor greed. For example, a theorized need for offering salaries much higher than is necessary to secure competent leadership (often
resulting in corrupt and entirely incompetent leadership), lowering wages more than is fair and equitable and scaling back of often hard fought for benefits, is sold to stockholders
as being in the best interest of the bottom-line market value and thus, in the best economic interests of individual investors. Likewise, major political and corporate exploitation of
third-world nations is rooted in the individual and joint greed of corporate investors and others who stand to profit from such exploitation. More than just investor greed,
If one examines the

course of human events closely, it can correctly be surmised that the root cause of humanitys
problems comes from individual human greed and similar negative individual motivatio n. The
Marx/Engles view of history being a class struggle does not address the root problem and is thus
fundamentally flawed from a true historical perspective (see Gallo Brothers for more details). So-called classes of people, unions,
corporations are driven by the greed of all those involved, including individuals outside the enterprise itself who profit indirectly from it.
corporations and political groups are made up of individuals who support the particular group or organizational position based on their own individual needs, greed and desires
nations engage in wars of aggression, not

because capitalism or classes of society are at root cause, but because individual members of a
society are individually convinced that it is in their own economic survival best interest. War,
poverty, starvation and lack of Human and Civil Rights have existed on our planet since long
before the rise of modern capitalism, free enterprise and multi-national corporation avarice, thus
the root problem obviously goes deeper than this.
and thus, an apparent class struggle in reality, is an extension of individual motivation. Likewise,
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Perm Coalition Building Solves

Perm-do bothsingular focus failswe need a coalition of resistance
Giroux 14-Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a
Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University [Henry, Totalitarian Paranoia in the Post-Orwellian Surveillance State,
Truthout, February 10, 2014, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21656-totalitarian-paranoia-in-the-post-orwellian-surveillancestate, DKP]
If the first task of resistance is to make dominant power clear by addressing critically
and meaningfully the abuses perpetrated by the corporate surveillance state and how such
transgressions affect the daily lives of people in different ways, the second step is to move from understanding
and critique to the hard work of building popular movements that integrate rather
than get stuck and fixated in single-issue politics. The left has been fragmented for
too long, and the time has come to build national and international movements
capable of dismantling the political, economic and cultural architecture put in place by the new
authoritarianism and its post-Orwellian surveillance industries. This is not a call to reject identity and specialissue politics as much as it is a call to build broad-based alliances and movements,
especially among workers, labor unions, educators, youth groups, artists,
intellectuals, students, the unemployed and others relegated, marginalized and
harassed by the political and financial elite. At best, such groups should form a vigorous and broad-based third party for
the defense of public goods and the establishment of a radical democracy. This is not a call for a party based on
traditional hierarchical structures but a party consisting of a set of alliances among
different groups that would democratically decide its tactics and strategies.
Perm do bothsurveillance processes and global capital are embedded within each
other
Ball and Snider 13-*Professor of Organization @ the Open University Business School, director of the Surveillance Studies
Network **Professor of Sociology @ Queens University [Kirstie, Laureen, The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: A political economy of
surveillance, Introduction: The surveillance-industrial complex: towards a political economy of surveillance? DKP]
The state and capital thus have a long shared history in the co- production of the
surveillance society. This is the first collection which explicitly examines the intersection with or to put it more
accurately the embeddedness of surveillance processes within the activities and agendas
of global capital and the state. Indeed work in this area benefits from a series of well- developed theoretical positions but lacks
significant tranches of empirical data. This collection brings together work by scholars from different countries which empirically examine this key
phenomenon associated with the spread of surveillance in society. The volume was conceived following a two- day workshop entitled The
Political Economy of Surveillance
held at the Open University, UK in September 2010. The workshop was co- supported by
The New Transparency3 a Major Collaborative Research Initiative funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Living
in Surveillance Societies4 and EU- COST action (for more information on these projects see Appendix A and B). The former project is a research network
which spans Canada, North and Central America, Japan and the UK; the latter is a research network which spans 26 European countries. The basis of this
collection is truly international and representative of thought leadership in this new area. The book is split into three sections. Part I, International
how the surveillance- industrial complex spans

international boundaries through the workings of global capital and its interaction
with agencies of the state. These five chapters examine issues of governance and the production of events which are of global
significance. They show how such issues and events are cemented through contracts for
service provision and driven by capitals unceasing search for competitive advantage ,
networks and global circuits of surveillance, examines
particularly at the international level. In this section, Stephen Graham explores the war on terror, arguing that it has been defended, legitimated and
reinforced through a combination of highly urban discourses rooted in specific material realities and practices. David Lyon and zgun Topak directly
the coalition of government and corporate players

that promote its growth through a case study of the growth of identification card systems. Adam Warren, Morag Bell and Lucy Budd
discuss the use of event based information systems by international health communities to track pandemics
and assess disease risk, which re- embed inequalities between the global south and
examine the surveillance industrial complex by looking at
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the global north. Minas Samatas tells of the corruption and controversy surrounding the story of the multimillion dollar surveillance system set up by two global corporations, SAIC and Siemens, at the Athens
Olympic Games in 2004. Stphane Leman- Langlois focuses on the objects that lie at the very origins of the devices used
for surveillance purposes, the governmentuniversityindustry complex of R&D
funding, management and governance of innovations in security surveillance
technology.
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Perm State/Micropolitcal Reforms Solve

Perm-do boththe alt alone forecloses possibility to explore
vulnerabilities within cap and is a reductionist understanding on the way
power manifestscollapses into ressentiment
Connolly 13-Professor of Political Theory at Johns Hopkins University [William, The Fragility of Things, pp. 36-42]
we do not
know with confidence, in advance of experimental action, just how far or fast changes in the systemic
character of neoliberal capitalism can be made. The structures often seem solid and
intractable, and indeed such a semblance may turn out to be true. Some may seem solid, infinitely absorptive, and intractable when theyre
in fact punctuated by hidden vulnerabilities, soft spots, uncertainties, and potential lines of flight
that become apparent when they are subjected to experimental action , upheaval, testing, and
A philosophy attending to the acceleration, expansion, irrationalities, interdependencies, and fragilities of late capitalism suggests that
strain. Indeed no ecology of late capitalism, given the variety of forces to which it is connected by a thousand pulleys, vibrations, impingements, de-
The
structural theory, at its best, was in identifying, institutional intersections that hold a system together; its conceit, at its
worst, was the claim to know in advance how resistant such intersections are to
potential change. Without adopting the opposite conceit, it seems important to
pursue possible sites of strategic action that might open up room for productive
change. Today it seems important to attend to the relation between the need for structural change and identification of
multiple sites of potential action. You do not know precisely what you are doing when you participate in such a venture. You
pendencies, shocks, and threads, can specify with supreme confidence the solidity or potential flexibility of the structures it seeks to change.
strength of
combine an experimental temper with the appreciation that living and acting into the future inevitably contain a shifting quotient of uncertainty. The
following tentative judgments and sites of action may be pertinent. 1) Neither neoliberal theory, nor socialist productivism, nor deep ecology, nor social
democracy in its classic form seems sufficient to the contemporary condition. This is so in part because the powers of market self-regulation are both
real and limited in relation to a larger multitude of heterogeneous force fields beyond the human estate with differential powers of self-regulation and
metamorphosis. A first task is to challenge neoliberal ideology through critique and by elaborating and publicizing positive alternatives that acknowledge
the disparate relations between market processes, other cultural systems, and nonhuman systems. Doing so to render the fragility of things more visible
and palpable. Doing so, too, to set the stage for a series of interceded shifts in citizen role performances, social movements, and state action. 2) Those
who seek to reshape the ecology of late capitalism might set an interim agenda of radical reform and then recoil back on the initiatives to see how they
An interim agenda is the best thing to focus on because in a world of becoming the
more distant future is too cloudy to engage. We must , for instance, become involved in
experimental micropolitics on a variety of fronts, as we participate in role experimentations,
social movements, artistic displaces, erotic-political shows, electoral campaigns, and creative
interventions on the new media to help recode the ethos that now occupies investment practices, consumption desires, family savings, state
work.
priorities, church assemblies, university curricula, and media reporting. It is important to bear in mind how extant ideologies, established role
To shift some of our own role

performances in the zones of travel, church participation, home energy use, investment, and consumption, for instance, that now implicate us
deeply in foreign oil dependence and the huge military expenditures that secure it, could make a minor difference on its own
and also lift some of the burdens of institutional implications from us to support
participation in more adventurous interpretations, political strategies, demands upon the state, and cross-state
performances, social movements, and commitments to state action intersect.
citizen actions. 3) Today perhaps the initial target, should be on reconstituting established patterns of consumption by a combination of direct citizen
actions in consumption choices, publicity of such actions, the organization of local collectives to modify consumption practices, and social movements to
reconstitute the current state- and market-supported infrastructure of consumption. By the infrastructure of consumption I mean publicly supported and
subsidized market subsystems such as a national highway system, a system of airports, medical care through private insurance, agribusiness pouring
high sugar, salt, and fat content into foods, corporate ownership of the public media, the prominence of corporate 403 accounts over retirement
pensions, and so forth that enable some modes of consumption in the zones of travel, education, diet, retirement, medical care, energy use, health, and
education and render others much more difficult or expensive to procure.22 To change the infrastructure is also to shift the types of work and investment
available. Social movements that work upon the infrastructure and ethos of consumption in tandem can thus make a real difference directly, encourage
more people to heighten their critical perspectives, and thereby open more people to a more militant politics if and as the next disruptive event
a cross-state citizen goal should construct a pluralist assemblage by

moving back and forth between experiments in role performances , the refinement of sensitive modes
of perception, revisions in political ideology , and adjustments in political sensibility; doing so to mobilize
enough collective energy to launch a general strike simultaneously in several
countries in the near future. The aim of such an event would be to reverse the deadly future created by established patterns of
emerges. Perhaps
climate change by fomenting significant shifts in patterns of consumption, corporate policies, state law, and the priorities of interstate organizations.
Again, the dilemma of today is that the fragility of things demands shifting and slowing down intrusions into several aspects of nature as we speed up
shifts in identity; role performance, cultural ethos, market regulation, and state policy. 4)
The existential forces of hubris

and of
(expressed above all in those confident drives to mastery conveyed by military elites, financial economists, financial elites, and CEOs)
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ressentiment (expressed in some sectors of secularism and evangelicalism) now play roles of importance in the
shape of consumption practices, investment portfolios, worker routines, managerial
demands, and the uneven senses of entitlement that constitute neoliberalism. For that
reason activism inside churches, schools, street life, and the media must become increasingly skilled and sensitive. As we proceed, some of us may
present the themes of a world of becoming to larger audiences, challenging thereby the complementary notions of a providential world and secular
For existential
dispositions do infuse the role priorities of late capitalism. Today it is both difficult for
people to perform the same roles with the same old innocence and difficult to
challenge those performances amid our own implication in them. Drives by
evangelists, the media, neoconservatives, and the neoliberal right to draw a veil of
innocence across the priorities of contemporary life make the situation much worse. 5)
mastery that now infuse too many role performances, market practices, and state priorities in capitalist life.
The emergence of a neofascist or mafia-type capitalism slinks as a dangerous possibility on the horizon, partly because of the expansion and
intensification of capital, partly because of the real fragility of things, partly because the identity needs of many facing these pressures encourage them
to cling more intensely to a neoliberal imaginary as its bankruptcy becomes increasingly apparent, partly because so many in America insist upon
retaining the special world entitlements the country achieved after World War II in a world decreasingly favorable to them, partly because of the crisis
tendencies inherent in neoliberal capitalism, and partly because so many resist living evidence around and in them that challenges a couple of secular
and theistic images of the cosmos now folded into the institutional life of capitalism. Indeed the danger is that those constituencies now most disinclined
to give close attention to public issues could oscillate between attraction to the mythic promises of neoliberal automaticity and attraction to a neofascist
movement when the next crisis unfolds. It has happened before. I am not saying that neoliberalism is itself a form of fascism, but that the failures and
meltdowns it periodically promotes could once again foment fascist or neofascist responses, as happened in several countries after the onset of the
Great Depression. 6)
consumption,
The democratic state , while it certainly cannot alone tame capital or reconstitute the ethos and infrastructure of
must play a significant role in reconstituting our lived relations
to climate, weather,
as it
also responds favorably to the public pressures we must generate to forge a new
ethos. A new, new left will thus experimentally enact new intersections between role performance and political activity,
resource use, ocean currents, bee survival, tectonic instability, glacier flows, species diversity, work, local life, consumption, and investment,
outgrow its old disgust with the very idea of the state, and remain alert to the
dangers states can pose . It will do- so because, as already suggested, the fragile
ecology of late ca. Most of those movemepital requires state interventions of several sorts . A
refusal to participate in the state today cedes too much hegemony to neoliberal
markets , either explicitly or by implication. Drives to fascism, remember , rose the last time in capitalist
states after market meltdownnts failed. But a couple became consolidated through a series of resonances (vibrations) back and
forth between industrialists, the state, and vigilante groups in neighborhoods, clubs, churches, the police, the media, and pubs. You do not
fight the danger of a new kind of neofascism by withdrawing from either micropolitics
or state politics. You do so through a multisited politics designed to infuse a new
ethos into the fabric of everyday life. Changes in ethos can in turn open doors to new
possibilities of state and interstate action, so that an advance in one domain seeds
that in the other. And vice versa. A positive dynamic of mutual amplification might be
generated here. Could a series of significant shifts in the routines of state and global capitalism even press the fractured system to a point
where it hovers on the edge of capitalism itself? We dont know. That is one reason it is important to focus on
interim goals. Another is that in a world of becoming, replete with periodic and surprising
shifts in the course of events, you cannot project far beyond an interim period . Another yet
is that activism needs to project concrete, interim possibilities to gain support and
propel itself forward. That being said, it does seem unlikely to me, at least, that a positive interim future includes either socialist
productivism or the world projected by proponents of deep ecology. 7) To advance such an agenda it is also imperative to negotiate new connections
between nontheistic constituencies who care about the future of the Earth and numerous devotees of diverse religious traditions who fold positive
The new, multifaceted movement needed today, if it emerges, will

take the shape of a vibrant pluralist assemblage acting at multiple sites within and
across states, rather than either a centered movement with a series of fellow travelers attached to it or a mere
spiritualities into their creedal practices.
electoral constellation. Electoral victories are important, but they work best when they touch priorities already embedded in churches, universities, film,
music, consumption practices, media reporting, investment priorities, and the like. A related thing to keep in mind is that the capitalist modes of
acceleration, expansion, and intensification that heighten the fragility of things today also generate pressures to minoritize the world along multiple
dimensions at a more rapid pace than heretofore. A new pluralist constellation will build upon the latter developments as it works to reduce the former
the forgoing comments will appear to some as "optimistic" or "utopian." But

optimism and pessimism are both primarily spectatorial views. Neither seems
sufficient to the contemporary condition. Indeed pessimism, if you dwell on it long, easily slides into cynicism, and
cynicism often plays into the hands of a right wing that applies exclusively to any set
effects. I am sure that
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of state activities not designed to protect or coddle the corporate estate . That is one reason that
"dysfunctional politics" redounds so readily to the advantage of cynics on the right
who work to promote it. They want to promote cynicism with respect to the state and innocence with respect to the market. Pure
critique
as already suggested,
does not suffice
either.
their followers to the edge of cynicism.
Pure critique too readily carries critics and
It is also true that the above critique concentrates on neoliberal capitalism, not
capitalism writ large. That is because it seems to me that we need to specify the terms of critique as closely as possible and think first of all about
interim responses. If we lived under, say, Keynesian capitalism, a somewhat different set of issues would be defined and other strategies identified.25
Capitalism writ largewhile it sets a general context that neoliberalism inflects in specific wayssets too large and
generic a target. It can assume multiple forms, as the differences between Swedish and American capitalism
suggest; the times demand a set of interim agendas targeting the hegemonic form of today, pursued with heightened militancy at several sites. The
point today is not to wait for a revolution that overthrows the whole system . The
"system," as we shall see further, is replete with too many loose ends, uneven edges,
dicey intersections with nonhuman forces, and uncertain trajectories to make such a wholesale project plausible.
Besides, things are too urgent and too many people on the ground are suffering too
much now.
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Perm State Reforms Solve

