Lincoln Douglas K

NC Shells

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

. 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.
bourgeois morality

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

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
this effectively,

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 moral statements may vary, may contradict, may

exaggerate philosophical differences between groups and may make
proclamations of moral right and wrong that are seemingly classneutral. However, when it comes to the role power plays in deciding 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.
bourgeois morality.

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

Capitalists buy
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
distribution. Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life.
the workers'

workers above and beyond the cost of paying worker's wages and other costs
of production. This surplus is called "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 only by extracting a

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 .
greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers by increasing exploitation.

With the rapid advance of 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 "recovery" from

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
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 entire industries to other countries.

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

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
even for those they do reach.

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

Racist violence and

the poison of racist ideas victimize all people of color no matter which
economic class they belong to. The attempts to suppress and undercount the vote of the African
racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites.

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

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 constant attacks
power. They use this power to ensure the economic and political dominance of their class.

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, even if there is no

alternative to neoliberalism, using the debate space to
criticize it expands the boundaries of our consciousness
and creates research practices that are more sensitive to
slow, everyday violence- thats a pre-requisite to effective
use of science and empiricism
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

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
In order

eulogizing hybrid, cyborg-esque, nomadic global citizenseven 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

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
Philippines knows

(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

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 juxtaposition, syncretic amalgamation, and so on, one
perceives a counter-current of fragmentation, increasing asymmetry, unbridgeable
inequalities, and particularistic challenges to neoliberal integrationincluding
as well as those peoples struggling for various forms of national sovereignty. While

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 dignity

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,
and justice in the everyday lives of whole populations with singular life-forms?

academic inquirers of globalization are protagonists in this unfolding drama of universalization under

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.
duress. One may pose the following questions as a heuristic pedagogical maneuver:

Justice
Under the standards of justice, capitalistic exploitation is
completely just, which is a reason to reject it.
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
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
"

although Marx never tries to tell us precisely what the scope of the class of Rechtsbegriffe is, it is clear that

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

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
actions and practices of individuals by generally accepted norms of conduct.

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

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 (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
capitalist exploitation is described as an "injustice,"

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 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

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
no concept of it at all. For Marx, justice is not and cannot be a genuinely revolutionary notion. The

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

. 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 byproducts of social abnormalities, rather than as the driving force behind his own revolutionary
the present society

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

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. Marx in fact regarded all attempts to base
revolutionary practice on juridical notions as an "ideological shuffle,"
foundation.

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

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

Capitalists buy
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 "profit" and consists of unpaid labor that the capitalists
distribution. Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life.
the workers'

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 only by extracting a

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 .
greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers by increasing exploitation.

With the rapid advance of 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 "recovery" from

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
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 entire industries to other countries.

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

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
even for those they do reach.

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

Racist violence and

the poison of racist ideas victimize all people of color no matter which
economic class they belong to. The attempts to suppress and undercount the vote of the African
racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites.

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

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 constant attacks
power. They use this power to ensure the economic and political dominance of their class.

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, even if there is no

alternative to neoliberalism, using the debate space to
criticize it expands the boundaries of our consciousness
and creates research practices that are more sensitive to
slow, everyday violence- thats a pre-requisite to effective
use of science and empiricism
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

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
In order

eulogizing hybrid, cyborg-esque, nomadic global citizenseven 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

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
Philippines knows

(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

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 juxtaposition, syncretic amalgamation, and so on, one
perceives a counter-current of fragmentation, increasing asymmetry, unbridgeable
inequalities, and particularistic challenges to neoliberal integrationincluding
as well as those peoples struggling for various forms of national sovereignty. While

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 dignity

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,
and justice in the everyday lives of whole populations with singular life-forms?

academic inquirers of globalization are protagonists in this unfolding drama of universalization under

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.
duress. One may pose the following questions as a heuristic pedagogical maneuver:

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

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, postindustrial, post-historical moment of history; a moment in which capitalism
has somehow broken free from its exploitative pas t (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 the social . As
theoretical "savvy-ness" today.

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

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
ideas" if this contradiction is to be secured.

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 "postindustrialism", 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
activists like Lapp and "high theorists" like Derrida alike,

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

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
politics (albeit often in an idealist fashion), post-al ethics abandons both.

with managing the effects of growing divisions resulting from the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, and ongoing privatization of all aspects of social

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.
life.

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
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
"

although Marx never tries to tell us precisely what the scope of the class of Rechtsbegriffe is, it is clear that

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

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
actions and practices of individuals by generally accepted norms of conduct.

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

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
capitalist exploitation is described as an "injustice,"

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 (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

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
institutions could bring about.

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 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

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
no concept of it at all. For Marx, justice is not and cannot be a genuinely revolutionary notion. The

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

. 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 byproducts of social abnormalities, rather than as the driving force behind his own revolutionary
the present society

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

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. Marx in fact regarded all attempts to base
revolutionary practice on juridical notions as an "ideological shuffle,"
foundation.

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

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

Capitalists buy
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 "profit" and consists of unpaid labor that the capitalists
distribution. Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life.
the workers'

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 only by extracting a

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 .
greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers by increasing exploitation.

With the rapid advance of 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 "recovery" from

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
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 entire industries to other countries.

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

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
even for those they do reach.

work of comparable value. All workers receive lower wages when racism succeeds in dividing and
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

Racist violence and

the poison of racist ideas victimize all people of color no matter which
economic class they belong to. The attempts to suppress and undercount the vote of the African
racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites.

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

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 constant attacks
power. They use this power to ensure the economic and political dominance of their class.

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, even if there is no

alternative to neoliberalism, using the debate space to
criticize it expands the boundaries of our consciousness
and creates research practices that are more sensitive to
slow, everyday violence- thats a pre-requisite to effective
use of science and empiricism
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

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
In order

eulogizing hybrid, cyborg-esque, nomadic global citizenseven 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

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
Philippines knows

(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

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 juxtaposition, syncretic amalgamation, and so on, one
perceives a counter-current of fragmentation, increasing asymmetry, unbridgeable
inequalities, and particularistic challenges to neoliberal integrationincluding
as well as those peoples struggling for various forms of national sovereignty. While

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 dignity

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,
and justice in the everyday lives of whole populations with singular life-forms?

academic inquirers of globalization are protagonists in this unfolding drama of universalization under

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.
duress. One may pose the following questions as a heuristic pedagogical maneuver: