Capitalism Kritik - Gonzaga 2013

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013
Pointer/LeDuc/Gaither
Capitalism K
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Economic engagement with Latin America fuels capitalist
exploitation the plan is used to make imperialist violence
more efficient and invisible
Tumino Assistant Professor of English @ City University of New
York, 02,
(Stephen, author of Cultural Theory After the Contemporary, May/June 02, The Red
Critique, Contesting the Empire-al Imaginary: The Truth of Democracy as Class,
http://redcritique.org/MayJune02/contestingtheempirealimaginary.htm, [Accessed
7/8/13], JB).
freedom and democracy under capitalism is only for the few who can
afford it because they live off the labor of the many. As capitalism
develops on a global scale, the many cannot even meet their basic needs
But
and are compelled to enter into struggle against the bossesas Argentina, after only 10 years of neoliberal
deregulation, and Venezuela, whose workers must arm themselves simply to defend the minor redistributions of
The emergent revolutionary struggles in

Latin America once again prove the basic truth of Marxism: that the global
development of capitalism leads to its own downfall by producing a
revolutionary working class with nothing left to lose and a world to win by
taking power from the owners and running the economy for the social
good. This truth is, however, covered up by a thick layer of mystification by the
corporate media through a variety of relays and mediations. This mystification serves to
naturalize the social inequality at the basis of capitalism and maintain the
status quo. Take the lie that the North, led by the US, has a moral destiny to bring freedom and democracy to
wealth of the Chavez government, once again show.
the South crushed by poverty and corruption. The poverty and corruption of course are the result of freedom and
democracythe freedom of the capitalist to exploit human labor power for profit which is what in actuality "chases
the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe" and "compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to []
introduce what it calls civilization into their midst", as The Communist Manifesto says (Marx 477). The "moral" story
about protecting human rights is told to cover up the material truth about democracy being the freedom to exploit
The story is needed to alibi the regime of wage-labor and

capital as a fact of nature. In other words, it portrays the normal daily
exploitation of labor under capitalism as the free expression of human
nature in comparison with which its everyday brutality is made to appear
"extreme" and "irrational" rather than a socially necessary consequence of
private property. The representation of capitalism as natural is of course not
natural at all but historical: it is needed now to manufacture consensus that capitalism
cannot be changed at a time when it is obvious that the material conditions already exist to abolish class
others for profit.
inequality. As Venezuela shows, it is obvious that what stands in the way of a regime directed toward meeting
people's needs, which is what Chavez represents, is not a lack of respect for human rights by immoral and corrupt
people of the South, but the need of big business for a bigger share of the world market. It was the US oil giants
represented by the Bush regime, supported by the trade union bureaucracy in this country, that aided the counterrevolutionary coup in Venezuela (e.g., by fomenting the oil workers strike as the core of a "civil society" movement
that tried to abolish the popular social reforms of the Chavez government). It is for profit not democracy that the US
supported the reactionary coup to overthrow Chavez (not just in words but with financial aid, military weapons and
advisors as the British Guardian has reported); it is for profit and not for democracy that the US supports Israel and
is currently colonizing Afghanistan as preparation for taking Iraq. It is obvious that the Bush regime is guided by
profit and not democracy, which is why global public opinion is everywhere outside the US opposed to US
"unilateralism" and "empire" building. This growing "obviousness" of democracy as hegemony of the rich threatens
the ideology of capitalism by exposing democracy as the bourgeois freedom to exploit the labor and resources of
the world. It is also behind the formation of a transnational populist left, however, that goes along with the system
of wage labor and capital by marking the obvious hoax of democracy but nevertheless channeling the opposition
into a reformist politics to maintain capitalism. By merely contesting its obviously barbaric effects rather than

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engage in a radical critique of capitalism for a social revolution against wage-slavery that is the cause of the effects,
the left supports the ideology of democracy as class rule. It thus goes along with the reactionary backlash to make
social contradictions into problems of "governance" and "policy" of "unruly" subjectsthe powerless are made to
What is emerging in the wake of the

revolutionary explosions in Latin America is the growing awareness that it
is becoming impossible to simply deny the basic truth of Marxism on
democracy as class inequality. As a result, newer mystifications of capitalism and why it changes
are also emerging to stabilize the status quo. The dominant mode of naturalizing
capitalism is to represent the new social struggles as spontaneous
movements of the oppressed, by denying that they are a product of
history as class struggle over the conditions of production. Rather than
produce awareness of the class interests behind the emerging struggles the populist left
portrays them as the outcome of spontaneous rebellions of the people
against power. It is thus on the left most of all that one finds the alibi of
capitalism as democracy that proposes capitalism may be reformed while
the exploitation at its root remains intact. A reformed capitalism is simply a
code for a more efficient regime of exploitation and imperialist brutality it
bear responsibility for the contradictions of class society.
is appeasement of the violent democracy of the owners.
The impact is extinction

Brown, 05 (Charles, Professor of Economics and Research Scientist at the University of
Michigan, 05/13/2005, http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/penl/2005w15/msg00062.htm)
The capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation-the means of production and distribution.
Capitalists buy the workers' labor,

but only pay them back a portion of the wealth they create. Because the capitalists own the means of
production, they are able to keep the surplus wealth created by workers above and beyond
the cost of paying worker's wages and other costs of production . This surplus is called
Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life.
"profit" and consists of unpaid labor that the capitalists appropriate and use to achieve ever-greater profits. These
profits are turned into capital which capitalists use to further exploit the producers of all wealth-the working class.
Capitalists are compelled by competition to seek to maximize profits. The capitalist class as a whole can do that
Under
capitalism, economic development happens only if it is profitable to the individual
capitalists, not for any social need or good. The profit drive is inherent in capitalism,
and underlies or exacerbates all major social ills of our times. With the rapid advance of
only by extracting a greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers by increasing exploitation.
technology and productivity, new forms of capitalist ownership have developed to maximize profit. The working
people of our country confront serious, chronic problems because of capitalism. These chronic problems become
part of the objective conditions that confront each new generation of working people.
The threat of
nuclear war, which can destroy all humanity, grows with the spread of nuclear
weapons, space-based weaponry, and a military doctrine that justifies their use in preemptive wars and wars
without end. Ever since the end of World War II, the U.S. has been constantly involved in aggressive military actions
big and small. These wars have cost millions of lives and casualties, huge material losses, as well as trillions of U.S.
taxpayer dollars. Threats to the environment continue to spiral, threatening all life on our planet.
Millions of workers are unemployed or insecure in their jobs, even during economic upswings and periods of
workers experience long years of stagnant real wages,

while health and education costs soar. Many workers are forced to work second and third jobs to
"recovery" from recessions. Most
make ends meet. Most workers now average four different occupations during their lifetime, being involuntarily
moved from job to job and career to career. Often, retirement-age workers are forced to continue working just to
provide health care for themselves. With capitalist globalization, jobs move as capitalists export factories and even
Millions of people continuously live below the poverty level;

many suffer homelessness and hunger. Public and private programs to alleviate poverty and hunger
do not reach everyone, and are inadequate even for those they do reach. Racism remains the most potent
weapon to divide working people. Institutionalized racism provides billions in extra profits for
the capitalists every year due to the unequal pay racially oppressed workers receive
for work of comparable value. All workers receive lower wages when racism succeeds in dividing and
entire industries to other countries.

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disorganizing them. In every aspect of economic and social life, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian
a nd Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Middle Eastern peoples, and other nationally and racially oppressed people
Racist violence and the poison of racist ideas

victimize all people of color no matter which economic class they belong to. The attempts
experience conditions inferior to that of whites.
to suppress and undercount the vote of the African American and other racially oppressed people are part of racism
in the electoral process. Racism permeates the police, judicial and prison systems, perpetuating unequal
sentencing, racial profiling, discriminatory enforcement, and police brutality. The democratic, civil and human
rights of all working people are continually under attack. These attacks range from increasingly difficult procedures
for union recognition and attempts to prevent full union participation in elections, to the absence of the right to
strike for many public workers. They range from undercounting minority communities in the census to making it
difficult for working people to run for office because of the domination of corporate campaign funding and the high
cost of advertising. These attacks also include growing censorship and domination of the media by the ultra-right;
growing restrictions and surveillance of activist social movements and the Left; open denial of basic rights to
immigrants; and, violations of the Geneva Conventions up to and including torture for prisoners. These abuses all
serve to maintain the grip of the capitalists on government power. They use this power to ensure the economic and
Women still face a considerable differential in wages for

work of equal or comparable value. They also confront barriers to promotion, physical
and sexual abuse, continuing unequal workload in home and family life, and male
supremacist ideology perpetuating unequal and often unsafe conditions. The
political dominance of their class.
constant attacks on social welfare programs severely impact single women, single mothers, nationally and racially
oppressed women, and all working class women. The reproductive rights of all women are continually under attack
ideologically and politically. Violence against women in the home and in society at large remains a shameful fact of
life in the U.S.
The alternative is to reject the aff

Rejection of the aff is key to a historical materialist criticism
voting negative endorses an anti-capitalist methodology that
denaturalizes the functions of capital
San Juan 6 (Epifanio, Jr., Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven,
Belgium, Crisis and Contradiction in Globalization Discourse
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/crisisandcontradictioninglobalizationdiscourse.htm) APB
order to
probe and analyze
the multilayered contradictions of any
phenomenon, we need to apply the principle of historical totalizing :
connecting spheres of culture, ideology, and politics to the overarching
structure of production and reproduction . This is axiomatic for any
historical-materialist critique. Consequently, the question of cultural identity
cannot be mechanically divorced from the historically determinate mode
of production and attendant social relations of any given socioeconomic
formation. What is the point of eulogizing hybrid, cyborg-esque, nomadic global citizens
In
even fluid, ambivalent "subject positions" if you likewhen the majority of these
postmodernized creatures are dying of hunger, curable epidemics, diseases and
psychosomatic illnesses brought about precisely by the predatory encroachment of
globalizing transnational corporations, mostly based in the U.S. and Western Europe? But it is not just
academic postmodernists suffering from the virus of pragmatist metaphysics who apologize for profit-making
globalization. Even a latterly repentant World Bank expert, Joseph Stiglitz, could submit in his well-known
Globalization and Its Discontents, the following ideological plea: "Foreign aid, another aspect of the globalized
world, for all its faults still has brought benefits to millions, often in ways that have almost gone unnoticed: guerillas
in the Philippines were provided jobs by a World Bank financed-project as they laid down their arms" (Stiglitz 420).
Any one slightly familiar with the Cold War policies of Washington vis--vis a neocolony like the Philippines knows
that World Bank funds were then used by the U.S. Pentagon to suppress
the Communist Party-led peasant rebellion in the 1950s against the iniquitous
semi-feudal system and corrupt comprador regime (Doty; Constantino). It is globalization utilized to
maintain direct coercive U.S. domination of the Philippines at a crucial conjuncture when the Korean War was
mutating into the Vietnam War, all designed to contain "World Communism" (China, Soviet Union). Up to now,
despite nationalist gains in the last decade, the Philippine government plays host every year to thousands of U.S.
"Special Forces" purportedly training Filipino troops in the war against "terrorism"that is, against anti-imperialist
forces like the Communist Party-led New People's Army and progressive elements of the Moro Islamic National

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Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front (International Peace Mission). One needs to repeat again
that the present world system, as Hugo Radice argues, remains "both global and national", a contingent and
contradictory process (4). Globalization dialectically negates and affirms national entitiespseudo-nations as well
a universal "free market"

is deemed to be homogenizing and centralizing in effect,
abolishing independent states/nationalities, and creating a global public sphere through
as those peoples struggling for various forms of national sovereignty. While
promoted by TNC triumphalism
juxtaposition, syncretic amalgamation, and so on, one perceives a counter-current of fragmentation, increasing
asymmetry, unbridgeable inequalities, and particularistic challenges to neoliberal

integrationincluding fundamentalist political Islam, eco-terrorism, drugs, migration, and other movements of
"barbarians at the gates" (Schaeffer). Is it a question of mere human rights in representation and life-style, or actual
Articulating these
historical contradictions without theorizing the concept of crisis in capital
accumulation will only lead to the short-circuiting transculturalism of
Ashcroft and other ideologies waging battle for supremacy/hegemony over
"popular common sense" imposing meaning /order/significance on the whole
globalization process (Rupert). Indeed, academic inquirers of globalization are protagonists in this
dignity and justice in the everyday lives of whole populations with singular life-forms?
unfolding drama of universalization under duress. One may pose the following questions as a heuristic pedagogical
Can globalized capital truly universalize the world and bring

freedom and prosperity to everyone, as its celebrants claim? Globalization as the
transnationalized domination of capital exposes its historical limit in the
deepening class inequality in a polarized, segregated and policed world.
While surplus-value extraction in the international labor market remains basic to the
logic of accumulation, the ideology of neoliberal transnationalism has
evolved into the discourse of war on terrorism ("extremism") rationalized as
"the clash of civilizations". Contradictions and its temporary resolutions
constitute the imperialist project of eliding the crisis of unilateral
globalism. A historical-materialist critique should seek to highlight the
political economy of this recolonizing strategy operating in the fierce competition of the
ruling classes of the U.S., Japan, and Europe to impose hegemonic control in an
increasingly boundary-destroying space and continue the neocolonial
oppression of the rest of the world. What is needed is a radical critique of
the ideology of technological determinism and its associated apologetics
of the "civilizing mission", the evangelism of "pre-emptive" intervention in
the name of Realpolitik "democracy" against resistance by workers,
peasants, women, indigenous communities (in Latin America, Africa, the Philippines and
elsewhere [see Houghton and Bell; San Juan, "U.S. Imperial Terror"]), and all the excluded and
marginalized peoples of the planet.
maneuver:

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***Links***

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Link Anthro
The affs attempt to reconnect human and animal ignores the
materialist thoughts that created the binary
Cotter, Assistant Professor of English at William Jewell College,
12
(Jennifer, Winter/Spring 2012, The Red Critique, Bio-politics, Transspecies Love
and/as Class Commons-Sense,
http://redcritique.org/WinterSpring2012/biopoliticstransspeciesismandclasscommon
ssense.htm, accessed 7/3/13, JZ)
This essentially spiritualist understanding of life, moreover, is codified on a new level within a specific variant of
biopolitical theoriestransspeciesist
posthumanismwhich posits a common

spiritual life beyond historical differences between "humans" and
"animals" as the basis of new global social relations. As a form of biopolitical ideology,
transspecies posthumanism displaces class relations with an ahistorical
and spiritualist understanding of common life. Transspecies posthumanism
does so more specifically by declaring the historical differences between
speciesspecifically between humans and other animalsas a metaphysical abstraction of
the common fact of living that exists within all species. One of the main
goals of transspecies posthumanism is to divert attention away from class
relations and exploitation of surplus-labor, by enacting a "fissure" in the
concept of the humanthat is, by ideologically dissolving the historical
difference between human and animaland, in so doing, invoking a
"crisis" in the concept of human labor-power. Transspecies posthumanism,
therefore, situates "life"which it understands as "transspecies" life or
life common to all speciesoutside of the historical relations that produce
differences between the species. In doing so it dispense with projects for material transformation
of historical relations of production on the grounds that they are "violently anthropocentric" and function on the
basis of what Donna Haraway calls "the goad of human exceptionalism" (When Species Meet 46). One of the central
concepts through which biopolitical and transspecies posthumanist theories advance a new spiritualism is in their
theorizations of "love." "Love" is re-articulated in these discourses as an autonomous life-force that will bring into
being new social forms and particularly a new "true," alternative globalizationwhat Hardt and Negri call an
"ontological event" which brings into being the "commons," and Donna Haraway calls an "other"-world but is, in
actuality, a spiritualist theory of the "other-worldly" which provides an ideological space for the privileged to
accommodate capitalism and the exploitation of labor of the majority, in the name of a "resistant" and alternative
globalization. In particular, post-nuclear and transspecies love, family and/or sexual relations are put forward in
biopolitical and posthumanist theories as "constitutive" of a new world order. This paper addresses the class politics
of the new bio-political and transspecies posthumanist spiritualism and especially what they offer as "resistant"
theories of questions of life, love, family, and sexuality now. In particular, this essay critiques the class politics of
Hardt and Negris argument that "love" is a "biopolitical event" that constitutes the commons, including their
seemingly radical argument in Commonwealth for a "mass exodus" from the family and capitalism, which they
argue is an institution which corrupts the creative forces of biopolitical labor and prevents the multitude from
bringing about commonwealth in society. As well, this essay critiques the class politics of Donna Haraways
transspecies posthumanist theory of love in which intimacy and "love" with companion species are represented as a
radical "other-world-making" evolution and thus, representing capitalism itself as evolved and the regime of the
"evolved." The argument that biopolitics is a form of spiritualism, to be clear, is at odds with the claims and selfrepresentations of bio-political cultural theorists, who contend that their theories are a "new" and "true" form of
materialism. Bio-politics maintains that capitalist relations of production has been fundamentally materially
transformed by the development of bio-technologies, cybertechnologies, knowledge work, the growth of service
industries, the erosion of industrial manufacturing in the North... so that earlier distinctions between "productive"
and "reproductive" labor have collapsed. Antonella Corsani, for example, claims that "what is emerging from the
metamorphoses of capitalism is a new relationship between capital and life" (107). "The sphere of reproductive
activities," Corsani contends, "is integrated into that of production, so that life itself is productive of surplus-value"
whether we are eating, drinking, "even," she claims, "when we are sleeping or making love" (117). Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri confirm this assumption when they suggest that we should no longer speak of capitalism in

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terms of "productive labor" but of "biopolitical labor" (which they use as a trope for reproductive labor) which
produces social life itself or "subjectivities." In their recently published book, Commonwealth, Hardt and Negri
displace "exploitation" with "alienation" as the key site of struggle and social transformation when they declare: "we
find ourselves being pulled back from exploitation to alienation, reversing the trajectory of Marxs thought" (139140). According to Hardt and Negri, "alienation" has no material relation to exploitation (the theft of surplus-labor
by owners of the means of production during the working day) and this, they claim, is owing "to the fact that some
characteristics closely tied to exploitation particularly those designating capitals productive role, have faded"
(140). On this basis bio-political theories posit reproductionwhat Hardt and Negri refer to as "biopolitical
What has actually been

occurring in transnational capitalism, however, is not a disappearance of
productive labor or exploitation (the theft of workers surplus labor by owners of the means of
production), but the transfer of productive labor and the export of capital from
the global North to the global South in search of securing sources of
cheaper labor to exploit. As Paula Cerni has argued "something very material has
accompanied the creation of a post-material economy where 83% of non-farm
production"as having materially displaced production in capitalism.
employees work in services." Far from actually bringing about a "post-material" economy "the real shift towards
Western
economies "no longer produce enough goods to fund [their] own massive
physical requirements, and, as a result, [they are] running an
unprecedented trade deficit" (Cerni n. pag.). What is at the root of this is the fact that it is labor not
the "immaterial" of culture or ideology that is the source of social wealth. It is precisely because the basis of
profit has been and continues to be the exploitation of productive labor
that the wealth of North Atlantic capitaland its share of the profits of the world marketis
in decline as it has concentrated investment in reproductive labor within
its own respective national borders, has relied more heavily on productive
labor around the world. To conflate the shifts in the way in which North Atlantic capital aims to acquire
[unproductive] service sectors in Western economies" has resulted in a situation in which
a larger share of the social wealth in transnational capitalism, with a fundamental change in basis of how this
wealth is actually produced in transnational capitalism, is a parochial analysis of the global economy that erases the
continued exploitation of surplus labor of workers around the world in China, in India, in Pakistan, Iraq,
Afghanistan... These shifts in production are not a break from the class relations of capitalism and the exploitation
of workers around the world; they are an intensification of its irreconcilable class contradictions. And the
consequences of these class contradictions and their "solutions" have been devastating for workers both in the
global North and the global South, from the spiking of unemployment, to the loss of homes and pensions, to the
gutting of public infrastructure for workers and transferring this social wealth to corporations, to increases in suicide
rates, depression, anxiety, and pharmaceutical dependency, to "jobless and wageless recovery" which, in actuality,
and transspecies
posthumanism, in displacing "class" with "life," "production" with
"reproduction," "labor" with "love," are affective and ultimately spiritualist
understandings of material contradictions that articulate what Marx calls
an "inverted world-consciousness." In "A Contribution to a Critique of Hegels Philosophy of
means an increase in the rate of exploitation of workers. I argue that biopolitics
Right: Introduction," Marx critiques religion for the way in which it articulates an inverted world consciousness
because, on the one hand, it is "an expression of and protest against real suffering" and, on the other hand, it
religion
provides an illusory resolution of the material contradictions of
exploitation in capitalism that cause the "real suffering" to which religion is both an
provides an "illusory happiness" for "real suffering." By "illusory happiness" Marx means that
effect and a response. In this way, rather than providing a material solution to problems of social alienation whose
religion ends up providing a "spiritual aroma"

for capitalism that helps to ideologically blur material relations of class
and culturally adjust exploited workers to ruling class interests . It is on this basis
that Marx argues that "The call [to workers] to abandon illusions about their
condition is the call to abandon a condition which requires illusions " (131).
Biopolitics and transspecies posthumanism articulate the "spiritual aroma"the
cultural imaginaryof transnational capital now. They do so by putting
forward a "common share" in the "immaterial" of a new "global" culture
under capitalism in place of transformation of the material relations of
production in capitalism and freedom from exploitation. In doing so they
origin are in material relations of production,

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serve to naturalize the material relations of exploitation and culturally

adjust the contemporary workforces to the needs of capitalism now. In this
respect, bio-political and transspecies posthumanist theories of love are a continuationin a new historical formof
updating the working class into a new morality. George Sampson, in his 1921 book on British national education,
English for the English, provides a telling historical example of this practice in his comments on the role of teaching
"English" literature and culture to the working-class: "Deny to working-class children any common share in the
immaterial, and presently they will grow into the men who demand with menaces a communism of the material" (as
qtd in Eagleton 21). To put this another way, the "common share" in the "immaterial" of "culture" for all, was
proposed by representatives of ruling class interests, such as Sampson, in order to ideologically smooth over severe
material contradictions which were leading British workers to increasingly call into question the basis of ruling class
wealth in their own exploitation. More generally, moreover ,
these comments are symptomatic

of the fact that it is in the material interests of capital to provide
"immaterial" and "spiritual" resolutions to deflect attention away from the
economic and at the same time maintain the cultural cohesion of social
bonds that are necessitated by social relations of production founded on
exploitation. Bio-political and transspecies posthumanist theories of "love" are
ideological and illusory articulations of workers actual need to do away with the conditions that "require illusions."
are a form of "inverted world-consciousness" because they obscure the

material need of workers to abolish the material relations under which
they are exploitedmaterial relations, that is, which lead to sharpening
alienation for workers. This is to say that biopolitical and transspecies posthumanist
theories of love are ideological and illusory not because exploited workers
do not actually have affective needs; workers do, indeed, have affective needs such as needs
for love. Rather, they are ideological and illusorya form of "inverted world-consciousness" because
they present love as a spiritual force that will heal social alienation
without the transformation of material relations founded on private
property and exploitation that produce alienation in the first place .
They
The affs focus on ethically reconsolidating the human-animal

relationship ignores the human-human relationship of class
struggles
DeFazio, English Professor at University of Wisconsin Lacrosse,
12
(Kimberly, Winter/Spring 2012, The Red Critique, Machine-Thinking and the

Romance of Posthumanism,
http://redcritique.org/WinterSpring2012/machinethinkingandtheromanceofposthuma
nism.htm, accessed 7/6/13, JZ)
for posthumanists, human exploitation of
humans stems from human exploitation of animals: "if we allow the
human/animal distinction to remain intact... then the machinery of
speciesism and animalization will be available to use against various
subjugated groups, animal or human, as history well shows" ("Speciesism, Identity
It is quite telling, then, that, as Wolfe makes clear,
Politics, and Ecocriticism" 102). Such arguments are especially effective (and hence popular in the publishing
industry) because, however much he may criticize commodification, he ultimately takes critical pressure off of the
role of capital in impoverishing the world's majority and destroying the environment, and places it (back) onto a
"humanity" beyond classes. The implication of Wolfe's argument is that struggles which prioritize social equality are
not only unethical but futile, since there can be no social change between humans until humans change their (more
But human-animal relations, once again, are

shaped by the social relations between people. And because it is the social relations that
shape material life, not only for humans but also for other species, different forms of social
organization consequently have different relations to animals. Social
"fundamental") relations to animals.

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organizations based on collective ownership of property (as in early Native American

tribes) have very different (in contemporary discourses, "ecological") relations to the natural
environment, compared to societies based on the commodification of
labor, in which all aspects of social and natural life are exchanged for private profit, regardless of the human or
ecological consequences. In claiming that human exploitation is caused by the
exploitation of animals by humans, not only does Wolfe therefore invert
the real relations conditioning human's lives and cover over historical
difference but he renders insignificant the great historical struggles to
transform class relations. It is not therefore surprising that the argument for the "most
different difference" of the animal is closely tied to Wolfe's and other
posthumanists' pragmatic, "ethical" argument against the possibilities of
an equal societyarguments which recall the more politically reactionary aspects of romanticism. In
discussing a text by Paul Patton on the relations between horses and humans, for instance, Wolfe writes that what
makes Patton's analysis so important is that "it helps to make clear the requirements and obligations of those
hierarchical relations of power we do enter into (with animals, with children, with each other) and draws our
attention to how those requirements are always specific to the beings involved, in the light of which, he argues, the
presumption of a one-size-fits-all notion of 'equality in all contexts' is 'not only misleading but dangerous'"
(Zoontologies xix). While the argument here seems to be a "progressive" call to be aware of the power dynamics
that exist in all relations so as to treat others "ethically," its more emphatic claim is the deeply conservative
argument against establishing "equal" conditions of equality for all, which casts principles for universal equality as
Wolfe's pragmatism tellingly echoes the right-wing argument that

efforts to provide "universal" health care, to establish federal laws
requiring corporations to set caps on emissions or provide workers
compensation are violent "impositions" on the local and the specific . It is in
"dangerous."
this context that Edmund Burke advocated as "natural" the "hereditary succession [of power] by law" and
denounced the struggles for democracy around the French Revolution as a "perversion" of individuality: "We procure
reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us to revere individual men," whereas
"those who attempt to level, never equalise. In all societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some
description must be uppermost. The levelers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things"
(Reflections on the Revolution in France 30, 43)a sentiment that has grown increasingly popular in the American
pragmatism is so effectively aligned with

ethics: both highlight the specificity of context and the absence of any
foundation of judgment and reject any notion of objective basis that might
be used to explain the underlying relations of specificities. Ethics, to put it
bluntly, is the ruse through which the "natural" existence of class relations
is justified today. Ethics (individual acts of kindness, or what Foucault calls the "care of the self") is
what follows once one has already decided that no serious social change is
possible.
political context. This is, by the way, why
10

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Link Containment
The affs containment strategies are fueled by capitalist
motives
Bromund and Phillips, Senior Research Fellows @ the Heritage
Foundation, 11
[Theodore R. and James, 2/14/11, The Heritage Foundation, Containing a Nuclear

Iran: Difficult, Costly, and Dangerous,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/02/containing-a-nuclear-iran-difficultcostly-and-dangerous, accessed 7/7/13, YGS]
The fundamental logic of containment is that the U.S., as a democratic and
capitalist society, is stronger than its enemies and that their weaknesses
will become apparent over time and ultimately destroy them .[23] That is true, but
it is no reason to believe that containment is therefore politically, economically, or morally easy. On the contrary, it
is a long-term policy that requires a profound and enduring national commitment. Calling for such a commitment is
Democracies are capable of manifesting such

commitment, as the U.S. and its allies proved during the Cold War , but the
easy, but keeping it is difficult.
Soviet Union posed an existential threat that concentrated the minds of many policymakers. Irans nuclear program
and the regimes hostility to the West have not produced an equivalent concentration among policymakers around
the world, even among U.S. policymakers. It is true that Iran is not the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a
formidable military power that made and could deliver advanced weapons, including a devastating nuclear arsenal.
It controlled a vast empire and influenced many other societies. Its economy faltered and ultimately collapsed, but
for decades it could mobilize substantial resources in pursuit of its aims, and it appeared to have no great need to
become part of the free economic order. Above all, it had an ideology thatno matter how bizarre or inhumane
appealed to many around the world who sought to justify their pursuit of power. By comparison, Irans most
significant military achievements apart from its nuclear and ballistic missile programs are its mobilization of suicide
terrorists and its use of IEDs.[24] Its direct influence is regional, its economy is in shambles and relies heavily on oil
exports, and its ideology appeals primarily to Shia who are embroiled in conflicts with non-Shia and have not had
the misfortune to experience Irans misgovernment directly. Yet the differences between Iran and the Soviet Union
cut both ways. The magnitude of the Soviet threat enabled the West to summon the political will to contain it. Iran,
precisely because it is not a superpower, cannot inspire such unified political will, even though it poses a clear
threat. During the Cold War, the policy of containment was far from glorious, but it was necessary. The alternative
to outlasting the Soviet Union was a war that no one would have won. Concluding that the only way to deal with
Iran is to treat it like a new superpower gives Iran far too much credit. The Iranian regime may rhetorically aspire to
become a superpower, but that aspiration is laughable. By treating Iran like a new Soviet Union, the U.S. gives the
Iranian regime a level of respect that its power does not merit. By emphasizing the containment of Iran, the U.S.
would also slight the more positive and creative elements of its Cold War grand strategy, especially President
Reagans policy of placing the Soviet Union under as much economic, diplomatic, and moral pressure as possible.
The U.S. could and should similarly pressure Iran. However, as long as containment remains a mere analogy, devoid
of policies reasonably comparable to those that the U.S. undertook during the Cold War, the U.S. will fail to build a
comprehensive grand strategy to counter and ultimately end the Iranian menace. Containment Requires a
Commitment to Freedom at Home Containment requires one more thing. As Aaron Friedberg has pointed out,
U.S. grand strategy in the Cold War emphasized avoiding the garrison
state.[25] In other words, the U.S. was fighting to keep the world safe for
democracy and capitalism. It was therefore vital to ensure that the U.S.
preserve democracy and capitalism at home, both for moral reasons and
for the practical reason that Americas free society gave it an advantage
against the Soviet Union over the long term. Thus, leading supporters of containment, such
as President Dwight D. Eisenhower, also supported limite
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Link Critical Terrorism Studies

The aff excludes class and material analysis that crowds out
interest in capitalism in the field that means its bound to fail
and makes it just another tool in class domination
Herring, Reader in International Politics, 2008
(Eric Herring, Reader in International Politics, 2008, Critical terrorism studies: an
activist scholar perspective, Critical studies on terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 198
200, Fontana)
In the development of critical security studies thus far, never mind

mainstream security studies, historical materialist (Marxist, neo-Marxist,
and fusions of these with post-Marxist as opposed to exclusively postMarxist) elements have been present to a minimal degree . For example, Karin
Fierkes Critical Approaches to International Security (2007) makes only passing mention to
Marx and none to class, capitalism, or neoliberalism (despite it being the
currently dominant ideology, form and project of capitalism ). In Mutimers (2007)
overview of critical security studies in the textbook edited by Alan Collins (one of the standard textbooks on
security studies),
Marxism is mentioned only once
in terms of Booths endorsement of it as part
While critical
theory has its origins in Marxism, as Mutimer hints, it has become somewhat
distanced from Marxist and neo-Marxist scholarship, even though that
scholarship continues to flourish. Wyn Joness (1999) attempt to ground critical security studies
of critical security studies, and with critical theory framed as post-Marxist (pp. 62, 63).
in Frankfurt school critical theory involved relying mainly on Ulrich Becks post-Marxism. One chapter in Booths
edited volume Critical Security Studies and World Politics (2005b) has a few brief discussions of Marxism and
The lack of
interest in historical materialism is a major weakness and imbalance
within critical security studies as it has developed thus far . There has been
an overwhelming emphasis on the ideational dimension, discourse
analysis, constructivism, and post-structuralism, and this is a crucial
limitation on its ability to theorise world politics in a systematic and
politically relevant way. Meanwhile, scholars working with historical
materialist perspectives are generating far-reaching and influential
analyses which locate the discursive within the context of hierarchically
structured relations at multiple levels globally (e.g. Harvey 2000, 2005, Jessop 2002,
2003, 2007). Such analyses have been central to the enormously successful
development of critical geography, critical sociology, and critical education studies, all politically
engaged fields intertwined with actually existing current social
movements (e.g. International Critical Geography Group (ICCG) n.d., Antipode n.d.). As Booth (2005a), in
defining it as being within the scope of critical security studies, states: The Marxian tradition offers
a deep mine of ideas that are especially useful for thinking about
ideology, class, and structural power (p. 261). And he adds: class is a muchignored referent, despite massive life-threatening and life-determining
insecurity being the direct result of poverty (Booth 2007, p. 197). Historical
materialism, including its Gramscian and historical sociology variants, is
flourishing within international relations (for a survey, see Hobden and Wyn Jones 2005)
and is a major resource for critical terrorism studies. Those who do
historical materialist analysis generally do not do security studies . This is
capitalism and a slightly more sustained discussion of neoliberalism, but nothing on class.
12

Capitalism K
they see it overwhelmingly as a field which serves

primarily as an instrument of class domination, and for intellectual
reasons, in that the concept of security is seen as a relatively unsatisfying
one for theorising about world politics. The problem with this approach is that students
new to security studies will effectively, even if unintentionally and despite
Booths assertion to the contrary, be guided to the conclusion that they have little to
learn from historical materialism and do not need to think about class and
capitalism. Path dependency roads more and less travelled will operate in a powerful way. For example,
mainly for political reasons, in that
the Approaches to Security section of the first edition of the Collins Contemporary Security Studies (2007)
textbook effectively sets out security studies as involving choices between a traditional state-centric realist-liberal
framing, a discursive-constructivist critical framing, or one focused thematically on peace studies, gender,
securitisation, or human security. Marxism is discussed briefly in the traditional approaches chapter which is
structured around realism and liberalism.
CTS fails to explain class relations in terrorism historical

materialism is needed as a new tradition in terror studies
Ogunrotifa, Research Assistant at Edinburgh University, 12
(Bayo Ogunrotifa, Research Assistant at Edinburgh University, April 2012 ,PUTTING

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM INTO TERRORISM STUDIES , International Journal of
Current Research, Vol. 4, P.228-229,JF)
However, CTS can be credited for espousing history, ideology, context and
intentions behind terrorism beyond the narrow lens of orthodox
approach. It is not clear following the review of literature at what point in
its history did state and non-state actors engage or continue to engage in
terrorism, what class2 in society did non-state actors belong to, which
class in society did non-state actors recruit to carry out individual
terrorism? How social contradictions in the society usher terrorism within
different classes? In other words, CTS failed to explain class analysis of
terrorism: how social relations of production among different social class
produce terrorism within and across states. The inability of CTS to
address this brings us back to Historical Materialism as a theory that is
needed to engage in class analysis of terrorism more than critical theory.
Although, Herring (2008), Herring
and Stokes (2011) and Jonathan (2011) have suggested that
CTS should
these appeals seems to raise

fundamental concern that may pitch it against certain interests who have
somewhat severed their link with Marxist and neo-Marxist scholarship, particularly in
Frankfurt Critical School or Welsh school of Critical Security Studies. It is my contention here that
Historical Materialism (HM) should stand alone as new theoretical tradition
in terrorism studies or in the alternative be a new variant that is taking
paradigmatic shift in CTS. This stems from the fact that if the focus of orthodox approach is to
incorporate class analysis into its theoretical
vocabulary,
provide problem-solving tools (as Robert Cox 1981:128-130
argued) to combat military threats using counter-
terrorism strategies against perceived enemies under the pretext of Waron Terror ,
CTS as far as its

current literature stands is less likely to shape policy direction. That explains
why Duvall and Varadarajan (2003:81) opines that critical theories is grossly overdrawn for imposing dubious
categorisation and simplifying all research into either being policy relevant or having no bearing on
Therefore, HM must rise to the task of unpractical gap left by

CTS in order to advance scholarship that bears implications for Policy and
Practical socio-political action that will help to stem the tide of state
policymaking.
13

Capitalism K
terrorism and individual terrorism of non-state actors that are more likely
to occur in the Third world countries than anywhere else in the future.
Ideological examinations of terrorism crowds out material

onesthat ensures CTS will fail to fully develop
Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies, 2009
Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies, 12-14-2009, Paper prepared for the BISA Annual Conference @ the
University of Leicester, UK, Critical Terrorism Studies: An Explanation, a Defence
and a Way Forward, p 17-18, accessed 7/2/13, Fontana
A second necessity if CTS is to make a lasting impact on the future

development of Terrorism Studies, is to go beyond critique and
deconstruction and articulate an alternative, credible research agenda . As
detailed elsewhere (Jackson, Breen Smyth and Gunning, 2009), CTS is a call for: (1)
broadening the study of terrorism to include subjects neglected by the
leading scholars of the field and in its main journals, including, among
other things, the wider social context of political violence, state violence,
non-violent practices, and gender aspects of terrorism; (2) deepening terrorism research by uncovering
the fields underlying ideological, institutional, and material interests and make the subjectivities and normative
commitments of both researchers and researched more explicit; and (3) making a commitment to emancipatory
I would suggest that an initial CTS

research agenda should include some of the following subjects. I recognise that
praxis central to the research enterprise . More specifically,
there is a growing literature on some of these subjects already; however, much of this research occurs largely
outside of Terrorism Studies and does not always engage directly with the issues and concerns of the broader
one of the tasks of a CTS field is to gather in all these

fragmented voices and serve as a tent under whose canvas research from
cognate disciplines can coalesce and cross-pollinate (Gunning 2007a). First, I would
terrorism field. Indeed,
argue that there is a need to examine more thoroughly and systematically the discourses and representational
practices of terrorism, and the ontological-discursive foundations the ideological, conceptual, and institutional
underpinnings which make both Terrorism Studies, and the practices of terrorism and counter-terrorism, possible
in the first place. Second, in addition to exposing and deconstructing the fields conditions of possibility, I would
there is also a need to explore in much more detail the political-economic

contexts of both the Terrorism Studies field as a politically-embedded domain of
knowledge, and the theory and practice of counter-terrorism. In other words,
applying historical materialist approaches 18 and taking materiality
seriously, there is a need for further exploration of how counter-terrorism
functions as a form of ideology how it works to promote certain kinds of
material and class interests, maintain political hegemony, and sustain
dominant economic relationships. This means rooting critical analyses of
the theory and practice of counter-terrorism within theories of class,
capitalism, hegemony, and imperialism (see Herring, 2008).
suggest that
14

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Link Democracy
Their drive to spread democracy to the rest legitimates the
expansion of capitalism by mystifying class relations as an
antagonism between culture.
Wilkie, Assistant Professor of Cultural and Digital Studies @
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, 08,
(Rob, Fall/Winter 2008, The Red Critique, Supply-Chain Democracy and the Circuits
of Imperialism,
http://www.redcritique.org/FallWinter2008/supplychaindemocracyandcircuitsofimperi
alism.htm, [Accessed 7/8/13], JB).
On the right, one also finds economic differences rewritten as cultural
differences, and in many of the same terms, but the sides are reversed. Instead of
the image of encroaching corporate homogenization led by the United States
imposing its cultural will on the local communities in the South, it is precisely U.S.
and European capital that is the guarantee of heterogeneity and difference. As
David Pryce-Jones writes in "Why They Hate Us", "Democracy means Us and Them.
Yet nothing in the history or the culture of Arabs and Muslims allows them to put
this into any form of political practice. From long ago they have inherited a cast-iron
absolute system, in which the ruler does as he pleases, and the rest have no
redress, indeed going to the wall" (Pryce-Jones 8). According to this logic, which
has perhaps been most popularly advanced in Samuel Huntington's The Class of
Civilizations, global conflict is driven today by a cultural divide between the
values of "democracy" and "free enterprise" in the West and authoritarian,
closed, anti-capitalist regimes in the East. Huntington writes, "[i]n the postCold War world, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological,
political, or economic. They are cultural" (21). It is in these terms that Huntington
rewrites economic divisions as cultural differences. He argues, "[i]n this new
world the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts will not be
between social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined
groups, but between peoples belonging to different cultural entities" (28).
Again, sharpening global class divisions are constructed as those between
homogeneity and heterogeneity in which the "West" represents a
civilization of "democracy, free markets, limited government, human rights,
individualism, the rule of law" with the "Rest" who are said to oppose such
values (184). These divisions are then naturalized as the source of
capitalist development and expansionan updated version of Weber's
"protestant ethic" in which "values" and "attitudes" produce reality, rather than
being an effect of it. Although Huntington himself believes it to be "immoral" to
impose Western cultural values on the East (for the "paternalistic" reason that that
the East is not prepared or interested in any form of "democracy" or "human rights")
others on the right, such as "anglobalization" historian Niall Ferguson, take this
thesis and argue that globalization is the means by which to spread
through a new colonial project the culture of democracy, free markets, and
individual liberty to what he describes as the "failed states" of the South
that lack the "cultural values" of the North (Ferguson 25). In the
15

Capitalism K
substitution of the discourse of "culture" and "values" for class relations

what is placed outside the boundaries of "real" discourse by both the left
and the right is any theory of globalization as imperialism, in which the
primary goal of capital expansion is explained as a necessary effect of the material
conditions for the further accumulation of capital. This is what has made
"globalization" such an effective concept for global capitalit substitutes
for economic imperialism a world of spiritual conflicts and cultural
bargains. In this context, while a number on the right are calling for
reconsideration of "imperialism" as a way of spreading "democracy," many
on the left have simply abandoned the theory of imperialism and argue that
"the term imperialism may no longer be adequate to address the present situation
[which] is less coherent and less purposeful than imperialism" (Pieterse 77). Or,
as Hardt and Negri put it more succinctly, "imperialism is over" (Empire xiv). To
draw connections between the global expansion of capitalism and rising inequality
is to be too reductive and trapped in the metanarrative of the past (Waters 186).
Instead, the world is described as "multidimensional" (Steger 14), "without borders
and spatial boundaries" (Waters 5), and "a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order,
which cannot be understood in terms of existing center-periphery models"
(Appadurai 221). What is at stake for both the right and the left in deploying
the rhetoric of cultural difference as a substitute for class divisions is
obscuring the economic realities of imperialism in order to maintain the
illusion of the possibility of capitalism without exploitation that works at
the level of ideology to divide the global working class against one
another and bind them to the capitalist system. In contrast to these
narratives, which are superficial readings of the contemporary in the sense of
describing rather than analyzing recent economic developments and therefore
remaining on the surfaces of society rather than addressing its fundamental logic, I
argue that in actuality capitalism has become more itself, not less, by going
global and that the most effective means for understanding the interests of
capital today remains the historical materialist theorization of imperialism.
While the dominant approach to the developments of globalization
obscures any discussion of the material conditions in which global society
is currently being produced by inverting the relationship between culture
and the economic, what is represented as the emergence of a
fundamentally new moment in capitalism based in communication technologies,
cultural and economic networks, and immaterial labor is best understood as the
global mode of accumulation corresponding to the stage of monopoly
capitalism as explained by Lenin in Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism:
namely the increasing concentration and centralizing of production in
monopolies, the subsequent development of "finance capital" and the
export of capital to "underdeveloped" regions required by the rising level of
organic capital in "developed" nations, and the division of the world's markets
and resources between the economic monopolies. What makes such a view so
controversial today, particularly for the Northern Left, is that while theories of
globalization have increasingly had to attend to the growing contradictions of global
capitalism it still remains almost universally accepted, even among more "radical"
social theorists who argue that capitalism is a global system of "exploitation," that
the labor theory of value, which Lenin argues is essential to understanding why
capital must expand globally and why it can be transformed into socialism, no
16

Capitalism K
longer has any explanatory value (Brenner 11; Wallerstein 20; Hardt and Negri,
Multitude 150).
No risk of a turn- true democracy isnt possible within their

framework because money corrupts the system so that it
always serves the interests of the elite.
Wilkie, Assistant Prof of Cultural and Digital Studies @
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse ,01
(Rob, Spring 2001, The Red Critique, Class, Labor and the "Cyber": A Red Critique
of the "Post-Work" Ideology,
http://redcritique.org/spring2001/printversions/classlaborandthecyberprint.htm,
[Accessed 7/8/13], JB).
If "full employment" has become, according to Beck, a "zombie concept" (online) it
is not because workers refuse to accept that "work" has become an ideological
fetter in the "New Economy," but because "employment" is an objective index of the
contradictions of class society. To put it simply, under capitalism the only means
that workers have to meet their needs is to sell their labor-power. The working class
interests of "full employment"which would mean, in practice, a society of labor
built on the principle from each according to her ability to each according to her
needis in direct contrast to the ruling classes use of the unemployment of the
industrial reserve army to drive down the cost of labor-power in an attempt to
increase profits. That is to say, it is not "ideas" that hold capitalism backin this
case, as Beck argues, an outdated puritan work ethicbut rather capitalism that
creates ideas that cannot be met. For example, as Lenin argues, monopoly
capitalism transforms democracy into an "illusion" ("Reply" 24). While
capitalism engenders democratic aspirations and creates democratic
institutions, the division of labor between those who own the means of
production and those who own nothing but their labor power, a division
which imperialism sharpens to its most brutal contradictions, means that
for the majority of the worlds' population democracy is an impossibility.
Thus, while capitalism "cannot be overthrown by democratic
transformations, no matter how ideal" socialism can be implemented only
"with [the] full development of democracy, i.e. the genuinely equal and
genuinely universal participation of the entire mass of the population in all state
affairs and in all the complex problems of abolishing capitalism" ("Reply" 25). In
other words, contrary to Beck, it is not that the ideal form of "work" has not been
thought, but rather that the social system necessary for the realization of the end of
wage-labor must be produced.
17

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Link Drug War

The Drug War is rooted in U.S. obsession for hemispheric
hegemony and expanding its economic interests.
Karlin, Truthout senior editor, 12 [Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash at Truthout,
writes aggressively to expose political hypocrisy and manipulation of power among
the right wing, he has as won four Project Censored Awards., B.A. in English, Writing,
from Yale, 2012 (How the Militarized War on Drugs in Latin America Benefits
Transnational Corporations and Undermines Democracy, Truthout, Buzzflash, News
Analysis, 8-5-12, Available Online at http://truth-out.org/news/item/10676-how-thewar-on-drugs-in-latin-america-benefits-transnational-corporations-and-underminesdemocracy, Accessed on July 2, 2013)][SP]
The Truthout on the Mexican Border series has noted that more than
50,000 persons have been killed since the outgoing Mexican President, Felipe Caldern,
launched the escalation of law enforcement and military attacks on drug
cartels in 2006, at the behest of the United States. But most of those murdered
and injured are widely considered civilian collateral damage , as are the minimum
of 10,000 missing persons and the more than 180,000 (primarily indigenous) Mexicans displaced by the conflict.
As a result of this record of destruction left in the wake of the US-declared

war on drugs, Paley speculated that there may be other unstated goals at work,
particularly US military hegemony through surrogate armies (and
paramilitary forces) in Latin America that help facilitate economic "free
trade" expansion for transnational corporations. As Paley concluded in her detailed
article: Precedents in Colombia and ongoing events elsewhere suggest possible areas for deepening the research
in order to better ascertain to what extent Mexico and Central America are being subjected to a model whereby as
paramilitary terror " ... continues to be

instrumental in the creation and maintenance of conditions, such as low
labor costs and access to land, which are conducive to the expansion of
the neo-liberal program ..." Increased study and research of the new
economic policies encouraged through US anti-narcotics policy could help
reveal the full extent of the economic transformation that has been
initiated in Mexico and Central America. ... Without a better understanding, discussions
about the war in Mexico could remain contained within the rhetoric of
drug prohibition versus liberalization. This kind of debate is wholly
inaccurate as a means of denouncing and mobilizing resistance to a "war
on drugs" that may be better understood as being about increased social
and territorial control over lands and people, in the interest of capitalist
expansion. In short, are US taxpayers funding a losing war on drugs to the tune of
hundreds of billions of dollars as a means of expanding military influence and
increasing political dominance over as many governments south of the
border as possible - with the deliverable result of creating increased
business opportunities for global companies based in the US? Hemispheric Expansion of
David Maher and Andrew Thomson report,
Transnational Corporations Is Dependent Upon Pro-"Free Trade" Governments in Latin America With the election of
more leftist governments in many South American nations since many of the military dictatorships and right-wing
governments supported by the US have fallen, the State Department and Pentagon have become particularly
concerned about using the military and intelligence services to increase US influence over Latin American armies as
This had long been a key hemispheric goal, maintained to

a certain degree by the training of key Latin American military officers at the
a counteracting measure.
infamous School of the Americas (now renamed the euphemistic Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
18

Cooperation: WHINSEC).
Capitalism K
As Walmart has expanded into the largest retailer in Mexico (in fact in Latin America) and
the US military and intelligence services

have expanded their presence in training and on-the-ground "support"
teams south of the border. Not only are we sending drones over Mexico,
we have embedded our military as "advisers" there through the Mrida Initiative (not to
the biggest private-sector employer in that nation,
mention the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)), which is based on Plan
Colombia (the US militarization and economic initiative in that nation). Now ,
we are even considering

sending military "cultural" officers (also known as "human terrain experts") beyond the
great border wall to our south. Canada Joins the US in War on Drugs That Provides Cover for
Transnational Expansion in Latin America Ratcheting up military and intelligence agency involvement is not limited
to the US in North America. Canada, which has a heavy contingent of mining companies extracting natural
resources in Latin America, is also playing a role in shaping the military and law enforcement structures in Mexico
and Latin America. According to the Canadian Internet site The Dominion: "The Royal Canadian Mounted
Police[RCMP], along with trainers from the United States and other international partners, are providing basic
training to Mexican Federal Police recruits," said [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper during a stop in Guadalajara in
2009. In addition to training 1,500 low-level Federales, the RCMP trained 300 mid-level Mexican officers and 32
Mexican police commanders received training at the Canadian Police College.... By late 2011, US funding had been
used to "train over 55,000 law enforcement and justice sector officials, including 7,200 Federal police officers,"
according to the US State Department. The New York Times reported that this training involved "conducting
wiretaps, running informants and interrogating suspects." Indeed, an essay in Al Jazeera provided background on
the growing surveillance aid that the US is providing to pro-US Latin American governments. In an article entitled,
"How the US fuels Latin America's surveillance technology: The US war on drugs often bolsters anti-democratic
forces abroad," the commentary stated that "in executing its wars on terror and drugs, the United States has been
aiding the adoption of surveillance technologies in Latin America for decades." Increased surveillance capabilities
in Mexico and Latin America make for the ability of central governments to better control their nations, thus offering
a more secure political environment for transnational corporations. Global Corporations Prosper in Mexico in the
in spite of the bloody upheaval the last six

years of the war on drugs has caused, it actually has coincided with a
Midst of Drug War Bloodshed Paley argued that
more stable environment for global corporations in Mexico . She described

how transnational corporations and their workers are given special
security forces to protect them amid the macabre violence, but she made
a more significant point concerning the "shock doctrine value" of the war
on drugs in advancing large corporate interests: Even more important is
another kind of security transnational corporations need. As the director of the
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean underscored, "What is important for an investor in
This notion of "security" calls

up the Colombia model: paramilitarization in the service of capital. This model
regards to security has to do with legal security and country risk."
includes the formation of paramilitary death squads, the displacement of civilian populations and an increase in
violence.
In the commercial sector, it is workers, small businesses and a

sector of the local elite who are hit hardest by drug war policies. Though
these non-official aspects of the war on drugs are sometimes presented as
damaging or threatening foreign direct investment, in fact it is violence
that controls workers and displaces land-based communities from
territories of interest to transnational corporate expansion. Paley contended that
just as paramilitary forces have aided US interests in serving as an adjunct to US-affiliated
Central American military forces - most notably during the Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush
they are now a permanent part of

protecting the interests of corporations setting up shop in Latin America as
a result of NAFTA, CAFTA, and other free-trade agreements. This includes the contracted killing
of union organizers and the clearing of indigenous populations on land
coveted by companies or natural resource extraction businesses. Paley listed
administrations, but also before and after this period -
Chiquita Brands, Drummond (mining) Company and British Petroleum among those likely involved in such activities
in Colombia, for example (Chiquita pled guilty to such a charge in 2007 in a DC court) - not to mention Coca-Cola.
Indeed, according to Strafor Global Intelligence, incoming Mexican President Pea Nieto, has "expressed a desire to
create a new national gendarmerie, or paramilitary police force, to use in place of the Mexican army and Marine
troops currently deployed to combat the heavily armed criminal cartels in Mexico's most violent hot spots.
According to Pea Nieto, the new gendarmerie force would comprise some 40,000 agents."
Government
19

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law enforcement and the military, as well as paramilitary organizations

play a role, according to David Bacon, in protecting the interests of the
ruling elite, who benefit and promote foreign investment at the cost of
violating labor and environmental rights, as well as exploiting indigenous
populations: For over two decades in many parts of Mexico, large corporations - mostly foreign owned but
usually with wealthy Mexican partners - have developed huge projects in rural areas. Called mega-projects, the
mines and resource extraction efforts take advantage of economic reforms and trade treaties like the North
American Free Trade Agreement. Emphasizing foreign investment, even at the cost of environmental destruction
and the displacement of people, has been the development policy of Mexican administrations since the 1970s....
But while these projects enjoy official patronage at the top, they almost invariably incite local opposition over
Environmental destruction, along with

accompanying economic changes, causes the displacement of people.
Families in communities affected by the impacts are uprooted and often
begin to migrate. Upheaval caused by the war on drugs facilitates the
seizing of lands owned by indigenous populations. The South American Trading Block
threatened or actual environmental disaster.
Mercosur and Leftist Alliance ALBA Cause Increased US Military and Intelligence Agency Concern Over the Southern
Hemisphere On July 31, 2012, according to The New York Times, the South American trading alliance Mercosur
admitted Venezuela after a long contentious delay. Meanwhile, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our
America (ALBA) continues to build a coalition of leftist governments in South America and the Caribbean. In
response to this climate,
the US is building more bases in South America, using the
drug war as an excuse
according to an article reposted in Truthout. Representative of what gives
deep capitalist anxiety to Washington, DC, and Ottawa is the Bolivian government's decision to nationalize mines
owned by the transnational corporation Glencore: "On June 22, the Bolivian government seized the company's
Colquiri tin and zinc mine, south of the capital city of La Paz. Colquiri was the third Glencore operation to be
nationalized by Bolivia in the last five years." That is an example of why the US was quick to accept the "soft coup"
impeachment (accomplished within 24 hours) of the populist President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo. According to
journalist Ben Dangl, the new pro-US government is open for business to transnational corporations including the
allegedly environmentally unfriendly and exploitative Montreal-based mining company, Rio Tinto Alcan, and
Monsanto, in a nation heavily dependent on soy and cotton crops that Monsanto will now likely be able to
monopolize. This is music to the ears of the free-trade proponents in the US and Canada, the war on drugs be
damned.
The affirmatives so called solution to the war on drugs is

actually an excuse for the U.S. to militarize Latin America to
benefit big corporations at the expensive of the greater
population
Paley, Vancouver Media Co-op cofounder, 12 [Dawn Paley, co-
founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op, has a Masters in Journalism from UBC and a
degree in Women's Studies from SFU, 2012 (Drug War Capitalism: Militarization &
Economic Transformation in Colombia & Mexico, Analysis, June/August 2012,
Available Online at http://www.solidarity-us.org/pdfs/Dawn.pdf, accessed on July 4th,
2013)][SP]
Barely two months later, Caldern launched the war on drugs in Mexico . The
following year, the U.S. and Mexican governments announced the Mrida
Initiative, described as a package of U.S. counterdrug and anticrime
assistance for Mexico and Central America.(27) By the time it was signed by George W.
Bush in 2008, Garzas prodding about cracking down on narcos in order to boost business was forgotten. Instead,
the primary justification for lawmakers endorsing the bill was to stem the flow of drugs to the United States.(28)
Both the U.S. government and critics agree that the Mrida Initiative in Mexico and Central America is a refined
iteration of Plan Colombia. We know from the work that the United States has supported in Colombia and now in
Mexico that good leadership, proactive investments, and committed partnerships can turn the tide, Hillary Clinton
lectured delegates to the Central America Security Conference in Guatemala City last summer.(29) Total U.S.
funding for the Mrida Initiative between 2008 and 2010 was $1.3 billion for Mexico, whose government matched
the funds 13 to 1.(30) Mrida/Central America Regional Security Initiative funds flowing to Central America during
the same period stood at $248 million, while the Merida/Caribbean Basin Security Initiative funds of $42 million
went to Haiti and the Dominician Republic.(31)
Meridas comprehensive strategy

20

Capitalism K
includes funds for training police and soldiers to protect critical

infrastructure, militarizing police and outfitting local security forces with
U.S. equipment, transforming the Mexican judicial system to a U.S.-style
oral trials system, modernizing the U.S.-Mexico border and promoting
institutional building and economic reform. One of USAIDs program goals is that the
Government of Mexico becomes more effective in curbing monopolies and eliminating anticompetitive
practices.(32) They focus on legislation related to telecommunications, banking and energy regulation.
Another important objective is to advocate a new regulatory regime and

additional privatization, deregulation, and foreign direct investment in the
transportation, financial, energy and telecommunications sectors.( 33) Pemex
along with the Federal Electricity Commission is the crown jewel of the privatization effort. Many prominent
Mexicans, including Enrique Pea Nieto, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate and frontrunner in the
2012 presidential elections, have advocated its privatization. Some, like the head of the Mexican Stock Exchange,
have proposed using as their model Colombias oil sector reform.(34) In a March 2012 presentation, a Bank of
Mexico representative talked about the pending reform agenda for the countrys central bank. This includes
improving the ease with which companies can do business in Mexico, removing legal obstacles, preventing labor
flexibility, strengthening the rule of law, and consolidating macroeconomic policies.(35) In 2008, before the
financial crisis spread to Mexico, FDI reached $23.2 billion but fell the following year to $11.4 billion.(36) However
FDI has rebounded and by 2011 stood at $19.43 billion, primarily in the manufacturing sector (44.1%) followed by
financial services (18%) and mining (8%).(37) Recent announcements indicate that there will be a surge of new
Mexicos Finance Minister Bruno

told Bloomberg in an English interview in August 2011 that Nowadays what we are
seeing is that we are having a big fight against crime so that, as I said, [it]
guarantees the future investments and the investments we are having
right now because what we are seeing is that Mexico is fighting to prevail against crime.(38) Ferraris
statement is backed up by the experiences of the transnational business
elite. According to a 2009 Business Week cover story,(39) attacks on foreign staff and factories have been rare in
investment in auto and aerospace manufacturing in central Mexico.
Ferrari
Jurez and other border towns along drug-trafficking routes, including Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, and Tijuana.
Police are already deployed with special instructions to care for

transnational corporations. Following the kidnapping of a corporate executive, the police suggested
managers alter their work routines, leave Jurez by sundown, and stick to two key roads. Patrols were beefed up
Even
more important is another kind of security transnational corporations
need. As the director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and
the Caribbean underscored, What is important for an investor in regards
to security has to do with legal security and country risk. (41) This notion
of security calls up the Colombia model: paramilitarization in the
along these roads, creating relatively safe corridors between the border and the industrial parks.(40)
service of capital . This model includes the formation of paramilitary death

squads, the displacement of civilian populations, and an increase in
violence. In the commercial sector, it is workers, small businesses and a sector of
the local elite who are hit hardest by drug war policies. Though these non-official
aspects of the war on drugs are sometimes presented as damaging or threatening foreign direct investment, in fact
it is violence that controls workers and displaces land-based communities

from territories of interest to transnational corporate expansion . For
generations, Indigenous and peasant communities in Colombia had defended their collective title to their lands, yet
paramilitary groups effectively forced them to flee. This phenomenon is concisely described by David Maher and
Andrew Thompson: "paramilitary
forces continue to advance a process of

capital accumulation through the forced displacement of communities in
areas of economic importance. Large sections of Colombias citizenry continue to abandon their
lands as they are forcibly displaced from their homes, satisfying the voracious appetite of
foreign (mainly U.S.) multinational corporations (MNCs) for Colombian territory as the
neo-liberal economic programme is further entrenched in Colombian
society."(42) In 2001, paramilitaries were responsible for half of all forced displacements in Colombia. Guerrilla
groups caused 20% of the cases, with paramilitaries and guerrillas together for another 22%.(43) Paramilitary
groups not only bear the bulk of the responsibility, they are also more effective in instigating displacement.(44) In
21

Capitalism K
paramilitarization is also beneficial to transnational corporations

wishing to dissuade labor organizing: "As part of the protracted U.S.-supported
counterinsurgency campaign, paramilitarystate violence continues to systematically
target civil groups, such as trade union organisations, which are
considered a threat to the political and economic 'stability' conducive to
the neo-liberal development of Colombia. This has made Colombia very attractive to foreign
investment as poor working conditions and low wages keep pro?t margins high."(45) Well-documented
cases of Chiquita Brands, Drummond mining corporation, and BP, the oil giant, have traced the links
between paramilitary groups and U.S. and transnational corporations. (46) In
Colombia,
March of 2007, representatives of Chiquita Brands pled guilty in a Washington, D.C. court to making payments to
the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) paramilitaries.(47) Chiquita made over 100 payments to the AUC
amounting to over $1.7 million, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Chiquita Brands paid blood money to
terrorists like Carlos Castao to protect its financial interests, according to the law firm representing the victims.
The War on Drugs is an excuse for the U.S. to pursue its

interests in Latin America undermines local economies for
large corporate groups
Paley, Vancouver Media Co-op cofounder 12 [Dawn Paley, co-
founder of the Vancouver Media Co-op, has a Masters in Journalism from UBC and a
degree in Women's Studies from SFU, 2012 (Drug War Capitalism: Militarization &
Economic Transformation in Colombia & Mexico, Analysis, June/August 2012,
Available Online at http://www.solidarity-us.org/pdfs/Dawn.pdf, accessed on July 4th,
2013)][SP]
Direct collusion between U.S. and transnational corporations and
paramilitaries is generally difficult to prove and when evidence emerges
it is not likely to be discovered quickly. But already we know that a group
of Texas companies are accused of colluding with the Zetas to illegally
import stolen fuel.(48) (The Zetas were the armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, which is active in northeast
Mexico. The two groups split in 2010, and since then the Zetas have essentially become a narco-paramilitary group,
though they are often referred to in the media as a drug cartel.) The
Zetas are a paramilitary
force, Dr. William Robinson, author of A Theory of Global Capitalism, told me when I interviewed him last
summer: Basically its the creation of paramilitarism alongside formal
militarization, which is a Colombian model. The Zetas are active in various parts of Mexico, particularly
Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Veracruz, and they are also blamed for massacres in the state of Jalisco and Petn,
Guatemala. Although they are not the only paramilitary group in Mexico, they are the group that receives by far the
most media attention. We need to keep in mind that Colombian President Santos, like [Guatemalan President
Otto] Prez Molina, wants to expand Plan Colombia, which doesnt just mean strengthening the fight against
narcotrafficking, but actually means converting it into a form of paramilitarism in order to generate a new kind of
counterinsurgency, not against social movements, but against indigenous communities, said Maximo Ba Tiul, a
Mayan Poqomchi analyst and professor based in Guatemala. While there is a hesitation on the part of journalists to
link their coverage of the drug war with struggles around natural resources, there is a growing list of places where
this theme and the lessons from the U.S. war in Colombia can be further explored. Residents of Ciudad Mier,
a small community in Tamaulipas, left en masse because of paramilitary violence. The town sits on top of Mexicos
largest gas field, as does a large portion of the violence-ridden state. In the Jurez Valley, considered the most
dangerous place in Mexico, killings and threats have forced many to leave, just as a new border crossing between
the U.S. and Mexico is being constructed. In Santa Maria Ostula, a small Indigenous Nahuatl community in
coastal Mexico, at least 28 people have been killed (and four others disappeared) by paramilitary and state violence
since 2009. Their territory is in a mineral rich and strategically located area. In the Sierra Madre mountain range
in northern Mexico, Canadian mining companies operate in areas where even government officials fear to enter
because of the presence of armed narcotraffickers. In Petn, Guatemala, government officials militarized the area
and declared a state of emergency because of the presence of Zetas that lasted eight months, ending in early
2012. Recent announcements indicate that a new oil rush is taking place in the same region.
Paramilitarization can also impact local, regional and even national

capitalists connected to the domestic economy, forcing them to close their
shops and businesses. This, in turn, opens up space for transnational
22

