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There is no such thing as benevolent welfare. Increases in social services gloss over the inadequacy of the
welfare state and directly prevent revolution against capitalism.
Richard Poe in 2005 (The Cloward-Piven Strategy”, A Guide to the Political Left, February 14, 2005,
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/theclowardpivenstrategypoe.html)

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the
"Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government
bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue a
black man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A
Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented
30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it came to be called. Many
were eager to put it into effect. In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to
weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion . Poor people
can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times on September 27,
1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should
work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political
and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the
rest of society" accept their demands. The key to sparking this rebellion would be to expose the
inadequacy of the welfare state.

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Capitalism has one goal, to earn a profit at the expense of anyone and everything that
gets in its way. Capitalism sustains, intensifies, and hides the social ills of society that
are growing with each generation. Nuclear war, environmental degradation,
exploitation of workers, poverty, racism, ideological poisons, human rights abuses,
women’s inequality, no future for our youth, the strangling of senior pensions, and the
near extinction of our family farms are just some of the consequences of a life based on
capital gain and profit.
CPUSA, 5.
(“The Road to Socialism USA: Unity for Peace, Democracy, Jobs and Equality” www.cpusa.org/filemanager/download/43/CPUSA_DraftProgram.pdf/)

The capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation—the means of production and distribution. Workers
sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists buy the workers’ ability to labor, but pay
them only a portion of the wealth they create. Because the capitalists own the means of production, they are able to
keep the surplus wealth created by workers above and beyond the cost of paying worker’s wages and other costs of
production—unpaid labor that the capitalists appropriate and use to achieve ever-greater profits. This surplus is the
source of profit. These profits are turned into capital which capitalists use to further exploit the sources of all wealth
—nature and the working class. Capitalists are compelled by competition to seek to maximize profits. The capitalist
class as a whole can do that only by extracting a greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers, by increasing
exploitation—what capitalists often call “increasing productivity.” Under capitalism, economic development happens
only if it is profitable to the individual capitalists, not for any social need or good. The profit drive is inherent in
capitalism, and underlies or exacerbates all major social ills of our times. With the rapid advance of technology and
productivity, new forms of capitalist ownership have developed to maximize profit and exploit new markets.The
working people of our country confront serious, chronic problems because of capitalism. These chronic problems
become part of the objective conditions that confront each new generation of working people.The threat of nuclear
war, which can destroy all humanity, grows with the spread of nuclear weapons, space-based weaponry, and a military
doctrine that justifies their use in preemptive wars and wars without end. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has
been constantly involved in aggressive military actions both big and small. These have cost millions of lives and
casualties, huge material losses, as well as trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Threats to the environment continue to
spiral out of control, threatening all life on our planet.Millions of workers are unemployed, underemployed, or
insecure in their jobs, even during economic upswings and periods of “recovery” from recessions. Most workers
experience long years of stagnant and declining real wages, while health and education costs soar. Many workers
are forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet. Most workers now average four different occupations
during their lifetime, many involuntarily moved from job to job and career to career. Often, retirement-age workers
are forced to continue working just to provide health care for themselves and their families. Millions of people
continuously live below the poverty level; many suffer homelessness and hunger. Public and private programs to
alleviate poverty and hunger do not reach everyone, and are inadequate even for those they do reach. With
capitalist globalization, jobs move from place to place as capitalists export factories and even entire industries to
other countries in a relentless search for the lowest wages.Racism remains the most potent weapon to divide
working people. All workers receive lower wages when racism succeeds in dividing and disorganizing them.
Institutionalized racism provides billions in extra profits for the capitalists every year due to the unequal pay racially
oppressed workers receive for work of comparable value. In every aspect of economic and social life, African
Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Middle Eastern peoples, and other
nationally and racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites. Racist violence and the
poison of racist ideas victimize all people of color no matter to which economic class they belong. Attempts to suppress
and undercount the vote of African American and other racially oppressed people are part of racism in the electoral
process. Racism permeates the police, the courts and prison systems, perpetuating unequal sentencing, racial
profiling, discriminatory enforcement, and police brutality.Capitalism causes other chronic problems in addition to
racism, starting with ideological poisons used to divide the working class and allies from each other: sexism and
male supremacy, national chauvinism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-communism. Much of this is spread
by way of the mass media, increasingly owned and dominated by monopoly corporations. The economics of the

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media are based on the promotion of consumerism—turning everything into a commodity and advertising to sell
more goods whether they are needed or not.

The democratic, civil, and human rights of all working people are constantly under attack. These attacks range
from increasingly difficult procedures for union recognition and attempts to prevent full union participation in
elections, to the absence of the right to strike or even unionize for many public workers. They range from
undercounting minority communities in the census to making it difficult for working people to run for office because of
the domination of corporate campaign financing and the high cost of advertising. These attacks also include growing
censorship and domination of the media by the ultra-right; growing restrictions and surveillance of activist social
movements and the Left; open denial of basic rights to immigrants; and violations of the Geneva Conventions up to
and including torture of prisoners. These abuses serve to maintain the grip of the capitalists on government power.
They use this power to ensure the continued economic and political dominance of their class.The legal system is
thoroughly racist and anti-working class. U.S. prisons are bursting with over 2 million prisoners, with virtually no serious
efforts at prevention or rehabilitation. Prisoners face widespread abuse and the anti-labor exploitation of prisoners for sub-
minimum wages. Many are subject to the threat of the death penalty, which is never justified and which is
frequently used against innocent victims. At the same time, capitalist crime is on the increase, and these
“billionaire” criminals are usually not apprehended, prosecuted, or punished. Corruption, speculation, fraud, market
manipulations, and theft on a massive scale are all increasing, while enforcement of laws against them is cut.Women still
face a considerable differential in wages for work of equal or comparable value. They confront barriers to
promotion, physical and sexual abuse, continuing unequal workload in home and family life, and male supremacist
ideology perpetuating unequal and often unsafe conditions. The constant attacks on social welfare programs severely
impact single women, single mothers, nationally and racially oppressed women, and all working class women. The
reproductive rights of all women are continually under attack ideologically and politically. The ultra-right projects an
ideology of Christian fundamentalism, which promotes restrictions on the role and activity of women in society. Violence
against women in the home and in society at large remains a shameful fact of life in the U.S.Youth, especially working
class youth and racially and nationally oppressed youth, have inadequate public education and are increasingly
priced out of higher education. Young people lack job training and face great uncertainty in the job market. Their
cultural, recreational, and sports needs are largely unmet. Youth also face in their own ways racism, sexism, and attacks on
civil liberties. Poverty and lack of opportunity compel large numbers of young people to enter the military and face
possible loss of life in one war after another. Taken together, this constitutes a complete denial of a secure future for
youth. Seniors, retired and often no longer able to work, face shrinking and disappearing employer pension plans,
while Social Security and Medicare experience repeated attacks. Seniors who have worked all their lives are
threatened by the ultra-right push to end “entitlement programs” and by the lack of or exorbitant cost of health care and
assisted living facilities.Over 45 million people are continuously without medical coverage—over 70 million are
without medical coverage for at least one month each year. Out-of-pocket costs are soaring even for those with coverage.
Unionized workers are forced to negotiate lower wages to pay for their health benefits or face benefit reductions and
increased co-pay. The crisis of the cities is chronic and growing and embraces all aspects of living. Financial burdens are
steadily transferred from the Federal government to the states and then to the cities, causing crippling budget deficits. As
the majority of racially and nationally oppressed people live in urban areas, the crisis of the cities also reflects institutional
racism. There is a chronic and growing shortage of affordable housing across the country, and a constant
deterioration of public education, health care, mass transit, and infrastructure in our cities.Most of rural and small
town U.S.A. is in continual recession. Hundreds of thousands of family farms have been put on the brink of
extinction, squeezed by agricultural corporations, banks, wholesalers, and retailers. Thousands of family farms
disappear each year to bankruptcy and sale, swallowed by agribusiness and corporate development. Predatory lenders,
monopoly corporations, and the insurance industry also conspire to put the squeeze on family farms, and urban and rural
small businesses, as well as professionals and intellectuals.

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The alternative is to reject capitalism as a way of life by pulling away time, energy, and resources,
thereby draining the Juggernaut until nothing is left but a shell. Simultaneously, we are putting effort
into building a new civilization to replace the old, Association of self-governed autonomous democratic
neighborhoods that abandon the idea of capital gain as a necessity of life. This requires recognizing our
slavery, reversing the process of how we came to be wage slaves, and refusing capitalism as a way of life.
Voting negative means endorsing this new vision of a society without capitalism.
Herod 4 (James, Getting Free, http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/06.htm)
It is time to try to describe, at first abstractly and later concretely, a strategy for destroying capitalism. This
strategy, at its most basic, calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization
and putting them into building a new civilization. The image then is one of emptying out
capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning out of them
until there is nothing left but shells.This is definitely an aggressive strategy. It requires great militancy,
and constitutes an attack on the existing order. The strategy clearly recognizes that capitalism is the
enemy and must be destroyed, but it is not a frontal attack aimed at overthrowing the system,
but an inside attack aimed at gutting it, while simultaneously replacing it with something
better, something we want. Thus capitalist structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools,
etc.) are not seized so much as simply abandoned. Capitalist relations are not fought so much as
they are simply rejected. We stop participating in activities that support (finance, condone) the
capitalist world and start participating in activities that build a new world while simultaneously
undermining the old. We create a new pattern of social relations alongside capitalist relations and
then we continually build and strengthen our new pattern while doing every thing we can to
weaken capitalist relations. In this way our new democratic, non-hierarchical, non-
commodified relations can eventually overwhelm the capitalist relations and force them out of
existence. This is how it has to be done. This is a plausible, realistic strategy. To think that we could
create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-
called revolution, or during the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new social world must
grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish
capitalist relations. Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinably,
because of the inexorable, materialist laws of history. It will happen, and only happen, because
we want it to, and because we know what we�re doing and know how we want to live, and know what
obstacles have to be overcome before we can live that way, and know how to distinguish
between our social patterns and theirs. But we must not think that the capitalist world can
simply be ignored, in a live and let live attitude, while we try to build new lives elsewhere. (There is
no elsewhere.) There is at least one thing, wage-slavery, that we can�t simply stop
participating in (but even here there are ways we can chip away at it). Capitalism must be explicitly
refused and replaced by something else. This constitutes War, but it is not a war in the traditional
sense of armies and tanks, but a war fought on a daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by
millions of people. It is a war nevertheless because the accumulators of capital will use
coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block any
rejection of the system. They have always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing
so. Nevertheless, there are many concrete ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods
can gut capitalism, which I will enumerate shortly. We must always keep in mind how we became
slaves; then we can see more clearly how we can cease being slaves. We were forced into wage-
slavery because the ruling class slowly, systematically, and brutally destroyed our ability to live
autonomously. By driving us off the land, changing the property laws, destroying community
rights, destroying our tools, imposing taxes, destroying our local markets, and so forth, we were
forced onto the labor market in order to survive, our only remaining option being to sell, for a
wage, our ability to work. It�s quite clear then how we can overthrow slavery. We must reverse
this process. We must begin to reacquire the ability to live without working for a wage or
buying the products made by wage-slaves (that is, we must get free from the labor market and the way of
living based on it), and embed ourselves instead in cooperative labor and cooperatively produced
goods. Another clarification is needed. This strategy does not call for reforming capitalism, for
changing capitalism into something else. It calls for replacing capitalism, totally, with a new
civilization. This is an important distinction, because capitalism has proved impervious to reforms, as
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a system. We can sometimes in some places win certain concessions from it (usually only temporary
ones) and win some (usually short-lived) improvements in our lives as its victims, but we cannot
reform it piecemeal, as a system. Thus our strategy of gutting and eventually destroying capitalism
requires at a minimum a totalizing image, an awareness that we are attacking an entire way of life
and replacing it with another, and not merely reforming one way of life into something else. Many people
may not be accustomed to thinking about entire systems and social orders, but everyone knows
what a lifestyle is, or a way of life, and that is the way we should approach it. The thing is this: in
order for capitalism to be destroyed millions and millions of people must be dissatisfied with
their way of life. They must want something else and see certain existing things as obstacles to getting what
they want. It is not useful to think of this as a new ideology. It is not merely a belief-system that is
needed, like a religion, or like Marxism, or Anarchism. Rather it is a new prevailing vision, a
dominant desire, an overriding need. What must exist is a pressing desire to live a certain way,
and not to live another way. If this pressing desire were a desire to live free, to be autonomous, to live in
democratically controlled communities, to participate in the self-regulating activities of a
mature people, then capitalism could be destroyed. Otherwise we are doomed to perpetual
slavery and possibly even to extinction. The content of this vision is actually not new at all, but quite old.
The long term goal of communists, anarchists, and socialists has always been to restore community. Even the
great peasant revolts of early capitalism sought to get free from external authorities and restore autonomy to
villages. Marx defined communism once as a free association of producers, and at another time as a situation in
which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all. Anarchists have always called
for worker and peasant self-managed cooperatives. The long term goals have always been clear: to
abolish wage-slavery, to eradicate a social order organized solely around the accumulation of
capital for its own sake, and to establish in its place a society of free people who democratically
and cooperatively self-determine the shape of their social world. These principles however must be
embodied in concrete social arrangements. In this sketch they are embodied in the following
configuration of social forms: (a) autonomous, self-governing democratic Neighborhoods
(through the practice of the Home Assembly); (b) self-managed Projects; (c) cooperatively
operated Households; and (d) an Association, by means of treaties, of neighborhoods one with
another. But how can this be achieved? Now we must turn to the task of fleshing out this strategy, but this
time in concrete terms rather than abstractly.

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2NC-Link Ext. (1/2)

Link Debate
First, State link- The affirmative puts time, energy and wealth into the existing structures of
Capitalism. That’s Herod
Here’s more ev… State policies correct the contradictions inherent in the capitalist
economy- this guarantees increased corporate profits and wars on the public dime.
CPUSA, 5.
(“The Road to Socialism USA: Unity for Peace, Democracy, Jobs and Equality” www.cpusa.org/filemanager/download/43/CPUSA_DraftProgram.pdf/)

Soon the monopolies and the government in the U.S. (and the other imperialist countries) became
intertwined, transforming into state monopoly capitalism. The state became a direct instrument to
accumulate capital for the monopolies. As is often the case with reforms under capitalism, government
regulation which resulted from popular struggles and were intended to alleviate some of the problems that
afflict working people and society as a whole also had the effect of stabilizing the capitalist system and
benefiting sections of monopoly capital. Some regulation has no broader social goal, but is used as a tool
to partially overcome the self-destructive anarchy of private capitalist competition for the purpose of
providing economic stability and greater profits for the corporations. The state also became a source of
economic stimulation through tax collection from the whole people to finance military spending, “cost-plus”
profits, and wars.

Second, Link is Welfare

The Ruling elite uses to Welfare to placate and control the masses. The collapse of the Welfare system
is necessary to achieve true revolutionary change.

And here’s more ev…

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2NC- Imp Ext.

Implications Debate
We have Seven implications out of the 1NC
First, Slavery- Capitalist monopolies have taken control of nearly all resources, from the land under
your feet to food on your plate. As a result, people are forced to sell their labor simply to survive.
Conditions for workers are continually becoming worse, wages stagnant and prices are increasing as
the division between the rich and poor continues to grow. That’s CPUSA and Harod.
Second, Environmental degradation- capitalism treats the environment as a resource that has
value only in its ability to be consumed and manipulated. Alternative Energy is simply an excuse to
abandon reforms of our consumption habits which are the Root cause of Environmental Harms.
Without a change the environment will be ravaged until it is turned into a wasteland unsuitable for
life. That’s CPUSA and Harod.
Third, Root Cause of War- Wars are fought over resources and the whims of capitalists seeking
both new markets and new commodities. Imperialism the ideological baby of capitalism. And Nuclear
Weapons are that baby’s rattle. Only the complete abandoning of cap will create the conditions
necessary for a peaceful life. That’s CPUSA
Forth, Poverty- Capitalism not only demands inequality, but it allows for in its most grave and
disastrous forms. As Billionaires fly on private jets sipping crystal and making money with their
money, Millions, if not billions of people live in dire poverty- starving, homeless and unable to pay for
medical care. As the Privileges of the rich get even larger, our public infrastructure crumbles and our
social services to the poor serve as nothing more than a cruel joke. That’s CPUSA
Fifth, Ideological Poisons- Capitalists deploy divisions within communities, pitting blacks against
whites, Men against Women, Third world against first world, the elderly against the young. The rich
against poor, the heterosexual against the homosexual, ad infinum- using stereotypes to justify their
exploitation and to prevent a front against capitalist oppression. That’s CPUSA
Sixth, Legal inequality- The recent bailout demonstrates the hypocrisy, white collar criminals get
minimum sentences or no sentences as all, as the full force of the law is thrust upon poorer
communities, exacerbating other intersections of inequality and making sure that it is minority
populations that fill our prisons. That’s CPUSA
Seventh, Destruction of Local farming- Land is stolen from the rural poor across the globe, the
poorest countries are forced to grow crops for international markets so they can buy the richest
companies products, instead of allowing them to engage in local agricultural practices. That’s
CPUSA
And we have one New Impact- Cap destroys Value to Life
Dillon 99 Michael Dillon, University of Lancaster, “Another Justice” Political Theory Vol. 27, No. 2,
Aprill 1999, JSTOR
Otherness is born(e) within the self as an integral part of itself and in such a way that it always remains an inherent stranger to itself." It derives from the lack, absence, or ineradicable incompleteness
which comes from having no security of tenure within or over that of which the self is a particular hermeneutical manifestation; namely, being itself. The point about the human, betrayed by this absence, is
precisely that it is not sovereignly self-possessed and complete, enjoying undisputed tenure in and of itself. Modes of justice therefore reliant upon such a subject lack the very foundations in the self that
they most violently insist upon seeing inscribed there. This does not, however, mean that the dissolution of the subject also entails the dissolution of Justice.
Quite the reverse. The subject was never a firm foundation for justice, much less a hospitable vehicle for the reception of the call of another Justice. It was never in possession of that self-possession
which was supposed to secure the certainty of itself, of a self-possession that would enable it ultimately to adjudicate everything. The very indexicality required of sovereign subjectivity gave rise rather to a
commensurability much more amenable to the expendability required of the political and material economies of mass societies than it did to the singular, invaluable, and uncanny uniqueness of the self.
The value of the subject became the standard unit of currency for the political arithmetic of States and the political economies of capitalism. They trade in it still to devastating global effect. The

Economies of evaluation necessarily require calculability. Thus no

technologisation of the political has become manifest and global.

valuation without mensuration and no mensuration without indexation. Once rendered calculable,
however, units of account are necessarily submissible not only to valuation but also, of course, to
devaluation. Devaluation, logically, can extend to the point of counting as nothing. Hence, no
mensuration without demensuration either. There is nothing abstract about this: the declension of
economies of value leads to the zero point of holocaust. However liberating and emancipating
systems of value-rights-may claim to be, for example, they run the risk of counting out the invaluable.
Counted out, the invaluable may then lose its purchase on life. Herewith, then, the necessity of championing the
invaluable itself. For we must never forget that, "we are dealing always with whatever exceeds measure. But how does that necessity present itself?
Another Justice answers: as the surplus of the duty to answer to the claim of Justice over rights. That duty, as with the advent of another Justice, is
integral to the lack constitutive of the human way of being.

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ALT EXT-
Our alt is to reject capitalism by pulling out time, energy and resources out of capitalism. Instead of seizing
structures we hollow them out. This hollowing out creates a space for alternative modes of society to resist the system of
Wage slavery that unifies revolution. The bonds of slavery cannot be shatter by reforming or simply ignoring capitalism-
such piecemeal strategies only marginally improve our lives while maintaining and improving the shackles of domination.
We must instead strive to replace capitalism with self autonomous democratic society that has more of a concern for its
people than the bottom line.

Here’s More ev.. the Alt solves- The system only has power when we believe in it. Every rejection
threatens to topple the pillars of domination.
Ainger et al ‘4
(Activist collective, We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anticapitalism,
http://artactivism.members.gn.apc.org/allpdfs/387-%5Bessay%5DPower.pdf)
But all gods have a secret vulnerability: they cease to exist when people no longer believe in them. Trust is the fuel of
power. As corporate collapses and financial scandals rock the markets, and the democratic deficit expands as people
desert the charade of participation by voting, trust is in short supply. And failure of belief in a system spreads fast. A
contagious whisper, it ripples through the multitude, rising to a roar. The roar was responded to by the World Economic
Forum in 2003, when it chose “Rebuilding Trust” as the theme for the gathering. As preparation for the meeting it
commissioned a massive public opinion survey representing the views of 1.4 billion people spanning every continent. The
results, according to the WEF, revealed “that trust in many key institutions has fallen to critical proportions.” The least-
trusted of the 17 institutions in the survey were national governments and corporations. Two-thirds of those surveyed
worldwide disagreed that their country is “governed by the will of the people” and half distrusted the WTO and the IMF to operate in the best interest of
society. The crisis of legitimacy has hit uncontainable proportions. According to a leaked email from a writer invited to Davos in 2003, the fear amongst
the guests was palpable. “These people are freaked out,” she wrote, describing her dinner conversations with the elite. Despite their privilege
and wealth, they know that their legitimacy is waning, that we have seen through them, that when trust has been eroded it
becomes increasingly difficult to wield power. Refusing to Cooperate “The tap root of power lies below the surface. It is
obedience, cooperation, collusion: the social glue that ensures that each day proceeds much like the last. Every single one
of us has the power to give or withhold our willing participation. To ‘reproduce’ or reshape society.” – Alex Begg,
Empowering the Earth: Strategies for Social Change, Green Books We are led to believe that the system of power is like a
pyramid, similar to a food chain with the dominant species at the top maintaining its control over those at the bottom through superior strength and
violence. But if an avalanche swept away all at Davos tomorrow, not much would really change because the power the Davos class accrues, through their
ownership of capital, extends everywhere. There is a secret, however, that those on the mountaintop rarely reveal, which is that their power exists to
some extent because we allow it to. They want us to believe that they wield power over us with their weapons and armies and police forces, and although
their violence is highly effective in disrupting our movements, hurting our bodies and making us afraid, violence alone can’t guarantee their
continued existence. Ultimately, it depends upon us believing in their power, in their immutability, and failing to
recognize our own. This was the substance of Shelley’s furious ballad of 1819 when he wrote the famous lines to
Manchester’s working poor after troops fired on them in the Peterloo massacre: “Rise, like lions after slumber / In
unvanquishable number/ Shake your chains to earth like dew / Which in sleep had fall’n on you! / Ye are many, and they
are few.” In reality, the system is more like a huge wedding cake than a pyramid: multiple layers of dominance held up by
many pillars – pillars which are institutions and individuals, values and belief systems. Successful movement strategies, therefore, are
those that identify the key pillars in society, and work to weaken their compliance until they break. As we take away one pillar, others begin to
wobble and the system trembles.

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ALT EXT
***IF YOU HAVE TIME

Resistance has to come from somewhere-Even temporary Cracks in the capitalist system offer the opportunity for change.

John Holloway Ph.D Political Science-University of Edinburgh and Alex Callinicos Ph.D Philosophy University of
Oxford, former Professor of Politics- University of York August 16, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5616
On the question of fissures. We often feel helpless because capitalism weighs so heavily on us. But when we say
No we start off with an appreciation of our own strength. When we rebel we are in fact tearing a little hole
in capitalism. It is very contradictory. By rebelling we are already saying no to the command of capital. We
are creating temporary spaces. Within that crack, that fissure, it is important that we fight for other
social relations that don't point towards the state, but that they point towards the sort of society we want
to create. At the core of these fissures is the drive to self-determination. And then it is a question of working
out what does this mean, and how to be organised for self-determination. It means being against and beyond the
society that exists. Of expanding the fissures, how to push these fissures forward structurally.
The people who say we should take control of the state are also talking about cracks. There is no choice but to start
with interstices. The question is how we think of them, because the state is not the whole world. There
are 200 states. If you seize control of one, it is still only a crack in capitalism. It is a question of how we
think about those cracks, those fissures. And if we start off from ourselves, why on earth should we adopt
capitalist, bourgeois forms for developing our struggle? Why should we accept the template of the concept of the
state? It is impossible to focus on the state without having a special definition of struggle. It means struggling within
the space of the state, whereas at the World Social Forum we are in rebellion against that space. The space
defines a concept of space and time

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>>>LINKS<<<

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Link- Abortion

Abortion is the pinnacle of a capitalist society

Eugene McCarraher, 2001, Eugene McCarraher on abortion and capitalism, Vox Nova,
http://vox-nova.com/2008/08/22/eugene-mccarraher-on-abortion-and-capitalism/
This political economy of death is the precondition for the emergence of “choice” as the holy grail of our moral culture. It’s neither
coincidental nor unironical that the word so decisive in the legitimation of corporate hegemony is also pivotal to the defense of
abortion. First, both abortion and corporate capitalism are justified in the liberal individualist language of self-
ownership and autonomous will. Second, the language of choice obscures and even nullifies the moral substance of the choices
made. And third, the alacrity with which “choice” is now invoked is, I suspect, an indication of how meaningless — and therefore how
few –our choices have really become. Abortion becomes more conceivable as a practice, not only when sex is utterly
divorced from pregnancy, but when the organization of work hampers or precludes the reproductive practices of
sex, birth, and child-rearing. If we are going to combat abortion, then I would suggest that we appropriate and
transform the language of choice, and argue that abortion is the hallmark of a culture that forces everything to
pivot around the accumulation of capital. We must tie abortion to a political economy that controls our work,
warps our practices of love, and compensates with the perverse but beguiling enchantments of commodified
freedom.

12
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Immigration
Allowing immigrants into the army, grants capitalist rulers utter control over them, and allows them to
play a key role in capitalism.
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race Relations, 19 72,
New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism, Stephen Castles and Godula
Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800
The solution to these problems adopted by West European capitalism has been the employment of immigrant
workers from under-developed areas of Southern Europe or from the Third World. 10 Today, the unemployed
masses of these areas form a ‘latent surplus-population’ 11 or reserve army, which can be imported into the developed
countries as the interests of the capitalist class dictate. In addition to this economic function, the employment of
immigrant workers has an important socio-political function for capitalism: by creating a split between
immigrant and indigenous workers along national and racial lines and offering better conditions and status to
indigenous workers, it is possible to give large sections of the working class the consciousness of a labour
aristocracy. The employment of immigrant workers in the capitalist production process is not a new
phenomenon. The Irish played a vital part in British industrialization. Not only did they provide a special form of labour
for heavy work of a temporary nature on railways, canals and roads; 12 their competition also forced down wages and conditions for
other workers. Engels described Irish immigration as a ‘cause of abasement to which the English worker is exposed, a cause
permanently active in forcing the whole class downwards’. 13 Marx described the antagonism between British and Irish workers,
artificially created by the mass media of the ruling class, as ‘the secret of the impotence of the English working class, despite their
organization’. 14 As industrialization got under way in France, Germany and Switzerland in the latter half of the 19th century, these
countries too brought in foreign labour: from Poland, Italy and Spain. There were 800,000 foreign workers in the German Reich in
1907. More than a third of the Ruhr miners were Poles. Switzerland had half a million foreigners in 1910–15 per cent of her total
population. French heavy industry was highly dependent on immigrant labour right up to the Second World War. According to Lenin,
one of the special features of imperialism was ‘the decline in emigration from imperialist countries and the increase in immigration
into these countries from the more backward countries where lower wages are paid’. 15 This was a main cause of the division of the
working class. The fascist form of capitalism also developed its own specific form of exploiting immigrant
workers: the use of forced labour. No less then 7½ million deportees from occupied countries and prisoners of
war were working in Germany by 1944, replacing the men recruited for the army . About a quarter of German
munitions production was carried out by foreign labour. 16 Compared with early patterns, immigration of workers to contemporary
West Europe has two new features. The first is its character as a permanent part of the economic structure. Previously, immigrant
labour was used more or less temporarily when the domestic industrial reserve army was inadequate for some
special reason, like war or unusually fast expansion; since 1945, however, large numbers of immigrant workers
have taken up key positions in the productive process, so that even in the case of recession their labour cannot
be dispensed with. The second is its importance as the basis of the modern industrial reserve army. Other groups
which might conceivably fulfil the same function—non-working women, the disabled and the chronic sick, members of the
lumpenproletariat whose conditions prevent them from working, 17 have already been integrated into the production process to the
extent to which this is profitable for the capitalist system. The use of further reserves of this type would require costly social measures
(e.g. adequate kindergartens). The main traditional form of the industrial reserve army—men thrown out of work by rationalization
and cyclical crises—is hardly available today, for reasons already mentioned. Thus immigration is of key importance for the
capitalist system.

13
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Immigration
Racism towards immigrants exists in the status quo due to capitalism
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race Relations, 1972,
New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism, Stephen Castles and Godula
Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800
Discrimination against immigrants is a reflection of widespread hostility towards them. In Britain, this is
regarded as ‘colour prejudice’ or ‘racialism’, and indeed there can be no doubt that the hostility of large sections
of the population is at present directed against black people. Race relations theorists attribute the problems
connected with immigration partly to the immigrants’ difficulties in adapting to the prevailing norms of the
‘host society’, and partly to the indigenous population’s inbred distrust of the newcomers who can be
distinguished by their skin colour. The problems are abstracted from the socio-economic structure and reduced
to the level of attitudes. Solutions are to be sought not through political action, but through psychological and
educational strategies. 45 But a comparison of surveys carried out in different countries shows that hostility
towards immigrants is everywhere as great as in Britain, even where the immigrants are white. 46 The Italian
who moves to the neighbouring country of Switzerland is as unpopular as the Asian in Britain. This indicates
that hostility is based on the position of immigrants in society and not on the colour of their skin. Racialism and
xenophobia are products of the capitalist national state and of its imperialist expansion. 47 Their principal
historical function was to split the working class on the international level, and to motivate one section to help
exploit another in the interests of the ruling class. Today such ideologies help to deepen the split within the
working class in West Europe. Many indigenous workers do not perceive that they share a common class
position and class interests with immigrant workers. The basic fact of having the same relationship to the means
of production is obscured by the local workers’ marginal advantages with regard to material conditions and
status. The immigrants are regarded not as class comrades, but as alien intruders who pose an economic and
social threat. It is feared that they will take away the jobs of local labour, that they will be used by the
employers to force down wages and to break strikes. 48 Whatever the behaviour of the immigrant workers—
and in fact they almost invariably show solidarity with their indigenous colleagues—such fears are not without
a basis. It is indeed the strategy of the employers to use immigration to put pressure on wages and to weaken the
labour movement. 49 The very social and legal weakness of the immigrants is a weapon in the hands of the
employers. Other points of competition are to be found outside work, particularly on the housing market. The
presence of immigrants is often regarded as the cause of rising rents and increased overcrowding in the cities.
By making immigrants the scapegoats for the insecurity and inadequate conditions which the capitalist system
inevitably provides for workers, attention is diverted from the real causes. Workers often adopt racialism as a
defence mechanism against a real or apparent threat to their conditions. It is an incorrect response to a real
problem. By preventing working-class unity, racialism assists the capitalists in their strategy of ‘divide and
rule’. The function of racialism in the capitalist system is often obscured by the fact that racialist campaigns
usually have petty-bourgeois leadership and direct their slogans against the big industrialists. The
Schwarzenbach Initiative in Switzerland—which called for the deportation of a large proportion of the
immigrant population—is an example, 50 as are Enoch Powell’s campaigns for repatriation. Such demands are
opposed by the dominant sections of the ruling class. The reason is clear: a complete acceptance of racialism
would prevent the use of immigrants as an industrial reserve army. But despite this, racialist campaigns serve
the interests of the ruling class: they increase tension between indigenous and immigrant workers and weaken
the labour movement. The large working-class following gained by Powell in his racialist campaigns
demonstrates how dangerous they are. Paradoxically, their value for capitalism lies in their very failure to
achieve their declared aims. The presence of immigrant workers is one of the principal factors contributing to
the lack of class consciousness among large sections of the working class. The existence of a new lower stratum
of immigrants changes the worker’s perception of his own position in society. Instead of a dichotomic view of
society, in which the working masses confront a small capitalist ruling class, many workers now see themselves
as belonging to an intermediate stratum, superior to the unskilled immigrant workers. Such a consciousness is
typified by an hierarchical view of society and by orientation towards advancement through individual

14
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
achievement and competition, rather than through solidarity and collective action. This is the mentality of the
labour aristocracy and leads to opportunism and the temporary decay of the working-class movement.

15
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Immigration
The immigrant army serves as the icing on the cake in a capitalist economy
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race Relations, 19 72,
New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism, Stephen Castles and Godula
Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800
The impact of immigration on contemporary West European society may now be summarized. Economic
effects: the new industrial reserve army of immigrant workers is a major stabilizing factor of the capitalist
economy. By restraining wage increases, immigration is a vital precondition for capital accumulation and hence
for growth. In the long run, wages may grow more in a country which has large-scale immigration than in one
which does not, because of the dynamic effect of increased capital accumulation on productivity. However,
wages are a smaller share, and profits a larger share of national income than would have been the case without
immigration. 51 The best illustration of this effect is obtained by comparing the German and the British
economies since 1945. Germany has had large and continuous increases in labour force due to immigration. At
first wages were held back. The resulting capital accumulation allowed fast growth and continuous
rationalization. Britain has had virtually no growth in labour force due to migration (immigration has been
cancelled out by emigration of British people to Australia, etc). Every phase of expansion has collapsed rapidly
as wages rose due to labour shortages. The long-term effect has been stagnation. By the sixties, German wages
overtook those of Britain, while economic growth and rationalization continued at an almost undiminished rate.
Social effects: The inferior position of immigrant workers with regard to employment and social conditions has
led to a division of the working class into two strata. The split is maintained by various forms of discrimination
and is reinforced by racialist and xenophobic ideologies, which the ruling class can disseminate widely through
its hegemony over the means of socialization and communication. Large sections of the indigenous workers
take the position of a labour aristocracy, which objectively participates in the exploitation of another group of
workers. Political effects: the decline of class consciousness weakens the working-class movement. In addition,
the denial of political rights to immigrants excludes a large section of the working class from political activity,
and hence weakens the class as a whole. The most exploited section of the working class is rendered voiceless
and powerless. Special forms of repression are designed to keep it that way.

16
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Immigration 1/2
Immigrant labor serves as the basic structure of capitalism
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race Relations, 1972,
New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism, Stephen Castles and Godula
Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800
Immigrant labour has an important function for contemporary West European capitalism. This does not mean,
however, that socialists should oppose labour migration as such. To do so would be incorrect for two reasons. Firstly, it
would contradict the principle of proletarian internationalism, which rejects the maintenance of privileges for one section of the
working class at the expense of another. Secondly, opposition to immigration would cause immigrants in West Europe to regard the
working-class movement as its enemy, and would therefore deepen the split in the working class—which is exactly what the
capitalists are hoping for. The aim of a socialist policy on immigration must be to overcome the split in the working class by bringing
immigrant workers into the labour movement and fighting against the exploitation to which they are subjected. Only by
demanding full economic, social and political equality for immigrants can we prevent the employers from using
them as a weapon against working-class interests. The policies of the trade unions with regard to immigration have varied
widely. The Swiss unions oppose immigration, and have since the mid-fifties campaigned for a reduction in the number of foreign
workers. At the same time, they claim to represent all workers, and call upon foreigners to join—not surprisingly, with little success.
The British unions opposed the recruitment of European Voluntary Workers after the war, and insisted upon collective agreements
limiting their rights to promotion, laying down that they should be dismissed first in case of redundancy and so on. 52 The policy
towards Commonwealth immigration has been totally different: the tuc has opposed immigration control, and
rejected any form of discrimination. This rejection has, however, been purely verbal, and virtually nothing has been done to
organize immigrants or to counter the special forms of exploitation to which they are subject. The cgt in France opposed immigration
completely during the late forties and the fifties, condemning it as an instrument designed to attack French workers’ conditions. More
recently the cgt, as well as the two other big labour federations, the cfdt and the fo, have come to regard immigration as inevitable. All
have special secretariats to deal with immigrant workers’ problems and do everything possible to bring them into the unions. In
Germany, the dgb has accepted immigration and has set up offices to advise and help immigrants. The member unions also have
advisory services, and provide foreign language bulletins and special training for immigrant shopstewards. In general, those unions
which have recognized the special problems of immigration have not done so on the basis of a class analysis (here the cgt is to some
extent an exception). Rather they have seen the problems on a humanitarian level, they have failed to explain the strategy of the
employers to the workers, and the measures taken have been of a welfare type, designed to integrate immigrants socially, rather than
to bring them into the class struggle. Therefore, the unions have succeeded neither in countering racialism among indigenous workers,
nor in bringing the immigrant workers into the labour movement on a large scale. The participation of immigrant workers in the
unions is on the whole relatively low. This is partly attributable to their rural background and lack of industrial experience, but in
addition immigrants often find that the unions do not adequately represent their interests. The unions are controlled by in-digenous
workers, or by functionaries originating from this group. In situations where immigrant and indigenous workers do not have the same
immediate interests (this happens not infrequently due to the differing occupational positions of the two groups, for instance in the
question of wage-differentials), the unions tend to take the side of the indigenous workers. Where immigrants have taken action
against special forms of discrimination, they have often found themselves deserted by the unions. 53 In such circumstances it is not
surprising if immigrants do not join the unions, which they regards as organizations for local labour only. This leads to a considerable
weakening of the unions. In Switzerland many unions fear for their very existence, and see the only solution in the introduction of
compulsory ‘solidarity contributions’, to be deducted from wages by the employers. In return the unions claim to be most effective
instrument for disciplining the workers. When the employers gave way to a militant strike of Spanish workers in Geneva in 1970, the
unions publicly attacked them for making concessions. Where the unions do not adequately represent immigrant workers, it is
sometimes suggested that the immigrants should form their own unions. In fact they have not done so anywhere in contemporary West
Europe. This shows a correct class position on their part: the formation of immigrant unions would deepen and institutionalize the split
in the working class, and would therefore serve the interests of the employers. 54 On the other hand, all immigrant groups do have
their own organizations, usually set up on the basis of nationality, and having social, cultural and political functions. These
organizations do not compete with the trade unions, but rather encourage their members to join them. The aism of the political groups
have so far been concerned mainly with their countries of origin.

17
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Immigration 2/2

They have recruited and trained cadres to combat the reactionary regimes upon returning home. At present, as a result of greater
length of stay and increasing problems in West Europe, amy immigrant political groups are turning their attention to class strugtle in
the countries where they work. It is the task of the revolutionary movement in West Europe to encourage this tendency, by making
contact with immigrant groups, assisting them in co-ordinating with immigrants of other nationalities and with the working-class
movement in general, giving help in political education and cadre-training, and carrying out joint actions. Such co-operation means
surmounting many problems. Firstly, language and culture may make communications difficult. Secondly, the risk of repression
to which immigrant militants are exposed may make them reluctant to make contacts. Thirdly, the experience of
discrimination may cause immigrants to distrust all local people. This leads in many cases to cultural nationalism, particularly marked
for historical reasons among black people. In order to overcome these difficulties, it is essential for indigenous political groups to
study the problems of immigrants and the special forms of discrimination and exploitation to which they are exposed. Concrete
attempts to combat these must be made. Indigenous groups must offer co-operation and assistance to immigrants in their struggle,
rather than offering themselves as a leadership. It is not only when revolutionary groups are actively trying to cooperate with
immigrant workers’ organizations that they come up against the problems of immigration. The majority of immigrants are not
politically organized, whether through apathy or fear of repression. Groups agitating in factories or carrying out rent campaigns are
likely to come up against large numbers of unorganized immigrants in the course of their daily work. It is then essential to take
special steps to communicate with the immigrants and to bring them into the general movement. Failure to do
so may result in the development of petty-bourgeois chauvinism within factory or housing groups, which would
correspond precisely with the political aims of the capitalists with regard to labour migration . In Germany, the large
numbers of revolutionary groups at present agitating in factories almost invariably find it necessary to learn about the background and
problems of immigrant workers, to develop special contacts with them, and to issue leaflets in the appropriate languages. The same
applies to housing groups, which frequently find that immigrants form the most under-privileged group in the urban areas where they
are working. Immigrant workers can become a class-conscious and militant section of the labour movement. This has been
demonstrated repeatedly; immigrant workers have played a leading part in strike movements throughout West Europe. They are at
present in the forefront of the movement which is occupying empty houses in German cities . Immigrant workers showed
complete solidarity with the rest of the working class in May 1968 in France, they were militant in strikes and
demonstrations and developed spontaneous forms of organization in the struggle. But such successes should
not make us forget the capitalist strategy behind labour migration. Powerful structural factors connected with
the function of immigrants as an industrial reserve army, and with the tendency of part of the indigenous
working class to take on the characteristics of a labour aristocracy, lead to a division between immigrant and
indigenous workers. Solidarity between these two sections does not come automatically. It requires a correct understanding of the
problems within the revolutionary movement and a strategy for countering ruling-class aims. It is necessary to assist the immigrant
workers in fighting exploitation and in defending their special interests. At the same time revolutionary groups must combat racialist
and xenophobic ideologies within the working class. These are the pre-conditions for developing class-consciousness and bringing the
immigrant workers into the class struggle.

18
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link: Broadband / Internet
Expanding broadband internet services ensure pure unadulterated capitalism.
Minoofar, Payam (University of California, Los Angeles. Ph.D., Inorganic Chemistry. February 2004 University of
California, Berkeley. Bachelor of Science, Chemistry. May 1992). "First in Capitalism Last in Broadband." Payam's Place. 27 May
2009. <http://payam.minoofar.com>.
Extolling the virtues of a “pure and unadulterated capitalism” has always been in vogue in the United States,
and it has never changed the fact the country is lagging in many critical measures of quality of life, chief among
them life expectancy and infant mortality. Now we can add broadband speed to the list, though broadband speed
is hardly a measure of quality of life. It is a damn nice measure of excess, that one characteristic for which the
USA is best known. It’s nice to know to know that monopoly power is still worshipped in the United States for
the excess power and wealth it concentrates in the hands of the few. Who cares that monopoly power never
delivers better service at a lower price, innovation (Microsoft still doesn’t get the iPod), improvements in
infrastructure, or a functioning marketplace?

19
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link: Discourse

Understanding social services and welfare through economic terms guarantees a capitalist response.
Their language is the newspeak of a totalitarian society.
Bourdieu and Wacquant 01 (Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant “Neoliberal newspeak: notes on the new planetary
vulgate”)
In a matter of a few years, in all the advanced societies, employers, international officials, high-ranking civil servants, media
intellectuals and high-flying journalists have all started to speak a strange Newspeak. Its vocabulary, which seems to have
sprung out of nowhere, is now on everyone’s lips: ‘globalization’ and ‘flexibility’, ‘governance’ and
‘employability’, ‘underclass’ and ‘exclusion’, ‘new economy’ and ‘zero tolerance’, ‘communitarianism’ and
‘multiculturalism’, not to mention their so-called postmodern cousins, ‘minority’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘identity’,
‘fragmentation’, etc.. The diffusion of this new planetary vulgate -- from which the terms ‘capitalism’, ‘class’,
‘exploitation’, ‘domination’, and ‘inequality’ are conspicuous by their absence, having been peremptorily
dismissed under the pretext that they are obsolete and non-pertinent -- is the result of a new type of imperialism
whose effects are all the more powerful and pernicious in that it is promoted not only by the partisans of the neoliberal
revolution who, under cover of ‘modernizatiom’, intend to remake the world by sweeping away the social and
economic conquests of a century of social struggles, henceforth depicted as so many archaisms and obstacles to the
emergent new order, but also by cultural producers (researchers, writers and artists) and left-wing activists who, for the vast
majority of them, still think of themselves as progressives. Like ethnic or gender domination, cultural imperialism is a
form of symbolic violence that relies on a relationship of constrained communication to extort submission . In the
case at hand, its particularity consists in universalizing the particularisms bound up with a singular historical experience by making
them misrecognized as such and recognized as universal.1 Thus, just as, in the nineteenth century, a number of so-called philosophical
questions that were debated throughout Europe, such as Spengler’s theme of ‘decadence’ or Dilthey’s dichotomy between explanation
and understanding, originated, as historian Fritz Rringer has demonstrated, in the historical predicaments and conflicts specific to the
peculiar world of German universities,2 so today many topics directly issued from the particularities and particularisms of U.S. society
and universities have been imposed upon the whole planet under apparently dehistoricized guises. These commonplaces -- in the
Aristotelian sense of notions or theses with which one argues but over which there is no argument -- , these undiscussed
presuppositions of the discussion owe most of their power to convince to the prestige of the place from whence they emanate,3 and to
the fact that, circulating in continuous flow from Berlin to Buenos Aires and from London to Lisbon, they are both ubiquitous and
everywhere powerfully relayed by supposedly neutral agencies ranging from major international organizations (the World Bank,
International Monetary Fund, European Commission and OECD), conservative think tanks (the Manhattan Institute in New York City,
the Adam Smith Institute in London, the Fondation Saint-Simon in Paris, and the Deutsche Bank Fundation in Francfort) and
philanthropic foundations, to the schools of power (Science-Po in France, the London School of Economics in England, Harvard’s
Kennedy School of Government in America, etc.), to the mainline mass media, which tirelessly spew out this all-purpose lingua franca
because it is suited to giving the illusion of ultramodernism to busy editorialists and over-zealous specialists in the cultural
importexport industry.

