Radical Autonomy K - Northwestern 2014

Critique of Radical Autonomy
1NC
Critique of Radical Autonomy 1NC

The affirmative participates in a form of radical individualism that
promotes separation of the self-this makes dangerous otherization
and violence inevitable
West 88 [Robin, is the Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy and
Associate Dean (Research and Academic Programs) at the Georgetown University
Law Center, Jurisprudence and Gender,
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1642&context=facpub] alla
I will start with the liberal description of separation, because it is the most
familiar, and surely the most dominant. According to liberal legalism, the
inevitability of the individuals material separation from the other,
entails, first and foremost, an existential state of highly desirable and
much valued freedom: because the individual is separate from the other,
he is free of the other. Because I am separate from you, my ends, my life,
my path, my goals are necessarily my own. Because I am separate, I am
autonomous. Because I am separate, I am existentially free (whether or
not I am politically free). And, of course, this is true not just of me, but of
everyone: it is the universal human condition. We are each separate and
we are all separate, so we are each free and we are all free. We are, that is,
equally free. This existential condition of freedom in turn entails the liberals
conception of value. Because we are all free and we are each equally free, we
should be treated by our government as free, and as equally free. The individual
must be treated by his government (and by others) in a way that respects his
equality and his free dom. The government must honor at the level of politics the
existential claim made above: that my ends are my ends; that I cannot be forced to
embrace your ends as my own. Our separation entails our freedom which in
turn entails our right to establish and pursue our own concept of value,
independent of the concept of value pursued or favored by others. Ronald
Dworkin puts the point in this way: What does it mean for the government to treat
its citizens as equals? That is . . . the same question as the question of what it
means for the government to treat all its citizens as free, or as independent, or with
equal dignity... . [To ac cord with this demand, a government must] be neutral on
what might be called the question of the good life. . . . [P]olitical decisions must be,
so far as is possible, independent of any particular conception of the good life, or of
what gives value to life. Since the citizens of a society differ in their conceptions,
the government does not treat them as equals if it prefers one conception to
another, either because the officials believe that one is intrinsically superior, or
because one is held by the more numerous or more powerful group.5 Because of
the dominance of liberalism in this culture, we might think of autonomy as the
official liberal value entailed by the physical, material condition of inevitable
separation from the other. separation from the other entails my freedom from him,
and that in turn entails my political right to autonomy. I can form my own
conception of the good life, and pursue it. Indeed, any conception of the good which
I form, will necessarily be my conception of the good life. That freedom must be
respected. Because I am free, I value and have a right to autonomy. You must value
it as well. The state must protect it. This in turn implies other (more con tested)
values, the most important of which is (or may be) equality. Dworkin continues: I
now define a liberal as someone who holds. . . . [a] liberal .. . theory of what
equality requires. Suppose that a liberal is asked to found a new state. He is
required to dictate its constitution and fundamental institutions. He must propose a
general theory of political distribution . . . . He will arrive initially at something like
this principal of rough equality: resources and opportunities should be distributed,
so far as possible, equally, so that roughly the same share of whatever is available
is devoted to satisfying the ambitions of each. Any other general aim of distribution
will assume either that the fate of some people should be of greater concern than
that of others, or that the ambitions or talents of some are more worthy, and should
be supported more generously on that account.6 Autonomy, freedom and equality
collectively constitute what might be called the up side of the subjective
experience of separation. Autonomy and freedom are both entailed by the
separation thesis, and autonomy and freedom both feel very good. However, theres
a down side to the subjective experience of separation as well. Physical
separation from the other entails not just my freedom; it also entails my
vulnerability. Every other discrete, separate individualbecause he is the
otheris a source of danger to me and a threat to my autonomy. I have
reason to fear you solely by virtue of the fact that I am me and you are
you. You are not me, so by definition my ends are not your ends. Our ends
might conflict. You might try to frustrate my pursuit of my ends. In an
extreme case, you might even try to kill meyou might cause my
annihilation.
This separation undermines the possibility of true community-it is a

denial of what makes us human
Phillips 14author of "Reclaimed: This Catholic Faith is Mine," is a trusted

resource on the topics of Catholicism and social justice (Gregory, Humanity is
Defined by Loving Community, 6/2, http://www.gregoryerichphillips.com/humanitydefined-loving-community/)//FJ
Think for a moment how you know yourself: it is in relation to other
people. Without the context provided by others, can you even accurately say who you are? Our human
experience is defined, enlivened and validated through relationships. It is
through our communities that we come to know ourselves and gain our
identity. Even though we know we need relationships, sometimes we forget how very much we rely on the
loving community around us. These communities do more than support us. They quite literally make
us who we are. Relationships our bound by love. Love is therefore the fullest expression of our humanness.
Emotions and actions in opposition to love (jealousy, selfishness, apathy), make us less human. True
community creates a virtuous cycle where love can thrive . Each person is nourished
and sustained by the love of the others. It is an intertwined relationship of support, standing at each others needs.
It is not always easy to maintain true community. Whether it is a family, group of friends,
church, or even a whole town, a community will always have problems; jealousies,
resentments and distrusts are inevitable in any group. Amongst people who have
known each other a long time, love will always have ongoing challenges. Sometimes it can feel like the easy path
would be to step out of the community and think of ones own needs. Are these difficult relationships really worth
However, as soon as personal needs are prioritized at the expense of, or

separate from community, it leads to an isolation of selfishness. At the extreme,
it leads to a loss of true human identity. Communities create an
environment for fostering love, and the mutual humanness of the
members. With this in mind we must remember one community of which
we are all a partthe entire human family. Communities frequently distort themselves into
it?
rivaling factions intent not on their own nourishment but on the destruction of a different community. Sadly, this is
the way many religious groups relate to one another.
Individualism makes extinction inevitable-causes alienation and

rejects community oriented solutions necessary to resolve every
global problem
Mitchell 10 [David, David worked on Energy Policy and Innovation as a

Breakthrough Generation Fellow in Summer 2010. He graduated from Oxford
University in June 2008 with a BA in Geography. He gained his master's degree from
Yale University in May 2011, having focused on Energy Economics, Environmental
Law, and Competitive Strategy, 6.8 billion Dependents: a critique of Individualism,
http://thebreakthrough.org/generation_archive/68_billion_dependents_a_critiq] alla
Individualism is a project focused on the self. You, alone, are the measure
of all things. You, alone, are the most important unit of consideration. The
individual must therefore oppose external influences and pursue one's
own goals and desires. For individualism, self-reliance is the name of the game.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a champion of individualism, believed we could "build our
own worlds", while Thoreau, a contemporary, famously told us to "go confidently in
the direction of (our) dreams". Yet while individualism as a theory is not all bad, we
must refuse to embed ourselves in any mode of thinking which discounts
the importance of community and which proposes living and thinking
within a vacuum. Many of the problems we face, we face together. Global
warming may be the best example of this, revealing the interconnectedness
of all 6.8 billion of us like never before. Our solutions, then, must not be
formed in isolation - we need collective action, not narrow individualism. It
is not so much that we must reject individualism as a project - the problems we face
have confidently done that for us. To be sure, there are some positive things to
draw from individualism as a moral philosophy: ideas about being authentic, selfreliant, and being critical of following the herd, can help to drive progress in certain
areas. Taken to the extreme, however, these ideas are harmful. We are not, and
will never be, self-reliant individuals. We live in an interdependent world,
each of us relying on others. Furthermore, we are beings longing for
community, not isolation; and relationship, not loneliness. As such, selfactualization will never come to any of us through a focus purely on the
self. A crucial failure of Emerson's argument is that his account of his own "genius"
is somewhat ahistorical; he forgets that his class, his race, his Harvard education,
and his setting have shaped his own ideas. His thinking was not formed in a
vacuum. Emerson's account therefore cuts off any discursive potential between
individuals, suggesting rather that we are better left to our own devices. Indeed, his
essay on self-reliance begins with the maxim: "ne te quaesiveris extra", meaning,
"do not seek things outside of yourself". As such, Emerson admonishes the
individual to "trust thyself", and to "insist on yourself; never imitate". Such

thinking may appeal to our baser instincts. It is not, however, the type of
stance or posture that will deliver solutions to our common problems; nor
will it create societies we would long for. In addition, Emerson appears to
assume that the imitation of ideas is always a bad thing. This is not the case.
Indeed, in the public policy world, we form ideas with the express intent
that others will weigh them and eventually imitate them. Political projects
are not formed in a vacuum and political ideas are not intended to stay in
a vacuum; they are distributed and shared amongst increasing numbers of
people, with numerous actors inputting along the way. It is worrying then to
see the "rise of self" within our society. Despite the evident failure of individualism,
our society is self-centered and self-absorbed, while grossly lacking in
self-esteem. Of great concern is the fact that our pursuit of selfactualization has focused for too long on the self, leading to feelings of
social isolation and alienation. We have, in short, been chasing self-esteem, not
self-actualization. Thus, in the pursuit of the individual, we have lost our
sense of belonging. Robert Putnam's now famous book, Bowling Alone,
published in 2000, detailed the death of social movements, and the death of social
engagement more broadly. He explained how the reasons for this decline are
fourfold: longer working hours and the entrance of women into the workforce;
suburban sprawl, putting greater distance between family and friends and work;
increased television watching and media consumption; and the rise of meorientated generations (from Break Through, Nordhaus & Shellenberger). In short, in
seeking our own goals and in seeking to fulfill our own desires, we have forgotten
what it means to be part of a larger network and a larger project. To turn
the tide, we must reject individualism as a stand-alone concept. There is
evidence that this is occurring and that our society is longing to feel "whole" again.
For example, Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life has sold over 30 million
copies, emphasizing peoples' longing for meaning both within and outside of
themselves. The book begins with this simple line: It's not about you. In Break
Through, Nordhaus and Schellenberger wrongly suggest that the book is not a
rejection of individualism, when it quite clearly is. While the book does note the
importance of the individual, as Break Through recounts, it also stresses that the
individual is fully actualized only when one is positioned within the setting
of a broader plan and community. It celebrates the individual, but only as a
citizen of a larger group. In the face of today's challenges, we must stress this
point again: it's not about you. It is, in fact, about Us. Collectively.
Together. The problems of the day - global warming, the economic recession,
national security, and the search for identity - teach us that this is true. Our
interdependence has never been more apparent. What we need, then, is an
"integrated individuality", which celebrates the individual, in the context
of the community. Put simply, we are born dependent and we die
dependent; we should stop trying to live and think during the intervening
years any other way. Instead, we must celebrate each other as a part of a
community which values and cares for its members. Self-actualization, then,
must be a group project. It cannot be attained alone.
The alternative is to reject the affirmatives conception of radical

individualism and embrace a new conception of social self
Friedman 89 [Marilyn, works in social and political philosophy, ethics, and

feminist theory., Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community,
January 1989, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381435] alla
A predominant theme in much recent feminist thought has been the
critique of the abstract individualism which underlies some important versions
of liberal political theory.' Abstract individualism considers individual human
beings as social atoms, abstracted from their social contexts, and
disregards the role of social relationships and human community in
constituting the very identity and nature of individual human beings.
Sometimes the individuals of abstract individualism are posited as rationally selfinterested utility maximizers.2 Sometimes, also, they are theorized to form
communities based fundamentally on competition and conflict among persons
vying for scarce resources, communities which represent no deeper social bond
than that of instrumental relations based on calculated self-interest.3 Against this
abstractive individualist view of the self and of human community, many
feminists have asserted a conception of what might be called the "social
self."4 This conception fundamentally acknowledges the role of social
relationships and human community in constituting both self-identity
and the nature and meaning of the particulars of individual lives.5 The
modified conception of the self has carried with it an altered conception
of community. Conflict and competition are no longer considered to be
the basic human relationships; instead they are being replaced by
alternative visions of the foundation of human society derived from
nurturance, caring attachment, and mutual interestedness.6 Some
feminists, for example, recommend that the mother-child relationship be viewed as
central to human society, and they project major changes in moral theory from
such a revised focus.7
Links
Link-Community
Neoliberal autonomy destroys social control by eliminating a sense
of community.
Smith 12 Sociology Lens Journal (Candace, Neoliberalism and