Capitalism K
corporations and investors to gain access to sectors of the economy

previously dominated by local capitalists. The businesses that are most affected by the
violence are the smallest and those that are located in the states of northern Mexico, writes Guadalupe Correa
Cabrera, a professor at the University of Texas in Brownsville. The
lack of security hurts small

and medium producers, businesses and vendors to a larger degree, due to
the fact that organized crime has a higher ease of penetration with them
than with the directors of large companies, which, in many cases, operate
from outside the country.(49) According to COPARMEX, a Mexican business association, 160,000
businesses closed because of insecurity during 2011.(50) There is a reconversion of the
economy taking place at the national level that is favoring [large
companies], and it is making more [Mexicans] into employees instead of
entrepreneurs, said Correa Cabrera during a presentation in Baja California Sur in February. Precedents in
Colombia and ongoing events elsewhere suggest possible areas for deepening the research in order to better
ascertain to what extent Mexico and Central America are being subjected to a model whereby as David Maher and
paramilitary terror continues to be instrumental in the

creation and maintenance of conditions, such as low labour costs and
access to land, which are conducive to the expansion of the neo-liberal
programme...(51) Increased study and research of the new economic
policies encouraged through U.S. anti-narcotics policy could help reveal
the full extent of the economic transformation that has been initiated in
Mexico and Central America. Upcoming elections in Mexico promise no relief from the horror and
Andrew Thomson report,
violence of the war, which will most likely carry on for at least another six years. All the presidential hopefuls
propose to continue or intensify the war against the gangsters, reads a recent piece in The Economist.(52)
the war in Mexico could remain contained

within the rhetoric of drug prohibition versus liberalization. This kind of
debate is wholly inaccurate as a means of denouncing and mobilizing
resistance to a war on drugs that may be better understood as being
about increased social and territorial control over lands and people, in the
interest of capitalist expansion.
Without a better understanding, discussions about
The affirmatives War on Drugs represses coalitions necessary

for radical economic revolution
A World to Win 12 [A World to Win News Service is a political and
theoretical review inspired by the foundation of the Revolutionary Internationalist

Movement, 2012 (Mexico's drug wars and the deep crisis of capitalism, A World to
Win News Service, International, 5-3-12, Available Online at
http://kasamaproject.org/revolutionary-strategy/3999-31mexico-s-drug-wars-andthe-deep-crisis-of-capitalism, Accessed on July 2, 2013)][SP]
There is a crisis of the state, and the war against the narcotics gangs is
both a product and cause of this crisis. The divisions and fractures within
the power structure are intertwined with the clashes between the drug
cartels that different parts of the state are allied with, undermining the
states ability to defend the systems overall interests. The governments
reactionary war on drugs aims to reinforce the states control over drug
trafficking in alliance with certain drug cartels, reinforce the weakened
reactionary state, and carry out a preventative counter-insurgency
against the people, repressing the people to try and prevent them from
rising up in the future. The state and the corporatist political system
presided over by the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) and its predecessors that had succeeded in
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Capitalism K
maintaining a certain suffocating, repressive and deadly stability for

several decades fell into a crisis rooted in the economic and social
transformations in the world and in Mexico [marked by splits in the ruling class, the end of
the "PRI-government", the dismantling of state enterprises and the emergence of rival reactionary parties, and
repeated social upheavals, starting with the 1994 indigenous peasant uprising in Chiapas]. In this context, drug
trafficking, together with extortion, kidnapping and relateud criminal activities have contributed to the
fragmentation of the power structure. The expansion of organized crime has been simultaneously a cause and
product of this weakening of the state. The crisis of the political system was intensified by more popular rebellions
and the acute electoral crisis of 2006 [when there was widespread popular anger that the governing PAN stole the
election from the rival PRD], leading to a new level of militarization of the government and society. Elaborate
The current crisis and

decomposition of the state has reached a point where it is very difficult to
distinguish between the attempts by the central power structure to
reaffirm the authority of the state in alliance with one or another drug
cartel, and the simple conflicts between different state institutions and
levels allied with different drug gangs, or under their control, in competition for the
government and U.S. claims about drug cartels and routes
merchandise and trafficking routes. Under the administration of Vincente Fox [2000-2006], the federal government
protected the Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartels and hit at their competition, the Tijuana and Gulf cartels. In general,
the U.S. government and its so-called anti-drug agency, the DEA, were in
agreement with this approach and played a decisive role in the operations, although they
were not always happy with the way the plans were carried out. This is how the governments of
Mexico and the United States tried to impose order on the drug markets
and bring down the level of violence. In the resulting battle, federal police fought municipal
police in what was in reality a competition between the Sinaloa cartel (with the support of federal troops) and the
Gulf cartel (which mobilized the local police under its command) for control of the plaza. Today there is still no
order. The current government of Felipe Calderon has continued supporting the Sinaloa cartel headed by El
Chapo Guzman in an attempt to impose order. Very few of the 53,000 people arrested during 2003-2010 have
belonged to the Sinaloa cartel. But the alliances among the drug gangs have shifted. One of the emerging cartels,
La Linea, is mainly made up of local and federal police and Mexican army members. The authorities claimed that El
Chapo escaped from prison in 2001, but really the federal government decided to let him go, and to ally with him
to unite various drug lords in what was called The Federation, as part of a plan to establish a certain order,
cooperation and mutual benefit sharing.
Today organized crime has become an
international big business . Although its illegality gives it certain particular characteristics, in
essence the drug trafficking organizations function like any other
capitalist enterprise. They have to compete with other organizations for
control of various markets and if they dont win in this competition they
will disappear. Although drugs and other illegal activities are the foundation of their fortunes, the main
drug lords also have major legal investments in shopping centres,
hospitals, farms and other enterprises. The illegal capitalists partner with
legal ones and try to legalize part of their capital. And the legal capitalists
in turn try to partner with the drug traffickers. Businessmen approach us
because they want to use our money to make more money. For example, money
laundering is a big business for the Mexican banking system, which is controlled by foreign capital for the most part.
[One big-shot drug lord] happily deposited millions of dollars in cash through his personal banker at Citbank, one
of the worlds most powerful financial institutions and now the owner of Banamex [Mexico's second-largest bank].
In the past, during the 1970s, large-scale drug cartels did not yet exist and [various government agencies and
service branches took charge of the different aspects of the drug trade. It was under control.] In the 1980s the CIA
opened up the U.S. drug market in exchange for the drug lords financing the Contras [organized by the CIA to
The problem today is not just the

consumption of drugs, but the enormous profitability of their production
and distribution for illegal and legal capitalists. At the same time, the
structural crisis that makes it impossible for 60 percent of the working
people to find a job in the formal economy and leaves many youth with no
future and no hope makes it a rational choice for a broad section of the
people to become petty drug dealers or killers for a drug gang. And although
overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua].
increased consumption is not the main factor driving the drug trade, poverty, the tearing of the social fabric,
24

Capitalism K
the atomization of society and other factors accelerated by imperialist

globalization in recent decades make conditions even more propitious for
many people to see drugs as a way to gain an illusory and temporary relief
from the madness of the modern capitalist world. The economic and
social bases underlying the huge leap in drug trafficking, and the crisis of
the capitalist-imperialist system that began in 2008-09 that has yet to end has
exacerbated all these factors even more. Other particularly important factors for Mexico are
changes in the routes taken by the transport of drugs, which have made Mexicos location next door to the U.S.
especially important. While the actions of the U.S. and Colombian governments have done nothing to reduce the
production and exportation of cocaine, they have influenced a shift in the drug circuits and the relative weight of
drug trafficking and its current boom are

part and product of the dynamics of the capitalist-imperialist economy as
well as the policies and measures applied by the governments that
represent this system. The ultra-high-profit rate of the drug trade has
made it both an entrance ticket to wealth for new sectors of illegal
capitalists and a competitive advantage and solution for the problems
of profitability being experienced by major sections of legal capitalists.
Drug addiction, the prostitution of women and children, people kidnapped
and forced to work as slaves on drug plantations, people killed or
incapacitated when their organs are taken to be sold this is the sordid
reality of the capitalist globalization lauded as modernity. Drug
the Colombian and Mexican cartels. In short,
trafficking is a product of this system , but the ruling classes do not have it under control. The
fracturing of Mexican government institutions and the increasing intervention of the U.S. government and its army
and police agencies are consequences of the basic contradictions of this system and the measures taken by the
U.S. and Mexican government, which instead of solving problems aggravate them or create new ones.
Capitalism is the root cause of Mexicos drug war

Vulliamy, Guardian and Observer writer, 11 [Ed Vulliamy, writer for the
Guardian and Observer, Foreign Reporter of the Year in 1993 and 1997, educated at the independent University
College School, won Ryszard Kapuciski award for his work on the Drug War, 2011 (The Drug War Is the Inevitable
Result of Capitalism Gone Mad; Ciudad Juarez Is All of Our Futures, The Guardian, Drug Trade, 6-20-11, Available
Online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartels, Accessed on
July 2, 2013)][SP]
War, as I came to report it, was something fought between people with causes, however crazy or honourable: like
between the American and British occupiers of Iraq and the insurgents who opposed them. Then I stumbled across
Mexico's drug war which has claimed nearly 40,000 lives, mostly civilians and all the rules changed. This is
Mexico's war is inextricable from

everyday life. In Ciudad Juarez, the most murderous city in the world, street
markets and malls remain open; Sarah Brightman sang a concert there recently. When I was back
warfare for the 21st century, and another creature altogether.
there last month, people had reappeared at night to eat dinner and socialise, out of devil-may-care recklessness
and exhaustion with years of self-imposed curfew. Before, there had been an eerie quiet at night, now there is an
On the surface, the combatants

have the veneer of a cause: control of smuggling routes into the US. But
even if this were the full explanation, the cause of drugs places Mexico's
war firmly in our new postideological, postmoral, postpolitical world. The
only causes are profits from the chemicals that get America and Europe
high. Interestingly, in a highly politicised society there is no rightwing or Mussolinian "law and order" mass
even eerier semblance of normality punctuated by gunfire.
movement against the cartels, or any significant leftwing or union opposition. The grassroots movement against the
postpolitical cartel warriors, the National Movement for Peace, is famously led by the poet Javier Sicilia, who
organised a week-long peace march after the murder of his son in the spring. This very male war is opposed by
But this is not just a war between

narco-cartels. Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy the
cartels, acting like any corporation, have outsourced violence to gangs
affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders with corrupt
women, in the workplaces and barrios, and in the home.
25

Capitalism K
police officers. The army plays its own mercurial role. "Cartel war" does not explain the
story my friend, and Juarez journalist, Sandra Rodriguez told me over dinner last month: about two children
who killed their parents "because", they explained to her, "they could". The culture of impunity, she
said, "goes from boys like that right to the top the whole city is a criminal enterprise". Not by
coincidence, Juarez is also a model for the capitalist economy . Recruits
for the drug war come from the vast, sprawling maquiladora bonded assembly plants
where, for rock-bottom wages, workers make the goods that fill America's
supermarket shelves or become America's automobiles, imported dutyfree. Now, the corporations can do it cheaper in Asia, casually shedding
their Mexican workers, and Juarez has become a teeming recruitment pool
for the cartels and killers. It is a city that follows religiously the
philosophy of a free market. "It's a city based on markets and on trash," says
Julin Cardona, a photographer who has chronicled the implosion. "Killing and drug addiction are
activities in the economy, and the economy is based on what happens
when you treat people like trash." Very much, then, a war for the 21st century. Cardona told me
how many times he had been asked for his view on the Javier Sicilia peace march: "I replied: 'How can you march
Mexico's war does not only belong to the postpolitical,

postmoral world. It belongs to the world of belligerent hyper-materialism,
in which the only ideology left which the leaders of "legitimate" politics,
business and banking preach by example is greed. A very brave man called Mario
against the market?'"
Trevino lives in the city of Reynosa, which is in the grip of the Gulf cartel. He said of the killers and cartels: "They
are revolting people who do what they do because they cannot be seen to wear the same label T-shirt as they wore
last year, they must wear another brand, and more expensive." It can't be that banal, I objected, but he pleaded
with me not to underestimate these considerations. The thing that really makes Mexico's war a different war, and of
our time, is that it is about, in the end, nothing. It certainly belongs to the cacophony of the era of digital
communication. The killers post their atrocities on YouTube with relish, commanding a vast viewing public; they are
busy across thickets of internet hot-sites and the narco-blogosphere. Journalists find it hard that while even people
as crazy as Osama bin Laden will talk to the media they feel they have a message to get across the narcocartels have no interest in talking at all. They control the message, they are democratic the postmodern way.
People often ask: why the savagery of Mexico's war? It is infamous for such inventive perversions as sewing one
victim's flayed face to a soccer ball or hanging decapitated corpses from bridges by the ankles; and innovative
torture, such as dipping people into vats of acid so that their limbs evaporate while doctors keep the victim
there is a correlation between the

causelessness of Mexico's war and the savagery. The cruelty is in and of
the nihilism, the greed for violence reflects the greed for brands, and
becomes a brand in itself. People also ask: what can be done? There is endless debate
over military tactics, US aid to Mexico, the war on drugs, and whether
narcotics should be decriminalised. I answer: these are largely of
tangential importance; what can the authorities do? Simple: Go After the
Money. But they won't. Narco-cartels are not pastiches of global
corporations, nor are they errant bastards of the global economy they
conscious. I answer tentatively that I think
are pioneers of it . They point, in their business logic and modus operandi,
to how the legal economy will arrange itself next. The Mexican cartels
epitomised the North American free trade agreement long before it was
dreamed up, and they thrive upon it. Mexico's carnage is that of the age
of effective global government by multinational banks banks that, according to
Antonio Maria Costa, the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, have been for years kept
afloat by laundering drug and criminal profits. Cartel bosses and street
gangbangers cannot go around in trucks full of cash. They have to bank it and
politicians could throttle this river of money, as they have with actions against terrorist
funding. But they choose not to, for obvious reasons: the good burgers of
capitalism and their political quislings depend on this money, while bleating about
the evils of drugs cooked in the ghetto and snorted up the noses of the rich. So Mexico's war is how the
26

Capitalism K
future will look, because it belongs not in the 19th century with wars of empire, or the 20th with wars of ideology,
in a present to which the global economy is committed,

and to a zeitgeist of frenzied materialism we adamantly refuse to temper: it is the inevitable war of
race and religion but utterly
capitalism gone mad . Twelve years ago Cardona and the writer Charles Bowden curated a book called
Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future. They could not have known how prescient their title was. In a recent book,
Murder City, Bowden puts it another way: "Juarez is not a breakdown of the social order. Juarez is the new order."
27

Capitalism K
Link Environmental Policy

Environmental reform within capitalism will be ineffectively
shallow to maintain profit levels
DeFusco, Past Director of Yale School of Forestry &
Environmental Studies, 8(David is Communications Director at Highstead, James Gustave
Speth [cited in the card] is the dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and is Co-founder of the
Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute and former White House advisor. (Book
Examines Clash of Capitalism and the Environment4/1/2008
http://livinglies.wordpress.com/2008/04/19/capitalism-and-environmental-policy-ultimate-reality-show/)
New Haven, Conn. The
environment will continue to deteriorate so long as
capitalism continues to be the modern worlds economic engine , argues

Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, in his
new book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to
Sustainability. Seeing an emerging environmental tragedy of unprecedented proportions, Speth says the books
aim is to describe a non-socialist alternative to capitalism. That alternative includes moving to a post-growth society
and environmentally honest prices, curbing consumerism with a new ethic of sufficiency, rolling back growing
corporate control of American political life, and addressing the enormous economic insecurity of the average
person. My point of departure is the momentous environmental challenge we face, Speth says. But todays
environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and
the erosion of democratic governance and popular control. Speth examines how these seemingly separate areas of
public concern are intertwined and calls upon citizens to mobilize spiritual and political resources for transformative
change on all three fronts. Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science, calls Speths book, A powerful and ambitious
attempt to characterize the changed strategies that environmental organizations need to adopt to become more
effective. This book challenges many things that would seem to have political immunity of a sortamong others,
corporate capitalism, the environmental movement itself and the forces of globalization. Co-founder of the Natural
Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute and former White House advisor, Speth has been
called the ultimate insider by TIME magazine. But now, faced with evidence of galloping degradation of the
Speth has concluded that all in all, todays environmentalism has not been
succeeding. He calls on environmentalists to step outside the system
and develop a deeper critique of what is going on. Speth argues that aggregate
economic growth is no longer improving the lives of most Americans and
suggests that in some ways it is making individuals worse off
environmentally, socially and psychologically. It is said that growth is goodso good that it is worth all the
planet,
costs, that somehow well be better off, says Speth, We are substituting economic growth and more consumption
for dealing with the real issuesfor doing things that would truly make us better off. The book calls for measures
that provide for universal health care and alleviate the devastating effects of mental illness; guarantee good, wellpaying jobs and increase employee satisfaction, minimize layoffs and job insecurity and provide for adequate
retirement incomes; introduce more family-friendly policies at work, including flextime and easy access to quality
child care; and provide individuals with more leisure time for connecting with their families, communities and
nature. My
hope is that all Americans who care about the environment will
come to embrace these measuresthese hallmarks of a caring community and a
good society as necessary to moving us beyond money to sustainability
and community, he says. Sustaining people, sustaining naturethey are just one cause, inseparable.
Speth writes that Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the dollar value of all goods and services produced by the
economy, is a poor gauge of human well-being or welfare. The book cites studies showing that throughout the
entire period following World War II, as incomes skyrocketed in the United States and other advanced economies,
reported life satisfaction and happiness levels stagnated or even declined slightly. Speth says that these studies
Obsession with consumption

growth has now causes more harmto the environment, social fabric and world
securitythan good. It took all of history, Speth notes, to build the $7 trillion world economy of 1950; today,
suggest the need for a radical rethinking and reordering of societys priorities.
and GDP
economic activity grows by that amount every decade. At current rates of growth, the world economy will double in
size in less than two decades. Society
is facing the possibility of an enormous

increase in environmental deterioration, just when we need to move
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Capitalism K
strongly in the opposite direction.
The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the

Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability is published by Yale University Press (yalebooks.com). See
the Bridge at the Edge of the World website for more information.
Promoting both economic growth and preventing destruction

of nature is impossible, profits take priority
Sullivan, phD in Anthropology, 9 Sian--Senior Lecturer in Environment and Development
2008 Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 1998 PhD Anthropology (University College London) and is in the
Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. (Green
capitalism, and the cultural poverty of constructing nature as service providerSian Sullivan 2009
http://siansullivan.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/sian-article.pdf)
In recent years, two phenomena have conspired to push these concerns

and concepts together to generate a utopian win-win scenario of both
mitigating environmental degradation and facilitating economic growth
through pricing the ecological services provided by nature. The first is the 2005 publication of the influential
United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), which highlights human-generated change of the
biosphere and overwhelmingly uses the language of ecosystem services in speaking of the non-human world.
These are further categorised into provisioning services (food, water, timber, fibre, etc.), regulating services
(floods, droughts, land degradation and disease), supporting services (such as soil formation and nutrient
Through
combining the quantification skills of ecological science and economics,
the MEA proposes that breaking nature down into these increasingly
scarce services,20 quantifying their functionality, and assigning a price
to them, will assist conservation by asserting their financial value; at the
same time as fostering economic growth by creating new tradeable assets.21 The second
cycling), and non-material cultural services (recreational, spiritual, religious, etc.).19
is the creation of a multi-billion dollar market in a new commodity carbon intended to mitigate (i.e. minimise)
climate change by providing the possibility of profitably exchanging one of the gases contributing to
anthropogenic global warming. As noted above, this is generating a market-based context for approaching the
the
assumption is that both good environmental governance and the
equitable distribution of environmental services will derive from the
correct pricing of quantified environmental goods and services,
combined with the self-regulating market behaviour that will emerge
from their market exchange. In this case, the financial price attributed to carbon is allocated to,
broader environmental concerns of the MEA. Like Adam Smiths putative economic invisible hand,22
and therefore captured by, heavy industry emitters. It is they who gain tradeable carbon credits (i.e. the currency
representing carbon), for example, under the European Unions Emissions Trading Scheme.23 Some (currently
minimal) scarcity is built into the market by allocating credits at a level below what major installations require to
cover their emitting levels, so as to meet the emissions reducing targets set by the Kyoto Protocol of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Once these credits enter the international financial system
their future value can be speculated on (as with any other currency or commodity, including derivatives) and
significant profits can ensue. In the wake of this, a veritable ecosystem of economists, stockbrokers and financial
advisors has emerged to service trade in this new commodity, as epitomised by the Europe Climate Exchange in
the City of London. This is the leading marketplace for trading carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions in Europe and
internationally,24 and basically a stock exchange for the 20 Radical Anthropology currency of tradeable carbon
credits. Interestingly, the website of the Europe Climate Exchange provides very little information connecting
this exchange with environmental impacts through the reduction of atmospheric CO2 . Such presentation seems
to emphasise that this is a product with a great deal to do with trade, finance and profit, operating at a rather
large remove from the materiality of global climate and ecosystems.
The shallow green capitalism of the aff is used to help profits,

not the environment
Smith, Rutgers University professor, 11 Richard Smith has taught history at
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and has written on the social and environmental impact of the transition to
capitalism in China for the New Left Review, the Ecologist, and other publications. (Green capitalism: the god that
failed 2011 http://paecon.net/PAEReview/issue56/Smith56.pdf)
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Capitalism K
In rejecting the antigrowth approach of the first wave of environmentalists in the 1970s, pro-growth green
capitalism theorists of the 1980s-90s like Paul Hawken, Lester Brown, and Francis Cairncross argued that
green
technology, green taxes, eco-conscious shopping and the like could align profit-seeking with environmental goals, even invert
many fundamentals of business practice such that restoring the environment and making money become one and the same
has clearly failed. I claim first, that the project of sustainable

capitalism was misconceived and doomed from the start because maximizing
profit and saving the planet are inherently in conflict and cannot be
systematically aligned even if, here and there, they might coincide for a moment. Thats because under
capitalism, CEOs and corporate boards are not responsible to society, theyre
responsible to private shareholders. CEOs can embrace environmentalism so
long as this increases profits. But saving the world requires that the
pursuit of profits be systematically subordinated to ecological concerns:
process. This strategy
For example, the science says that to save the humans, we have to drastically cut fossil fuel consumption, even close down
industries like coal. But no corporate board can sacrifice earnings to save the humans because to do so would be to risk
profit-maximization is an iron rule of capitalism, a

rule that trumps all else, and this sets the limits to ecological reform -- and
shareholder flight or worse. I claim that
not the other way around as green capitalism theorists supposed. Secondly, I claim that contrary to green capitalism proponents,
across the spectrum from resource extraction to manufacturing, the practical possibilities for greening and dematerializing
production are severely limited. This means, I contend, that the only way to prevent overshoot and collapse is to enforce a massive
economic contraction in the industrialized economies, retrenching production across a broad range of unnecessary, resourcehogging, wasteful and polluting industries, even virtually shutting down the worst. Yet this option is foreclosed under capitalism
because this is not socialism: no one is promising new jobs to unemployed coal miners, oil-drillers, automakers, airline pilots,
chemists, plastic junk makers, and others whose jobs would be lost because their industries would have to be retrenched -- and
unemployed workers dont pay taxes. So CEOs, workers, and governments find that they all need to maximize growth,
overconsumption, even pollution, to destroy their childrens tomorrows to hang onto their jobs today because, if they dont, the
system falls into crisis, or worse. So were all onboard the TGV of ravenous and ever-growing plunder and pollution. And as our
locomotive races toward the cliff of ecological collapse, the only thoughts on the minds of our CEOS, capitalist economists,
politicians and labor leaders is how to stoke the locomotive to get us there faster. Corporations arent necessarily evil. They just
cant help themselves. Theyre doing what theyre supposed to do for the benefit of their owners. But this means that,
long as the global economy is based on capitalist

production
for market,
private/corporate property and competitive
were doomed to collective social suicide and
tinkering with the market can brake the drive to global
so
ecological collapse .
no amount of
We cant shop our way to sustainability
because the problems we face cannot be solved by individual choices in the marketplace. They require collective democratic
control over the economy to prioritize the needs of society and the environment. And they require national and international
economic planning to re-organize the economy and redeploy labor and resources to these ends. I conclude, therefore, that if
humanity is to save itself, we have no choice but to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a democratically-planned socialist
economy.
Modern environmentalism was created to legitimize capitalism

Barker, alternative journalist, 10 Michael James has been writing for alternative media
outlets since 2006, and at present is a regular contributor to Swans Commentary. His work has been published by
the following media organizations: Ceasefire Magazine, Corporate Watch (UK), Countercurrents, CounterPunch,
Dissident Voice, Fifth Estate Online, Green Left Weekly, Jacobin, Media-ocracy, Monthly Review Zine, New
Community Quarterly, New Left Project, One Struggle, PULSE Media, Spinwatch, Socialist Project, State of Nature,
Upside Down World, Variant, and in the past I was a regular contributor to Znet. (Co-opting the Green
Movement8/1/2010 http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/coopting_greens_the_environmental_foundations_of_capitalism)
environmentalism emerged in the context of the most rapid economic

expansion in history and matured in the technological culture that capitalism had spawned. To the extent that it has
been a response to technology itself, American environmentalism has been shaped by it. And it has
been shaped by capitalism as well. Mark Dowie, 1995.1 Needless to say, the green ideas
spewing forth from the worlds leading capitalists are unlikely to bring about any
sort of meaningful resolution to the environmental destruction wrought by
capitalism. This has not, however, stopped representatives of the worlds most toxic
corporations from using their wealth to create well-endowed grantmaking bodies to
manage their environmental opposition; a manipulative process that was successfully institutionalized by
American
Americas leading robber barons in the early 20th century through the creation of not-for-profit corporations, otherwise known as
philanthropic foundations. Thankfully, prominent environmental historian Mark Dowie has traced the insidious influence of such socalled liberal foundations on popular struggles against the powers that be in two excellent books. The first, Losing Ground: American
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Capitalism K
Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century (MIT Press, 1996), dealt specifically with the environmental movement,
while the second, American Foundations: An Investigative History (MIT Press, 2001), provided an overview of the manipulative
nature of elite philanthropoids. While in recent years a number of other writers have scrutinized the problematic relationship
between liberal foundations and environmentalism, for example Daniel Faber and Robert Brulle, this article draws upon only Dowies
work in an attempt to provide a brief introduction to this vitally important but oft-neglected subject. For over a century foundation
executives have adopted grantmaking practices that ensure they fund research projects that document social pathologies
perhaps even ameliorate them, all the while protecting corporate capitalism. It is therefore unsurprising that, in their multitudinous
forays into managing Americas signature social movements - for womens rights, peace, environment, environmental justice,
students, gay liberation, and particularly labor, one finds that foundations have generally favored middle-class over lower-class
social movements.2 And rather than helping citizens to work through existing democratic channels, it appears that if there is a
central motive behind social-movement philanthropy it is to encourage concerned citizens to struggle outside the
government domain within a general rights-based framework for social change.3 This has the unfortunate effect of deflecting
legitimate concerns away from the one democratic body that could arguably resolve these problems, the government. Concerned
people are encouraged to seek justice (or simply democracy) in an indirect fashion by working through non-profit organizations that
act as a moderating buffer between the citizenry and the government - a problem amplified by the fact that the most powerful and
influential non-profits tend not to be run or organized around democratic principles. Yet even with the focus on activism outside of
government channels, most foundation trustees [still] see environmental groups as too adversarial, too confrontational to rank
alongside family, neighborhood, church, and palliative charities as legitimate institutions of civil society. In this way, thousands of
grassroots environmental groups tend to be ignored by most foundations while a handful of national organizations, which the
corporate media identify as the major players and agenda setters of American environmentalism, receive the noblesse oblige of
the major foundations. As one might expect, most of these national groups, like the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, the
Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Audubon Society, carefully avoid challenging the power
structures and relationships that have the most profound environmental impacts.4
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Link Ethics
Their notion of ethics makes the individual the base unit of
society and all problems inter-personal- fractures attempts for
broader social change.
DeFazio, Ph.D. in English with specialty in Cultural Theory, 03
(Kimberly, Ph.D., English, Spring 2003, The Red Critique, The Imperialism of "Eating
Well", http://redcritique.org/Spring2003/theimperialismofeatingwell.htm, [Accessed
7/8/13], JB).
The cultural imaginary in the West today is dominated by the discourse of
"ethics". Ethics, in its privileging of the subjective over the objective,
turns social structures into modes of personal behavior and thus sees
social change basically as a matter of changing individuals' minds and
ideas. On these terms, hunger is not viewed as a structure of social relations
tied to ownership of property (class)a view based on the understanding that a
transformation in property relation is the necessary precondition of eradicating
hunger. Rather, the primary solutions to hunger are individual and
subjective ones that promote life-style changes and daily negotiations
within existing unequal social structures. For instance: those with food give to
those who do not; food pantries redistribute surpluses; understanding that the
hungry are not in any fundamental way "different" from the fed, etc. These and
other similar reformist practices aimed at addressing only the most intolerable
effects of hunger, not its material roots, are widely seen as the only "reasonable"
solutions. Ethics, in other words, is one of the main manifestations of theoretical
"savvy-ness" today. Ethical theorists regard transforming hunger by
eradicating its roots in private property as highly "unreasonable" and
"crude", if not deeply suspicious, since transformation of class relations is
deemed a "totalitarian" imposition of one subjective will over another.
Social change, to put it differently, is only ethical when it deals with one
hungry person at a time. What is necessary to note about contemporary
ethics is that unlike the "traditional" ("modernist") ethics of John Stuart Mill
or Kant, for whom ethics involves the study of the "good society" (the "polis") and
finding the ideal means of living a "good life", ethics today is post-foundational.
It puts itself forward as a "radical" ethics because it does not essentialize
or monolithize the subject. Ethics, in other words, is now "post-al" and, as
Mas'ud Zavarzadeh explains, begins with the assumption that we have
entered a post-historical, post-class, post-industrial, post-historical
moment of history; a moment in which capitalism has somehow broken
free from its exploitative past (1-2). That is to say, in contemporary
articulations of ethics the social is a series of autonomous, disparate, and
aleatory events operating independently of any over-arching logic (such as
the logic of exploitation), and, therefore, without any common and underlying
principles of judgment. As a result, whereas traditional ethics was at least
formally committed to a notion of "equality", post-al ethics is resigned to
inequality, and views all discussions of "equality" as totalizing fictions
aimed at concealing over the fundamental "difference" that constitutes
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the social. As pragmatist Chris Barker succinctly puts it "The modernist goal of
equality is beset with problems, and equality of outcome is neither possible nor
desirable" (20). Post-al ethicists, he declares, have instead learned not to "mistake
our ethical choices for radical public politics" (19). As a result, ethics today is more
concerned with managing the effects of social inequalities. The shift from modern to
postmodern or post-al ethics, it is necessary to emphasize, is not the result of a
more "savvy", "sophisticated" or "radical democratic" understanding of ethicsthe
shift, in other words, did not come about due to the triumph of new or "better"
ideas. This is a claim that Francis Moore Lapp makes in the new introductory
chapter to the 20th Anniversary Edition of Diet For a Small Planet, a book that has
maintained its ongoing popularity by appealing to activist sentiments yet at the
same time effectively disconnecting hunger from any encompassing theory of
hunger as a product of capitalism. She writes that through the sheer "power of
ideas" a new ecological "myth" which recognizes the net of relationships in which
humans are involved is coming to replace an older Cartesian "mechanical" myth
that separated people into "atoms" and denied them agency (xix-xxvii). This, of
course, is the dominant understanding of social change today, which turns the
history of capitalism into the progress of ideas and erases the way in which the
possibilities of social change are the product of human labor in order to obscure the
fundamental exploitation of labor that is central to the organization of capitalist
society. Post-al ethics, in other words, is a response to the new needs of capital in
the era of cybercapitalism in which the material developments in production that
have enabled the possibility of an economically just society are held back by private
ownership and must instead be explained as a problem of "bad ideas" if this
contradiction is to be secured. Ethics, to be more general, is an articulation of
the way in which individuals are trained to deal with the contradictions of
capitalism. In other words, changes in what constitutes "ethical" behavior are an
effect of shifts in the needs of capital. Modern ethics, now deemed too
"mechanical" by both activists like Lapp and "high theorists" like Derrida alike,
responded to the needs of an emerging capitalist system; that is, it was
focused on the aims of "integrating" social classes into the capitalist
system at a time of deep unrest brought about by the conflict between
dying feudal relations and industrialization. The "good society" was
basically an attempt to assure the increasing numbers of dispossessed
that the market could meet the common needs of all. Ethics in what is
called "post-industrialism", on the contrary, is no longer aimed at
"integrating", or including the excluded. With the generalization of capitalist
relations throughout the world, and the resulting deepening divisions between the
haves and the have-nots, ethics has instead become more interested in
"recognizing" "difference" and the underlying alterity that, on post-al terms,
subvert the "good society" (a concept that is, as a result, largely abandoned
today as a modernist fantasy of wholeness that reduced the complexity of the social
to a false unity). Whereas the ethics of the "polis" emphasized collectivity and
politics (albeit often in an idealist fashion), post-al ethics abandons both. It
substitutes "community" for collectivity and emphasizes interpersonal
relations and individual differences, in order to evacuate social
(structural) contradictions from the scene of theory, and replace them
with local ones which can be micro-managed. Ethics today is thus more
concerned with managing the effects of growing divisions resulting from the
concentration of capital in the hands of the few, and ongoing privatization of all
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aspects of social life. To be ethical today is to recognize class and other

differences but to conclude at the same time that nothing can be done to
address these contradictions. Post-al ethics, in short, is a manifestation of the
growing cynicism of bourgeois society, resigned to deep inequalities.
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Link Heidegger
Heidegger ignores the struggles of the proletariat in his focus
on their relationship to machinery, dismantling the concepts
needed in a materialist explanation of the world
12
In the most basic terms, of course, both Heidegger and Marx agree that, as Marx puts it, "at the present day general
consciousness is an abstraction from real life and as such antagonistically confronts it" (Economic Manuscripts 105)
But Heidegger's hostility to the

"general consciousness" is deeply tied to his romantic treatment of
technology and technological thinking. "In utilizing public means of transport and in making
that is, that consciousness is alienated from reality.
use of information services such as the newspaper," Heidegger argues, "every Other is like the next. This Beingwith-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of Being of 'the Others' in such a way,
indeed, that the Others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. In this inconspicuousness and
Elaborating his
machine-thinking, Heidegger here perhaps makes most manifest his
rejection of the working class "mass," within whom (it is assumed) all
individuality is lost and one sinks into "averageness" and "mediocrity ."
unascertainability, the real dictatorship of the 'they' is unfolded' (Being and Time 154).
Deeply aware of the growing international power of the organized working class, not only in the Soviet Union, but
what Heidegger "sees" in the

strengthening urban proletariat is an indistinguishable mob threatening
unique authenticity (individuality), which is a code for private property. As
a result, it is not the property relations which strip workers of the means
of production, forcing them to work for someone else that Heidegger sees
as the root problem of the working class. It is instead the machines that
cause the working class to lose their individual freedom and individuality,
not workers' class relation to machinery but the machinery itself (along
with its instrumental thinking). Thus the homogenization (abstraction) of labor by capital gets
throughout Europe and even in the US after the first world war,
translated as "leveling down" and "averageness" which themselves are then equated with "publicness." The "city"
(the space in which technology is most concentrated) then is rejected because it "controls every way in which the
world and Dasein get interpreted" (165). Nature in turn becomes the romantic space in which "every difference of
level and of genuineness" and the "heart" of matters are experienced outside of social interpretationas the
"ineffable." This of course leads Heidegger, in his later writings, to become more and more concerned with the
consequences of technology's "enframing" logic for nature. As he puts it in "The Question Concerning Technology,"
in a technological age "even the cultivation of the field has comes under the grip of another kind of setting-in-order,
which sets upon nature. It sets upon it in the sense of challenging it. Agriculture is now the mechanized food
industry, air is now set upon to yield nitrogen, the earth to yield ore, ore to yield uranium, for example" (320). For
the conflict between "consciousness and real life" (Marx) is

ultimately a mode of thinking that has not been attentive to Being, and
can be remedied with a new mode of thinking. For Marx, by contrast, this
results from the social relations in which the products of human's labor
are alienated from them. Only a society in which a few own the means of
production can others be in a position that they not only must sell their
labor to survive but under conditions in which they have no control over or
property in their product of labor. "How would the worker come to face the product of his activity
Heidegger,
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as a stranger," Marx asks, "were it not that in the very act of production he was estranging himself from himself?
The product is after all but the summary of the activity, of production... In the estrangement of the object of labor is
merely summarized the estrangement, the alienation, in the activity of labor itself" (73-4). For this reason, there can
be no moving beyond the situation in which people are alienated from their productive activity ("hammering")
But Heidegger bypasses change of

material relations by suggesting that hiding behind (or "alongside") the
materiality of the everyday world of tools is a deeper, more elusive beingone
unless the social relations of production are transformed.
which renders the relation of subject and object far more "ambiguous" (subjective) and which can be accessed only
through intuition. For Heidegger, the more authentic approach to Being can only take place through the "qualitative
It is, however,
only abstraction that allows one to grasp the abstract material relations
underlying experience. To repeat, the hammer is material not because of the
qualities of its "thingness" (the argument of mechanical materialism and
matterism) but because of the abstract social relations which both
produce it and which determine its applications and its "meanings." In the
guise of putting forward a new notion of the (immaterial) "material,"
Heidegger's argument is a means of dismantling the concepts needed for
materialist explanation of the world. Without concepts which make connections between
experience" constitutive of being-in-the-world as against the "abstract" (concept) or theory.
apparently fundamentally different entities and phenomena, there is no way to understand the labor relations which
position people in structurally similar ways much less the economic laws which compel capital to exploit labor.
Heidegger forgets, in other words, that "pre-reflective" or "primordial" experience is the space of ideology.
Focusing only on the excessive "experience" of labor thus directs attention

away from the material world which shapes experiences and onto the
subjective ways of thinking about experience as an isolated "in itself":
precisely the ideological ways of thinking capital fosters so as to inhibit
working people from identifying common (class) interests and collectively
fighting for them.
Heideggers focus on unveiling beings stifles the ability to

study the material conditions of objects
12
To put this another way, in his theorization of production ("hammering"),
which is centered on the subject, the world and products of labor
increasingly recede and disappear. As he puts it elsewhere, the approach he
highlights "is not a way of knowing those characteristics of entities which themselves are [seinder
Beschaffenheiten des Seienden]; it is rather a determination of the structure of the
Being which entities possess. But as an investigation of Being, it brings to
completion... that understanding of Being which belongs already to Dasein
and which 'comes alive' in any of its dealings with entities" (95-6; emphasis added).
It is not about the material relations of human being or even the relations
of humans and tools that matters here. It is instead what using equipment
tells the subject (Dasein) about the innermost nature of human existence.
Thus the focus, as Dasein, becomes the interiority of the subject, the subject thinking about the hammeror the
"other" hammer in the subject's thoughts. Heidegger's is a spectral hammer, which seems to attain its more
authentic ("primordial") sense of being precisely to the extent that its roots in the material world are suppressed.
The subject's "rootless" interior "sight" is then posited as

(de-)establishing, negating, the qualities of the material world. The
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Capitalism K
material world (that matters) ends up being an effect of the thinking

subject. Consequently, as his discussion unfolds, the hammer looses more and more of
its "hardness" (that which links it to the outside world) to the
sensuousness of language and thinking (which renders that outside world
increasingly ineffable). The sensuousness of language here combats the instrumentalities of the
material world. We are led throughout Being and Time, and especially in his later writing on poetry, to the
materiality of language, which guides the subject, never to any "outside" reference (i.e., the objective world of
history) but to an ever deeper interiority of meaning within language. Language, after all, is for Heidegger "the
house of Being" ("Letter on Humanism" 217). And it is, more specifically, "[t]he liberation of language from
grammar into a more original essential framework" (218) that constitutes the most "primordial" mode of language
Heidegger's
writing removes from language any material resistance, and dwells in the
sensuousness of the signifier. What starts out as a gesture to the
worldliness of the world, in short, ends up in the worldless subject . This is
because, in the first place, the being of hammering has little to do with
the physical, material aspects of the hammer (its use value, which is in
part related to a products' physical properties) or empirical properties
which could be "tested" scientifically ("characteristics"). Even less so is
the hammer's readiness-to-hand for Heidegger the result of its being a
product of labor, used under specific historical relations of property which
enable it to be "ready-to-hand" for those who sell their labor to survive
(the "in order to" of commodity production). This is not coincidental. For, central to
his treatment of the "hammer" is the double-move of first reducing
materialism (which argues that consciousness is determined by material
relations) to mechanical materialism (the Newtonian thinking which treats
the world as independent, isolated, and unchanging objects), and then,
having done this, rejecting "materialism" as a rigid mode of thinking
incapable of grasping the complexity and changes of social or natural life.
(poetry). Through the meditation on "grammarless" language (outside of social convention),
As Heidegger explains, "When analysis starts with such entities [as Things] and goes on to inquire about Being,
what it meets is Thinghood and Reality. Ontological explication [then] discovers... substantiality, materiality,
extendedness, side-by-side-ness, and so forth" (96). But even on these terms, he argues, "the entities which we
encounter in concern are proximally hidden"(96). This is because, to address things in terms of their materiality or
their "substance" (127), Heidegger argues, is to posit "an idea in which Being is equated with constant presence-at-
Conflating
idealist and materialist theories of substance, and thus representing
materialism as positing an unchanging, eternal theory of the objective
world, Heidegger suggests that the materiality of the object is an
appearance only. Advancing a critique of present-ism that will later become central to textualism and
posthumanism, Heidegger suggests that empiricism, rationalism and historical
materialismall of which, in different ways, assume the existence of an
"object" which can be "known" by a "subject" which is distinct from the
objecthave obscured the true being of entities by focusing only on
appearances of objects (their "presence"). But these presentist appearances conceal deeperhand" (29), an idea based on entities as "That which enduringly remains, really is" (128).
lying dynamics (of becoming, of relations between presences and absence) that exceed attempts to conceptualize
(or "fix") them.
The romantic machine-thinking of the affirmative signals a

retreat from a focus on material conflicts
12
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Romantic machine-thinking is a response to capital's relentless conversion
of people into wage-laborersa process which, in times of crisis, hits the "middle" sectors of class
society (i.e, intellectuals, the petit-bourgeois) particularly hard. Facing the deep insecurity of
their class position yet ultimately opposed to the working class struggle to
transform capital, the first line of defense among intellectuals facing
growing economic and social crisis has always been the turn to the
immaterial, and often the irrational. That is to say, romantic idealism is a
discursive relay of the displaced petit-bourgeoisie and, in the face of the rising conflict
between labor and capital, signals a retreat into and call for some "other way of
life" in order not to engage the material conflicts of the present . This is why it
surfaces with such force during moments of intensified crisis. Thus, for instance, the rise of romanticism in late
1700s to the early 1800s is also the time of revolutionary upheavals, the intensified destruction of peasant life, as
well as the consolidation of the early industrial city with its obvious class contradictions with life in the early
factories (before the period of "social reform" from the 1840s on in England)which romanticism sees in terms of
the excesses of Enlightenment rationality and the logic of quantification. Although developed in many idioms,
what these romantic responses ultimately share, I argue, is not so much a

nostalgia for the pastthis is a secondary effectbut an idealist logic which ultimately erases
the human as shaped by labor. The importance of critically re-examining
such discourses (which often claim to represent a radical departure from dominant thinking) is that,
by disappearing the relations of labor, and replacing the material with the
immaterial, the ideological work of machine-thinking is to forestall
transformative change. It substitutes for the revolution of material
structures what Wordsworth, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, calls "throw[ing] over [familiar incidents] a
certain colouring of imagination" (597) or what Matthew Calarco, in reference to posthumanism, calls a "revolution
in language and thought" (Zoographies 6): a substitution that has become increasingly appealing to ruling class
interests at times of deepening social contradictions.
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Capitalism K
Link Hospitality/Infinite Obligation

Derridian hospitality deligitmates all attempts to make
demands for social change- roots reciprocity in the
assumption of property.
7/8/13], JB).
According to this logic, the ethical subject is one who no longer simply
identifies with the self but respects the other by "identify[ing] with the
other, who is to be assimilated, interiorized," (283). The self is never single
but plural, and indeed the boundary between self and other is continually
blurred. And it is precisely this ethical relation to the other that Derrida
calls "infinite hospitality" (282): the idea that one gives to the other "infinitely"
without beginning or end, without boundaries or determinants. The "excessiveness"
of hospitality in fact becomes even more explicit in Derrida's recent text Of
Hospitality, where he writes: "To be what it 'must' be, hospitality must not pay a
debt, or be governed by a duty [...] For if I practice hospitality 'out of duty' [] this
hospitality of paying up is no longer an absolute hospitality, it is no longer
graciously offered beyond debt and economy" (83). Hospitality, I argue, is like
"ethics" and "eating well", a trope deployed to exceed class binaries. As
Derrida emphasizes, hospitality cannot be the effect of existing relations of
material inequality (i.e., to "repay" a social or economic debt); nor can it be
"legislated". "Repaying" and "legislating" are textualist codes for the social
praxis of changing objective historical structurescodes which are seen as
"monolithic" and thus as stopping the play of differences that inherently undermine
all attempts at conceptualization. Hospitality, instead, "negotiates" on
subjective and local terms the already existing unequal relations among
people. It is an act of ethical willfulness that must be motivated spontaneously,
without condition, obligation, or determination. But it is precisely this textual logic of
"graciousness" and "hospitality" that enables corporations on the one hand to
refuse to pay taxes on their profitstaxes on which working people are forced to
rely for social servicesand on the other to "donate" large (tax-free) sums to
charity (to be used at the discretion of local administrators). Corporations too are
invested in precisely such notions of "hospitality" because they function outside the
"law". Rather than actually opening any space from which to examine the inherent
contradictions of language, Derrida's deconstruction of any connection
between the local and the global operates to legitimate the suspension of
all social structures such as regulation of the market and eliminates any
conception that the state is required to ensure livable wages, support
comprehensive healthcare, or to finance advanced educations for the
working class. Hospitality is in effect a code, not so much for sophisticated
reading, but for economic deregulation. It is the theoretical equivalent of freetrade agreements. That is, it is an ethical ruse for the complete
privatization of social resources under imperialism. Derrida's entire argument
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Capitalism K
is based on the assumption that, as he puts it, "one must eat". But in fact many
worldwide do not eat, and even more do not "eat well". What appears to be a
"beyond" class argument, in other words, is an alibi for the interests of the
bourgeois subject, for whom food, like other social resources, is always already
available. Not only does the trope of ethical eating naturalize the relation between
the haves and the have-nots, but the very availability of the food "eaten well"
by the subjectthat is, the conditions under which it is producedis taken
for granted. Derridean ethics, which claims to resist essentializing social
relations by appealing to the textual slippage of social codes, is in
actuality a means of defending the interests of the ruling class by
removing the ethical act from determination by material conditions.
40

Capitalism K
Link Human Rights

Human rights subordinate everyone to the only people who
count as human, a determination made by global capital.
Moufawad-Paul, PhD in Philosophy,13,
(Josh, 4/10/13, M-L-M Mayhem!: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections, Bourgeois
Moralism, http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2013/04/bourgeois-moralism.html,
Of course, it is worth recognizing that Marx did tend to philosophically ground the
necessity of socialism/communism upon the concept of a specific notion of human
commonality. In the introduction to the Grundrisse, for example, he distinguishes his
approach from bourgeois political economy by declaring solidarity with the concept
of the social rather than individual animal. Elsewhere, both Marx and Engels were
wont to speak of socialism as being a humanization (or more properly
"rehumanization") of society. And yet, as much as this is important on an abstract
theoretical level, it is clear that Marx understood this final "humanization" as
something that was only possible outside of a bourgeois humanism that
understands the bourgeois concept of "Man" (and here I am intentionally
using the gendered concept because it really does speak to the ideology of
bourgeois humanism and was not a concept, in my opinion, accidentally chosen by
bourgeois utopians) as being universal. And it is precisely this understanding
of humanity, which is one thoroughly compromised by a class society
which can only speak of humanity according to bourgeois rights, that is
behind our "common sense" morality. We are drawn to a vague
humanitarian ethics because we glimpse the contradictions of bourgeois
morality, because we see the rational kernel behind its platitudes, but we
are still caught up in its ideology: we see "rights" violated and we are
enraged, we must be equally enraged when "the sanctity of life" of reactionaries are
mocked by the victims of said reactionaries. We do not think of the necessities that
can sling-shot us past this bourgeois humanism of equal rights. We do not often
grasp what it might mean to struggle for a deeper concept of humanization because
we cannot recognize that the current ideology of "common humanity", where
everyone must be murderously subordinated to the only people who count
as human, is actually standing in the way of the re/humanization
proclaimed by Marx and Engels. We are troubled by the notion that the
expropriators must be expropriated in order for such a moment of commonality to
actually exist; we want to believe that this commonality can already be
understood and that, in order to be truly moral, we have to equivocate
between the rights of the oppressed and the rights of the oppressors But
between equal rights, as Marx pointed out in the first volume of Capital, greater
force decides.
No risk of turn- the oppressed dont need moral exhortation to

convince them to rise up.
Moufawad-Paul PhD in Philosophy,13,
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Capitalism K

Obviously I am reaching the point of philosophical obscurantism, if I haven't reached
it already, and I apologize if I've been too hasty or opaque. The best way to escape
with this descent into conceptual interrogationa descent, I think it is only fair to
argue, into which this bourgeois humanism necessarily leadsis to simply point out
something that should be terrifyingly obvious: those who concretely occupy the
social positions of exploitation and/or oppression do not care about the shared
humanity of their exploiters/oppressors. That is, the agent of revolution has
never needed to be convinced of its agency because of some ethical
assumption of a "shared humanity" or any of that sentimental moralism
that has convinced some of us ("some of us" generally a cipher for economic/social
privilege and petty-bourgeois academicism) to question bourgeois morality. If you
have nothing left to lose but your chains, and are forced to recognize the class
responsible for enforcing these chains, you are not drawn to revolution
because of some moralistic argument but because you viscerally recognize
the necessity And this is the moment, if properly understood, where all
moralistic arguments about violencethe ethics of revolutionary violence, the death
of reactionaries, etc.are annihilated. Does a revolutionary movement consisting of
the most wretched of the earth spend much time contemplating the humanity of
those whose Humanity is premised upon this very wretchedness? The question is
rather rhetorical because it is extremely doubtful: Fanon, for instance, talks about
how the oppressed/exploited masses' "permanent dream" is to tear the
oppressor/exploiter from hir pedestal. And in the face of this permanent dream all of
us who speak of revolution and socialism will be forced to reassess our politics.
The unequal treatment of human rights is rooted in the

capitalist model
Rimlinger, professor of economics at rice, 83
[Gaston V, fall 1983, Daedalus, capitalism and human rights vol 112
No. 4, p. 51-52, accessed 7-5-13, CSO]
This essay relates to the crisis of the welfare state to the extent that this crisis is a
dramatic manifestation of one of the dilemmas of human rights inherent in
capitalism under mass democracies. It is a dilemma that derives from a conflict
in human rights which is deeply embedded in the history of capitalism and
modern mass democracy, the conflict between private property rights and
social rights. In spite of the conflict, both kinds of rights have contributed in
major ways to the historic success of capitalism as an economic system and
as a civilization. Private property rights protect the freedom of the individual to
dispose of his property and his labor. Property rights are part of the civil rights that
are essential to individual freedom, and in the form of the freedom of contract,
they constitute the governing principle of a free market economy. Social
rights, on the other hand, entitle the individual to some share of the social product
based on membership in the community rather than on property or labor! To be a
genuine social right, however, such an entitlement has to be effectively protected
by custom or statute and be subject to due process. It cannot be a gift bestowed
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Capitalism K
upon the individual by a benevolent or calculating dictatorial power that may cancel
or alter the entitlement any time it suits its purpose. Social rights may be
guaranteed by the strength of tradition, but in a modern setting, they normally
presuppose mass democratic forces, though not necessarily democratic institutions.
In a capitalist economy, social rights represent an inevitable curtailment of
property rights and, by logical extension, of individual freedom. This has always
been the message of classical liberalism. Classical economists since Adam Smith
have argued that, in addition to reducing individual freedom, infringements of
property rights tend to reduce economic effort, initiative, efficiency, willingness to
take risks, and, ultimately, national prosperity. This is the central message of Milton
Friedmans Capitalism and Freedom; and of the other critics of the welfare state.
Human rights are exploited under the affs model of production

Flere, writer for the monthly review, 01
[sergej, January 2001, Issue 08 Volume 52, Monthly Review, Human
rights and the Ideology of Capitalist
globalization,http://monthlyreview.org/2001/01/01/human-rights-andthe-ideology-of-capitalist-globalization, accessed 7-5-13, CSO]
Human rights are no mere fad, lacking content and history. They contain
universal, all- embracing ideas with great allure. In political discourse and
life, however, they seem to be flexible enough to be invoked in the most
varied of situations. The concept of human rights is now used as a political
tool in the legitimation of highly diverse political acts on the part of the
ruling actors on national and world stages. Civilian targets in Novi Sad,
Yugoslavia, can be bombed; Iraqi children deprived of essential foods and
medicines by embargo; murderous South American military figures can be
arrested (like Pinochet) or alternatively supported with billions of dollars
and advanced weaponry (as in Colombia); and all justified with human
rights talk. In the contemporary dominant ideology, human rights are
understood almost exclusively as classical political rights (free speech,
assembly, universal suffrage, etc.), while rights of a social nature, such as
the right to health and welfare or the right to work, are ever less stressed
or stressed only in the spirit of lip service, as was the case at the aborted
Seattle World Trade Organization meetings. Shifts in universal and
timeless rights are particularly informative. For much of the Cold War,
refugees from communist tyranny were given honorary treatment. Now
that refugees come to the developed parts of the world in greater
numbers, citizenship and residence take on much greater importance as a
precondition for the enjoyment of supposedly universal human rights. The
movement of masses from the underdeveloped countries of the Third
World is curtailed, and by force. This, of course, is the way capitalism
works. Human rights are limited to legal residents, to political rights, and
they are abstracted from their social, economic, and cultural setting and
context.
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Capitalism K
The market in the status quo empirically exploits humans

rights
Flere, writer for the monthly review, 01
[sergej, January 2001, Issue 08 Volume 52, Monthly Review, Human
rights and the Ideology of Capitalist
globalization,http://monthlyreview.org/2001/01/01/human-rights-andthe-ideology-of-capitalist-globalization, accessed 7-5-13, CSO]
The concept of human rights, and the national and international legal
instruments that protect them, are not without potential for the
improvement of the human condition. But human rights as a legal
instrument are implemented and realized within certain finite , social,
economic, and cultural circumstances that determine the conditions of
their meaning for human dignity. Absent successful struggle to change
those conditions for the better, human rights talk is but cruel mockery.
Public property may lead to one distortion in the realization of human
rights, primarily if it leads to bureaucratization and its evils. On the
other hand, huge disparities and inequalities of a social nature in private
property represent a fundamental limitation in the achievement and use
of human rights (not to speak of human dignity). It may even represent
a denial of the existence and use of human rights. Therefore, the idea
of individual and collective human rights is a limited one at best. On
inspection, it proves no better than any other ideological instrument, in
spite of the rich international and domestic legal protection
mechanisms it extends. The existing domestic and international
instruments of legal protection of human rights may have little to offer to
those thrown to the wolves in the arena of market exploitation, where
full employment is becoming ever more rare and welfare protection
measures are being dismantled. It is necessary to draw attention to
double standards in the application and enforcement of human rights and
to the fact that these double standards are not accidental, but part and
parcel of ideological discourse.
Capitalism controls the direction of human rights
Douszinas, Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck
Institute, 13
[Costas, 5-23-13, Critical Legal Thinking, seven theses on human
rights: (3) Neoliberal Capitalism and Voluntary Imperialism,
http://criticallegalthinking.com/2013/05/23/seven-theses-on-humanrights-3-neoliberal-capitalism-voluntary-imperialism/, accessed 7-5-13,
CSO]
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Capitalism K
Similarly, human rights and their dissemination are not simply the result
of the liberal or charitable disposition of the West. The predominantly negative meaning of freedom as the absence of external constraintsa euphemism for
keeping state regulation of the economy at a minimumhas dominated the
Western conception of human rights and turned them into the perfect companion of neoliberalism. Global moral and civic rules are the necessary
companion of the globalization of economic production and consumption,
of the completion of world capitalism that follows neoliberal dogmas. Over the
last 30 years, we have witnessed, without much comment, the creation of global
legal rules regulating the world capitalist economy, including rules on investment,
trade, aid, and intellectual property. Robert Cooper has called it the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. It is operated by an international consortium of financial Institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank These institutions make
demands, which increasingly emphasise good governance. If states wish to benefit, they must open themselves up to the interference of international
organisations and foreign states. Cooper concludes that what is needed then
is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values.2 The (implicit) promise to the developing world is that the violent or
voluntary adoption of the market-led, neoliberal model of good governance and
limited rights will inexorably lead to Western economic standards. This is fraudulent. Historically, the Western ability to turn the protection of formal rights into
a limited guarantee of material, economic, and social rights was partly based on
huge transfers from the colonies to the metropolis. While universal morality militates in favour of reverse flows, Western policies on development aid and Third
World debt indicate that this is not politically feasible. Indeed, the successive
crises and re-arrangements of neoliberal capitalism lead to dispossession
and displacement of family farming by agribusiness, to forced migration and
urbanization. These processes expand the number of people without skills,
status, or the basics for existence. They become human debris, the waste-life,
the bottom billions. This neo-colonial attitude has now been extended from the
periphery to the European core. Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain have been subjected to the rigours of the neoliberal Washington Consensus of austerity and
destruction of the welfare state, despite its failure in the developing world.
More than half the young people of Spain and Greece are permanently unemployed
and a whole generation is being destroyed. But this gene-cide, to coin a term, has
not generated a human rights campaign.
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Capitalism K
Link Immigration
Capitalism causes forced migration and exploitation of foreign
workers
Beiter, Socialist Alternative: US, 06
(Greg, Socialist World, Global capitalism fueling poverty and immigration,
http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/2255, 1/5/2006, Accessed 7/2/13 EB)
Recent years have seen a massive wave of immigration to the United States from
the Third world, especially Latin America. Politicians and corporate media
personalities like CNNs Lou Dobbs continually attack these undocumented workers
as illegal aliens and criminals. The real criminals, however, are not
immigrant workers, but the corporate chieftains and politicians who, in
their insatiable lust for profits, plunder the natural resources of poor
countries, set up sweatshops, and wage wars for oil and empire. It is their
policies that create the grinding poverty and social breakdown throughout
the neo-colonial world which forces millions to flee their home countries in
search of work here. While U.S. corporations earn record profits, 128 million
people in Latin America live on less than $2 per day (USAID.org). More than 130
million have no access to safe drinking water, and only one in six persons enjoy
adequate sanitation service (NACLA.org). Big business sets up shop in all corners
of the world, searching for the cheapest labor and slackest environmental
regulations. They argue that in a globalised world we need free trade
and capital should be free to pick up and move to any country with the
best market conditions - yet they oppose the rights of workers to move to
countries with more favorable labor markets. The passage of the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, under Democratic President Bill Clinton,
allowed U.S. companies to massively step up their assault on working
people by laying-off unionized workers in the U.S. and setting up
sweatshops across the Mexican border. NAFTA has spelled a complete
disaster for workers in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. U.S. workers have lost around
395,000 jobs, while their new jobs pay on average 23% less. Simultaneously,
poverty has exploded in Mexico, with two-thirds of the population now living on less
than $3 per day. Millions of poor Mexican farmers have been driven into
bankruptcy after being forced to compete with subsidized U.S. agribusiness (which
relies on the cheap labor of Mexican immigrants, who are often paid less than
minimum wage). Most immigrant workers dont want to leave their country
of origin. They would prefer to stay with their families, where they know
the language and culture. The risks they face coming to the U.S. are many: death
in the desert, suffocation and starvation in shipping containers, or kidnapping and
exploitation by smugglers. Immigrants only come to the U.S. out of dire
economic necessity. They come hoping to make a better life for
themselves and their families a goal they share in common with U.S. workers.
However, this goal comes in direct conflict with the logic of capitalism and the
desire of big business to maximize profits. We cant allow borders and nationality
to divide us. In reality, workers of all countries have more in common with each
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Capitalism K
other than we do with the bosses in our own countries. Although a U.S. worker and
Bill Gates are both U.S. citizens, their lives are worlds apart. A U.S. worker and an
immigrant worker are both likely living paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to get by,
while Mr. Gates has billions of dollars to live in luxury. Our struggle is international,
a struggle against corporations that seek to increase profits by pitting workers in
different countries against one another in a race to the bottom. If corporations can
push down wages in Mexico and China - or among immigrant workers in the U.S. they are in a stronger position to demand U.S. workers make similar concessions in
order to compete. We see this playing out daily, from the auto industry to
software development. On the other hand, if workers in Mexico or China win higher
wages and benefits, U.S. workers will be in a stronger economic position to demand
better wages and benefits here. Build the Latin American Labor Movement As
long as massive poverty is the norm in the Third world, no matter how many
fences are built and laws are passed, millions of desperate workers will find a way
into the U.S. and other industrialized countries in search of a better life, and
multinational corporations will want to outsource as many jobs as possible to take
advantage of cheap labor in poor countries. The only viable answer to this
situation is building the labor movement in Mexico and throughout Latin America to
fight for decent jobs and living conditions. The U.S. labor movement needs an
internationalist outlook, with a policy of mobilizing its massive resources financial,
human, and political to help build the strongest possible workers movement in
Mexico and Latin America. A fighting workers movement in Latin America will very
quickly come up against the narrow limits of capitalism in the neo-colonial world
and the resistance of U.S. imperialism, as has happened again and again. That is
why the workers movement needs to be armed with a clear programme and
strategy for overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with socialism, where working
people have democratic control of their workplaces and the resources of their
society. Rather than U.S. corporations exploiting their labor and resources to make
mega-profits for their owners, the workers of Latin America could use this wealth to
create jobs, schools, hospitals, public services, and infrastructure. The potential
impact of such policies can be seen now in Venezuela, where the left-wing
government of Hugo Chavez has used Venezuelas oil revenue to benefit ordinary
workers and peasants instead of enriching the elite, as was the tradition. However,
the Venezuelan revolution has unfortunately not yet gone all the way in decisively
toppling capitalism and instituting democratic socialism, which means these reforms
are limited and precarious, as the Venezuelan capitalists and U.S. imperialism
prepare for a counter-revolution. International Socialism is the Solution While
some claim that globalization is rendering the nation-state obsolete, the reality is
that capitalism needs national borders and nation-states. Corporate America uses
the U.S. government to assert its interests - thats why they spend so much money
on lobbying and funding corporate politicians! Big business needs its own nationstate and military to pursue its interests internationally against competitors,
because it is in direct competition for the worlds markets and resources. For
example, U.S. capitalists engaged in a bitter dispute with their competitors in
France, Germany, Russia, and China over the invasion of Iraq. U.S. imperialism outmuscled these countries, and used its military might to topple Saddams regime in
an attempt to grab Iraqs oil and assert its power over the Middle East. Today we
see sharpening trade tensions between the U.S. and China and Europe.
Simultaneously, big business needs a state apparatus police, military, courts, jails,
etc. - to prevent the working class and oppressed at home from rising up. Just look
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Capitalism K
at the racist war on drugs that has criminalized a generation of black and Latino
youth, or the brutal state repression of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The
nation-state, which at one point in history played a progressive role in developing
the economy and society, has now become a tremendous obstacle to the further
development of society. With the development of global capitalism, our society and
economy are increasingly globally integrated. Problems such as poverty, war, and
global warming are international and cannot be solved on a narrow national basis.
International coordination and planning is desperately needed. However, with
capitalist nations constantly divided by ruthless competition, genuine global
cooperation is not possible. But there is a social force whose material interests
compel it to organize together on an international plane - the working class. The
working class is economically and socially bound together globally by capitalism. It
is an international class that is united by common interests and faces a common
enemy. In taking power, the working class would be able to free the economy and
society from the artificial confines of the national boundaries capitalism has
established. Instead, a democratic socialist plan would link together the U.S.,
Canada, and Mexico with the rest of Latin America in a voluntary socialist
confederation of the Americas to share our resources, knowledge, and technology.
A socialist confederation of the Americas would lay the foundation for decent living
standards for working people across both continents, while protecting our
environment. People would no longer be forced to leave their homeland for
economic reasons, and free movement across borders would no longer be
something to fear. Only through fighting for a socialist world can we end this brutal
capitalist system that pits workers against each other, seeks to take away our
rights, and drives our living standards into the ground. When the workers of the
world unite, the only thing we have to lose is our chains.
The US exploits migrant workers and Forces them to work in

the worst possible conditions
Misara, officer in the American Center for International Labor
Solidarity ,07
(Neha, Human Rights Brief, The Push & Pull of Globalization: How the Global
Economy Makes Migrant Workers Vulnerable to Exploitation.
http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?
article=1223&context=hrbrief, Accessed 7/2/13, Pgs 2,3, EB)
Taking a migrant rights approach to the issue of global labor migration is

increasingly being promoted as a way of ensuring that the human rights of migrant
workers are protected. Together with such an approach, the international
community must address the push and pull factors created by globalization,
specifically, how international trade agreements and global economic policies
make migrant workers vulnerable to exploitation. In the context of worker
rights, significant push factors for migration include poverty level
incomes, low wages in rural areas, and lack of employment opportunities
in poor countries, coupled with higher wages and greater job
opportunities in urban areas and rich nations. Despite its general economic
benefits, globalization has created an ever-widening wealth gap between
countries, and rural and urban areas within countries.1 Indeed, it is the lack
of viable economic opportunities at home that often pushes workers to
migrate in search of better options. Global economic policies, initiated through
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Capitalism K
market liberalization and the structural adjustment policies (SAPs) of the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund, are major causes of the gap in income and
employment opportunities, displacing workers from their local livelihoods.
For example, the flood of cheap agricultural products from the U.S.
following the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) displaced 1.7 million small-scale Mexican farmers, and destroyed
the agricultural economy in Mexico.2 Having lost their livelihoods, and
faced with few employment opportunities in rural areas, agricultural
workers migrated to urban areas in Mexico to compete for jobs. This
migration resulted in lower wages in urban centers and displaced workers
who, in turn, migrated to countries such as the United States in search of
work.3 The demand for cheap labor is a crucial pull factor for labor migration.
Often, migrant workers fill positions that workers in the domestic
workforce refuse to do because of low wages or harsh working conditions.
In the United States for example, immigrant workers constitute the
majority of the labor force in the U.S. meat and poultry industry. The
meatpacking industry, from the 1930s through the 1970s, had a unionized
workforce with higher wages than the average manufacturing job and safety
conditions in line with other industries. Now, wages in the meatpacking industry are
well below the average U.S. manufacturing wage (24 percent lower in 2002), and
meatpacking has become the most dangerous factory job in America, with
injury rates more than twice the national average.4 Studies of other
economic sectors, such as construction, in other parts of the world show a similar
pattern of increasing demand for cheap migrant labor accompanied by
declining wages, benefits, and labor and safety standards. When sectors
employ primarily migrant workers, the employers profit potential is
much higher than would be the case if local labor were employed,
particularly in the case of trafficked persons.5 Migrant workers, especially those
in the informal economy, are invariably paid at a lower rate than local
workers and usually do not receive benefits, such as healthcare or
pensions, that would raise the costs to employers. Employers may prefer
migrant workers over local workers because of their vulnerability and lack of
choice that results from their foreign status. Employers perceive them as
comparatively flexible and cooperative with respect to longer working hours,
more vulnerable to molding ... and less likely to leave their jobs.6 Globalization &
Exploitation of Migrant Workers Globalization and neo-liberal economic
policies are leading to an increased flexibility of the workforce, and the
degradation of work, where workers are increasingly moving from
formal to informal sectors of the economy, from permanent to temporary
and contract work, and receiving fewer benefits (such as healthcare and
pensions) from their employers. Such a situation puts workers into an
increasingly vulnerable position, as the safety net that used to catch them
when they were laid off, injured, or unable to find work no longer exists. For
example, global trade agreements such as the 2005 phase-out of the Multifiber
Arrangement under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules left thousands of female
textile and garment contract workers in places like Swaziland, Indonesia, and
Bangladesh, without jobs almost overnight. Without adequate severance pay,
unemployment insurance, and employment opportunities, many of these young
female workers were vulnerable to exploitation by labor recruiters trying to take
advantage of the workers precarious situation by offering them jobs
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Capitalism K
abroad that they had little choice but to accept. Global trade agreements,
which rarely include adequate labor standards and protections, often contribute to
the exploitation of migrant workers. For example, the U.S. African Growth and
Opportunity Act (AGOA) resulted in increased investment in Africa leading to the
growth of textile and garment factories in Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in
countries such as Uganda. To fill the low-wage jobs in these factories, Ugandan
and Kenyan agents recruited young women workers from Kenya. Once in Uganda,
according to Kenyan trade unions, many of these women were exploited and even
trafficked for forced labor and other exploitative labor and sexual practices. Some of
these women workers, referred to as AGOA girls, were in a particularly
vulnerable situation in Uganda due to their migrant status and the lack of labor law
protections in Uganda. Similar movements of workers have occurred in Jordan,
where large numbers of Bangladeshi workers migrate through recruitment
agencies to work in textile and garment factors in Qualified Industrial Zones that
developed as part of a trade agreement between the U.S. and Jordanian
governments. While the official line is often that there are not enough trained
Jordanians to fill such jobs (despite unofficial unemployment rates get as high as
30%), the recent reports of exploitation and abuse of migrant workers in these
factories indicates other motives.
Immigration causes displacement which makes businesses

exploit immigrants for cheap work and put natives out of work
Fair, 10
(Federation for American immigration reform, Immigration and Job Displacement
(2010),
http://www.fairus.org/issue/immigration-and-job-displacement, Accessed, 7/9/13,
EB)
Sometimes the employer intentionally replaces natives with immigrants to
have a cheaper, more easily exploited workforce. Sometimes the
displacement comes through an intermediary. In these cases, work may be
delegated out to subcontractors. The firms that use immigrants and pay them
low wages underbid other subcontractors that use natives. In some cases, the
ultimate employer may not even be aware that native workers have been displaced.
Regardless, the effects on Americans are real. As the Immigration and Naturalization
Service put it: "The critical potential negative impacts of immigrants are
displacement of incumbent worker groups from their jobs and wage
depression for those who remain in the affected sectors."1 The web of
complex interactions among factory openings and closings, choice of
production methods, ethnic networking in hiring, and labor subcontracting
make it difficult to prove iron-clad cases of displacement. Yet such evidence
does exist. Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at
Northeastern University in Boston, says 56 percent of the rise in U.S.
employment from 2000 to 2005 can be attributed to undocumented
immigrants. In the same period, he says jobs disappeared for U.S.-born adults
aged 16 to 24 and African-Americans without college degrees. "The greater the
influx of illegal immigrants into any state, the greater the employment
loss among people under the age of 35, particularly men without college
degrees." 2 The overabundance of unskilled labor in the U.S. has led to a 14.6
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Capitalism K
percent unemployment rate among high school dropouts in 2009. 3 One welldocumented case of displacement happened in the tomato industry in the 1980s. A
group of unionized legal border crossers picked the tomato crop for many years in
San Diego County and were making $4.00 an hour in 1980. In the 1980s, growers
switched to a crew of illegal aliens and lowered the wage to $3.35. Almost all the
veteran workers who were unwilling to work at the reduced rate disappeared from
the tomato fields.4 Sometimes, recent immigrants themselves are the victims
of displacement. In the raisin grape industry of California, Mestizos (the Spanishspeaking population of Mexico) were laid off and replaced with lower cost Mixtecs
(the indigenous people of Mexico). According to a study of the industry, the Mixtecs
"have driven the Mestizos out of the market."5 Agriculture has many other
instances of employers' switching to immigrant workers (legal and illegal) to
increase their profits. For example, Hispanic migrants have displaced native
black workers in the Georgia peach industry,6 and migrants have replaced natives
and previous immigrants in the cucumber and apple industries in Michigan.7 The
melon industry slashed its mechanized packing houses in favor of manual packing
in the field, eliminating unionized crews of mostly native workers and assigning
their work to lower paid Mexican field crews.8 In the furniture industry, competition
from immigrant-laden plants in Southern California closed all the unionized plants in
the San Francisco area and removed natives from the workforce in favor of
underpaid aliens.9 Unions fall before the weight of imported labor. In the
Mission Foods tortilla factory strike, management lowered wages by 40 percent, and
when the native labor went on strike, the Mexican managers intentionally brought in
newly immigrated strikebreakers to replaced them. Some of the natives returned to
work at the reduced wages but most left.10 In the last 30 years, the meatpacking
industry has completely reorganized around the use of immigrant rather than native
labor. IBP, the nation's leading meatpacking company, now recruits workers from
Mexico and directly along the border. As a result, the proportion of the labor force
protected by union contracts and the share of natives in meat processing has
dropped dramatically.11 After a 2007 raid on the Smithfied plant in Tar Heel, North
Carolina, unskilled natives soon filled vacancies left by illegal immigrants, a shift
that contributed to workers successful unionization the following year. 12 Similar
phenomena have swept over the hotel industry as well, with immigrant workers
displacing native black workers en masse.13 In Los Angeles, unionized black janitors
had been earning $12 an hour, with benefits. But with the advent of subcontractors
who compose roaming crews of Mexican and El Salvadoran laborers, the pay
dropped to the then minimum wage of $3.35 an hour. Within two years, the
unionized crews had all been displaced by the foreign ones, and without any other
skills, most of the native workforce did not find new work.14 Many politicians and
some citizens do not concern themselves with such displacement since it affects
primarily low-skilled Americans, who tend to lack political clout. As a result,
immigration has been responsible for 40 to 50 percent of the wage depression for
workers without a high school degree in recent decades.15 In an article on the
effects of illegal immigration in North Carolina that claimed that it is not proven that
illegal workers hurt job opportunities for American workers, data from the state's
Employment Security Commission were reported that show lagging wage increases
in industries known to hire many illegal workers, i.e., construction, cleaning and
maintenance, and food preparation. "While the average hourly wage increased 97
cents for all triad workers, from $15.69 to $16.66 during the past 30 months, it rose
in high-immigrant occupations as little as 3 cents in food preparation to as much as
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Capitalism K
83 cents in cleaning and maintenance."16 Some estimates indicate that nearly two
million Americans a year are displaced by immigration.17 Americans deserve
decent jobs at decent wages, not unfair competition from imported foreign workers
who are exploited to th
People move freely throughout countries for the best jobs

Tseng, 02
(Yen-Fen, International organization for migration, The Mobility of Entrepreneurs

and Capital: Taiwanese Capital-Linked Migration.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2435.00105/abstract, 12/16/2002,
accessed 7/2/13, EB)
Much of the literature concerning international investment focuses on the
movement of capital or trade flows and does not cover the persons who
migrate with the capital, even though in a globalizing economic system new
conditions emerge for the international migration of capitalists. On the one hand,
capital owners have been recruited directly by business migration programmes in
countries such as Canada, Australia, and the US. On the other hand, global
economic restructuring, one part of which entails increasing foreign direct
investment from a wider range of countries, has induced the migration of
an entrepreneurial/managerial class. This article analyses the relation between
the mobility of capital and of entrepreneurs by investigating Taiwans capital-linked
migrations. It aims to show that people can integrate migration and capital
investment as a strategy to best serve their interests. Although their
moves are mediated and constrained by different migration channels
(governmental policies, recruitment agencies, transnational corporations, etc.),
capital-linked migrants are not passive players in international migration
systems. They actively position themselves with regard to migration channels and
select active strategies that best suit their objectives. Sometimes immigration
serves capitalists interest in capital accumulation, at other times capital
investment serves as the means for securing a second nationality. In this way,
Taiwanese capitalist mobility has been incorporated into the open-ended logic of
flexible capitalism itself. Such understanding of the processes of capital-linked
migration and its implications contribute to new theories of the relationship
between international flows of capital and international migration.
e point of indentured servitude. We need immigration reform to stop the massive
influx of foreign workers from harming the living standard of our most vulnerable
citizens.
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Capitalism K
Link International Cooperation

Capitalism increases cooperation
Levite, freelance writer, 97
[Allan, 10-1-97, The Freeman, Capitalism and Cooperation,

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/capitalism-and-cooperation#axzz2Ya377BQR,
accessed 7-9-13, CSO]
In a 1989 article appropriately titled The Triumph of Capitalism, socialist
economist Robert Heilbroner, who deserves to be commended for his honesty,
observed: . . . at this moment socialism has no plausible economic
framework. 1 Perhaps socialists have finally reached the point where they will no
longer argue that socialism or communism can ever outperform
capitalism, confining themselves to the old argument that socialism is a
more moral system than capitalism. Morality, however, is not something that can
be demonstrated by facts. It is an outgrowth of shared values, such as
cooperation. In the past, socialists have tried to convince people that their
doctrine not only adhered to this commonly accepted behavioral norm, but actually
epitomized it. The program of utopian socialist Robert Owen, for example, was
referred to as a system of Mutual Cooperation and Community of Goods. 2 By
using the word cooperation as its own exclusive property, socialism has always
implied that capitalism produces competition at the expense of cooperation.
Without a doubt, capitalism involves competition, but socialism seems to
view competition as entirely harmful, placing little value on its role in economic
improvement. Competition between products, however, launches the best ones to
the forefront, while the makers of inferior products suffer losses. Price
competition results in lower prices for consumers, and even when price
wars are not taking place, competition keeps prices down. But in the midst of
making these complaints about capitalisms alleged suppression of cooperation,
socialists joined liberals in complaining about oligopolies, price-fixing, and other
efforts by manufacturers to divide up markets and keep competitors outactivities
that would necessarily involve cooperation between manufacturers who were trying
to avoid competing with each other. Under American law, conspiracies to fix prices
and allocate market shares became illegal. Although socialists would probably
applaud the motives behind antitrust laws, it would be hard to deny that one of the
aims of these laws was to prevent cooperation between capitalists. Despite
socialisms refusal to recognize it, capitalism is founded on cooperation, and
not only between capitalists within a given industry who might seek to regulate
their markets and freeze out competitors. The farmer cooperates with the milling
company, selling it grain at a price freely agreed upon by both. The railroad
cooperates with the miller and ships the grain at agreed-upon rates to an agreedupon destination, where both miller and railroad know that factory workers will
cooperate by being on hand to receive and process it. The supermarket cooperates
with the food processing company, buying the finished products and reselling them,
and honoring the manufacturers coupons. In turn, the manufacturer cooperates
with the supermarket by reimbursing it for coupons received. The bank cooperates
with both by enabling them to make these millions of transactions very efficiently,
[
53

Capitalism K
and to transfer large sums electronically or by check. Banks also cooperate with
families by making secured loans (e.g., mortgages), enabling them to buy homes,
which also pleases real estate and residential construction companies. Consumers
have cash to pay for what they buy because they have cooperated with their
employers by showing up for work on time and performing labor, for which the
employers cooperate by paying them. Consumers also cooperate with supermarkets
by buying the products and paying cash (and sometimes even by returning
shopping carts to the rack). Actually, even if relations between merchants and their
suppliers are not taken into account, there is nothing new about inter-firm
cooperation due to mutual self-interest. About a century ago, fire insurance
companies began to suspect that electrical equipment was causing building fires,
and backed William Henry Merrills idea for an independent testing laboratory for
electrical products. Thus was born Underwriters Laboratories Inc., an independent,
not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization that now conducts over 77,000 product
investigations each year. Manufacturers voluntarily submit products to UL for testing
and safety verification, and use of UL is not required by law. But few electrical
manufacturers would even consider marketing an electrical product without the ULs
coveted seal of approval, which is placed on more than nine billion products
annually and is known and trusted the world over. 3 Here is an organization that
fulfills the function of a government bureau, helping make sure that products
comply with rigid safety standardsall without costing the taxpayers a centand
accomplishes all this because capitalists want to cooperate with it! As this example
illustrates, self-interest does not necessarily lead to competition at the
expense of cooperation. Capitalism also features cooperation in a more
formal sense: what is now known as strategic partnering. Despite this
impressive new description, joint ventures and licensing agreements have taken
place for quite a long time, and newer industries have merely adopted these
standard practices. In the computer industry, for example, it is routine to buy a
hardware device and find it bundled with software made by a different company,
whose software the hardware company had licensed in order to include with their
own product. Many companies have also been making agreements with other firms,
by which marketing, manufacturing, or research will be conducted jointly between
them. IBM, for example, jointly built a $200-million plant with Toshiba, for the
manufacture of screens for laptop computers. IBM also began in 1991 to jointly
develop dynamic RAM chips with the German electronics firm Siemens. In Japan,
Mitsubishi sells IBM mainframes under its own name, which augments IBMs own
sales efforts. 4 No U.S. manufacturer produces its own color television sets, VCRs, or
CD players; all electronics products sold under the Kodak, General Electric, RCA,
Zenith, and Westinghouse brands are made by these firms foreign alliance partners
and imported into the United States. 5] This cooperation between competitors
is a far cry from the collusion that some capitalists have used on occasion
to stifle competition or restrict output. Such conspiracies attracted criticism
from writers and politicians, but the agreements never lasted long. The reason why
Adam Smith observed that capitalists were always colluding to try to control
markets is that markets were always changing, making yesterdays agreement
obsolete and constantly necessitating a new agreement to try to hold together the
previous conditions. Today, different reasons have been inducing capitalists
to cooperate, and with different results. The fragmentation and spiraling
complexity of todays mass markets have made it increasingly difficult for any
single firm to possess everything it needs to succeed. Such agreements as those
[
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Capitalism K
entered into by IBM were designed not to restrict output or control markets, but to
acquire the skills, resources, or markets that one firm lacked and could obtain only
from anotherwhich, in return, would receive something it lacked. Sometimes, the
parties to such agreements are competitors, but these partnering agreements are
cooperative, not collusive. In the fast-changing world of todays capitalism,
competition and cooperation are becoming indistinguishable.
Capitalism is as much about cooperation as it is about

competition
Voss, content director at CFA Institute, 12
[Jason, 7-16-12, enterprising Investor, Capitalism: Its as Much About Cooperation as
Competition, http://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2012/07/16/capitalism-it-is-as-much-aboutcooperation-as-competition/, accessed 7-9-13, CSO]
We have myopically come to believe that survival of the fittest is
synonymous with competition and is the highest expression of our nature. Yet
survival of the fittest also includes those creatures, including humans, who
successfully and continuously cooperate to survive. Case in point: Lions adorn the
flags of many nations as symbols of individual power and unparalleled ferocity
think of King Richard I of England, who was, after all, called Richard the Lionheart.
But as we all know, lions actually hunt and cooperate in packs in order to find and
secure food. In fact, the natural world is replete with numerous examples of
strength in numbers, from flocks of birds flying together to reduce wind drag during
migration, to schools of fish swimming together to increase the chance of survival in
the face of predation. In the human world, armies are vast cooperative enterprises
in which troops watch each others backs when confronting enemies. Science has
acknowledged these possibilities for decades, even though the subject receives
little attention from the popular press. One notable exception, however, is a
recent Scientific American cover story entitled Why We Help: The Evolution of
Cooperation. For me, its an article that can help bring an overlooked and
understudied aspect of capitalism into sharper view: the fact that the
capitalist system, like nature itself, depends on cooperation as much as
competition. To be sure, we tend to think of capitalism in the same way that
we think of survival of the fittest that it is one of the ultimate expressions of
competition. In fact, it is difficult to find a definition of the word that does not
emphasize competition in its description
55

Capitalism K
Link Justice
No fairer redistribution can tackle the fundamental problem of
exploitation because it is fair by capitalist standards- appeals
to justice mystify the question by making it purely one of
reforming excesses.
Wood, PhD, Ruth Norman Halls Professor of Philosophy at
Indiana University, 72,
(Allen W., General editor of Cambridge Edition of Kant's Writings in English
Translation, Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus at Stanford
University, Spring 1972, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 3, The Marxian
Critique of Justice, p. 267-272, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265053, [Accessed
7/5/13], JB)
"Justice," as we have seen, is a Rechtsbegriff, a concept related to "law" and

"right." And although Marx never tries to tell us precisely what the scope of the
class of Rechtsbegriffe is, it is clear that the central role of all these concepts
has to do with political or juridical (rechtlich) institutions, institutions whose
function is the regulation of the actions of individuals and groups through
socially imposed sanctions of some kind, whether civil, criminal, or moral in nature.
These institutions include those promulgating, applying, or administering laws,
those in which collective political decisions are made or carried out, and those
regulating the actions and practices of individuals by generally accepted norms of
conduct. When something is called an "injustice," or when it is claimed that
a practice violates someone's "rights," some sort of appeal is being made
to juridical insti-tutions, to the manner in which they regularly do act or the
manner in which they should act if they are to fulfill their proper social function.
When capitalist exploitation is described as an "injustice," the implication is that
what is wrong with capitalism is its mode of distribution. When the
appropriation by capital of the worker's unpaid labor is thought of as
"unjust," the claim being made is that the worker is being given a smaller
(and the capitalist a larger) share of the collective product of society than he
deserves, according to the juridical or moral rules and practices which
govern distribution, or at least, which should govern it. It is therefore being
suggested that the answer to capitalist exploitation is to be found in the
proper regulation of distribution by means of the promulgation and
enforcement of laws, the taking of political decisions, and the stricter
adherence by individuals to correct and appropriate moral precepts. Such a
conception of what is wrong with capitalist exploitation is, however, entirely
mistaken according to Marx. Distribution, he argues, is not something which
exists alongside production, indifferent to it, and subject to whatever
modifications individuals in their collective moral and political wisdom
should choose to make in it. Any mode of distribution is determined by the mode
of production of which it is a functional part.41 The appropriation of surplus
value and the exploitation of labor are not abuses of capitalist production,
or arbitrary and unfair practices which happen accidentally to be carried on within it
56

Capitalism K
(like fraud, for instance, or smuggling, or protection rackets). Exploitation of the

worker belongs to the essence of capitalism, and as the capitalist mode of
production progresses to later and later stages of its development, this exploitation
must in Marx's view grow worse and worse as a result of the laws of this
development itself. It cannot be removed by the passage or enforcement of laws
regulating distribution, or by any moral or political reforms which capitalist political
institutions could bring about. Moreover, any "reforms" of capitalist
production which proposed to take surplus value away from capital and
put an end to the exploitation of the worker would themselves be
injustices of a most straightforward and unambiguous kind. They would
violate in the most obvious way the fundamental property rights derived from the
capitalist mode of production, and constitute the imposition on it of a system of
distribution essentially incompatible with it. It is a mystery how such well-meaning
reformers could expect to keep their scheme of "just" distribution working once it
had been set up. (One is reminded of Aristotle's remark that any system, no matter
how misconceived, can be made to work for a day or two.) But this is not all. Even if
revolutionary practice should put an end to capitalist exploitation, and even if an
important aspect of this practice should consist in a change in the juridical rules
governing distribution, it would still be wrong to say that the end to exploitation
constitutes the rectification of "injustice." Revolutionary politics does not consist, for
Marx, in the imposition on society of whatever moral or juridical rules or "principles
of justice" the revolutionary politician should find most commendable. It consists
rather in the adjustment of the political or juridical institutions of society to a new
mode of production, of a determinate form and character, which has already taken
shape in society. Unless a fundamental change of this kind in the mode of man's
productive activity is already taking place in society of its own accord, any attempt
at a truly revolutionary politics would be irrational, futile, and, to use Marx's own
word, mere "Donquichoterie."42T his is what Marx and Engels mean when they say
in the German Ideology that "Communism is for us not a state of affairs to be
brought about, an ideal to which reality must somehow adjust itself. We call
communism the actual movement which is transcending [aufhebt] the present state
of affairs. The conditions of this movement result from presuppositions already
existing."43 Political action, therefore, is for Marx one subordinate moment of
revolutionary practice. Political institutions do not and cannot create a new mode of
production, but can only be brought into harmony with a mode of production that
men themselves are already bringing to birth. They can only set the juridical stamp
of approval, so to speak, on whatever form of productive activity historical
individuals are creating and living. If revolutionary institutions mean new laws, new
standards of juridical regulation, new forms of property and distribution, this is not a
sign that "justice" is at last being done where it was not done before; it is instead a
sign that a new mode of production, with its own characteristic juridical forms, has
been born from the old one. This new mode of production will not be "more just"
than the old, it will only be just in its own way. If the new is higher, freer, more
human than the old, it would be for Marx both entirely inaccurate and woefully
inadequate to reduce its superiority to juridical terms and to commend it as "more
just." Anyone who is tempted to do this is a person still captivated by the false and
inverted political or juridical conception of society, since he insists on interpreting
every crucial change in it as a change whose meaning is fundamentally political or
juridical in character. He is treating the old mode of production as if it were merely
one of the determinations of a mystical juridical structure of society, whereas in
57

Capitalism K
reality the actual juridical structure of society is a dependent moment of the

prevailing productive mode. He is also treating the social whole as if he, in his
sublime rationality, could measure this whole against some ideal of right or justice
completely external to it, and could then, standing on some Archimedean point,
adjust social reality to this ideal. He is removing social reality from his theory, and
his social practice from reality. In Marx's view, when anyone demands an end to
capitalist exploitation on the ground of its "injustice" he is employing an argument
carrying no rational conviction to urge action with no practical basis toward a goal
with no historical content. Someone might think that capitalism could be
condemned as unjust by applying to it standards of justice or right which
would be appropriate to some postcapitalist mode of production. No doubt
capitalism could be condemned in this way, but since any such standards would not
be rationally applicable to capitalism at all, any such condemnations would be
mistaken, confused, and without foundation. The temptation to apply
postcapitalist juridical standards (however they may be understood) to
capitalist production can only derive, once again, from the vision of
postcapitalist society as a kind of eternal juridical structure against which
the present state of affairs is to be measured and found wanting. The Marxian
conception of society and social change, as we have seen, repudiates any
vision of this kind. In the Critique of the Gotha Program Marx points out that
postcapitalist society itself will have different stages of development, to which
different standards of right will correspond. And in the long run, of course, Marx
believes that the end of class society will mean the end of the social need for the
state mechanism and the juridical institutions within which concepts like "right" and
"justice" have their place. If, therefore, one insists on saying that Marx's "real"
concept of justice is the one he would deem appropriate to a fully developed
communist society, one's conclusion probably should be that Marx's "real" concept
of justice is no concept of it at all. For Marx, justice is not and cannot be a genuinely
revolutionary notion. The revolutionary who is captivated by the passion for
justice misunderstands, in the Marxian view, both the existing production relations
and his own revolutionary aspirations. He implies, by his use of juridical
conceptions, that his protest against the prevailing mode of production is
a protest against evils which can and should be remedied by moral, legal,
or political processes, which in fact are only dependent moments of that mode of
production itself. He views his revolutionary aspirations as a kind of ideal juridical
structure underlying the existing society, an ideal or hypothetical contract or set of
natural rights or rational principles of right, which are being violated, concealed, or
disfigured by the rampant "abuses" and "injustices" of the present society. He thus
treats the essence of the actual production relations as arbitrary and
inessential, as a set of mere "abuses"; and he regards the social conflicts and
antagonisms to which these relations give rise as unfortunate by-products of
social abnormalities, rather than as the driving force behind his own
revolutionary consciousness. His "revolutionary" aim is therefore not really to
overthrow the existing society, it is only to correct the abuses prevalent in it, to
rectify its tragic and irrational injustices, and to make it live up to those ideals of
right and justice which are, or ought to be, its genuine foundation. Our
determined revolutionary, in other words, animated by his passion for justice, is
already equipped to deliver the keynote address at the next Democratic
Convention. Marx's call to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalist production
therefore is not, and cannot be, founded on the claim that capitalism is unjust.
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Capitalism K
Marx in fact regarded all attempts to base revolutionary practice on

juridical notions as an "ideological shuffle," and he dismissed the use of terms
like "equal right" and "just distribution" in the working-class movement as "outdated
verbal trivia."44I t is simply not the case that Marx's condemnation of capitalism
rests on some conception of justice (whether explicit or implicit), and those who
attempt to reconstruct a "Marxian idea of justice" from Marx's manifold charges
against capitalism are at best only translating Marx's critique of capitalism, or some
aspect of it, into what Marx himself would have consistently regarded as a false,
ideological, or "mystified" form.45
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Capitalism K
Link LA Democracy
Democratizing Latin America serves as cover for interventions
to accommodate big businessat best it merely channels
protests into making the system more efficient.
Tumino Assistant Professor of English @ City University of New
York, 02,
(Stephen, author of Cultural Theory After the Contemporary, May/June 02, The Red
Critique, Contesting the Empire-al Imaginary: The Truth of Democracy as Class,
http://redcritique.org/MayJune02/contestingtheempirealimaginary.htm, [Accessed
7/8/13], JB).
But freedom and democracy under capitalism is only for the few who can
afford it because they live off the labor of the many. As capitalism develops on a
global scale, the many cannot even meet their basic needs and are compelled to
enter into struggle against the bossesas Argentina, after only 10 years of
neoliberal deregulation, and Venezuela, whose workers must arm themselves simply
to defend the minor redistributions of wealth of the Chavez government, once again
show. The emergent revolutionary struggles in Latin America once again prove the
basic truth of Marxism: that the global development of capitalism leads to its own
downfall by producing a revolutionary working class with nothing left to lose and a
world to win by taking power from the owners and running the economy for the
social good. This truth is, however, covered up by a thick layer of mystification by
the corporate media through a variety of relays and mediations. This mystification
serves to naturalize the social inequality at the basis of capitalism and maintain the
status quo. Take the lie that the North, led by the US, has a moral destiny to
bring freedom and democracy to the South crushed by poverty and
corruption. The poverty and corruption of course are the result of freedom
and democracythe freedom of the capitalist to exploit human labor
power for profit which is what in actuality "chases the bourgeoisie over the whole
surface of the globe" and "compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to []
introduce what it calls civilization into their midst", as The Communist Manifesto
says (Marx 477). The "moral" story about protecting human rights is told to
cover up the material truth about democracy being the freedom to exploit
others for profit. The story is needed to alibi the regime of wage-labor and capital
as a fact of nature. In other words, it portrays the normal daily exploitation of
labor under capitalism as the free expression of human nature in
comparison with which its everyday brutality is made to appear "extreme"
and "irrational" rather than a socially necessary consequence of private
property. The representation of capitalism as natural is of course not natural at all
but historical: it is needed now to manufacture consensus that capitalism cannot be
changed at a time when it is obvious that the material conditions already exist to
abolish class inequality. As Venezuela shows, it is obvious that what stands in
the way of a regime directed toward meeting people's needs, which is what
Chavez represents, is not a lack of respect for human rights by immoral and
corrupt people of the South, but the need of big business for a bigger share
of the world market. It was the US oil giants represented by the Bush regime,
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Capitalism K
supported by the trade union bureaucracy in this country, that aided the
counter-revolutionary coup in Venezuela (e.g., by fomenting the oil workers
strike as the core of a "civil society" movement that tried to abolish the popular
social reforms of the Chavez government). It is for profit not democracy that
the US supported the reactionary coup to overthrow Chavez (not just in
words but with financial aid, military weapons and advisors as the British Guardian
has reported); it is for profit and not for democracy that the US supports
Israel and is currently colonizing Afghanistan as preparation for taking Iraq. It
is obvious that the Bush regime is guided by profit and not democracy, which is why
global public opinion is everywhere outside the US opposed to US "unilateralism"
and "empire" building. This growing "obviousness" of democracy as
hegemony of the rich threatens the ideology of capitalism by exposing
democracy as the bourgeois freedom to exploit the labor and resources of
the world. It is also behind the formation of a transnational populist left, however,
that goes along with the system of wage labor and capital by marking the obvious
hoax of democracy but nevertheless channeling the opposition into a reformist
politics to maintain capitalism. By merely contesting its obviously barbaric
effects rather than engage in a radical critique of capitalism for a social
revolution against wage-slavery that is the cause of the effects, the left supports
the ideology of democracy as class rule. It thus goes along with the
reactionary backlash to make social contradictions into problems of
"governance" and "policy" of "unruly" subjectsthe powerless are made to
bear responsibility for the contradictions of class society. What is
emerging in the wake of the revolutionary explosions in Latin America is
the growing awareness that it is becoming impossible to simply deny the
basic truth of Marxism on democracy as class inequality. As a result, newer
mystifications of capitalism and why it changes are also emerging to stabilize the
status quo. The dominant mode of naturalizing capitalism is to represent the new
social struggles as spontaneous movements of the oppressed, by denying that they
are a product of history as class struggle over the conditions of production. Rather
than produce awareness of the class interests behind the emerging
struggles the populist left portrays them as the outcome of spontaneous
rebellions of the people against power. It is thus on the left most of all that
one finds the alibi of capitalism as democracy that proposes capitalism
may be reformed while the exploitation at its root remains intact. A
reformed capitalism is simply a code for a more efficient regime of
exploitation and imperialist brutalityit is appeasement of the violent
democracy of the owners.
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Capitalism K
Link Labor
Under the capitalist mindset, humans are only seen as a
potential source of profit
Burawoy, Professor of Sosiology at University of California
Berkley, 82
[Michael, 9-15-13, University of Chicago Press, Manufacturing
Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism p.
22-23, CSO]
Under the feudal mode of production, surplus labor is transparent. It is
produced neither automatically nor simultaneously with subsistence
production. Rather, ser-fs can produce the means of existence independently of
working for the lord, and surplus labor therefore has to be extracted through
extraeconomic means. In short, because surplus labor is separated from
necessary labor, the appropriation of surplus is directly intertwined with
the political, legal, and ideological realms. Is this true for capitalism? Do direct
producers spend a certain amount of time working for capitalists and a certain
amount for themselves? Are workers in possession of the means of subsistence as a
product of their own activities? Are workers able to set the instruments of
production into motion themselves, independently of the capitalist? Does
the appropriation of surplus labor depend on the intervention of extra economic
means in the cycle of production? The answer to all these questions is no. Under
capitalism workers cannot by themselves transform nature and
autonomously provide their own livelihood. They are dispossessed of
access to their own means of production--raw materials as well as instruments
of production. In order to survive, direct producers have no alternative but to
sell their capacity to labor-their labor power-to the capitalist in return for
a wage, which they then turn into the means of existence. In working for a
capitalist, they turn their labor power into labor; their wage appears as
compensation for the entire period they are at work. In reality they are paid only the
equivalent, in monetary terms, of the value they produce in part of the working day,
say five out of eight hours. The five hours constitute necessary labor (necessary for
the reproduction of labor power), while the remaining three hours constitute surplus
or unpaid labor. Just as workers are dependent on a market for selling their labor
power for a wage, so capitalists are dependent on a market for selling their
commodities. Surplus labor produces not only useful things but commodities that
can be bought and sold, that is, things with exchange value. In other words. under
capitalism, surplus labor takes the form of surplus value, which is realized
as profit in the market.
The aff makes the use of labor abusive on a geographic scale

Herod, Professor of International affairs at University of Georgia, 1
[Andrew, 2001, The Guileford Press, Labor Geographies: Workers and the
Landscapes of Capitalism p. 36-37, CSO]
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Capitalism K
Fifth, in addition to recognizing the active roles played by working class

people in making the geography of capitalism, there is also the need to
recognize their roles in producing the very real geographic scales that, as
Smith (1990 (1984): xv) has argued, give uneven development its coherence. To
talk of the production of scale may at first seem strange, though perhaps no more
so than to talk of the production of space." Yet, contrary to the assumptions of
those neoclassical models that assume that people live in isotropic planes, space is
not in fact produced as a uniform surface but is pockmarked at a number of
geographic resolutions by the scars of uneven development. We cannot, therefore,
consider the production of space without also considering geographic scale, for it is
geographic scale that gives space much of its structure. For instance., the notion of
an industrial region" as a coherently produced space is meaningless unless we
have some way of identifying the region and what holds it together, of
distinguishing how it is geographically bounded, and of discerning where it ends
and different regional space-economies begin." Likewise. it makes little sense to talk
about "local" or "global" processes without a fuller understanding of what. Precisely,
is meant by the local or the global-if processes occur in geographically
circumscribed areas but have impacts that reach the other side of the globe. are
these local or global processes, or both. or neither? Concomitantly, as the
experiences of the new international division of labor and the implementation of
global assembly lines have shown, the scale at which space is socially
produced is thoroughly implicated in the historical geography of
capitalism. Thus. the geographies produced under nineteenth-century
conditions of nationally organized capitalism were quite different from the
geographies produced by late-twentieth-century globally organized
capitalism. Equally, the male at which power is to he exercised may he vigorously
fought over, for example when workers with different agendas argue over whether it
is the provisions of local or national labor agreements that should take precedence
in any particular situation.
Under capitalism, labor workers are exploited for the

opportunity of profit
Price, writer for rational revolution, 5
[R.G, 1-11-5, rationalrevolution.net, Understanding Capitalism part 3:
wages and labor markets
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_wages.htm,
accessed 7-5-13, CSO]
Under the capitalist system workers are no longer paid for the value of
what they produce, nor do they retain rights to ownership of what they
produce, instead they are paid by how little compensation someone else is willing
to do the same job for. Just as it is understood that market competition
drives the price of other commodities down, it has the same impact on labor
when labor is a commodity. Labor markets and other commodity markets are two
separate and distinct markets. By separating the cost of labor from the value
of labor, capitalists are able to increase profits. Profits are generated in part
by the difference between the cost of labor and the value that the labor has
created, as Adam Smith himself stated.
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Capitalism K
Link Latin American development

Expansion of companies and land development furthers
capitalism in Latin America
Ascher, Claremont McKenna College government and
economics professor, Mirovitskaya, Duke Sanford public policy
lecturer, 2012
[William, Natalia S., Economic Development Strategies and the Evolution of
Violence in Latin America, p.51, RN]
While competition for resources was intense and economic hardship
widespread in Chiapas, conflicts among the poor along ethnic and religious
lines were not the main source of violent conflict. Rather, conflict occurred
largely between poor indigenous groups, on the one hand, and powerful
groups such as ranchers, logging companies, and the state, on the other.
The general absence of violent ethnic and religious conflict among peasant
groups was likely related to a number of factors that dulled potential sources of
hostility. Indigenous people saw themselves as sharing a common condition of
deprivation; land colonization did not cause peasants to lose land to other
peasants, since the programs involved the occupation of vacant land or
land claimed by logging companies and significant out-migration from the state
may have alleviated pressures that could have contributed to conflicts.
64

Capitalism K
Link Mexico
Economic engagement will be used by Mexico to further their
neoliberal agenda
Muoz-Martnez, Professor of Political Science at University of New Brunswick ,
2009 (Hepzibah, December 15th, 2009. MR Zine Crisis, Populist Neoliberalism,
and the Limits to Democracy in Mexico
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/mm151209.html NMS)
Forbes magazine recently placed two Mexicans, Carlos Slim and Joaqun
Guzmn, high on their list of the most powerful people in the world. Carlos Slim is
the world's third-richest man and CEO of a telecommunications company
and Joaqun Guzmn is the leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel. While the
purpose and the methodology of this list is problematic, the inclusion of these
two names in Forbes' list tells us a lot about the long night of neoliberal
rule in Mexico as well as the current administration of Felipe Caldern,
who belongs to the centre-right National Action Party (PAN). The neoliberal policies
that squeeze wages and working conditions downward while promoting private
investment help explain Mexico's combination of incredible wealth on the
one hand and sharply rising poverty on the other. Global banks such as
Citigroup now consider their Mexican subsidiaries as their main source of
profit. While accumulation and impoverishment continue hand in hand, the
increasing violence, insecurity, and impunity caused by the rising power of
drug cartels and the indifference, if not collaboration, of local authorities,
particularly in some Northern states, have put a double burden on the
Mexican population, who not only see their economic security but also
their physical safety continuously threatened. This is the context where
both the PAN and the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) -- the party that
monopolized the three branches of government for almost 70 years -compete with a strategy of populist neoliberalism, each claiming that they
can do a better job at fighting organized crime than the other. This has
great popular appeal as the constantly escalating crime and insecurity affect all
sectors of the population. At the same time, both parties are committed to
the neoliberal model that has allowed Slim and other companies to obtain
and sustain their wealth. The commonalities and differences in the PRI's and
PAN's populist neoliberalism can be seen in the policies undertaken to fight
organized crime and the 2010 Budget negotiations in the Mexican Congress in the
context of the global crisis.
The Mexican ruling class, the Mexican state as well as other

organizations are fully committed to keeping neoliberal
globalism firmly entrenched in Mexican society
Otero, Professor of Sociology at Simon Frasier University 2004 (Gerardo
December 17th Mexico in Transition: Neoliberal Globalism, the State and Civil Society
P. 1 NMS)
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Capitalism K
THE purpose of this book is to address the impacts, challengers and alternatives to
neoliberal globalism in Mexico. Because the main impacts of neoliberal
globalism have negatively affected the peasantry, the working class and
middle classes in rural and urban Mexico, we pay most attention to them.
Given that the ruling classes and the Mexican state have been the main
architects of neoliberal globalism, along with suprastate organizations
such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, we focus our
attention on challengers and alternatives coming from below, particularly from the
subordinate groups, classes and communities that are becoming increasingly
organized in civil society
US-Mexico economic engagement will only be used to promote,

spread, and entrench neoliberalism throughout both countries.
Mexican Solidarity Network 2011 (Mexican Solidarity Network/Red de
Solidaridad con Mexico. 22 December 2011. Neoliberalism: Mexico- a Neoliberal
Experiment
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/programs/alternativeeconomy/neoliberalism NMS)
The United States and Mexico have been central to the development of the
neoliberal model. We share a 2,000 mile border, the only place in the world where
the Global North meets the South. The US-Mexico border is unique, and the
relationship between the two nations is equally unique. In many ways, this
geographic marriage represents the most important relationship in the world - a
laboratory that is defining the neoliberal model. Three historical markers
stand out as central to the development of neoliberalism: the
establishment of free trade zones and maquiladoras in 1965, Structural
Adjustment Programs initiated by the International Monetary Fund in 1982, and
the signing of the North America Free Trade Agreement in 1994. The USMexico relationship has been the proving ground for the practical realities
of the Washington consensus: production-for-export replacing production for
internal consumption, the use of debt as a lever to force structural adjustment
programs, loose investment rules that allow hot money to cross borders in seconds,
and a trade agreement (read NAFTA) that is the model for a new legal
framework that expands the rights of corporations at the expense of civil
society. Experiments that "work," from the perspective of transnational
capital (and all of the above-mentioned experiments "worked") are exported to
other countries. This implies a complete restructuring of the economies,
politics and cultures around the world, to make them consistent with the
neoliberal vision. Nearly everything is on the table for reform: economic policy,
public subsidies, social programs, industrial policy, government procurement,
intellectual property rights, patents, banking and financial services, agricultural
policy, foreign direct investment, energy policy, labor regulations, environmental
protection, public education and health care - and the list goes on. Twenty-first
century neoliberalism is a project for world domination, and the US and
Mexico are at the center of the vortex.
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Capitalism K
NAFTA and all other trade agreements between the US and

Mexico will be used to promote neoliberal globalism at the
expense of the working class
Mexican Solidarity Network 2011 (Mexican Solidarity Network/Red de
Solidaridad con Mexico. 22 December 2011. Neoliberalism: Mexico- a Neoliberal

Experiment
http://www.mexicosolidarity.org/programs/alternativeeconomy/neoliberalism NMS)
After a decade of NAFTA, the results are obvious - corporations have
benefited handsomely while the working class on both sides of the border
suffers declining living standards. NAFTA has been nothing short of a disaster,
yet it is proudly trumpeted by the ruling class as the blueprint for the Free
Trade Area of the Americas, a proposed (and ultimately failed) trade agreement
that would have included every nation in the hemisphere except Cuba. Neoliberal
proponents promised that NAFTA would increase trade between the
United States and Mexico and would increase foreign investment in
Mexico, and this has generally been the case, though with significant
deviations dependent largely on business cycles. Net US investment was a
negative US$41 billion in 1995 (largely a result of capital flight due to the peso
crisis) but the roller coaster turned positive in 1997 and topped out in 2000 at a
whopping US$162 billion (much of this due to the purchase of Banamex by
Citigroup), only to fall into negative territory again in 2002. Exports to the US
increased from US$49.4 billion in 1994 to US$161 billion in 2002. Employment in
the maquiladora sector increased from 546,433 in 1994 to 1,291,232 in 2000
(though this number has decreased to near one million since the 2001 recession).
But numbers don't tell the whole story. Increasing exports can be good, bad or
neutral, depending on the impact on living standards in both countries. Net foreign
investment can be good, but it can also increase dollar-denominated debt, forcing
nations into a perpetual debt treadmill, and short-term "hot money" investments
often do more harm than good. Increases in maquiladora employment must be
evaluated by the quality of jobs and the impact on the rest of the economy. A
closer look reveals substantial negatives on both sides of the border.
NAFTA and US-Mexico economic engagement will be used by

capitalists from both sides to enslave the working class in
large corporations and encourages an oppressive capitalist
system to become further entrenched
Ransom, Writer at Peoples Tribune 2013 (Dave. June 2013. Peoples Tribune
The Great Migration Together: the capitalist oligarchs of Mexico and the United
States are driving millions off the land http://peoplestribune.org/ptnews/2013/06/great-migration-together-capitalist-oligarchs-mexico-united-statesdriving-millions-land/ NMS)
)But the capitalist oligarchs of Mexico and the United States are now
systematically undermining the milpasreplacing them with large-scale,
soil-depleting, irrigated farmsand forcing the small farmers off the land.
A century ago, when the government of Porfirio Diaz concentrated the land into
fewer and fewer hands, the forebears of these farmers rose in rebellion against the
hacendadosthe owners of the great agricultural estates. Led by Emiliano Zapata
in the revolution of 1910-1920, they fought for a redistribution of the land. The corn
grown by those small farmers created the surplus on which Mexican industry was
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Capitalism K
built. But with the step-by-step dismantling of the Cardenas reforms, Mexican
finance, industry, and agriculture is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands
again. And Mexico has been thrown open to the capitalists of the world,
especially the United States. At the end of the 20th century, Mexicos
economy became increasingly entwined in the integrated world economy,
and Mexicos small farmers faced the Mexican and North American
oligarchies united against them. In the 1993 North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), Mexican capitalists, operating through the government of
Carlos Salinas, simply abandoned the small farmers. They dropped the tariffs
against imports of cheap U.S. corn, knowing full well that doing so would destroy
traditional agriculture. NAFTA has been primarily the project of the
capitalists of the U.S. They, too, knew that opening Mexico to U.S. corn
would destroy small Mexican farmers. Operating through presidents George G.
H. Bush and Bill Clinton, they were successful in winning NAFTA. And within a few
years, U.S. agribusinessdominated by giant corporations like Cargillwas
exporting four times as much corn into Mexico as before. The U.S. government was
actually subsidizing large-scale corn production in the United States and dumping it
on the Mexican market at less than it cost to produce. Mexican small farmers could
not compete with this. More than two million people were pushed out of agricultural
work and another five million could no longer live on farm income. Millions streamed
north. Whole villages hollowed out, dispossessed of their traditional
livelihood, and, in effect, of their culture and their land. The Mexican
oligarchy, too, was substantially subsidizing its agribusinesses, which
erupted into the world market. Since NAFTA began, Mexican companies like
Grupo Bimbo and Maseca have become dominant players in the global food
industry. But none of this helped the economic refugees fleeing north. Does the
story end here? Only if the global oligarchy continues to have its way
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Capitalism K
Link Morality
Moral claims legitimates the current social order, even if
theyre seemingly class-neutral--the bourgeoisie get to decide
what counts as right and wrong.
The Red Phoenix 11,
The Red Phoenix: Newspaper of the American Party of Labor 12/25/11, On
Communist Morality, http://theredphoenixapl.org/2011/12/25/on-communistmorality/ [Accessed 7/4/13], JB)
Bourgeois Moralitys Moral Imperative It is this defense of the position and power of
the bourgeoisie that stands as the central axiom of bourgeois morality. It is the
definitive moral imperative of the bourgeoisie to preserve the property
relations that define capitalism and their elevated position within it. Their
morality stands as a justification for their existence and as a means of
expressing their legitimacy. The bourgeoisie exists as a parasitic class who
exploit the labor of workers who are forced to work the means of production that the
bourgeoisie owns for fear of destitution and starvation. The bourgeoisie accrue
wealth and power from this relationship in the form of the surplus value generated
by the workers and their monopoly over the productive property that is required to
sustain life. As such, in order to justify and defend their existence, they rabidly
defend the private ownership of the means of production as being a sacred right. In
order to do this effectively, they must do two things: to obscure what it is
precisely they are defending and to make the defense of this something
that is defined by a power that is absolute. We see the first in the
characterization of the challenge on private property waged by those who would
challenge this. The anti-communist interprets the attack on the private property of
the bourgeoisie as an attack on all property, whether it be a factory or coal mine, or
on an individual home, a television, a car or the shirt off of someones back. There is
no distinction made in the anti-communists straw man characterization of
communism between personal property and industry, the means of production or
the means of personal subsistence. To acknowledge such a distinction would be
counter-productive. Rather, all property must be equally under attack, and this
attack must be condemned no matter who it attacks and for what reason. The
second means of defense exist to obscure the class origin of the defense of private
property. Rather than an individual member of the bourgeoisie arguing why he
thinks that his private property, and his alone, must be defended, instead we have a
sacred right applied to all such property, even if it is chiefly enforced to protect a
certain kind of property. When it comes to the bourgeoisie, they are are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. They may argue that the worker
is, as well, so endowed with these rights, yet at the end of the day the worker can
barely defend the existence of food on his plate, let alone some right he has no
power to defend within the confines of the capitalist system. This is the material
basis of bourgeois morality. Bourgeois moral statements may vary, may
contradict, may exaggerate philosophical differences between groups and
may make proclamations of moral right and wrong that are seemingly
class-neutral. However, when it comes to the role power plays in deciding
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Capitalism K
what is considered moral and how it is enforced, we see bourgeois

morality for what it is: an ideological framework wherein the bourgeoisie
may advance perceptions of morality which specifically defend their class
position and power. Trimmed of its superfluous moral proclamations, bourgeois
morality reveals itself as a convoluted way of saying might makes right,
at least when it is their might that is the force for power in society. After
all, in capitalism, the bourgeoisie have the power and therefor have the
means and the ability to decide what counts as right and wrong.
Appeal to morality will ultimately always help the Capitalist

system --the only morality that can have a foundational
grounding in a capitalist society is a bourgeoisie morality.
Wood, PhD, Ruth Norman Halls professor of philosophy at
Indiana University, 04
(Allen W, General editor of Cambridge Edition of Kant's Writings in English
Translation, Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus at Stanford
University, 2004, Karl Marx: Second Edition. Routledge, p. 141-2. Google Books.)
Engels docs of course speak of the 'proletarian morality of the future' and its
competition with the 'Christian feudal' and 'modern bourgeois' moralities. He
interprets competing moral codes as class ideologies, 'either justifying the
domination and the interests of the ruling class or else, as soon as the oppressed
class becomes strong enough, representing the indignation against this dominion
and the future interests of the oppressed'. He even says that there has been
'progress in morality largely and on the whole, as in all other branches ol human
knowledge'.32 These remarks might lead us to expect that Marx and Engels would
envision 'proletarian' standards of justice whose imposition on capitalist society
would give expression to the proletarians' indignation against their condition and
serve to promote their class interests. Engels, however, explicitly denies that
the 'proletarian morality of the future' is 'true' as contrasted with its
feudal and bourgeois predecessors. And neither Marx nor Engels ever employs
the standards of 'future' or 'proletarian' morality to condemn the present social
order. But why not? The reason, I believe, is this: The fact that capitalism is just
(by the standards appropriate to capitalist production) provides no real defense
of capitalist society. Likewise, the fact that it could be condemned as unjust
by applying some foreign standard constitutes no valid criticism of
capitalist relations. The rational content of proletarian moral ideologies consists
in the real proletarian interests represented by these ideologies, and the nonmoral
goods which will come about as a result of the victory of these interests in the
historical struggle. Marx prefers to criticize capitalism directly in terms of this
rational content, and sees no point in presenting his criticisms in the mystified form
they would assume in a moral ideology. Marx does not hold that an idea is correct
just in case it is a proletarian idea. If Marx had condemned capitalism by
measuring it against 'proletarian' standards of justice, then it would still
be pertinent to inquire after the rational foundation of those standards,
and the grounds for regarding them as applicable to capitalism. These
questions are not settled for Marx merely by calling the standards 'proletarian', or
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Capitalism K
even by showing that their dissemination or satisfaction serves proletarian

interests. For Marx, standards of justice based on correspondence to the
prevailing mode of production can be given some sort of rational
foundation. Alternative 'proletarian' standards could not. The most that
could be said for them is that people whose heads are stuffed with such ideological
fluff would be easier converts to the proletarian cause. But one of the chief aims of
that cause, as Marx pictures it, is to enable people to disenthrall themselves of ideological illusions, to cast off the need for them. To create a 'proletarian morality*
or 'proletarian concept of justice' by disseminating a set of ideas which
working class agitators find politically advantageous would strike Marx as
a shortsighted and self-defeating course for the movement to adopt. It is
far safer and more efficacious in the long run to rely simply on the genuine
(i.e., nonmoral) reasons people have for wanting an obsolete and inhuman
social system to be overthrown and replaced by a higher one.33
Class struggle must be the starting point- extraneous,

idealistic principles cover up class interests by pretending to
serve the greater good.
Motlhabi, PhD, 99
(Mokgethi Buti George, Department of Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics,

University of South Africa, 1999, Religion and Theology 6/2, Marxism, Morality and
Ideology: The Marxist Moral Paradox and the Struggle for Social Justice. p. 237-8.
Ebscohost.
We- have also seen in what respect morality is said to be a form of ideology. It is
mainly because morality is considered to be hugely not true to itself, it makes false
claims about itself, and also covers up some class interests which it promotes
in the pretext that it is promoting common interests. The assumption is that
morality does not have to be ideological, but it cannot cease being so until
the communist ideal of a classless society has been attained. In other words,
for morality to be true to itself, it must stop serving class interests and be- truly
objective in its evaluation of die human predicament and human social needs.
Further, it must have as its starting point the situational or materialist
basis of this human predicament and stop trying to apply extraneous,
idealistic principles in finding solutions to it.
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Capitalism K
Link Natural Resources

Capitalism leads to economic degradation and the exploitation
of natural resources
MacLeod, Legal and Social Theorist at the University of Oxford,
no date
(Jason, JDM, Marx, Capitalism, Globalization, and Climate
Change: Revolutionary Ideas For Climate Mitigation,
Changehttp://www.jasondmacle
od.com/marx-capitalism-globalization-climate-changerevolutionary-ideas-climate-change-mitigation/, 7/2/2013) GM.
The Industrial Revolution, the introduction of neoliberal economic
ideology, and the capitalist notion of maximizing efficiency and
production, have subjugated the environment to the limitless growth
potential of capitalism. The arrival of free or near-free market resources, in
tandem with globalization and cheap labor, produced a cycle of exploitation,
thereby allowing industry to abandon the resource exploited sites to move
on to other more efficient and exploitable sites without regarding long-term
environmental effects. Professor Ktting from the State University of New York
concluded, this liberalization and its supporting institutional framework have
led to a new form of ecological imperialism that subjugates resource
extraction and production to market ideology.[1] Capitalisms infinite
potential for growth is incompatible with the finite natural resources
available. The current ideology degrades environmental health as
corporations fail to internalize the cost of environmental protection. A
recent study commissioned by the United Nations Principles for Responsible
Investment, concluded that in 2008, the top 3,000 companies had an
environmental impact of $2.2 trillion dollarsthe estimated annual
environmental costs from global human activity equat[es] to 11% of global
GDP or $6.6 trillion.[2] They projected the cost to be $28 trillion by 2050
(excluding the costs of invaluable ecosystem services, pollution and waste).[3] In
the report, impact is a euphemism for environmental degradation. This
process is accumulation by dispossession, the exploitation of a resource
without appropriate reimbursement. The ultimate outcome of market growth
and environmental exploitation is climate change. Global societys
recreation of this relationship is essential to safeguard natural resources for
future generations. The nature of capitalism and its agents is that they
operate(s) in a short time horizon profits cannot be guaranteed in the
future and capitalists want to receive their profit in the moment. This
profit maximization, in the moment, will lead to faster and faster depletion of
non-renewable energy and resources. Marx noted how this short time
horizon exhausts resources Anticipation of the futurereal anticipation
occurs in the production of wealth in relation to the worker and to the
land. The future can indeed be anticipated and ruined in both cases by
premature overexertion and exhaustion, and by the disturbance of the
balance between expenditure and income. In capitalist production this
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Capitalism K
happens to both the worker and the landWhat is shortened here exists as
power and the life span of this power is shortened as a result of accelerated
expenditure.[4] The unprecedented growth of advanced capitalist nations,
post industrial revolution, and the current growth rate of developing
countries expends vast natural capital, much of it non-renewable.
A Few Centuries of Capitalist Development causes the

exploitation of natural resources, especially water
Liodakis, Professor of Political Economy at the Technical
University of Crete, 10 (George, 8/18/10, Greece, Political
Economy, Capitalism, and Sustainable Development,
Sustainability, 7/3/13) GM.
Coming now to a more detailed explanation of this increasing ecological rift, we might stress that, under
capitalism, an increase in labour productivity is essentially tantamount to
a reduction in the amount of abstract socially necessary labour required
for the production of any particular commodity (including labour power itself), which
is a condition for an increased extraction and appropriation of surplus
value [19]. This, as I have noted, is the dominant goal of capitalism, and hence all
increases in the productivity of labour should serve this goal. Under this context,
an increasing productivity of labour does not imply a process economizing
on labour or any other productive resources. On the contrary, insofar as capital can
proceed with a free appropriation of nature as a gift to capital, there will be a permanent bias
towards developing a labour-saving technology, but this technology is
conducive to a maximum throughput of natural resources and energy,
which further implies a rapidly increasing depletion of natural resources
and an increasing pollution contributing to a systemic environmental
degradation. A labour-saving technology, therefore, and a rising productivity of labour do not necessarily
imply an increasing social and ecological efficiency, but rather an increasing potential for material and energy
throughput, with an enhanced ecologically damaging impact. What is more ,
even a resource-saving
technological innovation cannot have, under capitalism, an environmentally
protective impact insofar as it will, most likely, imply lower commodity prices and
hence an increasing market demand, which will result in an increased (rather than
decreased) extraction of the natural resource concerned. This implication is
clearly related with the so-called Jevons Paradox [10,14,18]. Economic
efficiency, at a societal level, is not simply a technical issue (a matter of input/output relation) and should
not be understood, in general, as market (capitalist) efficiency. In fact it is largely
determined, not only by the dominant goals of production, but also by the prevailing social relations and the scale
of production, as well as relations of distribution and property regimes. Apart from other reasons, it should be noted
that, insofar as negative externalities (cost shifting) are not taken into account and positive externalities are
a
maximum social efficiency goal cannot be achieved under capitalism, and
this has clear and significant ecological implications [14,16,18,23]. This would
also largely apply within a context of market socialism, but on this issue
we will return below. It should further be stressed that the expropriation
and privatization of common property under contemporary capitalism has
increased class tensions, economic inequality and environmental
degradation, while mal-distribution and inequality undermine economic
efficiency and the sustainability of production [16,17,30-32]. On the other hand, a large
number of studies have recently questioned the assumed efficiency of private
property and pointed out a remarkably efficient allocation and utilization
insufficiently utilized due to the fragmented and (individually) antagonistic character of capitalist production,
73

Capitalism K
of resources in some traditional or alternative property regimes, such as

common property or open access regimes, which partly explains the long
run sustainability of these regimes [18,31-34]. Despite this evidence, the rapid
privatization and commodification of natural resources within the context
of the current neoliberal and rapidly globalizing capitalism, along with the
commodification of scientific research and technological innovation, tend
to a detrimental and multifaceted ecological impact [35]. Among other forms of this
ecological degradation, one might stress the rapid loss of biological diversity and the recent dramatic climate
While this ecological

degradation may imply an upward push of the regulating cost of
production without immediately putting absolute barrier to the reproduction
of capital, this process cannot continue without ultimately causing crucial
and perhaps insurmountable economic and environmental problems. Here, of
course, we need to take into account the possibility of extending nature, of
producing a second nature or alternative natures, which may have important implications
for the sustainability of capitalism. There is an extensive research concerning this production of
changes, as having far-reaching both ecological and economic implications.
a second nature or alternative natures and their socioeconomic and ecological implications [29,36-38]. As E.
Swyngedouw points out: While one sort of sustainability seems to be predicated upon feverishly developing new
natures ... forcing nature to act in a way we deem sustainable or socially necessary, the other type is predicated
upon limiting or redressing our intervention in nature, returning it to a presumably more benign condition so that
human and non-human sustainability in the medium and long term can be assured. Despite the apparent
contradictions of these two ways of becoming sustainable (one predicated upon preserving natures status quo,
the other predicated upon producing new natures), they share the same basic vision that technonatural and
sociometabolic interactions are urgently needed if we wish to secure the survival of the planet and much of what it
contains [39]. Although the possibility of producing new nature may extent the potential terrain of capitalist
accumulation, and this may have important implication for an epoch characterized by a tendency towards a
universal subsumption of nature under capital, it must be stressed that it does not imply that capitalism could ever
escape all natural constraints. It is a rather limited and consequential potential [40]. Distinct from this potential of
Neo-Malthusian approaches to the environmental problem,

by assuming a finite availability of natural resources, have tended to
overstress natural limits, presenting them usually in a naturalistic and
absolute manner, while blaming overpopulation as the main source of
environmental degradation and crisis [4,6]. On the other hand, Marx and contemporary
producing new nature,
Marxists, without ignoring natural and biological limits, conceive that social (organizational) or technological factors
may, occasionally, relax or defer such limits. Reflecting on Marxs view, P. Burkett points out that, with
its
exploitative scientific development of productive forces, its in-built tendency
to reproduce itself upon a constantly increasing scale, and the attendant extension of
productions natural limits to the global, biospheric level, capitalism is the
first society capable of a(n) truly planetary environmental catastrophe, one that
could ultimately threaten even capitals own material requirements [23]. As
I have argued, referring to a particular example, The increasing water scarcity, the
declining quality of water, and the inequitable pattern of its use across
countries and in each particular country, along with a green-house warming that increasingly dries
up mother earth, are not of course the result of some natural evolution, nor mainly
the result of overpopulation, but rather an outcome of a few centuries of
capitalist development and a particularly rapid economic growth during the last half of
the twentieth century [14]. In this case, as also in the case of energy, neo-Malthusian approaches are misleading
insofar as they naturalize external limits (emphasizing natural scarcity), while largely ignoring the potentially
important impact of drastic technological and organizational changes on both the supply and the demand side. On
the latter side, quantitative and qualitative developments in social needs may be more the result of changes in
technology and social organization, than the result of any population growth. But more importantly, neo-Malthusian
approaches are misleading because they erroneously divorce the allocation of resources from the scale of
production and, taking at face value the presumable allocative efficiency of the market mechanism, end up
stressing a fixed scale of production and hence a steady-state model as a necessary condition for the sustainability
of capitalism [41]. As R. Smith has plausibly argued, however, economic growth (and growthmania) is an inherent
tendency of the market system and capitalism, and therefore
a sustainability of capitalism
74