Perm solves- working within the state is key to challenge inequality
Mander, 13
(Jerry, Co-Founder, International Forum on Globalization, There Are Good Alternatives to US
Capitalism, But No Way to Get There, http://www.alternet.org/books/there-are-good-alternativesus-capitalism-no-way-get-there?page=0%2C0)
capitalism could be easily reformed, if only the laissez-faire, anti-government capitalist
Regulations could be advanced to
control pollution and resource use, to prevent banking excess, to stop the buying of
all politicians and government, and to promote equity. Theoretically, we could quickly
start mitigating inequity problems. We could require that the wealthy pay taxes at the
same rate as the middle class, or at surplus wealth rates (graduated rates that went as high as 90 percent) that
Some aspects of
fundamentalists werent depositing gifts into the pockets of legislators.
rose from the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman through Dwight Eisenhower. We could/should have excess profits
taxes on corporations to cover their externalized costs, or their depletion of the public-resources commons. We could ban tax havens
and the many subsidized tax rates on financial transactions and inheritance. We could establish maximum and minimum guaranteed
income levels. We could place controls on salary ratios within corporations. Thats all good. We could have better guarantees for
workers rights and better public services for everyonehealth, education, transportation, childcare, elder care. We could prevent
corporations from abandoning local communities and moving to China .
And we could establish a new, more

realistic relationship with the natural world, one based on equality, mutual
dependence, and the full acknowledgment of limits. Mos tpeople would appreciate
these interventions. Theyre all good. Im sure they would make us a happier society.
Maybe Americans would start voting again and eating less junk food while permitting
the natural world a deserved breather and long-term protections. Only oligarchs and freemarket fundamentalists would oppose them. Unfortunately, however, they are in charge . Those and a hundred
others ideas are all doable by relatively simple acts of Congress and the President.
Many other modern countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Germany,
Italy, Spain, Iceland, and Japanalready enjoy many of those practices within their
own versions of a kind of hybrid economics, an active collaboration of capitalist and socialist visions that
most of these countries call social democracy. Of course, they have problems, toosome of them caused, actually, by U.S.
deregulation of finance under Clinton and Bush II but, according to friends in Europe and members of my own family who live in
Scandinavia, as well as the statistics we cited in the last chapter, these countries are in far better shape than we are in terms of
public satisfaction, economic balance, environmental awareness, levels of equality, quality of public discourse, freedom from
ideological domination, willingness to adapt, and happiness.
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Perm Legal Debates Spillover

Compassionate political dialogue spills over to material change.
Grear 11
dominant groups (insiders including future insider

emerging from the heart of the capitalist technoeconomy) will (continue to) possess
privileges intimately related to the rising power of the corporate entities and
priorities currently shaping the worst excesses of globalisation and its fallout. Meanwhile, it is likely that the yawning gap between the powerful and powerless will
continue to grow in its significance and intractability. In this light, placing legal debates concerning rightssubjectivity against the
larger backdrop of contemporary globalisation and the related excesses (historical and contemporaneous) of the
intimacy between law and capital is an important political task . A politics of
compassion even as it is conducive to the extension of laws circle of concern beyond the human must necessarily reach beyond the closures
of law to respond to the tortured realities of the differential material and discursive subjectpositions (including
human subject positions) generated by a burgeoning capitalistic technoeconomy. A politics of compassion has arguably never been more
urgent. As we open our minds to the important idea of the subjectivity of a range of putative new rightsclaimants it is essential that we never
lose sight of those earthlings (of whatever form) who remain trapped outside and beneath the power
structures of our age. A burning question, of course, concerns precisely how we now construct a juridical order that is
responsive, inclusive and possesses the plasticity to account for new and complex kinds of rightsholders while simultaneously ensuring
full juridical responsiveness to the visceral realities facing currently (and traditionally) excluded subjectivities.
Returning, then, to the concern haunting this reflection, it seems highly likely that present and future
subjectivities
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Perm NB Cede Political

Rather we should embrace politics to solve capitalism.
Lerner 14
(MICHAEL LERNER, PhD in philosophy from University of California, Berkeley; PhD in Clinical/Social Psychology from the Wright Institute; professor of philosophy at Trinity College
until 1975; founded the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, Tikkun Volume: 25 Issue: 3 Pages: 7-11, Updated: 2014-05-25, Liberals and Progressives Need a New Strategy in
the Obama Years)
We don't want the

quasi-fascists to take their place and we believe that joining in the chorus of Obama-bashing only encourages the media to highlight the
So here is the problem for progressives: we have to protect the liberals from the anger their policies and their cowardice have generated.
biggest bashers: the extremist Right. We are not in control of the media! But it's not just that we can't risk giving more aid to the Tea Party. It's that many of us still hope that the
To be entirely cynical about the chances of Congress pursuing

progressive policies in a money-swamped corporate age is to be exactly where the
corporations want us to be: cynicism leads to passivity, and passivity is a form of
obethence. We assert that congressional reforms that deliver movement toward a caring
society are still possible. After all, the new health care legislation does insure another 32 million people and by some estimates will save as
Democrats can play a valuable role.
many as 30,000 lives a year. Nuclear arms are being reduced; the EPA is taking science seriously; we are no longer afraid of imminent war with Iran ; and existing government
services are being administered at the highest levels by people who want government to succeed, not fail. We should also credit Obama for his willingness to challenge the
settlement policies of Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government in Israel. Taken together . . . well, by no means what we had hoped for, but not to be imnimized either. These
gains, however, are not robust enough to provide an alternative to the powerful
onslaught that liberal and progressive ideas continue to face, an onslaught that threatens to bring the most conservative elements
in both major parties back into power. The only way we can effectively protect the liberals is to help put
them back on the right path by urging them to promote policies that embody the best
in Uberai and progressive thought. If we are to assist them, we have to openly criticize what is misguided
about their current policies, as background to putting forward visionary progressive
ideas, even though those will at first be dismissed as "unrealistic" or "utopian" by the very
liberals we need to protect. Strategize With Us June 11-14 in Washington, D.C. TO SUCCESSFULLY SUPPORT AND CRITIQUE
OUR LIBERAL ALLIES will require a special kind of subtlety and sophistication on our part. We need you to come to D.C. June 11-14 to strategize with
us on how best to build that progressive movement- and to say "no" to the inside-the-Beltway realists and
pragmatists who have led liberals and progressives into their current mistaken and unpopular path. At that gathering we will
present our proposal for a Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution (ESRA). The amendment would not only overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United
decision, which further enables corporate money to shape electoral outcomes, but would also
increase democratic control of the economy and empower Congress to take more dramatic steps to
protect the environment. Taken together with our previously developed Spiritual Covenant with America, Tikkun's Network of Spiritual Progressives provides a plausible vision of
America should be heading in the twentyfirst century (a vision not defined by what is "realistic" but by
what is necessary to save human life from wars and environmental tragedy ). Of course, central to
where
our approach is also a commitment to see those with whom we disagree- even the warmakers, the racists, and the fascists- as fundamentally valuable and deserving of respect,
We need you there not only to give feedback on the specifics of the amendment
(we'll reshape our final version in light of what we are hearing) but also to create a sufficient presence to command media
attention and give greater weight to the ideas we are advocating . If spiritual progressives are to play a role
even as we vigorously contend against their ideas and critique their public behavior.
in shaping America's future, you need to be there. You can register for the conference at spiritualprogressives.org by clicking on the picture of Obama in the left-hand column.
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Perm NB Life Affirmation

The aff is an affect of resistance that enables active questions of power
relationsthis advances a comportment necessary to affirm life
Proust 2k-Fall 2000. Franoise-agrege in Philosophy, was a program director at the Collge Internationale de Philosophie, in
addition to her post at the Universit de Paris I. Her work centered on the problem of how to think politics and political action today.
She is the author of Kant et le ton d'histoire (1991), L'Histoire contretemps: Le temps historique chez Walter Benjamin (1994), Point
de Passage (1994), and De la Resistance (1997).
every force, while it is affected by

another force, provokes a resistance which thwarts the action of the first force, while
falling short of stopping it. Necessarily, forces enter into relations not of opposition or
contradiction (which are rare and precarious cases) but of dissymmetric contrariety. Each and every force doubles and is
doubled by another force. While it continually accompanies the exercizing of that force, it also counters it, and so destabilizes and deregulates it. Foucault concentrated his/her
We are indebted to Michel Foucault for having generalized, while also displacing, the physical law of resistance:
discovery on relations of power. In a remarkable way he established that relations of power develop and deploy around, about, and between themselves like a map, or a diagram of points, a complex and reversible
Relations of power are subject to a

resistance and a counter-resistance which are more heterogeneous than
homogeneous, more unstable and multiple than stable and delimited, more aleatory
and singular than regulated and regular. Relations of power delineate variable configurations, where aggregations and agglomerations of forces
decompose under the effect of a force, or of forces which are subtle and entwined. They graft onto others, contaminate them, and find
themselves in turn affected. Elsewhere and otherwise they recompose [End Page 18] other blocks of relations (Deleuze 1988). Resistance is the
name of this simultaneously dense and fissured arrangement, this strategic apparatus
where powers play, obscurely, freely, at once with and against other powers. As an "a priorist
positivist," Foucault established a cartography of power. As "transcendentalists" we might want to elaborate an analytic of resistance. This would be the
transcendental of every resistance, whatever kind it be: resistance to power, to the state of things,
to history; resistance to destruction, to death, to war; resistance to stupidity, to
peace, to bare life. Resistance is not a task or a necessity. It is a law of being. It is
internal and immanent to its object. From the moment that being is given, takes form and figure, consists of and insists in, from the moment there is being or a
battlefield of intensive forces which "play the role of . . . target, support, or handle" (Foucault 1980, 95).
state, it incurs and bumps up against a resistance which irresistibly twists it and irreversibly fissures it. Say that a rule is a fragile stabilization and a heteroclite conglomeration of relations of force, law, compromise,
and justice. Accordingly, it is always on its way to being deregulated and altered. In the same way, life is not a substance, a given, or a value. It is a subtle disposition, plotting in a fragile way with the power of
destruction which constantly accompanies it and which forms a life-death complex that is precarious and reversible. Similarly, in a general way, every state is flanked by its double, which limits it and pressures it
from the interior. Resistance is internal and coextensive with the instance. Every being strikes against its counter-being. That counter-being is neither non-being, nor nothingness, nor another kind of being, nor a
power of annihilation, nor the least of beings. 2 It is being itself, which, in its deployment and its extension, turns against itself, and affects its "inside" with an "outside" that it has itself activated and incurred. One
can calculate several essential features of resistance from this logic of the double, this law of "countering." Immanent to its object, resistance is not created "in the name of" principles, values, ideals (truth, good,
law, honor, dignity, etc). We are not presupposing some heaven of ideas, nor confusing the transcendental with transcendence, nor contenting ourselves with tautology (resistance is good where it resists that which
Resistance is a fact, not an

It is included within being, it is not the "should-be." It is indeed that which
signifies history. From the moment that power appears, resistance immediately
accompanies it. Principles evoked might have been variable, its modalities changeable, and its occasions multiple. While resistance against power and stupidity, against death and time has
is bad, resistance is bad where it resists the good). So every principle is deduced, every ideal is posed, and every value is valorized before being valorizing.
obligation.
never ceased, neither has it ever been explicitly manifest, except in eclipses and brief flashes. In this regard, resistance is no more (and evidently no less) in question today than yesterday or tomorrow. It is simply
that the forms invented, at the same time as induced, by the apparatus of the era and of the contemporary situation are partially new. Perhaps, faced with the appearance [End Page 19] of capital and manufacture
which devales working tools and knowledge, one responds with sabotage and luddism. But faced with globalization and the extension over the whole planet of the laws of capital which render work and working
conditions precarious, we respond by agitating for the "thirty hour week, and an equal salary for all." Perhaps, confronted with expulsions to the country, inspections in the cities and neighborhoods, and the drive to
put everybody to work, one resists with calls for "less work!" and for our "right to leisure." But at the time when lawful states give themselves the mission of controlling population flows and singling out those with
In a general way, there is no just resistance, except as

adjusted-to, and justice is not that which "in the name of" one resists. It is an idea
(and an affect) which wakens and awakens because one resists. And it disappears if, or to the extent that, nobody
rights, one responds with calls for the "civil legalization of everybody!" etc.
resists. Eras vary and if one must evaluate and hierarchize them (one need not), it is in terms of their possible maneuvering margins for resistance and so of the possibilities they allow for turning around a situation.
Every resistance is a mixture of reactivity and activity, of conservation and invention,

of negation and affirmation. If it is archaic, it is so necessarily. It responds to a situation, it reacts to an event, it is therefore posterior, secondary, and subordinated to that
which it resists. However, one cannot deduce from this, contrary to what is sometimes supposed, that it is passive or backwards looking, or that it constitutes an obstacle to be removed or a regression to be
overcome for the responsible agent who might accept and assume this. Still less should we say that to speak of resistance is to adopt the point of view of the "victim" (see Badiou 1993, 13), as if evil, misfortune,
in speaking
of resistance we have to suppose that history turns always and "naturally" towards
the bad and only wins on the backs of the losers. But it is not a matter of idealizing the victors nor of deeming defeats heroic. For if
the losers resist, it is to gain space and time, to turn around and reroute the present
look of things. History inevitably takes bad turns, but good turns have inevitably
responded to these, as played by certain vigilant, watchful minoritarians, who are
always ready to leap in, to intervene and to cry: "Enough! Something else now! Some
air! Some breathing space!" Such stances are declarative, affirmative. More precisely, resistance
and universal suffering ruled over the world without exception and as if the sufferers must sacrifice themselves on the battlefield if not consenting or being resigned to misfortune. True,
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imperceptibly modifies its reactive position. The response can turn into the active stance of reply, riposte, and retort. It can invent new game rules while occupying a place on the chess-board or playing the
This kind of invention requires strategy: the art of borrowing, of miming, and
of understudying. To make a rejoinder is to steal and to fit out anew the adversary's arms, turn them inside out like a glove and offer them up in return. [End Page 20] In this way their
impasses and dangers, concealed until now, are made clear--as are chances and new possibilities which might previously have been unthinkable and impossible. This is the immanent
criteria of judgment and evaluation of resistance. There are no good resistances to badness (ethics) or to regression (individual or collective
adversary's game.
history), nor bad resistances to the good, or to progress. There are reactive resistances which deny, conserve, and restore the state of things and active resistances which activate reactivity and draw from this
If it is true that resistance is born from the thwarted

affecting of one force by another, then resistance is a matter of affect, passion, and
heart. It issues neither from free choice nor from reasoning. At once wild and strategic, resistance does not require a theory of the will--rather (to speak classically), some kind of "Treatise of the Passions,"
in other words, of liberty. Why does one resist? Because lived life is not livable, because the state of
things is not tolerable. A resistance is always punctual and local, always precise and
limited. Here, some forces respond, in that particular locale, and at that particular moment, to those particular forces in a complex and duplicit play where each resists the resistance of the other. The
forces of resistance are blind and obstinate, deaf and stubborn, and seem devoid of the least intelligence: the same forces are at work in death and life, in resistance and counter-resistance. However, as
attested by the fact that one resists as much with and for others as alone and for
oneself, these same forces search for air and the outside. They experiment with the new, they are subject to aleatory variations and to contingent encounters; they make use of turns and deviations about
which it is risky to decide if it is a matter of a ruse of the same or a complicated strategy to elude the same. This is why resistance is an experience of
subjectivization: it is the experimentation of freedom. Freedom is not the faculty
requisite to an explanation of why some resist and not others. It takes courage to
draw on one's anger at the unacceptable in order to glean the energy necessary to
combat it. It takes courage to reroute the power of existing which is unleashed by one's combative indignation in order to cultivate and multiply powers worthy of existence. All this takes a sense of
risk and perseverance. 3 And resistance, like ethics, is nothing other than the courage of freedom.
Resistance is a particular combat. It doesn't confront the enemy in order to impose defeat. It struggles with adversity, of which the adversary is only a stand-in to
weaken it and make it weaken its hold. Resistance does not seek victory, it does not engage in battle, still
less war. But, through a lateral and duplicit strategy it disarms the enemy with the enemy's own arms. Deregulating the rules of war that it had imposed, resistance constrains it to displace its domain
and its method of play. [End Page 21] Combative, strategic, duplicit resistance is neither the naked power of
triumphant life, be it in failure or death, nor this "unnamable" "thing " 4 which would
form like a bedrock, a residue, or an abyssal remainder on which any enterprise of
life, of any kind, would founder. If the same forces are at work in the resistance of death and in the resistance to death, it is because death and life are complex and
diversion the joy of invention and the affirmation of the something different.
precarious combinations of identical elements which only differ in intensity, ingeniosity, complexity, and inventivity. There is, in today's era, a multiplication of examples of these life-death compositions where the
living, thought of as a tactician, defies the death which constantly doubles it: grafts, long survivals, etc. Where death perseveres indefectibly in being, whether conserving or destroying, life simultaneously
The
being of life is nourished by counter-being. What is to be done? How to divert from it
the noxious and reactive force? The resistance of life is nothing other than its
capacity to play on and thwart irresistible resistances.
rebounds, patiently and impatiently, on those obstacles it encounters, ties with them new knots of which one will only ever know after the fact whether they confine or release new possibilities.
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Alt Bad Violent

There is no viable alternative to capitalism and vague utopian proposals
beget totalitarian societies worse than capitalism
Meltzer, 2009
(Allan, professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon, There is no better alternative than
capitalism, March 9, http://hiram7.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/there-is-no-better-alternativethan-capitalism/)
Critics of capitalism emphasize their dislike of greed and self-interest. They talk a great deal about social justice
and fairness, but they do not propose an acceptable alternative to achieve their ends. The
alternatives that have been tried are types of Socialism or Communism or other types
of authoritarian rule. Anti-capitalist proposals suffer from two crippling drawbacks. First,
they ignore the Kantian principle about human imperfection . Second, they ignore
individual differences. In place of individual choice under capitalism, they substitute rigid
direction done to achieve some proclaimed end such as equality, fairness, or justice.
These ends are not precise and, most important, individuals differ about what is fair
and just. In practice, the rulers choices are enforced, often using fear, terror, prison,
or other punishment. The history of the twentieth century illustrates how enforcement of promised ends
became the justification for deplorable means. And the ends were not realized.
Transferring resource allocation decisions to government bureaus does not eliminate
crime, greed, self-dealing, conflict of interest, and corruption. Experience tells us
these problems remain. The form may change, but as Kant recognized, the problems
continue. Ludwig von Mises recognized in the 1920s that fixing prices and planning resource use omitted an essential part of the
allocation problem. Capitalism allocates by letting relative prices adjust to equal the tradeoffs expressed by buyers demands. Fixing
Some gain, but others

Not all Socialist societies have
been brutal. In the nineteenth century, followers of Robert Owen, the Amana people, and many others chose a
Socialist system. Israeli pioneers chose a collectivist system, the kibbutz. None of these arrangements
produced sustainable growth. None survived. All faced the problem of imposing
allocative decisions that satisfied the decision-making group, sometimes a majority,
often not. Capitalism recognizes that where individual wants differ, the market
responds to the mass; minorities are free to develop their favored outcome. Walk
down the aisles of a modern supermarket. There are products that satisfy many
different tastes or beliefs. Theodor Adorno was a leading critic of postwar capitalism as it
developed in his native Germany, in Europe, and in the United States. He found the popular culture
vulgar, and he distrusted the workers choices. He wanted a Socialism that he hoped would uphold the
prices eliminates the possibility of efficient allocation and replaces consumer choice with official decisions.
lose; the losers want to make choices other than those that are dictated to them.
values he shared with other intellectuals. Capitalism, he said, valued work too highly and true leisure too little. He disliked jazz, so he
Adorno offered no way of achieving the culture he

desired other than to impose his tastes on others and ban all choices he disliked. This
appealed to people who shared his view. Many preferred American pop culture
whenever they had the right to choose. Capitalism permits choices and the freedom
to make them. Some radio stations play jazz, some offer opera and symphonies, and many play pop music. Under capitalism,
was not opposed to Hitlers ban in the 1930s. But
advertisers choose what they sponsor, and they sponsor programs that people choose to hear or watch. Under Socialism, the public
watches and hears what someone chooses for them. The public had little choice. In Western Europe change did not come until boats
outside territorial limits offered choice. The Templeton Foundation recently ran an advertisement reporting the answers several
prominent intellectuals gave to the question: Does the free market corrode moral character? Several respondents recognized that
free markets operate within a political system, a legal framework, and the rule of law. The slave trade and slavery became illegal in
the nineteenth century. Before this a majority enslaved a minority. This is a major blot on the morality of democratic choice that
public opinion and the law eventually removed. In the United States those who benefitted did not abandon slave owning until forced
by a war. Most respondents to the Templeton question took a mixed stand. The philosopher John Gray recognized that greed and envy
are driving forces under capitalism, but they often produce growth and raise living standards so that many benefit. But greed leads to
outcomes like Enron and WorldCom that critics take as a characteristic of the system rather than as a characteristic of some
individuals that remains under Socialism. Michael Walzer recognized that political activity also corrodes moral character, but he
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claimed it was regulated more effectively. One of the respondents discussed whether capitalism was more or less likely to foster or
sustain moral abuses than other social arrangements. Bernard-Henri Levy maintained that alternatives to the market such as fascism
and Communism were far worse. None of the respondents mentioned Kants view that mankind includes a range of individuals who
differ in their moral character. Institutional and social arrangements like democracy and capitalism influence the moral choices
No democratic capitalist country produced any crimes comparable to

the murders committed by Hitlers Germany, Maos China, or Lenin and Stalins Soviet
Union. As Lord Acton warned, concentrated power corrupts officials. Some use concentrated power to
individuals make or reject.
impose their will. Some allow their comrades to act as tyrants. Others proclaim that ends such as equality justify force to control
Communism proclaimed a vision of equality that it never approached. It was

unattainable because individuals differ about what is good. And what is good to them
and for them is not the same as what is socially desirable to critics of capitalism.
Kants principle warns that utopian visions are unattainable. Capitalism does not offer
a vision of perfection and harmony. Democratic capitalism combines freedom, opportunity, growth, and progress
with restrictions on less desirable behavior. It creates societies that treat men and women as they
are, not as in some utopian vision. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper showed why utopian
visions become totalitarian. All deviations from the utopian ideal must be prevented.
opposition.
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Alt Bad Violent
Capitalism is inevitable, adaptive, and alternatives are comparatively

worse
Meltzer, 2009
(Allan, professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon, There is no better alternative than
capitalism, March 9, http://hiram7.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/there-is-no-better-alternativethan-capitalism/)
There is no better alternative than capitalism as a social system for providing growth and
personal freedom. The alternatives offer less freedom and lower growth. The better
alternatives that people imagine are almost always someones idea of utopia. Libraries
are full of books on utopia. Those that have been tried have not survived or flourished. The most
common reason for failure is that one person or groups utopian ideal is
unsatisfactory for others who live subject to its rules. Either the rules change or they are enforced by authorities.
Capitalism, particularly democratic capitalism, includes the means for orderly change. Critics of capitalism look for
viable alternatives to support. They do not recognize that , unlike Socialism, capitalism is
adaptive, not rigid. Private ownership of the means of production flourishes in many
different cultures. Recently critics of capitalism discovered the success of Chinese
capitalism as an alternative to American capitalism. Its main feature is mercantilist
policies supported by rigid controls on capital. Chinas progress takes advantage of an American or western
modelthe open trading systemand the willingness of the United States to run a current account balance. China is surely more
authoritarian than Japan or western countries, a political difference that previously occurred in Meiji Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Growth
in these countries produced a middle class followed by demands for political freedom. China is in the early stages of development
following the successful path pioneered by Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and others who chose export-led growth under trade
rules. Sustained economic growth led to social and political freedom in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Perhaps China will follow.
Capitalism continues to spread. It is the only system humans have found in which
personal freedom, progress, and opportunities coexist. Most of the faults and flaws
on which critics dwell are human faults, as Kant recognized. Capitalism is the only
system that adapts to all manner of cultural and institutional differences. It continues
to spread and adapt and will for the foreseeable future.
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Alt Bad Violent
Alternatives to capitalism lead to violence.

Rummel 4
(Rudolph, prof. emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, The Killing Machine that
is Marxism, Online)
Of all religions, secular and otherwise, that of Marxism has been by far the bloodiest bloodier than
the Catholic Inquisition, the various Catholic crusades, and the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants. In practice,
Marxism has meant bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal prison camps and murderous forced
labor, fatal deportations, man-made famines, extrajudicial executions and fraudulent show trials,
outright mass murder and genocide. In total, Marxist regimes murdered nearly 110 million
people from 1917 to 1987. For perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and
foreign wars during the 20th century killed around 35 million. That is, when Marxists control
states, Marxism is more deadly then all the war s of the 20th century, including World Wars I and
II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars . And what did Marxism, this greatest of human social experiments,
achieve for its poor citizens, at this most bloody cost in lives? Nothing positive. It left in its wake an economic,
environmental, social and cultural disaster. The Khmer Rouge ( Cambodian communists) who ruled Cambodia for four
years provide insight into why Marxists believed it necessary and moral to massacre so many of
their fellow humans. Their Marxism was married to absolute power. They believed without a
shred of doubt that they knew the truth, that they would bring about the greatest human welfare
and happiness, and that to realize this utopia, they had to mercilessly tear down the old feudal or
capitalist order and Buddhist culture, and then totally rebuild a communist society. Nothing could be allowed to
stand in the way of this achievement. Government the Communist Party was above any law. All other institutions, religions,
cultural norms, traditions and sentiments were expendable. The Marxists saw the construction of this utopia as a war on poverty,
exploitation, imperialism and inequality and, as in a real war, noncombatants would unfortunately get caught in the battle. There
would be necessary enemy casualties: the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, "wreckers," intellectuals, counterrevolutionaries, rightists,
tyrants, the rich and landlords. As in a war, millions might die, but these deaths would be justified by the end, as in the defeat of
To the ruling Marxists, the goal of a communist utopia was enough to justify all
the deaths. The irony is that in practice, even after decades of total control, Marxism did not
improve the lot of the average person, but usually made living conditions worse than before the
revolution. It is not by chance that the world's greatest famines have happened within the Soviet
Union (about 5 million dead from 1921-23 and 7 million from 1932-3, including 2 million outside Ukraine) and communist
China (about 30 million dead from 1959-61). Overall, in the last century almost 55 million people died in various Marxist famines
Hitler in World War II.
and associated epidemics a little over 10 million of them were intentionally starved to death, and the rest died as an unintended
this "currency" of death by

Marxism is not thousands or even hundreds of thousands, but millions of deaths. This is almost
incomprehensible it is as though the whole population of the American New England and Middle
Atlantic States, or California and Texas, had been wiped out. And that around 35 million people
escaped Marxist countries as refugees was an unequaled vote against Marxist utopian
pretensions.
result of Marxist collectivization and agricultural policies. What is astonishing is that
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Alt Bad Violent

The Revolution the alternative calls for entails for a complete
destruction of capitalism, which involves the bourgeoisie class. The
Bourgeoisie and the state will utilize military and capital to preserve
capitalism and protect themselves, leading to mass violence and death
via the ensuing conflict.
Hitchcock 12
(Peter, Professor of English at Baruch College. Author of Revolutionary Violence, A Critique,
Symplok 20: 1-2, 2012.
In State and Revolution (the very title of which announces the space of violence), Lenin is typically unequivocal in his assessment of
what needs to be done in Russia in 1917: The
replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state

is impossible without a violent revolution (1969, 20). Lenin is well aware of the
violence necessary to the maintenance of any state; he understands the difference
between its subjective and objective elements, its abstract and concrete
manifestations, its ideological and institutional formations. There is no written reform that permits a
class structured in dominance to willingly submit to its own dissolution as a class, especially if, in the form of a state, it exercises a
It is true, hegemonic formations have been shuffled aside

by non-violent means, and our understanding of key figures like Gandhi and Martin
Luther King Jr. is driven by that realization. No one should doubt the power of belief in peaceful change to
alter the contours of human history. The history of class reform has moments of peaceful exchange
and transition; the history of class transformation, however, has only been one of
extreme and devastating violence. Such is Lenins insight but also, precisely, a reason for his vilification.
monopoly on violence (Weber 1997, 154).
Obviously, from the late eighteenth century through most of the twenti-eth century, outbreaks of revolutionary violence at the level of
class (the focus of the discussion here) were intense moments of transformational possibility and the subject of theorization by a
plethora of radical thinkers (Marx, Engels, symploke Vol. 20, Nos. 1-2 (2012) ISSN 1069-0697, 9-19. 10Sorel, Trotsky, Lukacs,
Benjamin, Fanon, Sartre, Mao, and Arendt, to name but a few). There is no space here to detail either the history or the philosophy of
revolutionary violence, but I am interested in its symptoms, its axioms, in the arch of its logic of transformation, the better to come
to terms with the absence or not of its present manifestations .
For many today, the very idea of proletarian

revolution structured and overdetermined by the violent over-throw of the bourgeois
state and capitalism as its lived relation seems absurd and anachronistic, a banalized red nostalgia for what might have
been but what cannot possibly be in a period where billionaires (Gates, Soros, Buffet, etc.) prove capitalism can keep its house in
order and where they, by char-ity or derivative, by monopoly and acquisition, provide the incontrovertible truth that capitalist caesars
To pose revolutionary violence

as even relevant when capitalist ubiquity is a sure sign of the success of its peaceful
evolution would seem to be not only utopian but faintly psychotic, a compulsion
resolutely detached from the social relations that compose the world system as such.
Indeed, we might venture that to conceptualize revolutionary violence is already to
commit the violence of hermetic abstraction, a fatal contradiction in thinking
passionately, incapable of advancing the cause of our resolute species being. Lenin is
dead. There is no proletarian agon. Like the aristocracies before them, capitalists
have won. Get used to it.
can correctly handle any and all contradictions among the people across the planet.
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Historical materialism leads to sexual exploitation, violence, and nuclear
war. Capitalism distributes wealth more effectively and allows for
innovation.
Giddens 81 (Anthony, British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his
holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern
sociologists, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on
average more than one book every year, 1981, A Contemporary Critique of Historical
Materialism, Volume 1, California Berkeley Press, pgs 249-251)
(3) Let me repeat: this is the era of the Gulag, of confrontations of a warlike character
between socialist states, of Pol Pot and something close to genocide in Kampuchea .
Neither socialism more generally, nor Marxism in particular, walks innocently in the world. Marx saw socialism as the
culmination of the pre-history of humankind, as expressing the victory of the
universal interests of the proletariat, and hence as needing no ethical justification
apart from that supplied by the postulated future march of history itself . Who could be
satisfied with this today? And yet many Marxists, including Western Marxists, appear to be. I think socialism does stand in need of
ethical justification, and that a normative theory of socialism, founded upon the critique of exploitation, is today of the first
importance. Those in traditions of Marxist humanism have always recognised this need, but all too often have formulated
programmes of the utmost vagueness or generality; and they have rarely connected those programmes to any sort of analysis of
No socialist theory is adequate that does not attempt to come to

terms with some of the major absences in Marxism: the role of violence and of
military power in exploitation, and the significance of ethnic and sexual exploitation .
actually existing socialism. (4)
Among these, by far the bulk of recent writing has been concerned with sexual exploitation, and I have already remarked upon its
potential radical implications. Very little attention has been given by Marxist authors, or by those close to Marxism, to violence and
ethnic exploitation and their various conjunctions. This is probably in large part because where such authors have written about these
Ethnicity, like the nationalistic sentiments with

tends to appear in the Marxist literature showing only one side of its Janus-like face:
as a phenomenon helping to inspire liberation movements. Similarly, violence has
mostly either been discussed in terms of the internal violence of the state (the police and
the repressive apparatus of power), or again as a positive factor, i.e. as defensible revolutionary
violence. But there is no matter that presses more heavily upon the contemporary
world than that of international violence, and the threat of nuclear war . For reasons 1 have
issues they have for the most part done so in relation to revolutionary activity.
which it may be linked,
touched upon in various parts of this book, Marxism has no tradition of theorizing violence either as an integral and chronic feature of
repression, or as the world violence of the contemporary system of power- blocs and nation-states. But a philosophy of violence
(i.e. ethical investigation of the conditions under which violence or war may be justified, if ever), and practical political programmes
that have relevance to the nation-state as the propagator of violence, seem of the first priority for socialist thinkers as much as for
anyone else. Actually
existing socialism has thus far certainly made no dent in preexisting patterns of violence and its threat among nationstates. On the contrary,
socialism has so far proved compatible with each of the three sets of phenomena
mentioned above: violence, internally and externally, associated with the socialist
nation-state; racism and ethnic exploitation; and the continued subjection of women .
(5) It would be a blinkered and bigoted theory indeed which failed to take account of
the successes of capitalism, however heavy the price the rest of the world may have had to pay for them in the
shape of colonialism, old and new. Two achievements of the states of the capitalist core, for their own citizenry, have been
particularly important in the twentieth century not least in so far as they are bound up with the non-occurrence of socialist
revolutions in those countries. These are: (a) Their internal affluence. The affluent societies of the West, as we know well, contain
major pockets of poverty, and have achieved their wealth in some part by draining the resources of the periphery, and by the
never before in world

history have large masses of the population been anywhere near as materially
affluent as in the liberal-democratic capitalist societies of today . (b) The political
framework of liberal democracy comprises a range of citizenship rights , acquired in some
creation of underdevelopment. These things being acknowledged, it is quite certain that
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The
modes in which the actually existing socialist societies have managed to radicalise
these rights are limited indeed, save in certain aspects of social welfare .
substantial degree through class struggle, that are also unique in history - whatever their manifest and notable limitations.
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Alt Bad Violent

The alt is manifests like an elitist revolutionary vanguard that
perpetuates state power and leads to a fetishization of violence and
terror
Newman 11-Reader in Political Theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London, PhD in Political Science @ the University of
New South Wales [Saul, Postanarchism and Radical Politics Today, Post-Anarchism: A Reader,
http://www.lboro.com/media/wwwlboroacuk/content/phir/documentsandpdfs/arg/LoughboroughPaper%20-%20Postanarchism%20and
%20Radical%20Politics%20Today%20-%20Saul%20Newman.pdf DKP]
There is an urgent need today for a new conceptualisation of radical politics, for the
invention of a new kind

of radical political horizonespecially as the existing political terrain is rapidly becoming consumed with various reactionary forces such as religious
fundamentalism, neoconservatism/neoliberalism and ethnic communitarianism. But what kind of politics can be imagined here in response to these
The category of the worker, defined in the

strict Marxian economic sense, and politically constituted through the revolutionary
vanguard whose goal was the dictatorship of the proletariat, no longer seems viable. The collapse of the
state socialist systems, the numerical decline of the industrial working class (in the West at
least) and the emergence , over the past four or so decades, of social movements and struggles around
demands that are no longer strictly economic (although they have often have economic implications), have all
led to a crisis in the Marxist and Marxist-Leninist imaginary. This does not mean, of course, that economic issues are no
challenges, defined by what goals and by what forms of subjectivity?
longer central to radical politics, that the desire for economic and social equality no longer conditions radical political struggles and movements. On the
the
relationship between the political and the economic is now conceived in a different
way: global capitalism now operates as the signifier through which diverse issues
autonomy, working conditions, indigenous identity, human rights, the environment, etc are given a certain meaning.3The point
is, though, that the Marxist and Marxist-Leninist revolutionary modelin which economic determinism met with a highly elitist
political voluntarismhas been largely historically discredited. This sort of authoritarian
revolutionary vanguard politics has led not to the withering away of state power, but
rather to its perpetuation. ieks attempt to resurrect this form of politics does not
resolve this problem, and leads to a kind of fetishization of revolutionary violence
and terror.4 Indeed, one could say that there is a growing wariness about authoritarian and statist politics forms, particularly as state power
contrary, as we have seen in recent years with the anti-globalisation movement, capitalism is again on the radical political agenda. However,
today takes an increasingly and overtly repressive form. The expansion of the modern neoliberal state under its present guise of securitisation
represents a crisis of legitimacy for liberal democracy: in all 5 even the formal ideological and institutional trappings of liberal checks and balances and
democratic accountability have started to fall away to reveal a form of sovereignty which is articulated more and more through the state of exception.
This is why radical political movements are increasingly suspicious of state power and often resistant to formal channels of political representationthe
state appears to activists as a hostile and unassailable force through which there can be no serious hope of emancipation.
They essentialize capitalism as a singular ideology which crushes

solvency a creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that denies the materialism
they claimed to be concerned about
Cleaver 2k-Professor of Economics @ The University of Texas, PhD in Economics @ Stanford [Harry, Reading Capital Politically
[http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/rcp1.html]
reading of Capital that is not only limited to being a passive interpretation, but which also, by restricting
itself to the "economic" sphere or "base" effectively, makes of political economy the theory of the capitalist
factory and its waged workers alone. (49) This has the effect of excluding the rest of society from the
analysis -- not only the state and party politics but also the unemployed, the family, the school,
health care, the media, art, and so on. As a result political economists who would try to take these things into account find
themselves rummaging through Marx's writings looking for suggestive tidbits of "other" theories. (50) Yet it is precisely in these
"other" social spheres that many of the major social conflicts of today are occurring . At the turn of the
What we have here is a
century, when working-class struggle was located primarily (but not uniquely by any means) in the factory, there was perhaps some excuse for reading
Capital as a theoretical model of the capitalist factory.
But as a result of the extensive social engineering of the
1920s and 1930s through which capitalist social planners sought to restructure virtually all of society, and as a result of the nature of recent social
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such interpretations today are grossly inadequate . The New Left correctly sensed this and
The inadequacy of both orthodox and neo-Marxist theories became abundantly clear in the
late 1960s. Both were unequipped to explain the revolts of the unwaged and were forced to appeal to ad hoc
solutions. Orthodoxy revived historical materialism and tried to shove peasant revolts into the box of
pre-capitalist modes of production. Student revolts were classified as either petty bourgeois or
lumpen. Women's revolts were within the framework of some "domestic" mode of production. All
were thus set aside as unimportant secondary phenomena because they were not truly working
class. This of course set up the Party once again as the mediating interpreter of the real workingclass interests and justified the attempt to repress or co-opt these struggles. Although the neo-Marxism of
the New Left made these struggles central to its notion of revolution, it fared little better theoretically. Because it accepted orthodoxy's
exclusion of these groups from the working class, all it could offer were vague evocations of "the people's"
interests. In as much as either they fell outside the "economic" sphere or their place within it was
obscure, these revolts had to be seen as byproducts of the general irrationality of the system . We
struggles against such planning,
avoided orthodox interpretations.
can thus see that one great weakness of reading Marx as political economy has been to isolate and reduce his analysis to that of the factory. But if this is
a weakness which has made both orthodox and neo-Marxism utterly incapable of accounting for the present crisis, it is not the only problem. Even more
the one-sidedness of all these analyses, from those of the Second International right up
through the contemporary debates on crisis theory. This one-sidedness lies in the limited way in
which the working class, however defined, makes an appearance in these models. When it
appears on the scene at all, it comes in from the outside and usually as a victim fighting
defensive battles. This is why I would label the Marxist or neo-Marxist categories employed in these models "reified." They
are "reified" in that instead of being understood as designating social relations between the
classes they have been turned into designations of things, things within capital separate from
the social relation. In fact the concept of capital itself in these models usually designates not the class
relation (that is sometimes thrown in as an afterthought) but rather the means of production, money capital,
commodity capital, and labor power, all circulating as mindless entities through the ups and
downs of their circuits. Where does the impulse to movement, technological change, or
expansion come from in these models? Why, it comes from within capital, of course, usually the blind result of
competition among capitalists. When competition breaks down in monopoly capital, Marxists like Baran, Sweezy, and Josef Steindl
deduce a necessary tendency to stagnation. In either case the working class is only a spectator to the global waltz of
capital's autonomous self-activating development. This was not Marx's view of the world. Not only did he
important is
repeatedly insist that capital was a social relation of classes, but he also explicitly stated that at the level of the class the so-called economic relations
were in fact political relations: Every movement in which the working class comes out as a class against the ruling classes and attempts to force them by
pressure from without is a political movement. For instance, the attempt in a particular factory or even a particular industry to force a shorter working
day out of the capitalists by strikes, etc., is a purely economic movement. On the other hand the movement to force an eight hour day, etc., law is a
political movement. And in this way, out of the separate economic movements of the workers there grows up everywhere a political movement, that is to
say a movement of the class, with the object of achieving its interests in a general form, in a form possessing a general social force of compulsion. (51)
as the struggle for the eight-hour day develops , as it becomes generalized, it moves
beyond the particular demands of a narrowly defined group of workers and becomes a demand
of the whole class and thus political. This corresponds to a historical movement which begins with the demands of a quantitatively
The point here is that
small number of workers but which circulates to become a new qualitative focal point of the class struggle. Such demands spread if they correspond to
the underlying social conditions of the class generally. Marx sought out and analyzed several of these struggles -- over the length of the working day, the
intensity of work, productivity, mechanization, the social wage, and so on. In Capital he lays out both the specific history of their development in England
and their general place within capital, that is, within the overall class struggle. From the time when these areas of contention become generalized, they
are branded as class and hence political relations. At any given moment particular groups of workers may or may not be actively struggling for one or
another demand, but if they do, the individual struggle at each factory or industry can no longer be considered an isolated "purely economic" struggle
but must be grasped as a part of the whole, as a political struggle for power. Today we can see this even more clearly than in Marx's time because of the
transformed role of the state. The rise of the Keynesian state has meant the virtual merging of not only the state and the "economy" but of the state and
a second fundamental danger of reading Marx as political economy and as

ideology. We are presented with elaborately detailed critical interpretations of this self-activating
monster in a way that completely ignores the way actual working-class power forces and checks
capitalist development. Marx saw how the successful struggle for a shorter working day caused a
crisis for capital. These political economists do not: they see absolute surplus value as a reified
abstract concept. Marx saw how that struggle forced the development of productivity-raising
innovations which raised the organic composition of capital . He thus saw relative surplus value as a strategic capitalist
response. These political economists do not: they see only competition between capitalists. Marx saw
how workers' wage struggles could help precipitate capitalist crises. These political economists see
only abstract "laws of motion." (52) These kinds of interpretations glorify the dynamic of capital,
however evil, and portray the working class as a hapless victim. Because of this, even if one
wishes to see ideological critique as a weapon in the class struggle, one must conclude that such theories
"society" itself. This is
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which accord all power to capital can only be in its interest. Such critiques are particularly well suited to the
needs of Leninist parties or any other elitist groups which would present themselves as the only
solution for the class. If the class is powerless in the "economic" struggle , as the theories say, then its
only solution is obviously "to join the Party and smash the state." How this mass of hapless
victims is to achieve such a feat would seem to be a mystery understood only by the Party
hierarchy, who will provide the necessary leadership and wisdom. But the truth is that the class
is not powerless at all and that the Party leaders seek to mobilize its power as a prelude to taking
control themselves and becoming the managers of a rationalized, planned "socialist" economy in
which the workers, they hope, will work even harder than before. CARD CONTINUES The flaw that
lies at the very heart of Critical Theory's concept of bourgeois cultural hegemony (just as it lurks within
political economy's theory of capitalist technological domination in the factory) is its total one-sidedness . The positing of cultural
hegemony, like that of an all-powerful technological rationality, reflects the inability to recognize
or theorize the growth of any working-class power capable of threatening the system . Although the
theory may have accurately reflected the new issues that accompanied the rise of Hitler, Stalin, and Roosevelt, its exaggerated pessimism became
the theory of absolute consumerist integration forced Marcuse, Baran, and Sweezy to interpret
the upheavals of the time as falling "outside" the class struggle and they built their hopes on what they saw as revolts against
racial and sexual repression and against the general irrationality of the system. This exteriorization of contradiction blinded [made them
unaware of] them all to the effectiveness of the actual struggles of wage workers as well as their
interaction with the complementary struggles of the unwaged. As a result Marcuse could see only defeat in the
manifested in the 1960s. The logic of
dissolution of the "movement" in the early 1970s and the rising danger of a new fascism. Unable to grasp how the cycle of struggles of the 1960s had
thrown capital into crisis, was forced back to the political economy of Baran and Sweezy for an explanation of the international economic crisis of the
while he has spoken of a capitalist "counterrevolution" that could lead to 1984,

he cannot see the "revolution" to which it is a counter and can only proclaim it a "preventive" action by capital. (83) He
does see the revolt against work but interprets its rampant absenteeism, falling productivity,
industrial sabotage, wildcat strikes, and school dropouts as simply "prepolitical" signs of
discontent and of the possible crumbling of bourgeois cultural hegemony via managed consumerism. (84) As a result he has begun, in
1970s. (82) It is ironic that,
Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972), to remodel his critical theory into one of how the consumerist logic of contemporary capitalism may be
undermining itself by the production of nonintegrable, transcendent needs. He postulates a growing divergence between the consumerist promises of
capitalist ideology propagated by the mass media and the willingness to deliver in a period of economic crisis: "a contradiction between that which is
and that which is possible and ought to be." (85) The political conclusions Marcuse draws from this analysis formulate the current political situation in
terms of the ideological question of whether growing popular dissatisfaction can be crafted by a revitalized New Left educational and organizational
effort into a real threat to the system. Despite his affirmation that consumerism has enlarged the base of exploitation and political revolt, and his calls
for a New Left revival, it must be said that he repeatedly points to what sometimes seems to be insurmountable difficulties in carrying out this program.
Given his insistence on the isolation of radicals, his repeated affirmation of the "political weakness and the non-revolutionary attitude of the majority of
the working class," and his endorsement of the necessity of a "long march through the institutions" (working within the system), one is not surprised to
find in his final declaration the traditional Old Left evocation of the "long road": "the next revolution will be the concern of generations and the 'final crisis
of capitalism' may take all but a century." (86) Gone is his sense of optimism that rode the wave of struggles of the 1960s. Marcuse seems to have
rediscovered the inherent pessimism of the Frankfurt School's concept of hegemony as well as its limited political program for a long process of "building
Blind to the real power developed and held by workers

today, Marcuse cannot see either the extent and difficulties of current capitalist attempts at
restructuring or how the continuing struggles of workers are thwarting those efforts. Of this
drama he can capture only the repressive side of the capitalist offensive and falls back into a more
or less traditional leftist program of defense against authoritarian state capitalism via the
ideological struggles of Critical Theory. To summarize: despite the originality and usefulness of their research into the mechanisms
of capitalist domination in both the economic and cultural spheres, and indeed precisely in the formulation of those mechanisms as
one-sidedly hegemonic, Critical Theorists have remained blind to the ability of working-class
struggles to transform and threaten the very existence of capital. Their concept of domination is
so complete that the "dominated" virtually disappears as an active historical subject. In
consequence, these philosophers have failed to escape the framework of mere ideological
critique of capitalist society. To return to the military analogy used earlier in this introduction, we can pose the difficulty this way: if
one's attention is focused uniquely on the enemy's activities on the battlefield, the battle will
assuredly be lost. In the class war, as in conventional military encounters, one must begin with the closest study of one's
own forces, that is, the structure of working-class power. Without an understanding of one's own
power, the ebb and flow of the battle lines can appear as an endless process driven only by the
enemy's unilateral self-activity. When the enemy regroups or restructures, as capital is doing in
the present crisis, its actions must be grasped in terms of the defeat of prior tactics or strategies by our forces -not simply as another clever move. That an analysis of enemy strategy is necessary is obvious.
The essential point is that an adequate understanding of that strategy can be obtained only by grasping it
consciousness" through the ideological critique of society.
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in relation to our own strengths and weaknesses. In the movie Patton there is a highly instructive
scene in which Patton sees that he will defeat Rommel's armor in North Africa and cries, "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!" He is
referring to a translation of Rommel's book on tank warfare. If Patton had read that book of his declared opponent the
way Critical Theorists read bourgeois authors, he would still have been sitting in his quarters
writing "critiques" of this point or that when Rommel rolled over him with his army. Instead, he read the
book as an enemy weapon, which it was, in order to develop better strategies to defeat him. It would also
have done him little good if, when he finally faced Rommel's army, he had had no understanding of the strengths of his own firepower. (87) It serves
little purpose to study the structures of capitalist domination unless they are recognized as
strategies that capital must struggle to impose. Revolutionary strategy cannot be created from
an ideological critique; it develops within the actual ongoing growth of working-class struggle.
Blindness to this inevitably forces one back into the realm of "consciousness raising " as the only way to
bridge the perceived gap between working-class powerlessness (capitalist hegemony) and working-class victory (revolutionary defeat of capital).
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The alt is overly simplisticeven if material forces shape some social relations, they
ignore the complex interaction of different identities with materiality
Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 3 (Valerie, Associate professor in the Department of Communication,
Media and Film at the University of Windsor, Peter, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, College of Educational Studies,
Chapman University, where he is Co-Director of the Paulo Freire Democratic Project, The Strategic Centrality of Class in the Politics of
Race and Difference , 2003, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/mclaren/mclaren%20and%20valerie.pdf)
To suggest that culture is generally conditioned/shaped by material forces and social

relations linked to production does not reinscribe the simplistic and presumably
deterministic base/superstructure metaphor, which has plagued some strands of Marxist theory. Rather, such a
formulation draws on Marx's own writings from both the Grundrisse (Marx, 1858/1973) and Cap- ital (Marx, 1867/1967)
in which he contended that there is a consolidating logic in the relations of production that
permeates society in the complex variety of its "empirical" reality .4 This emphasizes Marx's
understanding of capitalism and capital as a "social" relationone that stresses the interpenetration of these categories and one that offers a unified
and dialectical analysis of history, ideology, culture, politics, economics, and society (see Marx, 1863/1972, 1867/1976a, 1866/1976b, 1865/ 1977a,
fore- grounding the limitations of "difference" and "representational"

politics does not suggest a disavowal of the importance of cultural and/or discursive
arena(s) as sites of contestation. We readily acknowledge the significance of
theorizations that have sought to valorize precisely those forms of difference that
have historically been denigrated. They have helped to uncover the genealogy of
terror hidden within the drama of Western democratic life. This has been an
important development that has enabled subordinated groups to reconstruct their
own histories and give voice to their individual and collective identities (Bannerji, 1995;
Scatamburlo-D'Annibale & Langman, 2002). Contemporary theorists have also contributed to our
understanding of issues Contemporary theorists have also contributed to our
understanding of issues of "otherness" and "race" as hegemonic articulations (Hall, 1980,
1844/1977b). Moreover,
1987, 1988), the cultural politics of race and racism and the implications of raciology (Gilroy, 1990, 2000), as well as the epistemological violence
perpetrated by Western theories of knowledge (Goldberg, 1990, 1993). Miron and Indas (2000) work, drawing on Judith Butlers theory of performativity,
has been insightful in showing how race works to constitute the racial subject through a reiterative discursive practice that achieves its effect through
the act of naming and the practice of shaming.
The alt alone is coopted you need a multitude of standpoints means the perm solves
Carroll 10 founding director of the Social Justice Studies Program at the University of Victoria
(William, Crisis, movements,
counter-hegemony: in search of the new, Interface 2:2, 168-198)
Just as hegemony has been increasingly organized on a transnational basis through the globalization of
Americanism, the construction of global governance institutions, the emergence of a transnational capitalist class and so on (Soederberg 2006; Carroll
counter-hegemony has also taken on transnational features that go beyond the classic
organization of left parties into internationals. What Sousa Santos (2006) terms the rise of a global left is evident in
specific movement based campaigns, such as the successful international effort in 1998 to defeat the Multilateral Agreement on
2010)
Investment (MAI); in initiatives such as the World Social Forum, to contest the terrain of global civil society; and in the growth of transnational movement
organizations and of a democratic globalization network, counterpoised to neoliberalisms transnational historical bloc, that address issues of North-
an incipient war of position is at

work here a bloc of oppositional forces to neoliberal globalization encompassing a wide range of
movements and identities and that is global in nature, transcending traditional national boundaries (Butko 2006: 101).
South solidarity and coordination (Smith 2008:24). As I have suggested elsewhere (Carroll 2007),
These moments of resistance and transborder activism do not yet combine to form a coherent historical bloc around a counter-hegemonic project.
Rather, as Marie-Jose Massicotte suggests, we
are witnessing the emergence and re-making of political

imaginaries, which often lead to valuable localized actions as well as greater transborder solidarity (2009: 424). Indeed,
Gramscis adage that while the line of development is international, the origin point is national, still has currency. Much of the energy of
anti-capitalist politics is centred within what Raymond Williams (1989) called militant particularisms localized struggles
that, left to themselves are easily dominated by the power of capital to coordinate accumulation across universal but
fragmented space (Harvey 1996: 32). Catharsis, in this context, takes on a spatial character. The scaling up of militant
particularisms requires alliances across interrelated scales to unite a diverse range of social
groupings and thereby spatialize a Gramscian war of position to the global scale (Karriem 2009: 324). Such alliances, however, must be grounded
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in local conditions and aspirations. Eli Friedmans (2009) case study of two affiliated movement organizations in Hong Kong and mainland China,
respectively, illustrates the limits of transnational activism that radiates from advanced capitalism to exert external pressure on behalf of subalterns in
the global South. Friedman recounts how a campaign by the Hong Kong-based group of Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior to
empower Chinese mainland workers producing goods for Hong Kong Disneyland failed due to the lack of local mobilization by workers themselves. Yet
the same group, through its support for its ally, the mainland-based migrant workers association, has helped facilitate self-organization on the shop
floor. In the former case, well-intentioned practices of solidarity reproduced a paternalism that failed to inspire local collective action; in the latter,
workers taking direct action on their own behalf, with external support, led to psychological empowerment and movement mobilization (Friedman 2009:
212). As a rule, the
more such solidarity work involves grassroots initiatives and participation, the greater is
the likelihood that workers from different countries will learn from each other, enabling
transnational counter-hegemony to gain a foothold (Rahmon and Langford 2010: 63).
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Alt Bad Effaces Other Oppressions