20
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Links: Health Care
Those impoverished by capitalism are more susceptible to health problems.
Richard Levins, September 2000, Is Capitalism a Disease? The Crisis in U.S. Public Health, Monthly Revview,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_4_52/ai_65805749/pg_5/?tag=content;col1, Professor of Population Studies
It is an as-yet-unrecognized ecological principle in public health that when a community or an individual organism is
stressed for any reason (low income, a very severe climate, for example), it will be extremely sensitive to other
disparities. So, if people have very low income, changing seasonal temperatures become very important. For
example, in late autumn and early winter, emergency rooms have a lot of people coming in with burns from kerosene
stoves, ovens, and other dangerous means used to compensate for inadequate heat in their houses. For such people, a
small difference in temperature can have a big effect on their health--one that doesn't affect the more affluent. The same is true in
relation to food. When people are unemployed, or if the prices go up, they cut back on food and other kinds of expenditures
with an immediate impact on nutrition. If you are a superb shopper, and if you clip all the coupons and scrutinize the
supermarket ads, you might just get by on the Department of Agriculture poverty level basket; the people who dream up these baskets
assume you are a wiz at finding bargains. But suppose you are not so good, or that you read the ads but cannot get away for two
hours for comparison shopping. Or that you live in a neighborhood where the local supermarket was not as profitable
as the national chain owned it thought it should be, and is gone, and with it your opportunity to get quality food. Or
suppose that you would love to eat organic food for lunch but what you have is a half-hour break to go down to the vending machines.
Under those circumstances, individual differences in where you work, how much energy you have, whether you can have a babysitter
available or not, can have a big impact on your health.Poor health tends to cluster in poor communities. Conservatives will
say, "well, obviously poverty is not good for you, but after all, not all kids turn out badly. I made it, why can't you? Some people have
become CEOs of corporations who came out of that neighborhood." What they miss is the notion of increased vulnerability. The
apparently trivial difference in experience can have a vast effect on the health of someone who is marginal . Suppose
a pupil is a bit nearsighted but, because she is tall, is seated at the back of the classroom. The teacher is overworked and does not
notice that the student cannot see the blackboard. She fidgets; she gets into a fight with the kid at the next desk. Suddenly she has
become someone with a "learning problem" and is transferred to a vocational course even though she might have been great poet. In a
more affluent community, where the classes are smaller and teachers pay attention, this kid would simply end up with glasses.
Individual differences can come from anything, f rom personal experiences growing up, even from genetics.

The few receiving healthcare are part of a sick society, profits fueling both sickness and treatment.
Richard Levins, September 2000, Is Capitalism a Disease? The Crisis in U.S. Public Health, Monthly Revview,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_4_52/ai_65805749/pg_5/?tag=content;col1, Professor of Population Studies
The third hypothesis requires no elaboration for Monthly Review readers: the healthcare system is built on a foundation of
inequality. Only some of us actually receive or have access to the healthcare we need, while most don't.Finally, the fourth
hypothesis:wehave created a sick society, even as we invest more and more to repair the damage. We are
exposed to more pollution and increasing levels of stress and thereforeexposed, ironically, tomore opportunities
to display our cardiac surgery skills. We makemore people miserable, sowe spend more on psychiatry and on
psychotropic drugs. This isclearlyevident inthe public healthsituation in contemporaryRussia, where the collapse of
universal health coverage exposed the population to all the ills of incipient capitalism. They have hadwaves of
epidemics, diphtheria, whooping cough, andthe completely novel situation in modern times ofdeclining life expectancy--
from about sixty-four years to about fifty-nine years. Ours is a sick society that demands ever greater expenditure to repair the damage
to public health that it has itself inflicted.

21
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Health Care
Though the United States is ranked 37th in quality of healthcare, we are ranked number one in most
capitalist health care country.
Paul Dean, contributing author to Dissident voice, 09, Dissident Voice, June 19th, 2009, Health Care Reform And Carburetor
Tweaking, http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/health-care-reform/
Is there really any question that a “healthcare” system that allows insurance companies to deny coverage to people on the grounds
that they may actually need medical care is one that has been hideously deformed, diverted and subverted? It might be more
accurately described as a “profit delivery” system. But to the dismay of those that are committed to spreading fairy dust,
every healthcare system creates a product that can be examined. According to the World Health Organization,
our nation ranks 37th in the world in quality of care, placing just below Costa Rica and Dominica. Our system now leaves
about 50 million people without access to even basic medical care. But we are number one, and by a large margin, in cost
of medical services, executive compensation, and percentage of healthcare dollars spent on administrative
overhead. Without a generous quantity of fairy dust, a phony debate in the corporate media, the complicity of a bought-off Congress,
and a new President whose words support reform but whose timid, incremental approach will likely only diminish the possibility of
systemic change, the inexcusably lame performance of our health care system would be recognized for what it is: intolerable.

Capitalist health care is a problem that is occurring now in the United States. It is favoring the rich over
the poor and will lead to our nation’s downfall.
Paul Dean, contributing author to Dissident voice, 09, Dissident Voice, June 19th, 2009, Health Care Reform And Carburetor
Tweaking, http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/health-care-reform/

But regardless of whether we are in the process of creating, operating, maintaining, or “reforming” our health care system, what does
not make sense is to retain the one design element that contains within it a terminal conflict of interest that no tinkering can ever
resolve. A for-profit system assumes that we can somehow make people rich as a result of caring for the sick, but
what we really do is make people sick by caring for the rich. One thing is clear: despite spending tens of
millions of dollars worth of their ill-gotten profits to buy off our politicians and deform public opinion on the
issues, Americans are not buying the traditional array of industry excuses any more. Even absent any substantial
support for the idea in Washington or in the corporate mass media, about two- thirds of our citizens want to switch to a single-payer
system now. What is there really to argue or debate? Healthcare industry executives, some of the best paid people on the
planet, seem less than eager to appear before the public in front of a banner that reads, “We’re number thirty
seven — and that’s good enough!” So they and their politicians and media outlets spread fairy dust. Virtually
all of the current “reform” plans being tossed about by our politicians, including the much-touted “public
option,” leave in place a network of for-profit private insurance companies to administer the system. This
arrangement fails completely to address our systemic defect. For-profit healthcare is the problem. It cannot
possibly be the solution.

22
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Employment

Capitalism alienates and marginalizes its workers

Shane Gunster 04 School of Communication at Simon Fraser University “You Belong Outside- advertising, nature, and the
SUV”
Society, in other words, takes on the form of a 'second nature' as people conceptualize and interact with it as a
fixed and unchanging entity, beyond our understanding and control. In the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts, Marx argues that one of the defining qualities of life under capitalism is the alienation of workers
from their activities and the products of their activity. "The alienation of the worker in his sic product means not
only that his labour becomes an object, assumes an external existence, but that it exists independently, outside
himself, and alien to him, and that it stands opposed to him as an autonomous power. The life which he has
given to the object sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force."78 The mediation of human activity
through the commodity form produces a strange, phantasmagorical world which its authors can no longer
control or even recognize as their own creation. "Our emancipated technology," writes Benjamin, "stands beside
contemporary society as a second nature and indeed, as economic crises and wars show, as a no less elemental
nature than that confronted by primitive societies."79 Instrumental reason and associated forms of capitalist
industrialization predicated upon the mastery of nature generate a profound alienation of human beings from
End Page 17 both the natural and social world. "As its final result," note Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer,
"civilization leads back to the terrors of nature."80 Both appear and are experienced as hostile, threatening
environments and, in an endless tautology, each is taken as evidence for the normality and inevitability of the
other. On the one hand, narrow visions of rugged individualism and hyper-competitive Darwinism are projected
upon an anthropomorphized nature; on the other, these virtues feature prominently in cultural representations of
nature: 'discovering' them there is subsequently used to justify their presence within human societies as an
inescapable fact of 'human nature.'

Capitalism people to exclude themselves from society.

Shane Gunster 04 School of Communication at Simon Fraser University “You Belong Outside- advertising, nature, and the
SUV”
Enacting nomadic allegories that pit individuals against a rugged, beautiful, and often dangerous natural
environment glorifies the 'survivalist chic' of entrepreneurial self-reliance that constitutes one of the
cornerstones of neo-liberal ideology. "You are. It is." announces an ad for the Infiniti FX 45, dissolving the
borders between individual and car into a stylish cyborg identity by listing the attributes common to both:
"renegade fearless unexpected bold true spontaneous curious intriguing unwavering rare brash provocative
intuitive genuine daring uncommon irreverent brazen dynamic dreamer."107 Conversely, a companion ad
articulates precisely what the FX 45 and its drivers are not: "sign up go with the flow join the committee be one
of us be one of the guys be a team player be a company man get on board keep in step follow the crowd run
with the pack conform follow the leader settle down settle in blend in get comfortable adjust we need a
consensus join the club fit in adapt."108 Ads such as these interpellate SUV drivers as neo-liberal subjects,
summoning fantasies of autonomy and independence predicated upon the reduction and even elimination of
relations with larger communities and social networks. Globalization, for End Page 24 example, figures strongly
in SUV advertising that uses stylized portraits of exotic locations and cultures to hail potential buyers as savvy,
cosmopolitan, and ready for anything, members of a transnational elite for whom world travel has become a
requisite element of both business and leisure. National boundaries wither before dreams of capitalist
deterritorialization in which expanding networks of communication and transportation reconstitute the alien
geographies and cultures of all people as privileged sites for an experiential tourism that offers welcome relief
(for a lucky few) from the boredom and routine of everyday life.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Link---Disease
Human development causes disease transmition and single-minded thought stops prevention.
Richard Levins, September 2000, Is Capitalism a Disease? The Crisis in U.S. Public Health, Monthly Revview,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_4_52/ai_65805749/pg_5/?tag=content;col1, Professor of Population Studies
But the growing gap between rich and poor make many technical advances irrelevant to most of the world's
people. Publichealth authorities were caught by surprise by the emergence of new diseasesand thereappearance of
diseases believed to be eradicated. In the 1970s, it was common to hear that infectious disease as an area of research was dying. In
principle, infection had been licked; the health problems of the future would be degenerative diseases, problems of aging and chronic
diseases. We now know this was a monumental error. The public health establishment was caught short by the return of malaria,
cholera, tuberculosis, dengue, and other classical diseases. But it was also surprised by the appearance of apparently new infectious
diseases: the most threatening of which is AIDS, but also Legionnaire's disease, Ebola virus, toxic shock syndrome, multiple drug
resistant tuberculosi, arid many others. Not only was infectious disease not on the way out, but old diseases have come back with
increased virule nce and totally new ones have emerged.Another human activity, irrigation, is especiallyrelated to the
breeding of snails, who transmit liver fluke disease, and mosquitoes, who spread malaria, dengue, and yellow
fever.When irrigationproliferates, as it did, for example, after the construction of Egypt's Aswan Dam, habitats for mosquitoes were
created. Rift Valley fever, which had occasionally erupted in Egypt, can now be found fulltime . Thedevelopment of giant cities
in the third world has created new environments for the spread of dengue,transmitted by the same mosquito that
transmits yellow fever (Aedes aegypti). It hasadapted to life around the edges of cities. A poor competitor against other
varieties of mosquito in the forest, these mosquitoes are able to breed in abandoned lots, in puddles, water barrels, and old tires--in the
special environment that we create in the giantcities in the tropics.Dengue and yellow fever are particularly threatening
because of the growth of urbanization in the tropics with megacities like Bangkok, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City,
and others with populations of ten to twenty million.As human population grows, there are new opportunities
for diseases. For instance,you need a few hundred thousand in a population before it can sustain measles. If there
are fewer, measles can infect the entire population; those who survive will beresistant. But if there aren't enough new babies
to maintain the disease, it will disappear and have to be reintroduced.But in a population of a quarter million people,
there will be enough new babies who are not resistant that the disease can sustain itself in the population. Consider this: if we know
there are diseases that require a quarter million people to be self-sustaining, what diseases will emerge in crowded populations of ten
or twenty million? Clearly, as life conditions change so do opportunities for disease.Why do we wear these intellectual blinders that
have so hobbled the study and practice of public health in this country? First, there are a multiplicity of long-term intellectual biases.
Take, for example, American pragmatism. Americans pride themselves on their practicality. "Theory" is almost a dirty word.
When we are overwhelmed with the urgency of a population that is sick, of kids that are dying, it becomes a
luxury to ask about evolution. This overwhelming sense of urgency is one of the reasons why doctors don't look
at diseases of tomatoes, don't ask about competition between different kinds of mosquitoes, and certainly don't
look at historical factors. There is an inevitable tunnel vision built into the urgency of carrying out applied clinical or
epidemiological work.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Link- Local/Ind Solutions to the Enviro

Individual solutions to environmental problems ignore how the capitalist system operates, only a complete
rejection of the capitalist system can solve.

Workers Power, 8.
(“Capitalism, pollution and the solution” Workers Power 321 – Winter 2007–08 http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=156,1493,0,0,1,0)

Other political movements, although rejecting the free market answer to fighting climate change, look instead to reducing
individual carbon footprints by promoting a local solution still within the capitalist system. Environmental activists,
whether members of a Green Party or NGOs/charities like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, believe that it is just the scale
on which capitalism operates that is the fundamental problem. They say that it is big business and big capital is the root
cause of the environmental crisis, and only if you could go back to a smaller capitalism, a local capitalism, then the
problems would go away.
The main weakness in this theory is its failure to understand the dynamics of capitalism, the drive to competition and
profits, and the relationship between capital and labour. The Greens obscure the internal dynamics of the capitalist system:
the drive to competition and monopoly on one hand, which means that small firms compete, acquire each other or drive
the other out of business until the most successful become larger firms; and on the other hand the exploitation of workers,
which is based on who owns the means of production, allowing the accumulation of surplus value by the capitalists. So
even if you are a small, local capitalist, you still own the factory and exploit workers and the environment to gain a profit.
The Greens do not see that the working class movement is the primary agent to fight climate change. Yet the working
class has a vital interest in stopping capitalism laying waste to our world. Throughout its history, workers have fought to
stop dangerous production methods and impose safety standards on the capitalists and on their state. Through forcing
legislation on the ruling class, it has made tangible gains, helping to create a habitable environment in many cities and
towns again.
The Green's strategy of localism cannot be successful in overcoming climate change, which is an international problem.
Academic geographer David Harvey explains the contradiction: "Localism often allows the command of particular places
but this does not mean having the capacity to control or command the process of production; the capitalist class can shift
capital, playing one locality off against another, or undermine local strategies by the exercise of political power at national
or global scales of governance."
Lastly the green movement also emphasises an individualist response to environmental issues. The political slogans that
the greens have contributed to the movement - "think globally, act locally", "reduce, reuse, recycle", "walk gently on the
earth" - emphasise the localism and the individualism of their politics. The focus on individualist choice takes the burden
of climate change off the big polluters, but without changes in their behaviour greenhouse gas emissions will continue to
grow, no matter how much recycling consumers do. The focus on the individual also promotes reactionary movements
like Nimby-ism (Not In My Backyard) where those individuals with more political power or money can dictate to those
who do not.
Marxists believe that only the shift from the anarchic system of capitalism to a democratically planned global economy
will be able to address the needs of the majority population and take into account the environment as well. In this way, we
do not reject technology outright, like some of the more radical, "deep greens"; we realise that technology has been crucial
to the development of society, but that there is a balance between society and nature. As Marx and Engels said: "Know
only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature
and the history of men [sic]. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are
dependent on each other so long as men exist."

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Religion Link

Religion fuels complacency with the way things are.

Slater, 6.
(“The Root Causes of Terrorism and Why No One Wants to End Them” Philip is an A.B. and Ph. D. from Harvard and taught sociology at Harvard, Brandeis, and
UCSC. The Huffington post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater)

Fundamentalist religions and radical ideologies are the common refuge of people without hope. Christianity has
played this role for centuries. The rich encourage the poor to accept the misery of this world as a passport to
heaven, despite the fact that according to Jesus they don't have a prayer of getting in themselves. This isn't
really surprising. The rich wouldn't be caught dead in a place where they let poor people in.
Islamic fundamentalism is the latest drug being offered the poor and desperate. It has the added appeal that you
can not only get into heaven but also take vengeance at the same time.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Women Link
The Capitalism disproportionately effects women. Hyper-individualism destroys the family, perpetuates warfare
and supports conditions for violence against women.

Cotter, 2.
(Jennifer phd English, the RED COLLECTIVE is an international cadre of revolutionary Marxists committed to class struggle and producing class consciousness across
national boundaries. “War and Domestic Violence” http://redcritique.org/SeptOct02/waranddomesticviolence.htm)

War and domestic violence, to be clear, are matters of class: the social relations of production based on private
ownership of the means of production. The wars in Central Asia and the Middle East are imperialist wars on
behalf of U.S. capital, which is trying to gain a monopoly over the production of the total, global surplus-labor.
In order to stave off declining rates of profit brought on by overproduction, U.S. monopoly capital—specifically
oil cartels and their financiers—are compelled to seek out new conditions of production (a concentration of
ownership of means of production, raw materials, and access to cheap labor) through the building of a Central
Asian oil pipeline, gaining access to Iraqi oilfields, and access to new reserves of labor-power in Central Asia
and the Middle East from which to extract surplus-labor. War, in short, has become historically necessary for
U.S. capital if it is going to stave off a decline in profit. As Lenin argued, war is a historical necessity under
capitalism in its imperialist phase. It is the outcome of the intense concentration of production (of multiple
industries) into the hands of a few, the domination of monopolies over global production, a resulting crisis of
overproduction, and the subsequent need under capitalism for competing imperialist interests to re-divide
ownership of production in the world, often requiring violent force (war), in an attempt to raise the rate of profit
(Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism).
Far from helping to "liberate women" the imperialist wars sharpen class antagonisms, preserve private property
relations, and intensify the violent effects of private property on women "abroad" and "at home", including
domestic violence. The crisis of profit that develops as a result of the concentration of capital into fewer hands,
requires the increased exploitation of workers in production (through access to new reserves of cheap labor and
increased appropriation of their surplus-labor). Moreover, this, in turn, requires the use of existing capital to put
the conditions in place to make this possible (e.g., through shifting capital into the military and warfare). The
concentration of wealth into fewer hands and the resulting crisis of profit leads to increased impoverishment of
workers, which sharpens workers' dependence on the privatized family of capitalism as an economic unit of
survival. At the same time, the family—the relations of reproduction—cannot themselves stave off the crisis of
profit in production, which requires seeking out new sources of production and surplus-labor extraction. Both
the economic contradictions of the privatized family (that is, that the family cannot resolve the crisis of
profitability in production and the increased impoverishment of workers) and the ideology of the privatized
family of capitalism, which puts forward a possessive individualism, especially an ideology of "ownership" of
women by men, support conditions of domestic violence against women.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Liberate Women Link

Efforts to liberate women in foreign countries represent the interest of middle and upper class elites and
not the majority of women around the globe. This guts social progress in favor profitability.

Cotter, 2.
(Jennifer phd English, the RED COLLECTIVE is an international cadre of revolutionary Marxists committed to class struggle and producing class consciousness across
national boundaries. “War and Domestic Violence” http://redcritique.org/SeptOct02/waranddomesticviolence.htm)
This "liberal" position is not, in short, opposed to but rather takes as its fundamental presupposition the right-wing
position of "U.S. national security", which presents the imperialist wars in Central Asia and the Middle East as a
necessary means to liberate the women of the world from violence, currently articulated as freedom from the "veil".
Feminist Majority leader Eleanor Smeal has argued that "we must finish what we started in Afghanistan", which, she
points out, involves expanding "peacekeeping" troops beyond the capital (Feminist Daily News Wire, 9/26/2002). This
position is also evident in the corporate feminism of such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey who, in an episode of The Oprah
Winfrey Show dedicated to an examination of the Fort Bragg murders, argued that the military, in order to "defend
democracy", must be trained in a highly undemocratic and authoritarian environment that is conducive to the promotion of
domestic violence at home. This, in turn, is considered to be all the more reason to provide increased state spending on
behavioral health services in the military for soldiers and their families: so that they are more effective in their task of
fighting the current wars (The Oprah Winfrey Show, October 2002).
However, these measures actually reveal the class interests of liberal—that is "corporate"—feminism, which caters to the
economic interests of upper-middle class women in imperialist nations. These women largely support imperialist war in
Central Asia and the Middle East because it is helping to put in place economic conditions for U.S. capital (such as an oil
pipeline running through Central Asia) to extract a larger portion of surplus-labor from the international proletariat, of
which these women can then vie for a greater portion. It is no surprise that massive public attention was given to the
"need" to allocate greater resources to the military to "help" it combat the problem of domestic violence at the same time
that Congress was passing the largest Defense Appropriations Bill in history (now signed into law as of October 23,
2002), which allocates $354.8 billion for national security programs administered by the Department of Defense. The
hollowness of these measures as a means for ending domestic violence and inequality for women is made even more
obvious by the fact that the Defense Appropriations Bill also requires shifting billions of dollars away from social security,
health benefits, as well as social and economic resources to improve conditions of life for women in society at large. At
the same time the Bush Administration has been bombing the citizens of Afghanistan in the name of "women", it has cut
social resources for working class women and proposed welfare reforms that emphasize marriage over employment as a
solution to the impoverishment of working class mothers in the U.S. As a consequence, women will have fewer resources
at their disposal to leave abusive marriages and will be economically compelled to tolerate them. Moreover, as a New
York Times report indicates, the current administration has either eliminated women's agencies of the Labor Department,
military, and social services or demonstrated negligence toward renewing charters and leadership of these agencies, thus
stalling the work they are set up to do and undermining years of work to put these conditions in place ("Cloudy Future for
U.S. Women's agencies", December 19, 2001). The actions of the current administration, moreover, follow on the tails of a
widening gap in income between men and women since 1995 ("Male-Female Salary Gap Growing, Study Says", The
Washington Post, January 24, 2002). This demonstrates the deterioration of what little resources are reserved for women
under capitalism to improve their social and economic conditions of life, when these resources are no longer necessary to
maintain profitable conditions of production.
In short, the subordination of "domestic violence" to the project of "national security", the "military", and family values, is
actually an effort in defense of monopoly capitalists who will invest in "behavioral health services" so long as it is "cost
effective" in helping to reproduce those sectors of the workforce (in this case, the military and defense industry) that are
currently most useful in securing international conditions favorable to production for profit.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

War to protect women Link

More ev…
Cotter, 2.
(Jennifer phd English, the RED COLLECTIVE is an international cadre of revolutionary Marxists committed to class struggle and producing class consciousness across
national boundaries. “War and Domestic Violence” http://redcritique.org/SeptOct02/waranddomesticviolence.htm)
Far from challenging the material basis—the class relations—behind the state, transnational feminism simply furthers the
logic of privatization and inculcates women into the imperialist project by presenting the complete deterioriation of social
control of resources, as an instance of "radical agency". The formal opposition to the "state" and to "imperialist war" by
transnational feminism turns out to be a quiet support for the economic relations of imperialism. The support by
transnational feminism for the "redistribution of capital" conceals the source of the material contradictions for women in
the international division of labor: that is, the production of capital—the fact that workers must work part of the day to
produce necessary labor for their own reproduction and part of the day to produce surplus-labor for the ruling class. By
supporting the "redistribution of capital" as a radical act of "resistance", transnational feminists are merely representing
the interests of monopoly capital for profit as the general interest of all women. It is an economic necessity for monopoly
capitalists not simply to export goods but to "export capital" to new regions to develop production relations conducive to
raising profit. When other imperialist interests are also competing to concentrate production in the same regions in their
own hands, or when other local conditions owing to uneven development in capitalism prevent this from being done
through peaceful means, this makes warfare a necessary means for monopoly capitalists to raise the rate of profit. But, in
other circumstances this can be done by peaceful means. NGOs, and the transnational feminist support of them as the
"alternative", are merely one means to advance imperialist interests through peaceful means. They are one way in which
transnational capital exports capital to secure profitable conditions of production: they serve as a supplement to direct
financial investment into industry and production by specific cartels and finance capitalists, by investing in the social and
cultural conditions that will promote the adjustment of workers to their new conditions of exploitation. The fixation on the
"state" and "war" as autonomous problems are an ideological "decoy" for the underlying economic interests of capitalism.
What transnational feminism helps provide ideological alibis for is not actually the dismantling of the "state". Instead, it
simply helps to ideologically "get rid" of the problems of the state as the only provider of social services under capitalism
and the necessity of socially owned and controlled resources to emancipate women, in order to create more room for
transnational capitalism. What it is instead set on dismantling is social citizenship, the necessity for collective ownership
and control of the means of production so that the life conditions of citizens cannot be dictated by the interests of a few for
profit, but are determined on the basis of human need. The notion of "resistant agency" is simply a re-articulation of "civil
citizenship"—"autonomous" freedoms of the individual abstracted from the conditions of necessity for the majority of
women in the international division of labor.
Understood on these terms, arguments about the individualized agency of women under the burqa, it is becoming all too
clear, are a thin mask for protecting imperialism. This ideological strategy specifically appeals to the interests of petit-
bourgeois women of the North (aiming to protect their share of the surplus-labor of women of the South), who support
measures of increased productivity for women of Afghanistan and the Islamic diaspora so long as these "investments" are
made within production relations that will allow for a greater "return" to investment in the form of higher levels of
surplus-labor. This project is not at all inconsistent with the material basis and the ideological masking of the "war effort"
that transnational feminists formally oppose. For example, many have held up as "proof positive" that the current war is a
war of "liberation", that Afghan women are now being taught to read and write for the first time as a result of the
overthrow of the Taliban dictatorship. But the opportunistic track record of the United States toward protecting the
material conditions to ensure equality for women in Afghanistan, Iraq, the United States . . . including freedom from
domestic violence, reveals that these conditions are only "supported" when it is profitable to the ruling class. The U.S.
support for the literacy of women and freedom from state sanctioned abuse and murder by their husbands was not a
priority when it meant accepting a regime in Afghanistan with which the U.S. could not easily dominate the business
relationship. Moreover, it is not an effort to emancipate women from exploitation and oppression now that the Taliban
proved to be no longer profitable for U.S. monopoly capital. Instead, it is an effort to process women into the skills
necessary to be better (i.e., more profitable) workers for transnational capital now that a regime more friendly to U.S.
capital rules in Afghanistan. Moreover, because these women are coming out of a situation of state sanctioned domestic
violence and discrimination, they will prove to be cheaper labor for transnational corporations. In like manner, by
idealizing the conditions of violence against Afghan women as a question of "individualized agency" and "civil rights"
(against the U.S. and/or Islamic fundamentalism), transnational feminism erases the necessity of economic security
founded not upon private property and "national security" but on collective ownership of the means of production.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Family link
Capitalism privates the family to provide resources to the Capitalist military Machine.

Cotter, 2.
(Jennifer phd English, the RED COLLECTIVE is an international cadre of revolutionary Marxists committed to class struggle and producing class consciousness across
national boundaries. “War and Domestic Violence” http://redcritique.org/SeptOct02/waranddomesticviolence.htm)
Moreover, the class interests behind the "national security" project and the military's interest in "family values"
reveal that the "family", and domestic violence, are not at root a matter of "reproduction" and "intimate
relations" but of labor and, hence, of production. Capitalism, which is founded on the private appropriation of
the majority's surplus labor for profit by those who own the means of production, subordinates "reproductive
relations" to the interests of production for profit. That is, capitalism reproduces the privatized family—where
the economic burden for the social reproduction of workers lies in the hands of individual workers and not the
social collective—in order to reduce the portion of social surplus-labor that is used for meeting workers' needs
rather than profit for the owners. Moreover, when subordinated to private property relations, this results in
family and interpersonal relations characterized by what Alexandra Kollontai called "possessive individualism":
an ideological condition in class society in which "love" relations are thought to be autonomous from social
conditions and are viewed as a relation of "ownership", most often of women by men (Selected Writings 237-
249). In such a situation, in which family and interpersonal relations are subordinated to production for profit
not needs and relationships take on the character of possessive individualism that is fostered under capitalism,
women become commodified as objects toward which abuse seems "justified".
The military, as an institution of capitalism, is no exception. Cynthia Enloe has pointed out that the military uses
the "family" form to reproduce a "well-run base" and "ensure a cohesive military a generation later". As a result,
she argues, it encourages traditional gender conventions which "lower wives' expectations of paid work,
encourage them to derive their own sense of self-worth from their husbands' accomplishments, and suppress
wives' stories of depression and physical abuse for fear that they might damage their husbands' chances of
promotion" (Enloe 72). This ideology has been useful for the base (which is an institution of capitalism) in
order to help conceal the contradictions, particularly for women, of workers' dependence on the family as an
economic unit and, moreover, to get women to more easily adjust to performing reproductive labor to produce
the next generation of labor-power. In short, the military makes use of the privatization of the family under
capitalism: the fact that workers, whose surplus labor is appropriated for profit and are, therefore, economically
dependent on the family for their survival, at the same time, are privately responsible for the reproduction of
their own conditions of life and the next generation of laborers. The decision to start bases in which whole
families live was an economic decision to offset the cost from the social surplus-labor for social reproduction of
soldiers and officers. Despite the initial costs of accommodating families, it was considered more "cost
effective" in the long run to have women's unpaid labor help to reproduce conditions of life for soldiers, to
reserve more of the social surplus-labor for owners. This subordination of the family to production for profit
(which is why the military needs to be "reproduced" under capitalism to begin with), combined with the
subordination of sexuality to production for profit through the routine international use of violence against
women as a weapon of imperialist warfare (in Vietnam, Rwanda, Kosovo . . . ) as well as through the use of sex
workers on and off military bases, leads to the reproduction of conditions conducive to

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aid Link

International aid is a tool or pauperization – it makes sub-Saharan Africa dependent on economic

rationality

Saha, 98.
Santosh Saha. (Phd history) “First World, Third World” Journal of Third World Studies. Americus: Fall 1998. Vol.15, Iss. 2; pg. 224, 3 pgs PAGE JSTOR Accessed:
6/23/07 AK

Visualize a philanthropic movement, the "international aid," that has damaged the environment in Third World
counties, lowered the standard of living of the millions in poorer south, and left a trail of desperate indebtedness
in its wake; an international system of financing development projects in Latin America, Africa and Asia, where
corruption and inefficiency impoverished those poor people which the rich western donors purported to help.
That, in essence, is the system of aid that emerges from William Ryrie's timely vigorous presentation about the
evils of aid to the "Third World."
The author, who has served IFC and other international bodies, argues that aid organizations and professionals
are not aware that "whole societies can be corrupted or pauperized" by a mentality of dependency arising out of
foreign aid (p. 114). Ile testifies that aid would work well through redistribution rather than growth. "Aid...
should take the form of investment designed to promote economic growth, not subsidy" (p. 114). There is
nothing new in these assertions. What is novel in this presentation is the force of arguments, based on
substantial infonnation and comparative analysis

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Race Link
Race is by capitalists to further their agenda- failure to incorporate class analysis dooms solutions to failure.
Young, 6
(“Putting Materialism back into Race Theory” www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm. Robert is an assistant
professor of English at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa,)

This essay advances a materialist theory of race. In my view, race oppression dialectically intersects with the
exploitative logic of advanced capitalism, a regime which deploys race in the interest of surplus accumulation.
Thus, race operates at the (economic) base and therefore produces cultural and ideological effects at the
superstructure; in turn, these effects—in very historically specific way—interact with and ideologically justify
the operations at the economic base [1]. In a sense then, race encodes the totality of contemporary capitalist
social relations, which is why race cuts across a range of seemingly disparate social sites in contemporary US
society. For instance, one can mark race difference and its discriminatory effects in such diverse sites as health
care, housing/real estate, education, law, job market, and many other social sites. However, unlike many
commentators who engage race matters, I do not isolate these social sites and view race as a local problem,
which would lead to reformist measures along the lines of either legal reform or a cultural-ideological battle to
win the hearts and minds of people and thus keep the existing socio-economic arrangements intact; instead, I
foreground the relationality of these sites within the exchange mechanism of multinational capitalism.
Consequently, I believe, the eradication of race oppression also requires a totalizing political project: the
transformation of existing capitalism—a system which produces difference (the racial/gender division of labor)
and accompanying ideological narratives that justify the resulting social inequality. Hence, my project
articulates a transformative theory of race—a theory that reclaims revolutionary class politics in the interests of
contributing toward a post-racist society. In other words, the transformation from actually existing capitalism
into socialism constitutes the condition of possibility for a post-racist society—a society free from racial and all
other forms of oppression. By freedom, I do not simply mean a legal or cultural articulation of individual rights
as proposed by bourgeois race theorists. Instead, I theorize freedom as a material effect of emancipated
economic forms.

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Heg link
Hegemony is used to keep the global economic engine running.

Charles Derber, 2
(“People before profit: the new globalization in the age of terror, big money, and economic crisis” page 103)
The secret of globalization has rested on the United States success in reconciling these two aims. Building a
world safe for global Business has been almost entirely consistent in recent decades with increasing and
consolidating American power in the world. By imposing the neoliberal ideology around the world, the United
States has simultaneously created a dreamworld for global companies, while creating a Pax Americana that
appears to be a constitutional democracy of, by, and for the world.
All this reflects the shrinking fire wall between global business, with its thousands of lobbyists spread across
Washington, and the U.S. government itself. The distinction between the U.S. government and Global business
is blurring. American politicians are elected only with the huge campaign contributions of global companies,
and while national leaders must speak in the name of the people who elect them, they tend to pay back the
companies by representing them first. In Wartime, traditional patriotism and “America First” sentiment come
into the foreground, and the U.S. government is all red, white, and blue. But the War on terrorism, like the gulf
war and other U.S. military campaigns in the age of globalization, serves two intimately related ends. It builds
American Political and military power against terror networks and any regimes around the world viewed as
hostile to U.S. interests. But it simultaneously protects the oil supply that keeps the global economy running and
protects regimes in the Middle East and around the world that serve as handmaidens to global corporations.

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Link: Hegemony
1American hegemony is violent imperialism. It authorizes genocidal violence and results in
counterbalancing and asymmetrical warfare which exacerbate global conflict. The impact is extinction.
Foster, co-editor of Monthly Review, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, 2k3 [John, “The new Age of
Imperialism,” Monthly Review 55.3]

At the same time, it is clear that in

the present period of global hegemonic imperialism the United States is geared above
all to expanding its imperial power to whatever extent possible and subordinating the rest of the capitalist world
to its interests. The Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea Basin represent not only the bulk of world petroleum reserves, but also a rapidly increasing
proportion of total reserves, as high production rates diminish reserves elsewhere. This has provided much of the stimulus for the United States to
gain greater control of these resources—at the expense of its present and potential rivals. But U.S. imperial ambitions do not end there, since they are
driven by economic ambitions that know no bounds. As Harry Magdoff noted in the closing pages of The Age of Imperialism in 1969, "it is the
professed goal" of U.S. multinational corporations "to control as large a share of the world market as they do of the United States market," and this
hunger for foreign markets persists today. Florida-based Wackenhut Corrections Corporation has won prison privatization contracts in Australia, the
United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands Antilles ("Prison Industry Goes Global," www.futurenet.org, fall
2000).Promotion of U.S. corporate interests abroad is one of the primary responsibilities of the U.S. state. Consider the cases of Monsanto and
genetically modified food, Microsoft and intellectual property, Bechtel and the war on Iraq. It would be impossible to exaggerate how
dangerous this dual expansionism of U.S. corporations and the U.S. state is to the world at large.
As Istvan Meszaros observed in 2001 in Socialism or Barbarism, theU.S. attempt to seize global control, which is inherent in
the workings of capitalism and imperialism, is now threatening humanity with the "extreme violent rule of the
whole world by one hegemonic imperialist country on a permanent basis...an absurd and unsustainable way of
running the world order."* This new age of U.S. imperialism will generate its own contradictions, amongst
them attempts by other major powers to assert their influence, resorting to similar belligerent means , and all
sorts of strategies by weaker states and non-state actors to engage in "asymmetric" forms of warfare. Given the
unprecedented destructiveness of contemporary weapons, which are diffused ever more widely, the
consequences for the population of the world could well be devastating beyond anything ever before witnessed.
Rather than generatinga new "Pax Americana" the United States may be paving the way to new global
holocausts.
The greatest hope in these dire circumstances lies in a rising tide of revolt from below , both in the United States and globally. The
growth of the antiglobalization movement, which dominated the world stage for nearly two years following the events in Seattle in
November 1999, was succeeded in February 2003 by the largest global wave of antiwar protests in human history. Never before has
the world's population risen up so quickly and in such massive numbers in the attempt to stop an imperialist war. The new age of
imperialism is also a new age of revolt.
The Vietnam Syndrome, which has so worried the strategic planners of the imperial order for decades, now seems not only to have left
a deep legacy within the United States but also to have been coupled this time around with an Empire Syndrome on a much more
global scale--something that no one really expected. This more than anything else makes it clear that the strategy of the
American ruling class to expand the American Empire cannot possibly succeed in the long run, and will prove
to be its own--we hope not the world's—undoing.

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Link – Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology worsens the problems of capitalism.

Corporate Watch, 2007
(July 15, http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=2401)
Unfortunately the report was quite poor on addressing many of the serious societal issues that nanotech will raise.
While acknowledging the issues of ownership and control as fundamental, concerns about corporate control
over matter through nano-patents were entirely left out. As one of the report's authors told me, "we
chose not to deal with all the problems of industrial capitalism - it simply wasn't in our remit". But a
narrow remit meant that there was no discussion of nanotech monopolies or the implications of
nanotech for the global South. "There have been plenty of red flags, but the dollar signs have blotted out
the warnings signs", said Rory O'Neill, editor of the TUC's Hazards magazine. Ethical issues such as how using
nanotech for human enhancement will impinge the rights of the disabled and affect the definition of
"normal" were touched on but not explored. The amount of military spending assigned to nanotech and the
potential of nano-sensors for surveillance were also pointed out, but no concrete suggestions made.

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>>>Implications<<<

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

CAP BAD- Laundry List

Capitalism threatens the life on our planet by creating environmental threats, in the meantime, poverty,
racism, loss of human rights, torture, and male domination pervade the capitalist culture.
Brown, Charles May 13th 2005 (http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2005w15/msg00062.htm)

The capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation-the means of production and
distribution. Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists buy the
workers' labor, but only pay them back a portion of the wealth they create. Because the capitalists own the means of
production, they are able to keep the surplus wealth created by workers above and beyond the cost of paying worker's
wages and other costs of production. This surplus is called "profit" and consists of unpaid labor that the capitalists
appropriate and use to achieve ever-greater profits. These profits are turned into capital which capitalists use to
further exploit the producers of all wealth-the working class. Capitalists are compelled by competition to
seek to maximize profits. The capitalist class as a whole can do that only by extracting a greater surplus
from the unpaid labor of workers by increasing exploitation. Under capitalism, economic development
happens only if it is profitable to the individual capitalists, not for any social need or good. The profit
drive is inherent in capitalism, and underlies or exacerbates all major social ills of our times. With the
rapid advance of technology and productivity, new forms of capitalist ownership have developed to maximize profit. The
working people of our country confront serious, chronic problems because of capitalism. These chronic
problems become part of the objective conditions that confront each new generation of working people.
The threat of nuclear war, which can destroy all humanity, grows with the spread of nuclear weapons,
space-based weaponry, and a military doctrine that justifies their use in preemptive wars and wars
without end. Ever since the end of World War II, the U.S. has been constantly involved in aggressive military actions big
and small. These wars have cost millions of lives and casualties, huge material losses, as well as trillions of U.S. taxpayer
dollars. Threats to the environment continue to spiral, threatening all life on our planet. Millions of
workers are unemployed or insecure in their jobs, even during economic upswings and periods of
"recovery" from recessions. Most workers experience long years of stagnant real wages, while health and education
costs soar. Many workers are forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet. Most workers now average four
different occupations during their lifetime, being involuntarily moved from job to job and career to career. Often,
retirement-age workers are forced to continue working just to provide health care for themselves. With capitalist
globalization, jobs move as capitalists export factories and even entire industries to other countries. Millions of people
continuously live below the poverty level; many suffer homelessness and hunger. Public and private
programs to alleviate poverty and hunger do not reach everyone, and are inadequate even for those they
do reach. Racism remains the most potent weapon to divide working people. Institutionalized racism
provides billions in extra profits for the capitalists every year due to the unequal pay racially oppressed
workers receive for work of comparable value. All workers receive lower wages when racism succeeds in dividing
and disorganizing them. In every aspect of economic and social life, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian
a nd Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Middle Eastern peoples, and other nationally and racially oppressed people
experience conditions inferior to that of whites. Racist violence and the poison of racist ideas victimize
all people of color no matter which economic class they belong to. The attempts to suppress and
undercount the vote of the African American and other racially oppressed people are part of racism in
the electoral process. Racism permeates the police, judicial and prison systems, perpetuating unequal
sentencing, racial profiling, discriminatory enforcement, and police brutality. The democratic, civil and
human rights of all working people are continually under attack. These attacks range from increasingly difficult
procedures for union recognition and attempts to prevent full union participation in elections, to the absence of the right
to strike for many public workers. They range from undercounting minority communities in the census to making it
difficult for working people to run for office because of the domination of corporate campaign funding and the high cost of
advertising. These attacks also include growing censorship and domination of the media by the ultra-right;
growing restrictions and surveillance of activist social movements and the Left; open denial of basic
rights to immigrants; and, violations of the Geneva Conventions up to and including torture for
prisoners. These abuses all serve to maintain the grip of the capitalists on government power. They use this
power to ensure the economic and political dominance of their class. Women still face a considerable differential
in wages for work of equal or comparable value. They also confront barriers to promotion, physical and
sexual abuse, continuing unequal workload in home and family life, and male supremacist ideology
perpetuating unequal and often unsafe conditions. The constant attacks on social welfare programs severely
impact single women, single mothers, nationally and racially oppressed women, and all working class
women. The reproductive rights of all women are continually under attack ideologically and politically.
Violence against women in the home and in society at large remains a shameful fact of life in the U.S.

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CAP BAD- Laundry List

Capitalism causes sexism, racism, poverty, and nuclear annihilation
Sam Webb, National Chairman, Communist Party . People's Weekly World Newspaper “4-20-04.
http://www.pww.org/article/view/4967/1/207/0
Capitalism was never a warm, cuddly, stable social system. It came into the world dripping with blood from
every pore, as Marx described it, laying waste to old forms of production and ways of life in favor of new,
more efficient manufacturing. Since then it has combined nearly uninterrupted transformation of the
instruments of production with immense wealth for a few and unrelieved exploitation, insecurity,
misery, and racial and gender inequality for the many, along with periodic wars, and a vast zone of
countries imprisoned in a seemingly inescapable web of abject poverty. Yet as bad as that record is, its
most destructive effects on our world could still be ahead. Why do I say that? Because capitalism, with its
imperatives of capital accumulation, profit maximization and competition, is the cause of new global
problems that threaten the prospects and lives of billions of people worldwide, and, more importantly, it
is also a formidable barrier to humankind’s ability to solve these problems. Foremost among these, in
addition to ecological degradation, economic crises, population pressures, and endemic diseases, is the threat of
nuclear mass annihilation. With the end of the Cold War, most of us thought that the threat of nuclear war would
fade and with it the stockpiles of nuclear weapons. But those hopes were dashed. Rather than easing, the nuclear
threat is more palpable in some ways and caches of nuclear weapons are growing. And our own
government possesses the biggest stockpiles by far. Much like previous administrations, the Bush administration
has continued to develop more powerful nuclear weapons, but with a twist: it insists on its singular right to employ
nuclear weapons preemptively in a range of military situations. This is a major departure from earlier U.S. policy – the
stated policy of all previous administrations was that nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort to be used only in
circumstances in which our nation is under severe attack. Meanwhile, today’s White House bullies demonize, impose
sanctions, and make or threaten war on states that are considering developing a nuclear weapons capability. Bush tells us
that this policy of arming ourselves while disarming others should cause no anxiety because, he says, his administration
desires only peace and has no imperial ambitions. Not surprisingly, people greet his rhetorical assurances skeptically,
especially as it becomes more and more obvious that his administration’s political objective is not world peace, but world
domination, cunningly couched in the language of “fighting terrorism.” It is well that millions of peace-minded people
distrust Bush’s rhetoric. The hyper-aggressive gang in the Oval Office and Pentagon and the absolutely lethal
nature of modern weapons of mass destruction make for a highly unstable and explosive situation that
could cascade out of control. War has a logic of its own. But skepticism alone is not enough. It has to be
combined with a sustained mobilization of the world community – the other superpower in this unipolar world – if the
hand of the warmakers in the White House and Pentagon is to be stayed. A heavy responsibility rests on the American
people. For we have the opportunity to defeat Bush and his counterparts in Congress in the November elections. Such a
defeat will be a body blow to the policies of preemption, regime change, and saber rattling, and a people’s mandate for
peace, disarmament, cooperation, and mutual security. The world will become a safer place. In the longer run, however, it
is necessary to replace the system of capitalism. With its expansionary logic to accumulate capital
globally and its competitive rivalries, capitalism has an undeniable structural tendency to militarism and
war. This doesn’t mean that nuclear war is inevitable. But it does suggest that nuclear war is a latent, ever-present
possibility in a world in which global capital is king. Whether that occurs depends in large measure on
the outcome of political struggle within and between classes and social movements at the national and
international level.

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Cap Threatens Survival

Global capitalism threatens survival – its is not a question of just the state corporations manipulate and
control the market and our ecological well-being

Zizek, 99.
Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia, (Slavoj, The Ticklish Subject, page 350-351, )

This already brings us to the second aspect of our critical distance towards risk society theory: the way it
approaches the reality of capitalism. Is it not that, on closer examination, its notion of 'risk' indicates a narrow
and precisely defined domain in which risks are generated: the domain of the uncontrolled use of science and
technology in the conditions of capitalism? The paradigmatic case of 'risk', which is not simply one among many out risk 'as such', is
that of a new scientific-technological invention put to use by a private corporation without proper public democratic debate and control, then
generating the spectre of unforeseen catastrophic long-term consequences. However, is not this kind of risk rooted in the fact that
the
logic of market and profitability is driving privately owned corporations to pursue their course and use scientific
and technological innovations (or simply expand their production) without actually taking account of the long-term
effects of such activity on the environment, as well as the health of humankind itself?
Thus - despite all the talk about a 'second modernity' which compels us to leave the old ideological dilemmas of Left and Right, of capitalism
versus socialism, and so on, behind - is not the conclusion to be drawn that in the present global situation, in which
private corporations outside public political control are making decisions which can affect us all, even up to our
chances of survival, the only solution lies in a kind of direct socialization of the productive process - in moving
towards a society in which global decisions about the fundamental orientation of how to develop and use
productive capacities at the disposal of society would somehow be made by the entire collective of the people
affected by such decisions? Theorists of the risk society often evoke the need to counteract reign of the 'depoliticized' global
market with a move towards radical repoliticization, which will take crucial decisions away from state planners and experts and put them into the
hands of the individuals and groups concerned themselves (through the revitalization of active citizenship, broad public debate, and so on) - however,
they stop short of putting in question the very basics of the anonymous logic of market relations and global
capitalism, which imposes itself today more and more as the 'neutral' Real accepted by all parties and, as such,
more and more depoliticized. 34

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Try or Die 1/4

Try or die – capitalism necessitates extinction.
Independent Media Center 2k3, Marko, Anarchismand Human Survival: Russell's Problem,
Revolutionist,http://sydney.indymedia.org/print.php3?article_id=30393, March

Bertrand Russell throughout his long career as a public intellectual and political activist had reason to reflect on the follies
of humanity and the real threats to human survival, threats which are self induced. Much speculation and movie making is
devoted toward such survival threatening events as asteroid strikes and mantle head plumes. What is totally ignored is
the threat to human survival posed by our own institutions. We can notch another one for the propaganda model;
it is to be expected that our pathological institutions would not dwell on their inherent pathology. We can expect
nothing less of the corporate media.
I shall argue that we face what I refer to as "Russell's problem": “are Homo sapiens an intelligent maladaptive
organism doomed to self extinction? There exists good reason to suppose that a maladaptive, intelligent, organism
would indeed cause its own extinction simply because of the destructive potential of intelligence. This is one of the
farces of many science fiction stories, such as Star Trek, which posit the existence of hideous innately war like but highly
intelligent species. This is not a productive mix; surely any advanced species, in order to reach such heights as inter-
galactic travel, would need to be a species that places a premium on cooperation and solidarity. An avaricious intelligent
species would only over time succeed in destroying itself and much of the ecological basis for the support of life long
before it would be able to traverse wormholes.
There exist three threats to survival namely nuclear war, ecological change and north-south conflict. All three I
would argue can be traced to a single source that being the pathological nature of state capitalism. What is
frightening is that eventual self induced extinction is a rational consequence of our system of world order much like the
destruction of the system of world order prior to 1914 was a rational consequence of its internal nature. I shall focus in
this essay on nuclear war, the most immediate threat. In doing so we will come to appreciate the nexus between this threat,
globalisation and north-south conflict.
Currently we are witnessing a major expansion in the US global military system. One facet of this expansion is the
globalisation of US nuclear war planning known as "adaptive planning”. The idea here is that the US would be able to
execute a nuclear strike against any target on Earth at very short notice.For strategic planners the world's population
is what they refer to as a "target rich environment". The Clinton era commander of US nuclear forces, Admiral Mies,
stated that nuclear ballistic missile submarines would be able to "move undetected to any launch point" threatening "any
spot on Earth". What lies at the heart of such a policy is the desire to maintain global strategic superiority what is known
as "full spectrum dominance" previously referred to as "escalation dominance". Full spectrum dominance means that the
US would be able to wage and win any type of war ranging from a small scale contingency to general nuclear war.
Strategic nuclear superiority is to be used to threaten other states so that they toe the party line. The Bush
administration's Nuclear Posture Review stipulated that nuclear weapons are needed in case of "surprising military
developments" not necessarily limited to chemical or biological weapons. The Clinton administration was more explicit
stating in its 2001 Pentagon report to Congress that US nuclear forces are to "hedge against defeat of conventional forces
in defense of vital interests". The passage makes clear that this statement is not limited to chemical or biological weapons.

We have just seen in Iraq what is meant by the phrase "defense of vital interests". Washington is asserting that if any
nation were to have the temerity to successfully defend itself against US invasion, armed with conventional weapons only,
then instant annihilation awaits. "What we say goes" or you go is the message being conveyed.
It is also understood that the development of these nuclear weapons may require the resumption of nuclear testing, a key
reason for the Administration's lack of readiness to abide by the CTBT treaty, which is meant to ban nuclear testing. The
CTBT is a key feature of contemporary global nuclear non proliferation regimes for the US signed the CTBT in order to
extend the nuclear non proliferation treaty (NPT) indefinitely. Abandoning the CTBT treaty, in order to develop a new
generation of more "useable" nuclear weapons that will lower the threshold of nuclear war, will place the NPT regime
under further strain and greatly increase the chances of further nuclear proliferation.There exists a "deadly connection"
between global weapons of mass destruction proliferation and US foreign policy.
One may well ask what has all this to do with state capitalism? Consider the thinking behind the militarisation of
space, outlined for us by Space Command; “historically military forces have evolved to protect national interests
and investments – both military and economic. During the rise of sea commerce, nations built navies to protect and
enhance their commercial interests. During the westward expansion of the continental United States, military outposts and
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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
the cavalry emerged to protect our wagon trains, settlements and roads”. The document goes on, the emergence of

Try or Die 2/4

space power follows both of these models. Moreover, the globalization of the world economy will continue, with a
widening between a haves and have nots™. The demands of unilateral strategic superiority, long standing US policy
known as "escalation" or "full spectrum" dominance, compel Washington to pursue “space control". This means that,
according to a report written under the chairmanship of Donald Rumsfeld, "in the coming period the US will conduct
operations to, from, in and through space" which includes "power projection in, from and through space". Toward
this end, Washington has resisted efforts in the UN to create an arms control regime for space. As a result there will
inevitably arise an arms race in space.
The importance of this simply cannot be over-emphasised. Throughout the nuclear age there have been a number of close
calls, due to both human and technical error, that almost lead to a full scale nuclear exchange between Washington and
Moscow. These glitches in command and control systems were ultimately benign because both sides had early warning
satellites placed in specialised orbits which could be relied upon to provide real time imagery of nuclear missile launch
sites. However the militarization of space now means that these satellites will become open game; the benign
environment in space will disappear if the militarization of space continues. Thus if the US were to "conduct
operations to, from in and through space" it will do see remotely. Technical failure may result in the system
attacking Russian early warning satellites. Without question this would be perceived by the Russian's as the first
shot in a US nuclear first strike.
If these satellites were to be taken out then this ultimate guarantee disappears; the Russian ground based radar system has
a number of key holes that prevent it from warning of an attack through two key corridors, one from the Atlantic the other
from the Pacific. In the future if an event such as 1995 were to occur in space the Russians no longer would have the level
of comfort provided by its space based assets.The militarization of space greatly increases the chances of a full scale
accidental nuclear war.
In other words, we are witnessing the integration of strategic conventional, nuclear and space planning into the
command responsible for overseeing US nuclear forces. In turn these forces become an ordinary facet of US
strategic planning, severing the break between conventional and nuclear war.
The link between the increase in threats to survival and state capitalism (as well as globalisation) was provided for us by
the old Space Command as noted above. We may justly also conclude that US nuclear weapons provide a shadow,
enabling the deployment of offensive military firepower in what Kennedy era commander General Maxwell Taylor
referred to as the key theatre of war, namely "under-developed areas". This shield was made effective by "escalation
dominance", as noted above, now known as "full spectrum dominance". It isthis facet of US strategic policy that
compels Washington place such a premium on nuclear superiority and nuclear war fighting.
The link between US nuclear strategy and the global political economy is intimate. US nuclear weapons, both during and
after the cold war, have acted as the ultimate guarantors of US policy, which is concerned with managing the world
capitalist system in the interests of dominant domestic elites. Nuclear weapons provide the umbrella of power under
which the system is able to function in much the same way that Karl Polanyi in his classic work, The Great
Transformation, argued that the balance of power functioned in the service of the world capitalist system in the 19th
century. The great restoration of the world capitalist system, under the rubric of a liberal internationalism, and the
onset of the nuclear age in the wake of the third world war, are not merely coincidental. To understand the contours
of contemporary world order is to appreciate the deep nexus between the two.
Military superiority is necessary because of threats to "stability". It is to be expected that a system of world order
constructed for the benefit of an elite core of corporate interests in the US will not go down well with the world's
population, especially in key regions singled out for capital extraction such as the Middle East and Latin America.
Planners recognise that the pursuit of capital globalisation and the consequent widening of the gap between rich and poor
would be opposed by the globe's population. Absolute strategic superiority is meant to keep the world's population quite
and obedient out of sheer terror, as Bush administration aligned neo-conservative thinkers have argued it is better that
Washington be feared rather than loved. As they have asserted, after world war two US hegemony had to be "obtained",
now it must be "maintained" (Robert Kagan and William Kristol).It is only natural that this "maintenance operation"
should be a militaristic one given that the US has a comparative advantage in the use of force; a nuclear global first
strike capability would give Washington an absolute advantage.
This is a matter of great contemporary significance because of the current geographical expansion of the US military
system. One of the most significant results of the invasion of Afghanistan was the expansion of the US military system
into Central Asia, including into some former Soviet republics. The Russians have traditionally considered this to be their
version of the Western hemisphere. If a "great game" were to develop in the region between Russia and the US
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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
(perhaps also Pakistan, China and India all nuclear powers, Turkey which sits under US "extended deterrence" and
Iran, a potential nuclear power) then such a "great game" may become a nuclearised great game. Indeed the

Try or Die 3/4

standoff in Kashmir may have global consequences if a system of alliance politics were to develop in the region between
the globe's nuclear powers, especially as the threshold of nuclear war is being lowered. In this sense Central Asia may
develop into a global version of the link between the Balkans and central alliance systems prior to 1914.
Of even greater concern is the further expansion of the US military system into the Middle East following the invasion of
Iraq. Washington has already foreshadowed a desire to construct permanent military bases in Iraq in order to facilitate
intervention into the region. Both Iran and Syria are potential targets of US attack. Iran may decide upon the
nuclear option in order to deter the globeleading rogue state. This could be potentially explosive because it is well
known that Israel posses a significant nuclear force. Israel has always feared that its paymaster would ultimately
abandon it. In response Israel has reportedly developed a "samson option" nuclear targeting strategy.
The idea is that Israel would target Russia with its nuclear weapons (Israel has developed delivery systems with an
excessive range capability), which would lead to a full-scale nuclear exchange between Moscow and Washington. In
essence Israel is saying: we should be allowed to continue repressing the Palestinians if not we have the "samson
option".
The militarization of space, the development of so called "useable" nuclear weapons, the globalization of the US
nuclear planning system, the hair trigger alert status of the globe's nuclear forces and the expansion of the US
military system into Central Asia and the Middle East possibly triggering a "great game" in these regions between
nuclear powers, not to mention military expansion into "new Europe", all seriously increase the threats to our long
term (indeed short term) survival.
The most important target audience of declaratory policy is the American population, the so-called "internal
deterrent". Consider for instance the key nuclear proliferation planning document of the cold war era, the Gilpatric report
delivered to President Johnson. In it Gilpatric spelt out the threat that nuclear proliferation poses to US security: "as
additional nations obtained nuclear weapons our diplomatic and military influence would wane, and strong pressures
would arise to retreat to isolation to avoid the risk of involvement in nuclear war". So if it were seen by the population
that the pursuit of foreign policy, conducted in the interests of domestic elites, would increase the threat of nuclear
warthen the internal deterrent may become dangerously aroused possibly calling off the show. In the strategic literature
this is referred to as “self-deterrence”.
In other words US non proliferation policy was meant to lock in US strategic dominance so that the domestic population
would not become dangerously aroused whilst providing Washington the freedom of action necessary to brandish its
nuclear superiority over others. This sentiment was reflected in the Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review,
“nuclear capabilities also assure the US public that the United States will not be subject to coercion based on a false
perception of U.S. weakness among potential adversaries.” Many strategic thinkers have argued that the greatest threat
to US hegemony or "unipolarity" is the internal "welfare role" and the populations lack of understanding for the burdens
of Empire, in other words popular democracy. One of the reasons that the Reagan administration pursued "Star Wars" a
programme to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete" was to outflank the domestic and global peace movements
that were gathering pace as a result of the administration's pursuit of potentially apocalyptic nuclear policies (the very
same people have their fingers on the button again). It was well recognized that the Star Wars program would have
increased the chances of a nuclear exchange between Moscow and Washington, just as today the pursuit of short term
interests is known to have potentially serious international consequences,such as increase in conflict and global
weapons of mass destruction proliferation. The ruling class is well aware of the adverse impact the pursuit of its own
sectional interests will have on international order. It pursues those interests with renewed zeal anyway. As far as the
ruling class is concerned the greatest threat we face is not nuclear war, it is popular democracy.
As Adam Smith observed of a previous mercantile system, applicable to today's system of state-corporate mercantilism,
"it cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers,
we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been so carefully
attended to; and among this latter class our merchants and manufacturers have been by far the principal architects." Policy
Smith observed, "comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have
generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both
deceived and oppressed it."
This raises an interesting issue, namely that the pursuit of Armageddon is quite rational. The dominant institutions of
capitalism place a premium on short-term greed. Rational participatory planning incorporating long-term
concerns such as human survival are of no interest to these pathological institutions. What matters is short-term
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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
profit maximization. One can see this most clearly in the case of such “externalities” as ecological change where
the desire to pursue short-term profit undermines the long-term viability of the system itself (also us as a species;
indeed many have surmised that we are in the era of the sixth great extinction of life on Earth this time human

Try or Die 4/4

induced). For those actually interested in human freedom and survival Russell’s problem is to be solved in the
manner Bertrand Russell himself sought to solve it; not by lofty speculations and social “theories” but by political
dissidence in all its manifestations. Chomsky has stated that the people of the third world rely on a thin margin of survival
provided by turbulence and dissidence within the imperial states. In fact humanity relies on a thin margin of survival
provided by turbulence and dissidence within the imperial states. The global justice movement has an awesome
responsibility: human survival depends upon its success. The concerns expressed in this essay ought to occupy more of
its time.
In fact there exists a strong nexus between Russell’s problem and what Chomsky has referred to as "Orwell's
problem". Chomsky states that Orwell's problem asks, "why do we know so little given that the evidence is so vast"? In
our case this may be phrased, "why are we not aware of these threats to survival given that the evidence of their existence
is so rich"? As noted in the introduction the answer to this question is quite clear; these pathological institutions have no
interest in reflecting upon their own pathological nature. We of course have an interest in so reflecting but the interests of
mere people are not a matter of concern to these institutions, hence hidden. The corporate media and the intellectual class
that serves the ruling classes can be expected to adhere to what Nietzsche referred to as "declaratory policy". It would be a
prediction of Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model that the corporate media would ignore these threats to survival
and be more concerned with goblins and such. It is up to the alternative, non corporate media, to spread the word as
far and wide as possible, a task this author has found difficult to achieve; many would be more interested in a worthless
treatise on Habermas or some such I fear (these are the Left's version of goblins and marauding little green men). Perhaps
some future little green men would examine the vast fossilised collection of much that passes for Left commentary and
wonder why great time and effort was devoted to useless pursuits. Oh well, that's another one for Orwell's problem;
although for our alien friends Orwell's problem would be a serious scientific pursuit. It would surely fascinate them.
It is strange that it is the conservatives who defend the right of the state to pursue dangerous nuclear postures
without consulting the people. This must rank as one of the greatest examples in history of the placement of the
prerogatives of the state over the rights of people: the right of the state to wage war when and how it chooses
outweighs humanity’s right to survival. In The Limits of State Action, Humboldt observed that, "The state is not in
itself an end, but is only a means towards human development." If we adopt this as our guiding principle then it follows
that the state ought to be abolished for if the state "is not an end in itself" but is rather a "means towards human
extinction" then it must be done away with.
State capitalism poses a number of serious and pressing threats to human survival. To overcome these threats will
require us to ultimately replace the institutions of the state and capitalism with institutions that are governed, and
reflect the interests and concerns, of all those effected by them. Immanuel Kant in his essay "perpetual peace" argued
against what he referred to as "Democracy", essentially Anarchism. Kant argued that a league of "republican" (let us say
liberal democratic) states would suffice for perpetual peace. Kant himself was quite aware of Russell's problem, if only in
the abstract; in his day it could not take concrete form. Kant wrote, "it follows that a war of extermination, in which the
destruction of both parties and of all justice can result, would permit perpetual peace only in the vast burial ground of the
human race. Therefore, such a war and the use of all means leading to it must be absolutely forbidden." Can perpetual
peace be only achieved in the collective graveyard of humanity? This is another form that Russell's problem may take.
Kant went on to say that, "the republican constitution, besides the purity of its origin (having sprung from the pure source
of the concept of law), also gives a favourable prospect for the desired consequence, i.e., perpetual peace. The reason is
this: if the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared (and in this constitution it
cannot but be the case), nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game,
decreeing for themselves all the calamities of war."
We cannot be certain whether such an innate instinct for freedom exists but as Chomsky has stated, "by denying the
instinct for freedom, we will only prove that humans are a lethal mutation, an evolutionary dead end: by nurturing it, if it
is real, we may find ways to deal with dreadful human tragedies and problems that are awesome in scale." These
problems are so grave that we are left, contrary to the option offered by Washington of "hegemony or survival",
with two fundamental choices; self-induced extinction or emancipation from the forces of social domination.
Capitalism and indefinite human survival are incompatible, not only for the reasons stated here.
The choice we are faced with is not "hegemony or survival", as Washington would have it, but self-induced
extinction or emancipation from the forces of social domination.
43
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap  Extinction
Capitalism’s drive for hegemonic imperialism will result in multiple scenarios culminating in extinction
John Bellamy Foster Ph.D. York University, Prof. Sociology Oregon University Monthly Review, September 2005
http://www.monthlyreview.org/nakedimperialism.htm
From the longer view offered by a historical-materialist critique of capitalism, the direction that would be taken by U.S.
imperialism following the fall of the Soviet Union was never in doubt. Capitalism by its very logic is a globally
expansive system. The contradiction between its transnational economic aspirations and the fact that politically it
remains rooted in particular nation states is insurmountable for the system. Yet, ill-fated attempts by individual states to
overcome this contradiction are just as much a part of its fundamental logic. In present world circumstances, when one
capitalist state has a virtual monopoly of the means of destruction, the temptation for that state to
attempt to seize full-spectrum dominance and to transform itself into the de facto global state governing
the world economy is irresistible. As the noted Marxian philosopher István Mészáros observed in Socialism or
Barbarism? (2001)—written, significantly, before George W. Bush became president: “What is at stake today is not the
control of a particular part of the planet—no matter how large—putting at a disadvantage but still tolerating the
independent actions of some rivals, but the control of its totality by one hegemonic economic and military
superpower, with all means—even the most extreme authoritarian and, if needed, violent military ones—
at its disposal.”The unprecedented dangers of this new global disorder are revealed in the twin
cataclysms to which the world is heading at present: nuclear proliferation and hence increased chances of the
outbreak of nuclear war, and planetary ecological destruction. These are symbolized by the Bush administration’s
refusal to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the
Kyoto Protocol as a first step in controlling global warming. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense (in the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations) Robert McNamara stated in an article entitled “Apocalypse Soon” in the May–June 2005 issue
of Foreign Policy: “The United States has never endorsed the policy of ‘no first use,’ not during my seven years
as secretary or since. We have been and remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weapons—by the
decision of one person, the president—against either a nuclear or nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is
in our interest to do so.” The nation with the greatest conventional military force and the willingness to
use it unilaterally to enlarge its global power is also the nation with the greatest nuclear force and the
readiness to use it whenever it sees fit—setting the whole world on edge. The nation that contributes
more to carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming than any other (representing approximately a
quarter of the world’s total) has become the greatest obstacle to addressing global warming and the world’s
growing environmental problems—raising the possibility of the collapse of civilization itself if present
trends continue.The United States is seeking to exercise sovereign authority over the planet during a time
of widening global crisis: economic stagnation, increasing polarization between the global rich and the
global poor, weakening U.S. economic hegemony, growing nuclear threats, and deepening ecological
decline. The result is a heightening of international instability. Other potential forces are emerging in the world,
such as the European Community and China, that could eventually challenge U.S. power, regionally and even globally.
Third world revolutions, far from ceasing, are beginning to gain momentum again, symbolized by Venezuela’s Bolivarian
Revolution under Hugo Chávez. U.S. attempts to tighten its imperial grip on the Middle East and its oil have
had to cope with a fierce, seemingly unstoppable, Iraqi resistance, generating conditions of imperial
overstretch. With the United States brandishing its nuclear arsenal and refusing to support international agreements on
the control of such weapons, nuclear proliferation is continuing. New nations, such as North Korea, are
entering or can be expected soon to enter the “nuclear club.” Terrorist blowback from imperialist wars in the
third world is now a well-recognized reality, generating rising fear of further terrorist attacks in New York, London,
and elsewhere. Such vast and overlapping historical contradictions, rooted in the combined and uneven
development of the global capitalist economy along with the U.S. drive for planetary domination,
foreshadow what is potentially the most dangerous period in the history of imperialism.