Capitalism K
through a steady-state adjustment is impossible [42]. It
becomes rather clear from

the preceding analysis and an increasing number of studies that capitalism, as a specific mode of production,
tends to undermine the most basic conditions of ecological sustainability,

jeopardizing thus the survival of human beings and of the capitalist system
itself [14,15,43,44]. It would be rather misleading, however, to consider ecological sustainability separately from
the conditions of economic and social sustainability of capitalism. Although this is not the place to expand on the
deeper causes of the currently evolving and aggravated economic crisis, which tends to directly and indirectly
take into
account the fundamental role of the law of the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall [28], lying behind the overaccumulation crisis of the early 1970s which continues, with some
fluctuations, until the currently aggravated worldwide recession. This crisis, through a variety of processes
and mechanisms, has fuelled the exacerbation of ecological crisis in various
forms. Among these processes, we might consider the intensification of capitalist
competition, the increasing externalities (cost-shifting), and the overexhaustive exploitation of both labour power and natural resources. At the
undermine the conditions of economic and social sustainability of capitalism, we should briefly
same time, there is an equally important dialectical feedback of the exacerbated ecological crisis on the further
aggravation of economic and social crisis. At this point it may be pertinent to briefly address the dematerialization
hypothesis as it might possibly have significant implications for both ecological crisis (reduction of materials and
energy use) and the economic crisis caused by a rising organic composition of capital, namely the relation between
constant to variable capital (C/V), and falling profits rates (as noted above). According to this hypothesis, the
increasing information and knowledge content of production in modern capitalism, along with a relative expansion
of the sector of services and a more energy-efficient technology imply a significant reduction in the material
requirements of production. There are good reasons however, to argue that this dematerialization has not any
significant real dimensions [45,46]. More importantly, I would further argue that this presumable
dematerialization trend cannot have a significant impact on the material requirements of production, negating the
tendency towards a rising composition of capital. The capitalist imperatives behind this rising organic composition
any process of production in

capitalism encompasses a use-value production and a valorization
process, and labour has necessarily to be materialized through the use and
transformation of energy and natural resources. Secondly, competition implies
the need of an incessant mechanization and automation drive aiming at an
increased labour productivity. Thirdly, the capitalist need to discipline and
exploit labour in production can again be met by an increasing
mechanization. This increasing mechanization requires increased energy
and resource use and implies further a potentially maximum throughput of material
resources with a minimum labour power. It follows, therefore, that these necessities cannot
of capital relate to three interrelated processes. In the first place,
be significantly changed by any dematerialization trend, and hence it cannot have any significant ameliorating
impact of economic and ecological crisis. Capital, of course, deploys all sorts of strategies and methods to stave off
or ameliorate crisis, and popular pressure may also have some effect in limiting the implications of economic and
ecological crisis. Despite this pressure and all attempts or policies aiming at an ecological adjustment, however, it is
rather impossible to adequately tackle the ecological problem within the context of the currently prevailing
capitalist relations of production [10,14,18,21].
Corporate America continues to consume natural resourcesLead to more environmental problems

Heimonen, Computer Software and a think tank blogger, 04,
(Mark, 7/25/2004, Group Think, Capitalism, Exploitation, and
OverConsumption,http://markheimonen.blogspot.com/2004/07/cap
italism-exploitation-and-over.html/ 7/4/13) GM.
There are no more needs in our society, yet corporations have convinced
Americans to continually desire and upgrade the newest, greatest fads,
75

Capitalism K
while disposing of perfectly good products that are no longer in style. We produce
more food, housing, and other goods than we need, yet we continue to feel pressure
to work hard to keep our jobs, all in the name of profitability. We have turned into a
disposable nation, where it is cheaper to buy a new printer or monitor, than it is to
have it repaired. One only needs to watch the recent documentary, Super Size Me,
to recognize that we have become an over-indulgent nation. We continue to
consume vast quantities of our natural resources, with literal regard for
environmental concerns. Here is but a small sample of the issues we face:
Ozone Layer Depletion, Greenhouse Effect, Deforestation, Over-harvesting
of fish, Overflowing landfill sites, Toxic waste dumping, nuclear waste
sites, Over-consumption of non-renewable resources. In the capitalist
system, there are no checks in place to ensure that corporations function
in an environmentally responsible manner. Each individual and company is
motivated to keep up with the mechanisms of the giant profit-driven
corporate machine. The United States is currently waging war, all in the name
of keeping prices of gas and oil as low as possible (Even as they refuse to
publicly say so) The fact is, the Bush campaign has lied through their teeth, and
have failed to come up with a single plausible explanation for the war. One
multinational company, Halliburton, is going to profit more from the Iraqi war than
any other. This company, formerly headed by vice president Dick Cheney, was
awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts by the United States
government. In 1999-2000, Halliburton gave $709,320 in political contributions, of
which 95% went to the Republicans. At the same time, Halliburtons Subsidiary,
kellog Brown and Root (KBR), is under now under scrutiny for illegally operating in
Iran, and wasting tremendous amounts of money. Corporate America is in bed
with the United States government, and for these reasons, the government
cannot be relied upon to hold these companies accountable.
Nature is limited- Must save resources for future resources

Kikkawa, 11, (Khan, 4/2011, Wesleyan University, Sustainable
Capitalism Under Lockean Ethics,
http://wesscholar.wesleyan.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1
771&context=etd_hon_theses&seiredir=1&referer=http%3A
%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q
%3Dcapitalism%2520and%2520over%2520consumption
%2520and%2520resources%26source%3Dweb%26cd
%3D9%26ved%3D0CHAQFjAI%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F
%252Fwesscholar.wesleyan.edu%252Fcgi
%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1771%2526context
%253Detd_hon_theses%26ei%3DtZncUYLcKH8iwKr1oCgCw
%26usg%3DAFQjCNE_B4ViKgaxot9BCCD0wgSYhm5gDA
%26sig2%3DIGdDmlByU5nRVK20mVIkaA%26bvm
%3Dbv.48705608%2Cd.cGE#search=%22capitalism%20over
%20consumption%20resources%22, 7/9/13) GM.
Humanity has struggled to remedy the conflict between environmental
sustainability and capitalism since the privatization of resources and
overconsumption of resources creating a shortage of natural resources.
76

Capitalism K
Due to improper market pricing, capitalism undervalues natural resources

which discourages entrepreneurs from investing in technology to improve
the yield of natural resources or to limit their consumption of natural
resources. The positive externalities of natural resources are unaccounted
for in modern capitalism, creating a shortage in natural resources. Since
the production of natural resources is limited by Natures capacity to
reproduce, the current capitalist framework promotes a permanent
shortage of natural resources where the demand for natural goods is
always in excess to the supply of goods obtainable. Unlike other producers,
Nature is a limited producer in that its ability to reproduce goods available in
the commons for all individuals to access is dependent on the natural
resources that remain in the common. Natural goods are both the final
product as well as the initial input where a certain quantity of the
resources needs to remain in Nature untouched by mankind so those
resources can reproduce to increase the quantity of that resource for future
populations. Given that humanitys goal is to exist in the long run, it is in
the best interest for humanity to regulate their consumption levels and to
appropriate resources to meet their own needs while maintaining a base
level of supply in Nature so that future generations can enjoy the same
resources as our current generation. Unfortunately, modern environmental
philosophy is divided on how to define sustainability, let alone the method with
which society can hope to achieve a sustainable society. Modern environmental
philosophy is currently debating between basic definitions given the
feasibility on how sustainability can be assessed. Modern definitions are torn
between weak sustainability and strong sustainability, the difference between
definitions contingent on the substitutability of resources and the mechanisms
available to society to value those resources in question. Economists strongly
defend weak sustainability, arguing that resources can be substituted with other
resources and that weak sustainability is the only feasible definition society can
adopt to maintain a capitalist society that encourages innovation and
entrepreneurship to promote growth while being sustainable. Environmentalists
advocate strong sustainability however, arguing that natural resources
possess various functions that cannot be substituted by manufactured
goods that only possess single functions. Due to differences in the value
of natural resources as well as the practicality of measuring sustainability,
advocates for both are divided by definitions of sustainability.
Capitalism exploits natural and human resources- Root cause

of environmental problems
MIM, Movement Group, 96, (Maoist Internationalist Movement,
3/1996, Prison Censorship, On Capitalism and the
Environment, http://www.prisoncensorshi
p.info/archive/etext/mt/mt12capenv.html, 7/4/13) GM.
The root cause of environmental problems is capitalism, the private
ownership of the means of production by a relative handful of people. This essence
of capitalism is one reason why capitalism creates environmental
problems: while the majority of the world's people have a material interest in
maintaining a healthy planet, the small capitalist ruling class is not accountable to
77

Capitalism K
this majority, except in the indirect sense that the ruling class seeks to coopt the demands of the majority in order to maintain the capitalist
system. A second reason why capitalism creates environmental problems is that
although the world's resources are controlled by a relative handful of
people, planning is not centralized under capitalism. Instead, production is
anarchic; it is centered around making profits, not around meeting basic
human needs in the short or long runs. Much of what is produced by the capitalist
system is unnecessary and wasteful, and the system is not fundamentally capable
of incorporating long-term human survival as a need. Finally, the capitalist
system does not distribute resources equitably. Under capitalism, many
people do not have adequate resources for survival. Many environmental
problems stem from this root problem. Furthermore, capitalism is not static.
It has changed since Marx's day. Today, it has developed to its highest
stage: imperialism.(1) Under imperialism, the capitalists carve and recarve
the world. The unequal distribution of resources takes on a distinctly
national flavor, with a division of the world into imperialist countries on the
one hand and colonies and neocolonies on the other hand. Imperialism exploits
both the natural and the human resources of its colonies and neocolonies.
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Capitalism K
Link Pomo Ethics

Infinite ethics is infinite deferral- grounding their critique on
subjective ethics robs them of any ability to declare anything
bad on more than an individual level.
7/8/13], JB).
The suspension of judgment, law, determination, etc., while masquerading as
the height of freedom, is really a means of justifying deeply contradictory
practices. When for instance Chris Barker extends Derrida's and Edkins'
theoretical framework to a discussion of the possibility of any social change,
arguing that "ethics do not require to be grounded in anything outside our
beliefs and desires" (13), what he is really saying is that the ethical
subject, not determined by any laws or objectives, can be ethical in one place,
and not in another. Post-al ethics is a "politics without guarantees". But what
are "guarantees" on this logic except the ability to connect one's actions to the
larger social forces of which one is a part, and what does the suspension of
"guarantees" do except eliminate the means of understanding the world
outside of experience and immediacy? On the terms of the ethical, there
is no basis on which to critique the U.S. imperialist practices of on the one
hand dropping food for the hungry in its "humanitarian" missions, and, on the other,
using food and nutrition as a weapon against people in the economic blockade
against Iraq. The ethical subject can simply say that because our knowledge
is always limited, it is impossible to determine the effects of all of our
practices, let alone their causes. To once again return to Barkerwhose
"introductory" writings on the analysis of culture for beginning students serve as an
index of the institutionalization of the deeply conservative trend in cultural studies
todaywe engage in so many contradictory practices in such a "complex"
world, "the justification of ethics becomes an increasingly complex matter
that depends at its best on dialogue and at its worst on a descent into
violence" (13-14). Indeed, for post-al ethics, there is only "indeterminacy" and
contradiction, and violence is thus inevitable. By reducing the subject to the
effects of textual oscillations, there is no principle upon which one acts. Far from
serving as an intervention into the domination of the West, post-al ethics
becomes an alibi for U.S. imperialist practices of dropping food for the
hungry, while simultaneously using food and nutrition as a weapon against
people in order to secure U.S. economic interests in oil, labor and other
resources. Post-al ethics is a pretext for opportunism. That the seemingly
radical notion of ethics is but a cover for imperialist practices is evident,
for instance, in the fact that just over a year after the "humanitarian
intervention" "Infinite Justice", the Afghan people are in many instances
facing worse conditions than they were before the mission. In fact, so
desperate has the situation in post-intervention Afghanistan become, that after the
79

Capitalism K
endless boasting of the "liberation" of Afghan people by the U.S., the U.S. appointed
"president" of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai recently called on the U.S. to remind it "not
to forget" his country as the U.S commits tremendous military and economic
resources to the invasion of Iraq ("Don't forget us, Karzai warns"). But Karzai's trip is
not the only "official" index of the actual conditions of Afghanistan. As even a recent
report on Afghanistan commissioned by the U.S. administration's own Agency for
International Development indicates, "the level of 'diet' security," a measurement of
vulnerability to famine, has plummeted from nearly 60 percent in 2000 [before the
bombing began in Afghanistan] to just 9 percent now (reported in Smucker).
Meanwhile it is expected that 1.5 million refugees displaced during the U.S. war will
return to the country in 2003, placing even more of a burden on already scarce
resourcesand so scarce are basic resources that a UN report indicated as many as
88 percent of people living in urban areas lack access to safe drinking water (Colson
47). Under the same guise of "helping" the people of Iraq see the value of
democracy, the sanctions imposed by the U.S. on Iraq have had brutally
undemocratic effects for over a decade. As Rania Masri writes, since the U.S.
war with Iraq began in 1991, which killed more than 300,000 Iraqis over a 43 day
period, "more than 1 million peoplemainly young childrenhave died as a direct
result of the US-led blockade", and 4 million people, one fifth of the population, are
currently starving to death in Iraq, based on a UN FOA report. Every month in Iraq,
according to the 1996 UNICEF report, more than 4,500 children under the age of
five died from hunger. The current war promises only further devastation. Already,
there are reports of famine in Iraq, due to the choking and destruction of
virtually all production and distribution of goods throughout the country
as a result of the invasion (which has begun, critically, during the planting
season).[2] Far from helping the poor in Afghanistan and Iraq to feed
themselves, imperialist ethics have rendered them further dependent
upon and exploited by the imperialist nations. The status of the "infinite"
in the ethical, whether it is the infinite of "infinite hospitality" or "infinite
justice", is in short a ruse for rendering justice impossible, through infinite
deferrals which extend forever into the future the unequal conditions that
currently exist.
80

Capitalism K
Link Poverty
The root cause of poverty is Capitalism
Duhalde, activist and journalist with Boston
Poverty is not created in a vacuum. Socialists understand that poverty is caused

by the natural workings of a capitalist marketplace that has always
excluded a significant part of the population from decent jobs and, thus,
from the ability to purchase on the private market goods necessary for a
decent life for themselves and their children. Socialists also recognize that
poverty under capitalism is largely maintained by a skewed distribution of
wealth and services, not by lack of a work ethic. A socialist analysis of
homelessness illustrates how the workings of capitalism cause one major aspect of
poverty--a lack of affordable housing. Nearly twenty years ago, New York Mayor Ed
Koch successfully closed many Single Room Occupancies (SROs), apartment
buildings of one-room dwellings with shared kitchen and bath. SROs provided
inadequate shelter for many of the citys poor: alcoholics, the mentally ill and others
unable to find permanent work or housing. Koch capitalized on the unpopularity of
these abodes for his pro-gentrification agenda. Although SROs were hardly a
paragon of housing, shutting them down inevitably increased homelessness, as did
the Reagan administrations deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, without
providing adequate outpatient treatment for this population. Michael Harrington
wrote about this troubling paradox in a 1988 piece Socialism Best Informs Our
Politics. Harrington acknowledged that a democratic socialist, like any liberal, will
defend SROs as an imperfect tool for preventing homelessness.
Capitalism sustains poverty

Wolff, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts
in Amherst a Professor at the Graduate Program in
International Affairs of the New School University in New York,
11
(Richard, Monthly Review, Capitalism and poverty
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/wolff111011.html,
11/10/11, CF)
Deepening poverty has multiple causes, but the capitalist economic

system is major among them. First, capitalism's periodic crises always
increase poverty, and the current crisis is no exception. More precisely, how
capitalist corporations operate, in or out of crisis, regularly reproduces
poverty. At the top of every corporation, its major shareholders (15-20 or
fewer) own controlling blocs of shares. They select a board of directors -usually 15-20 individuals -- who run the corporation. These two tiny
groups make all the key decisions: what, how, and where to produce and
what to do with the profits. Poverty is one result of this capitalist type of
enterprise organization. For example, corporate decisions generally aim to
lower the number of workers or their wages or both. They automate, export
(outsource) jobs, and replace higher-paid workers by recruiting domestic and foreign
substitutes willing to work for less. These normal corporate actions generate
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Capitalism K
rising poverty as the other side of rising profits. When poverty and its
miseries "remain always with us," workers tend to accept what employers dish out
to avoid losing jobs and falling into poverty. Another major corporate goal is to
control politics. Wherever all citizens can vote, workers' interests might prevail over
those of directors and shareholders in elections. To prevent that, corporations
devote portions of their revenues to finance politicians, parties, mass media, and
"think tanks." Their goal is to "shape public opinion" and control what government
does. They do not want Washington's crisis-driven budget deficits and national
debts to be overcome by big tax increases on corporations and the rich. Instead
public discussion and politicians' actions are kept focused chiefly on cutting social
programs for the majority.Corporate goals include providing high and rising salaries,
stock options, and bonuses to top executives and rising dividends and share prices
to shareholders. The less paid to the workers who actually produce what
corporations sell, the more corporate revenue goes to satisfy directors, top
managers, and major shareholders. Corporations also raise profits regularly
by increasing prices and/or cutting production costs (often by
compromising output quality). Higher priced and poorer-quality goods are
sold mostly to working people. This too pushes them toward poverty just
like lower wages and benefits and government service cuts.
Poverty exists because of capitalism

Johnson, author, novelist, sociologist, public speaker, and
workshop presenter who has devoted most of his working life
to understanding the human condition, No Date
(Allan, Allan G. Johnson, Why is there poverty?, No date,
http://www.agjohnson.us/essays/poverty/, 7/8/13, CF)
Consider, for example, poverty, which is arguably the most far-reaching,
long-standing cause of chronic suffering there is. The magnitude of
poverty is especially ironic in a country like the United States whose enormous
wealth dwarfs that of entire continents. More than one out of every six people
in the United States lives in poverty or near-poverty. For children, the rate is
even higher. Even in the middle class there is a great deal of anxiety about
the possibility of falling into poverty or something close to it through
divorce, for example, or simply being laid off as companies try to improve their
competitive advantage, profit margins, and stock prices by transferring jobs
overseas. How can there be so much misery and insecurity in the midst of such
abundance? If we look at the question sociologically, one of the first things we see is
that poverty doesnt exist all by itself. It is simply one end of an overall distribution
of income and wealth in society as a whole. As such, poverty is both a structural
aspect of the system and an ongoing consequence of how the system is
organized and the paths of least resistance that shape how people participate in it.
The system we have for producing and distributing wealth is capitalist. It is
organized in ways that allow a small elite to control most of the capital factories,
machinery, tools used to produce wealth. This encourages the accumulation of
wealth and income by the elite and regularly makes heroes of those who are most
successful at it such as Microsofts Bill Gates. It also leaves a relatively small
portion of the total of income and wealth to be divided among the rest of the
population. With a majority of the people competing over whats left to them by the
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Capitalism K
elite, its inevitable that a substantial number of people are going to wind up on the
short end and living in poverty or with the fear of it much of the time. Its like the
game of musical chairs: since the game is set up with fewer chairs than there are
people, someone has to wind up without a place to sit when the music stops. In
part, then, poverty exists because the economic system is organized in
ways that encourage the accumulation of wealth at one end and creates
conditions of scarcity that make poverty inevitable at the other. But the
capitalist system generates poverty in other ways as well. In the drive for
profit, for example, capitalism places a high value on competition and
efficiency. This motivates companies and their managers to control costs
by keeping wages as low as possible and replacing people with machines
or replacing full-time workers with part-time workers. It makes it a rational
choice to move jobs to regions or countries where labor is cheaper and
workers are less likely to complain about poor working conditions, or
where laws protecting the natural environment from industrial pollution or
workers from injuries on the job are weak or unenforced. Capitalism also
encourages owners to shut down factories and invest money elsewhere in
enterprises that offer a higher rate of return. These kinds of decisions are a
normal consequence of how capitalism operates as a system, paths of least
resistance that managers and investors are rewarded for following. But the
decisions also have terrible effects on tens of millions of people and their
families and communities. Even having a full-time job is no guarantee of a
decent living, which is why so many families depend on the earnings of
two or more adults just to make ends meet. All of this is made possible by the
simple fact that in a capitalist system most people neither own nor control any
means of producing a living without working for someone else. To these social
factors we can add others. A high divorce rate, for example, results in large
numbers of single-parent families who have a hard time depending on a single adult
for both childcare and a living income. The centuries-old legacy of racism in the
United States continues to hobble millions of people through poor education,
isolation in urban ghettos, prejudice, discrimination, and the disappearance of
industrial jobs that, while requiring relatively little formal education, nonetheless
once paid a decent wage. These were the jobs that enabled many generations of
white European immigrants to climb out of poverty, but which are now unavailable
to the masses of urban poor. Clearly, patterns of widespread poverty are
inevitable in an economic system that sets the terms for how wealth is
produced and distributed. If were interested in doing something about
poverty itself if we want a society largely free of impoverished citizens then
well have to do something about both the system people participate in
and how they participate in it. But public debate about poverty and policies to
deal with it focus almost entirely on the latter with almost nothing to say about the
former. What generally passes for liberal and conservative approaches to poverty
are, in fact, two variations on the same narrow theme of individualism. A classic
example of the conservative approach is Charles Murrays book Losing Ground.
Murray sees the world as a merry-go-round. The goal is to make sure that everyone
has a reasonably equal chance at the brass ring or at least a reasonably equal
chance to get on the merry-go-round. He reviews thirty years of federal antipoverty
programs and notes that theyve generally failed. He concludes from this that since
government programs havent worked, poverty must not be caused by social
factors.
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Capitalism K
Capitalism promotes low wages to the working class
Wildson, Socialist Activist, 05

(Tony, Socialist World, How capitalism breeds poverty,
09/26/05, http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/1934, 7/8/13, CF)
To boost their profits, employers have ruthlessly attacked wages, benefits,
and working conditions. Both political parties collaborated in refusing to raise
the minimum wage, resulting in tens of million of workers seeing their
living standards drop below the poverty line. Restrictions have been
increased on eligibility for unemployment benefits. Fewer and fewer
workers now qualify for any unemployment benefits, resulting in tens of
millions dropping off the rolls and forced to live without any income .
Inherent in capitalism has been the maintenance of a sizeable pool of
unemployed workers living on the edge of poverty who are desperate for
job s. It keeps workers competing with each other to get jobs, allowing
corporate owners to keep wages low. This was first described by Karl
Marx, the founder of scientific socialism, as an essential weapon used by
capitalists to keep down wages. When this political and economic system is
judged by future inhabitants of the planet, this policy will be judged, correctly, as
one of the greatest crimes against humanity. Former Wall Street executive
David Driver summed it up well: The United States is the most capitalistic
of major industrialized nations. This is not because America is a leader in
per-capita gross domestic product, per-capita income, or productivity
growth, for it is not. America does, however, have one of the most probusiness, inequitable, and inhumane socioeconomic systems in the
industrialized worldIt certainly does not benefit the average citizen, not
does it benefit the country as a whole. Or, as John Hinderaker, a board
member for the Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think-tank, said:
Theres more opportunity in the American economy today than at any time in its
history. Its important to point out that income inequality isnt a bad thing, its a
good thing. The viewpoint of the capitalist class couldnt be better put. This neoliberal attack has lead to a massive increase in corporate profits. Just from 1980 to
1995, corporate revenues rose 129.5%, corporate profits rose 127% and executive
pay rose 182%. The richest 1% of the population now owns more wealth than the
bottom 90%. There has been a massive shift in wealth from the working class to the
capitalist class.
Capitalism is the root cause of the poverty in the status quo

Wolff, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts
in Amherst a Professor at the Graduate Program in
International Affairs of the New School University in New York,
11
(Richard, Professor Richard D. Wolf, Capitalism and poverty
10/11/11, http://rdwolff.com/content/capitalism-and-poverty, , 7/8/13 , CF)
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Capitalism K
The US Census Bureau recently reported what most Americans already

knew. Poverty is deepening. The gap between rich and poor is growing.
Slippage soon into the ranks of the poor now confronts tens of millions of
Americans who long thought of themselves as securely "middle class." The
reality is worse than the Census Bureau reports. Consider that the
Bureau's poverty line in 2010 for a family of four was $22,314. Families of
four making more than that were not counted as poor. That poverty line
works out to $15 per day per person for everything: food, clothing,
housing, medical care, transportation, education, and so on. If you have
more than $15 per day per person in your household to pay for everything
each person needs, the Bureau does not count you as part of this country's
poverty problem. So the real number of US citizens living in poverty -- more
reasonably defined -- is much larger today than the 46.2 million reported
by the Census Bureau. It is thus much higher than the 15.1 per cent of our
people the Bureau sees as poor. Conservatively estimated, about one in
four Americans already lives in real poverty. Another one in four is or
should be worried about joining them soon. Long-lasting and high
unemployment now drains away income from families and friends of the
unemployed who have used up savings as well as unemployment insurance. As city,
state, and local governments cut services and supports, people will have to divert
money to offset part of those cuts. When Medicare and if Social Security benefits
are cut, millions will be spending more to help elderly parents. Finally, poverty
looms for those with jobs as (1) wages are cut or fail to keep up with rising prices,
and (2) benefits -- especially pensions and medical insurance -- are reduced.
Deepening poverty has multiple causes, but the capitalist economic
system is major among them. First, capitalism's periodic crises always
increase poverty, and the current crisis is no exception. More precisely, how
capitalist corporations operate, in or out of crisis, regularly reproduces poverty. At
the top of every corporation, its major shareholders (15-20 or fewer) own controlling
blocs of shares. They select a board of directors -- usually 15-20 individuals -- who
run the corporation. These two tiny groups make all the key decisions: what, how,
and where to produce and what to do with the profits. Poverty is one result of
this capitalist type of enterprise organization. For example, corporate
decisions generally aim to lower the number of workers or their wages or both. They
automate, export (outsource) jobs, and replace higher-paid workers by recruiting
domestic and foreign substitutes willing to work for less. These normal corporate
actions generate rising poverty as the other side of rising profits. When poverty and
its miseries "remain always with us," workers tend to accept what employers dish
out to avoid losing jobs and falling into poverty.
Poverty of workers is caused by capitalismMarx says

Andreou, Professor of philosophy, No date
(Chrisoula, BU.EDU, In Defence of Marx's Account of the
Nature of Capitalist Exploitation, not date,
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Econ/EconAndr.htm, 7/8/13, CF)
In some of his early works, Marx suggests that the poverty of the workers
goes hand in hand with capitalist production. For example, in "Alienated
Labor" he claims that in capitalist society, "labor produces marvels for the
wealthy but it produces deprivation for the worker" (61). Indeed, "so much
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Capitalism K
does the realization of labor appear as diminution [of the worker] that the
worker is diminished to the point of starvation" (61). This view, that as a
necessary result of the capitalist mode of production the average worker
is deprived of many of the necessaries of life, is one that Marx had abandoned
by the time he wrote Capital. In Capital, Marx suggests that it is not part of
the "inner essence" of capitalist exploitation that the worker be deprived
of the necessaries of life. To the contrary, the reproduction of the capitalist mode
of production requires the reproduction of the class of workers, which in turn
requires providing the workers with the necessaries of life.
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Capitalism K
Link Terrorism
The war on terror is mechanism used by the US to expand its
capitalist and hegemonic influence
Delizo 11-blogger for the Global Periscope (Rasti, ESCALATING AMERICAS
GLOBAL WAR OF TERROR: US Imperialisms Legacy to the World a Decade After
9/11, Thr Global Periscope 2011,
http://rastiglobalperiscope.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/escalating-americas-globalwar-of-terror-us-imperialisms-legacy-to-the-world-a-decade-after-911/,MB)
Since the past decade, this White House-labeled GWOT has only revealed itself to
be but a bare-naked policy of globalized militarist aggression by America . It swiftly
became a primary foreign policy thrust of US imperialism to advance its own
strategic agenda for world hegemony in the 21st Century. Washingtons principal global
aim since 1945 has always been to maintain and strengthen its overall control
and domination of the international system in all its aspectseconomic,
political, military, social-cultural, and scientific-technological. As the worlds leading imperialist
power, the US constantly seeks to ensure that its domestic economic
infrastructure is always able to sustain its productive capacities, provide for its citizens and
of course, to secure super-profits for its capitalist ruling-class. It does this through its
economic-political influence inside a wide range of international institutions (i.e. the United Nations system, the
World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, etc.).
Specifically, US imperialisms main pillars worldwide are a host of regionally placed puppet-states (e.g. the
Philippine capitalist state) that incessantly and unquestioningly carry out whatever Washington orders them to do.
As such, these agent-states persistently provide America with natural resources, open markets and military access.
Washington frequently
supports these pro-imperialist agent-governments with political-military backing for the
latters exploitative, oppressive and repressive state policies against their own peoples. State-terrorism
works both ways. But on the other hand, however, if any state, organization and/or individual around the
world dare to chart an independent path from the American hegemonic project, then US imperialism is
always ready and willing to steady the killing of any such terrorist enemy
of democracy. This is a major fundamental focus of the GWOT.
And in return, America never forgets to reciprocate with its own favors. Thus,
The war on terror is backed by capitalist desires to maintain

economic and imperial dominance
SocialismToday 01- Socialist magazine of the Socialist Party (Bushs war to
defend imperialist interests, SocialismToday 2001,
http://www.socialismtoday.org/61/ed.html, MB)
According to Bush, Blair and other alliance leaders, the US attacks are part of a war against
terrorism. The primary motive for the war, however, is the need for the US ruling class to
avenge the blow to its prestige and power inflicted on 11 September . Access
to the oil reserves of Central Asia is a factor, but not, in our view, the decisive one in the US strategy. US
capitalism operates on a global scale. The primacy of multi-national corporations and US banks
rests partly on their massive economic weight, but it also depends on the enforcing role of US-dominated agencies
US economic hegemony relies on

the backing of US military power or the threat posed by its overwhelming
military force, the strongest element of its prestige. This combination of economic, political and military
like the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. Ultimately, however,
power is designed to facilitate the worldwide access of big business to cheap labour, raw materials and markets,
and to maximise corporate profits. These relationships constitute a system of imperialism, dominated by the US
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Capitalism K
The
assault on Afghanistan which may later be extended to other states is a defence of
imperialist interests. It will not eliminate the threat of terrorism or guarantee
with Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and other advanced capitalist countries as junior partners-in-crime.
the future safety and security of citizens in the US, Britain, or elsewhere. The horrific anthrax attacks, the work of as
yet unidentified perpetrators, is a warning of the insidious form of terrorist attack that may be used by fanatical or
unbalanced individuals or groups with a variety of grievances. Will they be deterred by the carpet-bombing of
Taliban forces, or by even the elimination of the al-Qaida network? On the contrary, military action by imperialism
will vastly multiply the unstable elements in the international chain-reaction of social crisis, political upheaval and
armed conflict. The more dispossessed, alienated people there are, the greater the accumulation of grievances, the
more individuals there will be who, from despair, will be driven to find a way out through desperate acts of suicidal
Military repression further punishment of the impoverished
masses of the neo-colonial countries through imperialist intervention will
not overcome the threat of terrorism. It will not end violent conflicts, like those in Israel-
terrorism.
Palestine or Kashmir, which are part of the equation. The resolution of such conflicts and the creation of social
harmony require a just social order, the eradication of the economic and social roots of violence. It requires
economic security for everyone, with housing, education, health care, and all the things that contribute to a
civilised existence. It means the democratic running of society by the overwhelming majority, not autocratic rule by
the representatives of capitalists, landlords, tribal leaders, or warlords. Class rule by a minority of exploiters is
Imperialism, however, the most powerful

form of capitalism, has always sought to control the semi-developed and
poor countries through alliances with indigenous exploiters and militarists. The imperialist
powers are organically incapable of resolving the problems of war, civil conflict,
and terrorism.
incompatible with social justice and democracy.
Capitalism creates the economic and social inequalities that

are the root cause of terror
Slater 06-Slater has an A.B. and Ph. D. from Harvard and taught sociology at
Harvard, Brandeis, and UCSC (Phillip, The Root Causes of Terrorism and Why No
One Wants to End Them, The Huffington Post 10/25/06,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater/the-root-causes-of-terror_b_32466.html,
MB)
The people who do most to foment terrorism are not the fundamentalist imams
and ayatollahs, who only exploit the hopelessness around them . The people who do the
most are those who create that hopelessness in the first place--the oil monarchies, for example. 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
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
celestial disgust.
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
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. 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 self-destruct 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
have literally more money than they can possibly use, the vast majority are struggling to get by.
system can survive without contradictions, because humans are much more complex than their ideologies.
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Capitalism K
Anti-US terrorism is motivated by the threat of capitalist

expansion
Lower 04-Writer for the Axis of Logic, a research news site (Gerry, Terrorists Do
Not "Hate Our Freedoms". They Hate Self-Righteous Capitalism, The Axis of Logic
5/14/04, http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_7453.shtml, MB)
Freedom in our Revolutionary father's Democracy has always had two sides to its worldly presence. We can be free
TO DO as we want (e.g., freedom of religion) and we can be free FROM unnecessary restraint (e.g., freedom from
Islamic extremists want freedom TO BE

Islamic, freedom TO honor the values of Islam unencumbered by the
values of western capitalism. In large part, this quest for freedom stems from
Islam's fear that capitalism's values will destroy traditional Islamic family
and community, as they have already largely destroyed traditional family
and community in America. This Islamic quest for freedom TO DO requires, in turn, freedom FROM
western religious and political influence. For decades, Islamic fundamentalism has seen
American capitalism and militarism as a threat to Islam's own "freedom,"
religious oppression). Osama bin Laden and
which itself has more to do with religious law than with freedom (although it apparently does include the freedom
provided by SUVs and cell phones). Clearly there are semantic problems with our various concepts of "freedom" in
the world, all of which stem from the global human failure to comprehend what the fathers of American Democracy
meant by the term. An honest and ethical freedom has nothing to do with political license. Bush and bin Laden
practice a notion of "freedom" unrestricted by honesty, decency and human knowledge, unrestricted by the values
of democracy. Democracy and the millennial human struggle for freedom is, in the final analysis, the struggle TO
DO what is honest and right in the interests of the people and the land, and to do so unrestricted by the wants of a
handful of desperate extremists with too much money and too much power extorted from the people.
Terrorism is the direct result of US capitalist influence and

corruption
Schwarz 03-Author and journalist for the National Review and The Weekly
Standard (Stephen, The Real Roots of Islamic Extremism, The Dissident 2003,
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=18083 , MB)
The victimized terrorists are variously thought to be directing their anger
against Western-induced poverty; the Western-supported rise of Israel; or the Western
imperialism that displaced the Ottoman Empire. Many writers cite the unarguably tragic fate of Palestinian
refugees after the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948 as the motive for acts of terrorism against civilians in
Israel and elsewhere, including New York and Washington.
And Islamic extremism is alleged to
be a product of poverty and hopelessness in the Arab world, which are in

turn blamed on U.S. hegemony and capitalist globalization.
Similarly, opponents
of the war in Iraq told us that military action to remove Saddam Hussein would further aggravate Arab and Muslim
frustrations, spawning more suicide terror. However, certain persistent facts undermine these claims. To begin
with, no Palestinians participated in the attacks of September 11. Apart from the ideological godfather of Osama bin
Abdullah Azzamm, who was killed in Pakistan in 1989, few people from Palestine or Jordan have
turned to Islamist extremism in disgust with the
Marxist, class-driven ideology of Yasir Arafat, al- Fatah, and the Palestine
Liberation Organization Islamist extremism exists because of the desire of
corrupt and oppressive rulers to maintain themselves in power. Thus, we should
Laden,
joined al-Qaida. And Azzam himself
support the democratization of the Arab and Islamic countries. Democratization need not involve the West imposing
its political model on these societies. Rather, the Western role should be to sweep aside the obstacles to
modernization and democratization from within. Above all, the liberation of these societies will be a liberation of
Islam from Saudi-style corruption and oppression. An Islam liberated from the grip of Saudi Arabia could correct
itself and defeat extremism on its own terms.
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Capitalism K
90

Capitalism K
Turns case
Terrorism is a product of class tensions
Current Research, Vol. 4, P.231-232, JF)
Terrorism is an inevitable consequence that will feature more prominently
in the capitalist mode of production because the social contradiction
(economic crisis) that arises out of the conflicts between the social relations
and productive forces will usher a continuous struggle within classes as Karl
Marx
affirmed. Henk Overbeek (2004) noted that these social
relations of (re-)production are hierarchical and
They are furthermore guaranteed by the state: in the era of the

dominance of capitalist social relations, they are guaranteed by the
capitalist state10. Capitalism which fosters private property makes some people to own more than
others. In other words, capitalist mode of production fosters inequality among the
exploitative.
classes, and further divides the society into have (rich and
super-rich) and have-not (the poor). In the period of
the class antagonism among the classes becomes

sharper given the extreme polarisation and inequality between the rich and the poor, while
capitalist
capitalism
crisis and contradiction,
cannot continue to guarantee certain social welfare scheme
and economic package for employees
the ruling class (Capitalists and Pro-Business political elites in power)

ekes the position of class war by undertaken savage cuts in living standards and harsh
and the citizenry.
Therefore,
economic reforms, purposely to save capitalism from imminent collapse and negation. The rich and other
members of the ruling class are less likely to be affected by these cut in social spending than the working and
the lumpen classes. Therefore, the gap between the ruling class and the working/lumpen class become wider,
and this will inevitably affects the prevailing social relations within capitalism. Reformist measures such as less
pay (wages) but longer working time, mass sacking of employees, poor working conditions, cut in social spending
and harsh austerity measures will be implemented Thus triggers social conflicts and
class struggle among the classes. In this situation, there is potential that class struggle that will lead to
strikes, protest and industrial disharmony between the working class and the ruling class. As Alan Wood (2002)
noted that most obvious and painful manifestations of the crisis of capitalism are not only economic but those
phenomena that affect their personal lives at the most sensitive and emotional points: the breakdown of the
family, the epidemic of crime and violence, the collapse of the old values and morality with nothing to put in
their place, the constant outbreak of wars - all of this gives rise to a sense of instability, a lack of faith in the
present or the future11 These contradictions caused by the capitalist mode of production and the inability of the
state (domination of ruling class) to provide for Lumpen class is recipe for anarchy. This stems from that
unemployed and others who cannot understand the series of frustration will be forced to response to the crisis
one way or the other. Frustrated sections of the lumpen class are more likely form criminal gangs, radical Islamic
organisations, who will find more solutions to their plight and

social condition by engaging in anarchism, and other forms of individual terrorist
method against the state. Although, most of these organisations were formed
to champion a particular cause at the initial stage, but became a political
force when their ideologies found an echo and support from a sections of
disenchanted and frustrated member of lumpen class who join these
organisations in large numbers. The cause and ideology of these sectarian
organisations comes in direct confrontation with that of the ruling class, and
they engage in individual terrorism first to respond to the series of frustration and
problems they faced, and second, to influence and change the behaviour of the ruling class and
the state. This method of expressing grievances by the lumpen class is more likely to
compel the ruling class and the state to engage in counterterrorist
strategies, capable of clamping down and suppress these individual terroristic groups, given the instrument
of force and terror at its disposal. Therefore, terrorism is a tactic of all classes in class
conflict, rather than just a tactic of a lumpen class. Terrorism is therefore a reflection of
groups, sects, fascist and terrorist
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Capitalism K
social relations among social classes within modern capitalism (Jonathan,

2011) such that the use of terror can be perpetrated by any of the classes
whenever their interests, rights and priviledges are at stake. It must however be noted that the extent to which
lumpen class-induced individual terrorism will occur varies from countries to countries. Individual terrorism by a
section of the lumpen class is more likely to occur in developing countries than in developed one. This is because
in the developed countries, tensions among the classes are not so tense because the state can afford, and
ensure that social security benefits; unemployment stipends, single mother benefits, scholarship and student
loans, pension among others are made available to the working class and the lumpen class. This is possible
because there is so much capital (wealth of the state) nurtured by over-exploitation of third world countries visa-vis taxes and incomes from multinational firms. Therefore, there are enough resources to soften the antagonism
among social classes, and ensure that sections of the lumpen class are discouraged from forming or joining
sectarian groups that will engage in individual terrorism against the state.
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Link AT Pomo
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Capitalism K
Destroys coalitions
Only unifying around material, objective exploitation can
create broad coalitions-Even if they win class essentialism
claims, its comparatively better than the perm that devolves
back into relativistic ID politics.
moufawad-paul PhD in Philosophy,13,
(Jost, 4/23/13, M-L-M Mayhem!: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections, 10 Theses on

Identity Politics, http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2013/04/10-theses-onidentity-politics.html, [Accessed 7/4/13], JB).
1) By basing a definition of oppression on sites of identity wrenched from a
materialist basis, there emerges a concept of oppression that lacks any
revolutionary praxis. There can be no solidarity in a theory that divides
along multiple moments of identity and elevates these molecularities
above the molar basis that actually divides a given mode of production into
ruling and ruled classes. While it may be unfashionable in certain academic
circles to make this claim, the only basis of revolutionary unity is still the
basis of social class since a given mode of production, as well as the momentum
of history, is determined, in the last instance, by class struggle. 2) While it is
correct to reject the class essentialism of a crude marxism that in itself
produces its own form of identity politics (where the proletariat is automatically and
erroneously overcoded according to a white, male, hetero, able-bodied, and cisgendered identity), it is incorrect to substitute a post-modern politics of
differencewhich concretely means identity politicsin its place. To argue that
the proletariat's composition is defined by these sites of oppression is not
the same as clinging to a politics that speaks only of these sites,
wrenched from the material basis of social class and treated in an abstract
and intersecting manner, rather than the material fact of class division. Class
might be determined by these moments of oppression, but it also and
simultaneously determines these moments of oppression. Again: in the
final instance we have to recognize social/economic class as the basis of
revolutionary struggle. 3) The theory of intersectionality, a term flouted about by
those committed to an identitarian approach, is ultimately banal. While it is indeed
a fact that class, race, sex, gender, nationality, etc. intersect, recognizing this fact is
about as useful as recognizing that the clouds are grey when it is close to raining.
No theory of intersectionality proposed by proponents of post-modern and
identitarian approaches has done anything more significant than inform us of
the obvious fact that oppression intersects and overlaps; they generally fail
to explain why and how they overlap, and more importantly they fail to provide a
praxis of revolutionary unity. Here the statements of intersectionality mean only
the recognition of disparate trajectories that happen to intersect, just because they
do, rather than provide a precise epistemology of intersection. So wtf is the "unity"?
4) Revolutionary communists have known, for a long time, that disparate
oppressions intersect in the moment of class which is the final instance rather than
a separate identitarian trajectory. By pretending that social class is something
that is only a moment of intersection, rather than the material basis that
makes sense of intersection, identity politics cannot challenge capitalism
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Capitalism K
in a scientific manner. Instead, all it can do is offer moralizations. 5) Those

who champion the enshrined practices of identity politicsanti-oppression training,
"safe spaces", rarified theories of privilege, abstract movementismare generally
petty-bourgeois academics. The irony is that while many of these people possess a
significant level of intellectual privilege (and note that the post-modern theories
behind this politics are currently accessible mainly to students and intellectuals)
they do not grasp the privilege generated by their social class as the primary
moment of privilege, or even recognize that they are economically privileged, when
they speak of privilege, oppression, intersectionality, etc. Hence the failure to
produce a material analysis of oppression: under capitalism those who possess the
most "privilege" are those who possess the most economic autonomy, i.e. the
bourgeosie, and those who possess the intellectual autonomy to flourish in the
spaces opened by identity politics also possess, in some very significant ways and
regardless of their specific identities (oppressed or otherwise), the very privilege
they imagine they lack. None of this is to say that these practices were not at one
point of time necessary, or at least the logical result of the class essentialism of a
crude marxism, but just that they can be nothing more than a petty-bourgeois
activism that produces neo-reformism. 6) Although there have been numerous
marxist attempts to reject identity politics without falling back into class
essentialism, most have ended up reifying the content of identity politics.
(Hence the recent bad faith appropriation of proletarian feminism where the same
identitarian notion of "privilege" is presupposed and revolutionary theorists such as
Anuradha Gandhy are poached by bourgeois feminists who replace exploitation with
an idealist concept of oppression.) Generally speaking, in our attempt to supersede
a class essentialism while learning from the politics of identity, some of us tend to
err more on the side of the latter in an attempt to overcome the problems of the
former. This error makes sense in light of the history of crude marxism and yet is
still an error for if we claim we are marxists, then we need to offer something
more and beyond the simplest and idealist rejections of a marxism that belongs in
the dustbin of history. 7) The legacy of identity politics has produced a
problematic language idealism where we focus more on correct words and
phrases rather than the material basis of oppression And even in the
moment where we imagine we are indeed combatting real world
oppression we are, in fact, simply engaging with the level of appearance.
We often fail to recognize that those who lack the privileged education to
understand the correct terminology and turns of phrase are not necessarily
those who are chauvinist, just as we fail to recognize that those who possess
the education to hide their chauvinism with the correct language are
indeed the enemy. This language idealism becomes nothing but a selfrighteous exercise when it refuses to contemplate a praxis of mass
pedagogy based on actually changing the material circumstances and
instead focuses on anti-oppression training, atomized concepts of privilege,
and how to speak correctly. It becomes utterly rarified and intentionally ignorant
when it demands that we waste our time examining every word and turn of phrase
at the expense of changing the material circumstances upon which this language is
dependent. Moralism abounds. 8) Now there are innumerable marxists who appeal
to identity politics in order to justify their lack of praxis. It is no accident that those
who are the least active in attempting to engage with the proletarian and declass
are also those who most rigidly abide by the dictates of identity politicsindeed,
the theoretical constellation of identity politics often provides the inactive
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Capitalism K
marxist with an excuse to remain inactive. One must not engage with the
masses if they say the wrong words; one must not engage with concrete
reality if it cannot be transformed so easily into a safe space. 9) We need to
ask why the [lack of revolutionary] praxis mobilized by identity politics matters only
to radicals at the centres of global capitalism. Why is this set politics seen as pettybourgeois by revolutionary movements at the global peripheriesmovements that
are tired of those intellectuals who, in the moment of theorizing about the
subaltern's ability to speak for itself, attempt to decide the manner in which this
subaltern can speak in order to be understood as subaltern? When we ask these
questions we may be forced to recognize that identity politics is connected to a
radical petty-bourgeois strain of what might be called the labour aristocracyor at
the very least a group of privileged migrant ex-patriatesand that its theorization
of privilege is also an attempt to obscure its own especial privilege. 10) The fact
that identity politics, and its theoretical basis in post-modern theory, is
predominant only at the centres of capitalism is no accident. This is not to
say that the insights produced by this ultimately petty-bourgeois practice have not
been useful and significant (indeed some crude marxisms it sought to correct were
also petty-bourgeois) only that these insights are limited precisely by their
petty-bourgeois idealism and inability to examine the material basis of
realitythat is, social class. Social class is precisely that which can be
obscured at the privileged centres of imperialism.
concern with the discursive problems is merely rearranging

deck chairs on the titanic- modifying the superstructure fails
to address its underlying causes and fragments politics.
(Josh, Dec 18, 2012, M-L-M Mayhem!: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections Because

and Despite of Identity Politics http://moufawadpaul.blogspot.com/2012/12/because-and-despite-of-identity-politics.html, [Accessed
7/4/13], JB).
Because of We need a unified movement that is capable of breaking away from
the unrecognized identity politics of excepting a certain type of (unionized and
white) worker as being the proletariat. Postmodern identity politics might have
given us the realization of such a worker but it has not given us the
politics of apprehending such a worker as the "hard core" of the proletariat
since it also resists totalization. Indeed, those who champion identity politics
spend a lot of time speaking of the structure of oppression but, in the end,
they are utterly incapable of explaining the root meaning of structural
oppression. Only marxism, which delves into the material foundations of a
given mode of production, can provide us with this insight.
Postmodernism only speaks of the surface reality and, due to its concern
with the surface, refuses to grapple with deep material structuresthis
would be scientific and totalizing, after all. Despite of In order to overcome
capitalism we need a unified movement, springing from the kernel of the hard
core of the proletariat, that is dedicated to revolution. A movement fractured
down innumerable identity lines is incapable of responding to capitalist
hegemonyit can only result in an ineffectual movementism. The point is
to develop a movement based on a shared political line rather than
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Capitalism K
splintered identity concerns and totalization, the supposed sin according to

postmodernism, where these concerns finally intersect based on a proper
understanding of class is where such a movement can emerge. Capitalism
will not fall based on innumerable "unique raindrops" or marbles scattered upon
multiple trajectories: just as the bourgeoisie was united as a class against tributary
feudalism, the proletariat (but understood in the above sense) must be united
against capitalism. But what does the praxis of postmodernism provide? Only
fragmentation. One speaks from their subjected position and this speaking is
supposedly radicalbut how do we gauge the distance between opposed subject
positions at that horizon where stand-point ethics becomes confused? Does a white
trans woman's experience trump the experience of a queer woman of colour? Do we
simply count up the oppressions all the while ignoring the political line? The point
is to unify these oppressions under a political line, totalizing them into a
counter-hegemonic unity and this is where marxism again takes over
from postmodernism.
Only the universalism a priori rejected by postmodernism

allows for unified coalitional politics.
(Josh, Dec 18, 2012, M-L-M Mayhem!: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections Because
and Despite of Identity Politics http://moufawadpaul.blogspot.com/2012/12/because-and-despite-of-identity-politics.html, [Accessed
7/4/13], JB).
Although I could write a very long and involved essay about some very specifically
philosophical limitations of postmodernism in regards to praxis (and have even done
so in my dissertation), I'm not going to spend too much time discussing these
problems here. Suffice to say, the rejection of the productive subject and
universalism permit no foundation for resistance; if there is no such thing as
a productive subject that is being dehumanized, that is, then how can we speak of
oppression? (In order to answer this rhetorical question, I urge interested readers
with a philosophical bent to read Jeff Noonan's Critical Humanism and the Politics of
Difference.) I could also speak of the idealist understanding of "power" the
postmodern tradition promotesan understanding that divorces power from
economic and political foundations and makes it transhistorical, something
that was not at all produced by humans but produces humans, and thus is
akin to the notion of power/violence promoted by the arch anti-semite Eugene
Duhring in the nineteenth century and adequately taken apart by Engels. These are
important philosophical interventions, true, but they would amount to tens of pages
and are, anyhow, besides the point.
For the point is that the only politics that can be expressed by the
postmodern tradition is a disunified politics, inexorably fragmented, that
is incapable of responding to the fact of capitalist hegemony. The fact that
it promotes this disunity as a strengthby virtue of rejecting the unification that is
only possible under the despised "totalization"is something that should be treated
as extremely dubious while, at the same time, recognized as a logical result of the
way politics was practiced at the centres of capitalism until the advent of
postmodernism.
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Capitalism K
Cant recognize oppression

Aff fails- Pomo collapses into an extreme relativism that has no
basis for labeling oppression.
(A side note Here we find ourselves trapped in the problem of post-modern

political praxis: the rejection of totalization means the inability to decide on
precisely what counts as oppression outside of some bland and toothless notions
of "stand-point ethics" and "subalternity". Interestingly enough, post-modernism
does reject the concept of the human subject and thus attempts to place itself, in its
own way, outside of bourgeois humanism But at the same time it ends up
reincorporating the content of this bourgeois humanism within its notion
of the decentred subject which is precisely the sublimated bourgeois subject.
Why? Because there is no one that is being oppressed, since there is nothing that
can be oppressed due to the fact that there is no basis for declaring what
counts as oppression. If all attempts to establish oneself as a subject, even
collectively, are doomed to become murderous, and all revolutionary ideologies
are "totalizing" (no more or less "totalizing", once the theory is reduced to its
political implications, then the status quo of domination) then every movement
with a coherent politics that provides a narrative is an instance of
murderous power. Upon this pedestal, which is ultimately a dead-end for
revolution, is built identity politics which is a perfect example of bourgeois
moralism: while claiming to be radical, especially in its thorough recognition of
sites of oppression and privilege, it does so in the most moralistic sense. But
again, all of this is a [rather hasty] tangental point which I may or may not unpack
in a future post)
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Capitalism K
***Impact***
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Capitalism K
Impact Ethics
Capitalism is dehumanizing People become nothing more
than material conditions of production.
Meszaros, University of Sussex professor, 95
(Istvan, 1995, Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition, pg. 527, JZ)
the
capitalist concept of 'property' can play a vital part in legitimating the
established - apriori prejudged and materially fixed, as well as
legally/politically safeguarded - relations of production and the dominant
mode of appropriation (and expropriation) corresponding to it, in sharp
contrast to its original meaning. For: Property originally means no more than a human being's
The raison d'ttre of such changes is not too difficult to identify. For through its radically perverted meaning,
relation to his natural conditions of production as belonging to him, as his, as presupposed along with hir own being;
relations to them as natural presuppositions of his self, which only form, so to speak, his extended body. He actually
does not relate to his conditions of production, but rather has a double existence, both subjectively as he himself,
and objectively in these natural non-organic conditions of his existence. . . . Property originally means - in its Asiatic,
Slavonic, ancient classical, Germanic form - the relation of the working (producing or self-reproducing) subject to
the conditions of his production or reproduction as his own. It will therefore have different forms depending on the
conditions of this reproduction. Production itself aims at the reproduction of the producer within and together with
these, his objective conditions of existence.
The capitalist mode of social reproduction

could not be more distant from this original determination of production
and property. Under the rule of capital, the working subject can no longer
consider the conditions of his production and reproduction as his own
property. They are no longer the self-evident and socially safeguarded
presuppositions of his being, nor the natural presuppositions of his self as
constitutive of 'his extended body'. On the contrary, they now belong to a
reified 'alien being' who confronts the producers with its own demands
and subjugates them to the material imperatives of its own constitution.
Thus the original relationship between the subject and object of
productive activity is completely overturned, reducing the human being to
the dehumanized status of a mere 'material condition of production'.
'Having' dominates 'being' in all spheres of life. At the same time, the real
self of the productive agents is destroyed through the fragmentation and
degradation of work while they are subjugated to the brutalizing
requirements of the capitalist labour process. They are acknowledged as
legitimately existing 'subjects' only as the manipulated consumers of
commodities. Indeed, they become the more cynically manipulated - as the
fictitious 'sovereign consumers' - the greater the pressure of the
decreasing rate of utilization. Naturally, under such circumstances and
determinations the productively active human beings cannot occupy their
rightful place as a human beings in capital's equations, let alone can they
be considered within the parameters of the capital system as the true aim
of production. The commodified and reified social relationship between
the productive subjects and their now independent controller - who, as a
matter of materially constituted and legally enforced rights, acts as the
sole proprietor of the conditions of the worker's production and selfreproduction -appear mystifying and impenetrable. Equally, the task of
social reproduction and metabolic interchange with nature is fetishistically
defined as the reproduction of the objectified/alienated conditions of
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Capitalism K
production of which the sentient human being is no more than a strictly

subordinated part, as a 'material factor of production'. And since the
established productive system, under the rule of capital, cannot reproduce
itself unless it can do so on an ever enlarged scale, production not only
must be deemed the aim of mankind but -as a mode of production to
which there cannot be any alternative -it must be premissed b the neverending multiplication of material wealth as the aim of production.
Capitalism creates a consumer society that encourages

material focus that results in dehumanization
McGregor, Mt St Vincent University peace and studies
undergraduate, 3
(Sue, April 2003, Consumerism as a Source of Structural Violence,
http://www.kon.org/hswp/archive/consumerism.pdf, JZ)
In a consumer society,
the act of consuming eventually leads to materialism,

defined as a culture where material interests are primary and supercede
other social goals (Friedman, 1993). Durning (1992) claims that people living in a
consumer culture attempt to satisfy social, emotional, and spiritual needs
with material things. This materialism eventually co-opts peoples physical
lives, community, and spirit because it gives a misleading sense of being
in control and secure, in the short term. A consumer society is fast paced, based on round the clock
living but people were not biologically designed for this pace. To compensate for the stress, as a quick fix,
people believe that all problems have a material or money solution.

People use spending and materialism as a way to build a new ego. People
try to become new persons by buying products that support their selfimage. Displaying all of the goods one has accumulated helps one gain prestige and envy, thereby living out the
ideology of conspicuous consumption. Unfortunately, this practice creates a false, temporary sense of inner peace
People
eventually begin to think that things are out of whack, that their priorities
are mixed up, that their moral center is being lost so . . . they spend more
to cover up the fear. To exacerbate this fear, technology has left people
isolated with no sense of belonging. It has cocooned them to the extent that they are blinded to
because the religion of the market (a system of beliefs) co-opts aspects of humanity and spirituality.
their destructive ways. Wisalo (1999) suggests that such destructive consumerism occurs because of humans
insecurity in their hearts and minds. Ironically, people allegedly consume to gain this security. He says that
people feel they can become a new person by purchasing those products
that support their self-image of whom they are, want to be, and where
they want to go. Unfortunately, this approach to becoming a new person,
to developing a sense of self, is unsustainable. People "under the
influence of consumerism" never feel completely satisfied because owning
something cannot help meet the security of heart and mind, the deeper
needs of humanity. Constantly spending and accumulating only gives
short-term fulfilment and relief from the need to have peace and security
in life.
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Capitalism K
Impact Environment
Its reverse causal we must destroy capitalism before we can
fight environmental exploitation and degradation
Altvater Former Prof. of Political Science at University of Berlin 2007 (Elmar,
The Social and Natural Environment of Fossil Capitalism,
http://www.globallabour.info/en/Altvater-Fossilism-SR-2007%20(rev.).doc, NMS)
The reason for capitalisms high economic impact on the environment is to
be found in its double character. It has a value dimension (the monetary value
of the gross national product, of world trade, of FDI, of financial flows, etc.) but is
also a system of material and energy flows in production and consumption,
transportation and distribution. Economic decisions concerning production first
consider values and prices, profit margins and monetary returns, on capital
invested. In this sphere the ruling principle is only the economic rationality of
profit-maximizing decision-makers. But the decisions they take have
important impacts on nature, due to the material and energy dimension of
economic processes. Under capitalist conditions the environment is more
and more transformed into a contested object of human greed. The
exploitation of natural resources, and their degradation by a growing
quantity of pollutants, results in a man-made scarcity, leading to conflicts
over access to them. Access to nature (to resources and sinks) is uneven and
unequal and the societal relation of man to nature therefore is conflict-prone. The
ecological footprints of people in different countries and regions of the world are
of very different sizes , reflecting severe inequalities of incomes and wealth.
Ecological injustices therefore can only usefully be discussed if social class
contradictions and the production of inequality in the course of capital
accumulation are taken into account.
Capitalism exploits the environment in order to continue

expanding and making profits
Foster, Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon, 2009(John Bellamy. The
Monthly Review A Failed System: The World Crisis of Capitalism and its Impact on
China
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/03/01/a-failed-system-the-world-crisis-of-capitalistglobalization-and-its-impact-on-china NMS)
As the foregoing indicates, the world is currently facing the threat of a new
world deflation-depression, worse than anything seen since the 1930s.
The ecological problem has reached a level that the entire planet as we
know it is now threatened. Neoliberal capitalism appears to be at an end, along
with what some have called neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics.54
Declining U.S. hegemony, coupled with current U.S. attempts militarily to restore its
global hegemony through the so-called War on Terror, threaten wider wars and
nuclear holocausts. The one common denominator accounting for all of these crises
is the current phase of global monopoly-finance capital. The fault lines are most
obvious in terms of the peril to the planet. As Evo Morales, president of Bolivia,
has recently stated: Under capitalism we are not human beings but
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Capitalism K
consumers. Under capitalism mother earth does not exist, instead there
are raw materials. In reality, the earth is much more important than
[the] stock exchanges of Wall Street and the world. [Yet,] while the United
States and the European Union allocate 4,100 billion dollars to save the
bankers from a financial crisis that they themselves have caused,
programs on climate change get 313 times less, that is to say, only 13
billion dollars.
Capitalisms need to dominate and exploit the environment,

just like the working class, will only lead to our destruction
International Perspective 2009 (Internationalist Perspective Capitalism,
Technology and the Environment http://internationalist-perspective.org/IP/iparchive/ip_50_environment.html NMS)
Fundamental to my whole approach to capitalisms relationship to nature is
that it is, in the end, essentially the same as capitals relationship to wage
labour. Capital dominates both, living labour and nature, in order to
exploit them both. In both cases, capital uses technology as a mediating factor in
order to realize, enforce and reproduce at a higher level these relations of
domination and exploitation. In both cases, the relationships and the processes
involved are linked and analogous. Capital is antagonistic toward the natural
environment just as it is antagonistic to wage labour. Capitals domination
and exploitation of nature, given the latters finite limits and specificities, leads
to destruction, degradation and despoliation of that nature, just as its
domination and exploitation of wage labour, given the physical limits and
specificities of human beings, leads to destruction, degradation and exhaustion of
the working class. Capital utilizes technological means in order to facilitate its
maximum exploitation of both living labour and natural resources. Further still,
just as the working class fights back against capitals depredations, so too
does nature in ways we are all too familiar with today, such as irreversible
climate change, widespread industrial diseases such as cancer, natural
disasters of all sorts, etc. But in reality, it is not nature taking revenge on
humanity. That would be to personify or subjectify nature, to ascribe to it
intentionality. In fact, all of these environmental catastrophes, which
constitute an expanding environmental crisis, result from capitals
technological transformation (and mutation (thus: trans-mutation?)) of natural
ecosystems and processes into monstrously destructive forces for humankind
which previously, naturally, they were not. Highly developed capitalist
domination of humanity and nature has intervened in and transformed the
myriad intricate and inter-related natural processes of the planet to such
an extent that the current natural environment we live within cannot be
truly said to be natural; it has been adulterated, contaminated, poisoned
and destroyed to such an extent that it is more accurately described as
the capitalistically modified natural environment.
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Capitalism K
Capitalist drive for profit exploits the environment and

threatens life itself
One Struggle 2011 (Kasama Project, Earth Day to May Day: Targeting
Exploitation and Ecocide http://kasamaproject.org/environment/3186-18earth-dayto-may-day-targeting-exploitation-and-ecocide NMS)
Capitalism is the economic system that dominates the planet. It runs on
the exploitation of human labor to turn the living world into dead
commodities, for the profit of a few . The small, powerful minority who own the
means of production enforce their dominance through their control over political
and cultural institutions, and their monopoly on force. They create a situation of
dependencyforcing us to work for them to obtain basic needs like food and
shelter. They annihilate those who resist or refuse to assimilate. This system
values profit over life itself. It has been built on land theft and
destruction, genocide, slavery, deforestation and imperialist wars . It
commits numberless atrocities as a matter of routine daily functioning. It
kills nearly 10 million children worldwide under age 5 each year, because
its not profitable to save them.* It kills 100,000 people annually in the US
by denying decent health care. More than 54% of the US discretionary budget is
spent on imperialist aggression. Recent casualties include more than a million
civilians in Iraq, and more than 46,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan
and Iraq. The economic and psychological violence wrought upon the worlds
inhabitants is so extensive and comprehensive that its effectively allencompassing. The system is killing the entire planet, the basis for all life.
Its converted 98% of old growth forests into lumber. 80% of rivers
worldwide no longer support life. 94% of the large fish in the oceans are
gone. Phytoplankton, the tiny plants that produce half of the oxygen we
breathe, have declined by 40% since 1950. 120 species per day become
extinct. Industries produce 400 million tons of hazardous waste every year.
Recently, the water in 89% of US cities tested has been found to contain the
carcinogen hexavalent chromium. To feed capitalisms insatiable need for
economic expansion, increasingly dangerous methods of energy extraction
are being perpetrated: deep sea drilling, oil extraction from tar sands,
mountaintop removal, fracking. No matter the consequences, no matter
what the majority of people may want, those in power insist on (and
enforce) their non-negotiable right to poison the land, water and air in
pursuit of maximum profit. The threat to our common existence on Earth
is accelerating and intensifying. This is a situation of extreme urgency.
Clearly, a global economic system based on perpetual expansion is
unsustainable. A system characterized by oppression and coercion is pure misery
for the majority. The obvious conclusion is that we need to get rid of it, and change
to a way of life that doesnt involve exploitation and ecocide. But first we must face
one hard fact: this system wont stop unless its stopped. It can not be escaped,
reformed, redeemed, cajoled, abandoned, or rejected. The system must be fought,
defeated and dismantled.
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Capitalism K
Capitalist drive for profit disregards environmental concerns

Magdoff and Magdoff, Editor of Monthly Review and worked for the United
States Department of Commerce, Professor of Plant and Soil Science at University of

Vermont and a director of the Monthly Review Foundation, 2005 (Harry and Fred.
July 1st 2005. Monthly Review. Approaching Socialism
http://monthlyreview.org/2005/07/01/approaching-socialism NMS)
Ecological degradation occurred in numerous precapitalist societies. But with
capitalism there is a new dimension to the problem, even as we have better
understood the ecological harm that human activity can create. The drive for
profits and capital accumulation as the overriding objective of economic
activity, the control that economic interests exert over political life, and the many
technologies developed in capitalist societies that allow humans rapidly to
change their environmentnear and wide, intentionally or notmean that
adverse effects on the environment are inevitable. Pollution of water, air,
and soil are natural byproducts of production systems organized for the
single goal of making profits. Under the logic of capitalist production and
exchange there is no inherent mechanism to encourage or force industry
to find methods that have minimal impact on the environment. For example,
new chemicals that are found useful to produce manufactured goods are
routinely introduced into the environmentwithout the adequate
assessment of whether or not they cause harm to humans or other
species. The mercury given off into the air by coal-burning power plants
pollutes lakes hundreds of miles away as well as the ocean. The routine
misuse of antibiotics, added to feeds of animals that are being maintained in
the overcrowded and unhealthy conditions of factory farms, has caused
the development of antibiotic resistant strains of disease organisms. It is a
technique that is inconsistent with any sound ecological approach to raising
animals, but it is important to capital because profits are enhanced. In
addition, the development of an automobile-centered society in the United States
has had huge environmental consequences. Vast areas of suburbs, sometimes
merging into a megatropolis, partially erase the boundaries between
communities. The waste of fuel by commuting to work by car is only part of the
story of suburbanization, as some people work in the city while others work in
different suburbs. Shopping in malls reachable only by cars and taking children to
school and play require transportation over significant distances. Climate change
resulting from global warming, not completely predictable, but with mostly
negative consequences, is another repercussion of unfettered capitalist
exploitation of resources. As fossil fuels are burned in large quantities by
factories, electrical generation plants, and automobiles and trucks, carbon dioxide
levels in the atmosphere have increased. There is some concern that the gradual
warming could actually lead to a fairly rapid change, with such factors as the
melting of polar ice, changes in precipitation and river flow, and a cessation of the
thermohaline conveyor (of which the Gulf Stream is a part) that brings warm water
to the north Atlantic and helps keep North America and Europe warm (see The
Pentagon and Climate Change, Monthly Review, May 2004).
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Capitalism K
Impact Genocide
The economic exploitation and expansion spurred by
Capitalism leads to genocide
Sethness 13- author of Imperiled Life: Revolution against Climate Catastrophe
(Javier, The Structural Genocide That Is Capitalism, Truthout 2013, http://truthout.org/opinion/item/16887-the-structural-genocide-that-is-capitalism, MB)
In this book, Leech guides his readers through theoretical examinations of the concept of genocide ,
showing why the term should in fact be applied to the capitalist mode of production . He
then illustrates capitalism's genocidal proclivities by exploring four case studies: the ongoing legacy of the 1994 North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Mexico; the relationship between trade
liberalization and genetically-modified seeds on the one hand and mass-suicide on
the part of Indian agriculturalists on the other; material deprivation and generalized premature death throughout
much of the African continent and the global South, as results from hunger, starvation, and preventable disease; and the ever-worsening climatic and
environmental crises. Leech then closes by considering the relevance of Antonio Gramsci's conceptions of cultural hegemony in attempting to explain the
puzzling consent granted to this system by large swathes of the world's relatively privileged people - specifically, those residing in the imperial core of
Europe and the United States - and then recommending the socialist alternative as a concrete means of abolishing genocide, while looking to the Cuban
and Venezuelan regimes as imperfect, but inspirational experiments in these terms In sum, while I take issue with some of his analysis and aspects of his
conceptualization of anticapitalist alternatives, his work should certainly be well-received, read and discussed by large multitudes. Following this opening
the theoretical case for considering capitalism to be genocidal , Leech

a few particularly devastating examples from the contemporary world to illuminate his argument.
In Mexico, the passing of NAFTA in 1994 has led to the dispossession of
campesinos (peasants) on a grand scale, as the country's stipulated
importation of heavily subsidized maize and other crops from the United States effectively led millions to
discussion of
takes
abandon agriculture and migrate to Mexican and US cities in search of employment in the manufacturing sector, in accordance with neoclassical theories
of "comparative advantage" - and very much mirroring the means by which capitalism emerged historically through the destruction of the commons in
this forcible displacement has resulted in the explosion of

precarity within the informal sector of the economy in Mexico, as many ex-campesinos
fail to find traditional proletarian jobs, and it has also driven the horrifying feminicides of
maquiladora workers in the Mexican border regions, migration en masse to the United States (and
England. For Leech,
attendant mass death in the Sonoran desert), as well as the horrid drug war launched in 2006 by then-president Felipe Caldern. Leech sees similar
processes in Colombia, which hosts the second-largest number of internally displaced persons in the world (4 million), with many of these people having
been removed from their lands due to military and paramilitary operations undertaken to make way for megaprojects directed by foreign corporations.
in India, Leech reports that more than 216,000 farmers committed suicide between
1997 and 2009, largely out of desperation over crushing debts they
accumulated following the introduction of genetically-modified seed crops,
Alarmingly,
as demanded by the transnational Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS, 1994) and the general shift from subsistence to exportoriented agriculture. In many cases, the genetically engineered seed varieties failed to expand yields to the levels promised by Monsanto, Cargill, and co.,
leading farmers then to take on further debt merely to cover the shortfalls as well as to pay for the next iteration of crops - which by conscious design
were modified at the molecular level so as not to be able to reproduce naturally, thus ensuring biotech firms sustained profitability (a "captured market,"
as it were). That such a dynamic should end in a downward spiral of death and destruction should be unsurprising, for all its horror. Leech further
capitalism's structurally genocidal nature in a chapter examining

Africa south of the Sahel. It is this world region that has been "most severely
impacted" by capital's genocidal imperatives, claims Leech, and it is difficult to argue with this claim:
illustrates his case regarding
Merely consider the millions who succumb to AIDS on the continent each year or the other millions who perish in the region annually due to lack of
medical treatment for complications within pregnancy or conditions such as diarrhea and malaria, themselves catalyzed by pre-existing background
malnutrition. All this deprivation is exacerbated, argues Leech, by food-aid regimes overseen by wealthier societies - which in the US case demands that
food be purchased from and shipped by US companies, thus effectively removing a full half of the total resources intended for the hungry - and the
infamous land-grabs being perpetrated on the continent in recent years by investors from such countries as Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Fundamentally,
the conflict is one based on the guiding principles of capital: Because

Africans in general do not possess the requisite income to "demand" food
commodities within international capitalism, they themselves do not
constitute a "viable market" and so are rendered invisible - nonpersons, or
"unpeople."
though,
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Capitalism K
The imperial empires supported by capitalism perpetuate

genocide
Ahmed 11- Writer for The Guardian and director of the Institute for Policy
Research and Development (IPRD) (Nafeez Mosaddeq, Colonial Dynamics of
Genocide Imperialism, Identity and Mass Violence*, Cesran International 2011,
http://cesran.org/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=1231%3Acolonial-dynamics-of-genocideimperialism-identity-and-mass-violence&catid=58%3Amakale-veraporlar&Itemid=99&lang=en, MB)
Modern empires have invariably been associated with violence . Historical cases
such as the European conquest of the Americas or the British colonization of
Australasia are viewed by some scholars as constituting or at least containing genocidal
episodes. Yet this conclusion is problematized by the sheer variegation in the experiences of colonized peoples
in different regions, who died in large numbers for many reasons, not all of them obvious, and many of them
inextricably intertwined for instance due to the impact of European diseases, massacres, onerous labour
conditions, alcohol abuse, and even depression (and suicide) due to socio-cultural dislocation. The question of
whether such cases of European imperial violence were genocidal, cannot be resolved without re-examining the
conceptual evolution of genocide against the background of European imperial mass violence. These examples
underscore the need to interrogate the relationship between imperialism, mass violence and genocide. Is genocide
why does imperialism frequently involve diverse

forms of mass violence against civilian populations ? And if the concept of genocide
intrinsic to imperialist practices? If not,
excludes the aforesaid examples of imperial mass violence despite their prevalence, does this suggest that the
concept itself needs re-evaluation? Of course, how scholars answer such questions depends ultimately on their
preferred definitions of genocide.[iv] These range from minimalist exclusivist conceptualizations restricting its
theoretical scope to a highly specified type of mass killing,[v] to maximalist inclusivist conceptualizations
encompassing a wide variety of forms of group violence.[vi] These prevalent approaches are also in tension with
the original sociological conceptualization of genocide elaborated by Polish Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin (19001959), for whom genocidal perpetrators could be states as well as decentralized and dispersed groups such as
inherently colonial form of genocide

reveals the inner dynamics of its ideological radicalization process in the
context of socio-political contestations, that can fuel the construction of new bifurcated inside
and outside group identities and justify mass violence against the Other .
settler-colonists. Critically, Lemkins insight into the
This paper thus excavates Lemkins sociological definition of genocide to develop a working theoretical framework
by which to understand the social causes of contemporary mass violence. It explores the implications of this
framework by briefly exploring the examples of Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Indonesia, and how a Lemkininian
approach might require if not a re-interpretation, a re-contextualisation of these genocidal episodes in a global
context. The paper thus demonstrates that a Lemkininian model, arming us with a better understanding of the
socio-political and transnational relations of ideological radicalization, could lead to more robust early warning
systems, as well as a more refined understanding of how to respond preventively by transforming the specific
process that can lead to the radicalised construction of exclusionary group identities that can culminate in
genocide.
Imperialistic expansion inevitably leads to genocideRwanda

proves
International Communist Current 04- (Genocide in Rwanda: The crimes
of French imperialism, ICC 2004,

http://en.internationalism.org/wr/274_france_rwanda.htm, MB)
We are currently celebrating a sad anniversary: ten years ago, French imperialism, under the banner of
humanitarianism, re-entered Rwanda in force, armed to the teeth with assault cars at the front. It
was to preside over one of the worst cases of genocide in history . According to the
official figures between 500,000 and a million people were killed in 100 days ,
almost unnoticed by the world at large. The French army had waited cynically at the frontiers of Rwanda for the
ethnic slaughter to reach its climax before intervening. Meanwhile inside Rwanda our countrys troops, under
orders, had trained the killers who carried out the genocide against the Tutsi. We armed them, encouraged them
and, when the day came, provided cover for them. I discovered this story in the Rwandan hills. It was hot, it was
summer time. It was wonderful weather, it was magnificent. It was the time of the genocide (Patrick de Saint
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Capitalism K
Exupery, journalist from Figaro and author of the book Linavouable: la France au Rwanda; see Le Monde
Diplomatique March 2004). It was indeed France which, for a number of years, had been training and arming the
local gendarmerie, the Hutu militia, and the Rwandan Armed Forces. It was France which had fully supported the
From the early 90s Rwanda had become a prize in

the geo-strategic game between French imperialism and American
imperialism. Rwanda had an obvious importance in this inter-imperialist
conflict because it is at the frontier of the zone under French control and the one under US control. Meanwhile
regime of president Habyarimana.
300,000 orphans were wandering the country. Cholera and famine were on the rise and rapidly carried off more
than 40,000 Hutu refugees, while combat helicopters, Mirages and Jaguars belonging to the French army waited for
The power mainly responsible for this vast death-toll

was without doubt French imperialism, which used the ethnic conflict to
strike at its US rival. Its the same French imperialism which today hides
behind the ideology of pacifism. The humanitarian alibi: a weapon of war The humanitarian alibi
another opportunity to intervene.
was used to cover the barbaric policy of France ten years ago. It was used again in 1999 to justify the bombing of
Serbia and the military occupation of Kosovo. Today in Kosovo there is a renewal of ethnic conflict, and the French
army, as it did in Rwanda, is using the opportunity to increase its presence on the ground. Meanwhile, Tony Blair
points to the lack of humanitarian intervention in Rwanda to argue in favour of the Iraq war, telling us that the only
hope for countries subjected to ethnic slaughter or mass murder by undemocratic states is the benign intervention
of the civilised powers. Rwanda, like the Balkans, like Iraq, provides us with proof that there can be nothing benign
in the intervention of an imperialist state. On the country, its only result can be to take the local barbarism onto a
higher level .
Unless the world capitalist system is overthrown, the Rwandan
genocide is a foretaste of humanitys future.
The capitalist system creates disparities that perpetuate mass

genocide
Corrigan, Department of Psychology @ University of
Portsmouth, 11
[Stephen, January 2011, The Role of Capitalism in Constructing and Maintaining
Mass Hate and Genocide, p. 1-2, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
Marxism focuses on the State creating polarised socio-classes; the

proletariat (work force) and the bourgeoisie (ruling class), making inequality
inevitable (Quinney, 1975, pl92). Social Disorganisation highlights inner-city
areas consisting highly of ethnic minority populations as they are largely
ascribed to the proletariat socio-class (cited by Rock, 2007, pl9). This sociopolarisation limits ethnic minorities from achieving transgression up the
socio-economic ladder as their working opportunities are restricted, and
they are depicted socially inferior to the ruling bourgeoisie (Quinney, 1975,
pl93). This allows blame for unattainable economic progression to be mobilised
against the minority faction making them appear harmful to society (Hall, Critcher,
Jefferson, Clarke & Roberts, 1978, p387). The role of Capitalism is therefore
centred on its differentiation between socio-classes, enabling
discrimination to ensue by allowing the powerful to form prejudices
against the powerless. Capitalism can extend mass-hate beyond initial
borders, with economic progression being an overriding principle. Marxism argues
Colonialism extends Capitalism, promoting social inequality elsewhere to
profit the metropole (Head State) at the expense of the indigenous people
(Stoler & Cooper, 1997, p3). This can result in social inequality being
manufactured against the indigenous majority, making Capitalism
instrumental in constructing mass-hate and genocide. Capitalist regimes
promote 'individualistic concerns,' but can individual prejudice flourish under
collective powers?
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Capitalism K
Capital is intrinsically linked to the Western power identity

that promotes silent genocide
Nelson, PhD in the Department of PolSci @ Carleton University,
12
[Matthew, 2012, Book Review: The Politics of Genocide,
http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/article/viewFile/15879/15778, p. 300303, accessed 7/8/13, YGS]
While
genocide
commonly refers to the killing or attempted killing
of an entire ethnic group or people, its
is often used to
describe diverse forms of direct or indirect killing, which has resulted in
its frequency of use and recklessness of application over the past several decades
(103). In The Politics of Genocide, Herman and Peterson argue that while members of the Western
establishment and news media have rushed to denounce bloodbaths in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda,
Kosovo, and Darfur, they have largely remained silent over war crimes and mass
atrocities committed by allied regimes in Southeast Asia, Central America, the Middle East,
definition is highly controversial
and Sub-Saharan Africa. As Noam
and the subject of extensive debate. The term
Chomsky suggests in the foreword to the book, since the end of the Cold
War,
we have witnessed the emergence of an era of virtual Holocaust denial

or genocide denial with a vengeance (7-9). In substantiating their
argument, Herman and Peterson draw on years of meticulous research, careful
documentation and in-depth, empirical analysis of atrocities and bloodbaths around the
world. The authors have done an excellent job at exposing the double standards of the US news media and its
hypocritical system of propaganda. In this sense, The Politics of Genocide offers a needed
corrective to those who manipulate and abuse the genocide label for the
purposes of promoting the expansion of imperial power interests around
the globe. Similar to Hermans past work, however, the book offers less in the way of a theoretical addition
to debates surrounding the nature of genocide and imperialism, instead providing a series of well-documented
case studies. Like the five filters in Herman and Chomskys Manufacturing Consent, the phenomenon of
while Herman
and Peterson, like Chomsky, do perceive imperialism fundamentally in race
and class terms, their use of terms such as elite and Western
establishment rather than class or ruling class tends to obscure the real
material links between genocide, capitalism and Western imperialism. For
Herman and Peterson, a remarkable degree of continuity stretches across the
many decades of bribes and threats, economic sanctions, subversion,
terrorism, aggression, and occupation ordered-up by the policymaking
elite of the United States (13). After the US emerged from the Second World
War in a dominant economic, political and military position, it had to
confront numerous nationalist upheavals in former colonial areas by peoples
seeking independence, self-determination and better lives (14). To counter these increasingly popular
demands for improvement in living standards, the US supported a series of dictatorships in
countries like Indonesia, South Vietnam and Chile. Although these national security
states were torture-prone and deeply undemocratic, they helped
improve the overall climate of capitalist investment by keeping their
majorities fearful and atomized (14). When local dictators failed, direct US military intervention
genocide is simply classified through four
categoriesin this case, of bloodbaths. Moreover,
often followed, as illustrated in the cases of Vietnam, and more recently, in Iraq and Afghanistan. The authors
draw on the framework for analyzing mass killings provided by Chomsky, and Herman himself in their CounterRevolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda (CRV), first published in 1973. In this work, Herman
demonstrable that US officials, with the help of the

media, would engage in atrocities management, by producing
incessant propaganda to deflect attention away from US-approved
and Chomsky conclude that it is obvious and

established
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violence, and onto
Capitalism K
its enemies. In its framework of analysis, CRV provided four categories of

(a sub-category under Nefarious). As
Herman and Peterson explain, [t]hose bloodbaths carried out by the
United States itself or that serve immediate and major US interests are
Constructive; those carried out by allies or clients are Benign; and those
carried out by US target states are Nefarious and (sometimes) Mythical (16). In
essence, instances of mass violence are evaluated differently by the US
political establishment and media depending on who is responsible for
carrying them out. The authors apply this analytical framework in their current work by subsuming more
bloodbaths: Constructive, Benign, Nefarious, and Mythical
recent bloodbaths under the four categories, which they argue are eerily applicable to the present, and apply
now with the same political bias and rigor (17-19). Using empirical measures such as the coverage of key
events in the media, what the authors offer the reader is more or less a classificatory schema or conceptual model
for understanding bloodbaths rather than a specific interjection into theoretical debates surrounding critical
and international law. Todays leading experts on
genocide and mass atrocities, including many journalists, academics, legal scholars and policymakers, are
often careful to exclude from consideration the Vietnam War, the 1965-1966
Indonesian massacres, and the invasion and occupation of East Timor by Indonesia in 1975,
the latter of which resulted in the deaths of somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000
civilians (although this is a hugely debatable claim) (18). The Vietnam War, and the massive
sanctions of mass destruction directed at Iraq during the 1990s, are
examples of Constructive atrocities, where the victims of war crimes are deemed unworthy
of our attention. However, when the perpetrators of genocide are considered
enemies of the West, the atrocities are Nefarious and their victims are seen to be
worthy of our focus and sympathy. Examples of Nefarious atrocities include: Cambodia under the
Khmer Rouge, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Halabja, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and
Darfur. When systematic violence is carried out by US clientssuch as
Indonesia in East Timor from 1975-1999, Israel in the Gaza Strip and West
Bank from 1967 to the present, or Rwanda and Uganda in Congothey are viewed
by the US political establishment as Benign and not worthy of condemnation. The
final category, Mythical, results from the inflation of numbers or invention of incidents by the
US government, media sources and NGOs to implement pre-planned interventions such as sanctions,
embargoes and the funding of various color revolutions. The Politics of
Genocide has done much to emphasize the biases and contradictions of US
foreign policy, but it should be read in conjunction to themes related to genocide,
imperialism and international law. First, while Herman and Peterson with other theoretical
contributions recognize that the history of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity demonstrates
the centrality of racism to the imperial project (22), there is little discussion of why
advanced capitalist powers and oppressed nations are, in the first place,
not equal partners in shaping the world. Due in part to their use of terms such as elite and
Western establishment rather than class, their analysis should be complimented by recent
work that is more explicit in highlighting the centrality of racism to issues of
class, capitalism and imperialism in the international system. While not directly
touching on the topic of genocide, Marxist theorists writing on current modes of imperialism such
accounts of genocide, imperialism
as Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (Global Capitalism and American Empire, 2004) and David
Harvey (The New
emphasize the extent to which current modes of imperialism

continue to exacerbate racial as well as global class inequalities.
Identifying the class basis of the new imperialism would help identify
some of the underlying reasons for why media coverage of genocides in
the West is often silent with respect to crimes committed by the various
client regimes of advanced capitalist states. Second, Herman and Peterson are highly
Imperialism, 2003)
critical of the selective investigation and selective impunity of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in
prosecuting alleged perpetrators of genocide, especially, in the contemporary age of responsibility to protect, the
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Capitalism K
exclusion from its jurisdiction of the international crime of aggression, judged at Nuremburg to be the supreme
international crime (21).
Western interventionism and capitalist domination has led to

the poverty and genocide of Latin America
Mallon, Julieta Kirkwood Professor of History Department Chair
@ the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 85
[Florencia E., January 1985, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the
Nineteenth Century by E. Bradford Burns Review by Florencia E. Mallon, The
Americas, Volume: 41, p. 118-119, YGS]
Latin American elites, in their enthusiasm to copy

European-style modernization and economic growth, came into conflict with and
ultimately destroyed a much more autochthonous and viable "folk" culture that Latin
Americans had built up, through the judicious blending of African, Indian, and Iberian influences,
during three hundred years of colonial rule. But the "folk" did not give up their culture
without a major struggle. Indeed, Burns argues that the seemingly random and
recurrent violence of the nineteenth century can best be explained as the
ongoing confrontation between Europeanized elites and the "folk" over
the definition of Latin American culture and society. At bottom, Burns
sees this as a cultural rather than a class conflict, since the lower classes allied with
The main theme of the book is that
the more traditional sectors of the elite (the "patriarchs" or feudal landowners) and with populist caudillos in their
efforts to preserve folk culture. With few exceptions, however-some of which are highlighted in the book-the
alliance of traditional patriarchs, populist caudillos, and lower class "folk" did not succeed in taking over the state
Quite the contrary. Throughout Latin America
it was statesmen from the Europeanized elite who, by the turn of the century, had
consolidated political power and placed their new nations firmly in the
orbit of Western Europe and the United States. Rather than bringing their countries development,
however, these leaders instituted a limited amount of economic growth that
generated increasing dependency on the world market and on foreign
capital, conspicuous consumption for the few, and increasing misery for
the majority. The "folk" were forced to abandon a communally oriented
culture that provided everyone with the basic necessities of life, getting
in return an ever more commoditized existence in which no aspect of
subsistence was guaranteed. More than anything else, Burns concludes, it was
this triumph of "progress" over "folk" that set the conditions for enduring
poverty and conflict in twentieth-century Latin America.
and fashioning society in their own image.
The affs elevation of the law of value is the basis upon which
racism and genocide become possiblethe Other becomes the
atomized thing toward which capitalist, hegemonic hatred is
directed
Internationalist Perspective, Marxist political organization, 2k
[Spring 2000, Capitalism and Genocide, Internationalist Perspective, Volume: 36,
YGS]
One way in which this ideological hegemony of capital is established over
broad strata of the population, including sectors of the working class, is by channeling
the dissatisfaction [sic] and discontent of the mass of the population with the
monstrous impact of capitalism upon their lives (subjection to the
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Capitalism K
machine, reduction to the status of a "thing", at the point of production,

insecurity and poverty as features of daily life, the overall social process
of atomization and massification, etc.), away from any struggle to establish a human
Gemeinwesen, communism. Capitalist hegemony entails the ability to divert that very
disatisfaction [sic] into the quest for a "pure community", based on hatred
and rage directed not at capital, but at the Other, at alterity itself, at those marginal social
groups which are designated a danger to the life of the nation, and its population. One of the most
dramatic effects of the inexorable penetration of the law of value into every pore of
social life, and geographically across the face of the whole planet, has been the destruction of all
primitive, organic, and pre-capitalist communities. Capitalism, as Marx and
Engels pointed out in the Communist Manifesto, shatters the bonds of immemorial custom
and tradition, replacing them with its exchange mechanism and contract.
While Marx and Engels stressed the positive features of this development in the Manifesto, we cannot ignore its
negative side, particularly in light of the fact that the path to a human Gemeinwesen has so far been successfully
The negative side of that

development includes the relentless process of atomization, leaving in its
wake an ever growing mass of rootless individuals, for whom the only
human contact is by way of the cash nexus. Those who have been
uprooted geographically, economically, politically, and culturally, are frequently left with a
powerful longing for their lost communities (even where those communities were
blocked by capital, with disastrous consequences for the human species.
hierarchically organized and based on inequality), for the certainties and "truths" of the past, which are idealized
the more frustrating, unsatisfying, and insecure, the world of capital becomes. Such longings are most powerfully
felt within what Ernst Bloch has termed non-synchronous strata and classes. These are stata and classes whose
material or mental conditions of life are linked to a past mode of production, who exist economically or culturally in
In contrast to the two historic

classes in the capitalist mode of production, the bourgeoisie and
proletariat, which are synchronous, the products of the capitalist present, these nonsynchronous strata include the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and -- by virtue of their
mental or cultural state -- youth and white-collar workers. In my view, Bloch's understanding of
the past, even as they chronologically dwell in the present.
non-synchronicity needs to be extended to segments of the working class, in particular those strata of the bluecollar proletariat which are no longer materially synchronous with the high-tech production process upon which late
capitalism rests, and the mass of workers ejected from the production process by the rising organic composition of
capital and its comcomitant down-sizing. In addition, the even greater mass of peasants streaming into the shanty
towns around the great commercial and industrial metropolitan centers of the world, are also characterized by their
non-synchronicity, their inability to be incorporated into the hyper-modern cycle of capital accumulation. Moreover,
all of these strata too are subject to a growing nostalgia for the past , a
longing for community, including the blue-collar communities and their institutional networks which were one of the
features of the social landscape of capitalism earlier in the twentieth century. However, no matter how powerful
this nostalgia for past community becomes, it cannot be satisfied. The organic communities of the past cannot be
recreated; their destruction by capital is irreversible. At the same time, the path to a future
Gemeinwesen, to which the cultural material and longings embodied in the non-synchronous classes and strata can
make a signal contribution, according to Bloch, remains obstructed by the power of capital.
So long as this is the case, the genuine longing for community of masses of people, and especially the nostalgia for
past communities especially felt by the non-synchronous strata and classes, including the newly non-synchronous
elements which I have just argued must be added to them, leaves them exposed to the lure of a "pure community"
in such an
ideologically constructed pure community, a racial, ethnic, or religious
identification is merely superimposed on the existing condition of
atomization in which the mass of the population finds itself. In addition to
ideologically constructed by capital itself. In place of real organic and communal bonds,
providing some gratification for the longing for community animating broad strata of the population, such a pure
community can also provide an ideological bond which ties the bulk of the population to the capitalist state on the
basis of a race, ethnicity, or religion which it shares with the ruling class. This latter is extremely important to
capital, because the atomization which it has brought about not only leaves the mass of humanity bereft, but also
leaves the ruling class itself vulnerable because it lacks any basis upon which it can mobilize the population,
The basis upon which such a pure community is
constituted, race, nationality, religion, even a categorization by "class" in the Stalinist
world, necessarily means the exclusion of those categories of the population
physically or ideologically.
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Capitalism K
which do not conform to the criteria for inclusion, the embodiments of alterity, even
while they inhabit the same geographical space as the members of the pure community. Those excluded,
the "races" on the other side of the biological continuum, to use Foucauldian terminology, the Other,
become alien elements within an otherwise homogeneous world of the
pure community. As a threat to its very existence, the role of this Other is
to become the scapegoat for the inability of the pure community to
provide authentic communal bonds between people, for its abject failure to overcome
the alienation that is a hallmark of a reified world. The Jew in Nazi Germany, the Kulak in
Stalinist Russia, the Tutsi in Rwanda, Muslims in Bosnia, blacks in the US,
the Albanian or the Serb in Kosovo, the Arab in France, the Turk in contemporary Germany, the Bahai in Iran, for
become the embodiment of alterity, and the target against which the hatred of
the members of the pure community is directed. The more crisis ridden a
society becomes, the greater the need to find an appropriate scapegoat;
the more urgent the need for mass mobilization behind the integral state,
the more imperious the need to focus rage against the Other. In an extreme
situation of social crisis and political turmoil, the demonization and victimization of the
Other can lead to his (mass) murder. In the absence of a working class
conscious of its historic task and possibilities, this hatred of alterity which
permits capital to mobilize the population in defense of the pure
community, can become its own impetus to genocide. The immanent
tendencies of the capitalist mode of production which propel it towards a
catastrophic economic crisis, also drive it towards mass murder and
genocide. In that sense, the death-world, and the prospect of an Endzeit cannot be
separated from the continued existence of humanity's subordination to
the law of value. Reification, the overmanned world, bio-politics, state
racism, the constitution of a pure community directed against alterity,
each of them features of the economic and ideological topography of the
real domination of capital, create the possibility and the need for
genocide. We should have no doubt that the survival of capitalism into this new millenium will
entail more and more frequent recourse to mass murder.
example,
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Impact Hunger
Capitalism leads to hunger GMOs
Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics
University of Missouri Columbia, 2006
(John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of
Missouri Columbia, 2006, University of Missouri, The Economics of Hunger:
Challenges and Opportunities for Future Food Systems ,
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Eastern%20Oregon-%20Econ%20Hunger.htm,
accessed 7-9-13, JF)
Biotechnology, on the other hand, is simply the latest tool for agricultural industrialization. The magnitude of risks
that genetically engineered foods pose to human health and the natural environment may not be fully known for
decades. But at the very least, genetic modification represents the greatest experiment to which humanity has ever
Genetic modification does nothing to increase

crop yields; it simply makes farming easier to carry out on larger operations. It
does nothing to enhance food quality that cannot be accomplished more effectively
through the conscientious selection of natural foods. Perhaps most relevant to
hunger, widespread acceptance of genetic modification of foods would
grant control of the worlds food supply to a handful of global
agribusiness corporations, under current plant and animal patenting laws. These
food corporations are not charitable organizations. They will sell their products
to whatever people, wherever in the world, they can generate the greatest
economic return for their stockholders. Their markets most certainly will not
be the hungry people of the poor countries of the world or the poor people of
the wealthy countries of the world. The goal of industrial agriculture in a
capitalistic economy is to sell food for profit, not to provide food for
everyone. An industrial agriculture will not feed the hungry.
been subjected with so little justification.
Cap leads to hunger it leaves the poor behind

But industrialization never made its way around the world and significant
pockets of hunger have persisted even in the wealthiest industrial nations
of the world. Somehow, the people of the world lost their way on the road to utopia. Far too many
people have been left behind poor and hungry to feel any sense of
victory over poverty and starvation. In terms of total productivity and wealth, industrialization
far exceeded the expectations of even the most optimistic. The people of the late 1700s could not possibly have
imagined all of the material wealth in the world today. But neither could they have imagined that so few people
would claim so much of the worlds wealth and so many others would be left with so little. The dreams of the
American industrial revolution were not just dreams of a world of wealth but also of a world of equity and justice, a
world in which all people would share in the wealth.
The fundamental flaw was not in the

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Capitalism K
productivity of industrialism but instead in the economics of industrialism,

in the means by which resources were allocated among the competing
needs of people. For most of two centuries, capitalism and communism struggled for economic supremacy
among the industrial nations of the world. With the fall of the former Soviet Union, however, political leaders around
the world declared global victory for capitalism. Free market capitalism quickly spread around the world. Even the
Peoples Republic of China, while still clinging to political socialism, turned to free markets to guide its economic
boom. Admittedly, capitalism has resulted in impressive economic growth and prosperity. But as we enter the
twenty-first century, serious questions are emerging concerning the sustainability of capitalism .
Capitalism causes hunger it destroys social connections that

are necessary to address hunger

But what does entropy have to do with hunger? Capitalism not only uses up physical energy, it
also uses up human energy. The law of entropy applies to social energy as well as
physical energy. All human resources labor, management, innovation, creativity
are products of social relationships. No person can be born or reach healthy
maturity without the help of other people who care about them personally, including
their families, friends, neighbors, and communities . People must be educated, trained, civilized,
and socialized before they can become productive members of complex societies. All organizations
including businesses organizations and economies also depend upon the
ability of people to work together for a common purpose, which in turn
depend upon the sociability and civility of the society in which they were
raised. Capitalism inevitably dissipates, disperses, and disorganizes
social energy because it weakens personal relationships. Social capital is
the value embodied in the willingness and ability of people to form and
maintain positive personal relationships. However, maximum economic
efficiency requires that people relate to each other impartially, which means
impersonally. People must compete rather than cooperate, if market economies
are to work efficiently. When people spend more time and energy working being
productive they have less time and energy to spend on personal
relationships within families and communities, and social capital is
depleted. When people buy things based on price rather than from people they know and trust , personal
relationships within communities suffer from neglect, and social capital is
dissipated. Neoclassical capitalism devalues personal relationships and disconnects people and thus
dissipates, disperses, and disorganizes social energy. Capitalistic economies are so efficient
because they use people to do work but do nothing to restore the social
capital needed to sustain positive personal relationships within society. It
makes no economic sense for corporations to invest in building
relationships within families, communities, or society for the benefit of
future generations. Its always more economically efficient to find new people
and new communities to exploit. Capitalistic economies dont waste energy by investing in society, and
they resist all attempts of people, through government, to tax private enterprises to promote societal well-being .
Thats why capitalism is so efficient. But, neoclassical capitalism inevitably tends toward social
entropy; thats why it is not sustainable. Industrialization did not eliminate hunger
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because, in devaluing personal relationships, it diminished our ability to

care and destroyed our willingness to share. Hunger is a symptom of a
society that is lacking in social capital. People who care and are willing to
share; they dont allow others to go hungry when they have plenty for
themselves. As social capital is depleted, the gap in wealth between the haves and have-nots
continues to grow, as those who have increase their power to exploit those who
have not. As social capital is depleted, the haves are numbed to the reality
that many of the have-nots have no food; they feel no need to share. Its
not economically efficient to share with the poor and hungry. Economic
efficiency demands that people be rewarded according to their
productivity, not according to their need. Income redistribution and
feeding the hungry penalizes those who produce and rewards those who
do not; such actions promote inefficiency. The invisible hand of free markets is fair and just,
we are told. Let the free markets work. If people get hungry, they will find work. The rising tide of prosperity raises
all boats. If we become wealthy, others will surely have enough to eat. But ,
the invisible hand of Adam

Smiths capitalism has been mangled in the machinery of industrialism. Todays
capitalism is not fair and just. The rising tide of prosperity simply blinds us to
growing poverty. Growing poverty and hunger are the inevitable consequences of
social entropy.
Cap causes hunger unsustainability


Serious questioning of capitalism began in the 1960s, with the emergence of the environmental and civil rights
Growing environmental degradation and persistent social

discrimination were linked directly to the industrialization of capitalistic
economies. The energy crisis of the 1970s raised concerns about the extractive
nature of capitalistic economies and the dependence of industrialization on finite
supplies of non-renewable resources. The trickle down economics of the
1980s raised further questions of social equity, with large and growing gaps
between the haves and have-nots. The U.S. economy languished after the economic bubble of
movements.
the 1990s burst at the turn of the century. Todays robust economy is propped up by record-large federal budget
Corporate profits were restored only by exporting Americas

middleclass jobs to lower-cost foreign labor markets, notably China and
India. Many Americans are now questioning not only the ecological and
social sustainability of capitalism, but also its economic sustainability.
Persistent hunger, in America and around the world, is not simply a
reflection of social equity, although todays hunger most certainly is
inequitable. Hunger is an inevitable consequence of an economic system
that lacks both ecological and social integrity. Persistent hunger is rooted
in the economy in the means by which we manage complex relationships
with each other and with nature. The economy determines who gets to
manage the resources needed to produce food, clothing, shelter, as well
as the non-necessities of life. The economy determines who receives the
and trade deficits.
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Capitalism K
benefits and who pays the costs how the bounties of industrial production are shared. An
economy cannot be sustained if it extracts wealth from nature and society
but fails to distribute that wealth equitably , both within and among generations.
Persistent hunger, in the U.S. and around the world, is a direct
consequence of an unsustainable global economy. If we are serious about alleviating
hunger, we must be willing to work for sustainability.
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Impact Power Wars

Capitalism fosters an imperialist mindset that inevitably leads
to warempirics prove
Packer 03- hold primary leadership roles at the International Socialist Group and
the Fourth International (Dave, Theory and history Capitalism means War, The
International Socialist Group 2003, http://www.isg-fi.org.uk/spip.php?article10, MB)
The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in human history, easily
exceeding the previous record, held by the nineteenth century, which began most notably with the Napoleonic wars .
During these two centuries, the capitalist world was marked by the rise of
competing imperialisms, at first in Europe but soon joined by the USA and Japan. Between 1876 and
1914 European powers annexed approximately eleven million square miles of territory, mainly in Asia and Africa. By
the twentieth century, inter-imperialist
competition for colonies and markets was

to drag nearly the entire world into two devastating world wars , with over one
hundred and sixty additional wars since the end of World War Two. The competition between capitals inherent
within the capitalist system forced it to continually revolutionise and expand the means of production, which
eventually led to a scramble across the world for colonies, markets and empires , like the British Empire, or its main
Inter-imperialist competition eventually

progressed beyond the numerous colonial wars of conquest, to armed conflict
between the great nations themselves. However, this now took the form of a struggle for
world hegemony. Here lay the origins of the two World Wars of the twentieth
century. Capitalism, at first by establishing direct colonial rule and later through economically dominated neocompetitor empires of France and latecomer Germany.
colonies, was now transformed from a progressive to a reactionary imperialist force in the world. As Ernest Mandel
writes in his book on the Second World War: The imperialist conquest of the world is not only, or even mainly, a
drive to occupy huge territories . . . The
motor force of the Second World War was the

need to dominate the economy of whole continents through capitalist
investment, preferential trade agreements, currency regulations and political hegemony. The aim of
the war was the subordination not only of the less developed world, but also of other industrial states,
whether enemies or allies, to one hegemonic powers priorities of capital
accumulation. (1) Capitalism means war because it is driven, in the last analysis,
by economic forces, which require ever-expanding markets and
opportunities for investments. It does this within the framework of
competition between capitals which, after World War Two, resulted in the world hegemony of US
imperialism. This hegemonic drive is in the nature of every imperialism: There is not the slightest proof of any
limitation on the war aims of Japan, Germany or the USA, writes Mandel of the Second World War. Very early on the
Tanaka memorandum established that for the Japanese army, the conquest of China was only a stepping stone to
the conquest of world hegemony, which could be achieved after crushing US resistance. (2)
Imperialistic policies of accumulating capital historically lead

to war
Judis 07- is a senior editor at The New Republic and a visiting scholar at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (John, Bush's Neo-Imperialist War,
The American Project 2007, http://prospect.org/article/bushs-neo-imperialist-war,
MB)
Our Iraqi occupation not only rejects American foreign policy since Wilson, it's a
throwback to the great power imperialism that led to World War I. Bush's
foreign policy has been variously described as unilateralist, militarist, and hyper-nationalist.
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Capitalism K
But the term that fits it best is imperialist. That's not because it is the most incendiary term,
but because it is the most historically accurate. Bush's foreign policy was framed as an alternative to the liberal
internationalist policies that Woodrow Wilson espoused and that presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton
the imperialist strategies that helped cause

two world wars and even the Cold War. Bush's foreign policy represents a return not to the
simple unilateralism of 19th-century American foreign policy, but to the imperial strategy that the
great powers of Europe -- and, for a brief period, America, too -- followed and that resulted
in utter disaster. There were two kinds of imperial rule: direct, where the colonial power assigned an
tried to put into effect as an alternative to
administrator -- a viceroy or proconsul -- who ran the country directly; and indirect, where the colonial power used
its financial and military power to prop up a native administration that did its bidding and to prevent the rise of
governments that did not. The latter kind of imperial rule was developed by the United States in Cuba in 1901 after
direct rule could bring war and

rebellion, as it had done, to the McKinley administration's surprise, in the Philippines. The
British later adopted this kind of imperial rule in Egypt and Iraq. This growth of imperialism
eventually created the conditions for its undoing. By encouraging not merely
trade rivalry, but growing competition for national power -- epitomized in
the preWorld War I naval arms race between Britain and Germany -Roosevelt's Secretary of War Elihu Root realized that
imperialism helped spawn wars among the great powers themselves.
The
rivalry between top dog England and challenger Germany, and between Germany and Austria, on the one hand,
and France and Russia, on the other, contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The Second World War also
represented, among other things, an attempt by the Axis powers, a subordinate group of capitalist nations, to
redivide the world at the expense of the U.S., Great Britain, France, and the USSR. And the Cold War stemmed from
the attempt by the Soviet Union, one of the most vocal critics of Western imperialism, to fulfill the imperial dreams
of Czarist Russia by expanding westward and to the south
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Capitalism K
Impact - Racism
Racism was born out of capitalism to justify the suppression,
exploitation of the working class and oppression of slaves
Taylor, doctoral candidate in the department of African American Studies at
Northwestern University, 2011 (Keeanga-Yamahtta. January 4th 2011. The Socialist
Worker Race, Class and Marxism http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-classand-marxism NMS)

Marxists argue that capitalism is a system that is based on the exploitation
of the many by the few. Because it is a system based on gross inequality, it
requires various tools to divide the majority--racism and all oppressions under
capitalism serve this purpose. Moreover, oppression is used to justify and
"explain" unequal relationships in society that enrich the minority that live
off the majority's labor. Thus, racism developed initially to explain and
justify the enslavement of Africans--because they were less than human and
undeserving of liberty and freedom. Everyone accepts the idea that the
oppression of slaves was rooted in the class relations of exploitation
under that system. Fewer recognize that under capitalism, wage slavery is the
pivot around which all other inequalities and oppressions turn. Capitalism used
racism to justify plunder, conquest and slavery, but as Karl Marx pointed out,
it also used racism to divide and rule--to pit one section of the working
class against another and thereby blunt class consciousness. To claim, as
Marxists do, that racism is a product of capitalism is not to deny or diminish
its importance or impact in American society. It is simply to explain its origins
and the reasons for its perpetuation. Many on the left today talk about class as
if it is one of many oppressions, often describing it as "classism." What people are
really referring to as "classism" is elitism or snobbery, and not the fundamental
organization of society under capitalism. Moreover, it is popular today to talk
about various oppressions, including class, as intersecting. While it is true
that oppressions can reinforce and compound each other, they are born out of
the material relations shaped by capitalism and the economic exploitation that is
at the heart of capitalist society. In other words, it is the material and economic
structure of society that gave rise to a range of ideas and ideologies to justify,
explain and help perpetuate that order. In the United States, racism is the most
important of those ideologies.
The ideological explanations of racism is a tool of the capitalist

system to divert attention from the socio-economic causes of
racism in order to uphold the myth of market equality
The Red Critique 2002(November/December 2002. The Red Critique Race is
Class http://redcritique.org/NovDec02/raceisclass.htm NMS)
The politics of racist segregation are, in other words, the direct product of
U.S. capitalism. Recent statistics demonstrate the actual fact that while
segregation might have been made "illegal" before the courts (a point which the
Bush administration is trying to change), in practice segregationist policies are
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Capitalism K
one of the main tools of capitalist bosses to divide the working class along
racial lines while driving down wages, by eliminating necessary public services
such as health care and education that affect all workers, for example. While the
capitalist bosses enjoy the full benefits of their workers' labor and live a life without
fear of not being able to afford basic necessities, 22% of African-American workers
and 34% of Latino workers do not have access to health care and 27% of both
African-American and Latino workers live below the poverty line. At the same time,
the U.S. capitalist class is trying to extend the policing tactics it has used
against the African-American members of the working classfor instance,
while African-Americans constitute roughly 13% of the population in the
United States, they represent almost half (48%) of all prison inmates and
half of all death-row convictions in what has become a form of "legal
lynching"by criminalizing all people of color as part of their "war on terror". INS
lock-ups, draconian immigration laws that are going to require all working
people to carry ID cards, and Ashcroft's on-going policy of detainment
without trial are all aimed at dividing the working class and ensuring that
a segment of the population forever remains available as a "cheaper"
source of labor (and a "scapegoat" when crisis emerges). While Lott's
comments have made all of this (momentarily) "visible" in the mainstream press,
the unfolding cultural commentary has trivialized the issue by focusing on the
personalities and speculating about whether the American people are ready to
accept a racist message from their leaders. In other words, the corporate media
does what it always does and turns what should be an occasion for investigating the
social effects created by the powers that be, which should be the role of the press in
a democracy, into a cultural debate about people's "values" that silently normalizes
the rule of the powerful whose material interests in fact dictate what counts as
public opinion because in actuality they own and control the culture industry and
government. The political economy of race, in short, is systematically
suppressed by the ruling ideology. The common sense of "race" trivializes it
as a cultural "stigma" that blocks the free play of market forces and produces
unfair "discrimination" in the job market that, if left to itself, gives all an "equal
opportunity". By turning racism from an economic to a cultural matter, the
common-sense view of race diffuses the issue into a private matter of
individualsthat is, there is racial discrimination because there are racist
people; a circular logic that fails to explain what it claims to. This privatized
view of race as discriminatory ideas, however, reflects the rule of a society
that enshrines private property as the motor of economic life and normalizes
the exploitation of the majority who are therefore forced to produce profit for
the few just in order to survive. In other words, the common-sense of race in
capitalism silently accepts and normalizes the unequal class relations that
systematically contradict the ideal of "equal opportunity" and produce racism
today: in an economy based on private control of the social means of production,
competition is the rule and racism is a tool for increasing profits because it justifies
unequal wages and undermines the unity of workers in the face of their exploiters.
This class-consciousness of race is suppressed under the false consciousness
that if left to itself the market frees the people from discriminatory ideas
and gives everyone a chance to benefit equally: i.e., that the market is
"colorblind". The common-sense that race is a matter of ideas that contradict the
principles of the free market is a not so subtle ruse to deflect attention
from the socio-economic causes of racism in capitalism onto its cultural
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Capitalism K
effects and serves the interests of the few who alone actually benefit from racism in
the world of wage-labor and capital. The cultural debate over the racism of the
Republicans, the speculation of whether such and such politician is or is not racist,
makes racism a matter of the ideas and beliefs of individuals so as to instill faith in
the underlying class relations that systematically breed racism today
Taylor, doctoral candidate in the department of African American Studies at

Northwestern University, 2011 (Keeanga-Yamahtta. January 4th 2011. The Socialist
Worker Race, Class and Marxism http://socialistworker.org/2011/01/04/race-classand-marxism NMS)

Today, the need for a revolutionary alternative to the failures of capitalism
has never been greater. The election of Barack Obama came 40 years after the
passage of the 1968 Civil Rights Act, the last piece of civil rights legislation from the
civil rights era of the 1960s. Despite the enormous shift in racial attitudes
symbolized by the election of a Black president in a country built in large part on
the enslavement of Black people, the condition of the vast majority of African
Americans today is perilous. For almost two years, Black unemployment has
fluctuated between 15 and 17 percent. Almost 20 percent of African Americans
under the age of 65 are without health insurance compared to 15 percent for the
rest of the population. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, a home
owned by an African American or Latino family is 76 percent more likely to be
foreclosed upon than a white-owned home. The wipeout of home ownership among
African Americans threatens to widen even more the gap in median family net
worth. In 2007, the average white family had a net worth of more than $171,000
compared to less than $29,000 for African American and Latino families. More than
25 percent of Blacks and Latinos languish below the official poverty line, and more
than a third of Black and Latino children live in poverty. The distressing numbers
that document the full impact of racism and discrimination in the United
States have no end. But while conditions across Black America threaten to
wipe out the economic gains made possible by the civil rights movement,
millions of white workers are meeting their Black brothers and sisters on the way
down. Tens of millions of white workers are stuck in long-term joblessness, without
health insurance and waiting for their homes to be foreclosed upon. Thus, the
question of Black, Latino and white unity is not abstract or academic, but must be a
concrete discussion about how to collectively go forward. For most of the 20th
century, legal racism both North and South created a tension-filled cross-class
alliance in the African American community that was focused on freedom and equal
treatment. The legislative fruition of that in the form of legal civil rights removed the
barriers to advance for a small section of Black America. To be sure, the "Black
middle class" is tenuous, fragile and, for many, a paycheck or two away from
oblivion, but a more stable and ambitious Black elite most definitely exists, and
their objectives and aspirations are anathema to the future of the mass of Black
people. No serious Marxist organization demands that Black and Latino
workers put their struggles on the backburner while some mythical class
struggle is waged beforehand. This impossible formulation rests on the
ridiculous notion that the working class is white and male, and thus incapable of
taking up issues of race, class and gender. In fact, the American working class is
female, immigrant, Black and white. Immigrant issues, gender issues and antiracism are working-class issues and to miss this is to be operating with a
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Capitalism K
completely anachronistic idea of the working class. Genuine Marxist

organizations understand that the only way of achieving unity in the
working class over time is to fight for unity today and every day. Workers
will never unite to fight for state power if they cannot unite to fight for workplace
demands today. If white workers are not won to anti-racism today, they will never
unite with Black workers for a revolution tomorrow. If Black workers are not won to
being against anti-immigrant racism today, they will never unite with Latino workers
for a revolution tomorrow. This is why Lenin said that a revolutionary party
based on Marxism must be a "tribune of the oppressed," willing to fight
against the oppression of any group of people, regardless of the class of
those affected. And this is why, despite the anti-Marxist slurs from academics and
even some who consider themselves part of the left, the idea that Marxism has
been on the outside of the struggle against racism in the U.S. and around the world
defies history and the legacy of Black revolutionaries who understood Marxism as a
strategy for emancipation and liberation. The challenge today is to make
revolutionary Marxism, once again, a part of the discussion of how to end the social
catastrophe that is unfolding in Black communities across the United States.
Attempts to resolve racism that leave capitalism intact will fail

Hall, leader and chairman of the CPUSA, 85Gus, born Arvo Kustaa Halbergwas,
was a leader and Chairman of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was four-time U.S. presidential candidate
[Courtesy Wikipedia].(Fighting Racism: Selected Writings 1985 pgs. 266-267
http://www.questiaschool.com/read/22117083/fighting-racism-selected-writings [URL may be inaccessible])
One can not help but admire the groups which get together and go into the ghettos to "clean up a block." The
clergy who inititate such actions do so with the best of intentions. But such efforts are not solutions. In fact they are
misleading, since ghettos are not the result of people failing to clean up their neighborhoods. These well-meaning
efforts are fruitless because they do not come to grips with the underlying causes of the problem
. Any
action that does not lead to a search for basic causes will not result in
even temporary solutions . Mass actions must lead to inquiry that in turn
can lead to even more meaningful mass struggles. Such is the path to
victory. What line of inquiry do the corporate powers want to obstruct? The one that asks: What makes
ghettos? Why should tens of millions of Americans be forced to live in rat
infested, dilapidated, rundown tenements without elementary
conveniences or facilities? Why is this the lot of Black Americans in the
first place? If the answer is poverty, what then is the cause of poverty? Why is there such poverty in the
midst of plenty? If the answer is unemployment, low wages, high prices, rents and taxes, what then is the reason
why is the percentage of Black Americans

among the unemployed and low-paid so large? This line of inquiry leads to
the very doorstep of the real culprit. It guides one to the real enemy -- the exploiting class -- and
for unemployment and low wages? And again,
its accessories. For Marxists this is not a new discovery. But for the millions it is a necessary line of inquiry and an
important and necessary discovery. This line of inquiry will lead from actions on the spontaneous level to a
conscious line of struggle focused on the basic cause of the oppression. At the end of such a line of inquiry the
people will find the culprit:
the corporate system of capitalism, a system in which the

few rob the many. It is this system that creates unemployment and low
wages, jacks up prices, rents and taxes. This system , this capitalist
structure , adapted from slavery the special system of oppressing the
Afro- American people and fitted it to its system of exploiting workers. The
The entire corporate structure exists for
the sole purpose of squeezing as much as possible from the people and
giving as little as possible back to them. It thus makes the handful of rich richer and the millions of
express purpose of this system is to rob the poor.
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Capitalism K
poor poorer. Exploitation is the economic basis of capitalism . The basic function of
capitalist ideology is to justify and to facilitate exploitation of the workers by the capitalists. The basic politics of
capitalism is the politics of exploitation. It is a politics that preserves and perpetuates this exploitative system. In
short, the whole capitalist establishment is an instrument of exploitation. But why repeat such elementary truths?
Only to point out the special responsibility of Communists, of Marxists. These truths are not known by the millions
who are in struggle. This side of capitalism remains hidden to them. It is very carefully camouflaged. All
"establishment" inquiries stop at this border. It is a safe bet that the presidential commission appointed to
investigate the summer rebellions in the ghettos will not enter this arena of inquiry. T his crisis forces all Americans
to re-examine their responsibilities. That white Americans have a special responsibility there can be no doubt. How
this responsibility is placed is a very important question. Our purpose in placing it is to win white Americans to the
goal of putting an end to the system of discrimination against their Black fellow Americans and thereby create a
united people's force for overall progress. By and large, Afro-Americans are, to one degree or another, in this
struggle. The challenge at this point is to win a larger section of white America. Black-white unity is one of the keys
to victory over discrimination and segregation.
Capitalism is the root cause of racism; racism masks

exploitative capitalism
Young, professor of English at the University of Alabama, 6Dr.
Robert M was a professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama. He passed
away in 2010. (Putting Materialism back into Race Theory:
Toward a Transformative Theory of Race
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm)
So, then, what is so new in the new social movements? It is certainly very "old" in the way it rehabilitates liberal notions of the
This
crisis of capital and the ensuing rupture in its ideological narrative
provides the historical condition for articulating resistance along the axes
of race, class, gender, ecology, etc. Even though resistance may take place
in very specific domains, such as race, gender, ecological, or sexuality, among others, this does
not mean that the crisis is local. It simply indexes how capitalist
exploitation brings every social sphere under its totalizing logic. However,
rather then point up the systematicity of the crisis, the theorists of the
new social movements turn to the local, as if it is unrelated to questions of
globality. With Gilroy and the new social movements, we are returned, once again, to the local and the experiential sets the
autonomous subject. Its newness is a sign of the contemporary crisis-ridden conjuncture in capitalist social relations.
limits of understanding. Gilroy asserts that people "unable to control the social relations in which they find themselveshave shrunk
the world to the size of their communities and begun to act politically on that basis" (245). If this is true, then Gilroy, at the level of
theory, mirrors this as he "shrinks" his theory to the dictates of crude empiricism. Rather than opening the possibility of collective
control over social relations, which points in an emancipatory direction, Gilroy brackets the question of "social relation" and
consequently, he limits politics to the cultural (re)negotiations of identity. If Gilroy deploys the post-colonial racialized agent for
displacing class, then Homi Bhabha's postcolonial theory detaches race from political economy by reinscribing race within the
problematics of signification. In The Location of Culture, Bhabha's last chapter, "Race', time and the revision of modernity", situates
the question of race within the "ambivalent temporality of modernity" (239). In this way, Bhabha foregrounds the "time-lag"
between "event" and "enunciation" and, for Bhabha, this produces space for postcolonial agency. Political agency revolves around
deconstructing signs from totalities and thereby delaying the connection between signifier and signified and resistance is the effect
of this ambivalence. Hence, for Bhabha, "the intervention of postcolonial or black critique is aimed at transforming the conditions of
enunciation at the level of the sign" (247). This idealist reading of the social reduces politics to a struggle over the sign rather than
the relations of production. Indeed, Bhabha re-understands the political not as an ideological practice aimed at social transformation
the project of transformative race theory. Instead, he theorizes "politics as a performativity" (15). But what is the social effect of
this understanding of politics? Toward what end might this notion point us? It seems as if the political now calls for (cosmopolitan)
witnesses to the always already permanent slippage of signification and this (formal) process of repetition and reinscription outlines
a space for "other forms of enunciation" (254). But will these "other forms of enunciation" naturally articulate resistance to the
dominant political and ideological interests? For Bhabha, of course, we "need to think beyond narratives of originary and initial
subjectivities and to focus on those moments or processes that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences" (1). However,
cultural differences, in themselves, do not necessarily mean opposition. Indeed, at the moment, cultural difference represents one of
the latest zones for commodification and, in this regard, it ideologically legitimates capitalism. Bhabha homogenizes (cultural)
difference and, consequently, he covers over ideological struggles within the space of cultural difference. In short, this other
historical site is not the site for pure difference, which naturally resists the hegemonic; for it, too, is the site for political contestation.
Bhabha's formalism makes it seem as if ambivalence essentially inheres in discourse. Ambivalence results from opposed political
interests that inflect discourses and so the ambivalence registers social conflict. In Marxism and the Philosophy and Language,
Voloinov offers this materialist understanding of the sign: Class does not coincide with the sign community, i.e. with the
community which is the totality of users of the same set of signs for ideological communication. Thus various different classes will
use one and the same language. As a result, differently oriented accents intersect in every ideological sign. Sign becomes an arena
of class struggle. (22) The very conceptideologythat could delineate the political character and therefore class interests
involved in structuring the content of discourses, Bhabha excludes from his discourse. In the end, Bhabha's discourse advocates
what amounts to discursive freedom and he substitutes this for material freedom. Like Gilroy, Bhabha's discursive freedom takes
place within the existing system. In contrast to Bhabha, Marx theorizes the material presupposition of freedom. In the German
Ideology, Marx argues that "people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in
adequate quality and quantity" (61). Thus for Marx "[l]iberation" is an historical and not a mental act" (61). In suppressing the issue
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Capitalism K
of need, Bhabha's text reveals his own class interests. The studied preoccupation with "ambivalence" reflects a class privilege, and it
speaks to the crisis for (postcolonial) subjects torn between national affiliation and their privileged (and objective) class position
within the international division of labor. The ambivalence is a symptom of social antagonism, but in Bhabha's hands, it becomes a
transhistorical code for erasing the trace of class. Here, then, is one of the primary effects of the postmodern knowledge practices:
class is deconstructed as a metaphysical dinosaur. In this regard, postmodernists collude with the humanists in legitimating the
sanctity of the local. Both participate in narrowing cultural intelligibility to questions of (racial) discourse or the (black) subject and,
in doing so, they provide ideological immunity for capitalism. It is now very difficult to even raise the issue of class, particularly if
you raise the issue outside of the logic of supplementaritytoday's ruling intellectual logic which provides a theoretical analog to
contemporary neo-liberal political structures. In one of the few recent texts to explore the centrality of class, bell hooks' Where We
Stand, we are, once again, still left with a reaffirmation of capitalism. For instance, hooks argues for changes within capitalism: "I
identify with democratic socialism, with a vision of participatory economics within capitalism that aims to challenge and change
class hierarchy" (156). Capitalism produces class hierarchy and, therefore, as long as capitalism remains, class hierarchy and
Hence, the solution requires a transformation of class

society. However, hooks mystifies capitalism as a transhistorical system and thus she can assert that the "poor may be with us
antagonism will remain.
always" (129). Under this view, politics becomes a matter of "bearing witness" to the crimes of capitalism, but rather than struggle
for its replacement, hooks call for strategies of "self-actualization" and redistributing resources to the poor. She calls for the very
same thingcollectivitythat capitalism cannot provide because social resources are privatized under capitalism. Consequently,
Hooks' program for "self-esteem" is an attempt to put a human face on capitalism. Whether one considers the recent work by
African-American humanists, or discourse theorists, or even left-liberal intellectuals, these various groupsdespite their intellectual
differencesform a ruling coalition and one thing is clear: capitalism set the limit for political change, as there is no alternative to
the rule of capital. In contrast to much of contemporary race theory, a transformative theory of race highlights the political economy
of race in the interests of an emancipatory political project. Wahneema Lubiano once wrote that " the
idea of race and

the operation of racism are the best friends that the economic and
political elite have in the United States" (vii). Race mystifies the structure of
exploitation and masks the severe inequalities within global capitalism.
am afraid that, at this point, many contemporary race theorists, in their systematic erasure of materialism, have become close
A transformative
race theory pulls back into focus the struggle against exploitation and
sets a new social priority "in which the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of all" (Marx 31).
(ideological) allies with the economic and political elites, who deny even the existence of classes.
Black alienation is rooted in capitalism; the affs refusal to

accept so supports capitalism
Young, professor of English at the University of Alabama, 6Dr.
Robert M was a professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Alabama. He passed
away in 2010. (Putting Materialism back into Race Theory:
Toward a Transformative Theory of Race
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm)
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
Indeed,
dismisses Marxism because it is Eurocentric; 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.
Asantes assumption, which erases materialism, enables Asante to offer

the idealist formulation that the word creates reality (Afrocentric 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
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: I dont
multicultural societies (Afrocentric Idea 56).
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
and thus McGarys 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 to be understood (Interview 90).
McGary confuses causes and effects and then misreads Marxism as a

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Capitalism K
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 and such and 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
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 McGarys expressed position,
black alienation is very
much rooted in economic relations. McGarys 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, postJim Crow era, there would still be an economic structure maintaining
contemporary oppressive normsfrom McGarys 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
McGarys
discourse, and consequently
capitalismremains
McGary
the
unsaid in
provides ideological support for
capitalism the exploitative infrastructure that produces and maintains alienation for blacks as well as for all
working people.
Racism is a tool of capitalism that divides workers and

prevents an overthrow of the system
Reich, professor of political economy at UC Berkeley, 74 Michael
is a
Professor of Political Economy at U. C. Berkeley. (The Economics of Racism1974 http://tomweston.net/ReichRacism.pdf)
COMPETING EXPLANATIONS OF RACISM How is the historical persistence of racism in the United States to be explained? The most
prominent analysis of discrimination among economists was formulated in 1957 by Gary Becker in his book, The Economics of -3Discrimination. 6 Racism, according to Becker, is fundamentally a problem of tastes and attitudes. Whites are defined to have a
"taste for discrimination" if they are willing to forfeit income in order to be associated with other whites instead of blacks. Since
white employers and employees prefer not to associate with blacks, they require a monetary compensation for the psychic cost of
such association. In Becker's principal model, white employers have a taste for discrimination; marginal productivity analysis is
invoked to show that white employers lose while white workers gain (in monetary terms) from discrimination against blacks.
Becker does not try to explain the source of white tastes for discrimination. For him, these attitudes are determined outside of
the economic system. (Racism could presumably be ended simply by changing these attitudes, perhaps by appeal to whites on
moral grounds.) According to Becker's analysis, employers would find the ending of racism to be in their economic self-interest, but
white workers would not. The persistence of racism is thus implicitly laid at the door of white workers. Becker suggests that longrun market forces will lead to the end of discrimination anyway: less discriminatory employers, with no "psychic costs" to enter in
their accounts, will be able to operate at lower costs by hiring equivalent black workers at lower wages, thus bidding up the black
wage rate and/or driving the more discriminatory employers out of business. The approach to racism argued here is entirely
Racism is viewed as rooted in the economic system and not in

"exogenously determined" attitudes. Historically, the American Empire was
founded on the racist extermination of American Indians, was financed in
large part by profits from slavery, and was extended by a string of
interventions, beginning with the Mexican War of the 1840s, which have been at least partly
justified by white supremacist ideology. Today, by transferring white
different.
resentment toward blacks and away from

to serve the
capitalism, racism continues
needs of the capitalist system.
Although individual employers might gain by
refusing to dis-criminate and hiring more blacks, thus raising the black wage rate, it is not true that the capitalist class as a whole
would benefit if racism were eliminated and labor were more efficiently allocated without regard to skin color. We will show below
that
the divisiveness of racism
bargaining
weakens workers' strength when
with employers ; the economic consequences
of racism are
126

Capitalism K
not only lower incomes for blacks but also higher incomes for the
capitalist class and lower incomes for white workers. Although capitalists may not have
conspired consciously to create racism, and although capitalists may not be its principal perpetuators, never-the-less racism
docs support the continued viability of the American capitalist system. We have,
then, two alternative approaches to the analysis of racism. The first suggests that capitalists lose and white workers gain from
racism. The second predicts the oppositecapitalists gain while workers lose. The first says that racist "tastes for discrimination"
are formed independently of the economic system; the second argues that racism interacts symbiotically with capitalistic economic
institutions. The very persistence of racism in the United States lends support to the second approach. So do repeated instances of
employers using blacks as strikebreakers, as in the massive steel strike of 1919, and employerinstigated exacerbation of racial
antagonisms during that strike and many others.7 However, the particular virulence of racism among many blue- and whitecollar workers and their families seems to refute our approach and support Becker.
Racism is used by capitalism to divide workers and prevent

unity against industry
Bohmer, professor at Evergreen State College, 98Peter is a professor at
the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and has a B.S., Economics and Mathematics, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, 1965; Ph.D., Economics, University of Massachusetts, 1985. (Marxist Theory of Racism and
Racial Inequality12/20/1998 http://academic.evergreen.edu/b/bohmerp/marxracism.htm)
Marxist models of racial discrimination have been developed to rectify this shortcoming, and to simultaneously
critique the implications derived from Gary Becker and Milton Friedmans conclusion that capitalism and racism are
incompatible. These class-based models show the interests of employers as a class to pay lower wages to blacks
than to whites coincide with the interests of the individual employer. They focus on one central aspect of racism,
capitalism uses racism to divide workers. Based on Marxs analysis that production is a
an individual employer can make more
profit from a racially divided working class than from a united one. In these
models, the level of wages and the average production per worker depend on workers
bargaining power as well as on the technology. More worker bargaining power means higher wages and
lower profits, and less bargaining power means lower wages and higher profits.
that
social as well as a technical process, these models show that
This provides a microeconomic foundation, consistent with profit maximizing behavior, of disparate on the job
treatment of equally skilled black and white workers. It also explains why black workers will not replace white
workers, even if the latter can be paid lower wages. These ideas are developed most thoroughly in Michael Reichs,
By hiring both white workers and black workers, but paying a

lower wage to the black workers, employers as a class gain by racism and racial
inequality, and each individual employer also maximizes profits. Paying unequal wages in a firm based
on race divides workers, makes unity weaker than it would be if all workers received the same wage or if
Racial Inequality.
the workforce was racially homogeneous. The resulting disunity from racial division lowers average wages and
increases profits. At a certain point, however, firms do not hire more lower paid black workers to replace white
workers because this would lead to more black worker militancy possibly raising the overall level of wages.
Alternatively, though with similar results, the disunity of workers caused by different wages paid to blacks and
whites leads to increased profits. The reason in the latter case is the employers are able to get workers to work
harder and faster and produce more than they would have otherwise. Doing careful econometric analysis, Michael
Reich shows that the data on racial inequality is consistent with and provides support for this theory. Using data
primarily from the 1970 census, he compares urban areas. He demonstrates that
greater racial
inequality causes lower average earnings of white workers and higher

profit rates.
He uses the ratio of black to white earnings as a measure of racial inequality and racism. In
cities in the U.S. South, where the gaps between the wages of blacks and whites are greatest, wages of whites are
lowest, and profit highest. Reich demonstrates empirically that
not only do black workers lose
from racism but so do all workers as their incomes are reduced.
If the wages of
blacks equaled whites, not only would the wages of blacks be higher but so would the wages of whites. When
synthesized with the historical analysis of racism, these models provide insight into the reasons for the reproduction
of black-white earnings inequality. They demonstrate that capitalists divide the working class,
and that the correct strategy for the increase of racial and overall equality (between employees and employers) is
an alliance of black and other workers of color with white workers against their common exploiter, capital. There
are a number of problems however. This model downplays the role and importance of black people and black
organizations in challenging racial inequality and exploitation. Also missing is a convincing explanation of why
white workers often accept or support racial inequality and a racist ideology. Since in this framework, the incomes
of white as well as black workers are lowered, claiming white workers have false-consciousness is not a sufficient
127

Capitalism K
explanation of their racism. Although this class-based approach to racism provides insight into the reproduction of
racial and overall inequality, it leads to class reductionism and excessive economic determinism. Class reductionism
considers central only movements and issues directly related to class struggle between the working and capitalist
class. Economic determinism means the economy determines the politics, culture, consciousness and struggles of a
society; it minimizes the autonomous role of culture and race. In the class-based approaches to racism (and in the
internal colonialism framework examined in the next chapter), there is little analysis of the role and situation of
black and white women and how it has differed from that of black and white men. Gender is almost completely
disregarded and there is little investigation of the relation between gender, race and class oppression. Recent
developments in Marxist theory have led to a fuller analysis of racism. These include theorizing the importance of
non-class-based groupings such as gender and ethnicity. Culture, ideology, consciousness and the State are
examined as more than reflections of the economic base. They are important aspects of society that influence and
are influenced by the entire social formation.
Capitalism uses race as a means to separate workers and

prevent action against conditions
Reich, Gordon, & Edwards, professors at University of Boston,
Harvard, and Harvard, 73Michael, David M, and Richard C. are professors at Boston University, Harvard University,
and Harvard University respectively. Michael was also a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, David M. founded the Institute for Labor Education and
Research in 1975 and later the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis in New York City, and Richard C. is a partner in Casner & Edwards Nonprofit
Organizations Law Practice and received a J.D. from Harvard Law School. (Dual Labor Markets: A Theory of Labor Market
Segmentation5/1/1973 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=econfacpub&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F
%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar_url%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.unl.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle
%253D1002%2526context%253Deconfacpub%26sa%3DX%26scisig%3DAAGBfm0gKF9qk3cSsk5OOTx7EewP6YvaUg%26oi%3Dscholarr#search=%22http
%3A%2F%2Fdigitalcommons.unl.edu%2Fcgi%2Fviewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1002%26context%3Deconfacpub%22)
At the same time that firms were segmenting their internal labor markets, similar efforts were under way with
respect to the firm's external relations.
Employers quite consciously exploited race,

ethnic, and sex antagonisms in order to undercut unionism and break
strikes. In numerous instances during the consolidation of monopoly capitalism,
employers manipulated the mechanisms of labor supply in order to
import blacks as strikebreakers, and racial hostility was stirred up to
deflect class conflicts into race conflicts. For example, during the steel strike
of 1919, one of the critical points in U.S. history, some 30,000 to 40,000 blacks were imported
as strikebreakers in a matter of a few weeks. Employers also often trans formed jobs into "female jobs" in
order to render those jobs less susceptible to unionization (Brecher, D. Brody, Com- mons). Employers also
consciously manipulated ethnic antagonisms to achieve segmentation. Employers often hired groups from rival
nationalities in the same plant or in different plants. During labor unrest the companies sent spies and rumor
mongers to each camp, stirring up fears, hatred, and antagonisms of other groups. The strategy was most
successful when many immigrant groups had little command of English (Brecher, Brody).
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Capitalism K
Impact Resource Wars

Capitalism ensures resource wars in the inevitable drive for
resources
Wang, The University of Arizona Mathematics professor, 10
(Qiudong, 11/10/10, Arizona Mathematics homepage, The Trend of Global
Capitalism, http://math.arizona.edu/~dwang/treaty3.pdf, pg. 8, accessed 7/2/13,
JZ)
Capitalism, as a framework for mankind to pursue collectively a happier life on earth, has come a long way
and has created marvels. However, it has not yet succeeded in escaping a shadow long
projected by Malthus, that is, the ultimately disastrous consequence of
the constraint of nature resources imposed on human activities. Modern
technology has based material productivity of human societies on
increased consumption of certain natural resources not reproducible on earth.
Imperative need for these resources, in particular the energy resources, has imposed
an ever increasing tension on relationships of all sovereign members of
the international community. Existing energy resource is obviously not
sufficient to sustain an equal material consumption for all, and hostile
competition stimulated by the constraint on resources is likely to bring
forth the dark side of humanity. This explains why western powers have behaved so reluctantly
to share with under developed world the fruit of advancement of modern technology. They would rather keep these
precious resources for themselves. The logic behind the course of their actions is irrefutable if we admit that selfserving is an intrinsic human nature. The real issue is that, even if western powers are completely successful in
carrying out their self-serving policy towards under developed world, they are only delaying the explosion of a
time bomb that is intrinsically built into the system. The base of economic and social activities of the modern world
has to be shifted from irreproducible onto reproducible energy source, though we do not know yet how and even
Without a clear solution, resource

constraint would eventually lead to hostile competition, resulting in a
general declination of modern civilization. There is still time but the clock is
ticking. On the other hand, one could only imagine the world of wonders when mankind is finally liberated
how long it will take us to figure a practical solution out.
from the pressure of a disastrous hostile competition caused by restraint of nature resources.
The drive for profit creates wars, whether from greed or

scarcity grievances
Le Billon, University of British Columbia associate professor, 3
(Phillippe, 2003, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, and a
researcher at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, The Political Ecology of War and
Resource Exploitation, Studies in Policy Economy,
https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/spe/article/viewFile/12076/8950, pg. 61,
accessed 7/8/13, JZ)
Building on studies of the economic functions of violence and the economic agendas of "warlords ,"
economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler identified primary commodity

dependence as "the most powerful risk factor" of civil war in their search to devise
which of "greed" or "grievances" was the chief motivation of rebellion.? They first interpreted this
result as evidence that civil war resulted from greed over valuable and
plentiful resources, rather than grievances over scarce resources. While Collier and Hoeffler recently
revised their argument and placed natural resources as a contextual "opportunity" for rebellion rather than a
primarily motivational factor,
the "greed factor" is not the only one linking natural

129

Capitalism K
resources to violent forms of conflicts and appropriation. Despite a diversity of

populations, cultures, and political systems, many resource-dependent countries share similar difficulties-induding
In the light
of the prominence of resource dependence as a characteristic of conflictridden countries, both greed and grievances need to be acknowledged; as
does the influence of resource dependence on the vulnerability of
institutional arrangements and the conflictuality of power politics.
poor economic growth, high inequalities, and political authoritarianism-all factors of grievances.
Capitalisms drive for natural resources ensures wars over

resource allocation
Le Billon, University of British Columbia associate professor, 1
(Phillippe, 2001, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, and a
researcher at the Liu Institute for Global Issues, The political ecology of war:
natural resources and armed conflicts, pg. 562-563,
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/ept/eprints/ecowar.pdf, accessed 7/9/13, JZ)
Natural resources have played a conspicuous role in the history of armed

conflicts. From competition over wild game to merchant capital and
imperialist wars over precious minerals, natural resources have motivated
or financed the violent activities of many different types of belligerents
(Westing, 1986).1 With the sharp drop in foreign assistance to many governments and rebel groups resulting from
belligerents have become more dependent upon

mobilising private sources of support to sustain their military and political
activities; thereby defining a new political economy of war (Berdal & Keen, 1997;
the end of the Cold War,
Le Billon, 2000a). Similarly, a fall in terms of international trade in primary commodities and structural adjustments
have led to a readjustment of the strategies of accumulation of many Southern ruling elites towardsshadowstate
politics controlling informal economies and privatised companies (Reno, 1998). Although domestic and foreign state
budgets continue to support armed conflict expenditures, other major sources of funding include criminal proceeds
from kidnappings or protection rackets, diversion of relief aid, Diaspora remittances, and revenues from trading in
Arms dumping and the

support of corrupt regimes during the Cold War, the liberalisation of
international trade, as well as the redeployment of state security
personnel and networks into private ventures have frequently participated
in the growth of such parallel networks and the routinisation of criminal
practices within states institutions, most notably in Africa and the former Soviet Union (Bayart,
Ellis, & Hibou, 1999; Duffield, 1998). There is growing concern that whereas resources
were once a means of funding and waging armed conflict for states to a
political end, armed conflict is increasingly becoming the means to
individual commercial ends: gaining access to valuable resources (Keen, 1998;
commodities such as drugs, timber or minerals (Jean & Rufin, 1996).2
Berdal & Malone, 2000). This demise of ideology and politics informs, for example, the assumption of the UN
Security Council that the control and exploitation of natural resources motivates and finances parties responsible for
the continuation of conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.3
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Capitalism K
Impact Value to Life

Capitalism creates mental conditions that decrease value to
life
James, Trained psychologist, 08
(Oliver, theguardian, Selfish Capitalism is bad for our mental health, 1/2/08,
Add to this the astonishing fact that citizens of Selfish Capitalist, English-speaking nations (which tend to be one and the same) are
twice as likely to suffer mental illness as those from mainland western Europe, which is largely Unselfish Capitalist in its political
economy. An average 23% of Americans, Britons, Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians suffered in the last 12 months, but
only 11.5% of Germans, Italians, French, Belgians, Spaniards and Dutch. The message could not be clearer. Selfish
Capitalism, much more than genes, is extremely bad for your mental health. But why is it so
toxic? Readers of this newspaper will need little reminding that Selfish Capitalism has massively
increased the wealth of the wealthy, robbing the average earner to give to
the rich. There was no "trickle-down effect" after all. The real wage of the
average English-speaking person has remained the same - or, in the case of the US,
decreased - since the 1970s. By more than halving the taxes of the richest and transferring the burden to the
general population, Margaret Thatcher reinstated the rich's capital wealth after three postwar decades in which they had steadily
become poorer. Although I risk you glazing over at these statistics, it's worth remembering that the top 1% of British earners have
doubled their share of the national income since 1982, from 6.5% to 13%, FTSE 100 chief executives now earning 133 times more
than the average wage (against 20 times in 1980); and under Brown's chancellorship the richest 0.3% nobbled over half of all liquid
assets (cash, instantly accessible income), increasing their share by 79% during the last five years. In itself, this economic inequality
does not cause mental illness. WHO studies show that some very inequitable developing nations, like Nigeria and China, also have
the lowest prevalence of mental illness. Furthermore, inequity may be much greater in the English-speaking world today, but it is far
less than it was at the end of the 19th century. While we have no way of knowing for sure, it is very possible that mental illness was
What does the damage is the

combination of inequality with the widespread relative materialism of Affluenza
- placing a high value on money, possessions, appearances and fame when
you already have enough income to meet your fundamental psychological
needs. Survival materialism is healthy. If you need money for medicine or to buy a house, becoming very concerned about
getting them does not make you mentally ill. But Selfish Capitalism stokes up relative materialism:
unrealistic aspirations and the expectation that they can be fulfilled . It
does so to stimulate consumerism in order to increase profits and promote
short-term economic growth. Indeed, I maintain that high levels of mental illness are essential to Selfish
Capitalism, because needy, miserable people make greedy consumers and can be
more easily suckered into perfectionist, competitive workaholism . With
nowhere near as widespread in, for instance, the US or Britain of that time.
overstimulated aspirations and expectations, the entrepreneurial fantasy society fosters the delusion that anyone can be Alan Sugar
or Bill Gates, never mind that the actual likelihood of this occurring has diminished since the 1970s. A Briton turning 20 in 1978 was
more likely than one doing so in 1990 to achieve upward mobility through education. Nonetheless, in the Big Brother/ It Could Be
This is
most damaging of all - the ideology that material affluence is the key to
fulfilment and open to anyone willing to work hard enough. If you don't succeed, there is only one person to blame - never
mind that it couldn't be clearer that it's the system's fault, not yours . Depressed or anxious,
you work ever harder. Or maybe you collapse and join the sickness benefit queue, leaving it to people shipped in to
You society, great swaths of the population believe they can become rich and famous, and that it is highly desirable.
do the low-paid jobs that society has taught you are too demeaning - let alone the unpaid ones, like looking after children or elderly
parents, which are beneath contempt in the Nouveau Labour liturgy. There is much tearing of hair across the media and advocacy of
131

nose-pegging on these pages of the "grin and bear it" variety. In fact,
Capitalism K
there is an alternative. We
desperately need - and before long, I predict we will get - a passionate, charismatic, probably female leader who
advocates the Unselfish Capitalism of our neighbours. The pitch is simple. Not only would reduced consumerism
and greater equality make us more ecologically sustainable, it would halve
the prevalence of mental illness within a generation.
Capitalism leads to laborer objectification

AP, Works for Cyber Harvard Law, no date
(AP, the Bridge, Economic Analysis leads to Commodification, no
date,
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/LawEconomics/critique5.htm,
7/3/13, CF)
[T]he hegemony of profit-maximizing buying and selling stifles the individual
and social potential of human beings through its organization of

production, distribution, and consumption, and through its concomitant creation and
maintenance of the person as a self-aggrandizing profit- and preference-maximizer. . . .1. Alienability and
Alienation: The Problem of Fetishism. -- For critics of the market society, commodification
simultaneously expresses and creates alienation. The word "alienation" thus harbors
an ironic double meaning. Freedom of alienation is the paramount characteristic
of liberal property rights, yet Marx saw a necessary connection between

this market alienability and human alienation. In his early writings, Marx analyzed the
connection between alienation and commodity production in terms of estranged labor; later he introduced
the notion of commodity fetishism. In his treatment of estranged labor, Marx portrayed workers' alienation
from their own human self-activity as the result of producing objects that became market commodities.
By objectifying the labor of the worker, commodities create objectbondage and alienate workers from the natural world in and with which
they should constitute themselves by creative interaction. Ultimately, laboring to
produce commodities turns the worker from a human being into a commodity, "indeed the most wretched
of commodities." Marx continued: The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity
the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world
of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of
men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the
worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities
generally. Commodification brings about an inferior form of human life. As a
result of this debasement, Marx concluded that people themselves, not just their
institutions, must change in order to live without the market. To reach the
post-capitalist stage, "the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary." The fetishism of
commodities represents a different kind of human subjection to commodities (or a different way of looking
at human subjection to commodities). By fetishism Marx meant a kind of projection of power and action
onto commodities. This projection reflects -- but disguises -- human social
interactions. Relationships between people are disguised as relationships

between commodities, which appear to be governed by abstract market
forces.
Capitalism causes dehumanization-people are seen as only

materials for production
AP, Works for Cyber Harvard Law, no date
132

Capitalism K
(AP, the Bridge, Economic Analysis leads to Commodification,

no date,
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/LawEconomics/critique5.ht
m, 7/3/13, CF)
I do not decide what objects to produce, rather "the market" does. Unless there is a demand for
paperweights, they will have no market value, and I cannot produce them for sale. Moreover, I do not
decide what price to sell them for, "the market" does. At market equilibrium, I cannot charge more nor less
than my opportunity costs of production without going out of business. In disequilibrium, my price and
profit are still set by "the market"; my price depends upon how many of us are supplying paperweights in
relation to how many people want to buy them and what they are willing to pay for them. Thus, the market
value of my commodity dictates my actions, or so it seems. As Marx put it, "[producers'] own
social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the
producers instead of being ruled by them." In an analysis that has profoundly influenced
many contemporary anticommodifiers, Georg Lukacs, developing Marx's concept of commodity fetishism,
found commodification to be "the central, structural problem of capitalist society in all its aspects."
Lukacs linked the trend to commodify the worker with Weberian

"rationalization" of the capitalist structure. The more efficient production becomes, the
more fungible are the laborers. Moreover, fungibility becomes pervasive: [ T]he principle of
rational mechanisation and calculability [embraces] every aspect of life.
Consumer articles no longer appear as the products of an organic process
within a community (as for example in a village community). They now appear, on the
one hand, as abstract members of a species identical by definition with its other
members and, on the other hand, as isolated objects the possession or nonpossession of which depends
on rational calculations. These falsely objectified commodities are said to be
reified. According to Lukacs, reification penetrates every level of
intellectual and social life. False objectification -- false separateness from

us -- in the way we conceive of our social activities and environment
reflects and creates dehumanization and powerlessness . The rhetoric, the
discourse in which we conceive of our world, affects what we are and what our world is. For example,
Lukacs thought that the universal commodification of fully developed capitalism underlies physicalist
reductionism in science and the tendency to conceive of matter as external and real. He thought that
universal commodification also underlies both our rigid division of the

world into subjects versus objects ("the metaphysical dilemma of the relation between
'mind' and 'matter'"), and the "Kantian dilemma" that places objective reason, purportedly the foundation
of metaphysics and ethics, in the noumenal realm forever beyond our reach. For Lukacs, thought
and reality are inextricably linked.
The capitalist system commodifies the working class as just means for
profit
Leys and Harriss-White, AP, 13
(Colin and Barbra, OpenDemocracy, Commodification: The
essence of our time, 4/2/13,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/colin-leys-barbaraharriss-white/commodification-essence-of-our-time, 7/3/13, CF)
Under advanced capitalism, commodification expands into all corners of
social and political life, with devastating consequences. Finding a limit to
133

Capitalism K
this process is more urgent than ever. The dominant process underlying
the transformation of life in all societies, since at least the mid-nineteenth
century, is the conversion of things and activities into commodities, or
commodification. In advanced capitalist countries this process is now
outstripping our political and social capacity to adjust to it. Any useful
economic analysis needs to foreground this process. Mainstream economics

does not do this. Commodities & commodification Not everything useful is a
commodity. What makes anything a commodity is the possibility of trading

it for profit. Apples grown in someones back yard are not commodities;
apples become commodities only when they are grown for sale. Under
capitalism, nothing is produced that cant be sold for profit, so the
production of commodities is capitalism s raison detre. The Italian
economist Piero Sraffa even defined capitalism as the production of
commodities by means of commodities meaning, by means of production
that are also traded: i.e. not only raw materials and machinery, but also
labour which under capitalism is sold by workers and bought by
employers.
Slavery is justifies in capitalism, reducing people to nothing

but the means for production and devaluating them as human
beings
Sakisaka, Writer for Marxist.org, 06
(Itsuko, Marxists.org, Exploitation of labor, 2006,
http://www.marxists.org/subject/japan/sakisaka/exploitation.ht
m, 7/9/13, CF)
Capitalism represents an historical era in which commodity production spans the entirety
of society. Human labor-power is commodified. As a commodity, laborpower also has value. And a wage is received that is the price of this
commodity. Because surplus-labor is exploited in the form of commodity
production, surplus-labor takes the form of surplus-value . Capitalism is
highly developed commodity production so the exploitation of surpluslabor likewise represents an extremely complex issue. In the case of the
exploitation of slave labor, by contrast, things are exceedingly clear.
Slaves, who exist as a sort of animal owned by another human being,
have no freedom . Like a dog, a slave is unable to exercise any degree of physical or mental freedom.
The products of a slave's labor belong in their entirety to the slave owner.
All that is received in return is food. A peasant, meanwhile, is a sort of half-person. Firmly tied
to the land, a peasant cannot choose what to grow or which land to grow it on, nor is he free to choose a profession.
To the extent that peasants cultivate the plot of land they are provided, they are able to obtain food, clothing and
lodging. But the fruit of their labor on the lord's fields entirely belong to this master. There is thus a clear, temporal
division between the labor the peasants perform for themselves and that performed for the feudal lord. This makes
it difficult to conceal the fact that labor is exploited. And when, as subsequently occurs, some of the products from
the land the peasants themselves cultivate must be paid as a tribute to this lord, in addition to their labor to
cultivate the lord's fields, this also clearly presents itself as exploitation because it takes an in-kind form. Even
though the yearly rice tribute was referred to in Japanese as goko-gomin (50 percent for master, 50 percent for
Under
capitalism, however, things are different. Labor-power is commodified and
thus sold according to its value. The means of production are also
purchased and owned by the capitalist class. Capitalists come into
peasant), this did not change the fact that the master's share was also the product of the peasant's labor.
134

Capitalism K
possession of the means of production and labor-power through the

process of circulation, as well as the resulting products that likewise flow back to them via the
circulation process to meet their needs. Even if everything is bought and sold at its
value, capitalists are able to obtain the surplus-labor that forms surplusvalue. What is the secret behind all of this?
135

Capitalism K
***Alternative***
136

Capitalism K
Alt General
The alt solves: the rejection of surplus value prevents class
formation but it requires total fidelity to the revolutionary
project
Shimp 9 (Kaleb, Department of Economics, University of Northern Iowa The Validity of Karl Marx's Theory of
Historical Materialism http://business.uni.edu/economics/Themes/shimp.pdf p. 54-55) APB
It cannot be denied that Marx wrote very little about Oriental societies. This may be due cither to a lack of
information or a lack of caring. The quote from Grundisse, however, can be used to illustrate why the Oriental
In order for the Asiatic mode of production to dissipate,

a contradiction has to be present. In this state of underdeveloped
productive forces, no contradiction exists. In the Asiatic mode of
production, as with primitive communism, no classes exist; the only way for
antagonistic classes to form is if the productive forces improve and a
surplus is created. The presence of a surplus provides motivation for
individuals to break from the commune in order to gain control of this
surplus. These individuals capture the surplus and emerge into new social
strata such as warrior castes, priesthoods, nobles and commoners (Laibman2006,186). The emergence
of classes signifies an end to primitive communism. In the Asiatic mode of
production, no surplus is present. Therefore, there is no motivation for
individuals to break from the commune. There is a "self-sustaining circle of
production, unity of agriculture and manufactures, etc." within the Oriental societies
that prevent class formation (Marx 1993,486). The "self-sustaining circle of
production" is why the Oriental societies remain unchanged. Marx describes this phenomenon in Capital when
he discusses the ancient Indian communities. Within each of these communities, a division of labor
exists where certain people perform certain tasks that provide for
everyone within the small communities. When the population increases, a
new community forms on vacant land (Marx 1990,478). These communities are isolated.
Because of this, the market is unchanged and people develop no new or additional
wants. Hence, there is no upward pressure on the productive forces to
satisfy the growing needs and wants of the market. Therefore, the Asiatic mode of
societies are an exception.
production subsists. Giddens recognizes this by saying that the stagnation of productive forces due to
circumstances within specific societies is consistent with Marxs work in Grundisse (1995,84). Still, Giddens and
many others feel that the productive forces do not "underlie the major episodic transitions" throughout history
(1995, 84-5).
Endorsing the negative project of historical totalizing is the

only way to recognize the continuity of class domination.
San Juan 6 (Epifanio, Jr., Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven,
Belgium, Crisis and Contradiction in Globalization Discourse
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/crisisandcontradictioninglobalizationdiscourse.htm) APB
order to
probe and analyze
the multilayered contradictions of any
phenomenon, we need to apply the principle of historical totalizing :
connecting spheres of culture, ideology, and politics to the overarching
structure of production and reproduction . This is axiomatic for any
historical-materialist critique. Consequently, the question of cultural identity
cannot be mechanically divorced from the historically determinate mode
In
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Capitalism K
of production and attendant social relations of any given socioeconomic

formation. What is the point of eulogizing hybrid, cyborg-esque, nomadic global citizens
even fluid, ambivalent "subject positions" if you likewhen the majority of these
postmodernized creatures are dying of hunger, curable epidemics, diseases and
psychosomatic illnesses brought about precisely by the predatory encroachment of
globalizing transnational corporations, mostly based in the U.S. and Western Europe? But it is not just
academic postmodernists suffering from the virus of pragmatist metaphysics who apologize for profit-making
globalization. Even a latterly repentant World Bank expert, Joseph Stiglitz, could submit in his well-known
Globalization and Its Discontents, the following ideological plea: "Foreign aid, another aspect of the globalized
world, for all its faults still has brought benefits to millions, often in ways that have almost gone unnoticed: guerillas
in the Philippines were provided jobs by a World Bank financed-project as they laid down their arms" (Stiglitz 420).
Any one slightly familiar with the Cold War policies of Washington vis--vis a neocolony like the Philippines knows
that World Bank funds were then used by the U.S. Pentagon to suppress
the Communist Party-led peasant rebellion in the 1950s against the iniquitous
semi-feudal system and corrupt comprador regime (Doty; Constantino). It is globalization utilized to
maintain direct coercive U.S. domination of the Philippines at a crucial conjuncture when the Korean War was
mutating into the Vietnam War, all designed to contain "World Communism" (China, Soviet Union). Up to now,
despite nationalist gains in the last decade, the Philippine government plays host every year to thousands of U.S.
"Special Forces" purportedly training Filipino troops in the war against "terrorism"that is, against anti-imperialist
forces like the Communist Party-led New People's Army and progressive elements of the Moro Islamic National
Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front (International Peace Mission). One needs to repeat again
that the present world system, as Hugo Radice argues, remains "both global and national", a contingent and
contradictory process (4). Globalization dialectically negates and affirms national entitiespseudo-nations as well
a universal "free market"

promoted by TNC triumphalism is deemed to be homogenizing and centralizing in effect,
abolishing independent states/nationalities, and creating a global public sphere through
as those peoples struggling for various forms of national sovereignty. While
juxtaposition, syncretic amalgamation, and so on, one perceives a counter-current of fragmentation, increasing
asymmetry, unbridgeable inequalities, and particularistic challenges to neoliberal
integrationincluding fundamentalist political Islam, eco-terrorism, drugs, migration, and other movements of
"barbarians at the gates" (Schaeffer). Is it a question of mere human rights in representation and life-style, or actual
Articulating these
historical contradictions without theorizing the concept of crisis in capital
accumulation will only lead to the short-circuiting transculturalism of
Ashcroft and other ideologies waging battle for supremacy/hegemony over
"popular common sense" imposing meaning /order/significance on the whole
globalization process (Rupert). Indeed, academic inquirers of globalization are protagonists in this
dignity and justice in the everyday lives of whole populations with singular life-forms?
unfolding drama of universalization under duress. One may pose the following questions as a heuristic pedagogical
Can globalized capital truly universalize the world and bring

freedom and prosperity to everyone, as its celebrants claim? Globalization as the
transnationalized domination of capital exposes its historical limit in the
deepening class inequality in a polarized, segregated and policed world.
While surplus-value extraction in the international labor market remains basic to the
logic of accumulation, the ideology of neoliberal transnationalism has
evolved into the discourse of war on terrorism ("extremism") rationalized as
"the clash of civilizations". Contradictions and its temporary resolutions
constitute the imperialist project of eliding the crisis of unilateral
globalism. A historical-materialist critique should seek to highlight the
political economy of this recolonizing strategy operating in the fierce competition of the
ruling classes of the U.S., Japan, and Europe to impose hegemonic control in an
increasingly boundary-destroying space and continue the neocolonial
oppression of the rest of the world. What is needed is a radical critique of
the ideology of technological determinism and its associated apologetics
of the "civilizing mission", the evangelism of "pre-emptive" intervention in
the name of Realpolitik "democracy" against resistance by workers,
peasants, women, indigenous communities (in Latin America, Africa, the Philippines and
maneuver:
138

elsewhere [see Houghton and Bell; San Juan, "U.S. Imperial Terror"]),
Capitalism K
and all the excluded and
marginalized peoples of the planet.
Only a horizontal movement by the multitude will overcome

capitalism
Tampio 5 (Nicolas Tampio, 2005, Visiting Assistant Professor of Government at
Hamilton College. In 2003-2004 he served as the assistant editor of Political Theory.
In 2005 he was awarded his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University Can the Multitude
Save the Left? http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v008/8.2tampio.
html#authbio)MB
The multitude, the hero of Hardt and Negri's 2000 book Empire, remained cloaked in shadows. The purpose of that
book was rather to illuminate the multitude's enemy: Empire. Empire is the new sovereign power that governs the
world. Empire comprises the concrete institutions and structures that regulate the global polity and economy: the
United Nations, the U.S. military, NATO, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, etc. Empire also creates the
languages, ideologies, and opinions that propagate the imperial order: e.g., that free markets generate free
societies, that globalization movements have affinities to Al-Quaeda, that communism is entirely discredited.
What makes Empire different and more sinister than earlier forms of
capitalism and imperialism, according to Hardt and Negri, is the extent of
its rule. Empire encompasses the entire world, presents itself as the culmination of
history, and produces the very bodies that it governs. Empire, cinemagraphically, is The Matrix: a global
parasite that extracts the energy and labor of a subjugated humanity. In
Empire, Hardt and Negri elaborate several features of the multitude that may combat this new
global order. The multitude is the postmodern proletariat. It includes
everyone exploited by capitalism, including the poor who vitalize society but are
dismissed by orthodox Marxism. The multitude produces ideas, songs, books,
and software, in addition to cars, tanks, and factories. It is nomadic, circulating the globe in
ever-accelerating flows, and miscegenated, hybridizing identities and
cultures. The multitude, performing cognitive, symbolic, and affective labor, is not the
industrial working class, and its internal diversity and intelligence distinguish it from the people, the
masses, and the mob. The multitude is a political subjectivity generating, and
generated by, our time. Most importantly, for Hardt and Negri, the multitude desires
freedom. The multitude seeks to possess citizenship anywhere in the
world, to earn a social wage, and to control collectively the means of
production. Many readers of Empire, including several in Paul Passavant and Jodi Dean's edited volume,
Empire's New Clothes, pressed Hardt and Negri for more details about the multitude.1 Consider Kam Shapiro's
thesis in "The Myth of the Multitude."2 Shapiro begins by drawing attention to the Christian images permeating
Empire, including pre-modern Christians debilitating the Roman Empire and St. Francis's exiting early modern
capitalism. Then, Shapiro identifies parallels between Hardt and Negri's commitment to spontaneous collective
action and George Sorel's General Strike and Rosa Luxembourg's model of revolutionary subjectivity. Finally,
Shapiro notes Hardt and Negri's wariness to define the multitude too
precisely or to identify any ongoing social movement as an embodiment of
the multitude. Shapiro, observing the historical consequences of chiliastic Christianity and Communism,
asks, reasonably enough, whether we ought to yearn for any global entity, immanent or transcendent, to deliver us
from Empire. "Are we not at present caught between perfectionist utopias and catastrophic myths, both of which
are linked to terrible violence?"3 In interviews, Hardt and Negri acknowledged that they needed to elucidate the
political subject capable of destroying Empire and building a better future.4 The aim of Multitude: War and
Democracy in the Age of Empire is to accomplish this conceptually and empirically. One side of Multitude, then,
updates Marx's historical materialism to show how the new world order spawns the conditions of possibility for the
emergence of the multitude. In diverse ways, Hardt and Negri argue, the global state of war and the postmodern
economy undermine Empire and prepare the multitude for absolute democracy. Take the global state of war.
Contemporary insurgencies, knowing that they cannot triumph over

Empire using conventional armies, organize themselves in distributed
networks. Faced with network enemies, the military branch of Empire dismantles its traditional sovereign
structures to become a network itself. The network struggles of the multitude, Hardt and Negri observe, are more
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Capitalism K
The multitude, for

example, can organize itself horizontally, siphon support for Empire, and
strike proficiently using the Internet. A similar process is at work, Hardt and Negri maintain, in the
postmodern economy. Labor today is becoming increasingly collaborative,
cooperative, and communicative. Nearly every profession, from
agriculture to industry and entertainment, requires workers to travel,
become technologically savvy, and work in groups. Empire encourages the production
of the multitude's general intellect to maximize its power. The multitude's mobility and
commonality, however, constructs a counter-Empire to oppose the
hegemony of Empire. The Internet, once again, is a site of conflict between Empire and the multitude, as
effective and democratic than earlier models of popular or guerilla warfare.
when young people use work computers to organize raves and demonstrations. The other side of Multitude, and
one that will interest many readers of Empire, provides examples of the nascent political subjectivity in action. The
multitude, Hardt and Negri claim, has begun to act for homosexual rights (ACT-UP and Queer Nation), socialmovement unionism (the piqueteros in Argentina and Justice for Janitors in the United States), and the cause of
global peace (the international antiwar protests of February 15, 2003). The greatest manifestation of the multitude
up to now, however, occurred in Seattle in 1999. The globalization activists who disrupted the Third Ministerial
Conference of the WTO exemplify one definition of the multitude: singularities that act in common. In Seattle,
diverse constituencies environmentalists and unionists, anarchists and church groups converged to protest the
current form of global capitalism and to discuss alternative futures. The protestors in Seattle are not a perfect
embodiment of the multitude because they are predominantly North Americans and because their positive vision is
The
relevant question for Hardt and Negri, therefore, is not, "What is the
multitude?" but: "What can the multitude become?" Hardt and Negri
create the concept of the multitude to revive the Left. Hardt and Negri
witness a world in which Empire pulls the levers of power and permeates
our hearts and minds. There are objections and protests, of course, but these are isolated and
incoherent a march here, a riot there, an editorial elsewhere. For Hardt and Negri, the Left needs a
political project to confront and replace Empire. The clay of the multitude
already exists, but it needs to be shaped into a powerful body. The multitude needs to
not yet fully articulated. The multitude today is more a virtual political force than an actual political entity.
become conscious of its own strength. At the beginning of Multitude, the authors describe the figure of the Golem in
Jewish mysticism.5 According to the Kabbalah, the Golem is unformed matter that is brought to life by a rabbi
pronouncing the name of God over it. The Golem then arises as a monster that can destroy the persecutors of its
creator or, perhaps, find redemption through love. Hardt and Negri carry this project into postmodernity. "Today we
need new giants and new monsters to put together nature and history, labor and politics, art and invention in order
to demonstrate the new power that is being born in the multitude."6
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Capitalism K
Alt Total Rejection Key

Total rejection is key to getting rid of capitalism
Flank 7 (Lenny, writer, Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony: Marxism, Capitalism, and Their Relation to Sexism,
Racism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism)
A critical examination of the relationship between Marxism and other social justice movements, including feminism,
The capitalist social

order is like a Hydra, a many-headed dragon. Try to cut off one head, and
the others will kill you. The only way to kill the beast is to cut off all its
heads at once. The social revolution must grow to encompass not merely
the economic means of production, but the entire mode of social life,
including its familial, sexual, racial, national, gender and authority roles.
The tactics of the traditional Leninists are entirely unsuited for that task.
Only a wider-ranging social movement can hope to defeat capitalist
hegemony.
anti-racism, gay liberation, environmentalism, anarchism and Native activism.
The only lasting solution is to get rid of capitalism altogether

League for the revolutionary party 12 (http://lrpcofi.org/statements/mayday2012.html)
As with the Republicans, the heart of the Democratic Party, along with its
money and power, belongs to wealthy capitalists. Capitalism by its nature
must try to divide and conquer the working class, in order to maximize profits at the
workers expense. Under the conditions of deep economic crisis of the past few years, the drives of
the system to scapegoat immigrants, people of color, youth and greedy union workers for the
problems of unemployment, inadequate health care and education, and poverty caused by the profit-
Anti-immigrant chauvinism, racism and

immiseration of the working class are features of capitalism at this time ,
not of any one given capitalist party or politician. Thus revolutionary socialists oppose
voting for candidates of any capitalist party and champion instead an alternative
making system itself, go into high gear.
strategy, based on the power of the working class to fight for its own interests. The working class can
unite to beat back specific capitalist attacks. People of color, especially youth, will be key to
developing a rising fight back. And revolutionary socialists will fight in every struggle to build as
the only lasting solution is to get

rid of capitalism altogether. Socialist revolution will put the working class in power and
strong a movement as possible. We also believe that
replace the current system based on production for private profit with a new society based on
production to satisfy human needs.
We must completely reject capitalism in our daily lives

Herod 4 (James, University of Massachusetts Boston,
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/06.htm)
Thus capitalist structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools, etc.) are not seized so much as
Capitalist relations are not fought so much as they are

simply rejected. We stop participating in activities that support (finance,
condone) the capitalist world and start participating in activities that build a
new world while simultaneously undermining the old . We create a new pattern of
simply abandoned.
social relations alongside capitalist relations and then we continually build and strengthen our new
pattern while doing every thing we can to weaken capitalist relations. In this way our new democratic,
non-hierarchical, non-commodified relations can eventually overwhelm the capitalist relations and
force them out of existence. This is how it has to be done. This is a plausible, realistic strategy.
To
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Capitalism K
think that we could create a whole new world of decent social

arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called
revolution, or during the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new
social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is
strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations. Such a revolution
will never happen automatically, blindly, determinably, because of the inexorable, materialist laws of
history. It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we know what were
doing and know how we want to live, and know what obstacles have to be overcome before we can live
that way, and know how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs. But we must not think
that the capitalist world can simply be ignored, in a live and let live attitude, while we try to build new
lives elsewhere. (There is no elsewhere.) There is at least one thing, wage-slavery, that we cant
Capitalism
must be explicitly refused and replaced by something else. This
constitutes War, but it is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and
tanks, but a war fought on a daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by millions of
simply stop participating in (but even here there are ways we can chip away at it).
people. It is a war nevertheless because the accumulators of capital will use coercion, brutality, and
murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block any rejection of the system. They have
always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so. Nevertheless, there are
many concrete ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods can gut capitalism, which I will
enumerate shortly.
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Capitalism K
Alt Hist Mat = Best method

Only historical materialism can account for the inseparability
of economics and political and social dominance
Shimp 9 (Kaleb, Department of Economics, University of Northern Iowa The Validity of Karl Marx's Theory of
Historical Materialism http://business.uni.edu/economics/Themes/shimp.pdf p. 41-43) APB
Historical materialism asserts that economic forces are the primary forces
that propel man through history as social classes interact. Economic
interactions are how man relates to the material world. Man changes the
material world, not with thought and conceptualization, but with picks,
shovels, ploughs, diggers, looms and lathes (Wolff 2003,28). Man has to labor in
order to survive. Labor physically changes the world, causing the
economic forces to develop as man is able to gain more and more control
over his environment. For example, farmers at one point used animal-driven plows to plant crops in
order to make a living. Eventually, tractors that performed the same task as animals, but much more efficiently,
were developed and gave farmers greater control of their environment. The tractor was simply a development in
As economic forces develop, class struggles become more

intense. Class struggles provide the contradiction that causes the
dialectical process to work in Marx's theory. Two classes, ruling and lower, struggle
the economic forces.
against each other until one eventually wins and becomes the new ruling class. From this new ruling class, another
lower class will develop, continuing the process. Marx and Engels clearly declare the importance of classes in
history with the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto, "The
history of all hitherto existing

society is the history of class struggles" (2005, 7). Classes develop from the
conflict between the economic/productive forces, relations of production,
and superstructure within society. Marx's clearest representation of the interactions between
productive forces, productive relations, and superstructure is in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and
independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their
material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
society the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite
The mode of production of material life determines the

social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men
that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their
consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces in
society come in conflict with the existing relations of production , or what is
but a legal expression for the same thing with the property relations within which they
have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn
forms of social consciousness.
into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire
immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. (Marx and Engcls 1983, 159-60) As the productive
forces continue to improve, the relations of production (as Marx says, these are for the most part property rights)
become a burden (in Marx's words a "fetter") on the improving productive forces, not allowing the productive forces
to continue on their path of improvement. The superstructure is the legal, philosophical, religious, and political
environment in which the productive forces and productive relations interact. The superstructure exists in order to
Classes develop due to the conflict between the

productive forces and productive relations. The productive forces and productive relations
help the productive relations.
do not have a dialectical contradiction. The contradiction is only present between the ruling and lower classes.
Between the productive forces and relations of production exists only a conflict and the presence of conflict does
not mean the presence of contradiction by the dialectical definition (Heilbroner 1981,39-40). The conflict between
the productive forces and the relations of production only provide the basis by which classes develop. The
productive forces are always changing and improving. As man labors in the world, the division of labor grows and
man finds new and better ways to master his environment. This improvement will benefit the lower class because
with greater control of the environment comes a greater capability of obtaining beneficial resources. The ruling
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Capitalism K
The current
relations of production and superstructure of the society exist to serve the
will of the ruling class. The ruling class determines the distribution of
goods within the society and they have no desire to change the relations
of production. The lower class, on the other hand, is not content with the current
situation and would like to take advantage of the ever-improving
productive forces. The ruling class prevents this from happening. This
class, however, is in an advantageous position and would like the status quo to remain.
contradiction of classes culminates in social revolution. The lower class overthrows the ruling class and forms new
relations of production that arc better suited to work with the productive forces. The superstructure changes with
the relations of production and the new relations of production and superstructure serve the interests of the new
ruling class. The new thesis will stay in existence until the productive relations and productive forces are again no
longer compatible. The incompatibility will cause another lower class to form in contradiction to the upper class,
beginning the antagonism all over again. Within every mode of production lies its own downfall.
Historical materialism is the best methodological approach to

fighting capitalism-it provides the ideological backdrop
necessary to turn theory into praxis and end capitalist
exploitation
Lukacs in 67 (George, Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. He is a
founder of the tradition of Western Marxism. He contributed the ideas of reification
and class consciousness to Marxist philosophy and theory, and his literary criticism
was influential in thinking about realism and about the novel as a literary genre. He
served briefly as Hungary's Minister of Culture as part of the government of the
short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, History and Class Consciousness)
Historical materialism has, therefore, a much greater value for the
proletariat than that of a method of historical research. It is one of the
most important of all its weapons. For the class struggle of the proletariat
signifies at the same time the awakening of its class consciousness. And
this awakening followed everywhere from an understanding of the true
situation, of the actually existing historical connections. And it is this that
gives the class struggle of the proletariat its special place among other
class struggles, namely that it obtains its sharpest weapon from the hand
of true science, from its clear insight into reality. Whereas in the class
struggles of the past the most varied ideologies, religious, moral and other
forms of 'false consciousness' were decisive, in the case of the class
struggle of the proletariat, the war for the liberation of the last
oppressed class, the revelation of the unvarnished truth became both a
war-cry and the most potent weapon. By laying bare the springs of the
historical process historical materialism became, in consequence of the
class situation of the proletariat, an instrument of war. The most important
function of historical materialism is to deliver a precise judgement on
the capitalist social system, to unmask capitalist society. Throughout the
class struggle of the proletariat, therefore, historical materialism has
constantly been used at every point, where, by means of all sorts of ideological
frills, the bourgeoisie had concealed the true situation, the state of the class
struggle; it has been used to focus the cold rays of science upon these
veils and to show how false and misleading they were and how far they
were in conflict with the truth. For this reason the chief function of
historical materialism did not lie in the elucidation of pure scientific
knowledge, but in the field of action. Historical materialism did not
exist for its own sake, it existed so that the proletariat could
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Capitalism K
understand a situation and so that, armed with this knowledge, it could

act accordingly. <224-225>
Dialectical materialism is the only sustainable way to stop

political paralysis. Their belief in pure subjectivity separates
us from the backdrop of capitalism that determines that
subjectivity, making paralysis inevitable.
The practical danger of every such dualism shows itself in the loss of any directive for action. As soon as
you abandon the ground of reality that has been conquered and
reconquered by dialectical materialism, as soon as you decide to
remain on the 'natural' ground of existence, of the empirical in its stark, naked
brutality, you create a gulf between the subject of an action and the
milieux of the 'facts' in which the action unfolds so that they stand opposed to each
other as harsh, irreconcilable principles. It then becomes impossible to impose the
subjective will, wish or decision upon the facts or to discover in them any
directive for action . A situation in which the 'facts' speak out unmistakably for or against a definite
course of action has never existed, and neither can or will exist. The more conscientiously the facts are
explored in their isolation, i.e. in their unmediated relationsthe less com-pellingly will they point in any one
direction. It is self-evident that a merely subjective decision will be shattered by the pressure of
dialectical materialism is
seen to offer the only approach to reality which can give action a
direction. The self-knowledge, both subjective and objective, of the proletariat at a
given point in its evolution is at the same time knowledge of the stage
of development achieved by the whole society . The facts no longer
appear strange when they are comprehended in their coherent reality, in the relation of all partial
aspects to their inherent, but hitherto unelucidated roots in the whole: we then perceive the
tendencies which strive towards the centre of reality, to what we are
wont to call the ultimate goal. This ultimate goal is not an abstract ideal
opposed to the process, but an aspect of truth and reality . It is the
concrete meaning of each stage reached and an integral part of the
concrete moment. Because of this, to comprehend it is to recognise the
direction taken (unconsciously) by events and tendencies towards the
totality. It is to know the direction that determines concretely the
correct course of action at any given momentin terms of the interest of the total
process, viz. the emancipation of the proletariat. However, the evolution of society
constantly heightens the tension between the partial aspects and the
whole. Just because the inherent meaning of reality shines forth with an ever more resplendent light, the
uncomprehended facts acting automatically 'according to laws'. Thus
meaning of the process is embedded ever more deeply in day-to-day events, and totality permeates the spatio-
The path to consciousness throughout the

course of history does not become smoother but on the contrary ever more
arduous and exacting. For this reason the task of orthodox Marxism, its victory over
Revisionism and utopianism can never mean the defeat, once and for all, of false
temporal character of phenomena.
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Capitalism K
tendencies. It is an ever-renewed struggle against the insidious effects

of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the proletariat. Marxist
orthodoxy is no guardian of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant
prophet proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate
present and the totality of the historical process . Hence the words of the Communist
Manifesto on the tasks of orthodoxy and of its representatives, the Communists, have lost neither their
relevance nor their value: "The Communists arc distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:
1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front
the common interests of the entire proletariat, independent of nationality. 2. In the various stages of
development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always
and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole" <23-24>
Prefer our alternative-historical materialism provides the

methodology needed for a deeper social and political
understanding of life. This education is vital to creating the
change necessary to stop capitalism.
Andrew N. McNight in 2010 University of Alabama at Birmingham, A
Pragmatic and pedagogically Minded Revaluation of Historical Materialism, Journal

for Critical Education Policy Studies, vol.8. no.2, http://www.jceps.com/PDFs/08-204.pdf
Toward a reconstruction of historical materialism, Habermas (1979) adopts many tenets of Marxian theory.
ethical social action can lead to progress, or

what he, and Lukacs before him, term social evolution (130). Habermas, however, renders
historical materialism less ideologically rigid and more interrelated to
the pursuit of concepts like moral-practical insight (120), and the moralization
Notably, he adopts a common belief that
of motives for action [italics omitted] (136). This can easily be described using the familiar terms of freedom
to control ones own production, freedom from oppressive economic dictates, freedom to ones own cultural
He views this
reconstruction of historical materialism as making necessary revisions
in a theory whose potential for stimulation has still not been exhausted (95). His revision is
still materialist in that it concerns the Marxian categories of production
and reproduction, and historical in that it seeks to identify causes of
social change and potentially new and more complex forms of social
organization toward securing a normatively prescribed societal identity, a culturally interpreted good
identity and from cultural violence being visited upon the former, etc.
or tolerable life (142). Habermas (1979) posits historical materialism not simply as a heuristic, but, as
aforementioned, a theory of social evolution (130) that can be used to solve many of the problems
Progress is, under this historical and materialist rubric,

both social and physical; it represents advances in empirical knowledge and
moral-practical insight . . . the development of productive forces and the maturity of forms
of social intercourse (142). Habermas (1979), however, warns against a retrogression
of Marxs general theory into historical objectivism . . . [where] philosophical
questions [are suppressed] in favor of a scientistic understanding (96). Although suspicious of
absolute narratives, he also takes a different stance from some on the
postmodern left that the instability of social norms is necessarily
beneficial to the moral development of a society. In neo-normative tenor he states,
a philosophical ethics not restricted to metaethical statements is
possible today only if we can reconstruct general presuppositions of
communication and procedures for justifying norms and values (97).
These presuppositions set the boundaries for social change as the
ability of the populace at large to analyze social circumstances and
confronting the moral development of social life.
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Capitalism K
learn their intricacies: a developmental logic [that may explain] the range of variations within
which cultural values, moral representation - can be changed and can find different historical expression (98).
the social learning a given culture can accommodate, and the

emotional capacity of consciousness to conflict with the underlying
contradictions within a given society, is related to the quality and
quantity of direct systemic social change.
Put crudely,
The method of rejecting Capitalism is a prerequisite because

only through understanding the system can we effectively act
on it
TUMINO 1(Stephen, Pittsburg English Professor What is Orthodox
Marxism and Why it Matters Now More than Ever, Red Critique, KR)
Orthodox Marxism has become a test-case of the "radical" today. Yet, what
passes for orthodoxy on the leftwhether like Smith and Zizek they claim
to support it, or, like Butler and Rorty they want to "achieve our country"
by excluding it from "U.S. Intellectual life" ("On Left Conservatism"), is a
parody of orthodoxy which hybridizes its central concepts and renders
them into flexodox simulations. Yet, even in its very textuality, however, the orthodox is a
resistance to the flexodox. Contrary to the common-sensical view of "orthodox" as "traditional" or
"conformist" "opinions," is its other meaning: ortho-doxy not as flexodox "hybridity," but as "original"
"ideas." "Original," not in the sense of epistemic "event," "authorial" originality and so forth, but, as in
chemistry, in its opposition to "para," "meta," "post" and other ludic hybridities: thus "ortho" as
resistance to the annotations that mystify the original ideas of Marxism and hybridize it for the
The "original" ideas of Marxism are inseparable

from their effect as "demystification" of ideologyfor example the
deployment of "class" that allows a demystification of daily life from the
haze of consumption. Class is thus an "original idea" of Marxism in the
sense that it cuts through the hype of cultural agency under capitalism
and reveals how culture and consumption are tied to labor, the everyday
determined by the workday: how the amount of time workers spend
engaging in surplus-labor determines the amount of time they get for
reproducing and cultivating their needs. Without changing this division of
labor social change is impossible. Orthodoxy is a rejection of the
ideological annotations: hence, on the one hand, the resistance to
orthodoxy as "rigid" and "dogmatic" "determinism," and, on the other, its
hybridization by the flexodox as the result of which it has become almost
impossible today to read the original ideas of Marxism, such as
"exploitation"; "surplus-value"; "class"; "class antagonism"; "class
struggle"; "revolution"; "science" (i.e., objective knowledge); "ideology"
(as "false consciousness"). Yet, it is these ideas alone that clarify the elemental truths
"special interests" of various groups.
through which theory ceases to be a gray activism of tropes, desire and affect, and becomes, instead,
a red, revolutionary guide to praxis for a new society freed from exploitation and injustice. Marx's
original scientific discovery was his labor theory of value .
Marx's labor theory of value is

an elemental truth of Orthodox Marxism that is rejected by the flexodox
left as the central dogmatism of a "totalitarian" Marxism. It is only Marx's
labor theory of value, however, that exposes the mystification of the
wages system that disguises exploitation as a "fair exchange" between
capital and labor and reveals the truth about this relation as one of
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Capitalism K
exploitation. Only Orthodox Marxism explains how what the workers sell
to the capitalist is not labor, a commodity like any other whose price is
determined by fluctuations in supply and demand, but their labor-power
their ability to labor in a system which has systematically "freed" them
from the means of production so they are forced to work or starvewhose
value is determined by the amount of time socially necessary to reproduce
it daily. The value of labor-power is equivalent to the value of wages workers consume daily in the
form of commodities that keep them alive to be exploited tomorrow. Given the technical composition
of production today this amount of time is a slight fraction of the workday the majority of which
The surplus-value is
what is pocketed by the capitalists in the form of profit when the
commodities are sold. Class is the antagonistic division thus established
between the exploited and their exploiters. Without Marx's labor theory of
value one could only contest the after effects of this outright theft of
social labor-power rather than its cause lying in the private ownership of
production. The flexodox rejection of the labor theory of value as the
"dogmatic" core of a totalitarian Marxism therefore is a not so subtle
rejection of the principled defense of the (scientific) knowledge workers
need for their emancipation from exploitation because only the labor
theory of value exposes the opportunism of knowledges (ideology) that
occult this exploitation. Without the labor theory of value socialism would
only be a moral dogma that appeals to the sentiments of "fairness" and
"equality" for a "just" distribution of the social wealth that does the work
of capital by naturalizing the exploitation of labor under capitalism giving
it an acceptable "human face."
workers spend producing surplus-value over and above their needs.
The dialectic material method is a prior concern because

humanitys relationship with capitalism and the world creates
our society and our horizon for possible action
Dickens and Ormrod 7 (Peter, Professor of Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International
Studies, Univ. of Cambridge, J.S., Senior Lecturer of Applied Social Science, Univ. of Brighton, "Cosmic society:
towards a sociology of the universe," p. 2-4) APB
Dialectics insists on recognizing the relationships between things rather

than the things themselves (Harvey 1996). Things, whether they are stars or societies, are
constituted by relationships. These things both form part of these relationships and have causal
effects on them. The distinction between parts and wholes is therefore meaningless.
Parts are integrated into wholes, and vice versa, in a process of indefinite change. In
situating cosmology within a broader system of social relationships, Best and Kellner insist: Cosmologies
are constituted within a social context, and as such, often are influenced by, or
are extensions of, social values and ideologies. Conversely, how human beings
interpret the stars, planets, and natural world around them shapes how they
understand their own societies. the domination of external nature was
associated with the domination of internal nature , with the perversion of
humanitys needs and capacities. (Best and Kellner 2001: 136) These relationships may even be
made explicit. Two of the founders of sociology, Comte (1974) and Spencer (1971), deliberately described the
cosmos and society together. Comte stressed that solidarity between elements must exist in social systems as it
did in the universe revealed by astronomy. Spencer argued that both society and universe were evolving towards
greater degrees of concentration and integration. Dialectics is a concept normally associated with Hegels
philosophical theory of the progress of ideas through thesis, antithesis and finally synthesis. Marx took up the reins
of dialectical thinking emphasizing contradictory relationships and their role in change and progress but applied
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Capitalism K
it to the material conditions and struggles of society, rather than the realm of ideas. It is Engels (1959) concept of
dialectics that is best suited to our purpose, however. Dialectics for Engels was about acknowledging the
interactions, especially between humans and nature, in which, because of their intimate relationship, a change in
Linking the universe and

society by asserting that both of them operate in a dialectical fashion is
therefore a useful way of starting analysis. Dialectics stresses the interactions
between the observer and the observed or between the subject and the
object. This is a major theme we will develop throughout this study. These dialectics operate on two levels. First,
our observations and understandings of the universe create changes in
the fundamental ways in which we experience, understand and manage
our social universe. But, second, through this mechanism, change is affected on a much deeper level. By
one caused a change in the other as the two became intertwined.
observing the universe, people in societies have transformed themselves. In Cosmos and Psyche, Tarnas makes
Our world view

is not simply the way we look at the world. It reaches inward to constitute
our innermost being, and outward to constitute the world. It mirrors but also
reinforces and even forges the structures, armorings, and possibilities of our interior
life. It deeply configures our psychic and somatic experience, the patterns
of our sensing, knowing, and interacting with the world. (Tarnas 2006: 16) We
the point convincingly, although for world view he might better have written cosmology:
explore the dialectic between cosmos and the self more specifically in the next two chapters (see also Dickens and
by physically interacting with the

universe, humans are transforming themselves once more. As societies interact with
Ormrod 2007). As the following chapters will suggest,
nature, human beings start changing themselves. Put in more sociological and material terms, as societies observe
and modify external nature they start modifying their own, internal, nature. And this is a dialectical process. The
kind of internal nature made in the process of environmental study and transformation has important effects on
the
domination of external nature was associated with the domination of
internal nature, with the perversion of humanitys needs and capacities.
how external nature is in turn considered and therefore treated. In particular, for critical theorists,
Method is key-dialectical materialism provides the best

method for understanding social and political relations-this
education is key to achieve class consciousness and stop
capitalism
If the question were really to be formulated in terms of such a crude antithesis it would deserve at best a
pitying smile. But in fact it is not (and never has been) quite so straightforward. Let us assume for the sake of
argument that recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx's individual theses. Even if this
were to be proved, every serious 'orthodox' Marxist would still be able to accept all such modern findings
without reservation and hence dismiss all of Marx's theses in totowithout having to renounce his orthodoxy
Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical

acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the 'belief in this or that
thesis, nor the exegesis of a 'sacred' book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers
exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical
materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed,
expanded and deepened only along the lines laid down by its founders. It is the conviction,
for a single moment.
moreover, that all attempts to surpass or 'improve' it have led and must lead to over-simplification, triviality
This definition is so important

and altogether so crucial for an understanding of its nature that if the problem is to be
and eclecticism. Materialist dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic.
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Capitalism K
approached in the right way this must be fully grasped before we

venture upon a discussion of the dialectical method itself . The issue
turns on the question of theory and practice. And this not merely in the sense given it
by Marx when he says in his first critique of Hegel that "theory becomes a material force when it grips the
more to the point is the need to discover those features and

definitions both of the theory and the ways of gripping the masses
which convert the theory, the dialectical method, into a vehicle of
revolution. We must extract the practical essence of the theory from the method and its relation to its
object. If this is not done that 'gripping the masses' could well turn out to
be a will o' the wisp. It might turn out that the masses were in the grip
of quite different forces , that they were in pursuit of quite different ends. In that event,
there would be no necessary connection between the theory and their activity, it would be a form
that enables the masses to become conscious of their socially
necessary or fortuitous actions, without ensuring a genuine and
necessary bond between consciousness and action. In the same essay* Marx
masses".1 Even
clearly defined the conditions in which a relation between theory and practice becomes possible. "It is not
enough that thought should seek to realise itself; reality must also strive towards thought." Or, as he expresses
it in an earlier work:3 "It will then be realised that the world has long since possessed something in the form of
Only when
consciousness stands in such a relation to reality can theory and
practice be united. But for this to happen the emergence of
consciousness must become the decisive step which the historical
process must take towards its proper end (an end constituted by the wills of men, but neither
a dream which it need only take possession of consciously, in order to possess it in reality."
dependent on human whim, nor the product of human invention). The historical function of theory is to make
this step a practical possibility. Only when a historical situation has arisen in which a class must understand
society if it is to assert itself; only when the fact that a class understands itself means that it understands
society as a whole and when, in consequence, the class becomes both the subject and the object of knowledge;
only when these conditions are all satisfied will the unity of
theory and practice, the precondition of the revolutionary function of
the theory, become possible. Such a situation has in fact arisen with the entry of the proletariat
in short,
into history. "When the proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing social order, Marx declares, "it does
* The
links between the theory that affirms this and the revolution are not
just arbitrary, nor are they particularly tortuous or open to
misunderstanding. On the contrary, the theory is essentially the
intellectual expression of the revolutionary process itself. In it every
stage of the process becomes fixed so that it may be generalised,
communicated, utilised and developed. Because the theory does nothing
but arrest and make conscious each necessary step, it becomes at the
same time the necessary premise of the following one. <1-3>
no more than disclose the secret of its own existence, for it is the effective dissolution of that order."
Historical Materialist analysis is uniquely key in educational

forums for young people to creating stable self determined
identities free from the totalization of false class
consciousness
McNight 10 (Andrew N., Professor at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, A Pragmatic
reevaluation of historical materialism: Notions of progress and vehicles for social justice Journal for
Critical Education Policy Studies 8(2) p. 5-7) APB
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Capitalism K
the dialectic between the relations of production of production . . .

the economic structure of society, the real foundation [and] a legal and political
superstructure (4). It is this latter bit that becomes the social consciousness of people
being defined by their social being, the stuff of their material and
relational experience. Marx then goes on to say that with changes in the economic foundation the
entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed (5). The distinction is then made
between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political,
religious, aesthetic or philosophicin short, ideologicalforms. (5) It is perhaps the aforementioned
Here he discussed
distinction that gives terrain for the critique to followthe nature of the relationship between foundation, or base,
and superstructure. Williams (1977), has noted that this definition may be insufficient to define the whole of
cultural activity (76), since Marx makes a distinction between material conditions and culture, writ large. In a
slightly lesser known and earlier passage, Marx (1963) displays a slightly different conception of the materialist
relationship, one that renders the former more subjective and interpretative but within a knowable framework. He
states, Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure
of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life .
The entire class

creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out of the
corresponding social relations. The single individual, who derives them
through tradition and upbringing, may imagine that they form the real
motives and the starting point of this activity. . . . And as in private life
one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and
what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must distinguish
still more the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organism and
their real interests, their conception of themselves, from their reality. (47) It
is this elucidation of historical materialism that I feel provides theoretically fertile ground for pragmatic
application. As will be restated later, there is play between the base and the superstructure, especially regarding
provides a means by which

we may examine these relationships and perhaps denude contradictions
and false consciousness within class relations. It is communicative action
toward some kind of economic liberations that is sought through, as Williams (1977)
put it, three senses [that] would direct our attention . . . (a) institutions; (b) forms of consciousness;
(c) political and cultural practices (77). In this sense we find some degree of harmony with Dewey
the cultural outcroppings of the material. However, the field of analysis
(1927), that the interplay among the historically created material conditions, the individual consciousness, and that
From the standpoint of the

individual, it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity
in forming and directing the activities of the group to which one belongs
in participating according to need in the values with the groups sustain.
From the standpoint of the groups, it demands liberation of the
potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and
goods which are in common. Since every individual is a member of many groups, this specification
of cultural identity within a plurality of groups/classes. He states,
cannot be fulfilled except when different groups interact flexibly and fully in connection with other groups. (147)
unless there is to be complete

obliteration of one or more of the constituent groups via some kind of
class totalization, one that denies identity with multiple groups and the potential common interests
among groups although differently expressed, perhaps. The plurality of voices and the
endeavor of multiple social analyses within a historical materialist
framework may very well aid us in distinguishing the phrases and
fancies of parties from their real organism and their real interests (47),
aforementioned by Marx. This is the site of pedagogy in my viewwhere students of
various ages and backgrounds might accurately discover their own
cultural location and point it toward liberation of the potentialities of
members of a group in harmony with the interests and goods which are
common (147), aforementioned by Dewey as the ethical outcome.
The flexibility interaction mentioned for Dewey is inevitable,
in
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Alt Class 1st key

Class must be the starting point of analysis-its the only way to
maintain the image of totality needed to unify theory and
praxis against capitalism

It was left to Marx to make the concrete discovery of 'truth as the subject' and
hence to establish the unity of theory and practice. This he achieved by
focusing the known totality upon the reality of the historical process
and by confining it to this. By this means he determined both the knowable
totality and the totality to be known. The scientific superiority of the
standpoint of class (as against that of the individual) has become clear
from the foregoing. Now we see the reason for this superiority: only tht
class can actively penetrate the reality of society and transform it in its
entirety. For this reason, 'criticism' advanced from the standpoint of class
is criticism from a total point of view and hence it provides the
dialectical unity of theory and practice. In dialectical unity it is at once
cause and effect, mirror and motor of the historical and dialectical process. The
proletariat as the subject of thought in society destroys at one blow the
dilemma of impotence: the dilemma created by the pure laws with their
fatalism and by the ethics of pure intentions. Thus for Marxism the
knowledge that capitalism is historically conditioned (the problem of
accumulation) becomes crucial. The reason for this is that only this
knowledge, only the unity of theory and practice provide a real basis
for social revolution and the total transformation of society. Only when
this knowledge can be seen as the product of this process can we close
the circle of the dialectical method-and this analysis, too, stems from Hegel.
<39-40>
We must discover Class Consciousness in order to combat it

Lukacs 1920 ( Georg Lukacs, March 1920, Merlin Press 1967,
Class Consciousness,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/lukacs3.h
tm, accessed 7.9.12, KR)
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Capitalism K
This twofold dialectical determination of false consciousness constitutes

an analysis far removed from the naive description of what men in fact
thought, felt and wanted at any moment in history and from any given
point in the class structure. I do not wish to deny the great importance of this,
but it remains after all merely the material of genuine historical analysis. The
relation with concrete totality and the dialectical determinants arising
from it transcend pure description and yield the category of objective
possibility. By relating consciousness to the whole of society it becomes
possible to infer the thoughts and feelings which men would have in a
particular situation if they were able to assess both it and the interests
arising from it in their impact on immediate action and on the whole
structure of society. That is to say, it would be possible to infer the thoughts and
feelings appropriate to their objective situation. The number of such situations is not
unlimited in any society. However much detailed researches are able to refine social
typologies there will always be a number of clearly distinguished basic types whose
characteristics are determined by the types of position available in the process of
production. Now class consciousness consists in fact of the appropriate and
rational reactions imputed [zugerechnet] to a particular typical position
in the process of production.[11] This consciousness is, therefore, neither
the sum nor the average of what is thought or felt by the single
individuals who make up the class. And yet the historically significant
actions of the class as a whole are determined in the last resort by this
consciousness and not by the thought of the individual and these actions
can be understood only by reference to this consciousness. This analysis
establishes right from the start the distance that separates class
consciousness from the empirically given, and from the psychologically
describable and explicable ideas which men form about their situation in
life. But it is not enough just to state that this distance exists or even to define its
implications in a formal and general way. We must discover, firstly, whether it
is a phenomenon that differs according to the manner in which the
various classes are related to society as a whole and whether the
differences are so great as to produce qualitative distinctions. And we
must discover, secondly, the practical significance of these different
possible relations between the objective economic totality, the imputed
class consciousness and the real, psychological thoughts of men about
their lives. We must discover, in short, the practical, historical function of
class consciousness. Only after such preparatory formulations can we
begin to exploit the category of objective possibility systematically. The
first question we must ask is how far is it intact possible to discern the whole
economy of a society from inside it? It is essential to transcend the limitations of
particular individuals caught up in their own narrow prejudices. But it is no less vital
not to overstep the frontier fixed for them by the economic structure of society and
establishing their position in it. [12] Regarded abstractly and formally, then,
class consciousness implies a class-conditioned unconsciousness of ones
own socio-historical and economic condition. [13] This condition is given
as a definite structural relation, a definite formal nexus which appears to
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govern the whole of life. The falseness, the illusion implicit in this
situation is in no sense arbitrary; it is simply the intellectual reflex of the
objective economic structure. Thus, for example, the value or price of
labour-power takes on the appearance of the price or value of labour itself
... and the illusion is created that the totality is paid labour.... In
contrast to that, under slavery even that portion of labour which is paid
for appears unpaid for. [14] Now it requires the most painstaking historical
analysis to use the category of objective possibility so as to isolate the conditions in
which this illusion can be exposed and a real connection with the totality
established. For if from the vantage point of a particular class the totality of existing
society is not visible; if a class thinks the thoughts imputable to it and which bear
upon its interests right through to their logical conclusion and yet fails to strike at
the heart of that totality, then such a class is doomed to play only a subordinate
role. It can never influence the course of history in either a conservative or
progressive direction. Such classes are normally condemned to passivity, to an
unstable oscillation between the ruling and the revolutionary classes, and if
perchance they do erupt then such explosions are purely elemental and aimless.
They may win a few battles but they are doomed to ultimate defeat.
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Alt Neolib
Our understanding of the possibilities of revolution conditions
the material actions we can take- we must interrogate the
foundations and limits of neoliberalism as precondition for the
success of existing anti-neoliberal movements.
Robinson, University of California at Santa Barbara, 99
(William I., Sept. 1 1999, International Studies Review, Vol. 1 Issue 3 Latin America
in the Age of Inequality: Confronting the new Utopia. p.63-67. Ebscohost
Neoliberalism had in the mid-1990s achieved a certain hegemony in global
society. The much-touted Washington consensus in the Western
Hemisphere, for instance, reflects agreement over the project of the transnational elite among an increasingly cohesive hemispheric elite. This
consensus is clustered in governments, the private sector, and international
financial and political agencies active in the hemisphere, such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank,
United Nations (UN), and Organization of American States. It was indeed a
consensus because it represented a congruence of interests among the
hemispheres dominant groups, and these interests were being advanced through
institutions that command power (the hemispheres states and the international
financial institutions). The consensus also achieved ideological hegemony by
setting the parameters for, and the limits to, debate among subordinate
groups on options and alternative projects for the hemisphere. 65 In this
sense, the Washington consensus reflected the emergence of a new hegemonic bloc
in the hemisphereand in global societyunder the leadership of the transnational
elite. Developing a viable, alternative socioeconomic program is not
enough. Social forces operating through nationally based social movements clearly
need to transpose their mobilization and their capacity to transnational space to
place demands on the system, because it is at the transnational level that the
causes are to be found of the conditions that these movements seek to address.
Moreover, these two are linked. The specifics of an alternative are not yet clear, but
it would need to be a new type of redistributionist project. It also would need to
be one that was transposed from the earlier national to the new transnational
space, one that challenges the logic of capitalist hegemony, and one that develops an ideology along the lines that Chase-Dunn proposed for a new
egalitarian universalism. What is the real negotiating power of popular
majorities within a transnational setting? To ask this is to ask what are the
prospects that key social movements such as those of women, labor, democracy
and human rights, and development and social justice will develop the mechanisms
that allow for trans- position of local and national organizing strength to a
transnational space. Latin American social movements had, in fact, begun to
transnationalize in the 1990s, moving to create alliances, networks, and
organizations that transcend national and even regional borders. One strategy put
forward for a more egalitarian outcome under globalization is the tempering of
neoliberalism by the infusion of global Keynesian perspectives,
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Capitalism K
presumably through social movements and other international actors, into

the network of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). But we should be wary of
the potential for the emerging set of global governance institutions to
provide transnational political and organizational space for egalitarian
social movements. Conversely, the network of reformed Bretton Woods bodies,
the UN system agencies, trade organizations, and so on constitute an incipient
transnationalized state apparatus that functions to impose the implacable
logic of global capitalism on the worlds peoples, with an impunity made
possible by its immunity from the types of constraints that could earlier
be exercised at the nation-state level. Far from providing space and
coordinating mechanisms for counterhegemonic development, the network of
IGOs act to subvert a transnational counterhegemony. They are partisans in
the battle for hegemony being waged in an increasingly transnationalized civil
society. Dominant groups have operated through networks of IGOs and national and
international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that link together local,
national, and transnational space. We have seen in the 1990s a division of
labor between the IGOs that strive to construct consensus and the general
conditions for global capitalism at the international level, and in
synchronization with networks of NGOs in each country and region, as one
particular organizational form through which the transnational elite is
attempting to construct its hegemony. For instance, to undercut the type of
opposition and alternative visions that could come from a
counterhegemonic movement, the international financial institutions have
recently called for structural adjustment programs to be re- designed to
give them a social dimension, not unlike the Basic Needs approach launched
by World Bank under the direction of Robert MacNamara in 1973. Each SAP in
Latin America now includes an adjunct social fund, such as Pronasol (or
Solidaridad) in Mexico, the social fund program (FOSOS) in Chile, and others. These
funds are usually financed jointly by local governments and the multilateral
agencies and putatively intend to target the poor. The New Social Policy (NSP)
programs have not been able to ameliorate the spread of poverty and
deprivation. They operate within the logic of the neoliberal model, largely
as temporary relief to those marginalized by the new economic model, but
without modifying the structural causes of that marginalization. The key
institutional mechanism of the NSP programs is the privatization of social services
that were earlier universalized and administered by states, and their decentralized
administration as charities through new NGOs that act in partner- ship with local
governments. These programs are not the beginnings of a double
movement, but an ineffectual tinkering from above. Their aim is to
contain the discontent generated by adjustment, depoliticize popular
grassroots constituencies, and neutralize opposition from the bottom up
in synchronization with state and transnational activity that operates
from the top down. The spread of NGOs in Latin America and around the
world has been hailed as an awakening and empowerment of civil society. We
should recall that civil society is the site of the battle for hegemony among
antagonistic social forces. Without hegemony in civil society, the neoliberal project cannot be stabilized. NGOs do not invariably defend popular
sectors and often represent dominant groups in civil society. The NSP programs
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Capitalism K
ipatory development, but in practice they mediate relations between

grassroots organizations and states in constructing the hegemony of the
neoliberal order at the grassroots level. This is part of a shift in
domination from above to below and from political to civil society. In
searching for a viable alternative to the neoliberal status quo , we should
recall that the extent of social change may be fixed by historic structures,
but the outer limits of these structures are always established and
reestablished by collective human agency. Our intellectual labor as a
form of social action may constrict just as it may extend the proclaimed
limits of the possible. Critical globalization studies should set as their
objective elucidating the structural and historical context of the crisis of
civilization we face, as well as the real inner workings and the
contradictions of the emergent global social order. In this way we may
exercise a preferential option for the subordinate majorities of emergent global society, and for the future that is latent within them.
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Capitalism K
Alt Critical Terror studies specific

Class analysis is key to CTS

activist scholar perspective, Critical studies on terrorism , Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 200
201, Fontana)
A whole host of related issues must be addressed, such as how many classes there are,
how distinct they are, how movement occurs between them, the extent to which and the ways in which classes are
how particular social formations are stabilised through means

such as class compromises compared with the threat or use of coercive
means such as terrorism, the relationships between classes and elites (i.e.
social and agentic concentrations of power of whatever kind ), how classes are organised within
and across states, how they can be united on some things and divided on
others, and how those divisions may be objective or perceptual. The class
role that terrorism plays may be functional or dysfunctional and driven by
complex interaction of fractions of classes and elites (subnational, national,
transnational), and progressive or reactionary opposition. States may tolerate or promote
progressive developments such as a move from dictatorship to liberal democracy. A class analysis
would expect in general terms that this will occur only when ruling class
power is not threatened or where it simply lacks sufficient power to
prevent those developments. Consideration will also need to be given to understanding when and
antagonistic,
how forces such as nationalism, ethnicity, religion, or sect can be the primary dynamic shaping resort or non-resort
to terrorism. A guard must also be maintained against a tendency often associated with historical materialist
perspectives of undervaluing liberal democracy and other often progressive aspects of liberalism.
Class analysis is key to solve terror, and its functionally

distinct from the aff
activist scholar perspective, Critical studies on terrorism, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 200,
Fontana)
The lessons for the emergent field of critical terrorism studies are clear.
Bringing the state back into terrorism studies is valuable, but not enough
what is required is a class analysis of the state and terrorism, one that is
historically specific to the changing dynamics of capitalist globalisation,
and one which considers the ways that terrorism can be a tactic of all
sides in class conflict, rather than just a tactic of a subordinate class . Such
a perspective would distinguish it sharply from mainstream terrorism
studies up to now. It would also provide it with a way of describing,
explaining, and challenging Northern state terrorism, because it would
frame it in terms of the extent to which it is functional for shoring up or
challenging exploitative relations which favour capital over labour. The good
news is that the work of scholars such as Stokes (2005, 2006) and Blakeley (2007, forthcoming) is leading the way,
building on the work of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, and ensuring that critical terrorism studies has a
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Capitalism K
major strand which puts the discursive and ideological into the context of US-led capitalist globalisation and
associated class relations.
Historical Materialism is needed to understand the origins of

terror
Current Research, Vol. 4, P.232,JF)
But in developing countries, these forms of benefit are nonexistent. This therefore makes social antagonism and
among classes to be sharper especially in the period of capitalist crisis. The sharper this
antagonism between classes, the more the lumpen class becomes
frustrated and aggrieved. The frustrated and de-classed members of the lumpen class who
are angry with the state of affair become the willing tools in the hand of groups/organisations
susceptible to the use of individual terrorism against the state. The ontological
position of HMs approach to Terrorism can be illustrated to a large
extent, as the description of the object of enquiry from within: driving the
object (terrorism)s own processes and arguments to the logical conclusions
and thus require assessing the object internally (within the society and economy)
instead of externallyas orthodox approaches would want us to believe.
This ontological position can be regarded as materialism . This is because the study
of a particular historical material constellation such as terrorism must be located on the
basis of how a particular society or system reproduces itself materially
vis--vis its particular mode of production, and how social contradiction
in that mode of production produces terrorism. Therefore, such contradictions that
produce terrorism are located within a particular society, state or system, and not outside. In the era of
the dominance of capitalist mode of production, terrorism must be
located within the context of hierarchically structured relations,
orchestrated by the prevailing capitalist society or system. However, the
epistemological position of Historical materialist approach to Terrorism
can be conceptualised as critical historicism. This stems from its ability to place the study
divides
of history on a scientific basis by uncovering the law that govern historical changes: how the development of the
productive forces brings into existence different production relations and different forms of class society, and
produces terrorism. Due to the epistemologies it uses, HM
approach to terrorism aim to utilise historical method to produce more
coherent and conclusive explanations. Therefore, a large number of
contemporary historical studies will be important to providing a thorough
methodological base for terrorism studies. Therefore, HMs aim is to
explain the discourse of terrorism by making reference to the empirical
essence of its historical evidences.
how conflicts within these classes
Terrorism cant be resolved absent of understanding the socioeconomic conditions that give rise to it
Current Research, Vol. 4, P. 234-235, JF)
Todays terrorism is not fundamentally and remarkably different from that of the cold-war era
given the ideological underpinning of state and non-state actors terrorism and
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Capitalism K
how this reflect the dynamics of unending class struggle implicit in the
hidden structures of oppression and structured contradictions in the
material world which global system of capitalism represents. The
discursive frame of terrorism cannot be analysed in isolation of its class
nature and the socio-economic conditions that gave rise to it. This is the
point that orthodox and critical theorists ignored. It is therefore
important that Karl Marxs Historical Materialism exposes the class
nature of terrorism in the current mode of production (capitalism) and how
non-state actors (groups/organisation linked to Individual terrorism) emerged out of the
existing social relation of production among classes in the society . HomerDixon (2001) observes that grievances exploited by non-state actors terrorists are compounded by an
international political and economic system thats more concerned about Realpolitik, oil supply, and the interests
of global finance than about the well-being of the regions human beings. The social contradictions and crises of
capitalism which Dussel Enrique (1983) problematized: The [neo-capitalist] globalization is that of a formal,
performative system (the value that valorizes itself, the money that produces money, D-D; fetishes of capital)
which raises itself up as the criterion of truth, validity, and feasibility and destroys human life, trampling on the
dignity of millions of human beings and not recognizing their equality or much less affirming itself as coresponsible for the alterity of the excluded and accepting only the peripheral nations, even if the debtor people
perishes, fiat justitiam, pereat mundus. It is a massive assassination; it is the beginning of a collective
suicide15 And others such mass poverty; inequality in educational, political and employment opportunities;
ignorance due to limited educational opportunities; and growing unemployment. In this situation, the lumpen
class are the worst hit especially in the developing countries. Socially alienated members of the lumpen class
who are unable to afford the basic necessities of life, drop out of society and join an organised groups/
This member of
the lumpen class thus became die-hard patriots of the sect,
groups/organisations and engages in the use of individual terrorism to
lash out at societys injustices. The responses of the state to the orgy of
violence and culture of fear and threats which individual terrorism
created, will be repelled with the brute force of the state instrument of
terror (state terrorism), then the vicious circle of terrorism will commence. In this
organisations (non-state actors) whose
formation is to achieve a specific political goal.
unending class struggle among classes in the society or states,
terrorism is a tactics of all side, used and justified
terrorism is therefore a
reflection of social relations among social classes within modern
capitalist mode of production. Finally, it is important to state that the
appropriate social and public policy formulation is needed to salvage the
cyclical social dislocations orchestrated the global capitalist crisis , and to
to yank out
their grievances and protect their interests. Therefore,
discourage the youth who are mostly member of the lumpen class from joining organised groups/organisations
tainted with individual terrorism. This can be achieved through equitable distribution of wealth and by taken all
grievances seriously rather than police and military measures to address this problem. For Western capitalist
states it is much easier to fight individual terrorism with military force, than introducing complex economic
redistributive mechanism in the global market. Putting Historical
Materialism into terrorism studies and discourses will help to provide
conceptual and theoretical frame for understanding and explaining
terrorism beyond the lens of Orthodox/Mainstream and CTS approaches.
There is no doubt that the social and economic condition plaguing the Third
World especially in Africa and Middle-East, are the springboard on which Individual
terrorism festers. The current global war on terror is unwinnable as long
as poverty, inequality and economic oppression continue in the Third
world societies. The bird that pinches on a rope will not be at rest as long
as the rope itself is never at rest.
measures, such as an equitable
Alt key to solve the aff your author goes neg

Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and
Conflict Studies, 2009
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Capitalism K
Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies, 12-14-2009, Paper prepared for the BISA Annual Conference @ the
University of Leicester, UK, Critical Terrorism Studies: An Explanation, a Defence
and a Way Forward, p 17-18, accessed 7/2/13, Fontana
Second, in addition to exposing and deconstructing the fields conditions of possibility, I would suggest that
there is also a need to explore in much more detail the political-economic

contexts of both the Terrorism Studies field as a politically-embedded
domain of knowledge, and the theory and practice of counter-terrorism. In other words, applying
historical materialist approaches 18 and taking materiality seriously,
there is a need for further exploration of how counter-terrorism functions
as a form of ideology how it works to promote certain kinds of material
and class interests, maintain political hegemony, and sustain dominant
economic relationships. This means rooting critical analyses of the theory
and practice of counter-terrorism within theories of class, capitalism, hegemony,
and imperialism (see Herring, 2008).
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Capitalism K
Alt Solves Hunger

Transitioning to a post capitalist society is key to resolve
hunger

So where is the hope for the hungry, or for humanity? The hope is not in tinkering
with public policy to try to place dollar-and-cent values on ecological and social
capital. Ethical and social values are fundamentally different from
economic values; we have to address them as they are rather than
attempt to transform them into something they are not. The hope for the
hungry and for humanity is in developing a new sustainable economy, an
economy based on the paradigm of living, biological, humanlike systems.
Living things by nature are self-making, self-renewing, reproductive, and
regenerative.[2] Living plants have the capacity to capture, organize, and store solar energy to offset the
energy that is inevitably lost in the processes of performing work. All living things have this
natural capacity for renewal and regeneration. Obviously, an individual life is not
sustainable because every living thing eventually dies. But, communities and societies of living
individuals clearly have the capacity to be productive while devoting a significant
part of their lifes energy to conceiving and nurturing the next generation, thus
sustaining the life of the community and society. Humans devote large amounts of time
and energy to raising families, with very little economic incentive to do so. We are living beings with an innate need
to reproduce. Individuals also choose to devote significant amounts of time, energy, and money to stewardship of
We are inherently
ethical and moral beings. The fundamental problem with todays
capitalistic economy is its domination by publicly held corporations, which
have no sense of ethical or social responsibility. They are not living
beings; they have no family, no community, no heart, and no soul. Living things
plants, animals, families, communities, societies are clearly capable of
permanence as well as productivity. We must find ways to restore life to our economy, to restore
its capacity to be both productive and regenerative, to restore its heart and soul. We must create an
economy for life a sustainable, living economy within a sustainable,
moral, and just society.
nature and charity within society, even when no economic incentives exist to do so.
Sustainable agriculture solve hunger absent it, major

corporations destroy the land
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Capitalism K
The hope for the hungry in todays global economy can be seen most
clearly in the emergence of a new sustainable approach to farming and
food production in sustainable agriculture. The modern sustainable
agriculture movement emerged in the U.S. in the 1980s, in response to growing concerns
about ecological, economic, and social consequences of agriculture industrialization. Large industrial
farming operations were displacing family farmers, degrading the land,
and destroying rural communities. They were extracting and exploiting,
just like their manufacturing and mining counterparts, and people were beginning to
realize that such farms are not sustainable. The initial emphasis of sustainable
agriculture was on ecologically and socially responsible farming methods. Organic
farming received a lot of attention because organic farmers were early leaders in
the movement. Low-input, chemical-free, biodynamic, holistic, ecological,
innovative, and practical farming also became identified with the sustainable
agriculture movement. In livestock and poultry, free-range, pastured, grass-fed, or
hormone and antibiotic free served to distinguish sustainable farming from conventional agricultural
production. Sustainable agriculture included all farmers who were trying to
farm in ways that would sustain the productivity of the land and the
quality of life in their communities, while making an acceptable economic
living. Sustainability inherently depends on ecological, social, and
economic integrity.
Food security can only exist absent of capitalism

No people, rich or poor, truly have food security until they are able to
either produce their own food or can secure enough food for survival from
people they know and trust. The only real food security is community food
security, food produced within communities or traded between communities that share relationships of
integrity and trust. Industrial capitalism has abandoned the poor and hungry
people, both in developed and less-developed countries of the world. Who
should we rely on to feed the hungry world in the future, multinational
corporations committed to profits and growth, or local sustainable farmers
who are committed to ecological, economic, and social integrity?
Sustainable ag solves hunger not cap

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Capitalism K
A sustainable agriculture could feed a hungry world. Even today, nearly
everyone in America could afford high quality, sustainably produced, local
foods.[8] On average, more than 80% of food costs in the U.S. are paid for
processing, packaging, transportation, advertising, and other things that
make food more convenient or attractive. While not everyone might be able to
afford the convenience and cosmetics, even those with the lowest incomes
could afford the food, particularly with our existing food assistance
programs. They would simply have to buy raw or minimally processed foods in
season and prepare those foods for themselves. However, people with low-incomes do not
have the freedom to choose good food because they dont have access to good, locally produced food, nor do most
Many low-income
people could actually save money by buying high quality, fresh foods from local
farmers and preparing more meals from scratch. Those who dont feel they have
enough time to prepare their own food need to understand that more time spent
with family members preparing, processing, storing, and eating good local food can
reduce costs of family health care and unnecessary recreational distractions and
can add to the overall quality of family life. To eliminate hunger, we must care
enough about poor people to help them learn to choose healthier
lifestyles, rather than just provide them with cheap food.
have the knowledge or ability needed to process, prepare, and store their own foods.
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Capitalism K
Epistemology
Ignore all their offense its just corporate propaganda in
order to crush sustainability

Unfortunately, the importance of social and ethical values in sustainability has become lost in the media hype about
The sustainable food culture is often portrayed as

an elitist movement, inaccessible to the poor and a threat to the hungry.
Corporate propaganda suggests that a transition to sustainable or organic
agriculture would result in starvation for half of the worlds population, would increase soil
organic and locally produced foods.
erosion, deplete soil productivity, and require clearing and cultivation of vast forests and rangelands, which are now
home for many of the worlds poor and hungry. Genetically engineered, high-input, high-yielding crops and livestock
However, nothing in this propaganda
actually challenges the true principles of either sustainable agriculture or
industrial agriculture. Research around the world has shown that organic and lowinput sustainable agriculture can be just as high yielding as high-input
industrial agriculture.[4],[5] Sustainable agriculture simply requires more
thinking people who understand how to work with nature, rather than try to
conquer nature, and who care about their land and their neighbors. Research has
also shown that sustainable agriculture actually reduces erosion, because
of the use of crop rotations, cover crops, and other sustainable practices . In
addition, sustainable agriculture enhances soil qual ity, because it relies on the natural
productivity of the soil rather than commercial fertilizers. Also, sustainable agriculture is site and
location specific, adapting farming systems to natural bioregions, rather
than clearing land and leveling land to facilitate mechanization and thus
preserves natural habitats of both people and wildlife . Sustainable
agriculture respects nature, including natural connections between people
and places.
are touted as the new industrial solution to world hunger.
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Capitalism K
***AFF***
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Capitalism K
AT: Capitalism Sustainable

Capitalism is unsustainable
A capitalistic economy cannot be sustained without ecological and social
capital. Economies are simply the means by which we deal with individual
relationships among people and between people and the natural environment in complex societies. There
are obviously too many of us to barter with each other and to produce our own food, clothing, and shelter.
Economies actually produce nothing; they simply transform physical

energy and social energy into forms that can be traded or exchanged in
impersonal marketplaces. All economic capital, meaning anything capable
of producing something of economic value, is extracted from either
natural capital or social capital. There are no economic incentives to
restore or renew either natural or social capital. Thus, when all of the
natural and social energy, or capital, has been extracted and exploited,
there is no source of economic capital. Without capital, the economy loses
its ability to produce anything of economic value; it reaches a state of
economic entropy.
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Capitalism K
Capitalism Inevitable
Capitalism is inevitable
Eadie, University of Nottingham critical security professor,
2005
[Pauline, Poverty And The Critical Security Agenda, p. 142, RN]
Following Realist notions of state security, it could be argued that human
security operates as a zero-sum game. In order for some sectors of
society, both national and international, to enjoy a level of affluence or to
safeguard their security, others become insecure. This is aided by a neoliberal formulation of the problem, which premises the freedom of the
market and defends private property rights. Current World Bank (WB) and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) (or Bretton Woods) approaches to poverty,
are based on this strategy, they seek solutions through growth rather than
redistribution. However, the free market and the capitalist ideology under
which it operates, is founded on a considerable degree or permanent
insecurity for all the units within it (individuals, firms, states) (Buzan, 1991,
p.235). This is because capitalism, by its very nature, is competitive, which
implies losers as well as winners. Therien states, when discussing the United
Nations attitude to poverty, that It [the UN] condemns the overriding values
represented by the cult of competition and the drive for profit because they
engender various forms of social Darwinism and marginalisation (1999 p. 735)
Common or absolute human security is the ideal, where all sectors of society
enjoy a condition of existence in which human dignity, including meaningful
participation in the life of the community, can be realized. Such security is
indivisible; it cannot be pursued by or for one group at the expense of
another (Thomas, 2001, p. 161). However it becomes difficult to devise an
objective ethical formulation to the problem of how far justice and equality
should be applied as people are generally bad judges where their own
interests are involved (Aristotle, 1992[1962], p.195). In other words
meaningful solutions to poverty are always going to be inhibited because
the rich or powerful will only advocate change to the extent that does not
challenge their own position or interests.
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Permutation
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Critical Terror specific

Perm do both - Herring concludes aff terror isnt all about
class class analysis should be included in CTS, not replace it

activist scholar perspective, Critical studies on terrorism , Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 201,
Fontana)
Bringing class back in does not mean class reductionism: terrorism is not
all about class. The point being made here is the rejection of the implicit
assumption that class has nothing to do with terrorism, including Northern state
terrorism, or only plays a role in class rebellion from below. By Northern states, I mean
industrial and post-industrial capitalist ones. They may be liberal democratic or authoritarian, although they are
overwhelmingly in the former group. Hence, it is not a geographical category, as such states can be located in the
southern hemisphere (such as Australia). By Southern states, I mean those with low levels of industrial and postindustrial capitalist development. The North is more or less a post-Cold War synonym for Western, though with
the obvious qualification that there is no non-capitalist East with which it is struggling for the political, military, and
economic allegiance of a Third World. Instead, the United States is trying to balance its own interests, with keeping
the other Northern democratic states on board while engaging with the structural shift associated with Chinas
increasingly global version of authoritarian Northern capitalism. The North and the Global North are frequently
used as synonyms (the latter being the trendy version): the problem with this approach is that the phrase Global
North is useful to encapsulate the fact that within Northern states substantial elements of society are part of the
Global South, defined as those which are marginal to advanced capitalism, impoverished and policed, or just
ignored. Their poverty, hunger, ill health, and shortened life spans can be witnessed across the world. Equally,
within Southern states there are substantial elements of society which are part of the Global North, defined as
those which are deeply integrated into advanced capitalism, wealthy, and on behalf of which the Global South is
policed, securitised, and if necessary repressed. The people of the Global North and Global South correspond
roughly to Duffields (2007) categories of insured and uninsured or surplus life (for an application to post-invasion
Iraq, see Herring, forthcoming). As such, it is above all a class rather than a geographical distinction, or a
distinction between types of state. Within this system, terrorism can be a means of capital accumulation by violent
Nevertheless, the
world is structured and stratified around multiple inequalities and critical
terrorism studies needs to be attentive to what they are and how they
relate to the use and non-use of terrorism. A particularly important
inequality which critical terrorism studies ought to challenge is the
operation of the categories of worthy and unworthy victims.
and intimidatory dispossession, opposition to it, or part of a bid to take part in it.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good
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Capitalism K
Cap Good - Solves Tech

Biotech
Capitalist competitiveness provides the best biotech which
solves pharmaceuticals and pollution
Birch, Research Fellow for the Center for Public Policy for
Regions, Neoliberalism studies, 2006
(Kean, University of Glasgow, Journal of Genomics, Society and Policy, Vol. 2, No. 3, The Neoliberal Underpinnings
of the Bioeconomy: the Ideological Discourse and Practices of Economic Competitiveness,
http://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/25814/1/neoliberal_bioeconomy_GSP.pdf)
Both policy and academic debates define the concept of competitiveness as success in international markets.68
Consequently competitiveness itself represents a discourse that justifies and naturalises the pursuit of specific
policies that ensure success in these markets through the (re)constitution of national institutional frameworks. The
representation of the biosciences as a driver of competitiveness throughout the regional, national and
supranational policy discourses can be seen as a process in which biotechnology has been presented as an obvious
The more recent link between

competitiveness and national well-being or healthcare embeds this
competitiveness concern in the intrinsic attributes of biotechnology itself
so that the previous emphasis on the bioeconomy appears rational and obvious;69 who does not want
and perhaps even inevitable solution to such policy concerns.
better drugs or less pollution after all?
Competitiveness can therefore be presented as
technologically determined and dependent upon innovation, which leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy as changes
made to institutional structures to encourage bioscience innovation benefit all firms and not just national ones. In
this way the external threat presented in the competitiveness discourse becomes concrete as external firms can
enter newly (institutionally) deregulated markets more easily than firms based in those markets because the latter
have to adapt to new institutions whilst the former do not because they have not been embedded in the previous
institutional environment.
Furthermore the emphasis on the need to continually
upgrade technology through innovation in order to compete leads to the

gradual expansion and privatization of global capital as country after
country deregulates in order to avoid any form of competitive
disadvantage.
Biotechnology solves food crises

Doyle, Reuters Environment Correspondent, 08
Alister Doyle has worked as Reuters Environment Correspondent since 2004, mainly
covering U.N. negotiations including the Copenhagen summit in 2009 and the
science of climate change. Previously, he had postings with Reuters in Paris,
Central America, Brussels and London in a career stretching back to 1982. He is a
graduate of Oxford University where he studied French and Spanish.
(Biotechnology a key to solving food crisis - U.S. says6/3/2008
http://in.reuters.com/article/2008/06/03/idINIndia-33887920080603)
Biotechnology can help solve the world's food crisis with benefits such as
flood-resistant rice in Bangladesh or higher cotton yields in Burkina Faso, a senior
U.S. official said at a U.N. food summit on Tuesday. "Biotechnology is one of the
most promising tools for improving the productivity of agriculture and
increasing the incomes of the rural poor," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer
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Capitalism K
said. "We are convinced of the benefits it offers to developing countries and small
farmers," he told a U.S.-led briefing on the sidelines of the June 3-5 summit seeking
ways to combat high food prices when climate change may aggravate shortages.
Some green groups say genetically-engineered crops threaten biodiversity while
many European consumers are wary of eating products dubbed by critics as
"Frankenfoods". Schafer said biotechnology, including genetically-modified
organisms (GMOs), could help produce more food by raising yields and
producing crops in developing nations that are resistant to disease and
pests. "Genetic engineering offers long-term solutions to some of our
major crop production problems," said Philippine Agriculture Minister Arthur
Yap. But he said that it was not a panacea for all of his country's agricultural
problems. Progress being made in the Philippines included research into rice and
coconuts resistant to disease, he said. "We're also working on virus-resistant
papaya, papaya hybrids with a longer shelf life that should be ready for market in
2009," he said. Climate change could aggravate production around the world with
more droughts, floods, disruptions to monsoons and rising sea levels, says the U.N.
Climate Panel. In Africa alone, 250 million people could face extra stress on water
supplies by 2020. COTTON Burkina Faso Agriculture Minister Laurent Sedogo said
the African country had worked with U.S. agriculture group Monsanto to battle pests
that blighted the cotton crop. "We are about to plant 15,000 hectares" of a new crop
that was resistant to pests, he said. That would also cut down on the use of
pesticides that could damage the health of farmers. The World Bank and aid
agencies estimate that soaring food prices could push as many as 100 million more
people into hunger. About 850 million are already hungry. Bangladesh said that it
was going ahead with efforts to make crops able to survive floods and more salinity
in the soil. A cyclone last year "is a wake-up call for all of us", said C.S. Karim, an
adviser to Bangladesh's agriculture ministry. "It shows the vulnerability of
Bangladesh."
25,000 die a day from hunger; thats over 9 million a year

huge systemic impact only capitalism can solve
APO 8African Press Organization, APO is the leading press release wire in Africa,
and the global leader in media relations related to Africa. (UN 25,000 empty
plates mark daily hunger death toll2/22/2008
http://appablog.wordpress.com/2008/02/22/un-%E2%80%93-25000-empty-platesmark-daily-hunger-death-toll/)
Twenty five thousand empty plates lined the street in front of the UN in
New York today the same number as those dying of hunger on a daily
basis. The plates bearing messages from all over the world call on the UN to end
hunger once and for all. Stop Injustice, End Hunger, said one message on a plate
from Sierra Leone. The plates were lined up on First Avenue following a meeting of
the UN Deputy-Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro with the anti-poverty agency
ActionAid. The meeting focused on the need for states to implement the UN General
Assembly resolution on the Right to Food. Hunger is still increasing worldwide
despite international and national commitments on the right to food, said
Colm OCuanachain, ActionAids International Head of Campaigns. Every day
25,000 people die from hunger related causes, and there are now over
850 million hungry people in the world. The HungerFREE campaign is
demanding that the UN and governments deliver on their obligation to provide
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Capitalism K
access to food for all. Since launching HungerFREE last year, more than 25,000
people from at least twenty countries have signed plates demanding an end to
hunger. ActionAid is demanding that hunger is placed at the top of the agenda for
the upcoming meeting of Heads of State on the Millennium Development Goals and
the 2008 UN General Assembly.
Generic Tech
Capitalism promotes technological advances and vice versa;
industrial revolution proves
Scherer, Harvard Economist, 10 Frederic Michael is an American
economist. His research specialties include industrial economics and the economics
of technological change, on which he has many much-cited works. Since 2006 he
has been Emeritus Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management in the
Aetna Chair, in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
(The Dynamics of Capitalism--2010
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/var/ezp_site/storage/fckeditor/file/pdfs/centersprograms/centers/mrcbg/publications/fwp/mrcbg_fwp_201001_Scherer_dynamics.pdf)
In this chapter, capitalism is viewed as the set of economic relationships
that emerged with the rise of the industrial or factory system during the
18th Century. To be sure, there were earlier precedents -- e.g., the commercial
ventures, local and international, of Venetian and Florentine businessmen during
the Renaissance. But here we focus on production in privately owned, often capitalintensive, facilities embodying ever more advanced technologies during and
following the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution set in motion
dynamic forces that will be our primary concern here. Most important among
them are technological advances that propelled accelerated economic
growth, changes in the structure of enterprise ownership and in the
distribution of income among workers and owners, and a tendency
toward more or less cyclical fluctuations in economic activity. These will
be the "dynamics" on which this essay focuses.
Capitalism is the most effective at technological advances

The most striking feature of industrial capitalism, seen either in its early
periods or in historical hindsight, is its enormous success in
implementing technological changes that expanded the supply of goods and services available
for consumption. No one said it better than Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their Communist
Manifesto of 1848:2 [The bourgeoisie] [Marx's term for the capitalist class] has been the first to show
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Capitalism K
what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian
pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly

revolutionizing the instruments of production ... The bourgeoisie, during
its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more
colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
Exoduses of nations and crusades.
Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steamnavigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole
populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive
forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? A Quantitative Overview What happened through the capitalistic
industrial revolution and its successors is compactly shown using estimates of real gross domestic product per
capita over several centuries. Angus Maddison (2006, Appendix tables) has estimated GDP per capita covering
numerous nations for three years preceding the onset of the Industrial Revolution -- 1500, 1600, and 1700 -- plus
more continuous series beginning (with some exceptions) in the year 1820. The data have been adjusted to hold
underlying price levels constant at dollar value purchasing power parities prevailing in 1990. The statistics are
almost surely less reliable, the earlier the time interval to which they pertain, and there is reason to suspect that
the consequences of the first stages of the Industrial Revolution - - i.e., from about 1750 to 1820 -- are
underestimated. Throwing caution to the wind, we begin with the nation commonly viewed as the font of the
Industrial Revolution: the United Kingdom. Figure 6.1 summarizes the Maddison time series. A logarithmic scale
implies constant exponential growth as a straight line trajectory, the growth rate being higher, the steeper the
line. For the early years, growth is palpably modest, from a value of roughly $714 per capita in 1500 to $1706 in
1820, implying a growth rate averaging 0.27 percent per annum. From 1820 on, the growth rate increases
dramatically and perhaps even accelerates slightly in the latter half of the 20th century.
Free markets allow for investment in the best technologies

Taylor, senior fellow at the CATO Institute, 12Jerry is a senior fellow
at the Cato Institute, where he researches environmental policy. He attended the
University of Iowa as a political science major. (Its Up to The Private Sector to
Invest in New Technology1/18/2012
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/its-private-sector-invest-newtechnology)
In free-market economies, decisions about whether to invest in a
technology or an industry are made by market actors with private capital. The
promise of profit induces investment in promising ventures and the sting
of loss penalizes those investments that turn out to be misguided. Of course,
we live in a mixed economy in which government frequently assumes tasks that were once left to private
individuals and corporations. Whether the government should invest in green energy suggests two questions. Are
major green energy investments worthwhile in the first place? And should the Obama administration be spending
$80 billion in grants and loans to make these investments on our collective behalf? Although proponents of green
energy note that the sheer enormousness of the federal subsidy effort is helping to expand green energy
generating capacity, stock prices for green energy firms are in free fall, even in China, because investors
understand that this industry would disappear if the lavish federal and state subsidies were to end. The green
jobs argument most commonly marshaled is thus looking thinner by the day. Data recently released by the U.S.
Department of Energy reveal that the $38.6 billion of federally guaranteed loans to green energy projects have thus
far produced only 3,545 new, permanent jobs ($5 million per job), far short of the 65,000 jobs promised by the
administration. If green energy is commercially promising, then profit-hungry capitalists will make those
investments. The DOEs Energy Information Administration reports that new renewable energy power plants will
continue to be far less economically competitive than new gas-fired generation plants over the foreseeable future,
even after federal subsidies are taken into account. Things look even worse in the transportation sector. The Obama
administration has spent $5 billion to promote the manufacture of electric vehicles so as to put 1 million EVs on
American roads by 2015. But layoffs and bankruptcies have plagued those receiving EV handouts because the
technology is still problematic and the final product so expensive that consumers wont buy it, even with $7,500
rebates. Consequently, only two tenths of 1 percent of the cars sold this year were EVs, and the vast majority of
those were in development long before President Obama took office. EV sales would have to be almost nine times
greater per year to meet the administrations objective. The only good argument for federal handouts to green
energy projects is the contention that there are environmental costs associated with fossil fuel consumption that
are not internalized in fossil fuel prices, distorting the market and leading to more brown energy consumption
than is economically efficient. But the most credible estimates about climate externalities put the cost at no more
than $12 per ton of CO2. Internalizing that cost into fossil fuel prices would increase gasoline prices by no more
than 12 cents per gallon, not enough to make EVs economically efficient or commercially competitive. If all the
nations electricity were coal-fired, a $12-a-ton CO2 tax would increase the price of electricity by about 1.3 cents
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Capitalism K
per kWh, just over 10 percent above the average retail price of 12 cents per kWh. Given that a little over half of the
nations electricity is coal-fired, the actual increase would be even less .
If green energy is
commercially promising, then profit-hungry capitalists will make those
investments. If it isnt, no amount of government subsidy will turn those
economic sows ears into wealth-creating silk purses.
Capitalism is the best economic system known, especially for

technological innovation
"Capitalism," a witticism prevalent in the Soviet Union during the 1960s observed,
"is the exploitation of man by man. Communism is the opposite." Indeed,
capitalism is not without problems -- at times low wages, which might be
viewed as exploitation, or even worse, a tendency toward occasionally violent
fluctuations and involuntary unemployment. But it is hard to conceive of a
practical economic system exhibiting superior dynamic performance,
notably, in the opportunity and incentive free markets provide to
capitalistic entrepreneurs for technological innovation -- more efficient
production processes, new products conferring superior consumer utility, and
better methods of business organization -- which in turn has raised living
standards by astonishing amounts. The problem for public policy is to secure
the dynamic benefits of capitalism while minimizing its negative side effects.
The free market produces the best technology; government

bureaucracy destroys innovation
Tucker, Fellow of the Foundation for Economic Education, 2K -Jeffrey Albert is the executive editor of Laissez Faire Books. Tucker is also a Distinguished Fellow of the Foundation
for Economic Education, an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an Acton University
faculty member.He is past editorial vice president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and past editor for the
institute's website, Mises.org. (Government and TechnologyJan 2000 http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?
control=290)
From the 1930s through the 1980s, government claimed it could innovate better than private markets. That' s what
the boondoggles like TVA, Nasa, and Semitech were all about. Hardly anyone believes that anymore, so the
rationale for government regulation of technology has changed. It now concerns such vagaries as fairness and wise
the free market is superior. What' s more

fair than permitting consumers to voluntarily decide which technologies
are best? And since when has government been wiser in the use of
resources than the market system driven by competitive pressure to keep
costs down? In fact, government plays a purely destructive role in its
technology. The most obvious case is Microsoft. Announcing that the company is a monopoly, the regulators
resource use. Yet even judged by these criteria,
are working with the courts to slice up the company, supposedly to create competition but actually to reward
Microsoft' s competitors. Is there anyone who truly believes that the software industry will be more innovative and
responsive after such intervention? Even Microsoft' s enemies are getting squeamish about the prospect. And yet
nothing illustrates the absurd results of government intervention in technology like the great toilet tank fiasco. In a
little-noticed law passed in 1992 the Energy Policy and Conservation Act Congress mandated that all future toilets
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Capitalism K
installed in homes had to qualify as Ultra-Low Flush (ULF). Older toilet tanks, invented by greedy capitalists who
care nothing about wasting water, held from 3.5 to 7 gallons of water. The much-heralded ULF tank holds 1.6
gallons. Congress cheered and made it official. But there is a hitch. It turns out that the ULF doesn' t work well. It
sometimes takes two and three flushes to do the work of one old one, so it does not necessarily save water. And so
what if it does? It clogs and overflows easily, which frequently leads to floor and ceiling damage (not to mention
unsanitary conditions). It also proves very difficult to keep clean. You must use chemicals in the tank, which in turn
break down the mechanical parts inside the tank, which then must be replaced regularly. No longer can a toilet be
flushed with confidence. The whole process must be monitored with great attention to detail. In a free market,
some entrepreneur might have dreamed up a ULF. But it wouldn' t have lasted. Given the low price of water, the
need to - conserve - it reflects not economic reality but a leftist civic piety. Indeed, as much as the left has long
hated the indoor toilet, consumers hate the ULF just as intensely. A survey from the National Association of Home
Builders reported nearly 80 percent dissatisfaction. So attached are consumers to the old models that local and
state governments have taken to paying contractors to install new ones, just to meet code. In a market setting,
then, the ULF wouldn' t have met the market test, except among those consumers who value a few bucks a month
more than clean toilets that work well. It turns out that there was wisdom in the old large tanks. They weren' t just
evidence of a conspiracy to waste water. They were designed to be efficient, fast, foolproof, and clean - all opposite
traits from the tanks blessed by government. Under the restricted market conditions imposed by Congress, the
result has been a thriving gray market in Canadian toilet tanks. Consumers can buy them legally, but they are
expensive, especially if you include shipping. But if a contractor or retailer buys one in Canada to install or sell in
the US, he faces fines of $2,500. Meanwhile, Canadian retailers are making a mint. American tank retailers have
responded to the regulations with undying devotion to the consumer: they have completely reinvented the toilet,
putting electric pumps inside designed to shove the water through the pipes. These are also very expensive (a highend version can cost $800) and they use electricity, a resource that Congress apparently thinks is less valuable
than water. The ULF propagandists say that the old tanks allowed 22,000 gallons of drinking water to be flushed
down the toilet every year. But just who is to decide that it is crucial to save water to drink rather than to make
sanitary living possible? The indoor toilet is a luxury that most of the developed world has universally enjoyed only
in the past 50 years. Leave it to government backed by leftist ideologues who hate consumer convenience to take
us a step back by force of law. If the bureaucrats had their way, the outhouse would again become the norm.
Another option promoted by the back-to-nature types: an indoor composting toilet that uses no water. No thanks.
market distortions, and

consumer exploitation occurs whenever government gets involved in
manipulating market technologies. When the regulators get around to
The toilet tank fiasco is far from unusual. The same process of bad results,
doing the same to software, the results will be the same: driving
innovation underground or forcing contortions just so that entrepreneurs
and consumers can keep their heads above water.
Capitalism promotes technological innovation

Maxwell, PhD in Chemistry 09 Ian, PhD in Chemistry, CEO of Maxco
Consulting, Managing (Managing Sustainable Innovation, p. 2
http://books.google.com/books?
id=IoOTZOaujGgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=managing+sustainable&hl=en&sa=X&
ei=a3HdUYPNGdHZigKEuIEI&ved=0CEAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=managing
%20sustainable&f=false)
Schumpeter is, perhaps, best known for his work showing the link between
entrepreneurial discovery and economic progress in the form of five waves of
industrial innovation. Crucially, these waves show a decreasing frequency
which indicates that innovation is accelerating. The current pace of
innovation is such that there appears to be every reason that the
Schumpeter theory is correct and that we are currently moving out of the
fifth wave and therefore rapidly approaching the next innovation wave as shown
in Fig. 1.1. Schumpeter also believed that innovation is the driving force not
only of capitalism, but also of economic progress in general, and that
entrepreneurs are the agents of innovation. Interestingly, he also feared that
entrepreneurial capitalism would not flourish because the bureaucracies
of modern government and big corporations would dampen innovation.
Moreover, he was also concerned that the importance of entrepreneurs
would fade over time as capitalism sought predictability from
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Capitalism K
governments who would plan economic activity as well as order social

benefits. Schumpeter showed great foresight in this regard as we now observe the
race for governments to remove the barriers of bureaucracy and create strong
infrastructure in which innovation will flourish.
Open capitalist competition provides the best innovations

International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology
12International Journal of Business, Humanities and Technology (IJBHT) is an open access, peer-reviewed and
refereed multidisciplinary journal published by Center for Promoting Ideas (CPI), USA. The objective of IJBHT is to
provide a forum for the publication of scientific articles in the fields of business, humanities and technology. In
pursuit of this objective the journal not only publishes high quality research papers but also ensures that the
published papers achieve broad international credibility. (Innovation and Competitiveness8/2012
http://www.ijbhtnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_5_August_2012/9.pdf)
Innovation is a key to competitiveness especially in today''s global markets. New knowledge is generated not
only through research and technology but also through new marketing and management solutions e.g. advertising
on pizza boxes, improving the tracing of electrical waste, finding new ways to monitor consumer behavior or
organising the way you do business more efficiently. Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA www.ijbhtnet.com 92
Competition is the critical driver of performance and innovation. It

benefits everyone by enabling us to choose from an array of excellent
products at affordable prices. Competition encourages the adoption of
innovation as companies evolve and offer new ideas in order to flourish
in the marketplace (C-Net News, 2005). Products should compete on their own merits, and consumers
everywhere should have the ability to easily choose the best products available for purchase. Fair and open
competition dictates that the best product wins, and market forces
prevail. Innovation fuels economic growth in the global economy. It
creates an evergreen environment of new markets - allowing us to reach
new customers with existing products and to serve todays customers
with new products and services. Consumers stand the most to gain from greater competition
in the natural resources market. Fair and open competition means lower prices and greater choice. Limiting
customers freedom of choice is harm to innovation. Harm to innovation is a setback
for anyone who wants tomorrows computers or any technology to be better than they are, today. Market
conditions that permit a single company to become the sole judge of price and quality set a dangerous precedent.
Fair and open competition in the market enables vendors and

manufacturers to deliver a greater variety of competitive products to
their customers around the world. This often results in lower prices and
high performance. When competition allows market forces to prevail, leading technology companies can
offer the best products to the widest audiences.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good - Human Rights
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Capitalism K
Expand free trade- Advances human rights

Aaronson, Associate Research Professor of International Affairs
at George Washington University, 08,
(Sarah, 8/5/08, Marketplace, Free Trade Improves Human
Rights, http://ww w.marketplace.org/topics/world/free-tradeimproves-human-rights, 7/8/13) GM.
U.S. policymakers have used trade agreements for over a century to achieve
two very different goals: to expand trade and advance human rights
abroad. The Bush Administration claims that a new free trade agreement with
Colombia will help that troubled country improve the rule of law, but many
human rights activists disagree. As a result, the agreement is unlikely to pass
Congress this year. Many labor and human rights activists argue that Congress
should postpone consideration of the pact until Colombia's human rights
performance improves. They don't want to reward countries that don't
consistently respect the rule of law. These critics have a point: Colombia's
human rights performance is lacking. Labor leaders are often murdered,
workers' rights are inadequately protected and in some regions terrorists
act with impunity. The rule of law might be improving, but it's still
inadequate. Critics need to rethink how we can help Colombia continue its
positive momentum. The agreement has provisions to bolster both the
supply and demand for good governance. Here's how: First, the free trade
agreement encourages public participation in trade policymaking. Citizens
in both countries gain the right to challenge trade rules. Second, the
agreement gives Colombian workers the right to petition the U.S.
government to take action. If the Colombian government is found to have
violated labor provisions, it may lose trade benefits. In this regard, the
agreement is both a carrot and a stick. Finally, empirical studies link expanded
trade with improvements in particular human rights such as freedom from
arbitrary imprisonment and extrajudicial killing. Thus, the agreement
could help advance the very human rights that need reinforcement in
Colombia. It's important to encourage democracies such as Colombia to
maintain human rights progress and the best way to do that is to provide
them with real incentives. The free trade agreement does that.
Free trade is key to promoting human rights

Dorn, Vice President for Academic Affairs, 97,
(James, 5/1/97, The Freeman, Free Trade and Human Rights in
China, http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/free-trade-andhuman-rights-in-china#axzz2YWLWRUDh, 7/8/13) GM.
The best way to promote human rights around the world is to promote
free trade. Trade liberalization improves ties among nations, increases
their wealth, and advances civil society. Protectionism does the opposite.
Governments everywhere need to get out of the business of trade and leave
markets alone. Western democratic governments, in particular, need to
practice the principles of freedom they preach and think of free trade not
as a privilege but as a fundamental human right. A free-market approach to
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Capitalism K
human rights policy does not mean an attitude of indifference toward

human rights abuses. Using slave labor or political prisoners and compelling
very young children to compete in international markets are wrong.
But blanket restrictions, such as the denial of most-favored-nation (MFN)
trading status or the use of sanctions not directly targeting the
wrongdoers, should be avoided. The problem is that even limited actions
are very difficult to enforce and unlikely to bring about political change in
an authoritarian regime. Protectionist measures are more apt to radicalize than
liberalize closed societies. The logical alternative is to use the leverage of
trade to open authoritarian regimes to market forces and let the rule of law
and democratic values evolve spontaneously as they have in Chile, South
Korea, and Taiwan. The expansion of markets creates a culture of commerce
and economic liberty that naturally spills over to social and political life. As
people become freer in their economic life, they will demand greater
autonomy in other areas, including a stronger voice in government. The proper
function of government is to cultivate a framework for freedom by
protecting life, liberty, and property, including freedom of contract (which
includes free international trade), not to use the power of government to
undermine one freedom in an attempt to secure others. The right to trade
is an integral part of an individuals property rights and a civil right that
governments should protect as a universal human right. Market exchange
rests on private property, which is a natural right. As moral agents,
individuals necessarily claim the right to liberty and property in order to
live and to pursue their interests in a responsible manner. Governments
should afford the same protection to economic liberties, including free
international trade, as to other liberties. Restrictive trade practices impede
not only the flow of goods and services but also the exchange of information
and the transmission of values that occur with free markets. When market
exchange opportunities are curtailed, government power grows, with
adverse effects on human liberty. Likewise, when markets expand, individuals
gain autonomy and government power diminishes. People become less
dependent on the state and more dependent on one another when
markets open and protectionism declines. A case in point is China.
Expansion of capitalism has rescued people from povertyincrease human rights

Weede, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bonn,
Germany, 07 (Erich, 1/31/07, Cato Journal, Human Rights,
Limited Government, and Capitalism,
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj28n1/cj28n1-3.pdf, 7/8/13)
GM.
The critics of capitalism and the proponents of positive rights tend to
forget an insight that has been well expressed by a Nobel Prize winning
economist: Too much concern for justice acts to insure that growth will
not take place (Buchanan 1999: 440). One may even argue that an exaggerated
focus on positive or welfare rights in Continental Europe has to be blamed for the
poor growth performance of France, Germany, and Italy. Since the advantages of
back- wardness have been exhausted, these economies need more
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Capitalism K
entrepreneurship, more radical innovation, and Schumpeterian creative

destruction in order to achieve better productivity growth (Baumol, Litan, and
Schramm 2007). As is already the case in the United States, Europe needs to make
it easy to establish new businesses, close them down, and fire workers who are no
longer needed or unqualified for the job. Interest groups and their rent-seeking
activities should be discouraged rather than served by government and policy.
Antitrust laws and open borders should reinforce competition. Only temporary rents
based on innovation and intellectual property rights deserve governmental and
judicial protection. The global expansion of capitalism to developing
countries has rescued hundreds of millions of people from dire poverty,
especially in Asia, and also has helped increase respect for human rights.
Cross-national studies support the propositions that globalizationthat is,
trade openness or foreign direct investmentpromotes human rights in
less developed countries, including free association and collective
bargaining rights, womens economic rights, and the avoidance of child
labor as well as of forced labor (Apodaca 2001; Harrelson-Stephens and
Callaway 2001; Neumayer and de Soysa 2005, 2006, 2007; Richards, Gelleny, and
Sacko 2001). Since human rights also promote trade (Blanton and Blanton
2007), there seems to be a virtuous circle in which some human rights
negative or physical integrity rights in contrast to welfare rightsand
international trade reinforce each other. There is no perfect market or
perfect government, but evidence shows that improving market institutions
contribute to improving peoples economic and personal freedoms.
Political reform is still necessary in China and other authoritarian regimes
if human rights are to be protected and enhanced. Retreating from
globalization and market-liberal principles, however, would be a step
backwards. According to econometric studies, globalization does not
undermine human rights but serves to spread them beyond the Western
world.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good - Failed States

Foreign control and Investment are the only ways to save a
failing state
Hawksley, BBC foreign correspondent 09
(Humphrey, Yale Global Online, Lessons of Failed States: Rebuilding Sierra Leone
and Liberia, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/lessons-failed-states-rebuildingsierra-leone-and-liberia, Accessed 7/8/13, EB)
SANNIQUELLIE, Liberia: The chain of events prompted by that terrible day in
September 2001 has begun to blur, and the electorates in the US and Britain are
eager to end their countries involvement in wars that ensued. Yet the Afghan
conflict, in particular, is far from over, and both governments are having to redefine
their missions to counter arguments for an early wind-down of military operations.
The debate, being driven almost exclusively by increased casualty figures, runs the
risk of forgetting a key lesson of 9/11: that failed states anywhere in the world can
play host to malignant forces with a global reach. In the heat of the argument,
precious lessons learned from interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and more
recently in Liberia and Sierra Leone are also being ignored. Both Barack Obama and
Britains Gordon Brown face a challenge in which voters unease is being pitted
against the reality of what is needed on the ground in a faraway land, a syndrome
that most memorably drove decisions over Vietnam almost half a century ago.
Exacerbating this situation is the inability of Western democracies to agree on how
to deal with this major international conundrum of our times the non-functioning
or rogue regime. The September 11 attacks that prompted the Afghan intervention
came not from the Taliban-run Afghan government, but from Osama Bin Laden who
was given sanctuary there. A major effort is now underway to prevent Pakistan
where Al Qaeda leaders now hide from becoming the next failed state domino. But
such sanctuary could equally be given in Somalia, North Korea, Burma and a dozen
other places, with the increased fear of terrorists acquiring a dirty bomb with
nuclear material. Over the past eight years, therefore, the primary need to
turn around a failing state has moved from being one with a humanitarian
goal to one of security. The mission itself, however, remains the same: To
raise the standards of living to such a degree that people can see a better
future in building rather than destroying their society. The solution lies in
long-haul commitment. In the early nineties, missions into Somalia and
Rwanda ended in failure one with a rapid US withdrawal; the other with
genocide. The European-led intervention into Bosnia faltered. But when
the US took the lead in 1995 and persevered, a lasting peace was forged.
Similarly, the Kosovo mission in 1999 has been successful. Significantly,
the people of Bosnia and Kosovo accepted that the highest government
authority should lie with an outsider rather than one of their own. Almost
fifteen years after the guns fell silent, power in Bosnia is held by an internationallyappointed High Representative. For nearly ten years, Kosovo was run by the United
Nations; even after its 2008 declaration of independence, much authority still lies
with the European Union. The willingness of the parties in conflict to cede
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Capitalism K
sovereignty to international forces for a period and patience and

perseverance of intervening powers may be essential to success. For
examples of missions still in progress, one can look at West Africa where
interventions in Sierra Leone in 2000 and neighboring Liberia in 2003 have stopped
wars, but have yet to secure enough confidence for a lasting peace. Given the
ethnic and religious mixes, the poverty, corruption, collapse of institutions
and infrastructure and a tendency toward warlordism and violence, these
two countries present us with important tests in dealing with the failed
state and all it implies for the security and welfare of their citizens and that of the
wider world. Most Liberians and Sierra Leoneans bought into the interventions and
stopped fighting. As in Bosnia and Kosovo, Liberians accepted infringement of their
sovereignty albeit to a lesser extent. The Governance and Economic
Management Assistance Program (GEMAP), initiated by Liberia and
international institutions, gave foreign technocrats budgetary control of
government ministries. The aim was to ensure that corruption did not
hamper rebuilding. GEMAP was not implemented in Sierra Leone which,
arguably, is facing more problems in its transition from emergency
conflict-prevention to long-term nation-building. Corruption continues to strip
main hospitals of essential medicines. Roads to the eastern area where the civil war
began are virtually impassable. Young men, who used to be child soldiers, have no
jobs. In Liberia, most hospital pharmacies are well stocked. Lawyers and
administrators in remote places have trained at some of the best Western
universities. Officials have canvassed at the grass roots to determine exactly what
the people want. We went all around the county into the villages and down to the
clans, explained Nimba county superintendent Mohan Kromah at a meeting in the
county capital Sanniquellie. We asked them: What is it you need? And they came
out with three priorities roads, education and health. By patching together the
lessons of these interventions, we may be able to establish some guidelines on how
to deal with failed states. There has been far too little debate on the success of the
Bosnian and Kosovo models because of fears of accusations over sovereignty
infringement and colonialism. Yet these arguments ignore the fact that sovereignty
belongs not to the political elite but to a nations people. Liberias GEMAP program
and its initiative with grass-roots communities is an example of how to re-establish
sovereignty. This system also builds democracy from the grass roots and tests local
accountability. The West should be cautious in using elections as benchmarks of
their own. None other than the former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay
Khalilzad, has warned that the current Afghan elections could further destabilize the
country and worsen ethnic divisions. So far he has not been proved wrong. As the
election got underway, voting was marred by widespread and deadly Taliban
attacks, serious fraud and patchy turnout. The winner will have almost certainly
have to secure his power by cutting deals with local warlords, possibly with
narcotics dealers and those involved in organized crime. And shortly before polling
day, the government brought in a law that by international standards blatantly
violated the rights of women: A husband is now allowed to starve his wife if she
refuses to have sex with him. It is seen as an attempt by President Hamid Karzai to
bolster his political support among hardliners. These are the malignant side-effects
of the democratic process. Elections might give a government international
legitimacy and provide a smoke screen for the political elite. But they do not
necessarily deliver more freedoms or improve life for the poor. Too often the
opposite is the case. What is really needed in these failed states is good
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Capitalism K
governance and the stamina to build institutions. They include a free and
responsible press; uncorrupt and efficient public services; an independent
judiciary that resolves cases and makes decisions; a disciplined police and
military; a strong election commission; a banking authority; and
education, health, transport and other authorities all of which must be
held to account.
State run systems lead to collapse of the economy and poverty

as well as failed states
Fritz and Menocal, 06
(V. And Rocha, Overseas Development Institute London, (Re)building
Developmental States: From Theory to Practice,
www.odi.org.uk/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/2328.pdf,
Accessed 7/7/13, EB)
In Africa and Latin America, attempts at state-led development were
widely undertaken from the 1950s. These were largely unsuccessful; many
partial gains (e.g. in expanding public services or stimulating growth)
were reversed during the subsequent crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. While
the story of Latin America is one of falling behind compared with Asia, and
of failing to lower poverty in particular, the African experience has been
more sweepingly one of failure to achieve a progressive social and
economic transformation. In some cases, the debt crisis and economic
decline then generates utterly failed states (e.g. Congo-Zaire). The analysis
below attempts to explain why states in these developing regions have remained
comparatively ineffective, focusing in particular on the case of Africa. The analysis
highlights the importance of political variables in the determination of
developmental outcomes. It agrees with those who have argued that the nature of
these political systems, based on neopatrimonial ties in Africa and
clientelistic/corporatist/populist patterns in Latin America, undermined state
capacity and developmental potential (Levy and Kpundeh, 2004; Lockwood, 2005;
Collier and Collier, 2002; Malloy 1977). As stressed in the introduction to this
section, there are deep historical reasons, related to the pre-colonial and colonial
period, for differences in state development, particularly between Africa and Asia;
here we focus mainly on how this played out in the 1950s and beyond. A number
of countries in Africa and Latin America embraced a state-led approach to
development. As Young (2004) has discussed with respect to Africa, the moment
of African independence [in the 1960s] coincided with the zenith of confidence in
state-led development. In many cases, this strategy proved quite successful at
least at the beginning. Africa, for example, experienced a considerable expansion in
the areas of education and health; countries such as Ghana and Kenya recorded
respectable rates of economic growth (Nugent, 2004; van de Walle, 2001). In Latin
America, similar trends were evident. In countries such as Argentina, Brazil and
Mexico, the state played a leading role in key sectors and industries (such as the
energy sector, the auto industry, etc.) and invested heavily in infrastructure and the
provision of social services. Many of these countries also grew at substantial
rates. However, by the end of the 1970s, serious limitations in the state186

Capitalism K
led model of development became apparent throughout Africa and Latin

America. Although specific circumstances varied from country to country, key
problems associated with this approach could be observed across
countries and regions. Many investments in the productive sectors were
inefficient; governments incurred ever-growing levels of debt to finance
further development. The oil price shock of the late 1970s, rising social
discontent and external meddling by the world superpowers based on Cold War
imperatives exposed these underlying weaknesses. In the 1980s and 1990s, many
earlier gains were reversed. After Mexico defaulted in 1982 and triggered a debt
crisis with serious implications throughout the developing world, this became known
as the lost decade of development. The immediate reasons for the failure of
state-led development in so many countries in Africa and Latin America
can be seen as largely economic: state-owned enterprises becoming highly
inefficient, employing far more staff than comparable enterprises while
failing to deliver products and services at reasonable prices and in a
timely manner; a large and often ineffective civil service that became fiscally
unaffordable; accumulation of external debt to unsustainable levels, not least as a
consequence of loss-making public enterprises; poor infrastructure despite public
investment; very high reliance on revenues from trade (especially import and export
tariffs) and low levels of internally generated revenue; and protectionist policies that
deprived the domestic economy of goods without effectively stimulating domestic
production. Furthermore, most African and Latin American countries
continued to rely on import substitution, which became increasingly
inefficient and expensive (ODonnell, 1979), whereas the successful
developmental states in East Asia turned to export-led growth after a
relatively brief stage of initial ISI. Overall, in successful developmental states,
governments were able to mobilise capital and investments, to channel them into
productive sectors, and to enforce incentives for these to become efficient; in the
unsuccessful cases, inefficiencies were allowed to take hold and spread (World
Bank, 1993; Stiglitz and Yusuf, 2001). However, if the immediate causes were
economic, the underlying reasons for the success of state intervention in
some cases and the failure in others are a combination of political and
social factors (Kohli, 2004). In many African countries, and in poor countries
elsewhere, benefits generated by state- led development were turned into
rents for small elites and clientelistic networks who captured the state
making investments successively less productive (van de Walle, 2001; Chabal
and Daloz, 1999; Bayart, 1993). The existing structure of economic opportunities
in many countries centred around mineral resources and/or distribution of land
and historical legacies of the colonial period helped to set in motion vicious rather
than virtuous circles. Political power constellations drove the choice and change of
institutions, as Acemoglu et al. (2004) have emphasised: [b]ecause different
groups and individuals typically benefit from different economic
institutions, there is generally a conflict over these social choices,
ultimately resolved in favour of groups with greater political power. As
Khan and others have emphasised, the difference between successful and failed
attempts at state- led development does not appear to be primarily attributable to
corruption which was generally present in both but rather to the problem of
state capture (Hellman et al., 2000; Khan, 2005). State capture implies not
only that benefits from state interventionism are diverted into private
pockets, but more importantly that the policies themselves no longer are
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Capitalism K
driven by a logic to yield development but rather are intended to yield

benefits for limited groups.As discussed, a key ingredient in avoiding state
capture and other forms of predatory behaviour is a competent, meritocratic and
results-oriented core bureaucratic system. Establishing such a system is
challenging. In East Asia, competent bureaucracies did not develop automatically or
overnight, but were rather the result of a prolonged struggle guided by strong
political motivation to achieve national development. In a majority of countries
in Africa and in many in Latin America, a committed and competent civil
service failed to emerge or was eroded (often despite repeated attempts to
develop it) (Rocha Menocal, 2004). Civil service structures and other benefits
generated by state-led development were frequently manipulated by the
government apparatus and ruling elites as a source of patronage. The
state was captured by narrow interests more concerned with building
clientelistic networks than with fostering a transformation of the
countrys economy (van de Walle, 2001; Bayart, 1993).
Us developmental assistances helps fix struggling economies

Banks, March 2013
(John P, et Al. Brookings institute: Africa growth initiative, Top Five Reasons Why
Africa Should Be a Priority for the United States, http://www.brookings.edu
/~/media /research/files/reports/2013/04/africa%20priority%20united
%20states/04_africa_priority_united_states.pdf, Accessed, 7/7/13, EB)
Total bilateral U.S. development assistance from the U.S. Agency for International
Development (US- AID) and the State Department to sub-Saharan Africa nearly
quadrupled from roughly $1.94 billion in FY2002 to an estimated $7.08 billion in
FY2012.1 The rapid uptick in U.S. development assistance to the region was
largely driven by global health spending, specifically the Presidents
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which concentrates HIV/AIDS resources
primarily to 14 countries, 12 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.2 Currently, USAID
operates 27 bilateral and regional missions in sub-Saharan Africa, which in FY2012
provided bilateral assistance to 47 sub-Saharan African countries. The Africa
regions top five recipients of U.S. assistance in FY2012 were Kenya, Nigeria,
Ethiopia, Tanzania and South Africa.3 Beyond global health, the U.S. is the leading
donor of humanitarian aid to sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the area of
emergency food aid.4 The Obama administration has also made assistance to
agriculture sector development a key priority in recent years through its Feed the
Future program, a global hunger and food security initiative. In June 2012, President
Obama signaled his development priorities toward the region with the release of the
White Houses U.S. Strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa. Economic growth, food
security, public health, women and youth, humanitarian response and
climate change are explicitly listed in the Obama Strategy as U.S. priority
areas to further accelerate development progress in the region. why is it
important For The U.S.? U.S. development assistance funds programs on the
ground in ways that bring government agencies and American
organizations and businesses into collaborative activities with Africans
who are trying to lift their countries onto a higher plane of social, political
and economic development. The region warrants sustained U.S. engagement for
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Capitalism K
a range of humanitarian, national security and economic reasons. Humanitarian

interests As a clear sign of Americas moral leadership around the globe,
the U.S. has historically been and remains the leading donor of
humanitarian assistance to the region. In response to the Horn of Africa
drought and subsequent famine in the summer of 2011, for example, U.S.
emergency food aid programs provided $740 million to Ethiopia, Kenya,
Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan (according to the U.S. State
Department). It is fully consistent with American values to continue to respond
vigorously and generously to emergencies in the region.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good - Poverty

Capitalism is curbing global poverty now the alternative
entrenches poverty
Brockman, The Borgen Project cofounder 13 [Katie Brockman,
cofounder for The Borgen Project, 2013 (Capitalism Is Helping End Global Poverty,
The Economist, 6-11-13, Available Online at http://borgenproject.org/capitalism-ishelping-end-global-poverty/, Accessed on July 8th, 2013)][SP]
1.1 billion people in the world still live in extreme poverty, which means
surviving on less than $1.25 per day. While that may seem like bad news, the good
news is that that number is half of what it was 20 years ago. Between 1990
and 2010, 1 billion people were lifted out of extreme poverty, and now we
need to do it again to wipe out extreme poverty by 2030 to reach the goal set
by the World Bank.
So, who is to thank for helping curb poverty around the world? Certainly, the
leaders who proposed the Millennium Development Goals have contributed by
raising awareness about the problem of poverty and encouraging advocacy by
creating goals. And without a doubt, the nonprofit organizations that have raised
money and volunteered to help raise less than privileged people out of extreme
poverty should be applauded. But, the most significant hero in this scenario
may be capitalism.
One of the best ways to help people is to teach them how to help
themselves. Sending food, medical care, and other supplies to help the poor helps
greatly, but not as much as helping a country grow so that they can create their
own food, become doctors to care for the sick, and buy or make their own supplies.
When a countrys entire economy grows, individuals financial outlooks
begin to look brighter as well.
China is a prime example of how capitalism is helping end global poverty.
The country has one of the most impressive rags to riches stories,
bringing 680 million people out of extreme poverty from 1981 to 2010.
Furthermore, a staggering 84% of Chinas massive population used to live in
extreme poverty, and that number has now been reduced to 10%. Most of
the reasoning behind this incredible transformation lies in the fact that
Chinas productivity level drastically increased towards the end of the 20th
century, supplying people with jobs to bring them out of extreme poverty.
There is much more to global poverty and the methods of ending it than simply
providing jobs through capitalism. There are major issues with inequality and
government systems, for example, and theres not always a simple answer. But,
growth remains one of the most significant ways to help a nation lift and
keep itself out of extreme poverty.
Capitalism is critical to alleviate poverty

Saul, Mission Measurement founder, 10 [Jason Saul, the founder
and CEO of Mission Measurement, a strategy consulting firm focused on creating
value through social change, 2010 (Khoslanomics - How Capitalism Can Solve
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Capitalism K
Poverty, Forbes, The CSR Blog, 10-20-10, Available Online at

http://www.forbes.com/sites/csr/2010/10/20/khoslanomics-how-capitalism-can-solvepoverty/, Accessed on July 8th, 2013)][SP]
Great New York Times article on Vinod Khosla and his plans to start a venture
capital fund to invest in companies that confront poverty in India, Africa
and elsewhere by providing services like health, energy and education.
Heres what I like about it: Mr. Khosla is what I call a social arbitrageur. He
understands that there is tremendous economic potential in solving social
problems. Not just in the ethereal, abstract, long-term sense. Like, in the
tomorrow sense. Khosla recently earned $117 million pocket change for a
billionaire on the recent IPO of SKS Microfinance, one of the largest micro-lenders
in India. Khosla, who founded Sun Microsystems, also raised a $1.1 billion for a
green VC fund last year.
According to Khosla: There needs to be more experiments in building
sustainable businesses going after the market for the poor. It has to be
done in a sustainable way. There is not enough money to be given away in the
world to make the poor well off. According to the Times, Mr. Khoslas advocacy
of the bootstrap powers of capitalism is part of an increasingly popular
school of thought: businesses, not governments or nonprofit groups,
should lead the effort to eradicate global poverty.
This is exactly what social innovation is all about. As I point out in my latest
book, Social Innovation, INC., companies need to look at social change as a
business opportunity, not just a moral obligation. Only then will we be
able to leverage the engine of the business rather than the fumes. In the
words of a Fortune 500 executive I recently interviewed, We are only ever going to
have $50 million in the foundation but I got $50 billion in the business and $50
billion can do a hell of a lot more good than $50 million.
Capitalism is also the new development manifesto of the Obama administration.
According to a recent White House statement on global development policy, the
U.S. government will [f]oster the next generation of emerging markets by
enhancing our focus on broad-based economic growth and democratic
governance. Economic growth is the only sustainable way to accelerate
development and eradicate poverty.
The future of social change depends on how we engage business in
becoming part of the solution. Khoslas efforts are just the beginningbut
like most good venture capitalists, Khosla is onto the next big thing . . .
Capitalism is critical to social, political and economic freedom

the alternative is oppression and poverty
Bernstein, SUNNY Purchase philosophy professor, 03 [Andrew
Bernstein, the author of The Capitalist Manifesto, PhD in philosophy from the
Graduate School of the City University of New York and professor of philosophy ,
2003 (Global Capitalism: Curing Oppression and Poverty, FEE, The Freeman, 1201-03, Available Online at http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/global-capitalismcuring-oppression-and-poverty#axzz2YZ3T4BGf, Accessed on July 8th, 2013)][SP]
Although leftist agitators continue to protest global capitalism, they
overlook the key points in the debate. Capitalism has been instituted on three continentsin
western Europe, North America, and Asia. These nationsEngland, France, the United States, Japan, Hong Kong,
and the othersare among the worlds wealthiest countries with per capita incomes in the range of at least
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Capitalism K
even the prosperity of a so-called socialist

country like Sweden is based on significant elements of capitalism , including
Volvo, Saab, and Ericsson, as well as countless private small shops. But capitalism is not merely
the system of prosperity; fundamentally, it is the system of individual
rights and freedom. The inalienable rights of individuals are largely
protected in these countries. For example, their citizens enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, and
$20,000$30,000 annually. Additionally,
of intellectual expression. They have freedom of religion. Similarly, they possess economic freedom, including the
right to own propertytheir own home or farmto start their own businesses, and to seek profit. These countries
the noncapitalist
nations of the world, past and present, lack both freedom and prosperity. For
example, in feudal Europe, before the capitalist revolution of the late eighteenth century, serfdom
and its legacy dominated. Peasants were often legally tied to the land and possessed few rights.
hold free elections, and their governments are subject to the rule of law. By contrast,
Commoners, more broadly, were subordinated to the king, aristocrats, and Church, and free thought was punished.
Voltaire, for example, was imprisoned for his revolutionary ideas, as was Diderot. Galileo was threatened with
torture and Giordano Bruno burned at the stake for supporting scientific theories that clashed with the teachings of
What were the

practical results of such repression? Poverty, famine, and disease were
endemic during the feudal era. The bubonic plague wiped out virtually one third of Europes
the Church. The minds and rights of individual citizens were thoroughly suppressed.
population during the fourteenth century, and recurred incessantly into the eighteenth. Famine killed sizable
portions of the population in Scotland, Finland, and Irelandand caused misery and death even in such relatively
prosperous countries as England and France. According to one economist, economic growth was nonexistent during
the centuries 5001500and per capita income rose by merely 0.1 percent per year in the years 15001700. In
The world today is

filled with countries more brutally repressed even than those of feudal
Europe. In Sudan, for example, the Islamic government arms Arab militias
that murder, rape, and enslave the black Christian population. There are
1500 the European per capita GDP was roughly $215; in 1700, roughly $265.1
currently tens of thousands of black slaves in Sudan. In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu tribesmen slaughtered 800,000
In communist North Korea, political

prisoners are enslaved, starved, and used for target practice by prison
guards and troops. The practical results of such oppression are the same
as in feudal Europe. In Sudan per capita GDP is $296; in Rwanda it is $227. In North Korea, where
innocent victims, mostly members of the Tutsi tribe.
nighttime satellite photographs reveal utter darkness because the country lacks electricity, conditions are just as
grim. Despite massive aid from the capitalist West, tens of thousands of human beings starved to death there in
What must be recognized is that freedom is a necessary

condition of wealth. Cures for disease, economic growth, agricultural and
industrial revolutionsthe means by which human beings rise above
deprivation and miseryare products of the rational mind operating under
conditions of political-economic freedom. When a James Watt, an Edward Jenner, a Cyrus
recent years.3
McCormick, an Alexander Graham Bell, or a Thomas Edison exists under an oppressive regime, whether feudal,
communist, fascist or theocratic, his intelligence and revolutionary thinking make him a threat and he is
suppressed. But when such a genius lives under capitalism, he is free to create a perfected steam engine, a
treatment for smallpox, a reaper, a telephone, and an electric lighting system, respectively. Liberation from
The freedom of the capitalist system liberates creative human

brainpower from bondage to the state. The ensuing advances in science,
medicine, agriculture, technology, and industry generate vast increases in
living standards and life expectancies. It is not surprising that during the capitalist epoch,
Bondage
roughly 1820 to the present, the free countries of western Europe and North America saw their total economic
output increase 60 times, and per capita income grow to be 13 times what it had been previously.4 Even minimal
capitalist elements have already produced salutary results in communist Vietnam. The annual minimum wage there
is $134; but Nike, which owns Vietnamese factoriesmisleadingly dubbed sweatshops by anti-capitalist
ideologuespays an average salary of $670, which is double the countrys per capita GDP.5 Western companies in
the poorest countries pay their workers, on average, twice what the corresponding native firms pay. Most important,
workers voluntarily seek such employment, and unlike the repressive governments, these private companies have
Capitalism is freedomand freedom leads to

prosperity. The moral is the practical. On the other hand, statism is oppression
and oppression leads to destitution. The immoral is the impractical. After two
no legal right to initiate force against them.
centuries of capitalism, 80 years of socialism, and a millennium of feudalism, the contest is over and the scores are
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Capitalism K
on the board. The alternatives open to human beings are stark: freedom and prosperity or statism and misery. We
have only to make our choice.
Free trade and capitalism are key to poverty reduction

empirically proven
Perry, University of Michigan economics professor 13 [Dr. Mark
J. Perry, a full professor of economics at the Flint campus of The University of
Michigan, 2013 (Capitalism Saves Lives, Reduces Poverty, United Liberty, 6-4-13,
Available Online at http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/13894-capitalism-saveslives-reduces-poverty, Accessed on July 8, 2013)][SP]
Capitalism is truly a wonderful thing. This economic system is empowers
the individual and limits government control over economies, which draws
criticism and derision from the Left. They like to claim that capitalism is greed
and they use that populist sentiment to push more state control and
regulations.
But what the Left wont admit is that capitalism is saving lives and
reducing poverty in countries where free trade and market liberalization
are being enacted. An editorial in the most recent issue of The Economist outlines
the successes of capitalism:
The worlds achievement in the field of poverty reduction is, by almost any
measure, impressive. Although many of the original Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) such as cutting maternal mortality by three-quarters and child
mortality by two-thirdswill not be met, the aim of halving global poverty
between 1990 and 2015 was achieved five years early.
The MDGs may have helped marginally, by creating a yardstick for measuring
progress, and by focusing minds on the evil of poverty. Most of the credit,
however, must go to capitalism and free trade, for they enable economies
to growand it was growth, principally, that has eased destitution.
The world now knows how to reduce poverty. A lot of targeted policiesbasic
social safety nets and cash-transfer schemes help. So does binning policies like fuel
subsidies to Indonesias middle class and Chinas hukou household-registration
system that boost inequality. But the biggest poverty-reduction measure of all is
liberalizing markets to let poor people get richer. That means freeing trade between
countries (Africa is still cruelly punished by tariffs) and within them (Chinas real
great leap forward occurred because it allowed private business to grow). Both India
and Africa are crowded with monopolies and restrictive practices.
Many Westerners have reacted to recession by seeking to constrain markets and roll
globalization back in their own countries, and they want to export these ideas to the
developing world, too. It does not need such advice. It is doing quite nicely,
largely thanks to the same economic principles that helped the developed
world grow rich and could pull the poorest of the poor out of destitution.
While an imperfect system, capitalism has done more to free people from the
chains of poverty than socialism or communism, which is why China is
expanding market reforms. Another point to add is that, as people in these
countries see that market liberalization works and is bringing them out of poverty,
theyre going to desire more freedoms.
And while it may take time to see this come to pass, governments will have a
tough time ignoring the cries for more freedom.
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Cap Good - Democracy

Even if democracies start out mostly formal, they have the
potential to reflect the will of the people and theyre
comparatively better than other systems.
Stephens, Gerhard E. Lenski, Jr. Distinguished Professor of
Political Science and Sociology at the University of North
Carolina, et al 92,
(John D, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens. April 15, 1992. Capitalist
Development and Democracy. University Of Chicago Press. Chapter 23, P. 248.
http://faculty.washington.edu/acs22/SinklerSite/PolS
%20204/Rueschemeyer_Stephens_Stephens.pdf , [Accessed 7/8/13], JB).
This position has methodological consequences. The concepts of democracy
used in our research as well as in virtually all other empirical studies aim to
identify the really existing democracies of our world and to distinguish
them from other forms of rule. Our operating concepts are therefore not
based on the most farreaching ideals of democratic thought-of a
government thoroughly and equally responsive to the preferences of all
its citizens (Dahl 1971) or of a polity in which human beings fulfill themselves
through equal and active participation in collective self-rule (Macpherson 1973).
Rather, they orient themselves to the more modest forms of popular
participation in government through representative parliaments that
appear as realistic possibilities in the complex societies of today. Our
definitions of democracy focus on the state's re sponsibility to parliament (possibly
complemented by direct election of the head of the executive), on regular free and
fair elections, on the freedom of expression and association, and on the extent of
the suffrage. Robert Dahl, whose careful conceptuali zations probably had the
greatest influence on em pirical democracy research, reserved the term "polyarch
y" for this more modest and inevitably somewhat formal version of democracy (Dahl
1956, 1971). Why do we care about formal democracy if it con siderably
falls short of the actual rule of the many? This question assumes particular
saliency in the light of two of our findings, namely that democracy was a result of
the contradictions of capitalist de velopment and that it could be consolidated only
if the interests of the capitalist classes were not di rectly threatened by it. The full
answer to this ques tion will become clear as we proceed with our analy sis. But it is
possible to anticipate our conclusion briefly already We care about formal
democracy because it tends to be more than merely for mal. It tends to be
real to some extent. Giving the many a real voice in the formal collective
decision making of a country is the most promising basis for further
progress in the distribution of power and other forms of substantive
equality. The same fac tors which support the installation and consolida tion of
formal democracy, namely growth in the strength of civil society in general
and of the lower classes in particular, also support progress towards greater
equality in political participation and to wards greater social and
economic equality. Ulti mately, we see in democracy-even in its modes: and
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Capitalism K
largely formal contemporary realizations-the -::..; beginning of the selftransformation of capitalism ....
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Capitalism K
Cap Good- Morality

Were proletarian morality- key to generate support for the
revolution.
The Red Phoenix 11,
The Red Phoenix: Newspaper of the American Party of Labor 12/25/11, On
Communist Morality, http://theredphoenixapl.org/2011/12/25/on-communistmorality/ [Accessed 7/4/13], JB)
Proletarian Moralitys Moral Imperative Proletarian morality is directly opposed
to this ideological expression of bourgeois domination. It sees bourgeois
morality for what it is: another set of chains fixed to the necks of the
working class to compel them to continue working without resistance to
power and property. Whereas bourgeois morality exists to advance bourgeois
hegemony, proletarian morality exists to resist and counter this hegemony.
As such, both the classical and modern-day Robin Hood characters can be seen as
moral actors for their resistance to exploitation. The proletariat is the laboring class
who have only their labor to sell, and hence find themselves trapped in capitalisms
production scheme, forced to work long hours only to be compensated for a
miniscule fraction of the wealth they create for the bourgeoisie. They are alienated
not only from what they produce, but from how they go about producing it. They are
also alienated from one another, forced to see other workers as competition and
otherwise being separated from others by the machinations of the capitalist system.
For the class-conscious worker, who understands what is happening and what the
cause of it is, the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system are presented as their
enemy. They are what cause the daily injustice and pain felt by all workers,
and therefore are abhorrent, immoral and need to be challenged and
defeated if workers are to escape the prison in which they find
themselves. The resulting moral outlook from this perspective is one that
emphasizes collective liberation of the working class from this system. It
is a moral perspective that condemns the exploitation and alienation
carried out in capitalism as a moral evil, and as a result sees a social situation
wherein workers are in control when they produce, of what and how they produce,
for what need and to what end, are not exploited and not alienated from one
another, as desirable, good, right and just. As well, the means of effecting such
a transition are as well moral, insofar as they do not have the
consequence of advancing the alienation and exploitation of the working
class. Therefor, just as bourgeois morality advances counter-revolution,
proletarian morality advances the cause of revolution, to put it simply.
Perm solves best- even if moralism is bad that doesnt mean

morality is.
Peffer 90,
May 1990, Morality and Ideology, In Marxism, Morality, and social Justice p. 266-7
Princeton University Press.
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Capitalism K
http://home.sandiego.edu/~peffer/Peffer-MarxismMorality&SocialJustice/PefferCha6236-267%20Morality&Ideology.pdf, [Accessed 7/4/13]

However, the doctrine of moralism, when incorporated into the concept of morality,
renders a misconception of morality. There is absolutely no contradiction in
accepting morality (and utilizing moral discourse), on the one hand, and
rejecting the doctrine of moralism. on the other, therefore, the doctrine of
moralism cannot be 4 part of the concept of morality or of a correct theory about
morality or moral discourse. Though the doctrine of nmralism is. in Marxist
empirical theory, undoubtedly ideological, morality does not entail and need
not accept this doctrine and thus is not (for this reason, at any rate)
ideological. This does not mean, of course, that no moral theories, codes,
principles, etc., are to be rejected as ideological. A great many -perhaps the vast
majority ofmoral theories will probably still turn out to be ideological based on the
criteria developed in the previous section. On the other hand, it is crucial that
Marxists nut reject moral theories simply because they have been
developed by thinkers who are not Marxists or socialists. Furthermore, one
must separate the mural component from the empirical component of moral and
social theories in order la be able to judge the merits of each. It is not always the
case that both components of a moral and social theory are ideological when that
theory as a whole is ideological. Conversely, even if Marxist empirical theory is not
basically correct, the Marxist concept of ideologyunder the analysis I have given it
is not thereby vitiated. Although certain of the ways in which a theory or
view can be ideological may be vitiated, and though the penultimate criterion
of supporting and defending the social status quo may fail, the ultimate
(normative) criterion of militating against the amelioration and/or
improvement of the human condition will still remain. Thus, if Marxist
empirical theory is wide of the mark, and capitalism is the best way of ameliorating
and/or improving the human condition, then Marxism itselfas its bourgeois
opponents have long contendedwill turn out lo be ideological and, indeed, a
major, world-historical form of ideology (in the negatively critical sense of the term).
That my analysis of ihe Marxist concept of ideology allows for this possibility I lake
to be a strength rather than a weakness of the theory. Being self sent-sealing or
auto-justificatory is certainly no theoretical virtue: in fact, it is a cardinal theoretical
vice. Although there is no reason to view morality as a whole as ideology
in the negative sense of the term, nor any other reason discovered so far
to accept the thesis that Marxism and morality are incompatible, it remains
to be seen whether Marxism i> committed to a pernicious form of moral relativism
and whether :l can claim some sort of objectivity for its normative political positions.
It is to these questions we now turn.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good Hunger

Statistics prove capitalism reduces starvation
Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, 05
(Johan Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, 1-1-05, In Defence of Global
Capitalism, P. 42-45, JF)
Longer lives and belter health are connected with the reduction of one of
the cruelest manifestations of underdevelopmenthunger. Calorie intake
in the Third World has risen by 30 per cent per capita since the 1960s.
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, 960 million people in the developing
countries were undernourished in 1970. In 1991 the figure was 830
million, falling by 1996 to 790 million. In proportion to population, this is
an immensely rapid improvement. Thirty years ago nearly 37 per cent of
the population of the developing countries were afflicted with hunger.
Today's figure is less than 18 per cent. Many? Yes. Too many? Of course.
But the number is rapidly declining. It took the first two decades of the 20th century for
Sweden to be declared free from chronic malnutrition. In only 30 years the proportion of
hungry in the world has been reduced by half, and it is expected to decline further, to 12
per cent by 2010. There have never been so many of us on earth, and we have
never had such a good supply of food. During the 1990s, the ranks of the hungry diminished
by an average of six million ever)' year, at the same time as the world's population grew by about 800 million.
Things have moved fastest in East and Southeast Asia, where the proportion of hungry has fallen from 43 to 13 per
cent since 1970. In Latin America, it has fallen from 19 to 11 per cent, in North Africa and the Middle East from 25
to 9 per cent, in South Asia from 38 to 23 per cent. The worst development has occurred in Africa south of the
Sahara, where the number of hungry has actually increased, from 89 to 180 million people. But even there the
Global
food production has doubled during the past half century, and in the
developing countries it has tripled. Global food supply increased by 24 per
cent, from 2,257 to 2.808 calorics per person daily, between 1961 and 1999. The fastest increase
occurred in the developing countries, where consumption rose by 39 per
cent, from 1,932 to 2,684 calorics daily. Very little of this development is due to new land having been
converted to agricultural use. Instead, the old land is being farmed more efficiently. The
proportion of the population living in hunger has declined, albeit marginally, from 34 to 33 per cent.
yield per acre of arable land has virtually doubled. Wheat, maize, and rice prices have fallen by more than 60 per
food prices have halved and production

from a given area of land has risen by 25 per centa process that has
been swifter in poor countries than in affluent ones. Such is the triumph of the "green
revolution." Higher-yield, more-resistant crops have been developed, at the same
time as sowing, irrigation, manuring, and harvesting methods have
improved dramatically. New, efficient strains of wheat account for more than 75 per cent of wheat
cent. Since the beginning of the 1980s alone,
production in the developing countries, and farmers there are estimated to have earned nearly $5 billion as a
result of the change. In southern India, the green revolution is estimated to have boosted farmers' real earnings by
90 per cent and those of landless peasants by 125 per cent over 20 years. Its impact has been least in Africa, but
even there the green revolution has raised maize production per acre by between 10 and 40 per cent. Without
this revolution, it is estimated that world prices of wheat and rice would be nearly 40 per cent higher than they are
today and that roughly another 2 per cent of the world's childrenchildren who are now getting enough to eat
would have suffered from chronic malnourishment.
Today's food problem has nothing to do

with overpopulation. Hunger today is a problem of access to the available
knowledge and technology, to wealth, and to the secure background
conditions that make food production possible. Many researchers believe
that if modern farming techniques were applied in all the world's
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Capitalism K
agriculture, we would already be able, here and now, to feed another

billion or so people.10 The incidence of major famine disasters has also
declined dramatically, largely as a result of the spread of democracy.
Starvation has occurred in states of practically every kind communist
regimes, colonial empires, technocratic dictatorships, and ancient tribal societies. In all cases they
have been centralized, authoritarian states that suppressed free debate
and the workings of the market. As Amartya Sen observes, there has never been a
famine disaster in a democracy. Even poor democracies like India and
Botswana have avoided starvation, despite having a poorer food supply
than many countries where famine has struck. By contrast, communist
states like China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and North Korea, as well as colonics like India under
the British Raj, have experienced starvation. This shows that famine is caused
by dictatorship, not by food shortage. Famine is induced by leaders
destroying production and trade, making war. and ignoring the plight of the starving population.
Growth solve hunger it only exists in redistributive states

market freedom insures no one is hungry
Ruwart, Ph.D. in biophysics, 10
(Mary Ruwart, Ph.D. in biophysics, spent 19 years as a pharmaceutical research
scientist for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals, 9-4-10, Libertarian Answers, Can free markets
handle the problems of hunger and famine in poor countries? ,
http://libertariananswers.com/can-free-markets-handle-the-problems-of-hunger-andfamine-in-poor-countries/, accessed 7-8-13, JF)
In todays world, widespread hunger exists only in Third World nations. The
poverty of these countries means that they cannot produce enough to
feed themselves, especially in crisis conditions. The lack of infrastructure to deliver
emergency goods means foodstuffs can deteriorate before they reach those in greatest
need. The best solution to famine is to make poor nations rich . Since wealth
of nations is directly linked to liberty, getting rid of aggressive
government is the key to feeding the world. The Third Worlds poverty is
created by its governments massive regulatory red tape, failure to
respect property rights, and high tariffs. When liberty is regained, Third
World nations become wealthy (e.g., South Korea) and no longer lose population to
massive food shortages, even in most emergency situations. When the U.S. government sends aid to starving
nations, a great deal of it is distributed to the rulers favorites. Even private aid is sometimes partially usurped by
unscrupulous Third World governments. Sometimes the confiscated food aid is simply sold to line the governments
coffers. In crisis, local farmers will sell their meager yield to the highest local bidder. Indeed, they must if they are
to plant the following season.
The loss of time and efficiency that occurs by

confiscating and redistributing what they produce outweighs the benefits
that might accrue to those who are too poor to help themselves. Since
many local farmers will go out of business if their crop is taken, even less
local produce will be available during the next crisis. Ultimately, only liberty
can insure that no one goes hungry. The best way for the Third World to
prevent famine is to embrace the libertarian ideal.
Capitalism solves hunger and poverty

Robert J. Samuelson, staff writer, 08
(Robert J. Samuelson, staff writer, 5-27-8, Rx for Global Poverty: Why globalization
can enrich everyone. , The Daily Beast,
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Capitalism K
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/05/27/rx-for-global-poverty.html,
accessed 7-9-13,JF)
There are roughly 6 billion people on the planet; in 2004, perhaps 2.5 billion survived on $2 a day or less, says the World Bank. By
What's baffling and

frustrating about extreme poverty is that much of the world has
eliminated it. In 1800, almost everyone was desperately poor. But the developed world has
essentially abolished starvation, homelessness and material deprivation. The solution to
being poor is getting rich. It's economic growth. We know this. The mystery is why all societies
2050, the world may have 3 billion more people; many will be similarly impoverished.
have not adopted the obvious remedies. Just recently, the 21-member Commission on Growth and Development -- including two
Nobel-prize winning economists, former prime ministers of South Korea and Peru, and a former president of Mexico -- examined the
puzzle. Since 1950, the panel found, 13 economies have grown at an average annual rate of 7 percent for at least 25 years. These
were: Botswana, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Malta, Oman, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand.
Some gains are astonishing. From 1960 to 2005, per capita income in South Korea rose from $1,100 to $13,200. Other societies
started from such low levels that even rapid economic growth, combined with larger populations, left sizable poverty. In 2005,
all these economies had

advanced substantially. The panel identified five common elements of success: Of course, qualifications abound.
Indonesia's per capita income averaged just $900, up from $200 in 1966. Still,
Some countries succeeded with high inflation rates of 15 to 30 percent. Led by Japan, Asian countries pursued export-led growth
with undervalued exchange rates that favored some industries over others. Good government is relative; some fast-growing
Globalization works. Countries

don't get rich by staying isolated. Those that embrace trade and foreign
investment acquire know-how and technologies, can buy advanced
products abroad, and are forced to improve their competitiveness. The
transmission of new ideas and products is faster than ever. After its invention, the
societies tolerated much corruption. Still, broad lessons are clear. One is:
telegraph took 90 years to spread to four-fifths of developing countries; for the cellphone, the comparable diffusion was 16 years
Free trade and development under capitalism solves hunger

Nguyen, current undergraduate doubling majoring in applied
mathematics and philosophy at Florida State, 12
(Anthony Nguyen, current undergraduate doubling majoring in applied mathematics
and philosophy at Florida State University, 8-20-12, Yahoo, Ending World Poverty
and World Hunger: What, Why, and How We Must Fight Absolute Poverty and
Hunger , http://voices.yahoo.com/ending-world-poverty-world-hunger-why-and11671802.html?cat=37, accessed 7-9-13, JF)
How to End Hunger and Poverty in the World: Free Trade. According to
recent research by a 21-member Commission on Growth and Development,
trade, not foreign aid, has been integral to economic growth in countries such as China,
Oman, and Japan. Foreign aid can actually exacerbate the problems of world poverty and world hunger by
decreasing the local prices of food, which would decrease the incentive for local farmers to grow food. Furthermore,
governments may respond to free money and food by enacting policies that restrict domestic food production and
general economic growth in order to get more "free" money and goods. Thus foreign aid may provide temporary
relief, but should not serve as a long-term solution to poverty and hunger in the developing world. At best ,
temporary aid should function to create the foundation for future

economic growth in a country by giving the impoverished the necessary
aid they need to get on their feet and work or otherwise engage in
entrepreneurship. A more practical solution is to engage in free trade
with developing countries. Basic economics, as explained by Nick Sanders, a researcher at Stanford
University, suggests that free trade benefits all participating countries, even if one
country has the "absolute advantage" in the production of all goods -- this
means that even the U.S. will economically benefit from trade with the poorest and least productive countries.
Furthermore, Daniella Markheim, a senior analyst in trade policy, says that " free
trade is about
beating poverty and expanding economic opportunity." With free trade,
entrepreneurship will increase in developing countries, which will allow for
stronger capitalistic forces in their own markets to grow -- they will
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Capitalism K
develop and create their own industries under free trade with developed
countries such as the U.S. Besides, we are currently experiencing high unemployment and increased
free trade will make more jobs -- about 9.2 million American jobs currently revolve around exports and therefore
Therefore, free trade can figuratively kill

two birds with one stone by helping to end world poverty and hunger, as
well as helping to resuscitate the American economy.
freer trade can only generate more American jobs.
Their anti-globalization discourse is highly exaggerated and

only serves to perpetuate hunger
Robert J. Samuelson, staff writer, 08
(Robert J. Samuelson, staff writer, 5-27-8, Rx for Global Poverty: Why globalization
can enrich everyone. , The Daily Beast,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/05/27/rx-for-global-poverty.html,
accessed 7-9-13,JF)
Globalization has moral as well as economic and political dimensions . The
United States and other wealthy countries are experiencing an anti-globalization
backlash. Americans and others are entitled to defend themselves from economic harm, but many of the
allegations against globalization are wildly exaggerated . Today, for example, the
biggest drag on the U.S. economy--the housing crisis--is mainly a domestic problem. By making
globalization an all-purpose scapegoat for economic complaints, many
"progressives" are actually undermining the most powerful force for
eradicating global poverty.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good- Genocide

Democracies are less likely to commit genocidethe violence
they claim arises from capital has the inverse relationship
Stewart, Development Economics professor at the University of
Oxford, 11
[Frances, March 2011, MICROCON: A Micro Level Analysis of Violent Conflict,
Economic and Political Causes of Genocidal Violence: A comparison with findings
on the causes of civil war, http://www.microconflict.eu/publications/RWP46_FS.pdf,
p. 23-25, accessed 7/10/13, YGS]
A number of scholars have argued that genocide frequently coincides with

major political upheavals defined by Harff as an abrupt change in the political community caused
by the formation of a state or regime through violent conflict, redrawing of state boundaries or defeat in
international war (Harrff 2003: 62). In such situations, new (previously subordinate) groups come to power, and/
or there is uncertainty and competition for power. Such upheavals are said to provide political opportunity
structures for genocide to occur ((Harff 1987)Krain 1997), which may be associated with external wars, civil wars,
decolonisation and extra-consitutional changes. For example, Melson (1989) analysing the
Armenian genocide and the German Holocaust argued that in each case
revolutions brought new classes (with a genocidal ideology) to power, and
that wartime conditions facilitated genocide, making it easier to conceal. Midlarsky (2005) analysing twentieth
century genocides argues that genocide is more likely during war . Levene (2005) suggests that genocides are
more likely during systemic crises faced by new states. The view that crises and changes in the political system
provide the conditions for genocide is consistent with the strand in the civil war literature, noted earlier, arguing
that civil war is more likely during political transition and crisis. Statistical investigations have found that the
level of upheaval ((Wayman and Tago 2010)Harff 1997;2003) is significantly related to the incidence of genocide.
Harff finds that all but one of 37 genocides and politicides that
began between 1955 and 1998 occurred during or immediately after
political upheavals (Harff 2003: 62) making such upheaval a necessary but not
sufficient condition for genocide to occur. This is a much stronger condition than the
Indeed,
findings in relation to civil war. Easterly et al. 2006 find that ongoing civil war is a significant correlate of genocide
in all their specifications , after allowing for the impact of GDP per capita and the extent of democracy. This is also
a finding of Krain 1997. Krain also finds that the combined effect of the simultaneous presence of both internal
and external wars is much greater than either alone. Akinds (forthcoming) and Wayman and Tago (2010) also
find that the presence of civil war is significantly and positively related to the incidence of both democide and
and so (independently) are coups. Concentration of power is argued to be a
precondition of genocide, with authoritarian governments most likely to
commit genocide and democracies least likely: The more power a
government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims
and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and
murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power
of governments, the less it will aggress on others. (Rummel 1994: 1-2). The
best way to account for and to predict democide is by the degree to
which a regime is totalitarian along a democratic-totalitarian scale. (Rummel
1995: 25). Statistical investigations show that regime type is, indeed,
generally associated with genocide: Fein 1993, 2000 finds that totalitarian states are most
politicide10,
likely to commit genocides and
that genocide is more likely to be committed by revolutionary and authoritarian
Harff 2003, 2009 finds that the presence of an autocratic

government increases the likelihood of genocide. Easterly et al 2006 find
that the extent of democracy is significantly and (inversely) related to
the incidence of mass killings.
states than democratic ones.
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Capitalism K
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Capitalism K
Cap Good- Social Change

Cap key to social change
Nordhaus & Shellenberger, American authors, environmental
policy experts, and the presidents of The Breakthrough
Institute., 2007 (Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the
Politics of Possibility, Ted & Michael, Managing Directors of American Environics, A

social values research and strategy firm,http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=xNJtkLxTpekC&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=Break+Through:
+From+the+Death+of+Environmentalism+to+the+Politics+of+Possibility&ots=aL
OSenUk5W&sig=vNuRh_LvmAWMCk3qsJXar57AZaY)
Just as prosperity tends to bring out the best of human nature, poverty and
collapse tend to bring out the worst. Not only are authoritarian values
strongest in situations where our basic material and security needs aren't
being met, they also become stronger in societies experiencing economic
downturns. Economic collapse in Europe after World War I, in Yugoslavia
after the fall of communism, and in Rwanda in the early 1990S triggered
an authoritarian reflex that fed the growth of fascism and violence . The
populations in those countries, feeling profoundly insecure at the physiological,
psychological, and cultural levels, embraced authoritarianism and other lower-order
materialist values. This is also what occurred in Iraq after the U.S. invasion. This
shift away from fulfillment and toward survival values appears to be occurring in the
United States, albeit far more gradually than in places like the former Communistbloc countries. Survival values, including fatalism, ecological fatalism, sexism,
everyday rage, and the acceptance of violence, are on the rise in the United States.
The reasons for Americas gradual move away from fulfillment and toward survival
values are complex. Part of it appears to be driven by increasing economic
insecurity. This insecurity has several likely causes: the globalization of the
economy; the absence of a new social contract for things like health care, child care
and retirement appropriate for our postindustrial age; and status competitions
driven by rising social inequality. Conservatives tend to believe that all Americans
are getting richer while liberals tend to believe that the rich are getting richer and
the poor are getting poorer. In our discussion of security in chapter 7 we argue that
what is happening is a little bit of both: homeownership and purchasing power have
indeed been rising, but so have household and consumer debt and the amount of
time Americans spend working. While cuts to the social safety net have not pushed
millions of people onto the street, they have fed social insecurity and increased
competition with the Joneses. It is not just environmentalists who misunderstand
the prosperity-fulfillment connection. In private conversations, meetings and
discussions, we often hear progressives lament public apathy and cynicism and
make statements such as Things are going to have to get a lot worse before they
get better. We emphatically disagree. In our view, things have to get better before
they can get better. Immiseration theorythe view that increasing suffering leads to
progressive social changehas been repeatedly discredited by history.
Progressive social reforms, from the Civil Rights Act to the Clean Water
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Capitalism K
Act, tend to occur during times of prosperity and rising expectationsnot

immiseration and declining expectations. Both the environmental
movement and the civil rights movement emerged as a consequence of
rising prosperity. It was the middle-class, young, and educated black Americans who were on the forefront
of the civil rights movement. Poor blacks were active, but the movement was overwhelmingly led by educated,
middle-class intellectuals and community leaders (preachers prominent among them). This was also the case with
the white supporters of the civil rights movement, who tended to be more highly educated and more affluent than
the general American population.
In short, the civil rights movement no more

emerged because African Americans were suddenly denied their freedom
than the environmental movement emerged because American suddenly
started polluting.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good - Environment

Capitalism key to environment
Taylor ,director of natural resource studies at CATO,2003 (Jerry
,April 22, Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?

pub_id=3073)
we wouldn't even have environmentalists in our midst were it not for
capitalism. Environmental amenities, after all, are luxury goods. America -- like
much of the Third World today -- had no environmental movement to speak of until
living standards rose sufficiently so that we could turn our attention from
simply providing for food, shelter, and a reasonable education to higher
"quality of life" issues. The richer you are, the more likely you are to be an environmentalist. And
people wouldn't be rich without capitalism. Wealth not only breeds environmentalists, it
begets environmental quality. There are dozens of studies showing that , as
Indeed,
per capita income initially rises from subsistence levels, air and water pollution increases correspondingly. But once
per capita income hits between $3,500 and $15,000 (dependent upon the pollutant), the ambient concentration of
This relationship is found

for virtually every significant pollutant in every single region of the planet.
It is an iron law. Given that wealthier societies use more resources than poorer societies, such findings are
pollutants begins to decline just as rapidly as it had previously increased.
indeed counterintuitive. But the data don't lie. How do we explain this? The obvious answer -- that wealthier
societies are willing to trade-off the economic costs of government regulation for environmental improvements and
that poorer societies are not -- is only partially correct. In the United States, pollution declines generally predated
the passage of laws mandating pollution controls. In fact, for most pollutants, declines were greater before the
federal government passed its panoply of environmental regulations than after the EPA came upon the scene. Much
of this had to do with individual demands for environmental quality. People who could afford cleaner-burning
furnaces, for instance, bought them. People who wanted recreational services spent their money accordingly,
creating profit opportunities for the provision of untrammeled nature. Property values rose in cleaner areas and
declined in more polluted areas, shifting capital from Brown to Green investments. Market agents will supply
whatever it is that people are willing to spend money on. And when people are willing to spend money on
capitalism rewards efficiency and

punishes waste. Profit-hungry companies found ingenious ways to reduce
the natural resource inputs necessary to produce all kinds of goods, which
in turn reduced environmental demands on the land and the amount of waste that flowed
environmental quality, the market will provide it. Meanwhile,
through smokestacks and water pipes. As we learned to do more and more with a given unit of resources, the waste
involved (which manifests itself in the form of pollution) shrank. This trend was magnified by the shift away from
manufacturing to service industries, which characterizes wealthy, growing economies. The latter are far less
pollution-intensive than the former. But the former are necessary prerequisites for the latter. Property rights -- a
necessary prerequisite for free market economies -- also provide strong incentives to invest in resource health.
Without them, no one cares about future returns because no one can be sure they'll be around to reap the gains.
Property rights are also important means by which private desires for resource conservation and preservation can
be realized. When the government, on the other hand, holds a monopoly on such decisions, minority preferences in
developing societies are overruled (see the old Soviet block for details). Furthermore, only wealthy societies can
afford the investments necessary to secure basic environmental improvements, such as sewage treatment and
electrification. Unsanitary water and the indoor air pollution (caused primarily by burning organic fuels in the home
for heating and cooking needs) are directly responsible for about 10 million deaths a year in the Third World,
Capitalism can save more

lives threatened by environmental pollution than all the environmental
organizations combined.
making poverty the number one environmental killer on the planet today.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good-VTL
Capitalism solves quality of life
Norberg, Fellow at Timbro and CATO, MA with a focus in
economics and philosophy, 2003 (Johan, July 31 , In Defense of Global
Capitalism,http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=VpnmwhBneTcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA7&dq=In+Defense+of+Global+Capi
talism&ots=xW0wpNx5QG&sig=Pbj8YC655sJ_-nMBjFnv3d_Xlec)
It is not a problem for the Third World that more and more diseases have been
made curable in the Western world. On the contrary, that is something that has
proved to be a benefit, and not just because a wealthier world can devote more
resources to helping the poor. In many fields, the Third World can inexpensively
share in the research financed by wealthy Western customers, sometimes
paying nothing for it. The Merck Corporation gave free medicine to a
project to combat onchocerciasis (river blindness) in 11 African states. As a
result those states have now rid themselves almost completely of a
parasite that formerly affected something like a million people, blinding
thousands every year. 22 The Monsanto Corporation allows researchers
and companies free use of their technique for developing golden rice, a
strain of rice enriched with iron and beta carotene (pro-vitamin A), which
could save a million people annually in the Third World who are dying of
vitamin A deficiency diseases. A number of pharmaceutical companies are
lowering the prices of inhibitors for HIV/AIDS in poor countries by up to 95
percent, on condition that the patents are preserved so that they can
maintain full prices in wealthier countries.
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Capitalism K
Cap Good - War

Capitalism reduces likelihood of war
Griswold ,director of the Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy
Studies,2005 (Daniel, December 28, Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3073)
First, trade
and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy,

and democracies don't pick fights with each other. Freedom to trade
nurtures democracy by expanding the middle class in globalizing countries
and equipping people with tools of communication such as cell phones,
satellite TV, and the Internet. With trade comes more travel, more contact
with people in other countries, and more exposure to new ideas. Thanks in
part to globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are
democracies -- a record high. Second, as national economies become more
integrated with each other, those nations have more to lose should war
break out. War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and
bigger government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that
impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has
dramatically raised the economic cost of war. Third, globalization allows nations to acquire
wealth through production and trade rather than conquest of territory and resources. Increasingly, wealth is
measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human
capital. Those are assets that cannot be seized by armies. If people need
resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm
products, they can acquire them peacefully by trading away what they can
produce best at home. Of course, free trade and globalization do not guarantee peace. Hot-blooded nationalism
and ideological fervor can overwhelm cold economic calculations. But deep trade and investment ties among nations make war less
attractive. Trade wars in the 1930s deepened the economic depression, exacerbated global tensions, and helped to usher in a world
war. Out of the ashes of that experience, the United States urged Germany, France, and other Western European nations to form a
common market that has become the European Union. In large part because of their intertwined economies, a general war in Europe
is now unthinkable.
Cap reduces conflict- Empirics prove

Griswold ,director of the Cato Institute Center for Trade Policy
Studies,2005 (Daniel, December 28, Happy Earth Day? Thank Capitalism,
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3073)
In East Asia, the extensive and growing economic ties among Mainland
China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan is helping to keep the peace.
Chinas Communist rulers may yet decide to go to war over its renegade
province, but the economic cost to their economy would be staggering
and could provoke a backlash among Chinese citizens. In contrast, poor
and isolated North Korea is all the more dangerous because it has nothing
to lose economically should it provoke a war. In Central America, countries
that were racked by guerrilla wars and death squads two decades ago
have turned not only to democracy but to expanding trade, culminating in
the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States. As the
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Capitalism K
Stockholm institute reports in its 2005 Yearbook, Since the 1980s, the introduction
of a more open economic model in most states of the Latin American and
Caribbean region has been accompanied by the growth of new regional
structures, the dying out of interstate conflicts and a reduction in intrastate conflicts. Much of the political violence that remains in the world today
is concentrated in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa the two regions
of the world that are the least integrated into the global economy. Efforts
to bring peace to those regions must include lowering their high barriers
to trade, foreign investment, and domestic entrepreneurship.
Interdependence averts war- WW1 proves

Wyne , a researcher at Harvard Universitys Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs, 2012 (Ali, May 11, 2012, Can
Economic Interdependence Help to Prevent a U.S.-China
War,http://bigthink.com/power-games/can-economic-interdependence-help-toprevent-a-us-china-war)
Far from deeming war impossible, then, Angell seemed resigned to its inevitability.
But is it really far-fetched to imagine that interdependence could have
prevented World War I? Erik Gartzke and Yonatan Lupu of UC San Diego
argue in the new issue of International Security that [h]ad globalization
pervaded Eastern Europe, or if the rest of Europe had been less locked
into events in the east, Europe might have avoided a Great War (p. 7).
They contend that the prevailing narrative about World War Ieconomic
interdependence among European countries didnt prevent it from occurringis
misguided, because it treats prewar Europe as a single unit of analysis.
Gartzke and Lupu deconstruct it into two clustersa highly integrated set of
countries in the West and a weakly integrated one in the Eastleading them to
this series of conclusions: [T]he turn of the century saw a series of intense crises
among the interdependent states of Western Europe that nevertheless did
not result in open warfare.the fighting in 1914 actually began among the
less interdependent powers of Austria-Hungary and Serbia.[while] the highly
interdependent European powers were generally able to resolve their
crises without resorting to war, the less interdependent powers were typically
unable to do so (p. 116).
Interdependence good-prevents war

Reed, Professor of Political Science at Rice
University,Information and Economic
Interdependence,2003(William, February 2003 ,The Journal of Conflict
Resolution, Vol. 47, No. 1, Building a Science of World Politics,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176182)SB
I argue that trade may enhance the probability that states settle their
disagreements short of militarized conflict, because it serves to minimize
distortion about the willingness of a target to give in to any specific
demand issued by a dissatisfied challenger. It is important to note that this
claim is only subtly different from the "conflict is too costly for trading states" notion.
Because one of the parameters in the decision to use militarized force is the
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Capitalism K
actors' utility for the costs of the conflict, the effect of costs is a crucial component
in the "information" explanation. Although an increase in the costs of conflict for
either actor will decrease the probability of conflict, my claim is that economic
interdependence does not just result in increased costs. Rather, the effect
of interdependence is most profound with respect to variation in the
distribution of information about the costs of conflict and other crucial
parameters in the actors' value functions. That is, trade affects the costs
of conflict in two independent ways. First, the costs of conflict for trading
states may be higher than for comparable nontrading states. Second,
trading states have more precise information about their opponent's costs
than do nontrading states. Although theoretically, these are different processes
relating trade to conflict, the empirical implications of these independent effects are
observationally equivalent. Trade should decrease the probability of conflict. I
construct a simple bargaining model to illustrate formally my argument. I evaluate
the credibility of the formal model with a Bayesian heteroskedastic probit estimator.
My results suggest that economic interdependence mitigates the effect of
uncertainty, and this leads to an enhanced probability of settlement short of
militarized conflict. I also show that trade is related to heterogeneity in conflict data.
This heterogeneity is a possible explanation for the null findings in some of the
published papers that examine the trade and conflict puzzle
Interdependence is Good- Democracy and Compromise

Oneal et al, Department of Political Science, University of
Alabama and Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv
University and Department of Political Science, Yale
University, 1996(John R. Oneal, Frances H. Oneal, Zeev Maoz and Bruce
Russett, Department of Political Science, University of Alabama and Jaffee Center
for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University and Department of Political Science, Yale
University, 1996, The Liberal Peace: Interdependence, Democracy, and International
Conflict, 1950-85*,: Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 11-28,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/425131)SB
The relationship between democracy and international conflict has received careful
attention, but political scientists have shown less interest in the consequences of
free trade and economic interdependence. Yet, expanded trade was
advocated as a remedy for war before democracy was a realistic
possibility in most countries. In the early 17th century, Emeric Cruce
concluded that wars were the result of international misunderstandings
and the domination of society by the warrior class. Both could be reduced
by the expansion of commerce: Trade brought individuals of different
nations into contact with one another and created common interests; and
it increased the prosperity and political power of the peaceful, productive
members of society at the expense of the aristocracy. Later, the
importance of economic relations in promoting world peace was
emphasized by Francois 12 John R. Oneal et al. Quesnay, Anne Robert Turgot, and
the French Physiocrats; by Adam Smith and his followers in England; and by Thomas
Paine (Domke, 1988, pp. 43-51; Howard, 1978). In his treatise on Perpetual
Peace (1991 [1795]), Immanuel Kant refined the liberal argument by
211

Capitalism K
suggesting that peace among democratic nations would be the

consequence of three complementary influences. First, republican
constitutions eliminate autocratic caprice in waging war. Second, 'an
understanding of the legitimate rights of all citizens and of all republics
comes into play.. .' with the spread of democracy (Doyle, 1986, p. 1161). This
creates a moral foundation for the liberal peace, upon which eventually an
edifice of international law can be built. Lastly, economic interdependence
reinforces constitutional constraints and liberal norms by creating
transnational ties that encourage accommodation rather than conflict.
Thus, material incentives add their force to law and morality.
Interdependence is Good- Stability

Matthews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 2007 (Jessica, 11/8, "Europe and the US: Confronting
Global Challenges,"
,http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/transcript_mandelson.pdf)
Now, the question I want to answer today is, how do we do this and to what
purpose? Firstly, fundamentally, we must engage with economic globalization,
accept it, shape it. Were not going to roll it back, and if we could, we shouldnt
seek to do so. In fact, Id argue that the preservation of an equitable economic
globalization should be the core political commitment at the heart of the
transatlantic economic relationship, equivalent in its way to the mutual
commitment to democracy that the Atlantic Charter embodied six decades ago,
because managed right, an economically integrated world is ultimately not
only a more stable and a more equitable world; it is also our principal
means of meeting the increasing number of global challenges that require
collective action. The reshaping of the global economy and the huge dramatic
changes that are taking place in the economic landscape of the world certainly test
the nerves of us in Europe and the nerves of you too in the United States. But just
because it tests our nerves doesnt mean to say that these changes are not in our
interests. Its true that some parts of our manufacturing sectors are certainly facing
some tough competitive pressure. It is true that this will force us to think about how
we choose to educate and to train ourselves in the future, and how we ensure that
the benefits of economic growth are equitably shared. Thats a major policy
challenge for us on both sides of the Atlantic. It is true that because of these great
changes and the huge anxiety that they are generating amongst people on both
sides of the Atlantic that policymakers are under increasing pressure to show that
our embrace of economic globalization is not naivety, that were not being taken for
a ride, in other words, by the rest of the world; to show that as we need to do as
policymakers to show that closing the gate to the outside world is not a better
alternative to keeping that gate open to the rest of the world. Now, these debates
are broadly the same in Europe and the United States. But in an open global market,
we have to understand that the growing economies of the developing world are also
a competitive stimulus and a real engine for the growth of our own economies. They
are a market for our goods and for our investment. They are a source of downward
pressure on consumer prices and inflation at home. They are also the driving force
that has lifted perhaps half a billion people out of poverty in half a human lifetime,
which is hard to argue against. In defending and preserving this openness to the
world and this growth of the global economy and its integration, the EU and the U.S.
212

Capitalism K
are faced with some simple realities. The first is that we now live in a world
that is increasingly economically multi-polar. One billion new workers have
entered the global labor force in the space of just two decades in the world. In
those 20-odd years, China has risen from a country with which the EU traded almost
literally nothing to becoming our biggest trading partner for manufacturers. In some
ways, an older balance of economic power is reasserting itself in the world. In
1830, India and China were the two biggest economies in the world in
1830. By 2050, they will again be amongst the very largest economies in
the world. Of course, this is not the only way of weighing power in the modern
world, far from it. But it is fundamental. And thats in the nature of the
fundamental revolution in economic terms, and also political terms,
therefore, that the world is undergoing. Now, the machinery of what you might
call the Atlantic consensus the World Bank, the IMF, GATT, G7 or G8 was
conceived and rooted in the assumption that the global economic and political order
could and would indeed be governed largely by the Atlantic world. That assumption
now no longer holds. There has been a reorientation from the Atlantic to the Pacific
and beyond. Now, the multilateral institutions that survive, therefore, will be those
ones that are able to adapt to this new 21st century landscape. The second
simple reality that I would identify for you is that economic globalization
means interdependence. This is not simply a question of global supply chains
and production lines. Our open markets are a ladder out of poverty for the
developing world. Their growing markets are a source of growth for us. That is the
fundamental interdependence that links and joins us and our interests together in
the global economy. A world of growing prosperity and economic integration
is a more stable world, even if it doesnt always feel that way Now, for that
reason, multilateral institutions in the multilateral trading system will matter more
than ever in the new global age of the 21st century. There is no going it alone in this
century, in this global age. Interdependence doesnt allow going it alone in the way
that we have tried to practice or imagine it was possible in the past. Our ability to
get things done multilaterally will define the extent to which we can shape
globalization in a way that makes it equitable and sustainable and binds in the big
new players who are emerging in that global economy. It will certainly define the
extent to which we can confront huge pressing problems such as global warming,
migration, nuclear proliferation, and energy security.
213

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The emergent revolutionary struggles in

The story is needed to alibi the regime of wage-labor and

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What is emerging in the wake of the

is appeasement of the violent democracy of the owners.

The impact is extinction

Capitalists buy the workers' labor,

workers experience long years of stagnant real wages,

Millions of people continuously live below the poverty level;

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Racist violence and the poison of racist ideas

Women still face a considerable differential in wages for

The alternative is to reject the aff

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a universal "free market"

asymmetry, unbridgeable inequalities, and particularistic challenges to neoliberal

Can globalized capital truly universalize the world and bring

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

posthumanismwhich posits a common

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

What has actually been

religion ends up providing a "spiritual aroma"

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

serve to naturalize the material relations of exploitation and culturally

these comments are symptomatic

are a form of "inverted world-consciousness" because they obscure the

The affs focus on ethically reconsolidating the human-animal

(Kimberly, Winter/Spring 2012, The Red Critique, Machine-Thinking and the

But human-animal relations, once again, are

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

organizations based on collective ownership of property (as in early Native American

Wolfe's pragmatism tellingly echoes the right-wing argument that

pragmatism is so effectively aligned with

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

[Theodore R. and James, 2/14/11, The Heritage Foundation, Containing a Nuclear

Democracies are capable of manifesting such

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Link Critical Terrorism Studies

In the development of critical security studies thus far, never mind

Marxism is mentioned only once

in terms of Booths endorsement of it as part

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

they see it overwhelmingly as a field which serves

CTS fails to explain class relations in terrorism historical

(Bayo Ogunrotifa, Research Assistant at Edinburgh University, April 2012 ,PUTTING

and Stokes (2011) and Jonathan (2011) have suggested that

these appeals seems to raise

provide problem-solving tools (as Robert Cox 1981:128-130

argued) to combat military threats using counter-

CTS as far as its

Therefore, HM must rise to the task of unpractical gap left by

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013

Ideological examinations of terrorism crowds out material

A second necessity if CTS is to make a lasting impact on the future

I would suggest that an initial CTS

one of the tasks of a CTS field is to gather in all these

there is also a need to explore in much more detail the political-economic

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substitution of the discourse of "culture" and "values" for class relations

Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013