Economic accounts of colonization come from a privileged, white male
european perspective that only considers race or gender as footnotes this perpetuates a cultural form of colonialism which means their alt can
only really guarantee liberation for white male european subjects
Grosfoguel, 2007
(Ramon, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, Decolonizing political economy
and postcolonial studies, Online: http://www.humandee.org/spip.php?article111)
Globalization studies, politicaleconomy
paradigms and worldsystem analysis, with only a few exceptions, have not derived the
epistemological and theoretical implications of the epistemic critique coming from
subaltern locations in the colonial divide and expressed in academia through ethnic
studies and womens studies. They continue to produce knowledge from the
perspective of western mans "point zero" divine view. This has led to important
problems in the way we conceptualize global capitalism and the "worldsystem".
These concepts are in need of decolonization, which can only be achieved with a
decolonial epistemology that overtly assumes a decolonial geopolitics and
bodypolitics of knowledge as points of departure for a radical critique. The following
examples can illustrate this point. If we analyze European colonial expansion from a Eurocentric
point of view, what we get is a picture in which the origins of the socalled capitalist
worldsystem is primarily produced by interimperial competition among European
empires. The primary motive for this expansion was to find shorter routes to the East,
which led accidentally to the socalled discovery and, eventual, colonization of the
Americas by Spain. From this point of view, the capitalist worldsystem would be
primarily an economic system that determines the behaviour of the major social
actors by the economic logic of making profits as manifested in the extraction of
surplus value and the ceaseless accumulation of capital at a worldscale . Moreover, the
concept of capitalism implied in this perspective privileges economic relations over
other social relations. Accordingly, the transformation in the relations of production
produces a new class structure typical of capitalism as opposed to other social
systems and other forms of domination. Class analysis and economic structural
transformations are privileged over other power relations.Without denying the importance of the
Coloniality of power as the power matrix of the modern/colonial world
endless accumulation of capital at a world scale and the existence of a particular class structure in global capitalism, I raise the
What would the worldsystem looks like if we moved the locus of

enunciation from the European man to an Indigenous women in the Americas , to, say
following epistemic question :
Rigoberta Menchu in Guatemala or to Domitila in Bolivia ? I do not pretend to speak for or represent the perspective of these
The first
implication of shifting our geopolitics of knowledge is the recognition that what
arrived in the Americas in the late 15th century was not only an economic system of
capital and labour for the production of commodities to be sold for a profit in the
world market. This was a crucial part of, but was not the sole element in, the entangled
"package." What arrived in the Americas was a broader and wider entangled power
structure that an economic reductionist perspective of the worldsystem is unable to
account for. From the structural location of an indigenous woman in the Americas,
what arrived was a more complex worldsystem than what politicaleconomy
paradigms and worldsystem analysis portray. A
indigenous women. What I attempt to do is to shift the location from which these paradigms are thinking.
European/capitalist/military/christian/patriarchal/white/heterosexual/male arrived in the Americas and established simultaneously in

time and space several entangled global hierarchies that for purposes of clarity in this exposition I will list below as if they were
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separate from each other : 1) a particular global class formation where a diversity of forms of labour (slavery, semi serfdom, wage
labour, pettycommodity production, etc.) were to coexist and be organized by capital as a source of production of surplus value
through the selling of commodities for a profit in the world market ; 2) an international division of labour of core and periphery where
capital organized labour at the periphery around coerced and authoritarian forms (Wallerstein 1974 ; 3) ; 3) an interstate system of
politicomilitary organizations controlled by European males and institutionalized in colonial administrations (Wallerstein 1979) ; 4) a
global racial/ethnic hierarchy that privileged European people over nonEuropean people (Quijano 1993 ; 2000) ; 5) a global gender
hierarchy that privileged males over females and European patriarchy over other forms of gender relations (Spivak 1988 ; Enloe
1990) ; 6) a sexual hierarchy that privileged heterosexuals over homosexuals and lesbians (it is important to remember that most
indigenous peoples in the Americas did not consider sexuality among males a pathological behaviour and had no homophobic
ideology) ; 7) a spiritual hierarchy that privileged Christians over nonChristian/nonWestern spiritualities institutionalized in the
globalization of the Christian (Catholic and later Protestant) Church ; 8) an epistemic hierarchy that privileged western knowledge and
cosmology over non Western knowledge and cosmologies, and institutionalized in the global university system (Mignolo 1995,
2000 ; Quijano 1991). 9) a linguistic hierarchy between European languages and nonEuropean languages that privileged
communication and knowledge/theoretical production in the former and subalternized the latter as sole producers of folklore or
It not accidental that the conceptualization of the

worldsystem, from decolonial perspectives of the South, will question its traditional
conceptualizations produced by thinkers from the North. Following Peruvian Sociologist Anbal Quijano
culture but not of knowledge/theory (Mignolo 2000).
(1991 ; 1998 ; 2000), we could conceptualize the present worldsystem as a historical structural heterogeneous totality with a
This matrix affects all

dimensions of social existence such as sexuality, authority, subjectivity and
labour (Quijano 2000). The 16th century initiated a new global colonial power matrix that by the late 19th century came to cover
specific power matrix, which he calls a "colonial power matrix" ("patrn de poder colonial").
the whole planet. Taking a step further from Quijano, I conceptualize the coloniality of power as an entanglement or, to use US Third
World feminist concept, intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989 ; Fregoso 2003) of multiple and heterogeneous global hierarchies
("heterarchies") of sexual, political, epistemic, economic, spiritual, linguistic and racial forms of domination and exploitation. Here, the
racial/ethnic hierarchy of the European/nonEuropean divide transversally reconfigures all the other global power structures. What is
new in the "coloniality of power" perspective is how the idea of race and racism becomes the organizing principle that structures all
the different forms of labour that

are articulated to capitalist accumulation at a worldscale are assigned according to
this racial hierarchy ; coercive (or cheap) labour is done by nonEuropean people on
the periphery and "free wage labour" at the core. The global gender hierarchy is also
affected by race : contrary to preEuropean patriarchies, where all women were inferior to all men, in the new colonial
of the multiple hierarchies of the worldsystem (Quijano 1993). For example,
power matrix some women (of European origin) have a higher status and access to resources than some men (of nonEuropean
origin). The idea of race organizes the worlds population into a hierarchical order of superior and inferior people that becomes an
Contrary to the
Eurocentric perspective, race, gender, sexuality, spirituality, and epistemology are not
additive elements to the economic and political structures of the capitalist
worldsystem, but an integral, entangled and constitutive part of the broad
entangled "package" called the European modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal
worldsystem(Grosfoguel 2002). European patriarchyand European notions of
sexuality, epistemology and spirituality were exported to the rest of the world
through colonial expansion as the hegemonic criteria to racialize, classify and
pathologize the rest of the worlds population in a hierarchy of superior and inferior
races. This conceptualization has enormous implications that I can only briefly mention here : 1) The old Eurocentric idea that
organizing principle of the international division of labour and of the global patriarchal system.
societies develop at the level of the nationstate in terms of a linear evolution of modes of production from precapitalist to
We are all encompassed within a capitalist worldsystem that

articulates different forms of labour according to the racial classification of the
worlds population (Quijano 2000 ; Grosfoguel 2002). 2) The old Marxist paradigm of infrastructure
and superstructure is replaced by a historicalheterogeneous structure (Quijano 2000) or a
"heterarchy" (Kontopoulos 1993), that is, an entangled articulation of multiple
hierarchies, in which subjectivity and the social imaginary is not derivative but
constitutive of the structures of the worldsystem (Grosfoguel 2002). In this conceptualization, race and
capitalist is overcome.
racism are not superstructural or instrumental to an overarching logic of capitalist accumulation, but are constitutive of capitalist
accumulation at a worldscale. The "colonial power matrix" is an organizing principle involving exploitation and domination exercised
in multiple dimensions of social life, from economic, sexual, or gender relations, to political organizations, structures of knowledge,
state institutions, and households (Quijano 2000). 3)
The old division between culture and

politicaleconomy as expressed in postcolonial studies and politicaleconomy
approaches is overcome (Grosfoguel 2002). Postcolonial studies conceptualize the capitalist worldsystem as being
constituted primarily by culture, while politicaleconomy place the primary determination on economic relations. In the
"coloniality of power" approach, what comes first, "culture or the economy", is a
chickenegg dilemma that obscure the complexity of the capitalist
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worldsystem (Grosfoguel 2002). 4) Coloniality is not equivalent to colonialism. It is not derivative from, or antecedent to,
modernity. Coloniality and modernity constitute two sides of a single coin. The same way as the European
industrial revolution was achieved on the shoulders of the coerced forms of labour in
the periphery, the new identities, rights, laws, and institutions of modernity such as
nationstates, citizenship and democracy were formed in a process of colonial
interaction with, and domination/exploitation of, non Western people. 5) To call the
present worldsystem "capitalist" is misleading, to say the least. Given the
hegemonic Eurocentric "common sense", the moment we use the word "capitalism"
people immediately think that we are talking about the "economy". However,
"capitalism" is only one of the multiple entangled constellations of colonial power
matrix of the "European modern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal worldsystem". It is an
important one, but not the sole one. Given its entanglement with other power
relations, destroying the capitalist aspects of the worldsystem would not be enough
to destroy the present worldsystem. To transform this worldsystem, it is crucial to
destroy the historicalstructural heterogenous totality called the "colonial power
matrix" of the "worldsystem". 6) Anticapitalist decolonization and liberation cannot
be reduced to only one dimension of social life. It requires a broader transformation
of the sexual, gender, spiritual, epistemic, economic, political, linguistic and racial
hierarchies of the modern/colonial worldsystem. The "coloniality of power"
perspective challenges us to think about social change and social transformation in a
nonreductionist way.
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Alt No Solve Monolithic Reps

Alt fails-representing capitalism as a bounded, monistic entity precludes alternatives
and fractures coalitions
Gibson-Graham 6
J.K., pen name shared by feminist economic geographers Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson
(The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, pg 43-45)
The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) problematizes "capitalism" as an economic and social descriptor .4
Scrutinizing what might be seen as throwaway uses of the term - passing references, for example, to the capitalist system or to global capitalism - as
well as systematic and deliberate attempts to represent capitalism as a central and organizing feature of modern social experience, the book selectively
a widespread understanding: that capitalism is the hegemonic, or even the

only, present form of economy and that it will continue to be so in the proximate future. It follows
from this prevalent though not ubiquitous view that noncapitalist economic sites, if they exist at all, must inhabit
the social margins; and, as a corollary, that deliberate attempts to develop noncapitalist
economic practices and institutions must take place in the social interstices , in the realm of experiment, or in
a visionary space of revolutionary social replacement. Representations of capitalism are a potent constituent of the
anticapitalist imagination, providing images of what is to be resisted and changed as well as intimations
of the strategies, techniques, and possibilities of changing it. For this reason, depictions of "capitalist hegemony"
deserve a particularly skeptical reading. For in the vicinity of these representations, the very idea
of a noncapitalist economy takes the shape of an unlikelihood or even an impossibility. It becomes
difficult to entertain a vision of the prevalence and vitality of noncapitalist economic forms, or of
daily or partial replacements of capitalism by noncapitalist economic practices, or of capitalist
retreats and reversals. In this sense, "capitalist hegemony" operates not only as a constituent of, but
also as a brake upon, the anticapitalist imagination .5 What difference might it make to release that brake and allow an
anticapitalist economic imaginary to develop unrestricted?6 If we were to dissolve the image that looms in the
economic foreground, what shadowy economic forms might come forward? In these questions we can identify the
traces the discursive origins of
broad outlines of our project: to discover or create a world of economic difference, and to populate that world with exotic creatures that become, upon
The discursive artifact we call

"capitalist hegemony" is a complex effect of a wide variety of discursive and nondiscursive
conditions.7 In this book we focus on the practices and preoccupations of discourse, tracing some of the different, even incompatible,
representations of capitalism that can be collated within this fictive summary representati n. These depictions have their origins in the diverse
inspection, quite local and familiar (not to mention familiar beings that are not what they seem).
traditions of Marxism, classical and contemporary political economy, academic social science, modern historiography, popular economic and social
thought, western philosophy and metaphysics, indeed, in an endless array of texts, traditions and infrastructures of meaning. In the chapters that follow,
have sustained a vision of capitalism as the dominant

form of economy, or have contributed to the possibility or durability of such a vision. But the point should
emerge none the less clearly: the virtually unquestioned dominance of capitalism can be seen as a complex
product of a variety of discursive commitments, including but not limited to organicist social conceptions, heroic historical narratives,
only a few of these are examined for the ways in which they
evolutionary scenarios of social development, and essentialist, phallocentric, or binary patterns of thinking. It is through these discursive figurings and
alignments that capitalism is constituted as large, powerful, persistent, active, expansive, progressive, dynamic, transformative; embracing, penetrating,
disciplining, colonizing, constraining; systemic, self-reproducing, rational, lawful, self-rectifying; organized and organizing, centered and centering;
originating, creative, protean; victorious and ascendant; selfidentical, self-expressive, full, definite, real, positive, and capable of conferring identity and
meaning.8 The argument revisited:
it is the way capitalism has been "thought" that has made it so difficult for
people to imagine its supersession.9 It is therefore the ways in which capitalism is known that we wish to delegitimize and displace.
The process is one of unearthing, of bringing to light images and habits of understanding that constitute "hegemonic capitalism" at the intersection of a
set of representations. This we see as a first step toward theorizing capitalism without representing dominance as a natural and inevitable feature of its
If it were
possible to inhabit a heterogeneous and open-ended economic space whose identity was not
fixed or singular (the space potentially to be vacated by a capitalism that is necessarily and naturally hegemonic) then a vision of
noncapitalist economic practices as existing and widespread might be able to be born; and in the
context of such a vision, a new anticapitalist politics might emerge , a noncapitalist politics of class (whatever that
being. At the same time, we hope to foster conditions under which the economy might become less subject to definitional closure.
may mean) might take root and flourish. A long shot perhaps but one worth pursuing.
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Alt No Solve No Class Solidarity

The Alternative cannot solve because the proletariat has devolved into
different entities of workers. Revolution will not occur because they are
indifferent to those who profit from their labor.
Hitchcock 12
(Peter, Professor of English at Baruch College. Author of Revolutionary Violence, A Critique,
Symplok 20: 1-2, 2012.
Since 1989-1991, it has become commonplace to note that the proletariat is not revolting
because it is no longer a proletariat. There are all kinds of work - ers, industrial,
agricultural, manual, service, informal, part-time, guest, state, immaterial, etc. (in
addition to the pivotal differentiation of gender, race, sex across and within concepts
of labor) but they do not simply share or express a class interest over and above or
against those who live predominantly from their labor. This does not mean there are no signs of class
ressentiment, class warfare, or class antagonism globally. On the contrary, what is remarkable is the extent of working-class action,
particularly in newly-industrialized states, or by those living the advanced exploitation of compressed modernity, like China (strikes,
mass organization, factory occupations, urban autonomy, co-ops, slowdowns, sabotage, etc.). It does underline, nevertheless, that
the contradictions between the development of productive forces and the social
forces that exercise hegemony over them appear inadequate to class forma - tion as
opposition across states, or at least to a form sufficient to pursue its own interests
absolutely over all others. The paradox of proletarian class formation is that it is in the service of its dissolution;
indeed, of the disso - lution of class per se. Within globalization, however, the object of that
dissolution, those for whom the extraction of surplus value from labor is its lifeblood,
appear correspondingly less diffuse, more assured that history has fortuitously ended
with them.
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Alt No Solve Warming
Alt cant solve warming- takes too long and empirics prove- the aff is key
Parenti, 2013
(Christian, professor of sustainable development at the School for International Training, A
Radical Approach to the Climate Crisis, Dissident Magazine, Summer,
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/a-radical-approach-to-the-climate-crisis)
Several strands of green thinking maintain that capitalism is incapable of a

sustainable relationship with non-human nature because, as an economic system, capitalism has a growth
imperative while the earth is finite. One finds versions of this argument in the literature of eco-socialism, deep ecology, ecoanarchism, and even among many mainstream greens who, though typically declining to actually name the economic system, are
this may be true. Capitalism, a system in which privately

owned firms must continuously out-produce and out-sell their competitors, may be
incapable of accommodating itself to the limits of the natural world. However, that is
not the same question as whether capitalism can solve the more immediate climate
crisis. Because of its magnitude, the climate crisis can appear as the sum total of all
environmental problemsdeforestation, over-fishing, freshwater depletion, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, chemical
contamination. But halting greenhouse gas emissions is a much more specific problem, the
most pressing subset of the larger apocalyptic panorama. And the very bad news is,
time has run out. As I write this, news arrives of an ice-free arctic summer by 2050. Scientists once assumed that would not
happen for hundreds of years. Dealing with climate change by first achieving radical social
transformationbe it a socialist or anarchist or deep-ecological/neo-primitive
revolution, or a nostalgia-based localista conversion back to a mythical small-town
capitalismwould be a very long and drawn-out, maybe even multigenerational,
struggle. It would be marked by years of mass education and organizing of a scale
and intensity not seen in most core capitalist states since the 1960s or even the
1930s. Nor is there any guarantee that the new system would not also degrade the
soil, lay waste to the forests, despoil bodies of water, and find itself still addicted to
coal and oil. Look at the history of actually existing socialism before its collapse in
1991. To put it mildly, the economy was not at peace with nature. Or consider the vexing
complexities facing the left social democracies of Latin America. Bolivia, and Ecuador,
states run by socialists who are beholden to very powerful, autonomous grassroots
movements, are still very dependent on petroleum revenue. A more radical approach
to the crisis of climate change begins not with a long-term vision of an alternate
society but with an honest engagement with the very compressed timeframe that
current climate science implies. In the age of climate change, these are the real
parameters of politics.
fixated on the dangers of growth. All
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Alt No Solve Position of Slave
Anti-capitalist struggle is insufficient to confront the legacy of slavery

we should start from the position of the slave to ensure total dialectical
overthrow of structures of oppression.
Thill, 2008
But there is yet another, more properly symbolic or rhetorical, function served by the repeated turns to Douglass in these New Left discourses. From the
the peculiar institution of chattel slavery occupies

a privileged space in our historical consciousness inasmuch as its vast scope and
undeniable horrors come down to us as precisely the sort of horrific, widespread,
oppressive social system that we committed leftists could immediately and
unproblematically recognize as a pure display of evil as the absolute antithesis of
the project of human freedom and dignity. Even more so than the long histories of
warfare, material deprivation, suffering, false consciousness, discrimination, the
struggle between labor and capital, institutional injustices, and the colonization of
the inner life of the individual in industrial society (the list could be extended
indefinitely), the institution of chattel slavery presents itself to us as sufficiently
distinct from our own contemporary practices and so destructive of human life that its
radical difference from presentday society makes it impossible (thankfully, we might wish to add) to
find anything that even approximates its nightmarish conditions. Slavery can appear, then, to even
the most antiutopian and antiprogressivist among us as evidence that no matter what problems exist in modern life,
they are surely not remotely comparable to the destructiveness and cruelty of the
slave trade much as, following Adorno, we might be inclined to let Auschwitz serve a
symbolic or synecdochal function beyond its literal ones: it is the special case, the lowwater mark of
mans unbridled inhumanity to man. In this respect, Frederick Douglass can serve simultaneously as a revolutionary figure
perspective of the 1960s, as well as from our own moment,
for the black nationalist and the German migr alike. The undeniable power and wisdom of Douglasss ideas aside, there is something else fundamental
that compels two such distinctly different figures of the New Left to locate meaningful antecedents to their individual brands of rebellion in the same
historical personage. The complicated character of key elements of the discourse of New Left theory and practice at once beleaguered and frustrated,
bold and utopian in its aims, ever seeking to find greater political traction (whether from the beins to the march on the Pentagon, from outbreaks of
what we are witnessing in this

period is not just the development and mobilization of an array of radical political
movements but also the simultaneous expression of anger, resentment, confusion,
and despair in the face of a social system that seemed to find ever new ways to coopt,
subvert, and undermine the power and effectiveness of these movements at every
turn. The universal, revolutionary act of negation the central Marcusean imperative has effectively
been rendered impotent within the advanced capitalist order. Given these conditions,
Douglass can symbolize for a multifaceted New Left the indissoluble unity of the
individual agent acting upon and against a system that must be brought down brick
by brick. More so than any other historical phenomenon whether the exploitation of wage labor, nebulous
but omnipresent forms of institutionalized discrimination, systemic abuses of human rights and civil liberties, or an array of other injustices the
fact of historical chattel slavery itself casts in bold relief (quite literally, in a divide between black and white
on the level of the physical and psychological organization of bodies) the much subtler and yet equally damaging
forms of oppression for which the New Left was still struggling to find a sufficiently
rich and striking vocabulary. Because there is nothing resembling a forceful rhetorical
analogue to the slave in the contemporary capitalist order, the slave can
therefore come to figure as a rhetorical trope or, more subtly, as an allegorical figure
for the forms of oppression that the committed anticapitalists , antiimperialists, and
violence in the inner cities to a massive and frustrated antiwar coalition) should remind us that
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antiracists of the polyglot New Left are experiencing without ever quite being able to
name or understand in a sufficiently striking fashion. Even today, from a rhetorical point of view, the
rupture of history called for by Marcuse, as well as the demand for racial equality and
opportunity by any means necessary through the slogan of Black Power offered by
Carmichael, pale in comparison to the image of the slave who dares to speak, the slave
who achieves his liberation. If this is the case, and Douglass (and the abolitionist cause that his rhetoric and his decisive act
represent) is in fact performing significant figural work within Carmichael and Marcuses analyses, this raises another issue relevant to a fuller
understanding of the complicated legacies of the New Left. For alongside this analysis of the use of the slave as a rhetorical figure, there should be a
certain element of critical disquiet. For it would not do to document certain New Left rhetorical strategies and offer these arguments as to their putative
purpose if we did not at the same time scrutinize more carefully this valorization of Douglass and the figure of the slave. What actually happens to the
slave and the historical fact and memory of slavery in this process of figuration, resurrected as a vehicle for New Leftist selffashioning and political
identification? Even if we read Marcuse and Carmichaels individual deployments of Douglass and the condition of slavery in the most charitable fashion
recognizing that they are speaking, perhaps, of rough analogies with contemporary situations of uneven power relations, rather than drawing strict
parallels between the historical condition of the slave and those who oppose the Wests global imperium it is still worth considering what this might
say about their relationship to the historical facts of slavery. In Hegel and Haiti, Susan BuckMorss offers a productive critique of
Enlightenment discourses of slavery and liberation that conveniently elided the problem of actually existing
slavery by conceptualizing slavery in largely metaphorical or allegorical (rather than material and historical) terms.21 For BuckMorss, Lockes criticism
has nothing to do with the real conditions of enslaved Africans but

becomes instead a metaphor for legal tyranny,22 much as Hegel ignored or
suppressed consideration of actually existing slavery to craft his dialectic of lordship
and bondage in order to develop a definition of slavery as a more broadly
philosophical obstacle to the free and full development of individual sensibility. This
tendency to speak of slavery while ignoring realworld slavery itself , she adds, is
likewise evident in later Marxist appropriations of Hegels dialectic. As she argues, beginning
with Marx and continuing through Lukacs, Kojve, and others (including, notably, Herbert Marcuse),
the struggle between the master and the slave has been abstracted from literal
reference and read once again as a metaphor this time for class struggle .23 These are
of slavery, for example,
strong criticisms, and BuckMorsss palpable frustration with received histories of Hegel invites us to reexamine certain fundamental elements of the
social construction of Enlightenment philosophy, as well as of a broader HegelianMarxist tradition that has often fallen prey to reconstituting as class
dramas certain social antagonisms that cannot be understood apart from the racial dynamics that inform them in powerful ways.
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Alt No Solve Racism

Modern capitalism is founded on racism and slaverytheir singular focus is bad
history
Mills 97-Professor of Moral and Intellectual Philosophy @ Northwestern University [Charles, The Racial Contract, pp. 31-40,
1997]
The classic social contract, as I have detailed, is primarily moral/political in nature. But it is also economic in the
background sense that the point of leaving the state of nature is in part to secure a stable
environment for the industrious appropriation of the world. (After all, one famous definition of politics is that it is about
who gets what and why.) Thus even in Locke's moralized state of nature, where people generally do obey natural law, he is concerned about the safety
of private property, indeed proclaiming that "the great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under
Government, is the Preservation of their Property."42 And in Hobbes's famously amoral and unsafe state of nature, we are told that "there is no place for
So part of the point of bringing

society into existence, with its laws and enforcers of the law, is to protect what you have
accumulated. / What, then, is the nature of the economic system of the new society? The general contract does not itself prescribe a particular
Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth."43
model or particular schedule of property rights, requiring only that the "equality" in the prepolitical state be somehow preserved. This provision may be
variously interpreted as a self-interested surrender to an absolutist Hobbesian government that itself determines property rights, or a Lockean insistence
that private property accumulated in the moralized state of nature be respected by the constitutionalist government. Or more radical political theorists,
such as socialists and feminists, might argue that state-of-nature equality actually mandates class or gender economic egalitarianism in society. So,
different political interpretations of the initial moral egalitarianism can be advanced, but the
general background idea is that the equality of human beings in the state of nature is somehow
(whether as equality of opportunity or as equality of outcome) supposed to carry over into the economy of the created
sociopolitical order, leading to a system of voluntary human intercourse and exchange in which
exploitation is precluded. / By contrast, the economic dimension of the Racial Contract is the most
salient, foreground rather than background, since the Racial Contract is calculatedly aimed at
economic exploitation. The whole point of establishing a moral hierarchy and juridically
partitioning the polity according to race is to secure and legitimate the privileging of those
individuals designated as white/persons and the exploitation of those individuals designated as
nonwhite/subpersons. There are other benefits accruing from the Racial Contractfar greater political influence, cultural hegemony, the
psychic payoff that comes from knowing one is a member of the Herrenvolk (what W. E. B. Du Bois once called "the wages of whiteness")44but the
Globally, the Racial Contract creates Europe as the continent that

dominates the world; locally, within Europe and the other continents, it designates Europeans as
the privileged race. / The challenge of explaining what has been called "the European miracle"the rise of Europe
to global dominationhas long exercised both academic and lay opinion. 45 How is it that a
formerly peripheral region on the outskirts of the Asian land mass, at the far edge of the trade
routes, remote from the great civilizations of Islam and the East, was able in a century or two to
achieve global political and economic dominance? The explanations historically given by Europeans
themselves have varied tremendously, from the straightforwardly racist and geographically
determinist to the more subtly environmentalist and culturalist. But what they have all had in
common, even those influenced by Marxism, is their tendency to depict this development as
essentially autochthonous, their tendency to privilege some set of internal variables and
correspondingly-downplay or ignore altogether the role of colonial conquest and African slavery.
bottom line is material advantage.
Europe made it on its own, it is said, because of the peculiar characteristics of Europe and Europeans. / Thus whereas no reputable historian today would
espouse the frankly biologistic theories of the past, which made Europeans (in both pre- and post-Darwinian accounts) inherently the most advanced
race, as contrasted with the backward/less-evolved races elsewhere, the thesis of European specialness and exceptionalism is still presupposed. It is still
assumed that rationalism and science, innovativeness and inventiveness found their special home here, as against the intellectual stagnation and
traditionalism of the rest of the world, so that Europe was therefore destined in advance to occupy the special position in global history it has. James
Blaut calls this the theory, or "super-theory" (an umbrella covering many different versions: theological, cultural, biologistic, geographical, technological,
etc.), of "Eurocentric diffusionism," according to which European progress is seen as "natural" and asymmetrically determinant of the fate of nonEurope." Similarly, Sandra Harding, in her anthology on the "racial" economy of science, cites "the assumption that Europe functions autonomously from
other parts of the world; that Europe is its own origin, final end, and agent; and that Europe and people of European descent in the Americas and
Third World theorists have traditionally

dissented from this notion of happy divine or natural European dispensation. They have claimed, quite to the
contrary, that there is a crucial causal connection between European advance and the unhappy fate
of the rest of the world. One classic example of such scholarship from a half century ago was the Caribbean
historian Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery, which argued that the profits from African
elsewhere owe nothing to the rest of the world."47 / Unsurprisingly, black and
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slavery helped to make the industrial revolution possible, so that internalist accounts were
fundamentally mistaken.48 And in recent years, with decolonization, the rise of the New Left in the United States, and the entry of more
alternative voices into the academy, this challenge has deepened and broadened. There are variations in the authors' positionsfor example, Walter
the exploitation of the empire (the