Individualism: Ego Leads to Interpersonal Violence?, The Society Pages, 12/4,
http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2012/12/04/neoliberalism-andindividualism-ego-leads-to-interpersonal-violence/)//FJ
As a result of this focus on the individual and the dismissal of society,
neoliberalism runs the risk of increasing criminality. By discharging society and by
highlighting the relationship between individual success and morality, neoliberal states are in
danger of losing the beneficial aspects of social control (Horsley 2010). Without
proper amounts of social control, Hirschi (1969) has argued, individuals are more
likely to act on their self-interest and to behave in a criminal manner.
Considering that neoliberalism insists on individualization and selfinterest, it makes since that those living under neoliberal regimes may
have fewer reasons not to act criminally. As Engels wrote during the early days of capitalism,
this market-based philosophy threatens to create people who care for nothing but self-interest and advancement
(Lea 1996). This mindset, he continued, would result in many people settling interpersonal differences with
neoliberalism can be seen as indirectly contributing to

interpersonal violence by acting through the neoliberal process of
individualization. In an attempt to more clearly examine the interconnections between neoliberalism,
individualism, and interpersonal violence, consider the case of France. Although this country has
violence. In this sense, then,
been more hesitant about adopting neoliberalism than other Western states, the policies of this ideology have been
ever since the arrival of

neoliberalism, France has become less concerned with the social welfare
of its citizens and it has become more concerned with economic matters . It
is likely that this slow shift away from the welfare state has had an impact on the
French people. Hofstede (2001) found, for instance, that France scores relatively high on the individualistic
creeping in since the mid-1980s. Bourdieu (1992) claims that
index compared to other nations. This means that the French are generally more concerned with themselves and
with their direct families than they are with belonging to a collective group. And ,
since the enactment

of neoliberal policies, the violent crime rate in France has amplified . Fougre,
Kramarz, and Pouget (2009) note, for example, that violent crime increased dramatically in that country from 1990-
it seems quite
possible that the introduction of pro-individualistic neoliberal policies may
have contributed to Frances growing violent crime problem.
2000. Considering Hirschis focus on the importance of social control on deterring crime,
Link-Ocean
The ocean is a key site for perpetuating individualist ethics
Beam 10an American journalist and a reporter for The New Republic
(Christopher, The Trouble With Liberty, The New York Magazine, 12/26,
http://nymag.com/news/politics/70282/)//FJ
The last best hope for Libertopia may be the ocean. Theres a long, not-soproud history of seeking freedom at sea. In 1972, Nevada real-estate
developer Michael Oliver built an island in the southwest Pacific by
dredging sand near an an existing reef, which he called the Republic of
Minerva. The nearby Kingdom of Tonga quickly conquered it. A proposal in the late nineties
to create a Freedom Ship nearly a mile long that would house 50,000
people never got past the planning stage. That hasnt stopped Patri Friedman, grandson of
libertarian hero Milton Friedman, from trying once more. Friedman founded the Seasteading
Institute in 2008 with the goal of creating a floating society free from
governments grasp. While seasteading communities would start smalljust a bunch of family-size
platforms floating off the coastFriedman imagines them harvesting energy and growing
food. What distinguishes seasteading from pure fantasy is money. Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and bought
a stake in Facebook back in 2004, has become the Johnny Appleseed of futurist libertarians. Since 2008, hes given
upwards of $750,000 to the Seasteading Institute. He recently announced that he will offer twenty grants of up to
$100,000 each to teenagers who want to start their own tech companiesa proposal that drew liberal scorn. Thiel
is unapologetic about his disdain for government. I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are
compatible, he wrote in a 2009 essay. Hes not alone. Silicon Valley has produced a whole cadre of libertarian
entrepreneurs, including longtime Sun Microsystems president Scott McNealy, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark,
and Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers.
Impacts
Impact-Otherization/Violence
Individual autonomy is the root cause of violencelack of mutual
ends and psychological bias to fear all Others
Law Center, Jurisprudence and Gender,
I will start with the liberal description of separation, because it is the most
familiar, and surely the most dominant. According to liberal legalism, the
inevitability of the individuals material separation from the other,
entails, first and foremost, an existential state of highly desirable and
much valued freedom: because the individual is separate from the other,
he is free of the other. Because I am separate from you, my ends, my life,
my path, my goals are necessarily my own. Because I am separate, I am
autonomous. Because I am separate, I am existentially free (whether or
not I am politically free). And, of course, this is true not just of me, but of
everyone: it is the universal human condition. We are each separate and
we are all separate, so we are each free and we are all free. We are, that is,
equally free. This existential condition of freedom in turn entails the liberals
conception of value. Because we are all free and we are each equally free, we
should be treated by our government as free, and as equally free. The individual
must be treated by his government (and by others) in a way that respects his
equality and his free dom. The government must honor at the level of politics the
existential claim made above: that my ends are my ends; that I cannot be forced to
embrace your ends as my own. Our separation entails our freedom which in
turn entails our right to establish and pursue our own concept of value,
independent of the concept of value pursued or favored by others. Ronald
Dworkin puts the point in this way: What does it mean for the government to treat
its citizens as equals? That is . . . the same question as the question of what it
means for the government to treat all its citizens as free, or as independent, or with
equal dignity... . [To ac cord with this demand, a government must] be neutral on
what might be called the question of the good life. . . . [P]olitical decisions must be,
so far as is possible, independent of any particular conception of the good life, or of
what gives value to life. Since the citizens of a society differ in their conceptions,
the government does not treat them as equals if it prefers one conception to
another, either because the officials believe that one is intrinsically superior, or
because one is held by the more numerous or more powerful group.5 Because of
the dominance of liberalism in this culture, we might think of autonomy as the
official liberal value entailed by the physical, material condition of inevitable
separation from the other. separation from the other entails my freedom from him,
and that in turn entails my political right to autonomy. I can form my own
conception of the good life, and pursue it. Indeed, any conception of the good which
I form, will necessarily be my conception of the good life. That freedom must be
respected. Because I am free, I value and have a right to autonomy. You must value
it as well. The state must protect it. This in turn implies other (more con tested)
values, the most important of which is (or may be) equality. Dworkin continues: I
now define a liberal as someone who holds. . . . [a] liberal .. . theory of what
equality requires. Suppose that a liberal is asked to found a new state. He is
required to dictate its constitution and fundamental institutions. He must propose a
general theory of political distribution . . . . He will arrive initially at something like
this principal of rough equality: resources and opportunities should be distributed,
so far as possible, equally, so that roughly the same share of whatever is available
is devoted to satisfying the ambitions of each. Any other general aim of distribution
will assume either that the fate of some people should be of greater concern than
that of others, or that the ambitions or talents of some are more worthy, and should
be supported more generously on that account.6 Autonomy, freedom and equality
collectively constitute what might be called the up side of the subjective
experience of separation. Autonomy and freedom are both entailed by the
separation thesis, and autonomy and freedom both feel very good. However, theres
a down side to the subjective experience of separation as well. Physical
separation from the other entails not just my freedom; it also entails my
vulnerability. Every other discrete, separate individualbecause he is the
otheris a source of danger to me and a threat to my autonomy. I have
reason to fear you solely by virtue of the fact that I am me and you are
you. You are not me, so by definition my ends are not your ends. Our ends
might conflict. You might try to frustrate my pursuit of my ends. In an
extreme case, you might even try to kill meyou might cause my
annihilation.
Impact-Alienation/Violence
Neoliberalism causes alienation among individuals replicates
violence.
Smith 12Sociology Lens Journal (Candace, Neoliberalism and

there may very well be a link between
neoliberalism, individualism, and interpersonal violence. By focusing so
strongly on the individual and by disregarding the importance of
community (Peters 2001; Brown 2003), neoliberalism increases the importance of individuality while
decreasing the importance of society (Amable 2011). This obsession with the individual,
research indicates, can result in a loss of social control and, as a result, a
potential for violence (Hirschi 1969). In support of this contention, Horsley (2010:20) writes that
neo-liberalism may not directly cause criminality and violencebut its
consequences certainly create the circumstances in which crime rates are
more likely to rise. Undoubtedly, in addition to individualism, one of the primary
consequences of neoliberalism is inequality. The interaction between
inequality and individualization suggests that the non-elite may feel
aggressive and frustrated with their social position and may experience
too little social control to contain these feelings. With many of the social bonds that had
previously discouraged violence gone, alienated individuals may be more apt to respond
to stress with violence.
As is evidenced by the French example,
The plans affirmation of autonomy re-entrenches neoliberalism

replicates violence by tearing apart social bonds.

There appears to be a link between neoliberalism, individualism, and
violence. In reference to the association between neoliberalism and individualism, consider
neoliberalisms insistence that we do not need society since we are all
solely responsible for our personal well-being (Peters 2001; Brown 2003). From a
criminological standpoint, it is not hard to understand how this focus on the
individual can lead to violence. According to Hirschis (1969) social control theory, for instance,
broken or weak social bonds free a person to engage in deviancy . Since,
according to this theory, individuals are naturally self-interested, they can use the
opportunity of individualization to overcome the restraining powers of
society. Bearing in mind neoliberalisms tendency to value the individual
over society, it could be argued that this ideology is hazardous as it acts
to tear apart important social bonds and to thereby contribute to the
occurrence of ego-driven crimes, including violent interpersonal crimes. Such
a thought suggests that as neoliberalism becomes more prominent in a country, it can be expected that
individualism and, as a result, interpersonal violence within that country will increase.
Prioritization of individual interest destroys interconnectedness of

people increases violence.
Horsley 10 a first class undergraduate dissertation submitted in May 2006 for

the Degree of BSc (Hons) Criminology, Division of Sociology and Criminology (Mark,
Capitalism and Crime: The Criminogenic Potential of the Free Market , Internet
Journal of Criminology,
http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Horsley_Capitalism_and_Crime_Oct_20
10.pdf)//FJ
Neo-liberalism with its emphasis on self-fulfilment and the competitive
individual could well be undermining one of the central concerns of the
civilising process, that of the interconnectedness of people pushing some
into reformulating it as the Pseudo-Pacification Process (Hall, 2000; Hall & Winlow, 2004; Hall et al,
2005). This might imply that we were never really civilised in any permanent way, that we were
Some commentators
have even noted a growing affinity to the general barbarism that the
Enlightenment and capitalisms unique civilising project had palpably
failed to leave behind (Hall & Winlow, 2004: 281). This raises questions around the purpose
happy enough to live peaceful lives while it was the easiest option.
of the civilising process as well as Elias (1994) assertion that people were simply getting better in
line with the liberal ideals of civility, freedom and democracy. It would seem that if this had been the
aim all along, such civility would be unshakable by the forces of neo-liberalism and increased
competition both globally and individually. What might have been missing from Elias account was a
Foucaultian/Marxian appreciation of the reasons behind increasing civility. Foucault (1979) asserts
that the primary motivation was a need to protect the new property rights of the bourgeois class and
to socialise the population into an effective working force for capitalisms new industries, this is why
we saw the growth of the prison as a means of punishment .
Although there is little doubt

that the civilising process did reduce crime and specifically instances of
serious interpersonal violence (Hall & Winlow, 2004: 282), this was purely
temporary because it was motivated by the needs of the bourgeois classes
to protect themselves and their property not because of a widely
acknowledged need for greater civility and pacification.
Individualism within neoliberalism contributes to violence loss of

social control encourages one to commit crimes for personal benefit.