44
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap War
Capitalism causes violence that leads to war.
Albert, 4.
(Michael is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. Also recipient of the Pio Manzu Award. “Life
After Capitalism - And Now Too” ZNET http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842 Dec 10)

Capitalism is violent. The pursuit of capitalist market domination produces nations at odds with other nations.
Those with sufficient weaponry exploit the resources and populations of those lacking means to defend
themselves, at times even unleashing unholy war.

Interdependence doesn’t solve war – their argument is based on a truly fair economic system which is not
how trade works

Shah, 5
(Anup, editor of Global Issues, Criticisms of Current Forms of Free Trade, originally created 09/07/1998, updated 6/20/2005
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/FreeTrade/Criticisms.asp)

In fact, as pointed out by the Institute for Economic Democracy, many wars throughout history, hot or cold,
have had trade, resources and related expansion at their core. History shows us that the more powerful nations
have devised international economic agreements that promote more dependency upon those wealthier countries.
In a twisted sense then, such an interdependency as implemented would be good for “stability” of the status
quo. Real interdependency on the other hand, that deals with equity and cooperation as well, may have more
likelihood of being good for all, but that would be less likely to happen because it would threaten to reduce the
influence and power of the wealthier nations and multinational corporations.

45
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Root Cause- War

Cap is the root cause of war.
Revolution Magazine, no Date.
(“Is war inherant to capitalism?” http://www.worldrevolution.org.uk/index.php?id=6,193,0,0,1,0 Social Youth Movement)

The system we live under, capitalism, is the root cause of most of the world's problems, and war is an inherent feature of
it.
Under capitalism, the resources, the products of the world, and the means to produce them are controlled by a small
number of capitalists. The other 5 billion of us are forced to work for this tiny elite either in factories, offices or on the
land. In return for this "privilege" we get a wage at the end of the week. For the billions who live outside the rich Western
countries, this wage, if you're lucky enough to have a job, is barely enough to live on.
It is a system that runs on competition, and decisions are made on the basis of profit. Different companies all compete for
market share. They come up with different products not to meet human needs but so they can carve out a bigger market
share and make a bigger profit. Nike competes with Adidas and Reebok to sell us different coloured trainers and track
suits. Music companies compete to sell us more bland manufactured music like Gareth Gates, Will Young. Britney Spears
or Pink. The music is secondary; all that matters is what can be sold and how much profit can be made.
Competition is so important to capitalism that it tries to introduce it in to every part of society. So hospitals compete for
patients, universities and schools must compete for students. Public utilities like water companies and train services are
privatised and broken up into smaller companies so they can compete for customers. The end result of this is higher bills,
a declining standard of services and lower wages for those who work in the industry. It makes us compete for jobs,
housing and food even though there is more than enough to go around. It is a system that puts the profits and the interest
of the big corporations before the needs and interests of billions of people.
Imperialism
A result of all this competition is that weaker firms either go bankrupt or get taken over by bigger ones. As companies
grow (in many cases into monopolies) they not only compete in their own countries but they start to compete with
companies all over the world for access to markets, access to cheaper sources of labour and resources like oil. For
example not only does Sainsbury compete with Tesco, but both compete with the US supermarket giant Wal-Mart which
owns Asda.
The end result of this competition on a global scale is that nation states start to compete for the right to exploit the world's
resources and people, and this is what leads to war. In 1916 the Russian revolutionary Lenin described this period, where
capital and wealth are concentrated into a few hands leading to competition between a few nation states for the control of
the world, as imperialism. It was the attempt to re-divide the world for exploitation between the imperialist powers that
caused the First and Second World Wars. Using the theory of imperialism as a guide Lenin illustrated the imperialist
nature of the first world war with example of "a slave owner who owned 100 slaves warring against a slave owner who
owned 200 slaves for a more 'just' distribution of slaves".
Logic of the world
This has been the logic behind the pattern of wars in the last century. A few rich countries dominate and control the
resources of the rest of the world. They no longer do this through having formal colonial empires, like those once
possessed by Britain and France, but through the more informal means of chaining entire nations through debt-slavery and
swallowing up the economy by the First World's multinationals. Occasionally, the imperialists quarrel amongst themselves
over their share of the loot - leading to wars like the two World Wars of the last century. Occasionally, the slaves rebel
against their masters and fight for their independence, leading to wars like Vietnam's long war against French and US
imperialism. And occasionally, the imperialists wage wars of conquest against countries whose leaders don't know their
place or refuse to play their game - like the first Gulf War or in Nicaragua.

46
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap Inequality
Capitalism creates inequality and poverty.

Albert, 4.
(Michael is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. Also recipient of the Pio Manzu Award. “Life
After Capitalism - And Now Too” ZNET http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842 Dec 10)

Capitalism is theft. The harsh and subservient labors of most citizens fantastically enrich a few others who don't
have to labor at all. In general, those who work longer and harder get less. Those who work less long and less
hard get more.
On the upper West Side of New York City, barely a mile apart exist neighborhoods in which the average
disposable income is on the poorer side about $5,000 per year and on the richer side about $500,000 per year.
The richest people in the U.S. are worth more than the populations of whole countries. The poorest people in the
U.S. live under bridges in threadbare cardboard shelters, or stop living at all. This gap is not due to different
industriousness or talent. It is due to social relations that force the many to enrich the few.

47
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

A2: Cap Key to Freedom/Demo

Capitalism is authoritarian- checks all their cap key to freedom arguments.
Albert, 4.
(Michael is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. Also recipient of the Pio Manzu Award. “Life
After Capitalism - And Now Too” ZNET http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842 Dec 10)

Capitalism is authoritarian. Within capitalism's workplaces those who labor at rote and tedious jobs have nearly
zero say over the conditions, output, and purpose of their efforts. Those who own or who monopolize
empowering positions have near total say. Not even Stalin controlled when people could rest, eat, or go to the
bathroom, but corporate owners routinely exercise such power. Corporations annihilate democracy.

48
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap is anti-democratic

Capitalism is anti-democratic- it makes a mockery of the principle “one person, one vote”
Jenson, 7.
(Robert, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. April 30, “An
Unsustainable System Anti-Capitalism in Five Minutes”

This one is easy. Capitalism is a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate wealth in a society, you
concentrate power. Is there any historical example to the contrary?
For all the trappings of formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands that the
wealthy dictates the basic outlines of the public policies that are acceptable to the vast majority of elected
officials. People can and do resist, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but such resistance takes
extraordinary effort. Those who resist win victories, some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth
continues to dominate. Is this any way to run a democracy?
If we understand democracy as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the
formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful, then it's clear that
capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Let's make this concrete. In our system, we believe that regular elections with the one-person/one-vote rule,
along with protections for freedom of speech and association, guarantee political equality. When I go to the
polls, I have one vote. When Bill Gates goes the polls, he has one vote. Bill and I both can speak freely and
associate with others for political purposes. Therefore, as equal citizens in our fine democracy, Bill and I have
equal opportunities for political power. Right?

49
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Greed destroys compassion

Capitalism fosters greed- destroys our compassion for others.
Jenson, 7.
(Robert, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. April 30, “An
Unsustainable System Anti-Capitalism in Five Minutes”

There is a theory behind contemporary capitalism. We're told that because we are greedy, self-interested
animals, an economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior if we are to thrive economically.
Are we greedy and self-interested? Of course. At least I am, sometimes. But we also just as obviously are
capable of compassion and selflessness. We certainly can act competitively and aggressively, but we also have
the capacity for solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging. Our actions are certainly
rooted in our nature, but all we really know about that nature is that it is widely variable. In situations where
compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and
aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior.
Why is it that we must choose an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and
strengthens the most inhuman? Because, we're told, that's just the way people are. What evidence is there of
that? Look around, we're told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed and the pursuit of self-
interest. So, the proof that these greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced
into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that way. Doesn't that seem just a
bit circular?

50
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap= Racist/sexist
Capitalism uses creates sexism and racism as tools to further exploitation in the name of profit.
Albert, 4.
(Michael is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. Also recipient of the Pio Manzu Award. “Life
After Capitalism - And Now Too” ZNET http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842 Dec 10)

Capitalism is racist and sexist. This is not intrinsic to the relations of production, but occurs because under the
pressure of market competition owners inevitably exploit racial and gender hierarchies produced in other parts
of society. When extra economic factors reduce the bargaining power of some actors and raise that of others or
when they impact expectations about who should rule and who should obey -- seeking profit, capitalists abide
and even enlarge the injustices.

The Workers struggle is key to fight racism.

Revolution Magazine, no date.
(Social Youth Movement, “RACISM
It's part of the capitalist system” http://www.worldrevolution.org.uk/oldsite/pages/ideas_pages/racism.html)

Black people make up at most 6% of the population. This is just not enough to overthrow the root cause of
racism - the capitalist system and the state that defends it. But the working class as a whole - black and white -
makes up the overwhelming majority of the population. United in struggle the working class could bring the
whole racist system crashing down.

51
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap=Racism

Racism is used as an excuse for capitalism.

Revolution Magazine, no date.

(Social Youth Movement, “RACISM
It's part of the capitalist system” http://www.worldrevolution.org.uk/oldsite/pages/ideas_pages/racism.html)

Big western companies decide what is produced and where. They force whole countries to produce things for
the West, not for themselves. The former colonies have to pay off massive debts to the Western banks, which
keeps them stuck in terrible poverty.
The 'advanced' countries are still imperialists, exploiting the Third World and keeping millions below the
poverty line. The former colonies are independent in nothing more than name: they are semi colonies.
And how do the imperialists explain away the terrible poverty and suffering that their system causes? Through
racism, of course.
They blame it all on the people of Africa and India themselves, for their "backwardness", "laziness",
"corruption" and so on. And when people try to escape from this awful situation and come to the West, they
keep them out with racist laws.
That is why we say that capitalism created racism, and keeps it going today. Racism is the capitalists' excuse for
hundreds of years of crimes against black people.
DIVIDE AND RULE
There is another reason why the capitalists spread racist ideas: to keep the working class divided.
It's simple if you think about it. The capitalists have to blame somebody for all the problems their system
creates. So they blame the victims. Black people become the scapegoats for the ills of capitalism.
These ideas can take a hold because many white workers want to keep themselves 'one step above' their black
brothers and sisters.
Slightly higher wages, slightly better chances of getting a job or promotion, slightly better housing - all these
things - according to racist ideas - need to be defended' against the claims of black people.
But the cost of defending the racist system is high for white workers too. Racist ideas weaken the struggles of
all workers, including whites.
One report from American experts proved that where black workers suffer discrimination or lower wages than
whites, the bosses will use this to push down all wages. In areas where there is less discrimination, wages of all
workers will tend to be higher. Unity is strength.
Some black activists believe that white workers are so corrupted by racism that there is no chance of a united
fight against the system. Instead they argue for a separate black struggle against racism. This is understandable
given the long history of racism in Britain, and the racist actions of the Labour Party. In government in the past
Labour has brought in racist immigration controls, and today Tony Blair supports increased powers for the racist
police. But separatism is no answer to this.

52
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Root Cause -Racism (African Americans)

Capitalism is the root cause of racism against African Americans.

Gonzalez, 5.
(Hank, July 1. “You Cant Have Capitalism Without Racism” http://www.socialistalternative.org/news/article20.php?id=76)

Today, while the mass mobilizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s did away with legally-codified
racism, in the 40 years since Malcolm's death the underlying economic roots of racial inequality have not gone
away. In fact, the social conditions facing many African Americans have worsened.
According to the U.S. census bureau, the official poverty rate for White Americans is a high 8.1%. However, the
rate for Black Americans is an enormous 24.1%. In the U.S., which has the world's largest imprisoned
population both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of total population, black people account for just over
12% of the total population but over 44% of the prison population.
Enduring realities like these led Malcolm X to claim "the system in this country cannot produce freedom for an
Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this social system, this system period."
More Than a Nationalist
Malcolm X is most widely known as a leader of the black nationalist Nation of Islam. What is less known is that
in the last year of his life Malcolm left the Nation and his political views changed drastically.
As the civil rights movement began to pick up steam in the early 1960s, Malcolm's will to participate in politics
ran up against the conservatism of Nation leaders who wanted to remain a mostly religious and cultural
organization. By 1964, the corruption of Nation leader Elijah Muhammad and developments in Malcolm's
political thinking led him to leave the organization that had trained him as a leader and an organizer.
During the 50 weeks between Malcolm's split from the Nation of Islam and his murder, his ideas and political
methods changed rapidly. Malcolm began to move away from the rigid black nationalism of the Nation of
Islam.
On his trip to Africa in 1964, Malcolm met non-blacks who he considered "true revolutionaries dedicated to
overthrowing the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary." Reflecting on his
experiences in foreign countries, Malcolm said, "I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my definition
of black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems confronting our people as black nationalism?
And if you noticed, I haven't been using the expression for several months."
Malcolm's Development as a Revolutionary
During the last year of his life, Malcolm moved towards recognizing the system of capitalism as the root cause
of the oppression and indignities suffered by African Americans. Though he never rejected Islam, he stopped
doing his political organizing on a religious basis. In June 1964, he founded the secular Organization of Afro-
American Unity.
At the OAAU's founding rally, Malcolm stated "we want equality by any means necessary." In a 1964 speech,
he said "you can't have capitalism without racism." Malcolm never became a socialist and he never broke with
some of the conservative ideas he had acquired early in his life. However, at the time of his death the trajectory
of his political thought was towards anti-capitalism, internationalism, and revolution.
Those who misrepresent Malcolm X as an anti-white racist do so only by ignoring much of what he actually
said. In January 1965, he said "I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those
that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality
for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation... It is incorrect to classify the revolt of
the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are
today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter."
Malcolm's identification of the economic and political system of global capitalism as the underlying basis of
racial oppression and his arguments in favor of international political struggle anticipated the worldwide growth
of revolutionary movements in the late 1960s.

53
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Wasteful/Unsustainable

Capitialism is extremely inefficient – it squanders resources.

Albert, 4.
(Michael is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. Also recipient of the Pio Manzu Award. “Life
After Capitalism - And Now Too” ZNET http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842 Dec 10)

Capitalism is inefficient. Capitalism squanders the productive capacities of about 80% of the population by
training them primarily to endure boredom and take orders, not to fulfill their greatest potentials. It wastes
inordinate resources on producing sales that aren't beneficial, and on enforcing work assignments that are
coerced and therefore resisted.

This means Cap is unsustainable.

Albert, 4.
(Michael is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. Also recipient of the Pio Manzu Award. “Life
After Capitalism - And Now Too” ZNET http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842 Dec 10)

Capitalism is unsustainable. Markets propel short term calculations and make dumping waste on others to avoid
costs an easy and unavoidable road to profit. As a result, money grabbers accumulate and accumulate, ignoring
or willfully obscuring the impact not only on workers and consumers, but also on today's environment and
tomorrow's resources. We see the results in sky, water, and soil, mitigated only by social movements that force
wiser behavior.

More ev…
The Guardian, 6
(Robert Newman, Feb 2, “It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both” http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/feb/02/energy.comment]

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster
consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central
organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible
hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.

More ev…
Jenson, 7.
(Robert, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. April 30, “An
Unsustainable System Anti-Capitalism in Five Minutes”

This one is even easier. Capitalism is a system based on the idea of unlimited growth. The last time I checked,
this is a finite planet. There are only two ways out of this one. Perhaps we will be hopping to a new planet soon.
Or perhaps, because we need to figure out ways to cope with these physical limits, we will invent ever-more
complex technologies to transcend those limits.

Both those positions are equally delusional. Delusions may bring temporary comfort, but they don't solve
problems. They tend, in fact, to cause more problems. Those problems seem to be piling up.

54
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Root Cause-Starvation and Public Health

Capitalism has no intrinsic need for public services- this leads to starvation and poor public health.

Albert, 4.
(Michael is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. Also recipient of the Pio Manzu Award. “Life
After Capitalism - And Now Too” ZNET http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6842 Dec 10)

In U.S. hospitals, tens of thousands of people a year die of diseases they did not have when they entered. This is
in considerable part a matter of hygiene and other correctable problems. Yet there is no massive campaign to
save these lives. It would not be profitable. Starvation the world over has the same root cause; to feed the poor
sufficiently is not as profitable as over-feeding the rich. What health we attain, what food we eat, what housing
we inhabit, comes to us because someone was seeking not health, sustenance, or shelter for all, but profit for
themselves. Economic logic seeks profit rather than social well being. Benefits for the weak arise only as a
byproduct, not an intention, and rarely at that. As Keynes put it, "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the
most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

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Root Cause-Terrorism

Wealth inequality is the root cause of terrorism. Defeating capitalism is the only way to defeat terrorism.
Slater, 6.
(“The Root Causes of Terrorism and Why No One Wants to End Them” Philip is an A.B. and Ph. D. from Harvard and taught sociology at Harvard, Brandeis, and
UCSC. The Huffington post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater)

Everyone talks about 'fighting terrorism' at the roots, but no one does anything about it. It's much easier--and
relieves more anxiety and frustration--to go bomb somebody. Making "war" on terrorism is a lot like taking a
couple of drinks to cure a hangover--an enjoyable short-term solution and a disastrous long-term one. But long-
term solutions have never played well in Washington, the land of the quick fix. Nor with the American public
for that matter--our instant-gratification consumer society has a bevy of corporations competing to make that
instant even shorter.
The people who do most to foment terrorism are not the fundamentalist imams and ayatollahs, who only exploit
the hopelessness around them. The people who do the most are those who create that hopelessness in the first
place--the oil monarchies, for example.
For of all capitalist enterprises, the extractive industries are probably the most deserving of the abuse heaped on
them over the years. The possessors of the earth's treasures believe, apparently, that the luck, wealth, or political
corruption that allowed them to own land containing such riches is a sign of divine favor, while the poverty of
those around them indicates celestial disgust.
Terrorists are people who have lost hope--hope for the possibility of peacefully creating a better world. They
may be middle-class and educated, as many terrorist leaders are, but their despair is one of empathy for the
plight of their people as a whole.
The root causes of terrorism are pathological inequalities in wealth--not just in Saudi Arabia but all over the
Third World. Even in our own country Republican policies have in recent decades created inequalities so
extreme that while a few have literally more money than they can possibly use, the vast majority are struggling
to get by. A society that impoverishes most of its population in order to enrich a few neurotically greedy
individuals is a sick society. As Jared Diamond has shown, societies in which a few plunder the environment at
the expense of the many are headed for collapse.

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Root cause - Violence Against Women

Capitalism is the root cause of Violence against women.

Cotter, 2.
(Jennifer phd English, the RED COLLECTIVE is an international cadre of revolutionary Marxists committed to class struggle and producing class consciousness across
national boundaries. “War and Domestic Violence” http://redcritique.org/SeptOct02/waranddomesticviolence.htm)

However, this eclectic approach to violence against women is founded upon an increasingly problematic
understanding of "rights" and the "state" which abstracts them from private ownership of the means of
production. By explaining the "root problem" of violence against women, from war to domestic violence, as a
matter of "state power" and not "exploitation" in private property relations, these theories serve as a most
effective ally of transnational capitalism. They quietly support the existing social relations of production by
seeking "solutions" in the social relations of reproduction, to the class contradictions that stem from private
property in production. Moreover, by putting forward "civil citizenship" as the basis of "agency" for women
against the limits of the "state", contemporary feminists suppress the need for social citizenship founded on
collective ownership and control of the means of production. What an analysis of both approaches reveals,
however, is that "war", "domestic violence", and their relation to each other are not, at root, a matter of "rights"
and "reproduction" but of class and labor, and as such they are the effect of the social relations of production.

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Root cause - Violence Against Women

More ev…
Cotter, 2.
(Jennifer phd English, the RED COLLECTIVE is an international cadre of revolutionary Marxists committed to class struggle and producing class consciousness across
national boundaries. “War and Domestic Violence” http://redcritique.org/SeptOct02/waranddomesticviolence.htm)
What actually lies behind these contradictions are historical conditions of necessity in capitalism: the fact that,
on the one hand, economic compulsion brought on by exploitation in production drives women to continue to
rely on the privatized family even though it is a site of violence and abuse and, on the other hand, the military is
itself necessary under capitalism in order to defend private property relations, and specifically the interests of
monopoly capitalists, that economically compel workers to rely on the privatized family to begin with. These
contradictions are symptomatic of the failure to resolve domestic violence by means of rearranging the social
relations of reproduction. Negotiation with the "state" for more resources to help crisis manage the privatized
family does not address the root issue of domestic violence. What is needed is freedom from necessity brought
on by exploitation. This is because domestic violence is a problem that stems from contradictions in production,
which cannot be resolved through the social relations of reproduction. Domestic violence is enabled by the
privatized family which itself is a historical necessity under capitalism: workers are economically compelled to
rely on it as an economic unit owing to their increasing impoverishment in the social relations of production
(the more they produce, the more capital gets concentrated into fewer hands), at the same time they provide a
valuable service for capital by absorbing the burden of reproducing labor-power. The contradictions of the
family under capitalism, therefore, lead to greater economic and social contradictions for workers, not fewer.
Fundamental changes in the relations of reproduction require changes in the relations of production. This is
further seen in the fact that, although capital historically necessitates the subordination of relations of
reproduction to private ownership of the means of production in order to offset the cost to capital of reproducing
labor-power, this use of "cost effective" measures (what Lenin called "clipping coupons") to reserve more of the
existing surplus-labor for profit does not stop the crisis in production and the decline in the rate of profit. It
reduces the drain on profit, but does not itself resolve the over all decline in the rate of profit. This requires
access to new reserves of labor-power from which to extract surplus-labor (through exploitation)—thus
reproducing the economic conditions of private property and their ideological effects that enable domestic
violence against women.
It is not an autonomous "state power" (which locates change in "reproduction") but the social relations of
production based on private property that the state is produced in order to maintain, that is the "root cause" of
violence against women through warfare and domestic violence. "National security" is an ideological strategy to
represent the interests of the ruling class to use imperialist warfare for a greater monopoly over the global
surplus-labor, as the general interests of all. Feminism, in order to enable the eradication of domestic violence
needs to confront the conditions of exploitation in the social relations of production that necessitate the state,
imperialist warfare, and violence against women. Without addressing the emancipation of labor from
exploitation (the private appropriation of surplus labor), and freedom of workers from conditions of necessity in
capitalism (such as the economic compulsion of workers to rely upon the "privatized family" as an economic
unit to survive), women cannot be freed from the conditions that reproduce domestic violence and imperialist
warfare.

