K Neoliberalism BFI 2016

1NC

1NC Neolib K
The affirmative strategic engagement with China is a final
attempt to revitalize a dying neoliberal economy this
reinvention of strategies ensures that the plan will fail
Haiphong 16
Daniel Haiphong is an activist and radical journalist, US foreign policy is the military assertion of
Capitalist supremacy, http://ahtribune.com/politics/991-us-foreign-policy.html, BEN. 2016.

US foreign policy has received the least attention in the 2016 elections. When it has been mentioned, the majority of candidates have
merely repeated dogma such as "Russian aggression" and the existential threat of "terrorism." Only Donald Trump has deviated from the
Washington consensus, questioning the legitimacy of NATO and US belligerence toward China and Russia. Yet even his comments do
not go far enough to expose the true motivations behind US foreign policy. The carnage, chaos, and catastrophe of US foreign policy are
driven by the interests of capitalism. Investor wealth and capitalist profit are the motivating forces of US foreign policy. US

foreign
policy can be divided into two different, but related, policies. The first policy is direct
military intervention by sanction, proxy, or invasion on sovereign countries. The second is
indirect military intervention through the deployment of military bases, command centers,
and intelligence operations to countries already under the boot of US hegemony. Both
policies are geared toward creating favorable conditions in the target country for the
supremacy of US capital. The US invasion of Iraq is the most blatant examples of the mutual relationship between US
foreign policy and the profit motive. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Iraqi government was the sole owner and distributor of the
nation's vast oil resources. The destabilization of the Iraqi state opened the door to privatization. Over 80 percent of Iraq's oil is currently
exported out of the country under the terms of contracts wielded by corporations such as Exxon and Chevron. A quarter of Iraq's
population now lives in poverty as basic services have become a luxury. Additionally, it was estimated in 2013 that defense contractors
raked in 138 billion dollars worth of contracts from Washington as a consequence of the war. " Defense"

and oil
corporations require the destruction of the sovereign nations such as
Iraq to expand market share. Once a nation is compliant, US foreign policy
shifts gears away from direct military rule to indirect . In South Korea, for example,
the US maintains an estimated 28,000 US troops to prevent the reunification of the Koran state. The US has nearly 1,000 military bases
around the world. Most of the operations conducted by these military installations carry the sole purpose of maintaining oppressive but
compliant governments in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The most important measure of compliance is whether a government is run
by puppets willing to do the bidding of US capital. If not, then the state in question is subject to US-sponsored destabilization .

At the
present moment, there are two powerful nations that stand in the way of full spectrum
dominance of US capital. Russia and China have been the prime targets of US foreign policy. US multinational
corporations and banks see Russia and China as the primary obstacles to unfettered global exploitation and profit accumulation. Russia's
vast energy resources are exported by state-owned companies such as Gazprom. China's socialist economy is heavily comprised of stateowned industries. Through aggressive national development ,

China has become the largest economy in the

world in terms of purchasing power. Russia and China have attracted lucrative economic relationships with nations all
over the world. Russia has taken the initiative to form the Eurasian Economic Union which calls continental trade integration. Similarly,

China has been developing an economic infrastructure project called the "New Silk Road."
This project, which most notably involves the development of a transnational railway connecting China to Russia and the European
market, is estimated to cost 1 trillion USD in foreign investment. The

strategic plans of Russia and China have the

US scrambling all over the globe to ensure the world remains locked into the exploitative
grips of US multinational corporations. Washington's Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the TPP , is
the counter response to the rise of China. It includes provisions that allow
corporations to sue participating states should their governments do
anything to impede corporate profit. The US has instituted a "pivot" to Asia to

create the military conditions necessary for such a trade deal. The US pivot has virtually
encircled China militarily with partnerships in the Philippines, Guam, Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The US has
conducted a similar policy of encirclement with regards to Russia. A ten day NATO exercise called operation Anaconda began on June
6th in Poland. The operation comprised of thirty thousand troops from twenty four countries. Furthermore, the US has supported the
reactionary proxy war in Ukraine that rendered the country ungovernable. Military installations such as AFRICOM and NATO have as
their main targets Russia and China. In Africa, the expansion of AFRICOM to all countries on the continent but two has come in direct

response to China becoming the world's largest investor in African wealth. The 2011 US-NATO war on Libya was conducted to prevent
the Libyan government from moving forward with plans to unify the continent around a single gold currency. Yet despite the
commitment on the part of the US to deploy its military around the world to protect the interests of capital, the economic system of
capitalism remains mired in crisis. US GDP continues to slow and stall. US influence around the world is increasingly being seen by
millions as parasitic and a fetter on real production. The

US capitalist system has reached a stage of terminal

decline, whereby its own need to revolutionize technology in order to increase profit has
actually sent profit into a downward spiral. Billions of workers globally either work in low-wage jobs or no jobs at
all. This is the world that US foreign policy protects. A new world will require a
coordinated global movement led by the oppressed to suppress the
forces of capital that dictate US foreign policy .

Capitalism culminates extinction and destroys value to life in

the process
Robinson 14

William Robinson is a professor of Sociology, Global and International studies, and

Latin American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara Global
Capitalism Is In the Midst of Its Most Severe Crisis
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13930403001544. 2014.
However, and this is the key point I wish to highlight here, US intervention around the
world clearly entered a qualitatively new period after September 11,
2001. This new period should be seen in the context of emergent 21st

century global capitalism. Global capitalism is in the midst of its most

severe crisis in close to a century, and in many ways the current crisis is much
worse than that of the 1930s because we are on the precipice of an
ecological holocaust that threatens the very earth system and the
ability to sustain life, ours included, because the means of violence

and social control have never before been so concentrated within a

single powerful state, and because the global means of communication
is also extraordinarily concentrated in the hands of transnational capital
and a few powerful states. On the other hand, global inequalities have
never been as acute and grotesque as they are today. So, in simplified terms, we
need to see the escalation of US interventionism and the untold
suffering it brings about, including what you mention the killing of unarmed
civilians, the destruction of the environment, forced migration and
displacement, undermining democracy as a response by the US-led
transnational state and the transnational capitalist class to contain the
explosive contradictions of a global capitalist system that is out of
control and in deep crisis. You ask me who is going to compensate for these losses.
That will depend on how the worlds people respond.

There is currently a global

revolt from below underway, but it is spread unevenly across

countries and has not taken any clear form or direction. Can the popular
majority of humanity force the transnational capitalist class and the US/transnational state to
be accountable for its crimes? Mao Zedong once said that power flows through the barrel of a
gun. What he meant by this, in a more abstract than literal way, I believe, is that in the end it
is the correlation of real forces that will determine outcomes. Because the United States has
overwhelming and full spectrum military dominance, it can capture, execute, or bring to trial
people anywhere around the world it has free license, so to speak, to act as an
international outlaw. We dont even have to take the more recent examples. In December 1989
the United States undertook an illegal and criminal invasion of Panama, kidnapped Manuel

Noriega whether or not he was a dictator is not the point, as the United States puts in power
and defends dictators that defend US and transnational elite interests, and brought him back
to US territory for trial. What country in the world now has the naked power flowing through
the barrel of a gun to invade the United States, capture George Bush, Dick Chaney, Donald
Rumsfeld, and other war criminals, and bring them somewhere to stand trial for war crimes
and crimes against humanity? Q: In your writings, youve warned against the growing gap
between the rich and the poor, the slant accumulation of the global wealth in the hands of an
affluent few and the impoverishment of the suppressed majority. What do you think are the
reasons for this stark inequality and the disturbing dispossession of millions of people in the
capitalist societies? You wrote that the participants of the 2011 World Economic Forum in
Davos were worried that the current situation raises the specter of worldwide instability and
civil wars. Is it really so? A: We have never in the history of humanity seen

such a sharp social polarization between the haves and the havenots, such grotesque levels of inequality, within and among countries. There have been

countless studies in recent years documenting the escalation of

inequalities, among them, the current bestseller by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the TwentyFirst Century. The pattern we see is that the notorious 1 percent monopolizes a
huge portion of the wealth that humanity produces and transnational
corporations and banks are registering record profits, but as well that some
20 percent of the population in each countries has integrated into the global economy as
middle class and affluent consumers while the remaining 80 percent has experienced

of insecurity, impoverishment, and precariousness, increasingly

inhabiting what some have called a planet of slums. The apologists of global
capitalism point to the rise of a middle class in China to claim that the
system is successful. But in China, 300-400 million people have entered
the ranks of the global middle and consuming class while the other
800-900 million have faced downward mobility, immiseration,
insecurity, unemployment and extreme levels of exploitation. Such is this
exploitation that a couple years ago, you may remember, Foxcomm workers preferred
to commit suicide by jumping off the roof of their factories than to
remain in their labor camps. This is the Foxcomm that makes your iPads
and iPhones. The 80 percent is then subject to all sorts of sophisticated systems of social
rising levels

We are headed in this regard towards a global police

state, organized by global elites and led by the US state, to contain the
control and repression.

real or potential rebellion of a dispossessed majority. Such structures of

inequality and exploitation cannot be contained over time without both ideological and
coercive apparatuses; conformity to a system of structural violence must

be

compelled through direct violence, organized by states and private security forces.
Edward Snowden revealed the extent to which we are now living in a global social control
state, a global panoptical surveillance state. George Orwell wrote about such a state in his
famous novel 1984. The Orwellian society has arrived. Yet it is worse than

Orwell imagined, because at least the members of Orwells society had

their basic needs met in return for their obedience and conformity. How
do we explain such stark inequality? Capitalism is a system that by its very internal dynamic
generates wealth yet polarizes and concentrates that wealth. Historically a de-concentration of
wealth through redistribution has come about by state intervention to offset the natural
tendency for capital accumulation to result in such polarization. States have turned to

an array of redistributive mechanisms both because they have been

pressured from below to do so whether by trade unions, social movements,

socialist struggles, or so on or because states must do so in order to retain legitimacy and

preserve at least enough social peace for the reproduction of the system. A great variety of

redistributive models emerged in the 20th century around the world, and went by a great
many names socialism, communism, social democracy, New Deal, welfare states,
developmental states, populism, the social wage, and so on. All these models shared two
things in common. One was state intervention in the economy to regulate capital accumulation
and thus to bring under some control the most anarchic and most destructive elements of
unrestrained capitalism. The other was redistribution through numerous policies, ranging from
minimum legal wages and unemployment insurance, to public enterprises, the social wages of
public health, education, transportation, and housing, welfare programs, land reform in
agrarian countries, low cost credit, and so on. But capital responded to the last major crisis of
the system, that of the 1970s, by going global, by breaking free of nation-state constraints to
accumulation and undermining models of state regulation and redistribution. Neo-liberalism is
a set of policies that facilitate the rise of transnational capital. As transnational capital has
broken free of the confine of the nation-state, the natural tendency for capitalism

to concentrate wealth has been unleashed without any countervailing

restraints. The result has been this dizzying escalation of worldwide

inequalities as wealth concentrates within the transnational capitalist class and, to a much
lesser extent, the better off strata of middle classes and professionals. There are other related
factors that account for the intensification of worldwide inequalities. One is the defeat of the
worldwide left in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which led the ruling groups to declare that
global neo-liberal capitalism was The End of History. A second is the rise of a globally
integrated financial system in which capital in its liquid, that is money, form can move
frictionless across the planet with no controls whatsoever. Transnational finance capital has
become the hegemonic fraction of capital on a global scale, and it engages in unfathomable
levels of speculation, turning the global economy into one giant casino. Transnational finance
capital has come to control the levers of the global economy, to get around and to undermine
any effort at regulation, and to concentrate wealth in its liquid form in a way that would have
been unimaginable just a few years ago. A third factor is the rise of a mass of surplus
humanity. Hundreds of millions of people, perhaps billions, have been

made superfluous, thrown off the land or out of productive

employment, replaced by machines and rising productivity,
marginalized and relegated to migration and to trying to scratch by an
existence in the planet of slums. In turn, this mass of humanity places
those that are employed in a very vulnerable situation, drives down
wage levels everywhere, facilitates the flexibilization and precarious
nature of wage labor, and thereby further aggravating inequalities. Q: In
one of your articles, you talked of an ever-expanding military-prison-industrial-securityfinancial complex that generates enormous profits through waging wars, selling weapons and
then taking part in reconstruction activities in the war-torn countries. How does this complex
operate? Is it really reliant on waging wars? A: We cannot understand intensified

militarization and the rise of this complex outside of the crisis of

global capitalism. This crisis is structural, in the first instance. It is what we call a

crisis of over-accumulation. The rise of the global economy driven by new

technologies, especially computer, information, and communications technologies, but also by
the revolution in transportation and containerization, by robotics, aerospace, biotechnology,
nanotechnology, and more recently, by 3D printing, among other aspects, has allowed

the transnational capitalist class to restructure and reorganize the

whole world economy, and to bring about a huge increase in productivity worldwide and
an enormous expansion of the capacity of the global economy to churn out goods and
services. But extreme inequality and social polarization in the global system

means that the global market cannot absorb the expanding output of
the global economy. The result is a stagnation that is becoming
chronic. The gap between what the global economy can produce and
what the global market can absorb is growing and this leads to a crisis

of overproduction: where and how to unload the surplus? How can

transnational capital continue to accumulate and generate profits if this output is not
unloaded, that is, profitably marketed? Unloading the surplus through financial

speculation, which has skyrocketed in recent years, only aggravates the solution,
as we saw with the collapse of 2008. Now, if only 20 percent of humanity can
consume in any significant quantity it is not very profitable to go into the business of mass,
inexpensive public transportation, health and education, or the production of practical goods
that the worlds population needs because very simply even if people need these things they
do not have the income to purchase them. A global civilian economy geared to the basic needs
of humanity is simply not profitable for the transnational capitalist class. Look at it like this:
the mass production and distribution of vaccines and other medications

for communicable and treatable diseases that affect masses of poor people
around the world are simply not profitable and as a result we even have
new pandemics of diseases tuberculosis, measles, etc. that
previously were under control. Yet it is profitable for the global
capitalist medical industry, including the giant pharmaceutical, biotechnology and
related branches to spend billions on developing plastic surgery and every
imaginable treatment for the vanity of a small portion of humanity, or
to develop incredibly expensive treatments for diseases that afflict the
affluent. The lesson here is that capital will seek to accumulate where it is
profitable, according to the structure of the market and of income, which in turn is
shaped by the balance of class and social power and what we call the
relations of production and irrespective of rational use of resources and
irrespective of human need. It is in this context that it becomes quite
profitable to turn to wars, conflicts, systems of repression and social control to

generate profit, to produce goods and systems that can repress that 80 percent of humanity
that is not your consumer, not your customer so to say, because they do not have the
purchasing power to sustain your drive to accumulate by producing goods and services for
them that they actually need. Global capitalism is a perverted and irrational system. Putting
aside geo-political considerations, the surplus that the global economy has

been and is producing but that cannot be absorbed by the world

market, has been channeled into wars and conflicts that involve
endless rounds of destruction and reconstruction, and new systems of social
control and repression, independent of geo-political considerations, that is, simply as a way
of sustaining capital accumulation and profit making in the face of
stagnation tendencies. The US invasions and occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan although legitimated in the name of fighting terrorism
have generated hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts and profits
for transnational capital. The prison-industrial and immigrant-detention
complexes in the United States and let us recall that the United States holds some 25-30
percent of the worlds prisoners is enormously profitable for private
corporations that run almost all of the immigrant detention centers, some of the general
prisons, supply everything from guards to food, build the installations, erect border walls, and
so on. Let us recall that the US National Security Agency and we now know from Edward
Snowden just how vast are its operations subcontracts out its activities to private
corporations, as do the CIA, the Pentagon, and so on. Global security corporations are one of
the fastest growing sectors of the global economy and there are now more private security
guards in the world than police officers. All of this is to say that we are now living in a

global war economy, in which the threat of stagnation is offset in part by

the militarization of global economy and society and the introduction and

spread of systems of mass social control. Of course this involves all kinds of
cultural, ideological, and political dimensions as well. A global war economy based
on a multitude of endless conflicts and the spread of social control
systems, from full-scale wars to the repression of racial minorities
and immigrants in the United States and Europe, must be
ideologically legitimated. This is where bogus and farcical wars on drugs
and terrorism come in, where enemies must be conjured up, in which
populations must be led to believe they are threatened, and so on. So the
US public must believe that Iran is a threat, that Putin is now the devil,
and so on. One threat replaces another but the system needs to
keep a population in permanent compliance through the manipulation
of emotion and the senses. This transition into a permanent global war
economy has involved some shifts in the gravitational centers of capital
accumulation, towards those global corporate conglomerates involved in the production of
war materials, of security, of engineering (for example, Bechtel and Halliburton), and other
activities that involve making profit out of conflict and control. Remember by way of example
that each drone that flies, each missile fired, each round of ammunition,

each tank deployed, each soldier equipped and fed, each prison that is
constructed, each surveillance system put into place, each border wall
installed, and so on and so forth, is produced in factories and through
production chains by global corporations whose supply, in turn, of raw
materials, machinery and service inputs in turn come from other global
corporations or local firms. So the whole global economy is kept running
through violence and conflict. But the global war economy also involves
the global financial institutions that are at the very heart of the global
economy, together with the petroleum complex that is coming under much
pressure from the environmental movement yet is showing all-time
record profits in the past few years. This is a new transnational power
bloc this complex of corporate interests brought around a global war
economy and global systems of repression and social control , together
with elites and state managers brought into or representing the power
bloc. Remember also that the polarization of the world population into 20
percent affluent and 80 percent immiserated generates new spatial
social relations, so that the privileged occupy gated communities and
those displaced by gentrification must be violently suppressed and
carefully controlled, while surveillance systems and security guards
must patrol and protect that 20 percent. All this and much more are
part of the militarization and securitization of global society by the
powers that be. We face new doctrines, ideologies and political discourse
that legitimize the construction of a global police state fourth generation
warfare, humanitarian intervention,

the war on drugs, among others, and above

the US state is the biggest

perpetrator of terror in the world. It is not that Al-Qaida and other
groups do not carry out condemnable violence against innocent
civilians. They indeed do. But if we define terrorism as the use of
violence against civilians for political objectives, then the US state is
all, the so-called war on terror. I say so-called because,

the worlds leading terrorist. The powers that be in global society and that control
the global political discourse attach the label terrorist to violence that they do not approve
of, and they attach the label of freedom and democracy and security to violence that they do
approve of, or that they commit themselves. Moreover, increasingly terrorism is used to
simply describe political dissent, so that legitimate social movements and political struggles
against global capitalism become labeled as terrorism in order to justify their suppression.

The alternative is to refuse institutional tinkering in favor of

reinvesting decision-making with care. Our act of criticism is a
prerequisite to challenging the drive to consume and trend
towards individuation that is preventing left from thinking a
challenge to the mis-growth of capitalism.
Barker 09
Stephen Barker is a professor and Head of Doctoral Studies at The Claire Trevor
School of the Arts, University of California at Irvine. Transformation as an
Ontological Imperative: The [Human] Future According to Bernard Stiegler
Transformation Journal Issue No. 17. 2009.
http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_17/article_01.shtml

Meta-transformation means that just as the ego/moi contains and

conceals the id/a, so new modes of individuation resist worse or
worst transformations that they too conceal (i.e. which are not lost as
possibilities, since transformation must always remain radically open); this aspect of
critical thinking acts as a kind of superego (surmoi), perpetually
analyzing and judging the results of previous transformative regional
ontologies against current ones. What must be guarded against, through
the programming institutions, as a result of the ascendency of the programming and cognitive
industries, is any sign of the mass mystification [38] resultant from the

occlusion of desire by drives, of deep attention by hyper-attention, and

of oiko-nomia [39] by consumer capitalism. Meta-transformation is a
cumulative process of innovation, a socio-genesis that is clearly a
techno-genesis in Stieglers sense. The moment knowledge
transmutes into the condition of a set of rules (or rules as mystifications)
that cannot subsequently generate new rules, it is no longer
knowledge, but either dogma or marketing (between which there is no

This evaluation forms the very core of meta-transformation.

Insofar as psychic and collective individuation must be defined always
fluidly as projected desire, it is always a matter of either dis- or reenchantment. Enchantment, in the sense in which Stiegler appropriates it from the
MEDEF, is the undoing of cognitive capitalisms seizure and control of
techniques (skills), knowledge, and consumption, a seizure which, as
the word suggests, is a suspension of dynamic development . The forces
of transindividuation bring about the adoption not only of cultural
histories and techniques but of the dynamic, participatory involvement
that can re-direct telecracy back into democracy which in Stieglers
diffrance).

participatory sense of it cannot survive the amnesia resultant from the subversion of long
circuits of attention and critical thinking by programming industries whose strategic goal is
attention-capture and the undermining, if not the destruction, of inter-generational
transference. The forces of control operating in the worst transformative

dimension in which we now find ourselves strive to become

adaptive, rather than adoptive, Stiegler points out; that is, entropic
(Renchanter le monde 122). Adaptation to adapt to environmental circumstance as
opposed to adoption to participate in the genealogical transmission and transformation of
knowledge and culture is for Stiegler not a matter of adjustment but of

amnesia, of the mind in thrall to the spectacle of images and

messages designed to short-circuit attention and critique. Adaptation

means the imperatives of production that are secondary to shareholder expectations, and not
producers of alternatives, of models of meta-transformation . Knowledge is intrinsically

contradictory to adaptation, as innovation (Renchanter le monde 122). In

other words, adaptation offers no alternative options to control, and
emerges as the blocking of the obstacle to human development. Stiegler,
[40] sees the ex-teriorization of memory technics as the very ground of human being as
such (original prostheticity); all knowledge, Stiegler says, has its origins in exteriorization:
memory is exteriorization re-interiorized in new intellectual and motor behaviors
(Renchanter le monde 136). The transformative process of individuation is the process of
exteriorization is grammatization. Re-enchantment, then, the re-enchantment

of the world, is beyond all else a gamble indeed, according to

Stiegler, a gamble against all the current odds. As the word enchantment
implies, re-enchantment in a world currently enchanted (in thrall to)
psychotechnologies would be nothing less than magical, resultant from
supernatural forces. But despite seemingly overwhelming evidence, Stiegler is not
pessimistic about this potential renewal; in his most recent work he sees the possibility of such
a re-enchantments occurring as resting on the associative circuitry of information,
knowledge, technology, industry, and society as the fragile product of an international politics
of the transformation of contemporary capitalism (Renchanter le monde 165; emphasis
added). In the battle against disenchantment whose other names are ennui and

in the battle for intelligence and for the perpetual

(re)creation of enchantment, the transformation of psychotechnologies
into psychopolitics devoted to the service of a noopolitics . . . through technologies of
the mind (Taking Care 339) is Stieglers great hope. There is no reason to
think that this re-creation is not possible; indeed, Stiegler insists, we must
assume that it is possible (to give Stiegler the last word): We can certainly go
on struggling against care-less-ness and weigh the results. But we
must face the consequences of recent information on the state of the
human mind, on what is destroyed and on the possibilities of
reconstructing what has been destroyed on condition of
fundamentally reversing the situation of this power as a psychopower,
and of subjecting it to the controls prescribed by a psychopolitics
placed in the service of a noopolitics, across an industrial politics of the
mind. (Taking Care 339) Only through transindividuation psychic,
collective, and technical can any hope of a future transcending our
current thrall to programming, an ontological future in the most
fundamental sense, become a program for a future of the human in a
world of psychotechnological mystifications.
care-less-ness [incurie]

Links

Financialization/Trade
Trade regulations and trade agreement highlight the hybridization of
neoliberal governmentality, inequitable markets and disposability of social
groups
Dardot and Leval 13
Pierre Dardot is a philosopher and specialist in Hegel and Marx. Christian Laval is Professor of Sociology
at the Universit de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Dfense. The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal
Society. 2009; Pg. 489-497. iBooks.

The financial crisis thus dramatically highlighted the dangers inherent in neo-liberal
governmentality, when this leads to entrusting part of prudential supervision at the very heart of
the capitalist economic system to the actors themselves, on the grounds that they directly
experience the constraints of global competition and know how to govern themselves by
pursuing their own interests. It was precisely these logics of hybridization that lulled
vigilance and led to extremely destabilizing conduct. Among the private actors who played
the most pernicious roles, we find, in particular, the small number of ratings agencies responsible
for evaluating banking establishments. Charged with monitoring a highly strategic role these
actors escape any monitoring themselves and are shot through with acute problems of conflicts of
interest, in so far as the evaluations are requested and remunerated by the enterprises being rated. The flaws in the
supervisory apparatus were obviously very diverse. But the rules
themselves were the decisive factor. In addition to being drafted and implemented by the

supervisees, they only concerned establishments taken individually, which immediately rendered them ineffective in the case of a
systemic crisis. What

is therefore at stake is the capacity of private actors to discipline

themselves by taking into account the interests not only of their own establishment, but
also of the system itself.17 We find the same logic of indirect, hybrid regulation in all the procedures of
technical specification necessary to world trade, which are left to negotiation between the
professionals of each sector. This development obviously takes us back to economic and financial changes themselves.
Competition has intensified to such an extent that it prompts various responses in
production and marketing for example, the accentuation of product differentiation by enterprises as the main mode of
their competition with one another. Oligopolistic competition between large global groups has
encouraged them to make alliances for research and development (R&D), in order to pool resources
and risks. In this set-up, states have no more than a subordinate or subsidiary role; and they
internalize this role to the extent that they are no longer in a position to define social,
environmental or science policies without the at least tacit agreement of the oligopolies.
The state is not retreating.18 It is conforming to new conditions that it
has helped to create. The political construction of global finance affords the best proof of this.19 It is with state
resources, and in accordance with an often very traditional rhetoric (the national interest, the security of the country, the good of the
people, etc.), that governments,

in the name of a competition they have themselves constructed,

pursue policies favourable to enterprises and disadvantageous to the wage-earners of their
own countries. When reference is made to the growing influence of international or inter-governmental
bodies, such as the IMF, the WTO, the OECD or the European Commission, it is forgotten that
governments which feign passive submission to the audits, reports, injunctions and
directives of these bodies, are actively involved in them. It is as if neo-liberal discipline,
which imposes social regression for much of the population and organizes a transfer of
income to the best-off, presupposes a game of masks that makes it possible to shift onto
other bodies responsibility for dismantling the social and educational state by laying down
competitive rules in all areas of existence. The major international institutions created after the Second

World War (IMF, World Bank, GATT) have

been the main vectors for imposing the new neo-liberal

norm. They have taken over from the United States and Britain without encountering major resistance.
For this, the Bretton Woods institutions have had both to redefine their role and to make space for new nongovernmental institutions and
agencies. The rise to power of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is a major sign of this. It would be erroneous to
view the latter as the mere tool of universal market rules, free of state and oligopolistic pressures and interests; and, even more so
perhaps, to regard it as the main defender of the countries of the South by virtue of the shift in the content of trade negotiations to
priorities linked to development. The

logic of oligopolistic interests is most openly expressed in the

area of technological innovation. In the framework of WTO negotiations, the countries of
the North are more inclined to serve the interests of oligopolies in sectors with high R&D
expenditure, by enabling them to achieve an extension of intellectual property rights.
Through international organizations, the pressure groups of knowledge oligopolies
organize the protection of innovation rents in order to recover the fruits of private R&D
expenditure and help to confine developing countries to under-development. Another inflection in
government action is even more directly bound up with the norm of global competition. It relates to the refocusing of state intervention
on factors of production. The

state now has an important responsibility for logistical and

infrastructural support for oligopolies, as for attracting these big oligopolies to the national territory it administers.
This affects a great variety of areas: research, universities, transport, tax incentives, cultural
environment and urbanization, guarantee of outlets (public markets open to small and medium-sized
enterprises in the US). In other words, government

intervention takes the form of a

policy of production and economic environment factors. The
competitive state is not the state as arbitrator between interests, but
the state as partner of oligopolistic interests in the global economic
war. This is clear in the area of trade policy. Free trade changes its meaning. As a result of

the fragmentation of productive processes, the products exported by a country contain an

increasingly large proportion of imported components. States are therefore led to replace
tariff protectionism by strategic protectionism, protection of products by a logic of
subsidizing factors of production. The norm of generalized competition impels states, or
other public bodies, to create the optimal local conditions for capital valorization what,
paradoxically, might be called the common goods of capital. Such goods are the product of the investment in
infrastructure and institutions required to attract capital and skilled workers in a regime of
intensified competition. Research structures, taxation, universities, roads, banking networks, residential zones and leisure
areas for managers these are some of the goods necessary for capitalist activity. This tends to show that the precondition of capital
mobility is the creation of fixed, immobile infrastructure by the state. The state is no longer so much

directed to ensuring the integration of the different levels of

collective existence as to aligning societies with the constraints of
global competition and finance. Population management changes in meaning and

method. Whereas, in the Fordist period, the predominant idea was (in the established formula) harmony between economic
efficiency and social progress in the framework of a national capitalism, this same population is now perceived merely as a resource
for enterprises, in a cost-benefit analysis. The

logic of the policy still referred to as social out of

semantic inertia is no longer a distribution of productivity gains intended to maintain a
sufficient level of demand for mass production outlets. It aims to maximize the
populations utility, by increasing employability and productivity and reducing its cost
through social policies of a new kind, which consist in weakening the bargaining power of
unions, downgrading labour law, reducing labour costs, and lowering the level of pensions
and the quality of social protection in the name of adapting to globalization. The
state is therefore not abandoning its role in managing the population, but its intervention no
longer responds to the same imperatives or the same springs. In place of welfare economics, which emphasized the
harmony between economic progress and the equitable distribution of the fruits of growth, the new logic views populations and
individuals from the narrower angle of their contribution and cost in global competition. The conditions in which

social groups come into conflict also change with entrepreneurial

government. Thus, neo-liberal rationality rings the death-knell of the inclusive regime of

class opposition established after the Second World War in the liberal democracies. What has been called the integration of
trade unions, pendent of social-democratic administration, made conflict of interests one of the motors of capital accumulation and class
struggle a functional factor in growth. The classical scansion of union-supervised conflict, bargaining, and the social progress that
resulted from it was often the expression of this conflictual inclusion. This is no longer the case when the population is viewed from the
vantage-point of human resource and social burden. The

only acceptable form of relations with unions

and, more generally, wage-earners is dialogue, convergence, and consensus on
universally desirable objectives. Anyone who refuses to respect managerial principles; any
trade union that does not from the outset accept the results to which dialogue must
necessarily lead, and which thereby refuses to act in concert with the rulers, sees
themselves immediately excluded from the game. The new regime of

government only recognizes stakeholders, who are directly

interested in the success of the business in which they are voluntarily
engaged. The most symptomatic fact is doubtless the compulsory unity of the discourse

used. Whereas, in the old regulation of social relations, logics that were regarded as
different and divergent had to be reconciled, implying the search for a compromise, in the
new regulation the terms of agreement are fixed from the start, and once and for all, since
no one can be an enemy of performance and efficiency. Only the practical modalities, pace
and various marginal arrangements can still be the subject of discussion. We know that this is the
very principle of courageous reforms in particular, those that aim to degrade the general situation
of the majority. Thus we see that the modes of conflictuality are set to change in enterprises, institutions and society as a whole.
Two major transformations emerge. On the one hand, managerial logic unifies the economic, social and political arenas and
creates the preconditions for a transversal struggle. On the other, by systematically deconstructing all the
institutions that pacify class struggle, it externalizes the conflict by giving it the character
of a general contestation of the entrepreneurial state and, thereby, of the new capitalism
itself.

*Multilateral Cooperation and International Financial

institutions are the lifeblood of neoliberal governmentality
Castro 11
RENATO CRUZ DE CASTRO, senior professor in the International Studies Department,De La Salle
University and the holder of the Ambassador Carlos P. Valdes ProfessorialChair on PoliticalEconomics.
Heearned his Ph.D. from the Governmentand InternationalStudies Department of the University of
South Carolina as a Fulbright Scholar in 2001.He obtained his BAand two masters degrees from the
University of the Philippines, June 2011, The Obama Administration's(Neoliberal) Reengagement
Policy in East Asia: Implications for U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-first Century, Institute of
International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, Issues & Studies 47, no. 2 (June
2011): 1-44, url:
https://www.academia.edu/1082901/The_Obama_Administrations_Reengagement_Policy_in_East_Asia_I
mplications_for_U.S.-China_Relations_in_the_21st_Century
Neoliberalism emerged as a powerful and incisive conceptual critique of the Bush
administration's post 9/11 foreign policy. Twenty-first century neoliberalism, like its Wilsonian
and late twentieth century predecessors(the Clinton administration version), has a marked
preference for multi-lateral approaches in addressing international problems .
Twentieth century neoliberals value the so-called pacification effects generated by

interna-tional institutions on the global community and argue that U.S.

foreign policy becomes more effective when the United States expresses
more willingness to work with other states in formal alliances and
international organizations. Neoliberalism generally equates U.S.

foreign policy successes with multilateral cooperation and its

failures with its absence. Furthermore, neoliberals maintain that international
institutions are important to U.S. hegemony since they set limits on the exercise of
preponderant power and make the power of the United States less threatening to other states
in the system. Twenty-first century neoliberals are composed of key academics and
former officials of the U.S. State and Defense departments identified with the
Democratic Party, who denounced the Bush admin-istration for projecting the United States as
an arrogant and dangerous superpower. They blamed the apathetic realists and the
neoconservatives among President Bush's close advisers for the slipping image and
standing of the United States in the world, which had accordingly weakened its alliances,
increased global resistance to U.S. policy, and boosted the number of terrorist recruits.

Nevertheless, the neoliberals agree with the realists/ neoconservatives that

the twenty-first century international environment is anarchic, perilous, and
unstable, and that U.S. power must be asserted to protect the country's
interests and promote global security. Unlike the liberal-internationalists of the 1920s,
contemporary neoliberals see power and force as indispensable components of international
politics. They also believe that the United States can use force when its interests and those of
its allies are at stake. However, they criticize the blatant use of power that triggers resistance
and resentment among both friends and foes of the United States. They disparage unilateral
moves and the use of force out-side of multilateral arrangements. Instead, the neoliberals
acknowledge the United Nations as the conduit and venue for the allied countries' ap-proval or
rejection of Washington's use of military power. Neoliberals do not have a reproachful
view of military power. In fact, they advocate the in-telligent use of hard power
that recognizes its limits and strategic potential. Furthermore, they also call for its integration
into an overarching strategy. They champion the use of what Joseph Nye calls "smart power"
the optimal combination of hard and soft power to pursue national security objectives. What
makes twenty-first century neoliberalism distinct from itsearlier versions is that it is basically a
critique of the Bush administration's post 9/11 foreign policy. Contemporary neoliberals
denounced the Bush administration's realist view of and militarized solution to international
terrorism. Immediately after 9/11, key administration officials instinc-tively dismissed the
possibility that terrorist groups could operate without government support, and accepted
unquestioningly the counter-terrorist approach of disabling states that purportedly sponsor
terrorism. Despite the fact that globalization had empowered the angry few and promoted the
rise of groups capable of evading and challenging state actors, the Bush administration
maintained that states were still responsible, being the pivotal forces in international relations.
The neoliberals were extremely critical of the Bush administration's highly realist assumptions
on terrorism. They argued that international terrorism is not a puppet or creation of states.
Rather, it is a result of systemic forces, such as market factors and openness,

technological ad-vancements, and breakthroughs in communication, that

have converged to bring about the "privatization of war," altering the face of
world politics. They contended that while the use of force was necessary and skillfully
applied in Afghanistan, it could not be as effective against terrorist cells in other parts of the
world. They added that only civilian cooperation in in-telligence and law-enforcement could
successfully deal with international terrorism. They also offered a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy in which military force is only one of many instruments used to counter this
security challenge. For them, the preemptive strategy could weaken the international norm of
the use of force, and this should be subjected to multilateral scrutiny especially when directed
against terrorist groups or states harboring them. The neoliberals supported the Bush
administration's international lcoalition against terrorism. They warned, however, that an
overemphasison U.S. pre-eminence would eventually lead to unilateralism and the alienation
and non-cooperation of friendly states. As a counter-policy to the Bush doctrine, the
Democratic Party proposed combining U.S. powerand democratic values in transformative
efforts to preempt war and terror-ism in the Middle East. The Bush doctrine, unfortunately,
isolated the United States from the rest of the world. The March 2003 invasion of Iraq, carried
out in the face of objections from the United Nations Security Council, provided the neoliberals
with fresh ammunition against the Bush administration's unilateral and mili-tarized approach to
global affairs. This was particularly the case when the U.S military proved to be ill-prepared
and ill-equipped to deal with Iraqi insurgents employing irregular warfare tactics. The

neoliberals denounced the administration's squandering of international goodwill, inaction on

the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the ballooning defense budget after 9/11.More significantly,
they also warned the Bush administration of the emergence of the "Beijing consensus," a
group of authoritarian states that were operating market economies and who were challenging
the "Washington consensus," composed of democratic governments with liberal market
economies. Eventually, these neoliberal grumblings evolved into a co-herent and vigorous
critique of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Neoliberalism accepts the exceptionalism
and primacy of the United States but cautions the it against allowing itself to be corrupted by
its un-limited power and turning into an empire. It exhorts the U.S. government to acquiesce to
the objections of allies and international organizations. It favors an activist U.S. foreign policy,
and suggests that the Democratic Party return to its antitotalitarian roots and adopt a
measure, similar to its anticommunist stance, to counter global jihad and China's growing influence in East Asia. In effect, it pushes for are invigorated U.S. leadership role, to be achieved by
repairing the damage wrought by realist/neoconser-vative decisions. Among its major foreign
policy prescriptions are: A new U.S. strategy in facing a dangerous and changing world Like
the realists/neoconservatives, the neoliberals view the inter-national system in the twenty-first
century as very dangerous for the United States. However, they reject the state-centric notion
that egoistic states are the pivotal billiard balls bumping into each other on the pool table of
world politics. Instead, the world, for them, is a complex, three-dimensional chess game.
Accordingly, world politics is made up of three separate levels: a top military/strategic
chessboard where the United States is dominant; a middle eco-nomic chess-board where the
United States, the European Union, Japan, and China are positioned in a multi-polar game; and
the bottom transnational chessboard where thousands of transnational actors transact their
business among themselves or within the terri-tories of sovereign state-actors. The neoliberals
argue that in this chess game, the United States cannot exercise its hegemony or simply rely
on its military or hard power to get what it wants. De-velopments in information and
communication technology (ICT)have made transnational actors important and have
empowered them to play a larger role in world affairs. International terrorism has become agile
and lethal because of the democratization of technology. Thus, the neoliberals do not think
that punishing states that sponsor terrorism can eradicate the problem. Instead, they advocate" unspectacular civilian cooperation among states as the best response to international
terrorism." A different role for the United States in world affairsThe neoli-berals assume that
the world is strife-ridden, and that the United States, as the world's only superpower, must
prevent or resolve international conflicts. However ,they reject the realist/neoconser-vative
view of a new unilateralism in which U.S. policy makers act without constraints and treat
international organizations as con-venient tools to serve Washington' sinterests. Instead, they
urge the United States to spearhead coalitions of friends and allies to solve common security
concerns within the legitimate framework of in-ternational organizations. Specifically,

Washington must sustain the infrastructure and institutional mechanisms that

have made possible concerted international actionssince1945the interlocking sets of bilateral agreements, regional security organizations and alliances,
and global institutions. Neoliberals believe that U.S.leadership and credibility
will be enhanced if Washington invests more time and attention to
multilateral institutions and agrees to be constrained by them.

*Specifically, US Neoliberals Seek to Build Bilateral Ties With

China (note: Names NoKo prolif specifically)
Castro 11
RENATO CRUZ DE CASTRO, senior professor in the International Studies Department,De La Salle
University and the holder of the Ambassador Carlos P. Valdes ProfessorialChair on PoliticalEconomics.
Heearned his Ph.D. from the Governmentand InternationalStudies Department of the University of
South Carolina as a Fulbright Scholar in 2001.He obtained his BAand two masters degrees from the
University of the Philippines, June 2011, The Obama Administration's(Neoliberal) Reengagement
Policy in East Asia: Implications for U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-first Century, Institute of
International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, Issues & Studies 47, no. 2 (June
2011): 1-44, url:
https://www.academia.edu/1082901/The_Obama_Administrations_Reengagement_Policy_in_East_Asia_I
mplications_for_U.S.-China_Relations_in_the_21st_Century

As mentioned above, the neoliberals expressed the need for the United States to confront Chinese
economic and political clout in East Asia, not with unilateral U.S. power, but with strategic engagement
and multilateral arrangements. They agreed that Washington's regional influ-ence had been
overshadowed by Beijing's economic largesse and active diplomatic offensive. It is interesting to note
that the neoliberals are op-posed to any attempt to contain China or adopt a hedging strategy against
it. They advocate a linkage strategy that fosters mutual interests between the two countries. They also
foresee bilateral and multilateral ties that will shape the way the two countries behave toward each
other, and reduce the perceived need to hedge. Thus, the neoliberals favor the creation of a nexus
between the bilateral security alliances of the United States and ex-isting regional multilateral
organizations like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ASEAN Regional Forum
(ARF). Obama's foreign policy pronouncements on China's expanding in-fluence in East Asia echoed
the neoliberal plan. He argued that the Bush administration's democratization agenda in the Middle
East distracted Washington's attention and policy from Asia and this had given Beijing strategic leeway
in the region. He declared that "American preoccupation has given a strategic advantage to China,
with as yet uncertain conse-quences. In his view, the U.S. strategy of hedging against China would not
disappear in the short-term because of the two countries' uncertainty about each other's long-term
intentions. Therefore, instead of regarding China as a challenge to U.S. primacy in East Asia, the United
States would have to enjoin China to cooperate in confronting global problems such as terrorism,
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed states, in-fectious diseases, natural disasters, and
piracy. In the same vein, he called on Beijing to help resolve security issues like North Korean nuclear
am-bitions and the Sudan crisis. He candidly admitted that the United States "will compete with China
in some areas and cooperate in others" and that Washington's "essential challenge is to build a
relationship [with China]that broadens cooperation while strengthening its ability to compete.

*Increasing Bilateral Ties With China Continues A Legacy of

Neoliberal Cooperation- WTO Coop Proves
Roden 03
Notes: Best Stuff Is Bolded At Bottom of Card. Also contains a warrant about how US businesses are
super gung-ho and influential lobbying. Also, I cant seem to find author quals, but it was published in a
legit journal and cited by other papers so I believe he is qualified.
Mark Roden, September 2003, USChina Relations in the Contemporary Era: An International Political
Economy Perspective, Politics September 2003 vol. 23 no. 3 192-199, Url:
http://pol.sagepub.com.libproxy.scu.edu/content/23/3/192.short
Based on the above Bill Clinton should be regarded as an enormously successful president. By 1996
the national deficit had been brought to its lowest ebb in over a decade and US economic power was in
the ascension fuelled by export-led growth (Walker, 1996, p. 350). Michael Cox has forcefully argued
that Clinton detractors largely ignored the administration's switch of emphasis from geo-politics to
geo-economics (M. Cox, 1995). Moreover, US ideological power waxed rather than waned during the
Clinton years. Governments across the globe followed the US lead in lowering trade barriers and
adapting themselves to the competitive exigencies of globalisation in its neoliberal form namely
deregulation and enhancing the rights of global capital vis--vis nationally based labour. This trend was
compounded by the formation of key institutions integral to an overall policy of promoting free market
policies throughout the world. Most significantly, the Clinton administration secured the passage of the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994; the 1995 agreement of the Asia Pacific
Economic Co-operation (APEC) to develop a free trade zone; and, also in 1995, the formation of the
World Trade Organisation (WTO). The important point here was that the institutionalisation of US power
at the regional and global levels harnessed what were ostensibly competitor economies (such as those
of Japan, Germany, and to some extent China) to economic ideas emanating from Washington. It would
be wrong to see the promotion of liberal free trade policies in solely negative terms. There were
positive aspects. Firstly, the US was engaged in the world and stressing the role of trade and
investment in overcoming historical conflicts. As Michael Cox has cogently argued Clinton's
involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process was a crucial element in persuading the formerly
Marxist Irish Republican Army (IRA) to end that conflict (M. Cox, 1998). Part and parcel of Clinton's free
trade policies has been that of fostering socio-economic stability and conditions conducive to the free

flow of capital, goods and services. This has had a progressive impact beyond furthering US interests
alone. The Clinton years, though driven by economic liberalism and a large dose of enlightened selfinterest, were also informed by a renewed belief in multilateral institutions and internationalism
(Ruggie, 1996). A crucial question in creating a new global economic order and legitimating US
leadership in the Clinton era, however, was how to bring China within the institutional framework of
the post-Cold War world order while also maximising the opportunities for US firms in a huge emerging
market. Previous Section Next Section The IPE of USChina relations in the Clinton era The Clinton
administration's overall approach was to bring China within the family of nations assenting to liberal
norms. Moreover, despite coming to power castigating George Bush Senior's Republican administration
for coddling dictators, the IPE of USChina relations were played out in correlation with key structural
goals that placed liberal economics above the promotion of liberal politics (Hughes, 1995). Gerard
Segal has dubbed the US approach positive conditionality a useful turn of phrase that connotes
China's gaining access to trade benefits in return for system-maintaining behaviour (Segal, 1995, p.
71). It was in the light of this strategy that the Clinton administration jettisoned its initial China policy
of tying China's Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status to progress on human rights. Linkage, as this policy
was known, came to be seen as a harmful impediment to US firms and was further viewed as
undercutting the overriding logic of policies pursued by key economic agencies such as the
Department of the Treasury, the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), and the
Commerce Department. Indeed, intense bureaucratic rivalries surfaced during Clinton's first term as
the administration moved to replace linkage with a policy of comprehensive engagement in May
1994. The new priority given to geoeconomics was polarised by the administration's decision to give
unequivocal support to the annual renewal of China's MFN trade status when voted upon by the US
congress. Moreover, the role of the State Department was noticeably downgraded as were
protectionist arguments (from both left and right) fuelled by the seemingly intractable trade deficit
that existed between the two countries (Lampton, 1994). The intellectual argument for engaging China
was perhaps best articulated by Laura D'Andrea Tyson who claimed that congressional revocation of
MFN would slow the flow of information about Western culture, ideas, business practices, and
perspectives that accompany foreign investment (Wall Street Journal, 28 May 1997). The case for the
engagement of China was also the result, however, of established economic forces within the US state.
Extensive and highly organised lobbying by business groups took full advantage of the fact that their
opponents on the left and right were fragmented and offering unattractive alternatives. In 1991 around
75 prominent US trade groups formed the Business Coalition for USChina Trade, whose members
included lobbying giants such as the US Chamber of Commerce, the USChina Business Council and
the 500-member strong National Foreign Trade Council (Sutter, 1998, p. 57). These groups were
particularly visible during the 1994 deliberations over delinking MFN from human rights. For example
the Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT) (representing 55 large US corporations with
worldwide sales of $55 trillion in 1992) was instrumental in the sending of an open letter to the Clinton
administration from 300 captains of industry and business (Sutter, 1998, p. 58). From 1994 to 2000 an
agglomeration of US business groups, pro-engagement members of Congress and administration
officials successfully ensured that MFN was renewed annually. This occurred despite the often
animated protestations of human rights lobbyists and protectionists. The IPE of USChina relations
during the Clinton administrations revolved primarily around two fundamental issues. The first was the
bilateral trade deficit. The second was China's accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Previous Section Next Section The trade deficit The USChina trade deficit, though real, has been
politicised in a way that falsely portrays China as protectionist and belligerent in her approach to free
trade. It is therefore highly significant that key neoliberal scholars have actually applauded China's
gradualist approach to reform, having witnessed events in the former Soviet Union (Overholt, 1993;
Lardy, 1994). As Nicholas Lardy points out, the deficit (which stood at $80 billion in 2001) does not
represent a Chinese ploy to take advantage of the world trade system but something altogether more
benign. The deficit is structural and reflects changes in the positions of the Newly Industrialising
Countries (NICs) in Asia taken as a whole. Thus although China's share of world exports in clothing,
toys, sporting goods and footwear rose from 14 per cent in 1984 to 39 per cent in 1994, the share in
these sectors simultaneously fell in the four Asian Tiger economies (Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and
South Korea) from 55 per cent to 24 per cent. In short China has merely filled the vacuum left by other
Asian nations that have moved into high-technology sectors (Lardy, 1998, p. 188). According to Robert
Ross, the cumulative US trade deficit with China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan has not
appreciably grown since 1998; only the distribution among the markets has changed (Ross, 1997, p.
48). Moreover, China's trade deficit with the US has also reflected the realities of consumer demand in
the US where low-value-added goods, manufactured largely in China, have been necessary imports
since the 1980s. The US economy had long since moved away from the mass production of toys,
plastics and footwear (Lardy, 1994). Thus it was argued that the deficit should not preclude China's

entry to the WTO. Previous Section Next Section The World Trade Organisation As a number of
observers of USChina relations have noted, China has largely acquiesced in the role of global
institutions since the end of the Cultural Revolution (Foot, 1995; Cheung, 1998). Despite protracted
negotiations (beginning in 1986) over China's entry to General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
and then the WTO, China has been admitted to the latter on terms largely congruent with neoliberal
policy goals. Conditions for China's entry to the WTO were agreed upon on 15 November 1999. Despite
US approval these conditions were initially subject to bilateral agreements between China and Canada
and China and the European Union. A six year phase-in period was approved by the US and involves
the following: China's agreement to cut duties on a wide range of products; to give foreign companies
the right to distribute products within China; and to allow foreign car makers to provide car financing.
Most significantly, in terms of USChina relations, general tariffs will be cut between 14.5 per cent and
15 per cent while new sectors of the Chinese economy, such as banking, insurance, the Internet,
telecoms, and electronics will be opened to the forces of global competition (Far Eastern Economic
Review, 25 November 1999). Significantly, since 1999 pro-business and pro-Chinese forces within the
lobbying world and within the US Congress have been pushing for an end to the yearly debate over
MFN, urging the approval of a Permanent Normal Trade Relations Act (PNTA). In June 2001 this Act was
passed with the approval of George W. Bush's Republican administration. This further
normalisation of USChina relations, in correlation with China's entry to the WTO,
suggests that both nations are moving ever closer in their mutual recognition of the
neoliberal ideas underpinning globalisation. Indeed, the claim that the two countries represent
diametrically opposed civilisations heading for imminent collision appears rather premature if not
entirely spurious.1 This point has been underscored in recent times by the reactions of Chinese
president Jiang Zemin and George W. Bush to the terrorist attacks of September 11 and their joint
resolve to ensure a stable global order.

Markets/Regulations
Their 1ac rhetoric of regulated markets sanitizes
neoliberalism its impossible to decontextualize markets out
from the broader political economy that makes them possible
Brown 14

Wendy, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Book

Review of What Money Cant Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, by Michael Sandel.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale,
by Deborah Satz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, Political Theory, 2014, Vol.
42(3) 355376

On the one hand, Sandel calls

for public deliberation about what things should be for sale. On the
other hand, he describes in arch detail the process by which society and
its inhabitants are being transformed by their saturation with market
reasoning. So how will these humans and this society draw the lines he wants us to draw?
With what resources does a marketized soul resist a marketized world?
Yet this is where the argument runs onto the shoals.

(Indeed how does even a non-marketized soul wage such resistance? Any parent who has
recently accompanied a child through the college applications process, with its exploding
markets in private consultants, tutors for stan- dardized tests and essay writing, and countless
other for-purchase advantages for the already advantaged, knows this quandary. Any aging
academic anx- iously awaiting an upgrade for an intercontinental flight knows it too.)
Moreover, even if we developed consensus about what should not be

marketized, what could possibly enforce the consensus? What will make
the baseball stadium offer general and affordable seating again? What will stop well-to-do
parents from abandoning public schools? What will stop the scalp- ers, the line-standers, the
derivatives markets in everything from bad debt to early death? What will incite the elites who
buy their way out of the com- mons to throw aside their privilege and rejoin the masses? What
will entice public universities to renounce the marketization language and practices that
increasingly organize every facet of their operation? Even leaving aside neoliberal

rationality, on what basis can we expect a reversal of capitalisms path

of commodifying everything and everyone? When and where in history
has there been de-commodification? The more common story is that
the new market scandalizing us today becomes ordinary tomorrow .

Certainly those reading this review have this experience with the neoliberalization of academic
life . . . remember when impact factor was an obscene rather than normal measure of a
journals worth, when self-promotion or entrepreneurial conduct were bad manners for a
professor? In short, Sandels book offers a compelling expose of our current condi- tion

frames what it exposes as a matter of values, decisions and

inadvertent drift rather than historical forces, social powers, a
governing rationality or an economy whose life principle is growth and new
markets. Consequently, he understates the dimensions and depth of the
problem and places the burden of fixing it before the feet of a people
but

interpellated by the condition he indicts and who cannot easily deliver us from

He also casts markets as that which, once

returned to their proper place, will cease to generate the inegalitarian
and corrupting effects he illuminates so well. This, of course, is to
abstract markets from capitalism itselfits ceaseless expansion, its
the problem by deliberating about it.

production of inequality, its descralizations and its production of

orders of reason that normalize it.
basis in and

Discourse of market efficiency depoliticizes the market and

justifies economic inequality presumptions of a selfregulating market deflect ethical questions and ensure error
replication
Harcourt 11

(Bernard E., Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and Political Science at The University of
Chicago, The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order,
pgs. 32-34)
Lets explore each of these claims. First, the ideas of natural order and market
efficiency have helped naturalize the market itself and thereby shield from

normative assessment the massive wealth distributions that take place

there. Those distributions come to be seen as the natural consequence
of an orderly market, and as such are less open to normative evaluation. They become
more normal, somewhat necessary, and assessing them becomes practically futile. And the
result is that those very distributional consequences get shielded from

political, social, and moral debates: the naturalness of the market

depoliticizes the distributional outcomes. Nietzsche made this point far more elegantly in his
Genealogy of Morals, in discussing the value of truth. So long as we held the thesis that truth was di- vine, Nietzsche suggested, assessing the
value of truth was not fully permit- ted. It is only once we let go of that idea of divine truth that we opened the door to the assessment of
truth, in other words, to raising the question of the value of truth. From the moment faith in the God of the ascetic ideal is denied, Nietzsche
wrote, a new problem arises: that of the value of truth.121 In parallel fashion, faith in natural order and market efficiency forecloses a full
normative assessment of market outcomes. It closes the door on the very condition of possibility. It effectively depoliticizes the market itself

It is only when the illusion of natural order is lifted that a real

problem arises: that of the justice of the organizational rules and their
distributional consequences. The idea of natural order, in effect, masks
the states role, the governments ties to nonstate organizationssuch as the Chicago
Board of Trade and the extensive legal and regulatory framework that
embeds these associations. Robert Hale and other legal realists in the early
twentieth century demonstrated the extent to which the distribution of
income and wealth is the product of the legal rules we choose to
and its outcomes.

impose.122 Hale trained our attention on the foundational rules of property and contract law, showing how free, voluntary,

compensated exchange is in fact the product of the legal coercion that the government establishes through its role in defining property
rights.123 But Hales insight applies with even greater force to the rules and regulations that we see at the Chicago Board of Trade. The truth
is, every action of the broker, buyer, seller, investment bank, brokerage firm, exchange memberor even nonmemberis scrutinized and
manipulated. Rules, oversight committees, advisory letters, investigations, and legal actions abound. The list of dos and donts is extensive.
Brokerage firms may combine and use blacklists to restrict retail buyers from reselling their publicly offered stock during a retail restricted
period of between thirty and ninety days following their purchase of newly offered stock, but the same brokerage firms may allow large
institutions to dump their stock in the aftermarket at any time.124 Exchange members on the New York Stock Exchange may get together and
fix the commission rate on stock transactions of less than $500,000that is, they may set the price of buying and selling stockbut freely
negotiate commissions for larger stock transactions.125 The National Association of Securities Dealers may agree to restrict the sale and fix
the resale price of securities of open-ended management companiesmutual fundsin the secondary market between dealers, between
dealers and investors, and between investors, thereby eliminating the secondary market in mutual funds a market that was significant prior
to 1940.126 And competing bidders in a corporate takeover may join together and make joint takeover offers to stock-holders, even if it
means that together they reduce the offering price for the stock purchase.127 But exchange members may not get together and forbid other
members from sharing commissions earned from the purchase or sale of stock with nonmember broker-dealers; and an exchange may not
order its members to remove private telephone connections to the offices of nonmember brokersunless the Securities and Exchange

The rules and regulations surrounding our

modern markets are intricate and arcane, and they belie the simplistic
idea that our markets are free. The reality today is far more complex. It is equally true that the practices of
Commission reviews and approves such a policy.128

the Physiocrats were also more complex than they might appear at first glance: they too were far more con- strained in their actions than they
were in their rhetoric. Le Mercier de la Riviere served as intendantadministrative governorof Martinique on two occasions during the early
1760s, and during his second tour of duty in 1763, after he had been fully converted to Physiocracy, he himself set the price of bread and
meats. That is, at a time when he was preaching the merits of free markets, he was enacting a most stringent police des grains and himself
fixing prices: No 271. Ordinance of MM., the General and Intendant, increasing the price of bread. September 24, 1763. The current price of
wheat flour making it impossible for bakers to pro- vide bread to the public at the specified price of 7 sols 6 deniers per pound, at the ordinary
weight of 16 ounces, we order that from this day forward, bakers will be held to furnish their bread at the weight of 14 ounces for 7 sols 6
deniers, and this shall continue until otherwise ordered by us . . . We promulgate this to the kings prosecutors, etc. Rendered at Martinique,
September 24, 1763. Signed, Marquis de Fenelon, and De La Riviere129 Thats right, signed Le Mercier De La Riviere.

Like Mercier,

we today want to see freedom even when there is nothing but constraint
before us. That desire, that urge is precisely what masks the distributions
that accompany the administration of contemporary markets. Because we
we fail to properly
scrutinize how the administration of the markets actually distributes
wealth. Because we want to believe in self-adjusting markets, we do not adequately
want to believe that the markets are operating on their own,

It is not that difficult, after all, to

identify the distributional outcomes; but when they are
mischaracterized as the natural consequence of a natural order,
making normative assessments becomes entirely beside the point. It makes
investigate the consequences of our choices.

little sense to raise questions about natural phenomena. In this sense, the idea of natural order
or, today, of market efficiency effectively obfuscates the massive distribution of wealth and
resources that occur through the market. Natural order essentially depoliticizes
the market.

Export Controls
*Neoliberals use export controls for solving problems between
states in order to obtain profits
Lipson 99

Michael Lipson, Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is

completing a dissertation entitled International Cooperation on Export Controls: Nonproliferation,
Globalization, and Multilateralism, Winter 1999.THE REINCARNATION OF COCOM: EXPLAINING POSTCOLD WAR EXPORT CONTROLS published in The Nonproliferation Review (Winter 1999)
Neoliberalism, the most influential theoretical alternative to realism, focuses on the salutary effects of
international interdependence and on the promotion of cooperation by international institutions.
Neoliberals accept the realist assumptions that states are the basic actors in international relations and
that they act rationally in pursuit of their national interests.19 However, neoliberals argue that states,
contrary to realist theory, are capable of sustained cooperation that is not merely a byproduct of the
distribution of power. This cooperation is accomplished through international institutions and regimes.
Thus, neoliberals see export control regimes, such as CoCom and Wassenaar, as institutional
arrangements for solving collective action problems among states with common interests. States may
participate not because of security concerns but to obtain economic side-payments such as freer trade
with members. Or, states may cooperate initially because of a temporary security concern, but find the
benefit of reducing the transaction costs of cooperation on other matters makes it worthwhile to
institutionalize their arrangement so that cooperation extends beyond the problem that first triggered
it.

BIT
*International Investment Law and BITs fuel pro-market
neoliberal ideology
PRIETO-RIOS 15
ENRIQUE PRIETO-RIOS, PhD Law Candidate, Birkbeck, University of London, May 6, 2015, Neoliberal
Market Rationality: The Driver of International Investment Law, Birkbeck Law Review Volume 3, url:
http://www.bbklr.org/uploads/1/4/5/4/14547218/55_prieto-rios_neoliberal-market-rationality_15-0506.pdf
The previous sections have shown the close link between neoliberalism and the IIL regime. Especially, I have
shown how the IIL regime is characterised as being pro-market and pro-investor and based on an
instrumental rationality.77 As it stands now, IIL on the one hand promotes the appropriation of natural
resources and, on the other, maintains the inequality that exists between industrialised and nonindustrialised countries, thus having a direct impact on the host states and also on the lives and the
ability of peoples to enjoy their rights. Neoliberalism has become a hegemonic ideology which has
reshaped the relationship between societies, governments and the market, leading to the
standardisation of conducts and practices.78 In this form, neoliberal ideology has played an essential
part in shaping IIL with regards to creating a pro-investor regime with strong protection of property
rights and contractual relationships. Despite the global economic and political crisis being experienced
worldwide in the last decade, neoliberalism continues to adapt to the new realities and changes of the
world, and IIL is no exception. The number of BITs and FTAs continue to increase, not only between
industrialised countries but also between non-industrialised countries. In so doing, countries reproduce
and expand the ideology. In accordance with the core principles of neoliberal ideology, IIL has worked
towards the reduction and limitation of the states ability to regulate, subordinating its decisions to a
market rationale.79 In this form, IIL places individuals, corporations, and states on a notionally equal
footing, entitling a company that represents millions of dollars to challenge measures adopted by any
state authority which acts on behalf of millions of people . The arbitral procedure for the settle- ment of
investments disputes has become an international judicial review, in which measures adopted by the executive, the
legislative, or even the judicial authorities, can be reviewed by an offshore tribunal. To paraphrase Michael Foucault,
the interest of the market 77 Brown (n 38) 45. 78 Cols (n 1) 76. 79 Grard Dumnil and Dominique Lvy, Capital
Resurgent: Roots of the Neoliberal Revolution (Harvard University Press 2004) 1. Birkbeck Law Review Volume 3(1)
76 and its main players (foreign investors) became one of the main reasons to confront governments and their
laws.80 Although there is no single answer to the question of how best to regulate the relationships between states
and investors, I expect that, by identifying the neoliberal influence in the IIL regime, this paper could contribute to
the ongoing global discussion. As afore- mentioned, although there are more structural discussions, such as the
constant global struggle against the hegemonic neoliberal ideology, there are also some other important
discussions that require academics as well as practitioners to engage in. Some of those relevant aspects include the
discussion about sovereignty over natural resources, the calculation of compensations and the way in which treaties
and arbitral decisions are hidden away from the public in general.

Alt/Framework

Movements from Below

Movements from below only bottom up politik can reenergize
the public sphere and dismantle transnational capitalism
Giroux 16
Henry A. Giroux currently is the McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the
Public Interest and The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. He
also is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University. His most recent
books include The Violence of Organized Forgetting (City Lights, 2014), Dangerous
Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2015) and coauthored
with Brad Evans, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of
Spectacle (City Lights, 2015). Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of
Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com. Henry A. Giroux | Radical Politics
in the Age of American Authoritarianism: Connecting the Dots, Truth-out. April 10,
2016.

There has never been a more pressing time to rethink the meaning of
politics, justice, struggle, collective action, and the development of new political parties and
social movements. The ongoing violence against Black youth, the impending
ecological crisis, the use of prisons to warehouse people who represent
social problems, and the ongoing war on women's reproductive rights,
among other crises, demand a new language for developing modes of
creative long-term resistance, a wider understanding of politics, and
a new urgency to create modes of collective struggles rooted in
more enduring and unified political formations. The American public

needs a new discourse to resuscitate historical memories and methods

of resistance to address the connections between the escalating
destabilization of the earth's biosphere, impoverishment, inequality,
police violence, mass incarceration, corporate crime and the poisoning
of low-income communities. Not only are social movements from below
needed, but also there is a need to merge diverse single-issue
movements that range from calls for racial justice to calls for economic
fairness. Of course, there are significant examples of this in the Black Lives
Matter movement (as discussed by Alicia Garza, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Elizabeth Day)
and the ongoing strikes by workers for a living wage. But these are only the
beginning of what is needed to contest the ideology and supporting
apparatuses of neoliberal capitalism. The call for broader social

movements and a more comprehensive understanding of politics is

necessary in order to connect the dots between, for instance, police brutality and
mass incarceration, on the one hand, and the diverse crises producing massive poverty, the
destruction of the welfare state and the assaults on the environment, workers, young people
and women. As Peter Bohmer observes, the call for a meaningful living wage and full
employment cannot be separated from demands "for access to quality education, affordable
and quality housing and medical care, for quality child care, for reproductive rights and for
clean air, drinkable water," and an end to the pillaging of the environment by the ultra-rich and
mega corporations. He rightly argues: Connecting issues and social movements

and organizations to each other has the potential to build a powerful

movement of movements that is stronger than any of its individual

parts. This means educating ourselves and in our groups about these
issues and their causes and their interconnection. In this instance, making
the political more pedagogical becomes central to any viable notion of
politics. That is, if the ideals and practices of democratic governance are
not to be lost, we all need to continue producing the critical formative
cultures capable of building new social, collective and political
institutions that can both fight against the impending authoritarianism
in the United States and imagine a society in which democracy is
viewed no longer as a remnant of the past but rather as an ideal that is
worthy of continuous struggle. It is also crucial for such struggles to cross
national boundaries in order to develop global alliances. At the root of this
notion of developing a comprehensive view of politics is the need for
educating ourselves by developing a critical formative culture along
with corresponding institutions that promote a form of permanent
criticism against all elements of oppression and unaccountable power .
One important task of emancipation is to fight the dominant culture
industry by developing alternative public spheres and educational
institutions capable of nourishing critical thought and action. The time

has come for educators, artists, workers, young people and others to push forward a new form
of politics in which public values, trust and compassion trump neoliberalism's celebration of
self-interest, the ruthless accumulation of capital, the survival-of-the-fittest ethos and the
financialization and market-driven corruption of the political system. Political

responsibility is more than a challenge -- it is the projection of a possibility in

which new modes of identification and agents must be enabled that can sustain new political
organizations and transnational anti-capitalist movements. Democracy must be

written back into the script of everyday life, and doing so demands overcoming
the current crisis of memory, agency and politics by collectively struggling for a new form of
politics in which matters of justice, equity and inclusion define what is possible. Such struggles
demand an increasingly broad-based commitment to a new kind of activism. As Robin D. G.
Kelley has recently noted, there is a need for more pedagogical, cultural and

social spaces that allow us to think and act together, to take risks and
to get to the roots of the conditions that are submerging the United
States into a new form of authoritarianism wrapped in the flag, the
dollar sign and the cross. Kelley is right in calling for a politics that places
justice at its core, one that takes seriously what it means to be an
individual and social agent while engaging in collective struggles. We

don't need tepid calls for repairing the system; instead, we need to
invent a new system from the ashes of one that is terminally broken .
We don't need calls for moral uplift or personal responsibility . We need
calls for economic, political, gender and racial justice . Such a politics

must be rooted in particular demands, be open to direct action and

take seriously strategies designed to both educate a wider public and
mobilize them to seize power. The left needs a new political
conversation that encompasses memories of freedom and resistance .
Such a dialogue would build on the militancy of the labor strikes of the 1930s, the civil rights
movements of the 1950s and the struggle for participatory democracy by the New Left in the
1960s. At the same time, there is a need to reclaim the radical imagination and to infuse it
with a spirited battle for an independent politics that regards a radical democracy as part of a
never-ending struggle. None of this can happen unless progressives understand education

as a political and moral practice crucial to creating new forms of

agency, mobilizing a desire for change and providing a language that
underwrites the capacity to think, speak and act so as to challenge the
sexist, racist, economic and political grammars of suffering produced
by the new authoritarianism.The left needs a language of critique that enables
people to ask questions that appear unspeakable within the existing vocabularies of
oppression. We also need a language of hope that is firmly aware of

the
ideological and structural obstacles that are undermining democracy.
We need a language that reframes our activist politics as a creative act that
responds to the promises and possibilities of a radical democracy.

Vote negative to reject neoliberal knowledge production and endorse globalization

from below---Refusing neoliberalisms hegemonic control over knowledge
production is essential within the space of this debate the alternative aligns the
ballot with resistance movements
Choi, Murphy, and Caro 4
Jung Min, John W, Manuel J, Professor of Sociology SDSU, Professor of Sociology
University of Miami, Professor of Sociology Barry University, Globalization with a
Human Face, pg. 6-9
Many critics have begun to wonder why hamburgers and jeans can be globalized, but the spread of themes such as peace or justice is
thought by many politicians to be impossible to generalize.

What many persons are calling for, especially in

the Third World, is an alternative approach to globalization. Along with justice, they want to globalize
resistance to current historical trends. They want to call a halt, for example, to the economic hardships and rape of the environment that
have accompanied the rise of neoliberalism. This

new strategy is referred to in many circles as

"globalization from below." The point is that current policies have been driven from above
from the capitalist centers around the worldand reflect the economic and cultural interests of these
powerful classes. Most other persons, accordingly, are viewed as simply a cheap source of labor
or a possible market for cheap goods. And because of this role in the world capitalist system, their opportunities are
severely restricted. Even if they conform to the cultural mandates of the market, the likelihood of
economic advancement is not very great. This sort of mobility is simply not a part of the role persons play on the
economic periphery. What actually occurs, indeed, is that the system of controls, which are found in the
economic centers, are reproduced on the periphery, but with more immediate devastation.
The imposition of consumerism and materialism, for example, undermine the local economy and community supports, thereby
increasing strife and reinforcing local elites and their ties to foreign investors. The old oligarchies are thus strengthened, while local
institutions become more dependent on outside intervention. The resulting hierarchy, accordingly, is more powerful than ever before. As
might be imagined, globalization from below has a very different agenda. Different values guide economic
development, in short, while new ways of organizing society are sought. Instead of profit, for example, the general improvement of a
community may be of prime importance. Likewise, emphasis may be placed on strengthening civil society, and thus ,advancing
democracy, rather than identifying markets and potential investors. In general, globalization

from below is driven by

local concerns and the masses of persons who have little influence in corporate boardrooms. These are the people--the
majority of the world's inhabitants--who are ignored unless their labor is suddenly profitable. At the core of
this new globalization is often the call for a postcapitalist logic. Novel ways of looking at, for example, production and consumption are
regularly a part of this project, in addition to new definitions of work and personal and group identity. Central to this scenario is that
persons can remake themselves entirely, and nothing is exempt from revision. What proponents of globalization from below have done,
in effect, is to seize control of their history and invent a new future. They have decided that history can be made, rather than merely
experienced, and that there is no inherent telos to this process. The past is nothing, therefore, other than a point of departure of a new
course of action. In the truest sense of the term, these activists are utopian thinkers. They are not
enamored by reality and are convinced that new social arrangements, which have never existed and may be very difficult to create, are
possible. As many students chanted during the 1960s, they are demanding the impossible and do not want to settle for more pragmatic
substitutes. They are simply asking that persons strive to fulfill their dreams. But these

demands are not based on

fantasy. Instead, proponents of globalization from below are trying to emphasize an idea advanced by Marx: that is, nothing that
humans imagine is foreign to them. Consequently, utopian ideals or practices are simply inventions that have not , yet been realized.
Through effort and determination, and the absence foreign subversion, an economic system that is founded on justice might eventually
be enacted. Merely because

this vision has not been actualized, does not necessarily signal that
such an aim contravenes human nature or is hopelessly flawed. The problem may simply
be that persons have been unwilling or unable to purge themselves of certain biases or
predispositions, and thus have never embarked on the creation of a new reality. Those who
champion globalization from below, however, are not politically naive. They understand that powerful interests that benefit from
injustice and inequality have intervened in the past to undermine various utopian projects. The proper dream is important, but so is the
ability to implement this vision. These new utopians are thus trying to convince the public to restrain those who want to destroy these
projects. What they are saying, in short, is that justice should be given the opportunity to thrive. THE RESTORATION OF
COMMUNITY Various critics are saying that only the restoration of a strong sense of community can guarantee the success of
globalization. What is meant by community, however, is in dispute. After all, even neoliberals lament the current loss of community that
has ensued in the world economy. From their perspective, a community of effective traders would strengthen everyone's position at the
marketplace. Advocates

of globalization from below, as might be expected, have something very different in mind.
They are not calling for the general assimilation of persons to a cosmopolitan ideal, which is
thought to instill civility and enforce rationality. Persons who want to join the world
market, as was noted earlier, are thought to need a good dose of these traits. Nonetheless,
there is a high price for entry into this communitycultural or personal uniqueness must
be sacrificed to promote effective economic discourse. Such reductionism, however, is
simply unacceptable in a large part of the globe that is beginning to appreciate local
customs and the resulting diversity. What these new activists want, therefore, is a community
predicated on human solidarity. This sort of community, as Emmanuel Levinas describes,
is focused on ethics rather than metaphysics." His point is that establishing order does not require
the internalization of a single ideal by all persons, but simply their mutual recognition. The
recognition of others as different, but connected to a common fate, is a powerful and
unifying principle. Persons are basically united through the recognition and appreciation of
their uniqueness. As should be noted, this image is encompassing but not abstract. Uniformity, in other words, is replaced by the
juxtaposition of diversity as the cement that binds a community together. Like a montage, a community based on human solidarity is
engendered at the boundaries of its various and diverse elements. The genius of this rendition of community is that no one is by nature
an outsider, and thus deserving of special treatment. Many of the problems that exist today, in fact, result from persons sitting idly while
their neighbors are singled out as different and discriminated against or exploited. When persons view themselves to be fundamentally
united, on the other hand, such mistreatment is unlikely, because community members protect and encourage one another. Indeed, this
sort of obligation is neither selective nor optional among those who belong to a true community. Basically the

idea is that if no
one is an outsider, there are no persons or groups to exploit. Such a community, moreover,
does not require extraordinary actions on the part of its members to end racism, sexism, or
economic exploitation. All that is required is persons refuse to turn away and say nothing
when such discrimination is witnessed. By refusing to go along with these practices, any
system that survives because of discrimination or exploitation will eventually grind to a
halt. Clearly, there is an implicit threat behind current trends of globalization. Because
globalization as it is currently defined is inevitable, anyone who expects to be treated as
rational and civilized must accept some temporary pain. Old cultural ways will simply
have to be abandoned, and a transition to the new economic realities. Those who cannot
tolerate the mistreatment of fellow community members any longer appear to be a part of
this change, however, they are obligated to bare witness to these abuses. And by refusing to
be complicit these actions, business as usual cannot continue. A globalization of can be
mounted, therefore, that might be able to create a more humane world. In the face of
mounting darknessincreasing economic hardship and degradationwhy not seriously
entertain the possibility that social life can be organized in less alienating ways? With little
left to why not pursue alternative visions?

Post capitalist Transition

The alternative is post capitalist revolution
Grosvenor 16
Peter C. Grosvenor is originally from Wales and holds a Ph.D. in Government from the London School of
Economics. Formerly a trade union researcher and speechwriter, he is currently Associate Professor of
Sociology & Global Studies at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. Tech Could Mean the
End of Capitalism. But What Comes Next?, In These Times. 1/21/16.
Obviously, capitalism is undergoing a revolutionary restructuring in the digital
age. Mason is advancing the radical thesis that information technologies are actually
subverting the fundamentals of capitalist economics and pointing the way to a new
postcapitalist system. A transition to postcapitalism, Mason argues, offers an

alternative to either the continuation of an increasingly ailing neoliberal

capitalism or its catastrophic collapse. Mason is a trenchant critic of neoliberalism,
the prevailing economic philosophy that justifies austerity and privatization
worldwide. He excoriates it for its calculated attacks on unions, its intensification
of economic inequality, its destruction of the environment and its tearing of
societies social fabric. Globally, he says, neoliberal financial practices are
exposing major economies to increasingly frequent and severe financial
crises. Neoliberalism also offers no solution to climate change, because the free
market favors drilling and fracking over investment in alternative fuels. Nor
can neoliberalism deliver on its post-Cold War promise of a stable New World
Order. Instead, it is confronted with an increasingly fragmented and conflictridden international disorder that is a far cry from the market-oriented,
liberal-democractic end of history supposedly heralded by the fall of Communism.
Neoliberal elites could conceivably hang on, but they will have to continue
shifting the costs of recurrent crises onto workers, pensioners and the poor.
And, to protect themselves from the backlash, states will have to carry out
more repression. These extremes may trigger a wholesale rejection of neoliberalism.
Populations sick of austerity may turn to parties of the old far Left that are still committed to
reinstituting some form of command economy. At the same time, as more and more migrants
and refugees flee intensified North-South economic polarization, climate change and regional
conflicts, we could see the rise of anti-immigrant parties of the far Right and a thickening of
national borders reminiscent of the 1930s.For Mason, the growing sense that the
present is unsustainable is reflected in the burgeoning pop cultural depictions of
zombies, natural disasters and civilizational disintegration. Still, he sees no reason to cede the
ground to the pessimists. Audaciously, Mason envisions a movement from capitalism

to postcapitalism that is no less epochal than the transition from

medievalism to modernism. A postcapitalist, informationbased,
networked society will subvert existing hierarchies and resist
neoliberal exploitation, he argues, making possible increased prosperity,
greater equality, green economic development and an end to the correlation
between work and income. These are vast claims, but Mason insists that core aspects of
postcapitalism are already in placeput there by capitalism itself. The information
revolution, Mason contends, subverts two core concepts of capitalist economics:
scarcity and the price mechanism. Information is abundant and does not degrade with
use, nor does its use by one consumer preclude its use by others. What is more, the marginal
cost of reproducing information is constantly falling. In such an environment, information
emerges as a public gooda resource or utility to which it is impractical to restrict access,
much like street lighting. Mainstream economics responds to these challenges with intellectual
property rights, in order to make information behave like a tradable commodity. But such laws
are full of inconsistencies and impracticalitiesfor example, we can copy a CD into iTunes, but

The information revolution makes possible what the legal scholar

Yochai Benkler calls commons-based peer production, characterized by
cooperative, horizontal working relationships. All of this is in marked contrast
to the top-down approach of firm production, which explains why Boeing could
not a DVD.

never have created the open-sourced Wikipedia. Like the sociologist Manuel Castells, Mason
believes that the new information-based networked society is as permanent as
electrification, and that it is forging a new kind of human being: post-deferential, peer-

driven and skeptical of traditional political elites of both the Left and the
Right. They will be the agents of social change, and Mason sees their fluid networks
already at work in uprisings like the Arab Spring and the urban development protests in
Istanbuls Gezi Park.

Historical Materialism
The alternative is a historical materialist analysis this is the
only starting point for effective solvency
San Juan 05
Epifano San Juan is a professor Emeritus of English/Comparative Literature/Ethnic Studies at Harvard.
From Race to Class Struggle: Marxism and Critical Race Theory, Nature, Society, and Thought, Vol 3
Iss 18 2005.