bullion from the great gold and silver mines in Mexico and Peru, the profits from plantation
slavery, the fortunes made by the colonial companies, the general social and economic stimulus
provided by the opening up of the "New World") was to a greater or lesser extent crucial in enabling and
then consolidating the takeoff of what had previously been an economic backwater. It was far
from the case that Europe was specially destined to assume economic hegemony; there were a
number of centers in Asia and Africa of a comparable level of development which could
potentially have evolved in the same way. But the European ascent closed off this development
path for others because it forcibly inserted them into a colonial network whose exploitative
relations and extractive mechanisms prevented autonomous growth. / Overall, then, colonialism
"lies at the heart" of the rise of Europe.50 The economic unit of analysis needs to be Europe as a whole, since it is not always the
Rodney, Samir Amin, Andre Guilder Frank, Immanuel Wallerstein9but the basic theme is that
case that the colonizing nations directly involved always benefited in the long term. Imperial Spain, for example, still feudal in character, suffered
massive inflation from its bullion imports. But through trade and financial exchange, others launched on the capitalist path, such as Holland, profited.
Internal national rivalries continued, of course, but this common identity based on the transcontinental exploitation of the non-European world would in
many cases be politically crucial, generating a sense of Europe as a cosmopolitan entity engaged in a common enterprise, underwritten by race. As
Victor Kiernan puts it, "All countries within the European orbit benefited however, as Adam Smith pointed out, from colonial contributions to a common
stock of wealth, bitterly as they might wrangle over ownership of one territory or another... [T]here was a sense in which all Europeans shared in a
heightened sense of power engendered by the successes of any of them, as well as in the pool of material wealth... that the colonies produced."51 /
Today, correspondingly, though formal decolonization has taken place and in Africa and Asia black, brown, and yellow natives are in office, ruling
independent nations, the global economy is essentially dominated by the former colonial powers, their offshoots (Euro-United States, Euro-Canada), and
their international financial institutions, lending agencies, and corporations. (As previously observed, the notable exception, whose history confirms
rather than challenges the rule, is Japan, which escaped colonization and, after the Meiji Restoration, successfully embarked on its own industrialization.)
Thus one could say that the world is essentially dominated by white capital. Global figures on
income and property ownership are, of course, broken down nationally rather than racially, but if a transnational racial
disaggregation were to be done, it would reveal that whites control a percentage of the world's
wealth grossly disproportionate to their numbers. Since there is no reason to think that the
chasm between First and Third Worlds (which largely coincides with this racial division) is going to
be bridgedvide the abject failure of various United Nations plans from the "development decade" of the 1960s onward it seems
undeniable that for years to come, the planet will be white dominated. With the collapse of
communism and the defeat of Third World attempts to seek alternative paths, the West reigns
supreme, as celebrated in a London Financial Times headline: "The fall of the Soviet bloc has left the IMF and G7 to rule the world and create a new
imperial age."52 Economic structures have been set in place, causal processes established, whose
outcome is to pump wealth from one side of the globe to another, and which will continue to
work largely independently of the ill will/good will, racist/antiracist feelings of particular
individuals. This globally color-coded distribution of wealth and poverty has been produced by the
Racial Contract and in turn reinforces adherence to it in its signatories and beneficiaries. / Moreover,
it is not merely that Europe and the former white settler states are globally dominant but that
within them, where there is a significant nonwhite presence (indigenous peoples, descendants of imported slaves,
voluntary nonwhite immigration), whites continue to be privileged vis-a-vis non-whites. The old structures of formal, de
jure exclusion have largely been dismantled, the old explicitly biologistic ideologies largely abandoned53the Racial Contract, as will be discussed later,
opportunities for nonwhites, though they have expanded, remain below

those for whites. The claim is not, of course, that all whites are better off than all nonwhites, but that,
as a statistical generalization, the objective life chances of whites are significantly better. / As an
is continually being rewrittenbut
example, consider the United States. A series of books has recently documented the decline of the integrationist hopes raised by the 1960s and the
whites who think they have "done enough," despite the fact that the
country continues to be massively segregated, median black family incomes have begun falling
by comparison to white family incomes after some earlier closing of the gap, the so-called "black underclass"
has basically been written off, and reparations for slavery and post-Emancipation discrimination
have never been paid, or, indeed, even seriously considered.54 Recent work on racial inequality by Melvin Oliver and
Thomas Shapiro suggests that wealth is more important than income in determining the likelihood of future
racial equalization, since it has a cumulative effect that is passed down through intergenerational
transfer, affecting life chances and opportunities for one's children. Whereas in 1988 black households earned
growing intransigence and hostility of
sixty two cents for every dollar earned by white households, the comparative differential with regard to wealth is much greater and, arguably, provides a
more realistically negative picture of the prospects for closing the racial gap:
"Whites possess nearly twelve times as much
median net worth as blacks, or $43,800 versus $3,700. In an even starker contrast, perhaps, the average white household controls
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focus on wealth
rather than income exposes how illusory the much-trumpeted rise of a "black middle class" is:
"Middle class blacks, for example, earn seventy cents for every dollar earned by middle-class
whites but they possess only fifteen cents for every dollar of wealth held by middle-class whites."
This huge disparity in white and black wealth is not remotely contingent, accidental, fortuitous; it
is the direct outcome of American state policy and the collusion with it of the white citizenry. In
effect, "materially, whites and blacks constitute two nations," 55 the white nation being
constituted by the American Racial Contract in a relationship of structured racial exploitation with
the black (and, of course, historically also the red) nation. / A collection of papers from panels organized in the 1980s by
$6,999 in net financial assets while the average black household retains no NFA nest egg whatsoever." Moreover, the analytic
the National Economic Association, the professional organization of black economists, provides some insight into the mechanics and the magnitude of
such exploitative transfers and denials of opportunity to accumulate material and human capital. It takes as its title The Wealth of Racesan ironic
tribute to Adam Smith's famous book The Wealth of Nationsand analyzes the different varieties of discrimination to which blacks have been subjected:
slavery, employment discrimination, wage discrimination, promotion discrimination, white monopoly power discrimination against black capital, racial
price discrimination in consumer goods, housing, services, insurance, etc.56 Many of these, by their very nature, are difficult to quantify; moreover,
there are costs in anguish and suffering that can never really be compensated. Nonetheless, those that do lend themselves to calculation offer some
remarkable figures. (The figures are unfortunately dated; readers should multiply by a factor that takes fifteen years of inflation into account.) If one
were to do a calculation of the cumulative benefits (through compound interest) from labor market discrimination over the forty-year period from 1929 to
1969 and adjust for inflation, then in 1983 dollars, the figure would be over $1.6 trillion.57 An estimate for the total of "diverted income" from slavery,
if one were to try to

work out the cumulative value, with compound interest, of unpaid slave labor before 1863,
underpayment since 1863, and denial of opportunity to acquire land and natural resources
available to white settlers, then the total amount required to compensate blacks "could take
more than the entire wealth of the United States"59 / So this gives an idea of the centrality of racial
exploitation to the U.S. economy and the dimensions of the payoff for its white beneficiaries from one
nation's Racial Contract. But this very centrality, these very dimensions render the topic taboo, virtually
undiscussed in the debates on justice of most white political theory. If there is such a backlash against affirmative
action, what would the response be to the demand for the interest on the unpaid forty acres and a mule? These issues cannot be raised
because they go to the heart of the real nature of the polity and its structuring by the Racial
Contract. White moral theory's debates on justice in the state must therefore inevitably have a
somewhat farcical air, since they ignore the central injustice on which the state rests. (No wonder a
1790 to 1860, compounded and translated into 1983 dollars, would yield the sum of $2.1 trillion to $4.7 trillion.58 And
hypothetical contractarianism that evades the actual circumstances of the polity's founding is preferred!) / Both globally and within particular nations,
then, white people, Europeans and their descendants, continue to benefit from the Racial Contract, which creates a world in their cultural image, political
states differentially favoring their interests, an economy structured around the racial exploitation of others, and a moral psychology (not just in whites
but sometimes in nonwhites also) skewed consciously or unconsciously toward privileging them, taking the status quo of differential racial entitlement as
normatively legitimate, and not to be investigated further.
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Capitalism Inevitable
Capitalism is self-correcting, evolutionary, and inevitable- theres no
chance of collapse
Pirie, 2013
(Madsen, Professor of Logic and Philosophy at Hillsdale College, Why Marx Was Wrong about
Capitalism, 4/11, http://www.adamsmith.org/research/think-pieces/why-marx-was-wrong-aboutcapitalism/)
Like many public figures who leave a legacy, either in their writings or their deeds, Karl Marx was sometimes right and
sometimes wrong. I concentrate on some of the things about which he was wrong. He was wrong to predict that
history would take us to the inevitable triumph of the proletariat and then stop.
History shows no signs of doing either. Marx was also wrong to suggest that this
would happen first in the most advanced economies as the final stage of capitalism. In
fact such revolutions as came took place in less developed economies such as Russia and
China. It has not happened in the advanced economies, and this could be because Marx was wrong about something else. He
predicted that capitalism would drive down wages to survival level before its final
denouement. In fact as economies became more advanced, both wages and living
standards rose to levels not even dreamt of in Marxs day, and this seems to have
lowered the pressure for revolutionary change. Marx was also wrong about something
more fundamental. He was wrong about change. I dont just mean that he was wrong about the changes
that would come about; more fundamentally he was wrong about how change takes place. He took the Hegelian model of change. To
Hegel change comes about through staccato triangles. A state of affairs nurtures its
opposite, and from the violent clash between the two a new state of affairs emerges. Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. Violence
is at the core of it, and hence Marxs commitment to revoution. But Marx was a contemporary of Darwin. He
had read Darwins Origin of Species and admired Darwins account of the origins of
humankind. He failed, however, to spot the significance of Darwins theory of change
and to incorporate it into his own programme. Darwin advanced a gradual mechanism
of change in which small differences gradually come to dominate over time . It is
evolutionary, not revolutionary , and is a much more accurate description of how change usually happens in human
Darwin was right and Hegel was wrong. This means that
Marx was also wrong, wrong about change, and wrong about how capitalism would
develop. The point is that capitalism changes and evolves. It has been through many
transformations. The capitalism that Marx thought would collapse under its own
contradictions is not the capitalism of today the one this motion refers to. In the material
societies than was Hegels account. Indeed ,
world organisms evolve. They respond to crises and they change. A similar thing happens with our social practices. They evolve and
Capitalism has faced many crises, and each time it has evolved and
changed. Each time a new form of capitalism has emerged to solve the problems its
predecessor faced. This is how human beings progress. We solve our problems by
adapting our practices. Capitalism certainly faced a crisis in 2008, but it is still with
us, as yet uncollapsed. It is evolving and responding to the changes that are needed
and, as before, when the dust of crisis has settled, it will be a new version of
capitalism that goes on to generate more wealth and to expand the opportunities
open to humankind. That new version of capitalism that emerges will have to be one which somehow manages to keep at
adapt to new circumstances.
arms length the politicians wanting to fix its outcomes for political advantage. Greedy bankers can only take reckless risks if
politicians make it cheap for them to do so by turning on the taps of credit and money. Politicians like booms and bubbles because
they help them to win elections and office, so procedures must be found that limit their ability to do this. Those whose greed is for
power are no less deadly than those who greed is for gain, and both need rules to circumscribe their scope for action. I wish to make
a further point: that
capitalism will survive because it is the only valid way we have found
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that works in practice to create wealth and the opportunities it brings. Marx was wrong about
another important thing. He subscribed to the labour theory of value, believing that the value of a thing arises from the labour put
into producing it. Wrong. Value is based on demand. If no-one wants a thing, then no matter how much labour went into producing it,
it is valueless. We all value things differently, which is why trade takes place. We trade because we each put greater value on what
the other person has than on what we are offering in exchange. We both gain more value when we trade, and thats how we create
wealth. We produce in order to trade and to create wealth, and we invest in order to produce. Thats in essence what capitalism is,
capitalism
grows more complicated and more ambitious as it evolves, but its principles remain.
Capitalism will survive its current crisis. It will be tweaked and modified but it will not
collapse, because nothing has ever been found that can replace it or do what it does,
or bring the advantages and benefits it brings. It has brought the resources that have
lifted most of humankind above subsistence and starvation, that have enabled us to
conquer diseases, to fund education and social services, to enable people to engage
in artistic and cultural activities and to enrich their lives with previously undreamt-of
opportunities.
and it works certainly better than anything else that has been tried. And it works more humanely, too. Yes,
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Welfare Aff Reform Solves

Aff reforms secure guaranteed income - that serves as anti-capitalist
mobilization.
guaranteed income,
only serves as a demand for mobilizations. According to them, the mere fact
that a guaranteed income would be utopian in a capitalist society could bring people
out into the streets for anticapitalist politics. According to them, the guaranteed income
should not actually be seen as a demand but as a strategy of direct appropriation like
the concept of the political wage which was formulated in Italy in the 1970s. As the political wage emerged around
militant mass worker struggles and broad movements of direct appropriation it does
look like the most radical concept. Then just as now the real question is how we understand politics: how do we see
the role of political organization? In the late 1960s, class struggles in Italy had broken free from the chains
of trade union control. Struggles and wage demands had detached themselves from the business cycle. That was the
material basis of workers autonomy. The mass workers struggles were the basis of
proletarian power against the factory society, radiating out into the territory: refusal to pay rent or energy
bills, squatting, free shopping in supermarkets etc. The political wage was supposed to unite and
homogenise all those struggles. A guaranteed wage outside of the factory means
making the transition to taking the commodities, it means appropriating them .
5. From the political wage to the guaranteed income Some groups ignore the criticism of the
arguing that it

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Present in the logic of the system of capital itself is not an

They exist, in other words, as a function of traditional theory.

global industrial civilisation could

Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among

Voting negative refuses the affirmative in favor of Historical Materialist

materialist critique aims

materialist critique relates these practices to the macrostructures of

Materialist critique is fundamental to a transformative feminist

individual to see through the arbitrariness of signification and the violence of

the ideals of a good society, for

The fact that the mass surveillance state could

The affirmatives account of surveillance trades off with a material

Present in the logic of the system of capital itself is not an

They exist, in other words, as a function of traditional theory.

Capitalisms exploitation of labor and resources will collapse modern

global industrial civilisation could

Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among

Voting negative refuses the affirmative in favor of Historical Materialist

materialist critique relates these practices to the macrostructures of

Materialist critique is fundamental to a transformative feminist

race, sexuality, and class,

individual to see through the arbitrariness of signification and the violence of

Communism, which previous generations rendered as the world-historical struggle of

all the way to human

Antiracism directs our attention to those

The demand for

Link Surveillance Topic K Affs

Present in the logic of the system of capital itself is not an

They exist, in other words, as a function of traditional theory.

Link Policy Reform of Surveillance

But what hasnt been discussed or engaged with yet, at least

NSA programmes as an abuse of that law.

are we really surprised that the government is violating our civil

The existence of the NSA as an organisation and its secretive,

If change is going to happen, it has to begin by challenging the

free market capitalism, with its concept of universal exchange,

Never mind the

Link Curtail Surveillance (Surveillance Can be Good)

The question therefore is: privacy for

socialist privacy is a specific contextualization of

Link Curtail Surveillance (Privatization)

Private entities are working in concert with the

neoconservatives exploit crises to advance

cuts haven't resulted in less policing; rather, they've resulted in an

Link Focus on State Privacy Violations

The task of a socialist privacy conception is to go beyond the focus of privacy

The concept of risk management, which has

To reduce the continuous manufacture of nuclear weapons,

The language of risk management is pervasive in not only the policies of

military activity is, in a Macchiavellian sense, really about

Management is necessarily apolitical, a term

drones appear to affirm the primacy of visual modalities of surveillance, their

Link Government Accountability

For Marshall and his colleagues on

The Supreme Courts decision that Dred Scott was

Thus, in 1857, for white

those who wind up in

the structure of separation of powers

The years since

Link State Action

no meaningful change is feasible without

a transformation of this magnitude

The role of reformist parties, by