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Root Cause – Oppression of women

The capitalist need to control the means of production defines the gendered bifurcation of nature—the
male is induced to associate the feminine with the dominated.
Joel Kovel, Former Professor Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Faculty in the New
School for Social Research, Green Party Presidential Nominee, 2007 (The Enemy of Nature: The End of
Capitalism or the End of the World, Zed Books, Accessed 07-25-2008, pp. 127-129//MUDI-Darxlice)
We would emphasize again that these principles would be variously applied across a vast range of situations. There is no
need, either, to imagine a single such event radiating outward to encompass the rest of humanity. But what has to be
underscored is the absolute dynamism of this event, and the fact that it amounted to a real mutation of human society as
potent as anything from the realm of genetics. Out of the nexus of original male violence arose codified
property relations, as a way of holding onto what had been taken: thus the notions of property and
legitimacy follow that of violent seizure. Similarly, the institution of patriarchy emerged, as a system of
apportioning women and assuring ownership and control over children - a never-ending dilemma for the
man who sows his seed and moves on, as the Big Man must. Property in this sense is not primarily that
which attaches to the self, like clothing or jewellery (though in stratified and wealthy societies, the
control over personal consumption is quite significant); but rather the power of producing - and
reproducing life - and the means for life. The control over labor originates civilization; and this
originates in the forcible control over women.
The control over labour enables civilization to emerge and shapes it,8 and this means that a basic
estrangement, or alienation, is introduced at the foundations of society - alienation being the reflex, at
the level of human being, of ecosystem splitting. The dominant male identity is formed in this cauldron.
From the beginning, its reference point is the other males in the hunting/warrior group, with whom it
associates and identifies; coordinatively, it comes to shun and deny recognition to the subjected female. A
purified male-Ego comes to define the dominant form taken by the self, which enters into the exfoliating system of splits
constituting the emergent civilization. Subjectively, this alienation becomes inscribed as a progressive
separation from the body, and from what the body signifies, namely, nature.9 A polarization between the
human and the natural world ensues, with masculinity occupying the human (= intellectual far-seeing,
spiritual, powerful, and active) pole, and femininity the pole of nature (= instinctual, limited and body-based,
inconstant, weak, and passive). The gendered bifurcation of nature has been set going, to configure the
relations between genders, and between humanity and nature, all the way to the ecological crisis once it
takes capitalist form.

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Cap  Starvation
Capitalism leads to global starvation.
Workers Power, 8
(“Crisis threatens global poor” Workers Power 323: March 2008 http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=159,1528,0,0,1,0)

It’s been another terrible month for anyone who believes capitalism is the answer to the world’s problems, and
even worse for capitalism’s victims, writes Richard Brenner, prices for food and fuel shot up, threatening
millions with starvation, while America’s economy continued to stall, raising the threat of global recession.
Inflation starvation
In the African state of Burkina Faso, food riots swept the cities in February, with a huge march on 28 February
in the capital, Ouagadougou, against hikes of between 10 per cent and 65 per cent in food and fuel prices. One
marcher said, “The choice is to demonstrate or to die of hunger. We have chosen to get our voice heard.”
On just one day – 25 February – wheat prices rose by 25 per cent, their biggest rise ever. Kazakhstan, a major
wheat exporter, has tried to cut exports because its own food inflation has reached 20 per cent. Russia and
Argentina have done the same. The US, another major wheat producer, has seen prices hit a record high.
Food prices generally have risen 75 per cent over the last two years. Droughts caused by global warming have
made things worse. China, Iraq and Turkey were all hoping to import wheat because their stocks are running
out. Even the USA’s stocks are expected to drop to their lowest level for 60 years.
In Indonesia in January, 10,000 demonstrated in Jakarta, after soya bean prices soared more than 50 per cent in
a month and 125 per cent over the last year.
Wheat importers like Mauritania and Senegal have been especially badly hit. In Egypt, the second biggest wheat
importer in the world, MP Mohamed Abdel-Alim claimed that a majority of limited-income Egyptian families
are suffering, and that “even a simple fuul (fava bean) sandwich, the staple of the average Egyptian diet, has
become too expensive for many to afford”.
Forty-one percent of Russians spend more than half their income on food, and 68 per cent have no savings.
Electricity, gas and water prices went up 16 per cent in the freezing January temperatures. Sergei Polyakov, a
worker at Kaliningrad’s Balt Keramika brickworks, told Bloomberg news that his 74-year-old mother cannot
afford to pay for both food and heating, even with a state pension after 35 years of work. “Everything is just
getting more expensive, from food to everything else… I have to help her live.” The social policy chief of the
Russian Academy of Sciences added: “For many, the situation is much worse than the official figures show. The
poor are hardest hit.”
What about China? Consumer prices hit an 11-year high in January, with food and fuel price rises driven by
soar-away economic growth, disease in the country’s pig farms and the impact of the terrible snowstorms this
winter. This is bad news for hundreds of millions of Chinese workers and peasants – especially in the interior,
where wages remain low. And it’s bad news for the world economy.

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Marxism Solves Environmental Problems

Marxism solves environmental harms.

Bachtell, 2.
(John is head of the New York District of the Communist Party USA., “Capitalism at war with nature and humanity”
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/465/1/47/)

In fact, Marx and Engles were early environmentalists. They and many Marxists over the years have been very influential
in the development of modern environmental science, by rooting it in the philosophy of dialectical materialism. The
foundations of dialectical materialism (the philosophy of change, development and interconnectedness rooted in material reality) were
influenced by Darwin's evolutionary theory, the ecology of cell biology and the laws of thermo-dynamics. Marx and
Engels also drew extensively from German agronomist Justus Von Liebig's studies of soil chemistry which were aimed at solving the early capitalist
agricultural crisis. Liebig's discoveries exposed the destruction that capitalist agriculture was wrecking on nature through the depletion of soil
minerals.
Marx noted that humans must carry on a continuous intercourse with nature or perish. This intercourse not only alters
nature but alters humans too. Under capitalism alienation of humans from their labor and from nature is one in the same.
The system turns labor and nature into commodities, exploiting both. Humans fashion their relations with nature by producing
their means of subsistence, through their labor. These relations are governed by society's mode of economic production. In the capitalist
economy the means of production are privately held, including all the machinery, technology, intellectual property rights, etc. and all the natural
resources that workers fashion into products for consumption. Workers have no control over the production process. Every decision on what is
produced and how it is produced is based on what will create maximum profit for the capitalist. Workers are alienated from their labor
and their ability to use that labor to transform nature. The products of labor and the products of nature are
privately appropriated by the capitalist. The advent of private property not only degrades creative labor, but it degrades nature and our
living and working environment. Everything in life is interconnected. Five billions years of evolution have produced nature's complex web
of interactions, ecology and intersecting ecological systems. All life, including human life is a product of this evolutionary
development.
Humanity, society and nature co-evolve. Humanity is part of the natural world, not the object of evolution, above it or
separate from it. Everything that effects nature effects humanity and society. Consequently, as the great environmentalist Barry Commoner
says, the environmental crisis is also a social crisis. Since capitalism is the dominant mode of production, the
environmental crisis is also a crisis of capitalism.
Because of the interdependence of nature and society, human activity alters nature and this web of interactions. Marx defined this labor process in
Capital as "a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism
between himself and nature."
While humans have altered nature throughout civilization, capitalism ushered in a level of degradation and
rapaciousness of nature never seen before.

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A2: socialism hurts environment

Our alt is a democratic socialism that checks all the environmental abuses of past socialist regimes.
Workers Power, 8.
(“Capitalism, pollution and the solution” Workers Power 321 – Winter 2007–08 http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=156,1493,0,0,1,0)

The idea of a planned economy conjures up the environmentally destructive policies of the Eastern European,
Stalinist states. What all Greens have in common is their critique of the socialist/communist movement as being
only interested in the rapid growth of the productive forces, and they criticise the Stalinist states for their
appaling environmental record. Chernobyl is the first argument that comes to mind.

The Chernobyl disaster proved that state ownership in itself is no guarantee of acceptable security, if it is under
bureaucratic control. In the case of the Stalinist states, the drive for mass industrialisation from the bureaucracy
meant that there was no democratic input. The five year plans of industrialisation did not take into account the
environmental impact, only the need to fulfil the quotas of production.

But when we raise the question of a planned economy, we are fighting for a democratically planned economy,
one that can take into account the totality of the environmental and social impact. Through exposing the lies of
the ruling class, throwing opening the company or government secrets, the masses can make well-informed
democratic decisions.

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Cap Destroys enviro

Capitalism destroys the environment – three warrants.

Joel Kovel, professor of social studies at Bard, 2002 “The Enemy of Nature”, p. 51-52

Capital’s responsibility for the ecological crisis can be shown empirically, by tracking down ecosystemic breakdowns to the
actions of corporations and/ or governmental agencies under the influence of capital’s force field. Or it can be deduced
from the combined tendencies to degrade conditions of production (the Second Contradiction), on the one hand, and, on
the other, the cancerous imperative to expand. Although the Second Contradiction may be offset in individual
circumstances by recycling, pollution control, the trading of credits and the like, the imperative to expand continually
erodes the edges of ecologies along an ever-lengthening perimeter, overcoming or displacing recuperative efforts and
accelerating a cascade of destabilization. On occasion, the force of capital expansion can be seen directly — as when
President George W Bush abruptly reversed his pledge to trim emissions of CO2 in March 2001, the day after the stock
market went into free-fall and in the context of a gathering crisis of accumulation. More broadly, it operates through a host
of intermediaries embedded within the gigantic machine for accumulation that is capitalist society. We need to take a
closer look at how this society works on the ground. Too much is at stake to close the argument with a demonstration of
abstract laws. Capital is no automatic mechanism, and the laws it obeys, being mediated by consciousness, are no more
than tendencies. When we say ‘capital does this’ or that, we mean that certain human actions are carried out under the
auspices of capital. We need to learn, then, as much as we can about just what these actions are and how they can be
changed. Capital originates with the exploitation of labour, and takes shape as this is subjected to the peculiar forces of
money Its nucleus is the abstraction of human transformative power into labour-power for sale on the market. The
nascent capitalist economy was fostered by the feudal state, then took over that state (often through revolution), centring
it about capital accumulation. With this, the capitalist mode of production was installed as such after which capital began
to convert society into its image and created the conditions for the ecological crisis. The giant corporations we rightly
identify as ecological destroyers are not the whole of capital, but only its prime economic instruments. Capital acts
through the corporation, therefore, but also across society and within the human spirit. Broadly speaking, this has taken
place in three dimensions — existentially, temporally and institutionally In other words, people increasingly live their lives
under the terms of capital; as they do so, the temporal pace of their life accelerates; finally, they live in a world where
institutions are in place to secure this across an ever-expanding terrain: the world of globalization. In this way a society,
and a whole way of being, are created hostile to the integrity of ecosystems.

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Cap Environmental Destruction

Capitalism destroys the environment.

Bachtell, 2.
(John is head of the New York District of the Communist Party USA., “Capitalism at war with nature and humanity”
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/465/1/47/)

Today's ecological crisis has to be seen within the framework of the dominant mode of production on the planet today, the dominant mode of human
interaction with nature. The capitalist production process places immediate maximum profits before a sustainable
ecology. The capitalist's concern for immediate profit over rides their concern for environmental destruction. The
capitalist is selling himself the rope to hang him and us with. It is an anarchistic system incapable of harmonizing with the laws of nature.
The development of gigantic monopoly corporations has been the determining factor in shaping the production
process and its relationship to nature, particularly in the post WWII period. A new economic pattern emerged where synthetics replaced
nature's products in the production process. New production processes emerged that were on a qualitatively new level of destructiveness.
For example, the post WWII rise of the agricultural monopoly corporations paralleled the change in agricultural
production methods, especially the exponential growth in the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and
genetically modified seeds. This was the result of growing monopolization of the agricultural industry and the drive for maximum profits. By
sheer economic power they determined the direction of the overall agricultural production process and its response to the growing depletion of the
soil and the demand for ever greater yields.
The petrol-chemical industry that emerged out of WWI was forced to create a market for the excess chemical
capacity that had been devoted to warfare. These chemicals were now used for killing people and killing insects. This began the historic
development of large-scale introduction of chemicals as insecticides and herbicides into agriculture.
Similarly, it was Dupont Chemical Corporation with its chief stake in General Motors that determined the use of lead in gas, ruling out other
alternative fuel additives. It created an immediate market for itself.
The oil, auto and rubber companies teamed up to buy most of the urban commuter train tracks to force people to
use cars and buses. Today the transnational auto industry has a decisive influence on our economic pattern. Cars
account for 90% of our transportation. Funding for highways has increased while funding for mass transit has
decreased. Today, the auto industry pushes bigger vehicles like SUVs simply because bigger vehicles with bigger
engines mean bigger profits.

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Cap Enviro Destruction 1/2

More ev…
Bachtell, 2.
(John is head of the New York District of the Communist Party USA., “Capitalism at war with nature and humanity”
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/465/1/47/)

Survival of humanity at stake

Today, the survival of humanity and nature are at stake. Entire ecological systems are in danger of being wiped out. This is
most starkly illustrated by the United Nations Environmental Program Global 3 report written by 1000 eminent scientists
worldwide. It predicted that in 30 years if humanity doesn't alter its economic pattern from what it called a "markets first"
approach (unrestrained, unregulated capitalist development), and adopt a "sustainability first" approach, an environmental
calamity will occur.
Under this scenario, the Earth would become a desert-strewn wasteland of urban slums and leave people inhabiting large
regions perishing from thirst and water-born diseases. Increasingly extreme climatic changes will result in a mass
extinction of plants and animals, coastal and river flooding and widespread desertification. One can only guess that ten's
of millions will die. The recent EPA report also reinforces this outlook.
Even if humanity were able to turn things around today, it would take generations, even hundreds and thousands of years
to undo the damage. The ecological crisis is of a global character, on a scale that humanity has never confronted before.
The world's underdeveloped regions are bearing the worst effects of the world environmental crisis and will require the
commitment of special approaches and resources.
The list of crises is long and growing. The most urgent is that of global warming and the aggravation of extreme weather
conditions such as El Nino and La Nina. Some regions are inundated with torrential rains and flooding and others face
growing desertification and drought. One factor in the western fires that has consumed hundreds of thousands acres of
forest is climate change.
As a result of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) depleting atmospheric ozone, a huge hole opened up in the ozone layer over the
Antarctic beginning some 30 years ago. At its largest in 2000 it covered an area three times the size of the United States.
Smaller holes have been recorded over the Arctic and Europe.
The ozone layer is the primary protection between us and the deadly ultraviolet rays of the sun. While CFCs are being
phased out, it may take 100 years for the hole to heal itself. But there is new concern that global warming may also have
an effect on Ozone depletion, causing the hole to grow once again. There is also new speculation that replacement gases
for CFCs, called hydroflourocarbons may be even more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent.
If the 75,000 synthetic chemicals registered with the EPA, only a few have ever been fully tested, including in
combination, to determine their effect on people. About 400 are found in humans. The journalist Bill Moyers was tested
for his chemical content while producing the documentary, "Trade Secrets." An analysis showed his body contained 84
synthetic chemicals.
Polyvinylchloride is the most common synthetic produced for consumer items and the construction industry. Twenty-two
to 30 million tons of the stuff is produced each year by the chemical industry. These are persistent chemicals that resist
breaking down. Over 400 million tons are in the environment. When they are incinerated they form deadly dioxins.
Ethylene dichloride is needed to produce PVCs. This is a chemical in the top 10% of all synthetics in terms of the ability
to damage the environment. It is a known carcinogen and nerve poison.
US industry dumps 100s of billions of tons of toxic waste into the environment each year. There are 30,000 toxic waste
sites in the US. These toxic wastes are leaching into the ground water. More and more ground water is unsafe to drink.
Unless it's stopped, over 100,000 shipments of highly irradiated nuclear waste will be sent by road and rail to Yucca
Mountain, Nevada for storage. This demands urgent action.
The accumulation of these chemicals, nuclear wastes, nitrates and others have been accompanied by a dramatic rise in
cancer and birth defects, and neurological disorders. This has been a canary in the mineshaft for many years.
Human created imbalances
Seventy-eight percent of the Earth's atmosphere is composed of nitrogen gas. It is in a form that most living things can not
use. To be utilized it must be "fixed," usually in the soil through bacteria. Life has adapted to using scarce amounts of
nitrogen. But over the past few decades, the capitalist production process has doubled the amount of nitrogen entering the
land-based nitrogen cycle.
Some turns into nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Some turns into nitric oxide, which when combined with hydrocarbons

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Cap Enviro Destruction 2/2

causes smog and acid rain and which is also a contributor to ozone depletion.
A large amount enters nature's chain through nitrogen based fertilizers. The use of nitrogen fertilizer has accelerated world
wide to overcome the mineral depletion of soil. Little of it is absorbed by the soil and it turns to runoff. It further depletes
the soil by leaching other essential nutrients.
The amount of nitrogen in our rivers and streams has grown dramatically. Nitrogen content has doubled in the Mississippi
River since 1965. Many scientists believe this is responsible for creating large scale ecological crises, particularly in the
oceans. It causes Eutrophication, mass algae blooms, in estuaries and coastal areas, leading to creeping "dead zones."
These are areas where the bottom water is devoid of oxygen. For example a huge dead zone many miles across has
appeared at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Eutrophication is linked to the loss of oceanic biodiversity, destruction of the corral reefs, sea grasses and seaweeds. In the
last few decades 35 million acres of corral reefs have been destroyed. This has reverberating effects all the way up the
food chain.
We are experiencing mass deforestation and desertification, particularly in Asia and Africa. Many tropical forests which
contain the greatest concentrations of biodiversity are being destroyed. We have our own desertification crisis in Montana
and some western states reminiscent of the Dust Bowl. Worldwide over 135 million people in 110 countries are affected,
particularly in poor rural regions. Some 60 million people are expected to leave the Sahelian region of North Africa if
desertification there is not halted.
The shortage of water for human consumption is a world crisis. Water tables are dropping drastically, agricultural
production is threatened over vast areas, and conflicts are brewing between countries over water resources. Public water
supplies are threatened with privatization.
There is a sharpening contradiction between the dominant mode of production and sustaining the Earth's ecology. The
capitalist mode of production seeks infinite economic expansion and the consumption of finite non-renewable energy
sources. Nature has limits. At some point the destruction and altering of nature's ecology reaches a qualitative stage where
the destruction is irreversible making life unlivable. We are approaching that point.

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Socialism Solves Environment 1/2

Socialism solves environmental destruction.

Bachtell, 2.
(John is head of the New York District of the Communist Party USA., “Capitalism at war with nature and humanity”
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/465/1/47/)

It will take global people's unity, all people's unity, of the working class, the oppressed communities, and
sections of monopoly capital, municipal governments, the developing countries and the worldwide
environmental movement to curb the power of the transnational corporations and their pollution. This issue can't
wait for socialism. For example, a mass movement must be built to force the Bush administration and congress
to adopt the Kyoto Treaty, with all its flaws.
The environmental crisis and the struggle against it has the potential to convince tens of millions that it's root
cause is not just the corporations, but the capitalist system of economic production. They will see that
everything is integrally connected to the production process. To save nature and humanity necessitates a change
in the mode of production.
The global nature of the crisis requires a global response, global cooperation and utilization of resources.
Socialism is the system that provides the best possibilities for global cooperation without the interference of
corporate drive for profit. This recognition will be a powerful factor in the development of mass anti-monopoly
and socialist consciousness.
But for this to happen, we and others need to do much more. The ruling class anti-communism and socialism's
own mistakes have unfortunately created some wrong ideas about the relationship of socialism to the
environment. We have to help people to understand the source of the problems, mistakes and errors, but also the
great contributions of socialism. We should greatly elaborate our vision of the policies an anti-monopoly
people's government and our own image of an environmentally conscious system of socialist economic
production.
During the early years of the Soviet Union the new socialist government pioneered the development of a
revolutionary environmental policy. But because the Soviet Union had to engage in a forced march to
industrialization and essentially organize a war economy, environmentally sustainable policies were put on the
back burner.
I also believe that some distortions of Marxist theory took place during the period of industrialization. The idea
that nature was there to be "dominated and mastered" by human society took hold. This undermined recognition
that necessity drives changes in nature and society, and that both are fundamentally interconnected. The policies
of increasing production and industrialization led to a real neglect of the environment in later years.
Cuba on the other hand was forced into fundamentally different approach to the environment based on its
response to the collapse of trade with the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. It was forced to develop a
sustainable economy. Its inability to purchase chemical fertilizers and pesticides for its agricultural industry
forced it to move to adopt an organic farming approach, recycling everything. Agricultural productivity
increased. The lack of gasoline forced the adoption of other modes of transit. Nearly 1 million bikes were
imported from China. They are expanding research and development of solar power. Today Cuba is recognized
around the world for its environmental achievements.
Nature Conservancy is working in conjunction with the Chinese government on various projects to preserve
regions of rich biodiversity.
We will have to continue to develop our concept of Bill of Rights socialism, as a sustainable, environmentally
conscious model; a society that will build a clean environment where we work, live and play.
Communists and the environmental movement
Communists and socialists have played an important role historically in the environmental movement. We
shouldn't underestimate the Party's contribution theoretically and practically. Many Party and YCL comrades

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Socialism Solves Environment 2/2
have been involved over the years, giving leadership to struggles in workplaces and communities. The writings
of Gus Hall and Virginia Brodine and others are known in the movement.
Within the environmental movement there is very broad left and a big and growing body of outstanding work of
Marxists beyond our ranks. They include Barry Commoner, John Belhamy Foster, James O'Connor, Richard
Levins and Richard Lewontin to name just a few. We should do more to build working relations with these
activists.
Political Affairs has had two really great special editions on the environmental crisis. The People's Weekly
World/Nuestro Mundo editorial board is making a conscious effort to give on-going coverage already resulting
in more articles. This is an important step in establishing relations with activists and struggles in the
environmental movement while broadening the PWW's appeal, especially to youth and students.
The environmental commission is working on redrafting the environmental program. We should encourage
more participation in the commission, including from YCLers, ensure it meets regularly and urge it to report
regularly to the National Board and other collectives.
We can and must do more to build environmental consciousness in all our collectives so we can take more
initiatives. The image of an environmentally conscious and active mass Communist Party, USA can not be
underestimated. This is an important part of winning the young generation to socialism and building the Party's
influence among the youth who are especially attuned to the environmental crisis. Their world outlook is being
fundamentally shaped by it.
We should deepen our relations with others, and in coalitions, conferences and events, and help make the
connections with other issues and other movements.
We should radically step up our involvement in the ideological discussions taking place in the environmental
movement. We should issue special pamphlets, especially exposing the connections between Bush, the ultra
right and the worst corporate polluters.
I want to end with some words from Marx,
"From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the
Earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a
nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the Earth. They are simply its
possessors, its beneficiaries and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, like good
house keepers."
The future of humanity is at stake. We are called upon to respond and we will, not only for our generation, and
that of our children, but to ensure that nature and humanity survives and flourishes long into the future.