I would reaffirm the need to situate racism in

late-capitalist society within the process of class rule and labor exploitation
to grasp the dynamics of racial exclusion and subordination. Beyond the mode of
production, the antagonistic relations between the capitalist class and the
working class are articulated with the state and its complex bureaucratic and
juridical mechanisms, multiplying cultural and political differentiations that
affect the attitudes, sentiments, and actual behavior of groups. A critique of
ideologies of racism and sexism operating in the arena of class antagonism
becomes crucial in the effort to dismantle their efficacy. Moreover, as Bensaid observes
Following the lead of Anderson and others,

in Marx for Our Times (2002), "the relationship between social structure and political struggle is mediated by the
relations of dependence and domination between nations at the international level." Linear functionalism yields to

Viewed historically, the phenomenon of

migrant labor, in particular Filipina domestics in North America and elsewhere, demonstrates how
racial and gender characteristics become functional and discursively
valorized when they are inserted into the dialectic of abstract and concrete
labor, of use value and exchange value, in the production of commodities--in
the dialectical analysis of concrete mediations.

this case, domestic labor as a commodity. Contrary to any attempts to legitimate the use of the underpaid services

the racializing and gendering discourse of global

capitalism can only be adequately grasped as the mode through which
extraction of surplus value, wage differentiation, and control and
representation of bodies are all negotiated. A study of racist practices and
institutions, divorced from the underlying determinant structure of capital
accumulation and class rule allowing such practices and institutions to
exercise their naturalizing force, can only perpetuate an abstract
metaphysics of race and a discourse of power that would reinforce the
continuing reification or commodification of human relations in everyday life .
of women of color from the South,

We cannot multiply static determinations in an atomistic manner and at the same time acquire the intelligible

A first step in
this project of renewing critical race theory is simple: begin with the concept
of class as an antagonistic relation between labor and capital, and then
proceed to analyze how the determinant of "race" is played out historically in
the class-conflicted structure of capitalism and its political/ideological
processes of class rule. It is of course important to maintain vigilance concerning the mystifying use of
totality of knowledge that we need for formulating strategies of radical social transformation.

"race" and the practice of racialization in any location, whether in the privacy of the family, home, school, factory,
or state institutions (court, prison, police station, legislature). Grace Chang (2000) has meticulously documented
how people of color, exploited immigrants and refugees, have themselves used racist images and rhetoric in their
role as "gatekeepers" to the racialized class system. Nevertheless, without framing all these within the total picture

without
understanding the continued domination of labor by capital globally, we
cannot effectively counteract the racism that underwrites the relation of
of the crisis of capital and its globalized restructuring from the late seventies up to the present, and

domination and subordination among nationalities, ethnic communities, and

gender groups. The critique of an emergent authoritarian state and questionable policies sanctioned by the
USA Patriot Act is urgently necessary. In doing so, naming the system and understanding its operations would be
useful in discovering precisely that element of self-activity, of agency, that has supposedly been erased in totalizing
metanarratives such as the "New World Order," the "New American Century" that will end ideology and history, and
in revolutionary projects of achieving racial justice and equality. As the familiar quotation goes, we do make
history--but not under circumstances of our choosing. So the question is, as always, "What alternatives do we have
to carry out which goals at what time and place?" The goal of a classless communist society and strategies to attain
it envisage the demise of racist ideology and practice in their current forms. But progressive forces around the
world are not agreed about this. For example, the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance-NGO Forum held in Durban, South Africa, from 31 August to 7 September,
2001 publicized the global problem of racism but was unable to formulate a consensus on how to solve it. Its final
declaration highlighted the historic origin of racism in the slave trade, colonialism, and genocide, and it raised the
possibility of reparations for its victims, but did not offer a concrete program of action (see Mann 2002). Because of
its composition and the pervasive climate of reaction, the Forum could not endorse a radical approach that would
focus on the elimination of the exploitation of labor (labor power as commodity) as a necessary first step. Given its
limits, it could not espouse a need for a thoroughgoing change of the material basis of social production and
reproduction--the latter involving the hegemonic rule of the propertied bloc in each society profiting from the
unequal division of labor and the unequal distribution of social wealth--on which the institutional practices of racism
(apartheid, discrimination, genocide) thrive. "Race is the modality in which class is lived," as Stuart Hall remarks

Without political power in the hands of the

democratic-popular masses under the leadership of the working class, the
ideological machinery (laws, customs, religion, state bureaucracy) that
legitimizes class domination, with its attendant racist practices, cannot be
changed. What is required is a revolutionary process that mobilizes a broad
constituency based on substantive equality and social justice as an essential
part of the agenda to dissolve class structures. Any change in the ideas, beliefs, and norms
concerning post-1945 Britain (Solomos 1986, 103).

would produce changes in the economic, political, and social institutions, which would in turn promote wide-ranging

Within a historical-materialist
framework, the starting point and end point for analyzing the relations
between structures in any sociohistorical totality cannot be anything but the
production and reproduction of material existence. The existence of any totality follows
changes in social relations among all groups and sectors.

transformation rules whereby it is constantly being restructured into a new formation (Harvey 1973). These rules

Within
this conflicted, determinate totality, race cannot be reduced to class, nor can
class be subsumed by race, since those concepts express different forms of
social relations.
reflect the dialectical unfolding of manifold contradictions constituting the internal relations of the totality.

AT Perm
Perm fails and is a new link - focus on particular violent acts is
a lure that causes ideological mystification and target the
symptoms not the root cause of violence
iek 8
(Slavoj, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, Big Ideas // Small Books, 2008, p. 3-8) [m leap]
Instead of confronting violence directly, the present book casts six sideways glances. There are reasons for looking at the problem of
violence awry. My underlying premise is that there is something inherently mystifying in a direct confrontation with it: the
overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with the victims inexorably function as a lure which prevents us from thinking.
A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense
in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between
(factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual
unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating experience in a clear
manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth. The problem here is part
of the solution: the very factual deficiencies of the traumatised subject's report on her experience bear witness to the truthfulness of her
report, since they signal that the reported content "contaminated" the manner of reporting it. The same holds, of course, for the so-called
unreliability of the verbal reports of Holocaust survivors: the witness able to offer a clear narrative of his camp experience would
disqualify himself by virtue of that clarity.2 The only appropriate approach to my subject thus seems to be one which permits
variations on violence kept at a distance out of respect towards its victims. Adorno's famous saying, it seems, needs correction: it is not
poetry that is impossible after Auschwitz, but rather prose.3 Realistic prose fails, where the poetic evocation of the unbearable
atmosphere of a camp succeeds. That is to say, when Adorno declares poetry impossible (or, rather, barbaric) after Auschwitz, this
impossibility is an enabling impossibility: poetry is always, by definition, "about" something that cannot be addressed directly, only
alluded to. One shouldn't be afraid to take this a step further and refer to the old saying that music comes in when words fail. There may
well be some truth in the common wisdom that, in a kind of historical premonition, the music of Schoenberg articulated the anxieties and
nightmares of Auschwitz before the event took place. In her memoirs, Anna Akhmatova describes what happened to her when, at the
height of the Stalinist purges, she was waiting in the long queue in front of the Leningrad prison to learn about her arrested son Lev: One
day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a young woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had of course
never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone
whispered there), "Can you describe this?" And I said, "I can." Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been
her face.4 The key question, of course, is what kind of description is intended here? Surely it is not a realistic description of the situation,
but what Wallace Stevens called "description without place," which is what is proper to art. This is not a description which locates its
content in a historical space and time, but a description which creates, as the background of the phenomena it describes, an inexistent
(virtual) space of its own, so that what appears in it is not an appearance sustained by the depth of reality behind it, but a
decontextualised appearance, an appearance which fully coincides with real being. To quote Stevens again: "What it seems it is and in
such seeming all things are." Such an artistic description "is not a sign for something that lies outside its form."5 Rather, it extracts from
the confused reality its own inner form in the same way that Schoenberg "extracted" the inner form of totalitarian terror. He evoked the
way this terror affects subjectivity. Does this recourse to artistic description imply that we are in danger of regressing to a contemplative
attitude that somehow betrays the urgency to "do something" about the depicted horrors? Let's think about the fake sense of urgency
that pervades the left-liberal humanitarian discourse on violence: in it, abstraction and graphic (pseudo)concreteness coexist in
the staging of the scene of violence against women, blacks, the homeless, gays... "A woman is raped every six seconds in this
country" and "In the time it takes you to read this paragraph, ten children will die of hunger" are just two examples. Underlying all this is
a hypocritical sentiment of moral outrage. Just this kind of pseudo-urgency was exploited by Starbucks a couple of years ago when, at
store entrances, posters greeting customers pointed out that a portion of the chain's profits went into health-care for the children of
Guatemala, the source of their coffee, the inference being that with every cup you drink, you save a child's life. There is a fundamental
anti-theoretical edge to these urgent injunctions. There is no time to reflect: we have to act now. Through this fake sense of
urgency, the post-industrial rich, living in their secluded virtual world, not only do not deny or ignore the harsh reality outside
their area they actively refer to it all the time. As Bill Gates recently put it: "What do computers matter when millions are still
unnecessarily dying of dysentery?" Against this fake urgency, we might want to place Marx's wonderful letter to Engels of 1870,
when, for a brief moment, it seemed that a European revolution was again at the gates. Marx's letter conveys his sheer panic: can't the
revolutionaries wait for a couple of years? He hasn't yet finished his Capital. A critical analysis of the present global constellation
one which offers no clear solution, no "practical" advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one
is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing towards us usually meets with reproach: "Do you mean we should
do nothing? Just sit and wait?" One should gather the courage to answer: "YES, precisely that!" There are situations when the
only truly "practical" thing to do is to resist the temptation to engage immediately and to "wait and see" by means of a patient,
critical analysis. Engagement seems to exert its pressure on us from all directions. In a well-known passage from his Existentialism and
Humanism, Sartre deployed the dilemma of a young man in France in 1942, torn between the duty to help his lone, ill mother and the
duty to enter the Resistance and fight the Germans; Sartre's point is, of course, that there is no a priori answer to this dilemma. The
young man needs to make a decision grounded only in his own abyssal freedom and assume full responsibility for it.6 An obscene third
way out of the dilemma would have been to advise the young man to tell his mother that he will join the Resistance, and to tell his
Resistance friends that he will take care of his mother, while, in reality, withdrawing to a secluded place and studying... There is more
than cheap cynicism in this advice. It brings to mind a well-known Soviet joke about Lenin. Under socialism, Lenin's advice to young
people, his answer to what they should do, was "Learn, learn, and learn." This was evoked at all times and displayed on all school walls.
The joke goes: Marx, Engels, and Lenin are asked whether they would prefer to have a wife or a mistress. As expected, Marx, rather
conservative in private matters, answers, "A wife!" while Engels, more of a bon vivant, opts for a mistress. To everyone's surprise, Lenin
says, "I'd like to have both!" Why? Is there a hidden stripe of decadent jouisseur behind his austere revolutionary image? No-he

explains: "So that I can tell my wife that I am going to my mistress, and my mistress that I have to be with my wife..." "And then, what
do you do?" "I go to a solitary place to learn, learn, and learn!" Is this not exactly what Lenin did after the catastrophe of 1914? He
withdrew to a lonely place in Switzerland, where he "learned, learned, and learned," reading Hegel's logic. And this is what we should
do today when we find ourselves bombarded with mediatic images of violence. We need to "learn, learn, and learn" what causes
this violence.

Framework
You should use your ballot to foreground a particular political vocabulary how
society is framed and understand gives debaters skill development a particular
trajectory and meaning the alternative is crucial to inserting the pedagogical
energy of the debate into a broader circuit of anti-neoliberal public spaces and
commons
Giroux 13
(Henry Giroux, currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural
Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University, Hope in the Age of Looming
Authoritarianism, 02 December 2013, http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20307-hope-in-the-age-of-loomingauthoritarianism#_edn2)
We live at a time in which the

crisis of politics is inextricably connected to the crisis of ideas, education

and agency. What must be remembered is that any viable politics or political culture can emerge only out of a
determined effort to provide the economic conditions, public spaces, pedagogical practices and social
relations in which individuals have the time, motivation and knowledge to engage in acts of translation

that reject the privatization of the public sphere, the lure of ethno-racial or religious purity, the emptying of
democratic traditions, the crumbling of the language of commonality, and the decoupling of critical
education from the unfinished demands of a global democracy. Young people, artists, intellectuals,
educators and workers in the United States and globally are increasingly addressing what it means
politically and pedagogically to confront the impoverishment of public discourse, the collapse of
democratic values and commitments, the erosion of its public spheres and the widely promoted modes of citizenship that have
more to do with forgetting than with critical learning. Collectively, they provide varied suggestions for

rescuing modes of critical agency and social grievances that have been abandoned or orphaned to the
dictates of global neoliberalism, a punishing state and a systemic militarization of public life. In opposition to the
attacks on democratic institutions, values and modes of governance, activists all over the globe are offering an
incisive language of analysis, a renewed sense of political commitment, different democratic visions and
a politics of possibility. Political exhaustion and impoverished intellectual visions are fed by the
widely popular assumption that there are no alternatives to the present state of affairs. Within the increasing corporatization of everyday
life, market values trump ethical considerations enabling the economically privileged and financial elite to retreat into the safe, privatized enclaves of family, religion and consumption. Those
without the luxury of such choices pay a terrible price in the form of material suffering and the emotional hardship and political disempowerment that are its constant companions. Even those
who live in the relative comfort of the middle classes must struggle with a poverty of time in an era in which the majority must work more than they ever have to make ends meet. Moreover, in
the face of the 2008 economic crisis caused by gangster financial service institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Barclay and Merrill Lynch, among
others, the middle class is dissolving into the jaws of a death-machine that has robbed them of their homes, health care, jobs and dignity. The ruling elites have taken flight from any sense of
social and ethical responsibility and their willing and active repression of conscience has opened the door to new forms of authoritarianism in which the arrogance of corporate power finds its

Some contemporary theorists suggest that politics as a site of contestation,

critical exchange and engagement is in a state of terminal arrest or has simply come to an end. However, too little
attention is paid to what it means to think through how the struggle over democracy is
underside in a hatred of all others that threaten its power.

inextricably linked to creating and sustaining public spheres where individuals can be engaged as
political agents equipped with the skills, capacities and knowledge they need not only as autonomous

political agents but also to believe that such struggles are worth taking up. The growth of
cynicism in American society may say less about the reputed apathy of the populace than about
the bankruptcy of the old political languages and the need for a new language and vision for
clarifying intellectual, ethical, economic and political projects, especially as they work to reframe
questions of agency, ethics and meaning for a substantive democracy. In opposition to the attacks on critical
thought, engaged citizenship, the discourse of hope and the erosion of "the public character of spaces, relations, and
institutions,"[xx] young people, workers, intellectuals, artists and environmentalists are once again

taking seriously Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's insistence "to hang on to intellectual and real
freedom" and to ensure that thinking does not become "immune to the suggestion of the status

quo,"[xxi] thus losing its "secure hold on possibility."[xxii] Increasingly, young people and others concerned about a substantive democracy are taking political stands; they are becoming
more willing to cross boundaries, join questions of understanding and power, and bring into being with passion and conscience new ways of engaging with the world. In doing so, this diverse
group of activists, intellectuals and concerned global citizens is intervening in the world on several registers. Such groups, while in their infancy, are determined to unmask society's most
pernicious myths, restage power in productive ways, rescue the promise of social agency from those places where it has been denied, and further the ethical and political imperative to provide an
accurate historical account of the racial state and racial power. More and more, youths and others marginalized by race and class are refusing the dominant scripts of official authority and the
limitations they impose upon individual and social agency. Progressives and oppositional groups are rethinking what it would mean to engage spaces of neglect and human suffering such as
schools, shelters, food banks, union halls and other sites of potential resistance as starting points from which to build unfamiliar, potential worlds of hope, learning and struggle. In the process of
thinking seriously about structures of power, state formation, race, sexuality, technology, class and pedagogy, these new modes of resistance never substitute moral indignation for the hard work
of contributing to critical education and enabling people to expand the horizons of their own sense of agency and collectively challenge structures of power. From Qubec and Athens to Paris
and New York City, these emerging collective movements bristle with a deeply rooted refusal to serve up well-worn and obvious truths, reinforce existing relations of power or bid retreat to an

What emerges in these distinct but politically

allied voices is a pedagogy of disruption, critique, recovery and possibility, one that recognizes that viable
politics cannot exist without will and awareness, and that critical education motivates and provides a crucial
foundation for understanding and intervening in the world. Freedom in this discourse means learning
how to think critically and act courageously - refusing to substitute empowering forms of education for mind-deadening
training and numbing methods of memorizing data and test taking. Collectively these emerging movements of
resistance are developing an understanding of politics that demands not only a new language but
also necessitates a broader vision, sense of organization and robust strategies that are critical and visionary. This
commitment translates into a pedagogy and politics capable of illuminating the anti-democratic
forces and sites that threaten human life; at the same time, its visionary nature cracks open the present
to reveal new horizons, different futures and the promise of a global democracy. And yet, under the reign of casino
official rendering of common sense that promotes "a corrosive and demoralizing silence."[xxiii]

capitalism, racist xenophobic nationalisms and other anti-democratic forces, notions of citizenship are increasingly privatized, commodified or subject to various religious and ideological
fundamentalisms that feed a sense of powerlessness and disengagement from democratic struggles, if not politics itself. The culture of cruelty is alive and well as casino capitalism presents
misfortune as a weakness and the logic of the market instructs individuals to rely on their own wits if they fall on hard times, especially because the state has washed its hands of any
responsibility for the fate of its citizens. Hope is in the air, but it is crucial to recognize that the creeping authoritarianism descending upon the United States will not give up power easily, if at all.

an impatient patience proceeds slowly and persistently offers the formative culture
necessary for feeding a radical imagination waiting to manifest itself concretely in a new vision,
Consequently,

social movement and fierce urgency of struggle.

Reject their expertise its a manifestation of neoliberal

governmentality that renders key issues such as poverty,
welfare, achievement gaps and HIV/AIDs spread apolitical
guts any chance of mobilizing the public and solving the
problems that disproportionately affects people of color
Spence 13
Lester Spence, I am an Associate Professor of Political Science and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins
University. Im particularly interested in inequality (and resistance to it) in the wake of the neoliberal
turn. The Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and
Society, 14:3-4, 139-159. 2012.

I noted the role expertise plays. In each anecdote we see expertise deployed in such a way
as to render the problem under consideration technical as opposed to political. This is most
apparent in the edu- cation casethe solution to the racial achievement gap is not organizing parents and teachers to rail against budget cuts. Rather its to properly incentivize
students using techniques based on careful peer-reviewed social science research. A related
type of expertise played a central role in the HIV=AIDS campaignexperts helped devise
the media ads used, experts were used to helped generate the most productive testing
regiment. Pastor Robinson uses biblical expertise, but he also uses expert-designed financial
packets to teach his churchgoers the rudimentary aspects of financial literacy. Expertise works in these cases to render them apolitical and technical. And in
two of the three cases it works in them to render them measur- ableFryer and the HIV=AIDS experts
possess an array of metrics they can use to examine whether the techniques themselves worked and who they worked on if they did
work. Furthermore they

used aggregate-level statistical data to determine the proper spatial context in which to use the techniques. This is particularly apparent in the health casethe ads
are not only tailored to specific populations deemed to be high risk. They are tailored to

very specific neighbor- hoodsthe billboards in Baltimore for instance appear in some of the poorest black
neighborhoods as well as almost all of the bus stops black Baltimoreans frequent, and this knowledge comes from combin- ing
knowledge of HIV=AIDS rates with knowledge of the race and class demographics of Baltimore neighborhoods. To the extent logical
questions can be raised here, these questions concern technique and even these questions require a certain level of experience and
expert- ise to muster. Relatedly,

these techniques are incredibly mobile, swiftly travelling across

space and across issue area. Fryer was able to take the experi- ment he devised and apply it, with some modifications, to a
range of cities. The HIV=AIDS health promotions campaign was not only eas- ily spread to a number of cities throughout the country,
the technique itself can easily be modified to deal with other similar health issues. And the type of financial empowerment workshops
connected to Pastor Robinsons sermonworkshops themselves conducted by finan- cial expertsare not only conducted in churches.
The Hip Hop Sum- mit Action Network used similar techniques in their hip-hop summits. Now

one might ask, given my

focus on technique, why does this matter? Should we not use expertise of some sort to
solve the problems we face? One reason this matters is because neoliberalism relies on two sets
of technologiestechnologies of subjection and technologies of
subjectivity. Here I focus largely on technologies of subjectivitytechnologies applied to populations that have expressed or
can potentially express the ability to be self-governing according to neoliberal dictates. The techniques above are
designed by experts but they are designed in such a way as to get individuals to govern
themselves, to take control of their own lives through technical modifications in their
own behavior instead of through political organization. And its very important to note that
these techniques work through the desires of the populations they are applied to. In the
education instance kids want to do wellthe research suggests no substantive differences
between black and white desires to do well in school (Carter 2005)and kids want to make
money. In the religious instance, churchgoers want to succeed economically, parti- cularly when
they cannot count on a social safety netand they also want to be right with God. Finally in the public health
example, people want to be healthy, but more than that they want to be attractive. However,
there is a flipside. The techniques above make clear distinctions between populations. The successful
kids are the ones able to properly manifest academic improvement. The healthy men and women are the ones able to main- tain testing
regimes, are the ones who always practice safe-sex, are the ones who always ask (and truthfully answer) questions about sex- ual habits.
Prayerful men and women are the ones who have success- fully wedded their biblical understanding to their lived (fiscal) practice. They
are all, in effect, deemed to be winners. However, while

technologies of subjectivity are used on (and by)

the winners, gradu- ally technologies of subjection are used on (and never by) the losers.
And it becomes very difficult to contest the losers status politically. Using the HIV=AIDS
example, losers are not willing to consistently test themselves, are not willing to
disclose their status, and are not willing to engage in safe sex practiceswho would fight
for them? Given how deadly the disease still is, we view those unable or unwill- ing to continually test themselves, to continually
practice safe sex, and to be open about their sexual history (and to expect such open- ness from their partners) as losers worthy of death,
and this is a pro- duct of the techniques we use to manage and problem-solve this and other problems within black communities. One

reason we should be incredibly skeptical about expertise then is because this specific form
of governmentality (and arguably other forms as well) seem to always involve making decisions about
which populations are worthy of life and which populations are worthy of death. And a range
of austerity policies designed to reduce the amount of life-sustaining resources poor
populations have access to depend on this approachgiven the realities of white
supremacy usually do not turn out well for black (and other non-white) populations. But
another reason is that these techniques and the theories they are based severely simplify the rich
ways black populations attempt to live their lives. They simplify the complications black
men, women, and children have to overcome as their routine every day struggle, they simplify
the various and sundry alternatives we might adopt in order to sustain our lives.

Impacts

Disease
Globalization ensures infectious disease spread global travel
of people and goods rapidly increase deadly virus spread
Blazes, Ryan, Riddle 15
Dr. Blazes is Professor of Tropical Public Health and Medicine at the Uniformed
Services University of the Health Sciences.Dr. Riddle is Senior Research Medical
Officer at the Naval Medical Research Center, and Editor-in-Chief of the BioMed
Central Tropical Diseases, Travel Medicine and Vaccine Journal. Dr. Ryan is a
Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard School of Public
Health, the Director of Global Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General
Hospital, and a previous President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and
Hygiene. The local importance of global infectious diseases, Tropical Diseases,
Travel Medicine and Vaccines. 2015.
Dengue in Tokyo and Key West. Leishmaniasis in Madrid and Texas. Chikungunya in Ravenna
and Puerto Rico. SARS in Toronto. Ebola in Dallas. And measles everywhere. Po pulation

growth, globalization, climate change and urbanization together are

reshaping the context upon which we must consider the global spread of emerging
and historically tropical infectious diseases and their interface with non-communicable
diseases of transitioning societies. We live on a crowded and interconnected
planet, with a projected global human population of at least 9 billion by
2050. Public health advances such as safe water, adequate sanitation, antibiotics, vaccines
and balanced nutrition programs have extended overall life expectancy, even in remote,
under-developed settings. The resulting unprecedented population surge

has
contributed to numerous challenges that will increasingly serve as
counter-balances to these public health advances and will synergize
with other inter-related factors such globalization, climate change and
urbanization to contribute to the spread of dangerous infectious
diseases.International travel and immigration increase each year, with
more than 1 billion humans crossing international borders in 2013 alone [2]. Many cross to
embrace economic opportunities or to escape war or disaster. Many also
travel to visit family or friends, or for business, education or leisure
purposes. Exotic, remote and dangerous locationsoften lacking public health
infrastructureare increasingly common destinations for travelers as well
as sources of immigrants to the developed world. This smaller world effect
brings with it much good in terms of societal connectedness and economic stimulation, but
also individual risk to the traveler and the opportunity for spread of

disease upon return. Our current age of globalization also involves the

increasingly rapid and direct transportation of food and other products

that can introduce or facilitate disease transmission, whether it be
cyclosporiasis associated with Latin America raspberries, [3] enterohemorrhagic E. coli
infection associated with Middle Eastern fenugreek sprouts, [4] monkeypox from pet Gambian
rats and prairie dogs, [5] or introduction into the US of Aedes albopictus (the Asian Tiger
mosquito and potential vector of dengue and chikungunya) via imported used-tires from Asia
[6]. Evolving global climate change and severe weather events can also

be expected to have significant impacts on the distribution, spread and

burden of many tropical and global infections; unfortunately, we just do not yet

have the ability to accurately predict what these impacts will be.

Two obvious areas

that warrant special surveillance are vector-borne and water-borne
diseases. For instance, regional burdens of malaria, dengue and
chikungunya may all increase with the effect of increasing temperature
on their mosquito vectors, and cholera and leptospirosis can increase
in the setting of flooding associated with severe weather events [7]. The
effect of severe weather on fragile health infrastructures will further
undermine detection and control efforts, facilitating spread of
pathogens. As the climate changes, unpredictable outcomes are also very likely, as
humans alter their behavior in the setting of changing ecosystems, potentially increasing
the likelihood of introducing new zoonotic infections into human
populations.The urbanization of the human population is impacting
the risk of transmission of many infectious agents. Currently, more than 80 %
of humans live in developing countries, and more than half of these people now live in urban
settings, many in informal settlement or slum conditions
(esa.un.org/unpd/wup/FinalReport/WUP2014.pdf Accessed 12 June 2015). This dense

concentration of people lacking appropriate infrastructure support

facilitates the transmission of contagious diseases while providing a ready
source of susceptible individuals, whether it be influenza, typhoid fever or
Ebola. Very real progress has been made in bending the curve of infant and child mortality,
though there is still a long way to go. The anticipated health, demographic and economic
dividends of such an achievement has observed and anticipated consequences. However, with
resultant increased life expectancy, the rise in cardiovascular and other chronic diseases
represents a double burden. Scarce dollars will need to be effectively managed to address all
population health issues. We must face the reality that emerging infections

are the norm and infections previously confined to one geographic

location are now often globally relevant. Non-communicable diseases are
extremely important, but we need not lose sight of the fact that infectious diseases still
account for significant mortality and morbidity. Projections suggest that over the

next few decades, infectious diseases will still account for one of five
deaths globally [8]. Vaccines have been a major advancement with millions of deaths
prevented each year by vaccination. However, challenges lay ahead in expanding
the availability of existing vaccines to those in most need,
development of new vaccines for malaria, HIV, dengue and enteric
pathogens, and a dwindling capacity to add more vaccines to programs
of immunization. Eradication (such as with current polio efforts) may alleviate the latter
issue, though better delivery and program management science is needed to achieve more
timely and cost-effective success. There are, however, many infectious disease

challenges for which vaccines are not likely to be solutions, such as

less common neglected tropical infections, the misuse of antimicrobials
agents, the emergence and spread of multi-drug resistant organisms,
and the rate of nosocomial infections. These all suggest that, even in resource-rich
environments, we still need to make significant investments in combating infectious pathogens
through advancements in policy.

Environment
Neoliberalism necessitates endless production and
consumption cycles that destroy the environment and make
warming inevitable
Movahed 16

Masoud Movahed is a researcher in development economics at New York University.

He contributes to, among others, Harvard Economics Review, Yale Journal of
International Affairs and Al Jazeera English., Feb 15, 2016, Does capitalism have to
be bad for the environment, World Economic Forum, 6/23/16,
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/does-capitalism-have-to-be-bad-for-theenvironment/
Ecologists and environmental scientists often take overpopulation and the subsequent exploitation of natural resources as the point of
departure in their prognoses of environmental crises. While refusing to look beyond what seems to be the roots of the malaise, they
argue that overpopulation compounded with unbridled industrial activity leads to

environmental disasters such as global warming, climate change, acid

deposition, soil degradation, air and water pollution .There is no denying that overpopulation, and
indeed, the massive industrial outputs of both developed and developing
countries, do have irrevocably deleterious impact on the climate. But what is often
omitted in their diagnoses is the environmental hazards inherent to the
dynamics of capitalism as a universal economic system . Capitalism - defined as production for
profit for a competitive market - is an economic system in which the private profit-maximization motif lies at the core of its virtues and
maladies. Its virtues are embedded in its impressive productivity and growth rates. The profit-maximization logic

induces the producers to specialize in what they are best at producing and
invest in the latest technologies to increase productivity and efficiency. The
profit-maximization motif also provides incentives for entrepreneurs to
increase productivity on a large scale to optimize profit . The same profit-maximization
motif, too, enables economic agents to allocate resources in such ways that
are conducive to growth and dynamism. Compelled by the competitive force of the
market, firms find it rational to invest in cost-cutting technologies, which allow them to resist the pressure that comes for their
peers in the marketplace. This altogether leads to a virtuous cycle of efficiency,
productivity, and optimized profit. Examples of success in terms of growth rates are numerous in the modern
history of capitalism. The massive industrial development of England in the 18th and 19th centuries, the United States as early capitalist
developers prior to the two devastating World Wars, the remarkable growth of rates western Europe (i.e. Germany, France, Italy,) in the
post-war era followed by Japan in the last half a century, the rise of the East Asian Tigers and, of course more recently, the Chinese
leviathan are the conspicuous examples of stunning economic development in contemporary capitalism. So what is the problem? After
all, if capitalism has been very successful in projecting itself as the engine of productivity and growth, why should it be blamed for
environmental disasters? It is herein that the very core dynamics of capitalism that generate its virtues, also cause its maladies.

Capitalism requires endless growth of production in order to remain

stable, raise the standards of living, and produce ample employment
for the young and increasing world population. Production itself is contingent on
consumption. Without sufficient consumption, which creates more demands for production, the production cycle would be paralyzed.

Consumption is thus the flip side of the coin of a thriving production cycle. But while
capitalism stimulates tremendous productivity rates, it biases productivity towards more
consumption to ensure that the production process is not impeded. Therefore, mass
consumption - or consumerism - is not merely a cultural phenomenon. It is embedded in the core tenets of
capitalism as an economic system. The higher consumption, the higher production, the
higher production, the higher sales, and with higher sales, higher profits are generated,
which are largely re-invested in the sustainability of the firm or the business-unit. But if we
live in a finite planet with limited ecological and natural resources that ought to be
preserved for sustainability purposes, how than, can we resolve this contradiction? If the

carrying capacity of the world cannot sustain endless consumption and production, there is
clearly a contradiction at stake here. This contradiction naturally raises the more important question: how to reconcile
the quandary of maintaining a capitalist system that meets necessary growth rates to remain stable on the one hand, and simultaneously
contain the environmental hazards that threaten our planet on the other?

Captialism dooms climate change solutions and ignores

ecological crisis
Clarke 14
April 26, 2014, Climate change is evidence of the death-wish of capitalism, GreenLeft, June 23, 2016,
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/56313
If modern industrial capitalism were a person, he or she would be on suicide watch. The
system that has brought us quantum physics and reality television, modern medicine and the
columns of Andrew Bolt is set on a course which, by all the best reckoning, points directly to its
doing itself in. If capitalism goes on everything goes. Climate, coastlines, most living
species, food supplies, the great bulk of humanity. And certainly, the preconditions for
advanced civilization, perhaps forever. Moreover, were not just talking risk, in the sense of an
off-chance. These are the most likely outcomes for capitalisms current policies and
performance in the area of climate change. As far back as 2010 the famed US paleo
climatologist Lonnie Thompson told a gathering of scientists in Phoenix, Arizona:
Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group Why then are climatologists
speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are
now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization. Rulers in
the capitalist world are not remotely contemplating action on the scale needed to contain the
crisis. In recent years, the Climate Action Tracker, a scientific partnership that includes
Germanys high-powered Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has issued an annual
report detailing the climate commitments of governments around the world, and spelling out
the implications for global warming. The most recent report, from last November, concludes:
Weak government action on climate change will lead to a projected 3.7C of warming by
2100. Almost certainly, though, the warming that will result if action is limited to current
promises will be much greater than this. Like the reports issued in recent months by the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Climate Action Tracker figures
do not take account of so-called slow feedbacks. These are factors, such as the melting of
polar ice and releases of greenhouse gases from melting permafrost, that cut in only on a timeframe of decades to centuries. What is it about capitalism that the system willfully pursues
strategies that look certain to bring about its own demise? The answer lies in the fact that
while an unaddressed climate crisis will be lethal to capitalism, the solutions to the crisis also
promise to bring the system down and sooner. The capitalists dilemma becomes clearer if
we list some of the key measures required: At least two-thirds of proven fossil fuel reserves
need to be left in the ground. That is billions of dollars effectively written off. Material and
financial resources need to be reoriented, in a concerted way, from the pursuit of maximum
profit toward achieving rapid declines in greenhouse gas emissions. This reorientation of the
economy will need to include a large element of direct state spending, structured around longterm planning and backed by tightening regulation. Schemes such as carbon pricing cannot
play more than a limited, subsidiary role. To keep mass living standards at the highest levels
consistent with these measures, and ensure popular support, the main costs of the
reorientation need to be levied on the wealthy. Can anyone imagine the worlds capitalist elites
agreeing to such measures, except perhaps under the most extreme popular pressure? To
address just the first point, the underground reserves of fossil fuels owned by energy
companies make up a large slice of the capitalization of stock markets around the world. If the
bulk of these assets were written off, the shock to global capitalism would be cataclysmic. The
capitalists as a class would resist such a move furiously, and indeed violently. Ironically, saving
the climate would not be particularly expensive compared with outlays the capitalist system
regularly makes particularly on its armed forces. The IPCC calculates that the cost of
keeping global temperature rises to 2C would be to reduce the median annual growth of
consumption over this century by a mere 0.06%. The problem is not the overall cost, but the
priorities and compulsions of capitalism. At the core of humanitys climate quandary is the fact
that it is hard to imagine a system less suited to halting climate change than the one that now

rules us. Capitalist firms have no choice but to try to maximize profits and growth rather than
address social needs. If they fail to concentrate on these private priorities, they are soon
outcompeted and ruined. In strictly private terms, carbon polluting can make for a killer
bottom line. But this privately rational choice will, in time, be collectively catastrophic.
Something of the same logic applies on the international scale. National capitalist classes are
compelled to compete against one another. Defending the collective profitability of their
backers, each capitalist government seeks to be the last to sign on to emissions abatement
agreements, while making the weakest undertakings. Under fire from environmentalists,
capitalist governments promote measures designed to make green investing more profitable
than the alternatives. But these schemes are not remotely adequate. Climate scientist Kevin
Anderson argues convincingly that the marginal changes in investment that result from ploys
such as carbon markets are completely insufficient for bringing about the cuts in emissions
as much as 10% a year in the case of advanced countries that are needed. A further reason
why capitalism is so poorly suited to dealing with climate change is the systems inherent
short-termism. Typically, companies aim to invest capital and secure returns over a cycle
lasting five years or less. If firms spend big sums on long-term goals, their overall capital
turnover tends to be slower than that of their rivals, and their profitability falls. Before long
they are out of business. Dealing with climate change, however, requires investing now to halt
processes whose effects may only become lethal in another half-century. Capitalism has great
difficulty looking that far ahead. Of course, the system has a collective instrument the state
designed to referee conflicts between capitalists and ensure that the overriding interests of
their class are defended. But what if most capitalists decide that long-term action to combat
climate change would threaten their near-term profits? And what if the state itself is captured
by a few huge corporations that are also big polluters? What if a decision of the US Supreme
Court allows big fossil fuel corporations to buy the Congress? What if Clive Palmer takes his
coal billions and sets out to win the balance of power in the Australian Senate? The timelines of
climate catastrophe are long, and in capitalisms systemic suicide it is not, on the whole,
todays corporate chiefs who are fated to perish. Theirs is strictly a proxy death-wish. The brief,
unhappy lives and early graves are to be the lot, mostly, of future generations. As the
renowned American philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky put it recently, In the moral
calculus of capitalism, greater profits in the next quarter outweigh the fate of your
grandchildren. All the more reason for working people, who have no stake in the survival of
capitalism, to consign the system to the historical dumpster.

Neoliberal solutions to the environment fail and plays up

sexist, racist and discriminatory political subjectivities
Parr 15

Adrian Parr, Taft Research Center, UNESCO co-chair of water, The University of Cincinnati, OH, USA, 20
April 2015, The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics Reflections,
GEOFORUM, 6/26/16, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515000767
In retrospect I wonder if I should have opened The Wrath of Capital with my closing remarks: I close with the following proposition,
which I mean in the most optimistic sense possible: our politics must start from the point that after 2050 it may all be over. (Parr, 2013:
147). The emphasis here is on maybe. A future world of rising oceans, extreme weather events, species extinction, pollution, and

If the human race continues on its current course, then the earth
could very well become an inhospitable place for a great many species, people included. To
change course though, humanity needs to begin with a healthy dose of critical realism and an
optimistic understanding of the political opportunities climate change presents. Using a
increasing inequity is not inevitable.

neoliberal framework to craft solutions to climate change produces a

vicious circle that reinstates the selfsame social organization and
broader sociocultural and economic structures that have led to global
climate change. The Wrath of Capital shows that climate change is not just an economic,

cultural, or technological challenge. It is a political dilemma. Rigorous thinking and

broadening our understanding of flourishing and emancipatory politics are important
resources we can use to counter the narrow-minded view that the free market will solve the
challenges climate change poses. The central focus of The Wrath of Capital is how opportunity is put to work in
climate change politics. Is it a moralizing or political operation? The conclusion I draw is that thus far the neoliberal

framework of climate change politics has turned it into a moralizing discourse. For as I show
the discourse exposes a racist, sexist, privileged political subject who
points the finger of blame in the direction of underdeveloped countries overpopulating the
earth, the Chinese polluting the atmosphere, primitive societies in need of modernizing
their economies and governments, and an inefficient and ineffectual public sphere that
should hand the ownership and management of common pool resources over to the private
sector. All are moralizing arguments presented under the umbrella of climate change
solutions. It is therefore important we recognize these are not political arguments. Arguments of this kind do not
view the opportunity in question as a platform for transforming otherwise oppressive,
exploitative, and coercive power relations. To briefly restate the argument I develop. I start with a now well known
and oft cited fact that the scientific

consensus is human activities are changing

global climate. If this situation continues predictions for the future of all life on earth

are far from good, and by some accounts these are quite simply catastrophic. Obviously we need to change course but
the lingering question is how to do this? Unsurprisingly, given the prevailing economic and political influence neoliberalism currently
has, solutions to the question of what to do about climate change have used a neoliberal point of reference. The principles of the free
market, privatization, individualism, consumerism, and competition all shape the current direction of climate change politics. In the book

climate capitalism that has

led to the creation of a market in pollution (cap and trade, or emissions trading) which has
placed the limits climate change poses for capitalism back in the service of capital
accumulation. Vast tracts of land have accordingly been turned into green energy farms
(solar panels or wind farms), which in theory is a fabulous idea, but when practiced unchecked leads
to land grabbing. Another form of land appropriation taking place under the guise of climate change solutions
is the greening of cities. Green urbanism, as it is commonly called, refers to modifying cities so as
to make them more environmentally friendly. This involves the creation of bike paths, green roofs, public
I describe how the logic of the free market has resulted in a new brand of capitalism

transportation, green spaces, pedestrian friendly cities, efficient land use policies, and energy efficient buildings; all fabulous initiatives

Green
urbanism in Chicago has also been used to justify demolishing public housing in a city where
land values are growing and the poor are turned out on to the rental market with vouchers
in hand designed to offset the higher rental costs. David Harvey fittingly calls this accumulation by
dispossession, when public wealth is privatized and the poor are displaced (Harvey, 2003).
that potentially could improve the lives of all city dwellers. I show how green urbanism trumps equitable urbanism.

Overconsumption causes a cascade of failing ecosystem services that overwhelms

management and conservation
Ehrlich & Ehrlich 13
Paul Ehrlich is a professor of Biology and President of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, and Adjunct
Professor at the University of Technology. Anne Ehrlich is a Senior Research Scientist in Biology at Stanford, Can a collapse of
global civilization be avoided?, January 9, 2013, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences)
But today, for the first time, humanity's global civilizationthe worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly
technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded is

threatened with collapse by an

array of environmental problems. Humankind finds itself engaged in what Prince Charles described as an act
of suicide on a grand scale [4], facing what the UK's Chief Scientific Advisor John Beddington called a perfect storm
of environmental problems [5]. The most serious of these problems show signs of rapidly escalating
severity, especially climate disruption. But other elements could potentially also contribute to a collapse: an
accelerating extinction of animal and plant populations and species, which could lead to a loss of
ecosystem services essential for human survival; land degradation and land-use change; a pole-to-pole
spread of toxic compounds; ocean acidification and eutrophication (dead zones); worsening of some aspects of
the epidemiological environment (factors that make human populations susceptible to infectious diseases); depletion of
increasingly scarce resources [6,7], including especially groundwater, which is being overexploited in many key

agricultural areas [8]; and

resource wars [9]. These are not separate problems; rather they interact in two
gigantic complex adaptive systems: the biosphere system and the human socio-economic system.
The negative manifestations of these interactions are often referred to as the human predicament [10], and determining how to
prevent it from generating a global collapse is perhaps the foremost challenge confronting humanity. The human

predicament is driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and the use of unnecessarily
environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens
aggregate consumption [1117]. How far the human population size now is above the planet's long-term carrying capacity is
suggested (conservatively) by ecological footprint analysis [1820]. It shows that to

support today's population of

seven billion sustainably (i.e. with business as usual, including current technologies and standards of living) would
require roughly half an additional planet; to do so, if all citizens of Earth consumed resources at
the US level would take four to five more Earths. Adding the projected 2.5 billion more people by 2050 would
make the human assault on civilization's life-support systems disproportionately worse, because almost everywhere
people face systems with nonlinear responses [11,2123], in which environmental damage increases
at a rate that becomes faster with each additional person. Of course, the claim is often made that
humanity will expand Earth's carrying capacity dramatically with technological innovation [24], but it
is widely recognized that technologies can both add and subtract from carrying capacity. The plough
evidently first expanded it and now appears to be reducing it [3]. Overall, careful analysis of the prospects does not
provide much confidence that technology will save us [25] or that gross domestic product can be
disengaged from resource use [26].

Heg

America pursuit of hegemony is wrapped up

in free market ideology and a political
agenda that encourages privatization, war
and economic decline in developing countries
Chossudovsky 16
Michel Chossudovsky, Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics
(emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on
Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He has taught as visiting professor in
Western Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Latin America. He has served as economic adviser to
governments of developing countries and has acted as a consultant for several international
organizations. He is the author of eleven books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New
World Order (2003), Americas War on Terrorism (2005), The Global Economic Crisis, The Great
Depression of the Twenty-first Century (2009) (Editor), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers
of Nuclear War (2011), The Globalization of War, America's Long War against Humanity (2015). He is a
contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty
languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings
on NATO's war of aggression against Yugoslavia. June 16 2016 Neoliberalism and The Globalization of
War. Americas Hegemonic Project, Global Research, June 22 2016,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/neoliberalism-and-the-globalization-of-war-americas-hegemonicproject/5531125

The United States and its allies have

launched a military adventure which threatens the future of
humanity. Major military and covert intelligence operations are
being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern
Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The
US-NATO military agenda combines both major theater
operations as well as covert actions geared towards
destabilizing sovereign states. Americas hegemonic project is
to destabilize and destroy countries through acts of war,
covert operations in support of terrorist organizations, regime
change and economic warfare. The latter includes the
imposition of deadly macro-economic reforms on indebted
countries as well the manipulation of financial markets, the
engineered collapse of national currencies, the privatization of
State property, the imposition of economic sanctions, the
triggering of inflation and black markets. The economic dimensions of this
military agenda must be clearly understood. War and Globalization are
intimately related. These military and intelligence operations are implemented alongside a
The world is at a dangerous crossroads.

process of economic and political destabilization targeting specific countries in all major regions of

Neoliberalism is an integral part of this foreign policy

agenda. It constitutes an all-encompassing mechanism of
economic destabilization. Since the 1997 Asian crisis, the IMF-World Bank structural
World.

adjustment program (SAP) has evolved towards a broader framework which consists in ultimately

undermining national governments ability to formulate and implement national economic and social

the demise of national sovereignty was also

facilitated by the instatement of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) in 1995, evolving towards the global trading
agreements (TTIP and TPP) which (if adopted) would
essentially transfer state policy entirely into the hands of
corporations. In recent years, neoliberalism has extend its grip
from the so-called developing countries to the developed
countries of both Eastern and Western Europe. Bankruptcy
programs have been set in motion. Island, Portugal, Greece,
Ireland, etc, have been the target of sweeping austerity
measures coupled with the privatization of key sectors of the
national economy. The global economic crisis is intimately
related to Americas hegemonic agenda. In the US and the EU, a spiraling
policies. In turn,

defense budget backlashes on the civilian sectors of economic activity. War is Good for Business: the
powerful financial groups which routinely manipulate stock markets, currency and commodity markets,
are also promoting the continuation and escalation of the Middle East war. A worldwide process of
impoverishment is an integral part of the New World Order agenda.

US hegemony is synonymous with global capitalistic

domination directing the world towards nuclear war and
ecological destruction
Foster 5 (John, Professor of Sociology @ the University of Oregon, Editor of the Monthly Review, PhD in Political
Science @ York University, September 2005, Monthly Review, Naked Imperialism,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0905jbf.htm)

The unprecedented dangers of this new global disorder are revealed in the
twin cataclysms to which the world is heading at present: nuclear proliferation and
hence increased chances of the outbreak of nuclear war, and planetary ecological
destruction. These are symbolized by the Bush administrations refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol as a first step in controlling
global warming. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense (in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) Robert
McNamara stated in an article entitled Apocalypse Soon in the MayJune 2005 issue of Foreign Policy: The United
States has never endorsed the policy of no first use, not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have
been and remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weaponsby the decision of one person, the president

The nation
with the greatest conventional military force and the willingness to use it
unilaterally to enlarge its global power is also the nation with the greatest
nuclear force and the readiness to use it whenever it sees fitsetting the whole world on edge. The nation
against either a nuclear or nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is in our interest to do so.

that contributes more to carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming than any other (representing
approximately a quarter of the worlds total) has become the greatest obstacle to addressing global warming and
the worlds growing environmental problems raising

the possibility of the collapse of

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

United States brandishing its nuclear arsenal and refusing to support international agreements on the control of
such weapons, nuclear proliferation is continuing. New nations, such as North Korea, are entering or can be

Terrorist blowback from imperialist wars in the

third world is now a well-recognized reality, generating rising fear of further terrorist attacks in
New York, London, and elsewhere. Such vast and overlapping historical contradictions,
rooted in the combined and uneven development of the global capitalist
economy along with the U.S. drive for planetary domination, foreshadow what is potentially the most
dangerous period in the history of imperialism. The course on which U.S and world
capitalism is now headed points to global barbarismor worse. Yet it is important
to remember that nothing in the development of human history is inevitable. There still
remains an alternative paththe global struggle for a humane, egalitarian, democratic, and
sustainable society.
expected soon to enter the nuclear club.

Poverty
Neoliberalism increases wage inequality, poverty and the
destruction of a social safety net
Claudia von Werlhof 07
Elaboration on a lecture given at a panel discussion with Ferdinand Lacina,
Austrian ExMinister of Finance and Ewald Nowotny, President of the BAWAGBank during the Dallinger Conference, AK Wien, November 21, 2005.
Original German Title: Alternativen zur neoliberalen Globalisierung, oder:
Die Globalisierung des Neoliberalismus und seine Folgen, Wien, Picus 2007
Small, medium, even some bigger enterprises are pushed out of the
market, forced to fold or swallowed by transnational corporations because their performances are below average in comparison
to speculation rather: spookulation wins. The public sector, which has historically been defined as a sector of not-forprofit economy and administration, is slimmed and its profitable parts (gems) handed to corporations (privatized). As a
consequence, social services that are necessary for our existence disappear.

Small and medium private businesses which, until recently, employed 80% of the workforce and
provided normal working conditions are affected by these developments as well. The
alleged correlation between economic growth and secure employment
is false. Where economic growth only means the fusion of businesses, jobs are lost (Mies/Werlhof 2003, p. 7ff); 6 If
there are any new jobs, most are precarious, meaning that they are
only available temporarily and badly paid. One job is usually not
enough to make a living (Ehrenreich 2001). This means that the working conditions in the North become akin to
those in the South and the working conditions of men akin to those of women a trend diametrically opposed to what we have always
been told. Corporations now leave for the South (or East) to use cheap and particularly female labor without union affiliation. This
has already been happening since the 1970s in the Free Production Zones (FPZs, world market factories or
maquiladoras), where most of the worlds computer chips, sneakers, clothes and electronic goods are produced
(Frbel/Heinrichs/Kreye 1977). The FPZs lie in areas where century-old colonial-capitalist

and authoritarian-patriarchal conditions guarantee the availability of

the cheap labor needed (Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies/Werlhof 1988). The recent shift of
business opportunities from consumer goods to armaments is a
particularly troubling development (Chossudovsky 2003). It is not only
commodity production that is outsourced and located in the FPZs,
but service industries as well. This is a result of the so-called Third
Industrial Revolution, meaning the development of new information
and communication technologies. Many jobs have disappeared
entirely due to computerization, also in administrative fields (Frbel et al. 1977). The combination of the
principles of high tech and low wage/no wage (always denied by progress enthusiasts) guarantees a comparative cost
advantage in foreign trade. This will eventually lead to Chinese salaries in the West. A potential loss of Western consumers is not seen
as a threat. A corporate economy does not care whether consumers are European, Chinese or Indian. The means of production become
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, especially since finance capital rendered precarious itself controls asset value ever more
aggressively. New forms of private property are created, not least through the clearance of public property and the transformation of
formerly public and small-scale private services and industries to a corporate business sector. This concerns primarily fields that have
long been (at least partly) excluded from the logics of profit e.g. education, health, energy, or water supply/disposal. New forms of socalled enclosures emerge from todays total commercialization of formerly small-scale private or public industries and services, of the
commons, and of natural resources like oceans, rain forests, regions of genetic diversity or geopolitical interest (e.g. potential pipeline
routes), etc. (Isla 2005). As far as the new virtual spaces and communication networks go, we are witnessing frantic efforts to bring these
under private control as well (Hepburn 2005). 7 All these new forms of private property are essentially created by (more or less)
predatory forms of appropriation. In this sense, they are a modified continuation of the history of socalled original accumulation
(Werlhof 1991, 2003a) which has expanded globally following to the motto: Growth through expropriation! Most people

have less and less access to the means of production, and so the
dependence on scarce and underpaid work increases. The destruction
of the welfare state also destroys the notion that individuals can rely
on the community to provide for them in times of need . Our existence relies

exclusively on private, i.e. expensive, services that are often of much worse quality and much less reliable than public services. (It is a
myth that the private always outdoes the public.) What we are experiencing is undersupply formerly only known by the colonial South.
The old claim that the South will eventually develop into the North is proven wrong. It is the North that increasingly develops into the
South. We are witnessing the latest form of development: namely, a world system of underdevelopment (Frank 1969). Development
and underdevelopment go hand in hand (Mies 2005). This might even dawn on development aid workers soon. It is usually women
who are called upon to counterbalance underdevelopment through increased work (service provisions) in the household. As a result,
the workload and underpay of women takes on horrendous dimensions: they do unpaid work inside their homes and poorly paid
housewifized work outside (Bennholdt-Thomsen et al. 1988). Yet, commercialization does not stop in front of the homes doors either.
Even housework becomes commercially co-opted (new maid question), with hardly any financial benefits for the women who do the
work (Werlhof 2004). Not least because of this, women are increasingly coerced into prostitution (Isla 2003, 2005), one of todays
biggest global industries. This illustrates two things: a) how little the emancipation of women actually leads to equal terms with
men; and b) that capitalist development does not imply increased freedom in wage labor relations, as the Left has claimed for a long
time (Wallerstein 1979). If the latter was the case, then neoliberalism would mean the voluntary end of capitalism once it reaches its
furthest extension. This, however, does not appear likely. Today, hundreds of millions of quasi-

slaves, more than ever before, exist in the world system (Bales
2001). The authoritarian model of the Free Production Zones is
conquering the East and threatening the North. The redistribution of
wealth runs ever more and with ever accelerated speed from the
bottom to the top. The gap between the rich and the poor has never
been wider. The middle classes disappear. This is the situation we are
facing. 8 It becomes obvious that neoliberalism marks not the end of
colonialism but, to the contrary, the colonization of the North. This
new colonization of the world (Mies 2005) points back to the beginnings of the

modern world system in the long 16th century (Wallerstein 1979, Frank 2005, Mies
1986), when the conquering of the Americas, their exploitation and colonial transformation
allowed for the rise and development of Europe. The so-called childrens diseases of
modernity keep on haunting it, even in old age. They are, in fact, the main feature of modernitys latest stage.
They are expanding instead of disappearing. Where there is no South, there is no North; where there is no periphery, there is no center;
where there is no colony, there is no in any case no Western civilization (Werlhof 2007a).

Neoliberal interests are self-fufilling, erode the working class

and result in esclatory worker conflicts in developing nations
Calleja Jr. 13
Robert J. Calleja Jr. is a Robert J. Calleja Jr. Neoliberalism and Genocide: The
Desenitization of Global Politics, Masters of Science Degree Requirement.
May 2013.
https://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110537/content/Calleja_asu_0010N_12955.pdf)
Siswo Pramono (2003) crafts a compelling argument, that if genocide is a policy that leads to the destruction of a particular group,
prompting the collapse of a whole society, then it is worth discussing how neoliberalism might possess a genocidal mentality. Pramono
(2003) is concerned with the working class and argues that: Neoliberalism is by nature genocidal

(and suicidal) because in order to survive, it has to eat its own tail. In
other words, by 'killing' the working class, capitalism is digging its
own grave. When the working class is dying, society is dying, which at
the end will lead to the death of capitalism itself (p. 121). The
significance is that neoliberalism not only impairs the global
economy, but it can potentially undermine human society as values
and the free market is determined through the lenses of
neoliberalism. Thus, human society is transformed into a market society based on laissez-faire capitalism
resulting in the corrosion of the value of work and worker as an
integral part of social structure (Pramono, 2003, p. 122). Pramonos argument revolves around the
importance of employment for maintaining an orderly society.
Employment imposes social control on people as work creates order
by addressing the individual self-interest of earning wages, 59 keeps

them busy and contributing something of worth to society.

Unemployment removes societal control over people and leads to
disorganization, potentially transforming the industrious working
class into a violent mob or law-breakers. As Robert Prasch (2012) warns, the public
might actually engage in civil disobedience or rebellion if they feel
abandoned by the state. The loss of employment also leads to
distress and intensifies as the quality of life declines due to the loss
of wages, particularly in developing countries. Neoliberal global
politics incite anger, rage, and the motive for retaliation and harm
doing (Staub, 1989; see also Pramono 2003, p. 129), as frustration
builds over the suffering experienced by the unemployed. Conflict and
violence can arise as the unemployed turn their frustration towards
those who they feel are responsible for their bleak outlook. Negative growth
shocks make it easier for armed militia groups which are often major combatants in Africas civil wars to recruit fighters from an
expanding pool of underemployed youths (Miguel, Satyanath, & Sregenti, 2004, p. 728). This offers groups challenging state power, or
blaming the state for suffering, a potential pool of youths to recruit. The discussion of Neoliberalism thus far has analyzed how structural
adjustment policies mandated by international financial institutions like the IMF, WTO, and World Bank assist with the short-term
development of Global South states, but become problematic in the long-term. Primary concerns are the

decrease of social programs resulting from funding cut to meet debt

obligations to financial institutions, the rise in unemployment, and
the introduction of business practices that dehumanizes employees
while desensitizing administrators to the needs and 60 suffering of
workers. These are important factors as they are precursors to violent
activities.

War
Globalization causes multiple flashpoints for war and
nuclear conflict
Malcomson 15
Scott Malcomson is a political-risk and communications consultant and visiting media fellow at the
Carnegie Corporation's international peace and security program. He has been a senior advisor at the
US. State Department and the United Nations, director of communications at International Crisis Group
and the Berggruen Institute, and foreign editor of the New York Times Magazine (2004-2011). He is a
member of the Council on Foreign Relations and PEN, and has lectured widely in Europe, China and the
United States. Does Globalization cause war?, Huffington Post. 1/28/2015.
The argument that globalization does not necessarily lead to peace is a pretty easy one to make, the usual example being that GermanBritish trade was going brilliantly right up to World War I. Arguing that globalization leads to war is an altogether different enterprise.
In his new book, When Globalization Fails: The End of Pax Americana, James Macdonald comes daringly close to showing that
globalization, as a system of interdependence among major states, is an inherently unstable system that breeds insecurity among great
powers. The interdependence feeds the insecurity. Macdonald squeezes a lot into a book of some 250 pages. He traces, from the 1820s
to the present, the pendulum swings between open economies at one end and closed, protected ones at the other. Because

mainstream economics today

with its central tenet of the pursuit of comparative advantage by economic

favors free trade, and because the benefits of free trade over the past 25 years seem so
we see relatively little discussion of the benefits of autarky or of
protectionism. Macdonald corrects this. He is by no means against trade or globalization, nor is he arguing for protection.
actors such as states
obvious,

He approaches the topic as a historian, with a dispassion that probably served him well over a long career as an investment banker.
(He is the author also of A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy, from 2006, which despite its title is about
empowerment.) Hes simply trying to see the world as it is and to describe it with clarity. Protection, as a way to ensure selfsufficiency and therefore (as it was thought) national security, was more or less the norm until the 19th century and industrialization.
As Macdonald writes: The Industrial Revolution led to mass migration from the country to the new manufacturing towns. Although
industrialization was accompanied by an agricultural revolution that constantly increased food output, there was a growing shortfall
between what the countryside could produce and the needs of the growing urban population. At the same time, the factories were
turning out a quantity of manufactured goods that was greater than could be easily absorbed within the country and for which overseas
markets were required. The solution to both these problems was free trade, which would open Britain to imports of cheap food, and
foreign countries to exports of British manufactures. The connection between this and peace was made by, among others, Richard
Cobden, the great advocate of free trade, who sought to break down the barriers that separate nations. . .behind which nestle the
feelings of pride, revenge, hatred, and jealousy, which every now and then burst their bonds, and deluge whole countries with blood;
those feelings which nourish the poison of war and conquest, which assert that without conquest we can have no trade, which foster
that lust for conquest and dominion which sends forth your warrior chiefs to sanction devastation through other lands. Cobden saw
trade as the solution to chronic early-modern warring over territory, including imperial expansion. This bright geopolitical possibility
merged powerfully with the economic reality that, in most cases, industrialization without trade or without dependence on other
powers was difficult, and even impossible. The key destabilizers in this system have been the

questions of precedence and of raw materials. Being early to some particular industrial
advance such as steam-powered mills had great advantages; indeed it might be said to create a comparative
advantage where one had not existed before . For a nation coming a bit later
to the game, the emotions Cobden identified pride, revenge, hatred and jealousy
might arise even in a situation of free trade, as the latecomer sensed that it
might find itself at a serious, even permanent, disadvantage . For nations
wishing to catch up, one common recourse was to discourage manufactured
imports until nascent industries could grow strong enough to face
competition from producers based in nations that had had a head start. This
could of course be done in any number of ways, whether the blindly murderous (Soviet collectivization of agriculture and forced
industrialization) or the merely authoritarian (South Korea in the 1960s), and could be variously financed through foreign investment
(the United States after the Civil War), currency manipulation (China in the 1990s) or expropriation . In a few cases, the

other central question access to raw materials could be avoided through

sheer good fortune. The United States has had a great deal of that. Whenever
industrial advance required a new input, whether timber, coal, iron ore, oil,
gas or water, the U.S. always seemed to have enough already on hand . (An
exception is the rare earths needed for todays electronics.) Russia has had similar luck, and so did
China in the 1990s, with ample coal and (for a time) oil. Britains coal and iron ore supplies were

likewise crucial to its early industrial expansion. Most nations werent so fortunate. Macdonald is really excellent on describing the
ups and downs of Franco-German competition over iron and coal, which was in many ways the crux of Europes bloody confrontation
with itself from the mid-19th century through World War II. He does the same for Japan, with its longing for the resources of
Manchuria (iron ore and coal; conquest came in 1931) and the East Indies and Malaya (oil, rubber, tin; 1942). Again, as in
industrialization, early movers like Britain and France, to the degree that their imperial expansions in the 19th-century scrambles for
Africa and Asia improved access to raw materials, had created advantages for themselves. Ambitious industrial powers like Japan,
Italy and Germany came to the imperial game late but fiercely in the hope of erasing the precedential advantages of Britain, France
and the U.S. We are nonetheless entering dangerous times. As Macdonald shows, ambitious

nations that did

not already have what they needed to feel that their own
industrialization was secure that is, roughly speaking, every nation except the U.S. and, but for a warmwater port, Russia would become aggressive out of fear. This was close enough to a zero-sum

The shifting dynamics

of industrial inputs combined with their finite nature (as in Chinas once-ample oil supplies, or
the new industrial need for rare earths) ensures that any settlement of this problem is
permanently subject to random shifts in its basic conditions. Macdonald writes: In a competitive
multipolar world governments were dealing with a prisoners dilemma of
whether they should cooperate or compete. It may have been fine for small countries to rely on the
game to make any multipolar system inherently unstable.

protection of the Royal Navy for their international trade. But was that a safe bet for countries like Germany that were large enough to
pose an economic and therefore geopolitical threat to Britain? Given its circumstances, it was logical for Germany to compete for
colonies and to build up a navy. Yet the attempt to carve out safety for one country was potentially threatening for others, leading to a
self-fulfilling prophecy.... [T]he search for self-sufficiency tended to make war more

rather than less likely. Even in the extravagant case of the U.S., selfsufficiency had destabilizing effects. Nations dependent on U.S. exports
(particularly of food, though also of capital) felt a vulnerability to U.S. power. Debates today on whether to
export U.S. natural gas and oil (or the recurring debates on ensuring food security, or indeed the question of Internet governance)
suggest a potential American isolation that is rife with strategic implications for other powers. The U.S. is far too big to ever imagine it
is making decisions only for itself; even when Americans believe it, no one else does. It is said that Americas return to energy
independence is also changing the geopolitical outlook. It will not only ease pressures on global supplies of oil and gas but will also
mean that there is less reason for the United States to get involved in the dangerous competition for oil from the Middle East or the exSoviet states in Central Asia. ... Underlying this line of argument is a twenty-first-century revival of the theory, so prevalent in the
1930s, that self-sufficiency is a route to peace. The problem, of course, is that America was self-sufficient in oil in the 1930s, but this
did not in any way save the world from war. Where does this leave us? Macdonald has the courage to follow his
own evidence and logic wherever they lead, but the destination is pretty bleak. He notes that American policy currently amounts to
containment of Russia and China, and advocates bringing both further into Western security arrangements. He also pushes for some
agreed regional sharing of China Sea natural resources. Both are good ideas but not new ones and feel somewhat tacked on. Toward
the end Macdonald wonders whether the biggest threat to free trade could paradoxically turn out to be

the globalization that the West did so much to foster. The inevitable result of this process was
the incorporation into the global economy of billions of low-paid workers from the third world,
which has led to a protracted squeeze, first on working-class and subsequently on middle-class
incomes in developed countries. This is worth pursuing. Most developed countries are democracies and the people hit
by that wage squeeze vote. European politics is animated by anti-elite, often nativist parties getting 10, 20, 30 percent and more of
national votes, as seen most recently in Greece. Economic stagnation and a nationalist revival have coincided in Japan as well. In the
U.S., President Obamas State of the Union speech last week aimed directly at the wage-squeeze demographic. The political dynamic
in developed countries is increasingly focused on what might be called the mild anti-globalization mainstream, with a worldview
colored by an often amorphous national-cultural identity. There is another middle class that has been

affected by globalization, namely the one it has helped create in the past 25 years in China, India and
elsewhere. The expectations of this sprawling, new and insecure demographic seem to be fairly consistent: they want to feel and assert
national pride, and they do not want to lose what they have so recently acquired. Their elected (Narendra Modi) and unelected (Xi
Jinping) leaders find it valuable to emphasize national identity in

strengthening and defending their own power. Russia, as ever a bit between geopolitical
stools, is also experiencing a resurgence of national feeling, with a
strong imperial element. Wobbly nationalistic middle classes are not
to be underestimated as political forces. They tend to have a stronger sense of their own
importance than lower social classes, which explains why the spectacular global growth in incomes of the bottom 50 percent seems to
have so little direct political valence, however huge it is in terms of how well humanity lives. Middle classes in more authoritarian
states like China might indeed make even stronger demands, as a class, than in democracies, since their ascendance under state
capitalism could lead to greater expectations of the state. One can imagine income inequality becoming a genuinely strategic
question. If our multipolar world is going the way of Macdonalds analysis, we would expect to see greater regionalization under the
direction of one or another regional hegemon and that does appear to be the case, despite important countervailing trends such as
improving U.S.-India relations, which have rescued the World Trade Organization. In Central Asia, Russias Eurasian Economic

Union and Chinas New Silk Road confront each other as opposing regional power plays. Asias export-led economies are also
becoming more regional: Asian exports are increasingly purchased within Asia itself as demand from advanced economies remains
weak. And regardless of the degree to which re-shoring exists, the desirability of siting production in closer physical proximity has
captured Western political imaginations. Meanwhile all the major powers are focused on

strengthening regional security arrangements, and all the major emerging

powers are building their defenses, including the blue-water navies whose major
defensive purpose is to defend raw-material supply routes. There are huge
differences between today and earlier eras when the dynamics of
globalization led to large-scale conflict. Nuclear weaponry is one; the
lack of demographic-growth pressures in advanced economies is
another. But we are nonetheless entering dangerous times.

Corporate interests are the worst corporatism is responsible

for ecosystem collapses, climate change, conflicts and death of
our planet
Claudia von Werlhof 07
Elaboration on a lecture given at a panel discussion with Ferdinand Lacina, Austrian
ExMinister of Finance and Ewald Nowotny, President of the BAWAG-Bank during the
Dallinger Conference, AK Wien, November 21, 2005. Original German Title:
Alternativen zur neoliberalen Globalisierung, oder: Die Globalisierung des
Neoliberalismus und seine Folgen, Wien, Picus 2007
Austria is part of the world system too. It is increasingly becoming a corporate colony (particularly of German corporations). This,
however, does not keep it from being an active colonizer itself, especially in the East (Hofbauer 2003, Salzburger 2006). Social, cultural,
traditional and ecological considerations are abandoned and give way to a mentality of plundering. All global

resources that we still have natural resources, forests, water, genetic pools have
turned into objects of utilization. Rapid ecological destruction
through depletion is the consequence. If one makes more profit by cutting

down trees than by planting them, then there is no reason not to cut them (Lietaer 2006).

Neither the public nor the state interferes, despite global warming
and the obvious fact that the clearing of the few remaining rain forests will
irreversibly destroy the earths climate not to even speak of the many
other negative effects of such action (Raggam 2004). Climate, animal,
plants, human and general ecological rights are worth nothing
compared to the interests of the corporations no matter that the rain forest

is no renewable resource and that the entire earths ecosystem depends on it. If greed and
the rationalism with which it is economically enforced really was an inherent
anthropological trait, we would have never even reached this day. The commander of
the Space Shuttle that circled the earth in 2005 remarked that the center
of Africa was burning. She meant the Congo, in which the last great
rain forest of the continent is located. Without it there will be no more rain clouds
above the sources of the Nile. However, it needs to disappear in order for
corporations to gain free access to the Congos natural resources that
are the reason for the wars that plague the region today. After all, one

needs petrol, diamonds, and coltan for mobile phones. The forests of Asia have been
burning for many years too, and in late 2005 the Brazilian parliament has approved the
clearing of 50% of the remaining Amazon. Meanwhile, rumors abound that Brazil and
Venezuela have already sold their rights to the earths biggest 9 remaining rain forest not
to the US-Americans, but to the supposedly left Chinese who suffer from chronic wood
shortage and cannot sustain their enormous economic growth and economic superpower

ambitions without securing global resources. Given todays race for the earths last resources, one wonders what
the representatives of the World Trade Organization (WTO) thought when they accepted China as a new member in 2001. They probably
had the giant Chinese market in mind but not the giant Chinese competition. After all, a quarter of the worlds population lives in China.
Of course it has long been established that a further expansion of the Western lifestyle will lead to global ecological collapse the faster,
the sooner (Sarkar 2001). Today, everything on earth is turned into commodities, i.e.
everything becomes an object of trade and commercialization (which truly means
liquidation: the transformation of all into liquid money). In its neoliberal stage it is not enough for capitalism to globally pursue less
cost-intensive and preferably wageless commodity production. The objective is to transform everyone and everything into
commodities (Wallerstein 1979), including life itself. We are racing blindly towards the violent and absolute conclusion of this mode of
production, namely total capitalization/liquidation by monetarization (Genth 2006). We are not only witnessing perpetual praise of
the market we are witnessing what can be described as market fundamentalism. People believe in the market as if it was a god.
There seems to be a sense that nothing could ever happen without it. Total global maximized accumulation of money/capital as abstract
wealth becomes the sole purpose of economic activity. A free world market for everything has to be established a world market that
functions according to the interests of the corporations and capitalist money. The installment of such a market proceeds with dazzling
speed. It creates new profit possibilities where they have not existed before, e.g. in Iraq, Eastern Europe or China.

Neoliberalism is granting undeniable power to those with monetary wealth, leading to the loss of

Unsustainable
Collapse of neoliberalism is inevitable because of
economic and environmental trends multiple structural
trends make resuscitation impossible, which means its tryor-die for the alt
Li 10
Minqi, Chinese Political Economist, world-systems analyst, and historical social scientist, currently an
associate professor of Economics at the University of Utah The End of the End of History: The
Structural Crisis of Capitalism and the Fate of Humanity, Science and Society Vol. 74, No. 3, July 2010,
290305)
In 2001, the U. S. stock market bubble started to collapse, after years of new

Bush administration took advantage of the psychological shock of 9/11,

and undertook a series of preemptive wars (first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq) that
ushered in a new era of intensified inter-state conflicts. Towards the end of 2001, Argentina,
which was regarded as a neoliberal model country, was hit by a devastating
financial crisis. Decades of neoliberalism had not only undermined the living standards of the
economy boom. The

working classes, but also destroyed the material fortunes of the urban middle classes (which remained
a key social base for neoliberalism in Latin America until the 1990s). After the Argentine crisis,

neoliberalism completely lost political legitimacy in Latin America. This paved the
way for the rise of several socialist-oriented governments on the continent. After the 2001 global
recession, the global economy actually entered into a minigolden age. The big semiperipheral economies, the so-called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) became the most
dynamic sector. The neoliberal global economy was fueled by the superexploitation of the massive cheap labor force in the semi-periphery (especially in
China). The strategy worked, to the extent that it generated massive amounts of surplus
value that could be shared by the global capitalist classes. But it also created a massive
realization problem. That is, as the workers in the emerging markets were deprived
of purchasing power, on a global scale, there was a persistent lack of effective
demand for the industrial output produced in China and the rest of the semiperiphery. After 2001, the problem was addressed through increasingly higher
levels of debt-financed consumption in the advanced capitalist countries (especially in the
The neoliberal strategy was economically and ecologically
unsustainable. Economically, the debt-financed consumption in the advanced
United States).

could not go on indefinitely. Ecologically, the rise of the BRICs

greatly accelerated resource depletion and environmental degradation on a
capitalist countries

global scale. The global ecological system is now on the verge of total
collapse. The world is now in the midst of a prolonged period of economic and political instability
that could last several decades.

In the past, the capitalist world system had responded to

similar crises and managed to undertake successful restructurings. Is it conceivable

that the current crisis will result in a similar restructuring within the system that will bring about a new
global New Deal? In three respects, the current world historical conjuncture is

fundamentally different from that of 1945. Back in 1945, the United States was the
indisputable hegemonic power. It enjoyed overwhelming industrial, financial, and military
advantages relative to the other big powers and, from the capitalist point of view, its national interests
largely coincided with the world systems common and long-term interests. Now, U. S.

hegemony is in irreversible decline. But none of the other big powers is in a

position to replace the United States and function as an effective hegemonic power. Thus,
exactly at a time when the global capitalist system is in deep crisis, the
system is also deprived of effective leadership.4 In 1945, the construction of a
global New Deal involved primarily accommodating the economic and political
demands of the western working classes and the non-western elites (the
national bourgeoisies and the westernized intellectuals). In the current conjuncture, any new
global New Deal will have to incorporate not only the western working
classes but also the massive, non-western working classes. Can the capitalist
world system afford such a new New Deal if it could not even afford the old
one? Most importantly, back in 1945, the worlds resources remained abundant
and cheap, and there was still ample global space for environmental
pollution. Now, not only has resource depletion reached an advanced stage,
but the world has also virtually run out of space for any further
environmental pollution.

Neoliberalism is unstable because it causes and worsens

economic crises- EU proves
Stockhammer 14
Engelbert Stockhammer, research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst) and member of the coordination committee of the Research
Network Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policy at Kingston University of London, 7 January 2014,
The Euro Crisis and contradictions of Neoliberalism in Europe, published in Post Keynesian Economics
Study Group Working Paper 1401, url:https://www.postkeynesian.net/downloads/wpaper/PKWP1401.pdf

The financial crisis began in the market for derivatives of US subprime

mortgages and translated into the worst recession since the 1930s in
all advanced economies. However, five years after the crisis began the
experience differs dramatically across countries. Only in Europe has
the crisis mutated into a sovereign debt crisis. This paper offers an
analysis that puts Neoliberalism at the very heart of the crisis in
Europe both as a cause of the imbalances at the root of the crisis
and, specific to the EMU (Economic and Monetary Union), as an
economic policy regime that has turned the financial crisis into a
sovereign debt crisis. Neoliberalism has given rise to an unstable
finance-dominated accumulation regime. It has not led to a sustained
profit-led growth process, but to two complementary growth models
that rely either on financial bubbles and rising household debt (debtdriven growth) or on rising export surpluses (export-driven growth).
These two growth regimes can be observed across the world, but in
Europe, their emergence is closely linked to the process of European
integration along neoliberal lines. European Neoliberalism had, on the
one hand, fostered financial deregulation and, as a consequence,
financial flows that fuelled the housing bubbles in Spain and Ireland.
On the other hand it has fixed exchange rates and created an
economic policy regime that has allowed the German ruling classes to
pursue an aggressive neomercantilist strategy by suppressing wage

growth in the wake of German unification. Trade imbalances as well as

the build-up of debt are closely related to neoliberal strategies.
European Neoliberalism is also at the root of the uniquely dysfunctional
economic policy reaction to the crisis. The EMU came with an economic
policy package that has downward flexible wages (or internal
devaluation) as the preferred adjustment mechanism, which creates a
deflationary bias and puts the adjustment burden on the deficit
countries. It also has constrained national fiscal policies from
counteracting the recession and, by trying not to play the lender of last
resort (LOLR) for governments, but only for private banks, it has paved
the way for sovereign debt crises.

Neoliberalism is unsustainable Brittan proves collapse

coming soon
Chakrabortty 5/31

Aditya Chakrabortty is senior economics commentator for the Guardian. Youre

witnessing the death of neoliberalism from within, The Guardian. May 31, 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/witnessing-deathneoliberalism-imf-economists
When Red Plenty was published in 2010, it was clear the ideology underpinning contemporary capitalism was failing, but not that it was

similar process as that described in the novel appears to be happening now, in our crisishit capitalism. And it is the very technocrats in charge of the system who are slowly,
reluctantly admitting that it is bust. You hear it when the Bank of Englands Mark Carney
sounds the alarm about a low-growth, low-inflation, low-interest-rate equilibrium. Or
when the Bank of International Settlements, the central banks central bank, warns that the global
economy seems unable to return to sustainable and balanced growth. And you saw it most
clearly last Thursday from the IMF.What makes the funds intervention so remarkable is not what is being said but
who is saying it and just how bluntly. In the IMFs flagship publication, three of its top economists have
written an essay titled Neoliberalism: Oversold?. The very headline delivers a jolt. For so long mainstream
dying. Yet a

economists and policymakers have denied the very existence of such a thing as neoliberalism, dismissing it as an insult invented by gaptoothed malcontents who understand neither economics nor capitalism. Now here comes the IMF,

describing how a
neoliberal agenda has spread across the globe in the past 30 years. What they mean is
that more and more states have remade their social and political institutions into pale
copies of the market. Two British examples, suggests Will Davies author of the Limits of Neoliberalism would
be the NHS and universities where classrooms are being transformed into supermarkets. In this way, the public
sector is replaced by private companies, and democracy is supplanted
by mere competition.The results, the IMF researchers concede, have been terrible.
Neoliberalism hasnt delivered economic growth it has only made a few people a lot
better off.

It causes epic crashes that leave behind human wreckage and cost billions to clean
up, a finding with which most residents of food bank Britain would agree. And while George Osborne might justify austerity as
fixing the roof while the sun is shining, the fund team defines it as curbing the size of the state another
aspect of the neoliberal agenda. And, they say, its costs could be large much larger than the benefit. Two things
need to be borne in mind here. First, this study comes from the IMFs research division not from
those staffers who fly into bankrupt countries, haggle over loan terms with cash-strapped governments and administer the fiscal
waterboarding. Since

2008, a big gap has opened up between what the IMF thinks and what it
does. Second, while the researchers go much further than fund watchers might have believed, they leave in some all-important get-out
clauses. The authors even defend privatisation as leading to more efficient provision of services and less government spending to

which the only response must be to offer them a train ride across to Hinkley Point C. Even so,

this is a remarkable breach

of the neoliberal consensus by the IMF. Inequality and the uselessness of much modern finance: such topics have
become regular chew toys for economists and politicians, who prefer to treat them as aberrations from the norm. At last a major
institution is going after not only the symptoms but the cause and it is naming that cause
as political. No wonder the studys lead author says that this research wouldnt even have been published
by the fund five years ago. From the 1980s the policymaking elite has waved away the notion that
they were acting ideologically merely doing what works. But you can only get away with that claim if what youre
doing is actually working. Since the crash, central bankers, politicians and TV correspondents have
tried to reassure the public that this wheeze or those billions would do the trick and put the
economy right again. They have riffled through every page in the textbook and beyond bank bailouts, spending cuts, wage
freezes, pumping billions into financial markets and still growth remains anaemic. And the longer the slump goes on,
the more the public tumbles to the fact that not only has growth been feebler, but ordinary
workers have enjoyed much less of its benefits. Last year the rich countries thinktank, the
OECD, made a remarkable concession. It acknowledged that the share of UK
economic growth enjoyed by workers is now at its lowest since the
second world war. Even more remarkably, it said the same or worse applied to
workers across the capitalist west. Red Plenty ends with Nikita Khrushchev pacing outside his dacha,

to where he has been forcibly retired. Paradise, he exclaims, is a place where people want to end up, not a place they run from. What
kind of socialism is that? What kind of shit is that, when you have to keep people in chains? What kind of social order? What kind of
paradise. Economists dont talk like novelists, mores the pity, but what youre

witnessing amid all the graphs and

technical language is the start of the long death of an ideology.

AT World Improving
Global inequality is rising latest report of the riches nations
prove
Treanor 15
Jill Treanor is the Guardian's City editor. She specialises in the banking sector. Half of world's wealth now in hands of 1% of population
report, The Guardian. 10/13/15

Global inequality is growing, with half the worlds wealth now in the
hands of just 1% of the population, according to a new report.

The middle classes have been squeezed at the expense of the very rich, according to research by
Credit Suisse, which also finds that for the first time, there are more individuals in the middle classes
in China 109m than the 92m in the US. Tidjane Thiam, the chief executive of Credit Suisse, said: Middle class
wealth has grown at a slower pace than wealth at the top end. This has reversed the precrisis trend which saw the share of middle-class wealth remaining fairly stable over time.
The report shows that a person needs only $3,210 (2,100) to be in the wealthiest 50% of world
citizens. About $68,800 secures a place in the top 10%, while the top 1% have more than
$759,900. The report defines wealth as the value of assets including property and stock market investments, but excludes
debt.About 3.4 bn people just over 70% of the global adult population have wealth of
less than $10,000. A further 1bn a fifth of the worlds population are in the $10,000$100,000 range. Each of the remaining 383m adults 8% of the population has wealth of more
than $100,000. This number includes about 34m US dollar millionaires. About 123,800 individuals of
these have more than $50m, and nearly 45,000 have more than $100m. The UK has the
third-highest number of these ultra-high net worth individuals. The report said: Wealth
inequality has continued to increase since 2008, with the top
percentile of wealth holders now owning 50.4% of all household
wealth. At the start of 2015, Oxfam had warned that 1% of the worlds population would own

more wealth than the other 99% by next year. Mark Goldring, Oxfam GBs chief executive, said: The fact
it has happened a year early just weeks after world leaders agreed a global goal to reduce
inequality shows just how urgently world leaders need to tackle this problem.This is the latest
evidence that extreme inequality is out of control. Are we really happy to live in a
world where the top 1% own half the wealth and the poorest half own just 1%? The Credit
Suisse report concludes that global wealth has fallen by $12.4tn so far in 2015 - to $250tn the first
drop since the 2008 banking crisis. This is largely a result of the strength of the dollar, the currency used for Credit
Suisses calculations.

Neoliberalism is producing accelerating inequality, environmental destruction, and conflict

in the squo statistics showing the world is getting better only illustrate the positive impact
of Latin American and Chinese resistance to the neoliberal model
Milne 15
(Seumus Milne, Guardian columnist and associate editor, The Davos oligarchs are right to fear the world theyve made, 22
January 2015, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/22/davos-oligarchs-fear-inequality-global-elite-resist)

Just 80 individuals now have the same net

wealth as 3.5 billion people half the entire global population. Last year, the best-off 1% owned 48% of the worlds
wealth, up from 44% five years ago. On current trends, the richest 1% will have pocketed more than the
other 99% put together next year. The 0.1% have been doing even better, quadrupling their share of US income since
the 1980s. This is a wealth grab on a grotesque scale. For 30 years, under the rule of what Mark Carney, the Bank of
The scale of the crisis has been laid out for them by the charity Oxfam.

England governor, calls market

fundamentalism, inequality in income and wealth has ballooned, both

between and within the large majority of countries. In Africa, the absolute number living on less
than $2 a day has doubled since 1981 as the rollcall of billionaires has swelled. In most of the world, labours share
of national income has fallen continuously and wages have stagnated under this regime of
privatisation, deregulation and low taxes on the rich. At the same time finance has sucked wealth from
the public realm into the hands of a small minority, even as it has laid waste the rest of the economy. Now the
evidence has piled up that not only is such appropriation of wealth a moral and social outrage, but it is
fuelling social and climate conflict, wars, mass migration and political corruption, stunting health
and life chances, increasing poverty, and widening gender and ethnic divides. Escalating inequality
has also been a crucial factor in the economic crisis of the past seven years, squeezing demand and fuelling the
credit boom. We dont just know that from the research of the French economist Thomas Piketty or the British authors of the
social study The Spirit Level. After years of promoting Washington orthodoxy, even the western-dominated OECD and IMF
argue that the widening income and wealth gap has been key to the slow growth of the past two neoliberal
decades. The

British economy would have been almost 10% larger if inequality hadnt mushroomed.
Now the richest are using austerity to help themselves to an even larger share of the cake. The big
exception to the tide of inequality in recent years has been Latin America. Progressive governments across
the region turned their back on a disastrous economic model, took back resources from corporate
control and slashed inequality. The numbers living on less than $2 a day have fallen from 108
million to 53 million in little over a decade. China, which also rejected much of the neoliberal catechism, has seen
sharply rising inequality at home but also lifted more people out of poverty than the rest of the
world combined, offsetting the growing global income gap. These two cases underline that
increasing inequality and poverty are very far from inevitable. Theyre the result of political and
economic decisions. The thinking persons Davos oligarch realises that allowing things to carry on as they are is
dangerous. So some want a more inclusive capitalism including more progressive taxes to save the system from itself. But
it certainly wont come about as a result of Swiss mountain musings or anxious Guildhall lunches. Whatever the feelings of some
corporate barons, vested corporate and elite interests including the organisations they run and the political structures
they have colonised have shown they will fight even modest reforms tooth and nail. To get the idea, you
only have to listen to the squeals of protest, including from some in his own party, at Ed Milibands plans to tax homes worth
over 2m to fund the health service, or the demand from the one-time reformist Fabian Society that the Labour leader be more
pro-business (for which read pro-corporate), or the wall of congressional resistance to Barack Obamas mild redistributive
taxation proposals. Perhaps a section of the worried elite might be prepared to pay a bit more tax.

What they wont accept is any change in the balance of social power which is why, in one country after
another, they resist any attempt to strengthen trade unions, even though weaker unions have been a crucial factor in the rise of
inequality in the industrialised world. Its only through a challenge to the entrenched interests that have

dined off a dysfunctional economic order that the tide of inequality will be reversed. The antiausterity Syriza party, favourite to win the Greek elections this weekend, is attempting to do just that as the
Latin American left has succeeded in doing over the past decade and a half. Even to get to that
point demands stronger social and political movements to break down or bypass the blockage in a
colonised political mainstream. Crocodile tears about inequality are a symptom of a fearful elite. But change will
only come from unrelenting social pressure and political challenge.

***Affirmative Answers***

Perm
Permutation solves single issue, single institutional focus
fails
Giroux 16
Henry A. Giroux currently is the McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the
Public Interest and The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. He
also is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Ryerson University. His most recent
books include The Violence of Organized Forgetting (City Lights, 2014), Dangerous
Thinking in the Age of the New Authoritarianism (Routledge, 2015) and coauthored
with Brad Evans, Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of
Spectacle (City Lights, 2015). Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of
Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com. Henry A. Giroux | Radical Politics
in the Age of American Authoritarianism: Connecting the Dots, Truth-out. April 10,
2016.

The willingness of contemporary politicians and pundits to use

totalitarian themes echoes alarmingly fascist and totalitarian elements
of the past. This willingness also prefigures the emergence of a distinctive
mode of authoritarianism that threatens to further foreclose venues for
social justice and civil rights. The need for resistance has become
urgent. The struggle is not over specific institutions such as higher education or socalled democratic procedures such as elections but over what it means to get to the
root of the problems facing the United States and to draw more people
into subversive actions modeled after both historical struggles from the
days of the underground railroad and contemporary movements for
economic, social and environmental justice. Yet, such struggles will only
succeed if more progressives embrace an expansive understanding
of politics, not fixating singularly on elections or any other issue but
rather emphasizing the connections among diverse social
movements. An expansive understanding such as this necessarily links the calls

for a living wage and environment justice to calls for access to quality
health care and the elimination of the conditions fostering assaults by
the state against Black people, immigrants, workers and women. The
movement against mass incarceration and capital punishment cannot
be separated from a movement for racial justice; full employment;
free, quality health care and housing. Such analyses also suggest the merging of
labor unions and social movements, and the development of progressive cultural apparatuses
such as alternative media, think tanks and social services for those marginalized by race, class
and ethnicity. These alternative apparatuses must also embrace those who are angry with
existing political parties and casino capitalism but who lack a critical frame of reference for
understanding the conditions for their anger. What is imperative in rethinking the

space of the political is the need to reach across specific identities and
stop mobilizing exclusively around single-issue movements and their
specific agendas. As the Fifteenth Street Manifesto Group expressed in its 2008 piece,
"Left Turn: An Open Letter to US Radicals," many groups on the left would grow stronger if they
were to "perceive and refocus their struggles as part of a larger movement for social
transformation." Our political agenda must merge the pedagogical and the

political by employing a language and mode of analysis that resonates

with people's needs while making social change a crucial element of
the political and public imagination. At the same time, any politics that is

going to take real change seriously must be highly critical of any

reformist politics that does not include both a change of
consciousness and structural change. If progressives are to join in the
fight against authoritarianism in the United States, we all need to
connect issues, bring together diverse social movements and
produce long-term organizations that can provide a view of the
future that does not simply mimic the present. This requires

connecting private issues to broader structural and systemic problems

both at home and abroad. This is where matters of translation become
crucial in developing broader ideological struggles and in fashioning a
more comprehensive notion of politics. Struggles that take place in particular
contexts must also be connected to similar efforts at home and abroad. For instance, the
ongoing privatization of public goods such as schools can be analyzed
within the context of increasing attempts on the part of billionaires to eliminate the
social state and gain control over commanding economic and cultural
institutions in the United States. At the same time, the modeling of schools
after prisons can be connected to the ongoing criminalization of a wide
range of everyday behaviors and the rise of the punishing state. Moreover,
such issues in the United States can be connected to other authoritarian
societies that are following a comparable script of widespread repression. For instance, it is
crucial to think about what racialized police violence in the United States has in common with
violence waged by authoritarian states such as Egypt against Muslim protesters. This

allows us to understand various social problems globally so as to make

it easier to develop political formations that connect such diverse social justice
struggles across national borders. It also helps us to understand, name and make
visible the diverse authoritarian policies and practices that point to the
parameters of a totalitarian society.
The state is a key institutional site for economic regulation and
reform reject the cynicism and pessimism of the alternative
Bresser-Pereira 09
LUIZ CARLOS BRESSER-PEREIRA, professor emeritus of the Fundao Getlio Vargas, So Paulo, 2009,
Assault on the State and on the Market: Neoliberalism and Economic Theory published in ESTUDOS
AVANADOS 23 (66), 2009, url: http://www.scielo.br/pdf/ea/v23n66/en_a02v2366.pdf
It is vain to attempt to increase the power of the market by weakening the State, as the neoliberal ideology
has irrationally aspired to do. When, after associating itself with seemingly scientifi c economic and

Neoliberalism orchestrated a veritable assault on the social

and democratic State that began to be established with the New Deal
in the United States and was consolidated particularly in post-WWII
Europe, the market also came under assault, because, in the absence
of regulation, it ceased to carry out its function in society and become
demoralized. Neoliberals and people guided by common sense will probably claim that the
political theories,

dominant ideology of the last 30 years which for this very reason became commonsensical did not

seek to weaken the State, but merely to remove it from the productive realm;
they wanted the State to cease being a producer and become a

regulator. To be sure, part of what they said seemed to corroborate this, yet their words were
empty. Their discourse was classical Orwellian doublespeak that says the opposite of what one actually

The fundamental role of the State is, indeed, that of regulator,

defi ning and establishing itself as the constitutional-legal system. But
the State can also be a protector, an inducer, an enabler and, in the
initial stages of economic development, a producer. Neoliberalism not
only rejected a State with these qualities qualities that distinguished
or were beginning to characterize the social and democratic State of
capitalisms 30 glorious years (1945-1975) but also did not want a
regulatory State. The name regulatory State was vacuous. Its goal was to deregulate, not
regulate. For Neoliberalism, the State should become minimal, and this
meant at least four things: safety net, namely, the entire protective
system through which modern societies seek to remedy the blindness
of the market regarding social justice; third, it should stop inducing
productive investment and technological & scientifi c development,
means.

ESTUDOS AVANADOS 23 (66), 2009 9 that is, it should relinquish leadership of a national development
strategy; and, fourth, it should stop regulating the markets and, in particular, the fi nancial markets,
deemed to be self-regulating. The most insistently repeated proposal of the Neoliberal creed has been the
deregulation of the marketplace. How could it be possible, then, to speak of a regulatory State? Much

What neoliberals aspired

to, both in rich countries where their ideology emerged and in the
developing world, was a weak State that allowed national economies to
become a playing fi eld for large corporations, their top executives and
fi nancial agents to obtain all kinds of rents in lieu of moderate
interest rates, fair business profi ts and professional wages, the
legitimate forms of reasonably the economic elites. Neoliberalism was the
better, and more forthright, would be to say deregulatory State.

hegemonic ideology from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. It was the ideology adopted and promoted by
American governments since Ronald Reagan. After the turn of the century, however, its intrinsic
irrationality, its failure to encourage economic growth in developing countries, its effi cacy in concentrating
income for the richest 2% of every rich or developing society that adopted its ideas, and the increased
macroeconomic instability (as shown by the successive fi nancial crises of the 1990s) became clear
indications of the exhaustion of Neoliberalism. Is it possible that, by forcing the State to intervene so

the
ongoing economic and fi nancial crisis might represent the collapse of
this ideology the end of its hegemony? The much-disparaged State
was fi nally called upon to save the market Neoliberalism today is a dead ideology,
forcibly to rescue indebted banks, companies and families, the crash of October 2008 and

an embarrassing remembrance that owes its spectral existence only to the nefarious consequences it had
on the societies it victimized. Am I, perhaps, being unfair with Neoliberalism and with the neoliberals?
Having myself been always critical of this ideology, I call upon the testimony of someone wholly
unsuspected, Francis Fukuyama (2004), a conservative but not a neoliberal, who in his book, Statebuilding: governance and world order in the 21st century, vigorously criticizes the neoliberal policies
imposed by the United States on less developed countries, particularly in Africa. He showed how such
policies failed states1 . I am aware that failed nation-States are a borderline case, but borderline cases can
help us to clarify ambiguous situations that so often prevail in society. For a long time, I defi ned
Neoliberalism as radical economic liberalism, as the ideology of minimal State and self-regulated markets.
Although these defi nitions are correct, the fi rst poses a rather serious problem. After all, both political and
economic liberalism were social conquests and weve had many forms of radical liberalism that were not
in the least neoliberal.2 It is better to defi ne Neoliberalism by making a historical comparison with
Liberalism. Liberalism, in the 18th century, was the ideology of a bourgeois middle class struggling against
an oligarchy of landowners and weapons masters supported by an autocratic State. Therefore, if we wish
to characterize Neoliberalism, a 10 ESTUDOS AVANADOS 23 (66), 2009 reactionary ideology, it is not
enough to say that it is a radical type of economic liberalism, because the liberal radicalism of the 18th
and early 19th century was revolutionary. Let us, then, attempt to see what Neoliberalism is or was
historically. Neoliberalism is the ideology that the wealthy used in the late 20th century against the
poor, the workers and a social democratic State. It is, therefore, an eminently reactionary ideology. It is an
ideology that, bolstered by the neoclassical economic theory of rational expectations, by the so-called new

institutionalism, by the theory of public choice and by the more radical forms of the rational choice school,

orchestrated a veritable political and theoretical assault against the

State and against regulated markets over the last 30 years. As a result, if we
compare this period with the immediately preceding years, we will see that in the rich countries growth
rates were reduced, fi nancial and economic instability was increased and income become concentrated
among the wealthiest 2% of the population. As for the developing countries that accepted the ideology
the followers of the Washington consensus , growth rates were insuffi cient for them to even hope

The great institutional construction of modern societies is

the State. Hegel was the fi rst to understand this fact, to see it as the ultimate crystallization of
catching up. State

reason, as the loftiest endeavor of human rationality. For us, it diffi cult to understand the claims of the

we see our own State as an imperfect normative

institution, always needy of reforms (the constitutional-legal system),
and as an organizational institution peopled by public servants and
politicians replete with administrative and ethical problems (the
apparatus of the State or public administration). These, however, are
merely differences between design and reality that do not disavow the
State as a construct of human will, as the ultimate pursuit of
rationality. Whereas the economy and society conceived with no heed
to the State remain in the realm of necessity, politics and the State are
the realm of freedom and human will. In the economy and in society, everyone defends
great philosophers, because

their own interests and only secondarily cooperates with others and both actions are carried out in a
rather disorderly manner. There are no common goals, no collective choices. In this scenario, individuals
are guided solely by their reason to fulfi ll their own self-interests. Because of this, when economists who
defi ne themselves as liberals [i.e., as conservatives in the American sense] seek to develop theories about
society and the economy without considering politics and the State, they inevitably fall into the perversion
of determinism. Determinism is a proper doctrine in the natural sciences, but it lures economists by
making their science more scientifi c, apparently more precise or seemingly better equipped to provide
explanations. In reality, however, economics and other social sciences can only be rendered deterministic
through a radical simplifi cation of human behavior that is intrinsically misleading, because there is always
an element of ESTUDOS AVANADOS 23 (66), 2009 11 freedom and unpredictability in each human being

Brought together in
society, individuals share values and beliefs and build institutions that
themselves change the patterns of social behavior. It is by establishing
a legitimate and effective constitutional-legal system the State and
by means of other social institutions that citizens can transform their
society and build their Republic in accordance with those values. When
and because social behavior is never the mere sum of individual behaviors.

attempting to understand society and the economy, we must always consider the State as well, its
government and other institutions. As Karl Polanyi (1944, p. 33) said: Economic liberalism misread the
history of the Industrial Revolution because it insisted on judging social events from the economic
viewpoint, because it believed in the spontaneity of social change and ignored the elementary truths

Although concerned with their own interests,

citizens can be called free when, in addition to this, they show
themselves capable of regulating society and the economy, of
organizing the common good, of building their nation and their State;
in short, of changing their fate for the better. Success in this
undertaking is always relative but, if we believe in progress, we
should reject pessimism and cynicism, and remember that the realm of
freedom will slowly impose itself upon the realm of necessity, and that
humankind, by constructing the State, will gradually give rise to
national societies and a world society that are more prosperous, freer,
fairer and environmentally-friendly. The social or welfare State and the
social capitalism that European societies (particularly in Scandinavia)
of political science and statecraft.

have built are far from paradisiacal, but they are a very signifi cant
sign of progress. This does not mean that citizens of those countries can afford to give themselves
over to self-complacency. On the contrary, they remain engaged in an ongoing critique of their States
practices and institutions, this being the only way to advance a perpetually evolving construction.
Regarding this point, I always remember a German social scientist who, during a seminar in a developing
country with much more serious social and economic problems than Germanys, embarked on a ferocious
critical analysis of his own native land. The other participants were taken aback, because they were used
to criticizing their own society but saw the more advanced countries as something to emulate. In truth,
however, a country and its society can only be deemed more advanced if its citizens have not lost their
critical sense. Because they know that building a good society depends on the ability of each one to
cooperate and commit to others; in particular, it depends on their ability to establish a good State in which
social objectives and commitments have been embedded.

The State has become a tool of Neoliberalism, stripping away rights and
social aspects of citizenry
Haque 08
M. Shamsul Haque, Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore, (2008),Global
Rise Of Neoliberal State And Its Impact On Citizenship: Experiences In Developing Nations, Asian
Journal of Social Science 36 (2008) 1134, url:http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/polhaque/Haque.pdf

In the case of developing nations, there emerged multiple interpretations of

the nature of state formation, including the postcolonial state, the
bureaucratic-authoritarian state, the developmental state, and so on. Since
the early 1980s, however, the diversity in state formations has been
replaced by a globally standardized state model based on neoliberal
assumptions and policies a state model that serves private capital, favours
market institution, and imitates business management. Globally, this newly
emerging state formation has been portrayed as the contract state, the
hollow state, the managerial state, the enabling state, the surveillance state,
the evaluative state, the skeleton state, and the minimal state (Clarke and
Newman, 1997). In this article, the newly evolving state is interpreted as a
neoliberal state, because the term not only connotes the states neoliberal
ideological basis and its relation to private capital and the associated
class(es), it also implies other dimensions of the state, including its scope
(minimal or hollow), role (enabling and contracting), functions (evaluation
and surveillance), and so on. Th e central argument of this article is that in
general, the emergence of a neoliberal state formation in various regions and
countries has significantly changed the meaning and composition of
citizenship, especially in terms of the eroding rights or entitlements of
citizens caused by the policy agenda pursued by such a state. In the
developing world, the recent transition toward a neoliberal state and the
replacement of statist governments by market-friendly regimes have been
reinforced by the unprecedented globalization of capital, expansion of
market ideology, and influence of international agencies (Haque, 1999b;
Walton and Seddon, 1994). In Latin America, even some of the former statecentered regimes, including Carlos Menem in Argentina, Alberto Fujimori in
Peru, Jaime Paz Zamora in Bolivia, and Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela,
changed their policy perspectives and embraced neoliberal policies and
reforms (Torre, 1993:105). In the existing literature, there is a relative dearth
of studies on the emergence of neoliberal state formation in the developing
world. Most of the prevalent studies on neoliberal states and policies tend to

be parochial and biased in terms of focusing on disjointed country cases or

projects, highlighting their positive economic outcomes, overlooking their
adverse economic consequences, and excluding their social and political
implications. Broader and more comprehensive studies of these missing
dimensions or under-researched areas are necessary, especially in relation to
developing nations that have undergone unprecedented restructuring of the
state based on the neoliberal 12 M. S. Haque / Asian Journal of Social Science
36 (2008) 1134 M. S. Haque / Asian Journal of Social Science 36 (2008) 11
34 13 perspectives and policies through the so-called structural adjustment
programs affecting citizens entitlements and democratic rights. As Alvarez,
Dagnino and Escober (1998:22) mention with regard to Latin America,
neoliberalism is a powerful and ubiquitous contender in the contemporary
dispute over the meaning of citizenship and the design of democracy. Th e
significance of the issue is also indicated in the adoption of the UN
Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2003/21, titled Effects of Structural
Adjustment Policies and Foreign Debt on the Full Enjoyment of All Human
Rights, which highlights that structural adjustment-reform programmes
have serious implications for the ability of the developing countries... to
improve the economic, social and cultural rights of their citizens (UN
Commission on Human Rights, 2003)

Not our Neolib permuation double binds solves the residual

neoliberal theory or the alternative cant overcome neoliberal
economic thinking/foreign policy
Ramirez 14
Carlos Ramirez, full time Lecturer in the Department of Applied Sociology, Kindai University, Osaka,
Japan where he teaches courses on international relations, development and communications. He
holds an M.A. from the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada, No Date, Obamas Neoliberal Foreign Policy in a Neoliberal World, published in the
International Affairs Forum, url: http://www.ia-forum.org/Content/ViewInternalDocument.cfm?
ContentID=8401
To answer this question and to wrap our minds around these seemingly contradictory positions, we
need to understand the overarching principles that inspire President Obamas foreign policies.
Neoliberal theory is the best explanatory lens through which to do this. Neoliberalism should be
distinguished from Neoliberal economic thinking and from Neoliberalisms main philosophical
competitor in foreign policy circles, Realism. Neoliberal economics are the ideas associated with
laissez-faire capitalism, which espouses free trade and small governments. Realism in foreign policy
views the world as in a state of anarchy. Self-help solutions are viewed as the sole viable approach to
survival. Self help is defined by Realists almost exclusively in security terms the bigger your army,
the more likely you are to influence another countrys behavior and therefore to survive this dog eat
dog world. President Obamas policies are neither of these two. While the origins of Neoliberal
economics and Neoliberal foreign policy are the same they are both rooted in 18th century
enlightenment thought - their current focus is very different. Neoliberalism in international
relations is less concerned with free markets and the size of government and more
interested in how governments and other actors in global affairs interact or co-operate. In
other words, the contrast between the two philosophies can be distilled to the study of self-interest
(Neoliberal economics) vs. the study of mutual interest (Neoliberalism). In contrast to Realism,
Neoliberals agree that anarchy is a fact of global affairs, but they believe it can be tamed through the
establishment of relationships among public and private actors. The norms and codes of conduct that
develop as a product of these relationships can be formalized into rules, laws and treaties - to be
overseen and regulated by international institutions. In sum, Neoliberalism believes in building
relationships that are later to be managed by international organizations. Academics like to use the
fancy term engagement or, the even more magniloquent, interdependence to describe these

relationships. Establishing relationships, then, is important for Neoliberals For once they are
established, dependencies arises among the parties involved. The partners in these relationships can
be equally dependent or, conversely, the dependency can be unequal with one partner more reliant on
the other. For example, a country with few natural resources may establish a relationship with an oil
producing country to satisfy its energy needs. It is likely that the importing country will be in a weaker
position than the exporter. To reduce dependence, the importing country may want to diversify its
sources. Neoliberals use the concept of interdependence as a tool in policy making to check or
influence other countries or, inversely, to reduce ones own dependence. In the end, however,
Neoliberals believe that countries value the benefits, especially economic benefits, accrued from
relationships with other states. Countries are very wary to lose these benefits through conflict or
diplomatic disputes and will invariably opt for co-operation over conflict whenever possible.[ii]

World Getting Better

Alarmist news obscures the fact the earth is getting betterempirics prove

Roser 14
Max Roser, has a BSc in geoscience, a BA and an MA in philosophy, an MSc in
economics, and a doctorate from the University of Innsbruck, Austria,
studying the long-term evolution of living standards around the world. Has
doneconsultancy work for institutions such as the World Bank and the Global
Fund and my work has been covered in media outlets including The New York
Times, The Financial Times, Business Insider, TIME Magazine, The
Washington Post, Forbes, Slate, Vox, The Guardian, Rue 89, La Presse
(French), and Sddeutsche Zeitung (German), 20 Oct 2014, It's a cold, hard
fact: our world is becoming a better place, published in University of
Oxfords Martin School News,
url:http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/opinion/view/274
Is it actually true that we are building a better world? Or are those who
claim that things are always getting worse the ones in the right?
Whether we're discussing the way of the world over a pint in the pub or
dissecting the issues at an academic conference, its a topic that
lingers constantly: how is the world changing? The evidence to answer
these questions is out there, but it is often obscured by media
headlines. So we created OurWorldInData.org to present long-term
data on how our world is changing. Using empirical data, visualised in
graphs, we tell the history of the world that we live in, looking at longterm economic, social and environmental trends. For each topic the
quality of the data is discussed and comprehensive lists of the data
sources are provided, giving a trustworthy and transparent starting
point for researchers. The answers to my initial questions are very
clear. The evidence shows that we are becoming less violent and
increasingly more tolerant, that we are leading healthier lives, are
better fed, and that poverty around the world is declining rapidly.
Taking these facts into account paints a very positive picture of how
the world is changing. Because our endeavours to build a better future

are, inevitably, linked to our perception of the past, it is important to

understand and communicate the way our world has changed.
Studying our world in data and understanding how we overcame
challenges that seemed insurmountable at the time should give us
the confidence to tackle the problems we are currently facing .

OurWorldInData.org both highlights the challenges that lie ahead and

demonstrates that we are indeed making the world a better place. The
interactive graphic below shows the number of world citizens living
under different political systems (the sources can be found in the
democratisation entry on OurWorldInData). To show the percentage of
people living under the different systems listed, click on 'Expanded'. It

is easy to be cynical about the world and to maintain that nothing is

ever getting better. But fortunately the empirical evidence contradicts
this view. We believe it is partly due to a lack of relevant and
understandable information that a negative view on how the world is
changing is so very common. It is not possible to understand how the
world is changing by following the daily news; disasters happen in an
instant but progress is a slow process that does not make the
headlines. We believe it is important to communicate to the largest
audience possible that technical, academic, entrepreneurial, political,
and social efforts are in fact having a very positive impact. Our metadatabase is freely available and my own data visualisations for this
website are made available under a Creative Commons license. The
website only launched this summer but because of the wide scope of
topics and the accessibility, academics and journalists alike are already
using it as a resource. Over the coming months we will expand
OurWorldInData.org and to cover even more aspects of the world. To
be kept up to date on our work, follow @MaxCRoser on Twitter.

Sustainability
Capitalism is tricky either its sustainable and the alternative
fails or it will collapse on its own and the alternative isnt
necessary
Keucheyan 14

Razmig Keucheyan is an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and the
author of The Left Hemisphere. Not even climate change will kill off capitalism, The Guardian.
3/6/2014.
Arguably the single most important mistake the revolutionary movements of the
60s and 70s made was to overlook the resilience of capitalism . The idea
catastrophism, as it is often called that the system was going to crumble under

the pressure of its own contradictions, that the bourgeoisie produces its own

"gravediggers" (as Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto) has been disproved.
When the rate of profit started showing signs of decline in the first half of the 70s, the
redistributive policies implemented after the second world war were terminated and the
neoliberal revolution was launched.This resilience of capitalism has little to do with
the dominant classes being particularly clever or far-sighted. In fact, they can
keep on making mistakes yet capitalism still thrives. Why? Capitalism has
created a world of great complexity since its birth. Yet at its core, it is based on a set of simple
mechanisms that can easily adapt to adversity. This is a kind of "generative grammar" in Noam
Chomsky's sense: a finite set of rules can generate an infinity of outcomes. The context today
is very different from that of the 60s and 70s. The global left, however, is in danger of

committing the same error of underestimating capitalism all over again.

Catastrophism, this time, takes the form of investing faith in a new object:
climate change, and more generally the ecological crisis. There is a
worryingly widespread belief in leftwing circles that capitalism will not survive
the environmental crisis. The system, so the story goes, has reached its absolute limits:
without natural resources oil among them it can't function, and these resources are fast
depleting; the growing number of ecological disasters will increase the cost of maintaining
infrastructures to unsustainable levels; and the impact of a changing climate on food prices
will induce riots that will make societies ungovernable. The beauty of catastrophism, today as
in the past, is that if the system is to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions, the
weakness of the left ceases to be a problem. The end of capitalism takes the form of

suicide rather than murder. So the absence of a murderer that is, an

organised revolutionary movement doesn't really matter any more. But the
left would be better off learning from its past mistakes. Capitalism might well
be capable not only of adapting to climate change but of profiting from it. One
hears that the capitalist system is confronted with a double crisis: an economic
one that started in 2008, and an ecological one , rendering the situation doubly
perilous. But one crisis can sometimes serve to solve another. Capitalism is responding
to the challenge of the ecological crisis with two of its favourite weapons:
financialisation and militarisation. In times of crisis, for instance, markets will require
simultaneously that wages be cut and that people keep consuming. Opening the flow of
credit allows the reconciliation of these two contradictory injunctions at
least until the next financial crisis.

Collapse of growth and capitalism isnt inevitablethe system

constantly adapts and bounces backhistory proves
Kaletsky, 11
(Anatole, editor-at-large of The Times of London, where he writes weekly columns on economics, politics, and
international relationsand on the governing board of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Theory (INET),
a nonprofit created after the 2007-2009 crisis to promote and finance academic research in economics, Capitalism
4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, p. 2-3, jj)
To explain this process of renewal, and identify some of the most important features of the reinvigorated capitalist
system, is the ambition of this book. This transformation will take many years to complete, but some of its
consequences have become discernible already. And with the benefit of even a few years hindsight, it is clear that
these consequences will be very different from the nihilistic predictions from both ends of the political spectrum at

On the Left, anticapitalist ideologues seemed honestly to

believe that a few weeks of financial chaos could bring about the
disintegration of a politico-economic system that had survived two
hundred years of revo lutions, depressions, and world wars . On the Right, freethe height of the crisis.

market zealots insisted that private enterprise would be destroyed by precisely the government interventions that
proved necessary to save the system and as soon as the crisis was over, started to claim that all the trouble could
have been avoided if governments had simply allowed the financial systems to collapse. A balanced reassessment
of the crisis must challenge both left-wing hysteria and right-wing hubris. Rather than blaming the meltdown of the
global financial system on greedy bankers, incompetent regulators, gullible homeowners, or foolish Chinese
bureaucrats, this book puts what happened into historical and ideological perspective. It reinterprets the crisis in
the context of the economic reforms and geopolitical upheavals that have repeatedly transformed the nature of
capitalism since the late eighteenth century, most recently in the Thatcher-Reagan revolution of 1979 89. The

capitalism has never been a static system that follows a

fixed set of rules, characterized by a permanent division of responsibilities between private enterprise and
central argument is that

governments. Contrary to the teachings of modern economic theory, no immutable laws govern the behavior of a

capitalism is an adaptive social system that mutates

and evolves in response to a changing environment. When capitalism is
capitalist economy. Instead,

seriously threatened by a systemic crisis, a new version emerges that is

better suited to the changing environment and replaces the previously
dominant form. Once we recognize that capitalism is not a static set of
institutions, but an evolutionary system that reinvents and reinvigorates
itself through crises, we can see the events of 2007 09 in another light: as
the catalyst for the fourth systemic transformation of capitalism, comparable
to the transformations triggered by the crises of the 1970s, the crises of the
1930s, and the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 15. Hence the title of this book.

Alt Fails
They cant spill up to effective policy change All institutions
vary significantly, so failure to consider that up-front ensures
inferior results
Freiwald 01
Susan Freiwald is a professor of law at the University of San Fransico. Comparative Institutional
Analysis in Cyberspace: The Case of Intermediary Liability for Defamation 14 Harv. J. Law & Tec 569,
Spring, lexis)

The fight over social policy goal choice often leads analysts to neglect to consider which institution
is best situated to realize a particular social policy goal. 43 Much cyberspace legal scholarship ignores the
institutional mechanism by which particular legal changes should be made. 44 Once the author has described how the new
cyberspace technologies affect operation of the law in practice and has advocated the legal changes required to marry the ideals
of the law with the reality of cyberspace, he or she usually leaves unspecified how the change should come about or
else assumes without discussion that Congress could and should make the change. 45 But ignoring
institutional choice often means creating inferior public policy. In fact, because the different
institutions vary so significantly in their ability to resolve legal conflicts, when a less preferred
institution decides a legal question, the results can be [*582] disastrous. 46 For example, not only
may Congress be ill-suited to make a change, but, once it does, that decision may compromise the
ability of other institutions to solve the problem. The case study tells such a story of institutional failure and the
deplorable intermediary immunity from defamation liability that resulted.

Neoliberalism has created a docile subjectivity incapable of

resistance- it wont collapse because we are incapable of resisting
Han 15

Byung-Chul Han, philosopher that teaches philosophy and cultural studies at Berlins University of the
Arts (UdK). He is the author of more than 16 books, covering topics as diverse as violence, love, ADHD
and religion. In the past few years, his provocative essays have been translated into numerous
languages, and he has become one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe and beyond,
20151103, Why Revolution is No Longer Possible, published in Our World by the United Nations
University, url: http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/why-revolution-is-no-longer-possible

The neoliberal system of domination has a wholly different structure. Now,

system-preserving power no longer works through repression, but through
seduction that is, it leads us astray. It is no longer visible, as was the case under the
regime of discipline. Now, there is no longer a concrete opponent, no enemy
suppressing freedom that one might resist. Neoliberalism turns the
oppressed worker into a free contractor, an entrepreneur of the self. Today,
everyone is a self-exploiting worker in their own enterprise. Every individual is master and slave
in one. This also means that class struggle has become an internal struggle with oneself. Today, anyone who fails
to succeed blames themself and feels ashamed. People see themselves, not society, as the problem. The
subjugated subject is not even aware of its subjugation Any disciplinary
power that expends effort to force human beings into a straitjacket of
commandments and prohibitions proves inefficient. It is significantly more
efficient to ensure that people subordinate themselves to domination on
their own. The efficacy defining the system today stems from the fact that, instead of operating through
prohibition and privation, it aims to please and fulfill. Instead of making people compliant, it endeavours to make
them dependent. This logic of neoliberal efficiency also holds for surveillance. In the 1980s, to cite one example,
there were vehement protests against the German national census. Even schoolchildren took to the streets. From

todays perspective, the information requested therein profession, education levels, and distance from the
workplace seem almost laughable. At the time, people believed that they were facing the state as an instance of
domination wresting data from citizens against their will. That time is long past. Today, people expose themselves
willingly. Precisely this sense of freedom is what makes protest impossible. In contrast to the days of the census,
hardly anyone protests against surveillance. Free self-disclosure and self-exposure follow the same logic of
efficiency as free self-exploitation. What is there to protest against? Oneself? Conceptual artist Jenny Holzer has
formulated the paradox of the present situation: Protect me from what I want. It is important to distinguish
between power that posits and power that preserves. Today, power that maintains the system assumes a smart
and friendly guise. In so doing, it makes itself invisible and unassailable .

The subjugated subject

does not even recognize that it has been subjugated. The subject thinks she
is free. This mode of domination neutralizes resistance quite effectively.
Domination that represses and attacks freedom is not stable. The neoliberal
regime proves stable by immunizing itself against all resistance, because it
makes use of freedom instead of repressing it. Suppressing freedom quickly
provokes resistance; exploiting freedom does not. Any disciplinary power that expends
effort to force human beings into a straitjacket of commandments and prohibitions proves inefficient. It is
significantly more efficient to ensure that people subordinate themselves to domination on their own. After the
Asian financial crisis, South Korea stood paralysed and shocked. The IMF intervened and extended credit. In return,
the government had to assert its neoliberal agenda by force. This was repressive, positing power the kind that
often proves violent and differs from system-preserving power, which manages to pass itself off as freedom.

According to Naomi Klein, the state of social shock following catastrophes

such as the financial crisis in South Korea or the current crisis in Greece
offers the chance to radically reprogram society by force. Today, there is
hardly any resistance in South Korea. Quite the opposite: a vast consensus
prevails as well as depression and burnout. South Korea now has the
worlds highest suicide rate. People enact violence on themselves instead of
seeking to change society. Aggression directed outward, which would entail
revolution, has yielded to aggression directed inward, against oneself. Today, no
collaborative, networked multitude exists that might rise up in a global mass of protest and revolution. Instead, the
prevailing mode of production is based on lonesome and isolated self-entrepreneurs, who are also estranged from
themselves. Companies used to compete with each other. Within each enterprise, however, solidarity could occur.

Today, everyone is competing against everyone else and within the same
enterprise, too. Even though such competition heightens productivity by
leaps and bounds, it destroys solidarity and communal spirit. No
revolutionary mass can arise from exhausted, depressive, and isolated
individuals. Neoliberalism cannot be explained in Marxist terms. The famous
alienation of labour does not even occur. Today, we dive eagerly into work until we burn out. The first stage of

it is
mistaken to believe that the Multitude will cast off the parasitic Empire to
inaugurate a communist society.
burnout syndrome, after all, is euphoria. Burnout and revolution are mutually exclusive. Accordingly,

The alt fails withdrawing from capitalism/burning it down are

incapable of producing an alternative system of governance
prefer the plan
Srnicek 11

Nick Srnicek is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the London School of

Economics. Economics and the Left, The Oxford Left Review, Issue 5. November
2011.
As Alex Andrews notes, none of these approaches is suficient on its own. Yet even more worryingly, I

have been present at a

number of events where it is argued that leftists neednt worry about such issues right now.
Instead, it is suggested that all we need is to bring about a revolution (as though

revolutions were some clean break with the past, rather than being a complex mixture of diverse social forces).
The presumption implicit in this response is that once leftists are given the opportunity to create a
new society, the answers will just become clear. Perhaps consensus decisionmaking against all evidence will
provide a sophisticated answer! But the risk of relying on such unrelective people power is that
when the opportunity comes to effectuate change, the actors involved fall back on
habitual ideas simply because they cant imagine an alternative. This is a
crisis of imagination, but also more signiicantly of cognitive limits. Very few have done the hard work
to think through an alternative economic system. And as a result, we remain
embedded within capitalist realism unable to think outside the socio-economic
coordinates established by an all-encompassing capitalist imagination. Slavoj Zizek has been a
popular exception here by consistently arguing for the necessity of thinking about the day after tomorrow. Yet few appear to have taken
up his call, and he seems to have ignored it himself.

Impact Environment
Cap solves environmental destruction
Veer 12
Pierre-Guy, Independent journalist writing for the Von Mises Institute, 5/2, Cheer for the Environment, Cheer for
Capitalism, http://www.mises.ca/posts/blog/cheer-for-the-environment-cheer-for-capitalism/

How can such a negligence have happened? Its simple: no one was the
legitimate owner of the resources (water, air, ground). When a property is state-owned as was the case under
communism government has generally little incentive to sustainably exploit it . In communist
Europe, governments wanted to industrialize their country in order , they hoped, to catch up with capitalist
economies. Objectives were set, and they had to be met no matter what. This included the use of
brown coal, high in sulfur and that creates heavy smoke when burned[4], and questionable farming methods,
No Ownership, No Responsibility

which depleted the soil. This lack of vision can also be seen in the public sector of capitalist countries. In the US, the Department of Defense creates more
dangerous waste than the top five chemical product companies put together. In fact, pollution is such that cleanup costs are estimated at $20 billion. The
same goes for agriculture, where Washington encourages overfarming or even farming not adapted for the environment its in[5]. Capitalism, the Green

In order to solve most of the pollution problems, there exists a simple solution: laissez-faire
capitalism, i.e. make sure property rights and profitability can be applied. The latter helped
Eastern Europe; when communism fell, capitalism made the countries seek profitable and not just cheap ways to
produce, which greatly reduced pollution[6]. As for the former, it proved its effectiveness, notably with the Love Canal[7]. Property
rights are also thought of in order to protect some resources, be it fish [8] or endangered species[9]. Why
such efficiency? Because an owners self-interest is directed towards the maximum profitability of his piece
of land. By containing pollution as Hooker Chemicals did with its canal he keeps away from costly
lawsuit for property violation. At the same time, badly managed pollution can diminish the value of the land,
and therefore profits. Any entrepreneur with a long-term vision and whose property is safe from arbitrary government
decisions thinks about all that in order to protect his investment . One isnt foolish enough to sack ones property! In
Solution

conclusion, I have to mention that I agree with environmentalists that it is importance to preserve the environment in order to protect mother nature and
humans. However, I strongly disagree with their means, i.e. government intervention. Considering it very seldom has a long-term vision, it is the worst
thing that can happen. In fact, one could says that

most environmental disasters are, directly or indirectly, caused

by the State,

mainly by a lack of clear property rights. Were they clearer, they would let each and everyone of us, out of self-interest, protect the
environment in a better manner. That way, everyones a winner.

Capitalist driven climate strategies work Carbon Pricing is

key to controlling CO2 emissions
Parry 14
Ian Parry is Principal Environmental Fiscal Policy Expert in the IMFs Fiscal Affairs Department,
specializing in fiscal analysis of climate change, environment, and energy issues. Before joining the
Fund in 2010, Ian held the Allen V. Kneese Chair in Environmental Economics at Resources for the
Future. Carbon Pricing: Good for You, Good for the Planet,IMF Direct. 9/17/14.

The time has come to end hand wringing on climate strategy, particularly
controlling carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We need an approach that
builds on national self-interest and spurs a race to the top in lowcarbon energy solutions. Our findings here at the IMFthat carbon pricing is practical,
raises revenue that permits tax reductions in other areas, and is often in countries own
interestsshould strike a chord at the United Nations Climate Summit in New York next week.
Let me explain how. Ever since the 1992 Earth Summit, policymakers have struggled to
agree on an international regime for controlling emissions, but with limited
success. Presently, only around 12 percent of global emissions are covered by

pricing programs, such as taxes on the carbon content of fossil fuels or permit
trading programs that put a price on emissions. Reducing CO2 emissions is
widely seen as a classic free-rider problem. Why should an individual country
suffer the cost of cutting its emissions when the benefits largely accrue to other countries and,
given the long life of emissions and the gradual adjustment of the climate system, future
generations? This argument crucially ignores immediate domestic
environmental benefits from reducing CO2. Fossil fuel combustion, especially coal, is
a leading cause of local outdoor air pollution which, according to World Health Organization
figures, is estimated to cause over 3 million premature deaths a year worldwidethrough
increasing the risk of heart disease, lung cancer, and so on. Taxing the carbon content

of coal will increase its price, and decrease its use, leading to both
fewer CO2 emissions and better public health due to cleaner air. A
carbon tax would also increase motor fuel prices, which will reduce
traffic congestion and accidents as people economize a bit on their use
of vehicles. This again spurs domestic economic benefits, at least in countries where
people are not already fully charged for these adverse effects through existing motor fuel
excises. These health and other co-benefits from reducing fossil fuel use add

to the gains in economic efficiency that start with pricing CO2 emissions.
Ideally, governments would use other policies to address domestic environmental problems,
like charges for local air pollution. However, until these policies are fully implemented
(likely a long time), policymakers should look at how the indirect impact of CO2

pricing can help alleviate these problems when they consider shorter-term
climate policies.

Impact War
Globalization and economic interdependence solves threat of
conflict
Harrison 11
Mark Harrison is a professor Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Centre for Russian and East
European Studies, University of Birmingham, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University,
Capitalism at War, Oct 19
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/papers/capitalism.pdf

Capitalisms Wars America is the worlds preeminent capitalist power. According to a poll of
more than 21,000 citizens of 21 countries in the second half of 2008, people tend on average
to evaluate U.S. foreign policy as inferior to that of their own country in the moral dimension. 4
While this survey does not disaggregate respondents by educational status, many apparently
knowledgeable people also seem to believe that, in the modern world, most wars are caused
by America; this impression is based on my experience of presenting work on the frequency of
wars to academic seminars in several European countries. According to the evidence,
however, these beliefs are mistaken. We are all aware of Americas wars, but they make
only a small contribution to the total. Counting all bilateral conflicts involving at least the show
of force from 1870 to 2001, it turns out that the countries that originated them come from all
parts of the global income distribution (Harrison and Wolf 2011). Countries that are richer,
measured by GDP per head, such as America do not tend to start more conflicts,
although there is a tendency for countries with larger GDPs to do so. Ranking countries by the
numbers of conflicts they initiated, the United States, with the largest economy, comes only in
second place; third place belongs to China. In first place is Russia (the USSR between 1917 and
1991). What do capitalist institutions contribute to the empirical patterns in the data? Erik
Gartzke (2007) has re-examined the hypothesis of the democratic peace based on the
possibility that, since capitalism and democracy are highly correlated across countries
and time, both democracy and peace might be products of the same underlying
cause, the spread of capitalist institutions. It is a problem that our historical datasets
have measured the spread of capitalist property rights and economic freedoms over shorter
time spans or on fewer dimensions than political variables. For the period from 1950 to 1992,
Gartzke uses a measure of external financial and trade liberalization as most likely to signal
robust markets and a laissez faire policy. Countries that share this attribute of capitalism
above a certain level, he finds, do not fight each other, so there is capitalist peace
as well as democratic peace. Second, economic liberalization (of the less liberalized of the
pair of countries) is a more powerful predictor of bilateral peace than democratization,
controlling for the level of economic development and measures of political affinity.

Impact Terrorism
Free trade solves intenational terrorism
Lindsey 03
Lindsey Brink is director of the Cato Institutes Center for Trade Policy Studies. 8/5/3.
http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/pas/tpa-024.pdf.

Confronted by the grave threat of Islamist terrorism, the United States has an enormous
and urgent interest in encouraging economic and political liberalization in the Muslim
world. In much of the region, violent radicalism is currently the only available avenue for challenging a clearly unacceptable status
quo. The advance of freedom would open innumerable new avenuesfor building businesses, pursuing careers, forming and joining and
supporting nonprofit organizations, expressing viewpoints, and banding together for peaceful political change. The

appeal of
radicalism and with it the number of potential recruits for the terrorist jihadwould wane with the emergence
of constructive alternatives. But what can the United States do to foster the growth of
liberal institutions in the Muslim world? In two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has ousted
entrenched despotisms by force and is now overseeing reconstruction with large occupying forces. But what are the options short of war
for effecting regime changewhich, defined broadly to encompass thoroughgoing economic and political reform, is the desired
objective for the region? In other words, how can U.S. policy encourage developments in the Muslim world that will make future wars
less likely? The creative and determined use of trade policy is one option with real promise. At
the outset, though, a caveat: whether through trade policy or other diplomatic initiatives, the United States can exercise at best only
modest leverage over conditions in the Muslim world. Whether countries in the region embrace liberal reform, whether they can find a
viable path to prosperity and freedom, is overwhelmingly up to them. Even in Afghanistan and Iraq, where U.S. will is backed by
military force on the ground, success in building institutions that provide even tolerable security for property, contract, and political
rights is by no means ensured. Elsewhere in the region, we must accept that our capacity to promote needed changes is limited. With that
disclaimer, trade

policy is an option for combating terrorism that we ignore or slight at our

peril. By removing obstacles to exports from the region, by convincing Muslim countries
to open their own markets to foreign competition, we can expand economic opportunities
in the region and brighten the prospects for broader, pro-market, pro-growth reforms. And
while there is no guarantee that greater economic dynamism would lead inevitably to full-scale liberal democracy, the growth of
economic power centers outside the state-run sector would likely create momentum in turn
for a wider distribution of political power.

Impact Disease
Diseases wont cause extinction burnout or variation
York 14 (Ian, head of the Influenza Molecular Virology and Vaccines team in the Immunology and
Pathogenesis Branch, Influenza Division at the CDC, former assistant professor in
immunology/virology/molecular biology (MSU), former RA Professor in antiviral and antitumor immunity
(UMass Medical School), Research Fellow (Harvard), Ph.D., Virology (McMaster), M.Sc., Immunology
(Guelph), Why Don't Diseases Completely Wipe Out Species? 6/4, http://www.quora.com/Why-dontdiseases-completely-wipe-out-species#)

mostly diseases don't drive species extinct. There are several reasons for that. For one,
the most dangerous diseases are those that spread from one individual to
another. If the disease is highly lethal, then the population drops, and it
becomes less likely that individuals will contact each other during the infectious
But

phase.

Highly contagious diseases tend to burn themselves out that way. Probably

the main reason is variation. Within the host and the pathogen population
there will be a wide range of variants. Some hosts may be naturally resistant. Some
pathogens will be less virulent. And either alone or in combination, you end up
with infected individuals who survive. We see this in HIV, for example. There is a
small fraction of humans who are naturally resistant or altogether immune to HIV, either
because of their CCR5 allele or their MHC Class I type. And there are a handful of people who
were infected with defective versions of HIV that didn't progress to disease. We can
see indications of this sort of thing happening in the past, because our genomes contain
many instances of pathogen resistance genes that have spread through the
whole population. Those all started off as rare mutations that conferred a strong selection advantage to
the carriers, meaning that the specific infectious diseases were serious threats to the species.

They wont spread

Nick Beckstead 14, Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, citing Peter Doherty,
recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Medicine, PhD in Immunology from the University of Edinburgh,
Michael F. Tamer Chair of Biomedical Research at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, How much
could refuges help us recover from a global catastrophe? in Futures, published online 18 Nov 2014,
Science Direct

While there is little

published work on human extinction risk from pandemics, it seems that it
would be extremely challenging for any pandemicwhether natural or
manmadeto leave the people in a specially constructed refuge as the sole
survivors. In his introductory book on pandemics (Doherty, 2013, p. 197) argues: No pandemic
is likely to wipe out the human species. Even without the protection
provided by modern science, we survived smallpox, TB, and the plagues of
recorded history. Way back when human numbers were very small, infections
may have been responsible for some of the genetic bottlenecks inferred from
evolutionary analysis, but there is no formal proof of this. Though some authors have
That leaves pandemics and cobalt bombs, which will get a longer discussion.

vividly described worst-case scenarios for engineered pandemics (e.g. Rees, 2003 and Posner,
2004; and Myhrvold, 2013), it would take a special effort to infect people in highly
isolated locations, especially the 100+ largely uncontacted peoples who
prefer to be left alone. This is not to say it would be impossible. A madman intent on annihilating all
human life could use cropduster-style delivery systems, flying over isolated peoples and infecting them. Or perhaps
a pandemic could be engineered to be delivered through animal or environmental vectors that would reach all of
these people.