10.pdf)//FJ
The third and final element of the neoliberal transition we have space to
discuss appears to be a set of changes in the way we organise and
perform social control (social structures that hold us to the norms of our society). Over the
course of the last 50 years many western nations have implemented changes in their internal
this has been expressed as a move

away from traditional forms of control towards a more ego-dominated
self regulation allowed for the reflexive and flexible calculation that came
to be expected (Wouters, 1999: 416). As we relax the informal controls associated with the
construction of social control. Broadly speaking
rely more on personal judgement in combination with a

rapid expansion of legal penalty perhaps more are likely to consider the
possibility of committing deviants acts. Most criminological explanations of this
post war era and begin to
development tend to focus on either changing control or upon the disintegration of morality and
ineffective socialisation. What actually happened, however, was a relaxation of some controls and an
we have moved away from expecting

individuals to be controlled by society and toward each individual
controlling him or herself (ibid.) with an expansion of penalties if we fail. If this
development is coupled with the current of individualisation promoted by
neoliberalisation, the deepening of social inequality as well as the
development of a more expansive consumer culture it is just possible that
some individuals may control themselves into criminality in order to fulfil
unrealistic expectations gathered from interactions between consumer
culture and the hegemonic liberal cult of the self. For the relatively well off,
intensification of others. In other words
adopting the codified rules (laws) of our post industrial society may be advantageous enough to
for those
who are disadvantaged by the current political economy, who live in areas
where there are no jobs and no way of fulfilling their desires, what reason
remains to be law abiding? In fact, many of the characteristics of the current
political economy such as reflexivity of the self and the weakening of
collective identities (Furlong & Cartmel, 1997: 82) that have been discussed above, may
well have a deleterious effect upon social cohesion and control and perhaps even
contribute to the crime rates of neoliberal nations.
mitigate against a certain amount of criminality (if we ignore the white-collar variety) but
Impact-Suffering
Radical autonomy puts those dependent on community in a position
of constant suffering by refusing to help them.

10.pdf)//FJ
During the post-war social democratic era (roughly 1945 to late 1970s) traditional
working class communities were fairly solid, stable entities where
individuals gained identity through their work and through ideological
identification with their compatriots. For sake of argument this relatively
prosperous period came to an end in 1979 with the election of Margaret
Thatcher, the leader of our first neoliberal government. This government simply were not willing to
protect and subsidise industries like coal mining that were not profitable in a world of increased
global competition. Though this might sound reasonable enough with modern sensibilities, its affects
With
the destruction of these traditional forms of working class life the
proletarian hard-man, the pre-requisite workforce of heavy industry, was
reduced to a position of radical insignificance (Hall, 2000: 36). He simply did not
on those who relied on such industries for their livelihood seem to have been largely ignored.
and could not fit into the burgeoning new service economy, leaving many inner city estates originally
Today many of these

areas have become areas of permanent local recession (Taylor, 1999) with no
jobs and permanently marginalised populations. Seeing no attraction in
the routine forms of exploitation offered by neo-capitalist
consumer/service work, many males continue to seek new functions and
rewardsin the unregulated alternative economies (Hall et al, 2005: 109).
built to service particular industries struggling to find a source of income.
Impact-Extinction
Individualism makes solutions to global problems impossible
causes alienationonly a community based approach can solveour
offense subsumes theirsonly communities can give value to the
individual
Mitchell 10 [David, David worked on Energy Policy and Innovation as a

Breakthrough Generation Fellow in Summer 2010. He graduated from Oxford
University in June 2008 with a BA in Geography. He gained his master's degree from
Yale University in May 2011, having focused on Energy Economics, Environmental
Law, and Competitive Strategy, 6.8 billion Dependents: a critique of Individualism,
http://thebreakthrough.org/generation_archive/68_billion_dependents_a_critiq] alla
Individualism is a project focused on the self. You, alone, are the measure
of all things. You, alone, are the most important unit of consideration. The
individual must therefore oppose external influences and pursue one's
own goals and desires. For individualism, self-reliance is the name of the game.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, a champion of individualism, believed we could "build our
own worlds", while Thoreau, a contemporary, famously told us to "go confidently in
the direction of (our) dreams". Yet while individualism as a theory is not all bad, we
must refuse to embed ourselves in any mode of thinking which discounts
the importance of community and which proposes living and thinking
within a vacuum. Many of the problems we face, we face together. Global
warming may be the best example of this, revealing the interconnectedness
of all 6.8 billion of us like never before. Our solutions, then, must not be
formed in isolation - we need collective action, not narrow individualism. It
is not so much that we must reject individualism as a project - the problems we face
have confidently done that for us. To be sure, there are some positive things to
draw from individualism as a moral philosophy: ideas about being authentic, selfreliant, and being critical of following the herd, can help to drive progress in certain
areas. Taken to the extreme, however, these ideas are harmful. We are not, and
will never be, self-reliant individuals. We live in an interdependent world,
each of us relying on others. Furthermore, we are beings longing for
community, not isolation; and relationship, not loneliness. As such, selfactualization will never come to any of us through a focus purely on the
self. A crucial failure of Emerson's argument is that his account of his own "genius"
is somewhat ahistorical; he forgets that his class, his race, his Harvard education,
and his setting have shaped his own ideas. His thinking was not formed in a
vacuum. Emerson's account therefore cuts off any discursive potential between
individuals, suggesting rather that we are better left to our own devices. Indeed, his
essay on self-reliance begins with the maxim: "ne te quaesiveris extra", meaning,
"do not seek things outside of yourself". As such, Emerson admonishes the
individual to "trust thyself", and to "insist on yourself; never imitate". Such
thinking may appeal to our baser instincts. It is not, however, the type of
stance or posture that will deliver solutions to our common problems; nor
will it create societies we would long for. In addition, Emerson appears to
assume that the imitation of ideas is always a bad thing. This is not the case.
Indeed, in the public policy world, we form ideas with the express intent
that others will weigh them and eventually imitate them. Political projects
are not formed in a vacuum and political ideas are not intended to stay in
a vacuum; they are distributed and shared amongst increasing numbers of
people, with numerous actors inputting along the way. It is worrying then to
see the "rise of self" within our society. Despite the evident failure of individualism,
our society is self-centered and self-absorbed, while grossly lacking in
self-esteem. Of great concern is the fact that our pursuit of selfactualization has focused for too long on the self, leading to feelings of
social isolation and alienation. We have, in short, been chasing self-esteem, not
self-actualization. Thus, in the pursuit of the individual, we have lost our
sense of belonging. Robert Putnam's now famous book, Bowling Alone,
published in 2000, detailed the death of social movements, and the death of social
engagement more broadly. He explained how the reasons for this decline are
fourfold: longer working hours and the entrance of women into the workforce;
suburban sprawl, putting greater distance between family and friends and work;
increased television watching and media consumption; and the rise of meorientated generations (from Break Through, Nordhaus & Shellenberger). In short, in
seeking our own goals and in seeking to fulfill our own desires, we have forgotten
what it means to be part of a larger network and a larger project. To turn
the tide, we must reject individualism as a stand-alone concept. There is
evidence that this is occurring and that our society is longing to feel "whole" again.
For example, Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life has sold over 30 million
copies, emphasizing peoples' longing for meaning both within and outside of
themselves. The book begins with this simple line: It's not about you. In Break
Through, Nordhaus and Schellenberger wrongly suggest that the book is not a
rejection of individualism, when it quite clearly is. While the book does note the
importance of the individual, as Break Through recounts, it also stresses that the
individual is fully actualized only when one is positioned within the setting
of a broader plan and community. It celebrates the individual, but only as a
citizen of a larger group. In the face of today's challenges, we must stress this
point again: it's not about you. It is, in fact, about Us. Collectively.
Together. The problems of the day - global warming, the economic recession,
national security, and the search for identity - teach us that this is true. Our
interdependence has never been more apparent. What we need, then, is an
"integrated individuality", which celebrates the individual, in the context
of the community. Put simply, we are born dependent and we die
dependent; we should stop trying to live and think during the intervening
years any other way. Instead, we must celebrate each other as a part of a
community which values and cares for its members. Self-actualization, then,
must be a group project. It cannot be attained alone.
Impact-Value to lIfe-Human
Living within political community is the essence of being human
the alternative is a life of alienation.
Parekh 11an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University

(Serena, Between Community and Humanity: Arendt, Judgment, and Responsibility
to the Global Poor, Philosophical Topics, Volume 39, Number 2, Fall 2011, pp. 145163, Project Muse,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/philosophical_topics/v039/39.2.parekh.pdf)//FJ
The right to have rights "means to live in a framework where one is judged by one's actions and
opinions, and the right to belong to some kind of organized community " (Arendt
1978,29697). This means that inclusion in a community is fundamental since
without this, it is impossible to have one's rights either recognized or
protected.18 Political belonging is important in another way as well. Though a political community is
necessary to protect rights, it also provides the framework for the possibility of
action. Belonging means being able to live within a framework where you
are judged according to who, and not merely what, you are ; it is to be
treated as a person based on your words and deeds, and not merely on
your mem- bership in a category (Arendt 1998, 17879). Without the possibility of
public dis- closure, we are left with a life of alienation, a loss of meaning,
and a loss of being at home in the world. So fundamental is political belonging that Arendt
thought, "no man can live without belonging to some community " (Arendt 2003,150).
By this she did not mean merely that biological survival is impossible but that political communities
create the possibility for one to exercise her humanity through speech and
action. Effectively, political communities for Arendt were necessary to
preserve freedom understood not as freedom of the will but as the
freedom to pursue common ends in a public sphere. Freedom, for Arendt, is the ability
to act in concert with others in a public realm, rather than the ability to pursue private interests unobstructed by
the government. Thus,
rather than diminish freedom, the laws of a state protect

freedom insofar as "laws are the positively established fences which
hedge in, protect, and limit the space in which freedom is not a concept,
but a living, political reality" (Arendt 1983,81-82). For Arendt, then, political
communities are fundamental both for human rights and for the
possibility of being fully human.
Humanity defines community creates the conditions for

cooperation and love that prevent a life of selfishness.
Phillips 14author of "Reclaimed: This Catholic Faith is Mine," is a trusted

resource on the topics of Catholicism and social justice (Gregory, Humanity is
Defined by Loving Community, 6/2, http://www.gregoryerichphillips.com/humanitydefined-loving-community/)//FJ
Think for a moment how you know yourself: it is in relation to other
people. Without the context provided by others, can you even accurately say who you are? Our human
experience is defined, enlivened and validated through relationships. It is
through our communities that we come to know ourselves and gain our
identity. Even though we know we need relationships, sometimes we forget how very much we rely on the
They quite literally make

us who we are. Relationships our bound by love. Love is therefore the fullest expression of our humanness.
Emotions and actions in opposition to love (jealousy, selfishness, apathy), make us less human. True
community creates a virtuous cycle where love can thrive . Each person is nourished
loving community around us. These communities do more than support us.
and sustained by the love of the others. It is an intertwined relationship of support, standing at each others needs.
It is not always easy to maintain true community. Whether it is a family, group of friends,
church, or even a whole town, a community will always have problems; jealousies,
resentments and distrusts are inevitable in any group. Amongst people who have
known each other a long time, love will always have ongoing challenges. Sometimes it can feel like the easy path
would be to step out of the community and think of ones own needs. Are these difficult relationships really worth
However, as soon as personal needs are prioritized at the expense of, or

separate from community, it leads to an isolation of selfishness. At the extreme,
it leads to a loss of true human identity. Communities create an
environment for fostering love, and the mutual humanness of the
members. With this in mind we must remember one community of which
we are all a partthe entire human family. Communities frequently distort themselves into
it?
rivaling factions intent not on their own nourishment but on the destruction of a different community. Sadly, this is
the way many religious groups relate to one another.
Impact-Value to Life-Competition
Neoliberal communities demoralize individuals through the constant
need for competition.

10.pdf)//FJ
Willem Bonger (2003 [1916]) also wrote on this topic during the early 20th century. He proposed that
an economic system based

upon exchange instead of utility cannot fail to have an egoistic
character (ibid. 58). Bonger thought that a society based on exchange would
isolate individuals from each other by weakening the bonds that unite
them (Ibid.). The primary bond between individuals in early capitalist
society was a sense of shared interest and common fate, but (neoliberal)
capitalism might actually dismantle this bond by forcing people to
compete with each other for work, income and social position. It seems quite
a favourable environment could prevent egoistic acts but
obvious that this all sounds very normal in the present day and is no more than a statement of reality
but we must remember that this economic type was still relatively new at the beginning of the 20th
century. Bongers explanations for the rise of social inequality and for the demoralising effect that
capitalism can have on individuals arose from the necessity of labour to capitalist production and in
particular the need of the producer to purchase labour (and from the labourers need to sell). Bonger
argues that people are forced to sell their labour to avoid starvation, which, in most cases, does not
enter the equation now because of the remnants of our welfare state. However, it is still the case that
we need to work to provide for ourselves, thus Bongers idea that this situation gives rise to
exploitation may still be relevant. Little
by little one class of men has become

accustomed to think that the others are destined to amass wealth for
them (Ibid. 60), this, thought Bonger, demoralises both the producer and
the labourer. In the producer it creates greed and a disregard for those
under his or her charge who are seen solely as profit making machines. In
the labouring classes it creates feelings of insecurity and demoralisation
because there is always a surplus of labour with which we can be
threatened if we fail to live up to expectations.
Impact-Ethics-Collective Responsibilty
The affs notion that all individuals can be autonomous is flawed a
refusal for compromise would destroy collective responsibility which
is key to societal advancement.
Beam 10an American journalist and a reporter for The New Republic
(Christopher, The Trouble With Liberty, The New York Magazine, 12/26,
http://nymag.com/news/politics/70282/)//FJ
the biggest
banks had failed, bankers wouldnt have been the only ones punished.
Everyone would have lost his money. Investors who had no idea how their dollars were
Its a compelling story. But like many libertarian narratives, its oversimplified. If
being usedthe ratings agencies gave their investments AAA grades, after allwould have gone
broke. Homeowners who misunderstood their risky loans would have gone into permanent debt. Sure,
the bailouts let some irresponsible people off easy. But not intervening would have unfairly punished a
Theres always tension between freedom and fairness. We

want less government regulation, but not when it means firms can hire
cheap child labor. We want a free market, but not so bankers can deceive investors.
Libertarianism, in promoting freedom above all else, pretends the tension
doesnt exist. Case in point: A house in Obion County, Tennessee, burned to the ground in
much greater number.
September because the owner had not paid the annual $75 fee for opt-in fire protection. As the fire
raged, the house owner told the dispatcher that he would pay the cost of putting out the fire. The fire
department still refused to come. The house burned down, with four pets inside. Libertarians point out
that this is how opt-in servicesas opposed to taxpayer-funded public servicesworks. If you dont
pay, you dont get coverage. The firefighters cant make exceptions without creating moral hazard.
This makes sense in theory. In practice, not so much. The firefighters showed up to protect a
neighboring property. The homeowner offered to pay not just the cost of the fire protection but the full
cost of the spray. A court would have enforced that contract. But because the firefighters stuck to a
rigid principle of opt-in services, a house was destroyed. Will this serve as a cautionary tale next time
a rural resident of Obion County is deciding whether to buy fire insurance? No doubt. But will someone
else inevitably not learn his lesson and make the same mistake? No doubt. And thats just the
government side. Consider the social side of Libertopia. Its no coincidence that most libertarians
At best, libertarianism means pursuing your

own self-interest, as long as you dont hurt anyone else. At worst , as in Ayn
Rands teachings, its an explicit celebration of narcissism. Mans first duty is to
discover the philosophy as teenagers.
himself, says the young architect Howard Roark in his climactic speech in The Fountainhead. His
moral obligation is to do what he wishes. Roark utters these words after dynamiting his own project,
The message: Never

compromise. If you dont get your way, blow things up. And theres the
problem. If everyone refused to compromise his vision, there would be no
cooperation. There would be no collective responsibility . The result
wouldnt be a city on a hill. It would be a port town in Somalia. In a world of
since his vision for the structure had been altered without his permission.
scarce resources, everyone pursuing their own self-interest would yield not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of
And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, youd be

surrounded by assholes.
the Flies.
Turns Structural Violence

Affirmation of individualism leads to structural inequality the poor
are blamed for their suffering

When it comes to individualization, this idea is one of the fundamental aspects of neoliberalism. In fact, Bauman
in neoliberal states individualization is a fate, not a

choice. As Amable (2011) explains, neoliberals have realized that in order for their
ideology to be successful, a states populace must internalize the belief
that individuals are only to be rewarded based on their personal effort. With
such an ego-driven focus, Scharff (2011) explains that the process of individualization
engenders a climate where structural inequalities are converted into
individual problems. That is, neoliberalism surmises that anyone can overcome obstacles if only they
(2000:34) argues that
work hard enough. Similarly, Brown (2003) describes how neoliberal policies place a moral component on success.
By insisting that only the immoral fail to achieve success, this concept
permits and even encourages a society to blame the poor for their suffering (Passas
2000). And, because people are responsible for their own fate as individuals,
neoliberalism further entails that a state should not interfere with this
process since doing so would be counterintuitive to the basic premise that
only merit should determine success (Amable 2011). As Thatcher once said about the role of the
state, There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are familiestheres no
such thing as entitlement (Keay 1987:8-10).
Turns Minority Oppression

Individualism is the primary cause of racism the belief that each
individual is imbued with equal rights creates a worldview that is
hostile to disproportionally helping minorities.
Guay and Lamont 14(*Joseph AND **Lamont, Is neoliberalism a

threat to civil rights?, The Boston Globe, 5/7,
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/07/neoliberalism-threatcivil-rights/GOy4Uw3yBH5kE4VTLTsdgO/story.html)//FJ
New research by Leanne S. Son Hing, a professor of psychology at the University of Guelph, suggests
racism is in many cases associated with what seem to be highly

sophisticated beliefs in neoliberal hallmarks like entrepreneurialism,
individualism, self-reliance, and a strong work ethic. Neoliberalism as economic
policy endorses privatization, the liberalization of trade, and minimal state intervention in the market.
Over the span of 30 years, these prescriptions have rewarded active participation, risk taking, and
innovation, providing the fuel for unprecedented economic growth in the modern era. But as these
market principles may serve to justify racial

antipathy and cause us to turn a blind eye to structural restraints that
often marginalize vulnerable minority communities , according to Son Hing. By
employing neoliberal narratives premised on equal competition for
prosperity, for instance, whites may reason that, discrimination no longer
exists, that blacks demands for special treatment are unfair, and that
blacks fail to get ahead because of a lack of hard work and self-reliance.
policies influence our worldviews,
To make matters worse, as the current economic system exacerbates competition over scarce
neoliberals,
who reject worldviews where things are not up to the individual, may
become hostile to policies such as affirmative action or any other form of
group remediation. Son Hing is quick to point out that the picture is mixed a left-right
resources, heightens uncertainty about the future, and fosters greater inequality,
political and economic orientation does not map perfectly onto prejudice. There are a number of
aversive racists (characterized by unconsciously holding negative values) on the political left who are
prejudiced and principled conservatives on the right who are not particularly prejudiced.
Furthermore, some would argue that the sink-or-swim nature of our current economic system is what
makes it work regardless of race, sex, creed, or any other social or physical determinant; reliance on
strict market principles, in this view, is really the only way to ensure equity for all. By introducing
some other, lower standard of judgment for those of different color/culture, we would be engaging in
the very sort of racism that we want to eliminate. Nevertheless, the research by Son Hing raises the
in a neoliberal world, traditional variants of racism can more

easily survive under the cover of evenhandedness. It is thus prudent that while we
possibility that
commemorate the legislation that has opened the door politically for millions of minorities here in the
United States, we also contemplate the role that our economic beliefs can have in hampering that
political progress in the days to come.
The affirmatives individualism cannot break away from structures

of oppression minorities will never be able to gain true access to
the autonomy that aff claims to create neoliberalism proves.
Cooke 13(Christina, On The Neoliberal Ego, OF THAT CLOSE KERNING, SO

SPLENDIFEROUS, REPLETES, 12/13,
http://ofthatclosekerningsosplendiferousrepletes.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/on-theneoliberal-ego/)//FJ
the kumbaya preaching of all voices are

equal! which conveniently ignores the systemic prejudices and structural
disadvantages barring most non-white, non-native (in terms of migration), nonstraight people from partaking in this supposed laissez-faire freedom.
You know the kind Im talking about:
What sorts of disadvantages? For example, more often than not, when people see me (I am not so
foolish as to attempt to speak for all marginalized peoples whore similar to myself. The last thing
black feminism needs is another saviour whos deadset on saving The Race), they see my black skin
which makes them wary. They see my button-downs and loose pants, and read me as male which
makes them nervous. When they realize Im cis-female, however, that just makes them flat-out
confused. From there, the conversation usually devolves into them trying to put a recognizable label
Neoliberal equality claims to

push against such forms of denigration by emphasizing a social free-for-all in
a seeming gesture of inclusivity, which usually reveals itself to be more
concerned with preserving the colonial and capitalist ego than anything
else: singing the sugary anthem of were all the same affords white
neoliberals the false right to ignore social, racial, economic and cultural
differences in a so-called attempt to acknowledge our Universal Humanity .
on me instead of actually listening to what Im there to say.
Such a stance also ensures white, settler, upper-class concerns always have a (prominent) seat at the
discussion table: If were all the same, then my white concerns deserve to be heard amidst this blackcentered discussion, too! Heaven forbid we non-mainstream folk ever do anything that doesnt focus
on, relate to, or continually gush gratitude to our white counterparts for granting us the space to be!
Turns Gender-Activism
The focus on freedom and individualism siphons off activism to
resist gender oppression
Scharff 11Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King's College

(Christina, Disarticulating Feminism: Individualization, Neoliberalism and the
Othering of Muslim Women, European Journal of Womens Studies, May, Sage
Journals)//FJ
processes of individualization create a climate in which structural
inequalities are regarded as individual problems. Exploring feminist
consciousness in 10 white middle-class women in Britain, Rich (2005)
found that individual achievement is believed to be sufficient to overcome
social constraints. These empirical observations resonate with broader sociological arguments
In addition,
about individualization (Beck, 1992; Beck and Bcck-Gcrnshcim. 1995; Giddcns, 1991) and more critical
perspectives on processes of individualization in particular (Bauman, 2000,2001; McRobbic, 2009).
'Individualization is a fate, not a

choice' and that refusal to participate in the 'individualizing game is emphatically not on the
Writing about the contemporary era, Bauman argues that
agenda' (Bauman, 2000: 34; emphasis in original). 'Everything . . .', he states, 'is now down to the
the conditions in which individuals live, their experiences and narratives undergo a relentless process of individualization.
individual' (Bauman, 2000: 62);
Discussing The Aftermath of Feminism, McRobbic (2009: 16) draws on Bauman's arguments to develop
Examining young women's repudiation of

feminism, she claims that feminism has been replaced with 'aggressive
individualism' (McRobbic, 2009: 5).
the concept of "female individualization'.
Turns Gender-Violence
Private individualism allows for the subordination of non-masculine
identitiesroot cause of sexual violence against women
Olsen 93 [Frances, Professor of Law at the University of California, Constitutional

Law: Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Distinction,
http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?
handle=hein.journals/ccum10&div=25&g_sent=1&collection=journals#325] alla
Many of the feminist arguments for more state intervention in the family are based
on this first level of criticism of the public/ private distinction. Feminist lawyers have
objected to the withdrawal of the law from the so-called domestic sphere on the
basis that the withdrawal left women unprotected from abuse and gave the
ideological message that domestic life was less important than commercial life or
other aspects of society governed by law.13 It should no longer be overlooked
that while police and district attorneys have tended to treat the matter as
private when a husband beats his wife, and to suggest that they should
let the couple work out their differences, police and district attorneys
have always treated it as public when the wife shoots the husband, never
seeing that as one way for the couple to work Out their differences. 14 The
movement against sexual violence against women and against sexual
abuse more generally pointed out how the asserted privacy of things
sexual resulted in very limited protection for women against sex crimes.
The slogan that rape is about violence not sex was an effort to move rape from
the private realm, where it was all too often tolerated or subjected to minimal
controls, 15 to the public realm, where one might expect the criminal law would
be applied in a reasonable manner to punish and deter rape.6 This critique was
expanded into a critique of the complex and subtle ways in which the
power that men as a group exercised over women as a group was seen all
too much as private.17 In a similar vein, women have questioned why it is that
men are so able to see the appeal of laws placing limits on the rights of the
homeless to beg for money, especially as some of them do so aggressively and
threateningly, and so unable to see any justification for laws limiting the rights of
men to beg for sex, even when many of them do so aggressively and threateningly.
Indeed many more men seize sexual pleasure of one form or another from women
than homeless people seize money or other property from those who choose not to
engage in the gratuitous transfer requested. On the second level of criticism,
public and private are shown not to be analytic categories at all. On this level
of critique, the problem is not just that private actions can be made to look like
state action and vice versa, but rather that there really is no way to say that
certain action is private action. I have often used the example of state
intervention in the family to illustrate this point.9 Is the state intervening or not
intervening if it allows a deceased mans same-sex lover instead of his parents to
make funeral arrangements? What is the non-interventionist state response, for
example, if parents try to reclaim their child from an aunt to whom the child has
fied?20 For most of us, what we want to do and be left alone to do seems like
private actionthus beating up ones son, oppressing ones workers, supporting a
political party, discriminating against African-American customers, and publishing

Salmon Rushdies ad dress or the name of a rape victim are all considered private
by the person who engages in the activity. The laws that facilitate the in jury of
one person by another seem like state action when they seem unjust, but go
unnoticed or are treated as a neutral background of law to those who support the
rules. Acts of racial discrimination which are now widely seen as state action used
to seem like private action to those who supported discrimination.21 The
interesting question is how the particular behavior is successfully characterized
as private or public, and why the legitimation or delegitimation works. The
important critical point is that injustice cannot be justified by means of the
public/private distinction. Thus, I disagree with the assertion in Larry Alexanders
paper that absolutely nothing follows from this criticism of the state action
doctrine or of the public/private dichotomy.22 What follows from the criticism is
that the asserted presence or absence of state action is not a
justification for an otherwise unjust decision. On a third level of critique,
deeper political meanings are found behind the appeal of privacy.
Notions of individualism,23 of choice24 and of desire,25 and the reasons
why we value privacy26 are deeply related to the peculiar importance
placed on the male/female distinction and to the subordination of women.
Privacy is re lated to manhood; private parts are sexual; and the
classical liberal individual is not an asexual person but the male head
of a family. Privacy is most enjoyed by those with power. To the
powerless, the private realm is frequently a sphere not of freedom but of
uncertainty and insecurity.27 On this level of critique, the point is not just
that men enjoy a kind of privacy in the family that women and children
do not enjoy (but rather too often suffer under). Rather, the standard
situation in which one enjoys privacy and free dom is not a situation of
equality but one of hierarchy. We virtually never all enjoy privacy equally,
and the pretense that equality is the norm, and situations of domination
an exception, is simply another way of maintaining the status quo.
Individual distancing allows for gendered violence to occurthe

male is never held accountable for private issues
Schneider 91 [Elizabeth M., Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, The

Violence of Privacy, http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?
handle=hein.journals/conlr23&div=35&g_sent=1&collection=journals#987] alla
Historically, the dichotomy of public and private has been viewed as
an important construct for understanding gender. The tradi tional notion
of separate spheres is premised on a dichotomy between the private
world of family and domestic life (the womens sphere), and the
public world of marketplace (the mens sphere). Nadine Taub and I have
discussed elsewhere the difference between the role of law in the public and private
spheres. In the public sphere, sex-based exclusionary laws join with
other institutional and ideological constraints to directly limit womens
participation. In the private sphere, the legal system operates more subtly.
The law claims to be absent in the private sphere and has historically
refused to intervene in ongoing family relations.2 Tort law, which is
generally concerned with injuries inflicted on individuals, has traditionally been held
inapplicable to inju ries inflicted by one family member on another. Under
the doctrines of interspousal and parent-child immunity, courts have
consistently refused to allow recoveries for injuries that would be
compensable but for the fact that they occurred in the private realm. In
the same way, criminal law fails to pun ish intentional injuries to family
members. Common law and statutory definitions of rape in most states
continue to carve out a special exccption for a husbands forced
intercourse with his wife. Wife beating was initially omitted from the
definition of criminal assault on the ground that a husband had the right
to chastise his wife. Even today, after courts have explicitly rejected the
definitional exception and its rationale, judges, prosecutors, and police
officers decline to enforce assault laws in the family cotext.3 Although a
dichotomous view of the public sphere and the private sphere has some heuristic
value, and considerable rhetorical power, the dichotomy is overdrawn. The notion
of a sharp demarcation between public and private has been widely rejected by
feminist and Critical Legal Studies scholars.15 There is no realm of personal and
family life that exists totally separate from the reach of the state. The state de
fines both the family, the so-called private sphere, and the market, the so-called
public sphere. Private and public exist on a continuum. Thus, in the so-called
private sphere of domestic and family life, which is purportedly immune from law,
there is always the selective application of law. Significantly, this selective
application of law invokes privacy as a rationale for immunity in order to
protect male domination. For example, when the police do not respond to a
battered womans call for assistance, or when a civil court refuses to
evict her assailant, the woman is relegated to self-help, while the man
who beats her receives the laws tacit encouragement and support.
Indeed, we can see this pattern in recent legislative and prosecutorial efforts to
control womens conduct during pregnancy in the form of fetal pro tection laws.
These laws are premised on the notion that womens childbearing capacity, and
pregnancy itself, subjects women to public regulation and control. Thus, pregnant
battered women may find them selves facing criminal prosecution for drinking
liquor, but the man who battered them is not prosecuted.17 The rhetoric of
privacy that has insulated the female world from the legal order sends an
important ideological message to the rest of society. It devalues women
and their functions and says that women are not important enough to
merit legal regulation. This message is clearly communicated when particular
relief is withheld. By declining to punish a man for inflicting injuries on his
wife, for example, the law implies she is his property and he is free to
control her as he sees fit. Womens work is discredited when the law refuses to
enforce the mans obligation to support his wife, since it implies she makes no
contribution worthy of support. Similarly, when courts decline to enforce contracts
that seek to limit or specify the extent of the wifes services, the law implies that
household work is not real work in the way that the type of work subject to
contract in the public sphere is real work. These are important messages, for
denying womans humanity and the value of her traditional work are key
ideological components in maintain ing womans subordinate status. The
message of womens in feriority is compounded by the totality of the

laws absence from the private realm. In our society, law is for business and
other important things. The fact that the law in general claims to have so little
bearing on womens day-to-day concerns re flects and underscores their
insignificance. Thus, the legal or ders overall contribution to the devaluation of
women is greater than the sum of the negative messages conveyed by individual
legal doctrines.9 Definitions of private and public in any particular legal con
text can and do constantly shift. Meanings of private and public are based on
social and cultural assumptions of what is valued and im portant, and these
assumptions are deeply gender-based. Thus, the in terrelationship between what is
understood and experienced as pri vate and public is particularly complex in
the area of gender, where the rhetoric of privacy has masked inequality and
subordination. The decision about what we protect as private is a political
decision that always has important public ramifications.2 In general, privacy has
been viewed as problematic by feminist theorists.2 Privacy has seemed to rest
on a division of public and private that has been oppressive to women and
has supported male dominance in the family. Privacy reinforces the idea
that the personal is separate from the political ; privacy also implies
something that should be kept secret. Privacy inures to the benefit of the
individual, not the community. The right of privacy has been viewed as a
passive right, one which says that the state cannot intervene.22
Turns Gender-Psychology
The psychology and philosophy of radical freedom is predicated on
the idea of woman as a threat to freedom. It is designed to deny
consciousness to woman and promote male domination
Simons 90 [Margaret A., Professor of Philosophical Studies at Southern Illinois

University at Edwardsville, Sexism and the Philosophical Canon: On Reading
Beauvoir's The Second Sex, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709626]
Barrett gives three objections to Sartre's dualistic psychology: man is isolated
from nature the existence of the unconscious is denied, and human
relationships become "a perpetual oscillation between sadism and
masochism" that "turns love and particularly sexual love into a perpetual
tension and indeed warfare." It is this third objection that concerns us here.
Barrett describes Sartre's analysis of relationships in frightening terms, as "a
dialectical ingenuity that is almost fiendish.... [T]he glance of the Other, in
Sartre, is always like the stare of Medusa, fearful and petrifying" (229). The
argument that follows is Barrett's attempt to explain away this dangerous human
relationship. He begins by criticizing Sartre's "fundamentally masculine
psychology that misunderstands or disparages the psychology of woman."
He finds "the element of masculine protest" "strong" in "Sartre's philosophical
analysis ... of the viscous, the thick, sticky substance that would entrap his liberty
like the soft threat of the body of a woman. And the woman is a threat, for the
woman is nature and Sartrean man exists in the liberty of his project,
which, since it is ultimately unjustified and unjustifiable, in effect sunders
him totally from nature" (230). Barrett could have responded to this Sartrean
vision as Beauvoir did in The Second Sex, by examining the roots of men's fears
and myths about woman that explain male domination. Beauvoir contrasts
these with women's experience of oppression and desire for liberation and
argues for reciprocity. Instead, Barrett seeks to eliminate the battle between
the sexes by eliminating woman/nature as a threat, thus providing a
secure foundation for male domination. His solution is two-fold: to reunite man
with nature through the unconscious and to deny consciousness to women. Let
Barrett himself take up the narrative at the point following his reference to The
Second Sex: ... Take an ordinary woman, one of the great number whose being is
the involvement with family and children, and some of whom are happy at it, or at
least as humanly fulfilled by it as the male by his own essentially masculine
projects. What sense does it make to say that such a woman's identity is
constituted by her project? Her project is family and children, and these do in
fact make up a total human commitment; but it is hardly a project that has issued
out of the conscious ego. Her whole life, with whatever freedom it reveals, is
rather the unfolding of nature through her (232). Barrett's solution to the
battle of the sexes is both simple and traditional: woman is revered, and
silenced, as a passive expression of nature. Since woman lacks
consciousness, the oscillation between sadism and masochism stops;
woman never becomes subject. Woman, whose being is involvement with
the family, mediates in that role between man and nature, a relation that
for man functions at the level of unconscious, not as a subject for

conscious concern. Another problem for Barrett and others in the interpretation of
Beauvoir's philosophy is that many of her texts, especially beginning with The
Second Sex, stubbornly resist being cast in a Sartrean context. Barrett saw French
existentialism as a European philosophy of despair, diametrically opposed to
American optimism and belief in technology. But Beauvoir's philosophy in The
Second Sex is optimistic, based on faith in the liberating potential of technology,
which had brought violence and productivity into the physical grasp of women-as it
had brought control over reproduction. Barrett could not have maintained his
conceptual framework and at the same time have incorporated The Second Sex into
his analysis.
Turns Gender-Masculine Ethics

Radical individualism always prioritizes masculine ethicsdestroys
community cooperation
Tong and Williams 14 [Dr. Rosemarie Tong is Distinguished Professor of

Health Care Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and Director of the Center for
Applied and Professional Ethics at UNC Charlotte and Nancy Williams is Associate
Professor at Department of Philosophy at Wofford, "Feminist Ethics", Fall 2014,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-ethics/] alla
Clearly, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century feminist thinkers like Wollstonecraft,
Mill, Beecher, Stanton, and Gilman contributed to the development of a widerange of feminist approaches to ethics that focused on the similarities and
differences between male/masculine ethics and female/feminine
ethics. In doing so, they inaugurated a discussion of the different ontologies
and epistemologies that underpin these types of ethics. In the main, they
challenged the ontological presupposition that the more separate the self
is from others, the more fully-developed that self is. They also questioned
the presupposition that the more universal, abstract, impartial, and rational
knowledge is, the more closely it mirrors reality. In place of these presuppositions,
decidely present in most traditional ethics, they instead suggested the
ontological assumption that the more connected the self is to others, the
better the self is. They also offered the epistemological presupposition that
the more particular, concrete, partial, and emotional knowledge is, the
more likely it represents the way in which people actually experience the
world. Thus, it is not surprising that communal woman gradually began
to replace autonomous man in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century feminist
approaches to ethics (Tong, Feminine and Feminist Ethics, 1993). Building on the
legacy of many of the thinkers who preceded them, a prominent group of twentiethcentury feminist ethicists have continued to use communal woman to develop
a variety of care-focused feminist approaches to ethics. Unlike nonfeminist care-focused approaches to ethics, feminist ones are highly
attune to gender issues. Feminist care-focused ethicists are quick to
notice instances of female subordination and the tendencies of patriarchal
societies not to properly esteem women's ways of thinking, writing,
working, and loving. 2.1 Feminist Care Ethics: The Different Voice Proponents of
feminist care ethics, including Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings stress that
traditional moral theories, principles, practices, and policies are deficient
to the degree they lack, ignore, trivialize, or demean values and virtues
culturally associated with women. Gilligan offers her work as a critique of the
Freudian notion that whereas men are morally well-developed, women are not.
Freud attributed women's supposed moral inferiority to girls' psychosexual
development. Whereas boys break their attachment to their mothers for fear of
being castrated by their fathers if they fail to do so, girls remain tied to their
mothers because the threat of castration has no power over them. As a result of this
theorized male-female difference, girls are supposedly much slower than boys
to develop a sense of themselves as autonomous moral agents, personally
responsible for the consequences of their actions: as persons who must

obey society's rules or face its punishments. In other words, boys and men
come to respect law more than girls and women do. According to Gilligan,
Freud is simply one of many traditional thinkers who have viewed women as morally
inferior to men. She singles out educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg for
extended criticism. Kohlberg claimed that moral development is a six-stage process.
Stage One is the punishment and obedience orientation. To avoid the pain of
punishment and/or to receive the pleasure of a reward, children do as they are told.
Stage Two is the instrumental relativist orientation. Based on the notion of
reciprocity scratch my back and I'll scratch yours children meet others' needs
only if others meet their needs. Stage Three is the good boy-nice girl orientation.
Adolescents adhere to prevailing norms to secure others' approval and love. Stage
Four is the law and order orientation. Adolescents develop a sense of duty, defer
to authority figures, and maintain the social order to secure others' admiration and
respect. Stage Five is the social-contract legalistic orientation. Adults adopt a
utilitarian moral point of view according to which individuals may do as they please,
provided they do not harm other people. Stage Six is the universal ethical principle
orientation. Adults adopt a Kantian moral perspective that transcends all
conventional moralities. Adults are no longer ruled by self-interest, the opinion of
others, or the fear of punishment, but by self-imposed universal principles.
(Kohlberg in Mischel, ed., Cognitive Development and Epistemology, 1971).
Although Gilligan concedes that Kohlberg's moral ladder appeals to many people
schooled in traditional ethics, she points out that wide acceptance of a moral
development theory is not necessarily the measure of its truth. She asks whether
Kohlberg's six stages of moral development are indeed universal, invariant, and
hierarchical. In particular, she asks why, in the Kohlbergian scheme of things,
women rarely climb past Stage Three, whereas men routinely make it to Stages Four
or even Five? Does this gender difference mean that women are less morally
developed than men are? Or does it instead mean there is something wrong with
Kohlberg's methodology some bias in it that permits men to achieve higher moral
development scores than women? Gilligan believes that Kohlberg's methodology is
male-biased. Its ears are tuned to male, not female, moral voices. Thus, it fails to
register the different voice Gilligan claims to have heard in her study of twenty-nine
women reflecting on their abortion decisions. This distinctive moral voice, says
Gilligan, speaks a language of care that emphasizes relationships and
responsibilities. Seemingly, this language is largely unintelligible to Kohlbergian
researchers who speak the dominant moral language of traditional ethicsnamely,
a language of justice that stresses rights and rules.
Turns Gender-Male Domination

Individualism is premised on masculine idealsentrenches male
domination
Thompson 3 [Denise, Dr Thompson, BA (Hons), PhD University New South

Wales, Feminism and The Problem Of Individualism, July 2003,
http://users.spin.net.au/~deniset/brefpap/cfemindivid.pdf] alla
Perhaps this is a terminological quibble. After all, Jaggar is fully aware of the social
relations of male dominance as the central problematic of feminist
politics: All feminists are concerned to end male dominance, and all feminist
political theory is designed to show how this can be done (Jaggar, 1983: 147). And
the reference to male bias is a step in the right direction since it identifies
a connection between individualism and male interests. But the fact that she
was later to stop referring to male dominance, substituting instead expressions like
strategic gender interests (citing Maxine Molyneux)2 (Jaggar, 1998), indicates that
far more is at stake than terminological niceties. It suggests there is a closer
relationship between individualism and male supremacy than Jaggar allowed,
and that carelessness in theorizing individualism is also carelessness in
theorizing male domination. Scheman gives a more detailed account of how a
male dominated society might construct what Jaggar referred to as the
human desires and interests of abstract individualism. Following feminist
object relations theory, she links the separate, autonomous, sharply
individuated self embedded in liberal political and economic ideology and
in individualist philosophies of the mind with masculinity. She argues that
one of the reasons for the widespread acceptance of individualism is the
cultural requirement that males be deeply motivated to differentiate
themselves from the women who are their primary caregivers in infancy
(Scheman, 1983: 235).
Egoism Bad
Egoism justifies the worst forms of violence allows one to inflict
harm on another for self-benefit.
Rachels 97(James, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, University of Alabama,

pp. 85)//FJ
Curiously, philosophers have not paid much attention to what you might think is the most obvious argument against
Ethical Egoism, namely that it would endorse wicked actions provided, of course,
that those actions benefit the person who does them. Here are some examples, taken
from various news- papers: To increase his profits, a pharmacist filled prescriptions
for cancer-patients using watered-down drugs. A nurse raped two patients
while they were unconscious. A paramedic gave emergency patients
injections of sterile water rather than morphine, so that he could sell the
morphine. Parents fed a baby acid so that they could fake a lawsuit,
claiming (he baby's formula was tainted. A 13-year-old girl was kidnapped
by a neighbor and kept shackled in an underground bomb-shelter for 181
days, while she was sexually abused. Suppose that, by doing such things,
someone could actually gain some benefit for himself. Of course, this
means that he would have to avoid being caught. But if he could get away
with it, wouldn't Ethical Egoism have to say that such actions are
permissible? This seems enough by itself to discredit the doctrine. I believe this is a valid complaint;
nonetheless, one might think that it begs the question against Ethical Egoism, because in saying that these actions
are wicked, we are appeal- ing to a noncgoistic conception of wickedness. So we might ask if there isn't some
further problem with Ethical Egoism, that doesn't beg the question.
Communal rules are key to resolve conflicting interests ethical

egoism exacerbates these conflicts by promoting self-interest.
Rachels 97(James, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, University of Alabama,

pp. 85)//FJ
The Argument That Ethical Egoism Cannot Handle Conflicts of Interest. In his book The Moral Point ofVieto (1958),
Ethical Egoism cannot be correct because it cannot provide

solutions for conflicts of interest. We need moral rules, he says, only because
our interests sometimes come into conflict if they never conflicted, then
there would be no problems to solve and hence no need for the kind of
guidance that morality provides. But Ethical Egoism does not help to resolve
conflicts of interest; it only exacerbates them. Baier argues for this by introducing a
Kurt Baler argues that
fanciful example:Let B and K be candidates for the presidency of a certain Country and let it he granted that it is in
the interest of either to be elected, but that only one can succeed. It would then be in the interest of B but against
the interest of K if B were elected, and vice versa, and therefore in the interest of B but against die interest of K if
K were liquidated, and vice versa. But from this it would follow that B ought to liquidate K that it is wrong lor B not
to do so, that B has not "done his duty" until he has liquidated K: and vice versa. Similarly K, knowing that his own
liquidation is in the interest of Band therefore, anticipating B's attempt-* to secure it, ought to take step* to foil B's
endeavors. It would be wrong for him not to do so. He would "not have done his duty" until he had made sure of
stopping B ... litis is obviously absurd. For morality is designed to apply in just such cases, namely, those where
interests con- flirt. But if die point of view of morality were that of self- inlcrcsi. then there could never be moral
Does this argument prove that Ethical Egoism is

unacceptable? It does, t/the conception of morality to which it appeals is accepted. The argument
solutions of conflicts of interest-
assumes that an adequate morality must provide solutions for conflicts of interest in such a wav that everyone con-
cerned can live together harmoniously.
The conflict between B and K, for example, should be

resolved so that they would no longer Ik- at odds with one another. (One would
not then haw a duty to do something that the other has a duty to prevent.) Ethi- cal Egoism does not
do that, and if you think an ethical theory should, then you will not find
Ethical Egoism acceptable.
Increased egoism kills progress leads to increased violence and reentrenches oppression turns the aff.
Fischer 14Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley

(Claude S., Libertarianism Is Very Strange, Boston Review, 1/27,
http://www.bostonreview.net/made-america/claude-s-fischer-libertarianism-verystrange)//FJ
Social psychologists have demonstrated how anomalous is the Western, especially American, view of
autonomous selves. For example, Americans are likelier than others to explain what happens to people
as a result of their individual traits and choices, to perform better when we are allowed to choose our
own tasks, to get upset if we sense a lack of personal freedom, and to care greatly about our selfesteem. Psychologists Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan synthesized much of this
work in a well-received 2010 article, The Weirdest People in the World? They conclude that, yes,
Americans are the weirdest; they are most likely to conceive of

themselves primarily as self-contained individuals . . . as autonomous
agents, rather than as interpersonal beings intertwined with one
another in social webs. Americans, for example, seem unique in assigning babies their own
rooms. That such fundamental cross-national differences persist after centuries of Western colonialism
and a hundred years of American cultural hegemony testifies to the historical oddity of the libertarian
premise. The individual was not the prime mover of history, but its result.
Emile Durkheim objected to deducing society from the individual for we possess no knowledge that
gives grounds for believing in the possibility of such a spontaneous generation .
Collective
life, he argued, did not arise from individual life; on the contrary, it is the
latter that emerged from the former. Libertarian thinkers have reinvented history to
place the autonomous self at creation. Of course, libertarians can concede that society preceded the
individual but still argue that government was formed by contract. Spontaneous, voluntary groups
grew into the minimal state, which they see as the only legitimate state. But this is also bad history.
The state, as a distinguishable institutionwhether Roman, Aztec, Americanis distinctive, but
rulership is universal, or nearly so. Chiefs, councils of elders, and big men all sought to monopolize
power and maintain order. Government rarely if ever emerged from social contracts. (A few supragovernments emerged from contracts among lesser governments, as in Philadelphia, 1789.) Bentham
thundered this point in the early days of libertarianism: There
are no such things as

natural rightsno such things as rights anterior to the establishment of
government. Research explaining why rates of interpersonal violence
have declined over the centuries backs this up : domestic order is
necessary so that individuals can have rights against the assaults of other
individuals. The origination of governments, Bentham continues, from a contract is a pure
fiction . . . . It never has been known to be true in any instance . . . . All governments that we have any
account of have been gradually established by habit, after having formed by force. Libertarians can
concede this, too, claiming only that their just-so story serves moral philosophy. Nozick writes, We
learn much by seeing how the state could have arisen, even if it didnt arise that way because he is
making a moral argument. Modern Westerners do indeed endorse the principles of individual selfownership and universal rights. We do so, however, not because the principles are self-evident but
because our thoughts on the matter are the product of modern Western philosophy. If libertarian
positions cannot be justified by reasoning from history or anthropology, they might be justified by
practicality: That government which governs best governs least . . . . [indeed,] that government is
best which governs not at all, Thoreau claimed in a characteristically solipsistic declaration. (Not
paying taxes was Thoreaus way of remaining unstained by connection to slavery, yet it took big
government to end slavery.) In todays policy debates ,
libertarians argue that their
philosophy guides us toward both more individual freedom and better

collective outcomes. Writing in Salon, Michael Lind taunted libertarians on this claim: If
your approach is so great, why hasnt any country anywhere in the world
ever tried it? In the scramble to answer the challenge, conservative blogger Ben Domenech,
quoting Robert Tracinski, points to America itself, up to about 100 years ago, with no federal
welfare state, no Social Security, no Medicare. . . . Life for the common man was better than it had
ever been before. Yet Domenech concedes, Life was nowhere near as good [then] as it is for
Americans life expectancy, health,

physical security, and living standards soared in the 20th century not,
however, because of the march of libertarianism , as Domenech insinuates, but in
great measure because of the welfare state and of regulation of food,
medicine, water, work safety, pollution, and so on. Personal liberty itself
has also improved in the last century, with civil rights for minorities and
women and broader guarantees of civil liberties . These advances, too,
largely developed not against government but with it. The American western
Americans todayafter another century of progress.
frontier illustrates what libertarians might consider the minimal, night watchman state. Yet that
watchman was often outgunned by desperadoes and vigilantes. The high homicide rates there and in
the frontier-like quarters of 19th century American cities came down largely because a bigger state
policingstood up. American history testifies against the libertarian thesis. So do contemporary crossnational data using the Human Development Index, which measures a populations well-being in terms
of health, education, and wealth. The HDI, corrected for internal distribution (the Bill Gates-makes-allAmericans-look-rich factor), is typically higher in OECD nations where governments are relatively
the
government that governs least does not govern best, whether the
criterion is promoting the general welfare or promoting individual liberty .
large. Both historical and contemporary research suggests that Thoreau was wrong;
This does not mean that the converse is true, that maximal government is best. There appears to be a
reasonable balancing point. We Americans seem to be below that reasonable point, and
libertarianism threatens to drive us further down . Of course, Rands John Galt

wouldnt give a damn.
Alternative
Alternative-Re-envisioned State
Radical individualism undermines the possibility of building a reenvisioned state that provides for the common good
Law Center. West's research is primarily concerned with feminist legal theory,
constitutional law and theory, philosophy of law, and the law and literature
movement, Rights, Capabilities, and the Good Society,
In a number of books and articles over the last ten years, Martha Nussbaum and
Amartya Sen have carved out a third position, which, they argue, is in greater
accord with liberal commitments to individual autonomy, and particularly the
autonomous right of individuals to determine their own conceptions of the good.8
The state, Nussbaum and Sen argue, as a matter of goodness and justice
both, must not ensure minimal welfare directly-that would indeed be
unduly paternalistic, illiberal, and in important respects, impossible: a state
cannot ensure, say, a healthy, long life for each citizen.9 Rather, a decent and
liberal state in a good society must ensure that citizens achieve and
enjoy certain fundamental human capabilities (thereby leaving to the
citizens the choice whether or not to avail themselves of those
capabilities) -including the capability to live a safe, well nourished,
productive, educated, social, and politically and culturally participatory
life of normal length.10 Thus, to be "fully human," Nussbaum argues, and to be
possessed of the full dignity that one's humanity implies, just is to enjoy this
minimal threshold level of capability." If they are to have fully human lives,
citizens must have access to, and the capability to attain, non-alienating,
nondiscriminatory and non-humiliating work." They must have, or have the
capability to acquire, various welfare goods such as decent healthcare,
adequate food, shelter, and clothing. 3 They must have a good and liberal
education, a safe upbringing, protection against physical and sexual
assault, and security in their intimate and affiliative associations. Citizens
must have access to the material preconditions of these capabilities, if they are to
have the ability to live fully human lives.'4 Furthermore, Nussbaum argues, for
many or even all of us, these preconditions cannot be met without
considerable state and community assistance, or more pointedly, without
considerable state run redistribution and regulation. 15 These are not
preconditions readily satisfied in either a state of nature or a minimally regulated
social order. A good society, therefore, Nussbaum concludes, and a liberal, just
society, is one in which the state is not just permitted, but is obligated to
ensure, on behalf of its citizens, that these material preconditions of our
fundamental human capabilities are met. 6 All states, particularly liberal states,
ought to regard their obligation to secure the preconditions of basic human
capabilities as fundamental and as required by justice." Liberal states should regard
their obligation to secure the minimal material preconditions of the basic human
capabilities to be a basic constitutional duty.
The demand for individual rights destroys all positive state actions
insulates the individual from the state
Liberal, constitutional rights, according to their legions of critics and numerous
rights theorists, undercut any state obligation to secure the preconditions for
the fundamental human capabilities for two basic and interconnected reasons.
The first is political. The good society, as envisioned by virtually all "good
society" theorists, requires substantial state intervention into various
"private" spheres, and substantial redistribution of the goods, resources,
and power found in those spheres.24 Liberal rights, as defended and
constructed by contemporary constitutional theorists and jurists both, limit the
power of states to do precisely that. Were a state to go about the task
of ensuring the material preconditions of a good life for all, or, in the
Nussbaumian version of the same idea, ensuring the preconditions for the
capabilities which are themselves requisite to a "fully human life," it would have
to break down the walls of insularity that liberal rights, both in theory and to
a considerable degree in practice, protect. To secure the minimal
preconditions of the good society for all of us, the state would have to
violate the rights we hold as individuals- rights of liberty, property, contract,
and privacy. Indeed, not only do we lack a "right" to a state obligated to
ensure minimal preconditions of a good society-whether the "good society"
is as envisioned by Karl Marx, John Dewey, Michael Sandel, Frank Michelman,
William Forbath, or Martha Nussbaum-but if anything, we have a right to a state
that does not attempt to ensure that the material preconditions of a
good society are met. Rights protect us against the paternalistic state that
might otherwise regard the "good society" as its business. Furthermore, rights
deter the creation of a state interested in good society ambitions by
structural design, not because they are misused by Machiavellian political actors. In
many liberal states, and virtually by definition in the United States, rights are
overwhelmingly negative. We have whatever rights we have, against the
state, and against the state's actions, and against the state's actors; we
do not have rights that positively obligate the state to do something. We
do not have rights that require, rather than forbid, the state to take
some action. It is, of course, because we have rights against the state
(and only against the state) rather than rights to some particular sort of
state action or state intervention, that rights protect the individual
against an overreaching state in the manner celebrated by rights
advocates. But it is also because of their negativity that rights preclude
the state from taking any role in securing to citizens the material
preconditions of the good society. Negative rights thus disempower the state
from pernicious, intermeddling, paternalistic, or malign intervention into the
private affairs of individual citizens. By virtue of so doing, however, negative
rights also disempower the state from intervening into the private
sphere for the democratically progressive purpose of redistributing
power or resources within it. Negative rights elevate or empower the citizen
relative to an overreaching, paternalistic state. Yet by staying the paternalist's
intervening hand, negative rights both subordinate that citizen to his
stronger brother-thereby entrenching private inequalities-and disable the state
from securing, on behalf of weaker citizens, the material preconditions to
developing the capabilities necessary to a fully human life. Good society theorists,
rights critics, and a number of liberal rights theorists, have all concluded from this
argument that rights, as conceived and employed in at least United States liberal
and constitutional jurisprudence, are fundamentally at odds with any purported
state obligation to ensure the material preconditions of a good society. If this
conclusion is correct, then it obviously holds for a capabilities approach to
welfarism as well. If so, the state's obligation to promote conditions that secure the
minimal capabilities essential to a fully human life, even if such an obligation
exists, would have to be secured by some means other than individual rights.
The demand for radical autonomy distances the self from the
communitydestroys the ability of the state to have any positive
benefits
First, for there to be a state obligation to provide for minimal capabilities
requisite to a fully human life, at least in a democratic state in which state actors,
and hence the "state" itself, are some subset of citizens, there must exist the
political will for it. That will, in turn, requires some degree of communal
solidarity among citizens. Rights, however, disincline us to even regard each
other, much less assume responsibility for each others' welfare. Rights
erode rather than enhance our feelings of obligation toward our
neighbors, cocitizens, and arguably even our intimates and family members.
Rights leave us identified with our possessions, rather than with each
other. For that reason alone, they seriously undercut the empathic
solidarity necessary to sustain a democratic case for a state obligation to
provide for the well-being of others. Second, at least some of the material
preconditions of human capabilities which a good state is obligated to provide are
those preconditions for our capability for social affiliation or connection with others,
and mutual and moral responsibility for each others' well being.' To live a fully
human life, according to Nussbaum and others, means in part to have the capability
to live responsibly and safely with and for others, at work, at home, and in the
community! - The capability for doing just that, then, is part of what a just state is
obligated to ensure, if the state is obligated to ensure the minimal material
preconditions of a good society. The atomism that is at the core of liberal
understandings of rights, however, implies at most an atomistic individual in
need of rights of isolation, of privacy, and of individuation; not rights
that might stem from a frank recognition of our social or relational
nature. In terms of capabilities, current rights rhetoric implies that the
capability for autonomy is the core capability in need of protection
through rights, to the virtual exclusion of relational capabilities. Because
of the power of modern individualistic rights rhetoric, we not only lack
"relational rights" that might bolster our social capabilities, but we
become disinclined to even envision or argue for them. In an atomistic
rights culture, we come to view ourselves, and then increasingly come to
be, possessors of individual rights against each other and the state. We
are not only without any responsibilities toward others, but also without any rights
to ensure that we have the capabilities to safely exercise those responsibilities
toward others. As a result, we come to identify our "rights" our most precious
political entitlements, and hence our political identity as rights to individuate and
distance or sever ourselves from, rather than rights to safely connect or
relate to, our families, intimates, communities, or co-citizens.
Alternative-Feminist social Self

The alt is to vote negative to reject the masculinzied concept of
radical freedom - Radical freedom cannot take place without
institutional change designed to allow women the equal capacity to
assert their freedom. The belief in radical autonomy can only
produce gender inequality if not preceded by calls for institutional
transformation.
Kruks 1987 [Sonia, Robert S. Danforth Professor of Politics at Oberlin College and
received her Ph.D. in Government from the London School of Economics, Simone
de Beauvoir and the Limits to Freedom, http://www.jstor.org/stable/466482]
If we compare de Beauvoir's account of woman's situation with Sartre's discussion
of situation in Being and Nothingness, several striking divergences emerge. Most
obviously, situation becomes, in de Beauvoir's analysis, above all externally
constituted (though subjectively experienced): it is not brought into being by
woman's project. It is, moreover, a condition which is general to women as a
certain social category of human beings. While in Being and Nothingness
other people are commonly presented as only a peripheral or indirect
structure of "my" situation, for de Beauvoir others are directly involved in
my own constitution of the meaning of even a free project. For example, in
contrast to Sartre's description in Being and Nothingness of the climber's solitary
project, de Beauvoir had described, in Pyrrhus et Cine'as, a solitary walker
experiencing his or her relation to nature-but, as soon as the walk was
over, needing to share the experience with a friend in order to confirm
it.23 For de Beauvoir, my situation is always mediated for me by othershence, as we have seen, her argument that I need freedoms equal to mine
in the world. For woman (and other oppressed groups), however, such a
confirmation through others is impossible: paradoxically the social nature of
her situation constitutes for her a denial of her freedom, not its
confirmation. For woman lacks the relations of equality with man
necessary for a reciprocal recognition of freedoms Along with her direct,
personal relations of inequality and oppression, woman also encounters of
what we might call a set of social institutions.24 It is these instittions in
their generality which function analogously to natural forces in
perpetuating her immanence. If all that took place was a Hegelian (or Sartrean)
struggle of consciousnesses between two human beings, one of whom happened to
be male and one female, we could not anticipate in advance which one of them
would win. However, if we examine the relations of a husband and a wife, then it is
very different. For the institution of marriage in all its aspects-legal, economic,
cultural, etc.-has formed in advance for the protagonists their own relation of
inequality. As de Beauvoir points out in a strikingly unSartrean passage, ... it is not
as single individuals that human beings are to be defined in the first
place; men and women have never stood opposed to each other in single
combat; the couple is an original Mitsein; and as such it always appears as a
permanent or temporary element in a larger collectivity The relations of
any particular couple are embedded in the relations of the larger
collectivity and they are delimited by it. Thus, as de Beauvoir also points out,
although man has imposed her situation on woman, individual men may be as much
the victims of what has become an impersonal system of forces as are women A
colonial administrator has no possibility of behaving well towards the natives, nor a
general towards his soldiers; the only solution is to be neither a colonist nor a
military chief; but a man could not stop himself from being a man. So there he is,
guilty in spite of himself and oppressed by this fault which he himself has not
committed. ...The evil does not originate from individual perversity ... it arises from
a situation against which all individual action is powerless In other words, the result
of multiple, free (male) human action throughout history has been to create a set of
institutions-forms of what Sartre was later to call the "practico-inert"-which function
as real limits on freedom, female or male. If woman is to become a free
existent (and indeed if male freedom is to be increased), the process of
change will have to commence from the radical transformation of the
institutional aspects of woman's situation. Marriage, motherhood, her
exclusion from economic and public activity, all will have to be extensively
transformed.27 Liberation is not only a matter of individual choice, but a
process of complex social transformation. De Beauvoir is (in retrospect
naively) optimistic that, as women begin to attain social equality, in time an "inner
metamorphosis" will also take place.28
Alt solves the casedoesnt reject the idea of an individual but

reframes the starting point of the aff to focus on gender problems
Friedman 89 [Marilyn, works in social and political philosophy, ethics, and

feminist theory., Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community,
January 1989, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381435] alla
This article is an effort to redirect communitarian thought so as to avoid
some of the pitfalls which it poses, in its present form, for feminist theory and
feminist practice. In the first part of the article, I develop some feminist-inspired
criticisms of communitarian philosophy as it is found in writings by Michael Sandel
and Alasdair MacIntyre. 1 " My brief critique of communitarian thought has
the aim of showing that communitarian theory, in the form in which it
condones or tolerates traditional communal norms of gender
subordination, is unacceptable from any standpoint enlightened by feminist
analysis. This does not preclude agreeing with certain specific
communitarian views, for example, the broad metaphysical conception of
the individual, self, or subject as constituted by its social relationships and
communal ties, or the assumption that traditional communities have some value.
But the aim of the first section is critical: to focus on the communitarian
disregard of gender related problems with the norms and practices of
traditional communities.
Affirmative
Only an insistence on radical autonomy from power structures can
avoid replication of oppression South Africa proves.
Roos 13a writer, activist, filmmaker, and founding editor at Roar Magazine
(Jerome, South Africas untold tragedy of neoliberal apartheid, Roar Magazine,
11/12, http://roarmag.org/2013/11/south-africa-marikana-anc-poor/)//FJ
The ANC and all other so-called revolutionaries betrayed the poor the moment
they made it their aim to take over the institutions of apartheid and
reproduce them in a different form. But with the ANCs crisis of legitimacy
deepening following the Marikana massacre, more and more people who do not feel
represented are being driven towards the only sensible conclusion . Earlier this
year, in March, one thousand shackdwellers stormed a piece of land in Cato Crest in Durban, occupied it, and called
the dawning
realization around the world that, in these times of universal deceit, only
an insistence on radical autonomy can take the revolution forward. In South
it Marikana in honor of the slain miners. The action was just one more expression of
Africa, the only way to overcome the social segregation that continues to needlessly kill hundreds every day, is to
embrace a political philosophy of needs that focuses on the empowerment of communities; that operates through
instead of trying to emancipate

South Africans by becoming more like their former oppressors actively
breaks out of the cycle of exploitation by building interracial autonomy
from below.
democratic participation and militant direct action; and that
Individualism ultimately serves to benefit the greater good natural

generosity.
Branden 01the author of 20 books, including The Art of Living Consciously,

Taking Responsibility, and most recently, My Years with Ayn Rand (Nathaniel,
Reflections on Self-Responsibility and Libertarianism, The Free Man, 4/1,
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/reflections-on-self-responsibility-andlibertarianism)//FJ
The ideal of self-responsibility in no way forbids us to help one another ,
within limits, in times of need. As noted, Americans have a long tradition of doing this. We are the
most charitable people in the world. This is not a contradiction but a natural result of the fact that
ours is the first and still the only country in history to proclaim the right to selfishness in the pursuit
In
proclaiming and defending our right to pursue our own self-interest, to
live for our own sake, the American system released the innate generosity
in everyone (when they are not treated as objects of sacrifice). It is interesting to
observe that during the 1980s, the so-called decade of greed,
Americans gave more than twice the amount to charity they had given in
the previous decade, in spite of changes in the tax laws that made giving less advantageous.
of happiness. The happiness the Declaration of Independence refers to is our own.
Our private, not-for-profit organizationsthe Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the Salvation Army,
churches, not-for-profit hospitals, and philanthropic agencies of every conceivable kindperform
benevolent work far more extensive than in any other country. What
needs to be challenged in our country today is not the desirability of
helping people in difficulty (intelligently and without self-sacrifice), but rather the
belief that it is permissible to abrogate individual rights to achieve our
social goals. We must stop looking for some new use of force every time
we encounter something that upsets us or arouses our pity.
Individualism is the foundation of a true community responsibility

for ones own actions removes dependency which is the
precondition for good will.
Branden 01the author of 20 books, including The Art of Living Consciously,

Taking Responsibility, and most recently, My Years with Ayn Rand (Nathaniel,
Reflections on Self-Responsibility and Libertarianism, The Free Man, 4/1,
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/reflections-on-self-responsibility-andlibertarianism)//FJ
We hear a great deal about the need for a greater sense of community.
Government by pressure group is the antagonist of community. This is why I stress
that individualism and self-responsibility are the necessary foundation for
true community. If we are free of each other, we can approach each other
with good will. We do not have to be afraid. We do not have to view each
other as potential objects of sacrifice, nor view ourselves as potential
meals on someone elses plate. If we live in a culture that upholds the
principle that we are responsible for our actions and the fulfillment of our
desires, and if coercion is not an option in the furtherance of our aims,
then we have the best possible context for the triumph of community,
benevolence, and mutual esteem.
Capitalisms consumerism makes community a breeding ground for

fear and competition.
Block 10 author, consultant and citizen of Cincinnati, Ohio (Peter, Restoring

Humanity in our communities and institutions: an interview with Peter Block,
http://www.peterblock.com/_assets/downloads/Converse8%20Peter%20Block.pdf)//FJ
In Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter highlights the pervasive spread of consumerism into every corner
has brought huge improvements to the quality of millions

of peoples lives, it has come at a cost. The dominance of the consumer
mindset has led to our creeping colonisation by the sense of entitlement
from the dominant other with a consequential diminution of self and
our planet. Peter picks up the theme in our conversation. Peter: The existing community
context is one that markets fear, assigns fault, and worships self-interest
the provider-consumer transaction is the breeding ground for entitlement
and it is unfriendly to our definition of citizen and the power inherent in
that tradition When we expect others to be in control, it is a short step to participating in a way in which
of our lives. Whilst this
we expect others to take responsibility for our wellbeing (patriarchy), idealising them and then blaming them when
they fail to live up to our expectations. (Caryn Vanstone, in her article on page 27, refers to this as the child/parent
we can only exert our freedom and accountability if we

can shed the outdated assumptions and mindsets that have colonised our
culture and ourselves.
dynamic). Peter argues that

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Critique of Radical Autonomy

Critique of Radical Autonomy 1NC

This separation undermines the possibility of true community-it is a

Phillips 14author of "Reclaimed: This Catholic Faith is Mine," is a trusted

However, as soon as personal needs are prioritized at the expense of, or

Individualism makes extinction inevitable-causes alienation and

Mitchell 10 [David, David worked on Energy Policy and Innovation as a

individual to "trust thyself", and to "insist on yourself; never imitate". Such

The alternative is to reject the affirmatives conception of radical

Friedman 89 [Marilyn, works in social and political philosophy, ethics, and

Smith 12 Sociology Lens Journal (Candace, Neoliberalism and

neoliberalism can be seen as indirectly contributing to

ever since the arrival of

since the enactment

Smith 12Sociology Lens Journal (Candace, Neoliberalism and

The plans affirmation of autonomy re-entrenches neoliberalism

Smith 12 Sociology Lens Journal (Candace, Neoliberalism and

Prioritization of individual interest destroys interconnectedness of

Horsley 10 a first class undergraduate dissertation submitted in May 2006 for

Although there is little doubt

Individualism within neoliberalism contributes to violence loss of

Horsley 10 a first class undergraduate dissertation submitted in May 2006 for

this has been expressed as a move

rely more on personal judgement in combination with a

we have moved away from expecting

Horsley 10 a first class undergraduate dissertation submitted in May 2006 for

Today many of these

Mitchell 10 [David, David worked on Energy Policy and Innovation as a

Parekh 11an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University

rather than diminish freedom, the laws of a state protect

Humanity defines community creates the conditions for

Phillips 14author of "Reclaimed: This Catholic Faith is Mine," is a trusted

They quite literally make

However, as soon as personal needs are prioritized at the expense of, or

Horsley 10 a first class undergraduate dissertation submitted in May 2006 for

an economic system based

by little one class of men has become

Theres always tension between freedom and fairness. We

At best, libertarianism means pursuing your

The message: Never

And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, youd be

Turns Structural Violence

Smith 12 Sociology Lens Journal (Candace, Neoliberalism and

in neoliberal states individualization is a fate, not a

Turns Minority Oppression

Guay and Lamont 14(*Joseph AND **Lamont, Is neoliberalism a

racism is in many cases associated with what seem to be highly

market principles may serve to justify racial

in a neoliberal world, traditional variants of racism can more

The affirmatives individualism cannot break away from structures

Cooke 13(Christina, On The Neoliberal Ego, OF THAT CLOSE KERNING, SO

the kumbaya preaching of all voices are

Neoliberal equality claims to

Scharff 11Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King's College

'Individualization is a fate, not a

Examining young women's repudiation of

Olsen 93 [Frances, Professor of Law at the University of California, Constitutional

political party, discriminating against African-American customers, and publishing

Individual distancing allows for gendered violence to occurthe

Schneider 91 [Elizabeth M., Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, The

message of womens in feriority is compounded by the totality of the

Simons 90 [Margaret A., Professor of Philosophical Studies at Southern Illinois

for man functions at the level of unconscious, not as a subject for

Turns Gender-Masculine Ethics