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Cap deforestation and Pollution

Capitalism causes overcrowding, deforestation, and pollution.
Rogaly, 97.
Joe Rogaly: PERSPECTIVES; Pg. 03November 01, 1997

America is not always the plaintiff in these cases. What is more, it does not always win. Venezuela and
Brazil successfully challenged the US Environmental Protection Agency's emission standards for
imported gasoline. Obliged to comply with the ruling, the EPA has relaxed its application of the Clean Air
Act. Similar non-green adjudications may be expected over the next few years. Cumulatively, they could
wipe out the bulk of US anti-pollution legislation.The proponents of free trade as a cure for all earthlings'
troubles argue that individual states' health and environmental regulations should be ignored or, at best,
treated with suspicion. They might otherwise be used as devices to protect domestic producers from
incoming competition. The WTO disputes panel is programmed to prevent such prevarication. It is an
alternative to the law of the jungle.That sounds comforting and civilised, but what if the mechanism
works too well? Of the 101 cases filed in the first 2 1/2 years of the panel's existence, 35 originated in the
US - the principal base of global businesses, the world's largest exporter, and the home of intergalactic
companies like Boeing, Intel, Microsoft ...Funny about Intel being on that list. Not many years ago,
Japanese manufacturers of semiconductors were regarded as a threat, likely to dominate world markets.
The US set numerical targets for exports of American chips to Japan. Today, the WTO is designed to free
the world from such constraints.
It will also assist European companies, on whose behalf the EU brought 21 cases, and those of less
developed countries, some of which have won. Cross-border buying and selling will gradually become
easier, as WTO case law accumulates. When China and Russia join, the reach of this quasi-judicial global
institution will include most of the world's population. This is a dizzying prospect. It does not guarantee
heaven on earth.
The whittling away of ob-stacles to trade over the past half century, first under the Gatt and latterly under
the WTO, has promoted rapid increases in the overall wealth of the planet. Since 1945, trade has tripled
its share of global income, now accounting for more than a fifth of what humanity earns. This is an
accelerating force. Given the additional impetus of the WTO treaties, world production of goods and
services could double over the next 20 years.If you believe that economic growth is the best measure of
human happiness, you will cheer. But pause for a moment. Over the past 50 "golden" years, the planet has
been steadily deforested oceans have become sinks for human waste. Its cities have become overcrowded ant-
heaps. The atmosphere has been laden with noxious fumes. A quarter of the globe's bird species has been
rendered extinct. Many of us are better-fed, longer lived, and healthier than past generations, but famine and
undernourishment persist. Our ability to call a halt is becoming steadily weaker. The WTO is a child of
treaties concluded after long and pain-staking negotiations between its member countries. It is an
understanding between governments. When the US looked like being a big loser, as in its sanctions
against Cuba, it threatened to ignore any adverse ruling. The litigants, the EU, held back.Most
participating adminis-trations shape their trade policies according to the needs of their leading companies,
not foreign consumers. Corporate self-interest lies at the heart of both world trade and the organisation
that settles disputes between participants. Cunning lobbyists, smart lawyers, hired scientists are deployed
to win arguments based on the narrowest of definitions of what would do most good. Prepare for tears.

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Capitalism Environmental Destruction
Capitalistic growth destroys the environment
Kovel, 97.
Joel Kovel, American politician, academic, writer and eco-socialist. Monthly Review Nov. 97

It is a great privilege to be here and share with you these reflections about the global crisis of ecological
destruction. I believe Cuba to be the one place on earth where this, perhaps the greatest crisis in human
history, can receive a full and deep analysis. Cuba has earned the distinction by becoming the first modern
society to embrace an agricultural policy capable of sustainability. While we know that this transformation
was the fruit of painful circumstances, we also appreciate it as a manifestation of the heroism of the
Cuban people and their defense of socialism. The ecological crisis is defined by the brutal fact that the
normal course of social production inexorably destroys the natural basis of society. Until as recently as the
1960s nature was able to buffer the effects of production. Now this function is breaking down in a
proliferating and incalculable way across multiple ecosystems. Climate change, species loss, disease,
depletion of soils and groundwater, intoxication by pollutants ... the list can be extended, but its message is
clear and harrowing: survival depends upon coming to grips with what is wrong at the mainspring of our
civilization. We need to be able to call things by their right name if we are to change them. To find the
right name for something in this sense is to follow Marx's method in the Grundrisse, where he writes of
the importance of finding the proper level of abstraction in order to grasp the concrete nature of things.
"As a rule," Marx writes, "the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible
concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many."(1) It follows that we need to go
beyond partial explanations in order to track down the actual, efficient cause of the ecological crisis at that
level of abstraction where the individual causes all act together.

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Root cause- Global Warming

The Root Cause of global warming is capitalism.

Maoist international Movement, no date.

(“Ice melting at North Pole,” http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/enviro/globalwarming1206.html)

But for all the urgency behind global warming, the real environmental crisis in the world today is not global
warming but capitalism. A system that puts profit over humyn well being inevitably must ignore environmental
threats, especially those that are caused by capitalist production and consumption. There are many ways to
modify production and consumption to stop the humyn destruction of the environment, but few of them will
benefit the capitalists and most will cost in the short run. Ignoring the long term benefit to humanity is a
hallmark of capitalists who sponsor invasions of Third World countries, murdering tens of thousands of people
in the name of establishing "stability" for exploitation of resources and labor.
As MIM wrote in 1997 in the MIM theory journal Environment, Society, Revolution: "The root cause of
environmental problems is capitalism, the private ownership of the means of production by a relative handful of
people. This essence of capitalism is one reason why capitalism creates environmental problems: while the
majority of the world's people have a material interest in maintaining a healthy planet, the small capitalist ruling
class is not accountable to this majority, except in the indirect sense that the ruling class seeks to co-opt the
demands of the majority in order to maintain the capitalist system. A second reason why capitalism creates
environmental problems is that although the world's resources are controlled by a relative handful of people,
planning is not centralized under capitalism. Instead, production is anarchic; it is centered around making
profits, not around meeting basic human needs in the short or long runs. Much of what is produced by the
capitalist system is unnecessary and wasteful, and the system is not fundamentally capable of incorporating
long-term human survival as a need. Finally, the capitalist system does not distribute resources equitably. Under
capitalism, many people do not have adequate resources for survival. Many environmental problem stem from
this root problem."(3)
As destruction of the earth's environment continues it will become clear to more and more people that systemic
changes are required to save this planet and the people who live on it. Revolutionary environmentalism is the
only solution to this destruction--an environmentalism that fights to overthrow the system that puts profit over
people.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Root cause- Global Warming

More ev…
Workers Power, 8.
(“Capitalism, pollution and the solution” Workers Power 321 – Winter 2007–08 http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=156,1493,0,0,1,0)

That is the bottom line - no capitalist government or business is ultimately going to do anything that damages
their profits. That is why the intergovernmental treaties, like Kyoto and the post-Kyoto deal to be brokered in
Bali this month, are not in reality binding, even for the countries that ratify the agreement. Plus how can an
international solution work if the US, the world's biggest polluter per capita, refuses to ratify it and is instead
setting up its own committee of the 16 world's biggest polluters that don't have to set targets that would interfere
with their economic development?

In Britain, a country that is "leading" the fight against climate change, Labour's record on cutting emissions is
abysmal. The UK government's targets of reducing carbon emissions by 60 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050 has
been ridiculed. Brown just recently cut £300 million from the government department, DEFRA, which is
supposed to be spearheading Britain's fight against climate change. The government has also announced £7.6
billion expansion plans to almost double the number of flights out of Heathrow to maintain Britain as a major
aviation hub within Europe. In a follow up to the Stern report (meant to answer its environmental critics),
Labour announced plans to leave international aviation out of the emission targets in this year's climate bill - so
flights can continue to increase without affecting the 2050 targets.

The last paragraph shows the illogical, anarchic drive of the capitalist system. As Marxists, we understand that
the root of environmental degradation lies within the capitalist system, the continued expansion of capital,
accumulation of profits and the development of the productive forces, i.e. industry, on a global scale.

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Racial/Indigenous domination

Ethnic and racial domination occur because of capitalism.

Bachtell, 2.
(John is head of the New York District of the Communist Party USA., “Capitalism at war with nature and humanity”
http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/465/1/47/)

Marx captured it in his famous quote from Capital:

"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the
aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a
warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production." In
just the few years of its existence, capitalism has altered an ecology that was created over billion of years. These alterations are having a profound,
lasting and even permanent effect. The larger the alterations the more profound the effect. We cannot predict what the long term implications will be
from these alterations, what destructive tendencies have been set in motion, what ripple effects they will have on all ecosystems. This includes the
issue of genetically modified plants and animals.

More ev…

Robinson, 4.
Andy the School of Politics, University of Nottingham.PhD. “Between Marxism and Populism: Working Class Identity and Bourgeois Ideology”
http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext28/Populism.html No.28 2004)

Capitalism operates as a system of class control, through both domination and hegemony. The capitalist class
has a more-or-less integral world-view through which it posits the preconditions for its own existence as
universal necessities or as universal goods. Historically, this system was – and is – produced by a process of the
violent subordination of other groups to this so-called necessity. Although the focus of this article is on the
western working class, it should not be forgotten that capitalism and colonialism arose as a single system, and
that colonial forms of subordination remain the norm for large sections of the world’s population. Workers and
other subordinate groups are entrapped/coerced into the capitalist system through a process Marx refers to as
"real sublation". This process of domination may be experienced as a form of violence, but it is important to
realise that it may also frame the limits of a worker’s life-world in such a way as to make other ways of life
unthinkable. As Gramsci astutely observes, the conglomeration of inconsistent and supposedly "obvious" beliefs
which make up "common sense" (the philosophy/ies operative in everyday life) is heavily influenced by
bourgeois ideology. This influence is often conscious (for instance, nationalist ideology), yet it can also include
unreflexive and unconscious ideas which workers barely realise they have or which they do not question. Even
when the bourgeoisie cannot win hegemony in the full sense, achieving active support of subordinate groups, it
usually succeeds in keeping workers and others in a condition of passivity, by preventing the emergence of
alternative conceptions of the world.2

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Root Cause – Native American Oppression (1/3)

Consumer Capitalism fetishizes Native American identity

<Aldred, Lisa, J.D. from unc School of Law in 1985 and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill in 1999, currently an assistant professor in the Center for Native American Studies at Montana State
University. Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sundances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality,
2000>
The subjectivities of human experience produced under capitalism leads to feelings of alienation. Yet
people increasingly think of themselves and others as akin to commodities. Purchasable lifestyles are
mistaken for communities. So, driven by the quest for some kind of community and historical tradition, New Agers
fetishize Native Americans and their religio-cultural practices. Yet the only way they know how to achieve the
attributes that they project onto Native Americans is through commercialization and purchase. This cycle
does not end their alienation. They are still so removed from any recognition of social relations (much less historical
conflict) that they cannot understand why Native American peoples themselves would object to their appropriations. The
individualism that has become characteristic of both capitalism and American political ideology cannot
fathom political and social accountability. Yet the kind of community New Agers so desperately seek to relieve their
feelings of isolation would, in my view, not be defined by superficial trappings, but by collective accountability.
Despite the New Agers' professions that they are working toward social and cultural change, their commercialization
of Native American spirituality articulates well within late-twentieth-century consumer capitalism.
There is strong historical and social evidence that the commercialization of ideas and values, as well as
the fetishized image of a social body perceived to be ethnically Other, stems in part from thought and
practices produced within the context of recent consumer capitalism. Although the New Age spiritualists
identify themselves as countercultural, their uncritical ideas about commercialization and marketing practices appear to
have been shaped by the larger capitalist market economy. Moreover, their imperialistically nostalgic fetishization
of Native American spirituality hinders any recognition of their own historical and social complicity in
the oppression of indigenous peoples.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Root Cause – Native American Oppression (2/3)

Commercial exploitation is the root cause of native American oppression.

<Aldred, Lisa, J.D. from unc School of Law in 1985 and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of North Carolina-
Chapel Hill in 1999, currently an assistant professor in the Center for Native American Studies at Montana State
University. Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sundances: New Age Commercialization of Native American Spirituality,
2000>
Commercial exploitation of Native American spiritual traditions has permeated the New Age movement since its
emergence in the 1980s. Euro-Americans professing to be medicine people have profited from publications
and workshops. Mass quantities of products promoted as "Native American sacred objects" have been
successfully sold by white entrepreneurs to a largely non-Indian market. This essay begins with an
overview of these acts of commercialization as well as Native Americans' objections to such practices. Its
real focus, however, is the motivation behind the New Agers' obsession and consumption of Native
American spirituality. Why do New Agers persist in consuming commercialized Native American
spirituality? What kinds of self-articulated defenses do New Agers offer for these commercial practices?
To answer these questions, analysis from a larger social and economic perspective is needed to further
understand the motivations behind New Age consumption. In the so-called postmodern culture of late consumer
capitalism, a significant number of white affluent suburban and urban middle-aged baby-boomers complain of feeling
uprooted from cultural traditions, community belonging, and spiritual meaning. The New Age movement is one such
response to these feelings. New Agers romanticize an "authentic" and "traditional" Native American culture whose
spirituality can save them from their own sense of malaise. However, as products of the very consumer culture they seek to
escape, these New Agers pursue spiritual meaning and cultural identification through acts of purchase. Although New
Agers identify as a countercultural group, their commercial actions mesh quite well with mainstream capitalism.
Ultimately, their search for spiritual and cultural meaning through material acquisition leaves them feeling unsatisfied.
The community they seek is only imagined, a world conjured up by the promises of advertised products, but with no
history, social relations, or contextualized culture that would make for a sense of real [End Page 329] belonging.
Meanwhile, their fetishization of Native American spirituality not only masks the social oppression of real Indian peoples
but also perpetuates it.

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Root Cause – Native American Oppression (3/3)
Commodification of Native American culture results in the loss of identity and negative stereotypes
James Edward Black,, proffesional culture critic, The Mascoting of Native America: construction, copmmodity, and
assimilation, from project muse, 2002
In "Commodity Feminism" Goldman, Heath, and Smith critique the layering of female bodies (lived context) with
advertising (product image) [End Page 611] that brings about desire (fetishism). The commodification of female
experience correspondingly inspires both female consumption of the image and male gaze upon the image—distorting the
lived context of femininity. This critical tool can also be applied to Native American culture, wherein universities layer
Native identity (lived context) with university culture (product image) to incite a desire to attend the University of Illinois
or to purchase Florida State Seminole boxer shorts (fetishism). In both the feminist and cultural cases, an appropriation of
a lived context is co-opted and exploited for material gain.
Given the commodity culture inherent in university spheres, one queries whether Natives are truly commemorated as
mascots or simply used as ciphers to collect more money. For this reason, American Indians call university appropriation
of Chiefs Osceola and Illiniwek (and the Seminole and Illini) "mascots." Mascots serve to represent a commercial object, in
part, as a parody or farce. They are, as Spindel puts it, "a good luck charm.... When they (universities) insist that Chief
Illiniwek and Osceola are more than mascots, these schools acknowledge that a mascot may inspire feelings of affection,
but not respect."35
Clem Iron Wing, an Illini Native, discusses this metonymy in describing the Illinois bookstore's marketing of Chief
Illiniwek toilet paper:
The eagle feather (which accompanies Chief Illiniwek) is the primary religious symbol of the American Indian. We would
like to know how many persons of faith would like their religious symbols used to wipe human excrement?... Whenever
you see any school using "Indian" as a mascot, you will hear them say this is an honor. Remember the brown stain on the
eagle feather and you will know what their honor means.36
Here we see that Chief Illiniwek indeed is not revered for his courage; he is mocked because the university creates an
image of him as a thing. Why else would he be placed on toilet paper? The university trounces the religious eagle feather
by packaging it as a consumable good; Illini identity is trumped in favor of making money from a stereotyped image of
Illiniwek and the Plains Indian version of a crucifix or Star of David.
In its defense of selling the "Indian" Illinois argues for a marketing of its own university values—itself a spurious
promotional strategy. Because the mascot "embodies the attributes we value as alumni, students and friends of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign," writes the Honor the Chief Society, the university sells Illiniwek as a model
synecdoche of Illinois culture. By purchasing his toilet paper, "you too" can take home a piece of the famous Illini stoicism.
The society continues, "the tradition of our Chief is a great link to our great past, a tangible symbol of an intangible spirit,
filled with qualities to [End Page 612] which a person of any background can aspire."37 The link is whitewashed; that is,
universities connect with a past they have constructed. The collegiate "Indian" is the white man's "good" Indian. Spindel
recalls for us, "to minimize criticism, most teams have retired bad Indian mascots or sanitized their images so that the
mascots that remain are mostly good Indians... It's noble or nothing these days."38 Truly, though, a consumer purchases
not an authentic account of Illini history or an accurate representation of Illini culture but rather a sampling of university
ideology by way of buying a piece of, and connecting with, Illinois's Native mascot.
Euramerican commodification remains predicated on property and ownership; Americans conquered the so-called
savages during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so they presently think they can do with Indigenous cultures what
they see fit.39 The mascotting of Native America spells out an unfortunate social death in this vein: not only was past
Native identity conquered and capitalized upon—through slave labor and land sales—but their current identities are also
being sold. Moreover, this sale is marketed inappropriately as university identity. Miller argues that the "whole notion of
winning the West meant that Euramericans had to have an enemy to conquer, and Native Americans were cast in that
role."40 To reconquer Native America by selling—and thus owning —a commodity casts American Indians back into an
adversarial role. This role is then sold and becomes "a new way to oppress."

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Root Cause – Self-Determination
Self determination can not happen under a capitalist system. Our Alternative is an explicit drive towards
self determination.

John Holloway Ph.D Political Science-University of Edinburgh and Alex Callinicos Ph.D Philosophy University of
Oxford, former Professor of Politics- University of York August 16, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5616
This prefiguration, this revolution here-and-now is above all the drive to self-determination. Self-
determination cannot exist in a capitalist society. What can and does exist is the drive towards social self-
determination: the moving against alien determination, determination by others. Such a moving against
determination by others is necessarily experimental, but three things are clear:
(a) The drive towards self-determination is necessarily a drive against allowing others to decide on our
behalf. It is therefore a movement against representative democracy and for the creation of some form of direct
democracy. (b) The drive towards self-determination is incompatible with the state, which is a form of
organisation which decides on our behalf and thereby excludes us. (c) The drive towards self-determination
makes no sense unless it includes as its central point the self-determination of our work, our activity. It
is necessarily directed against the capitalist organisation of work. We are talking, therefore, not just of
democracy but of communism, not just of rebellion but of revolution.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap Space Exploitation

The drive towards space is just a replications of Capital’s control over the psyche – the negatives
argument refuses to confront the crisis of exploitation

Tort, 5.
Julien Tort, UNESCO (Working paper for the Ethical Working Group on Astrobiology and Planetary Protection of ESA (EWG) July 28, 2005
“Exploration and Exploitation: Lessons Learnt from the Renaissance for Space Conquest” http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-
URL_ID=6195&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=-465.html

The scenario in which extraterrestrial room is used as a response to the degradation of the terrestrial environment also
leads us to the second question that may be asked when considering the parallel between the conquest of the West and the
exploration of space. While the possibility of colonizing celestial bodies may seem distant, it diverts attention from
terrestrial issues in a very real way. The paradigm of the accumulation of Capital is profoundly bound to the pollution and
the overexploitation of natural resources. Likening space exploration to the discovery of America may then be misleading
and dangerous. There is –most probably— no new earth to be discovered through space conquest and it is, so far, unlikely
that any relief can come from outer space for environmental pain. Furthermore, even if the possibility of human
settlements on other celestial bodies was likely, would it still be right to neglect the terrestrial environment, with the idea
that we can go and live elsewhere when we are done with this specific planet (again a scenario that science fiction likes:
see for example the end of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation)? In a way, the presentation of space as a new area for conquest and
expansion tends to deny that the model of the limitless exploitation of natural resources is facing a crisis.

More ev…
Tort, 5.
Julien Tort, UNESCO (Working paper for the Ethical Working Group on Astrobiology and Planetary Protection of ESA (EWG) July 28, 2005
“Exploration and Exploitation: Lessons Learnt from the Renaissance for Space Conquest” http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/ev.php-
URL_ID=6195&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=-465.html

The importance of the model of the first pioneers in the justification of space exploration should not be
neglected, and it seems that claiming to justify space exploration only by its scientific benefits is contrary to the
facts. In particular, serious studies about the economic interest of the exploitation of space resources could give an
idea of what is really at stake in the exploration of the Moon and Mars. It is indeed necessary to have an idea of
what could be expected in the absence of any regulation or guideline if we want to foster an exploration of outer
space that would be beneficial to all [hu]mankind. If there is any interest –economic or political - in going to
Mars and doing something there, then there will be competition between potential interested parties, and any
ethical consideration of Mars exploration should take this aspect under consideration. In this perspective, the
possible discovery of non-intelligent life on Mars would raise the issue of the possible exploitation of Martian
resources and even the issue of the possible exploitation of this lifeform. The consideration of space as a new resource should
also be handled with care, for it tends to divert attention from the need to take care of our own planet and its limited resources. It should be recalled
that Earth is our natural environment and that the idea that human beings will adapt in space or on another planet is at best hypothetical and in any
case an optimistic assumption. More generally, the effect of space conquest on our relationship to our own planet should be taken into account in
“space ethics”.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Ethics Impacts

Ethical actors must be willing to risk the impossible – this radical ethical stance is key to break free from
the neo-liberal capitalist order

Zizek and Daly, 4 (Slavoj and Glyn, Conversations with Zizek page 18-19)

For Zizek, a confrontation with the obscenities of abundance capitalism also requires a transformation of the
ethico-political imagination. It is no longer a question of developing ethical guidelines within the existing
political framework (the various institutional and corporate ‘ethical committees’) but of developing a politicization of ethics; an
ethics of the Real.8 The starting point here is an insistence on the unconditional autonomy of the subject; of
accepting that as human beings we are ultimately responsible for our actions and being-in-the-world up to and
including the constructions of the capitalist system itself. Far from simple norm-breaking or refining / reinforcing existing social
protocol, an ethics of the Real tends to emerge through norm-breaking and in finding new directions that, by definition, involve
traumatic changes: i.e. the Real in genuine ethical challenge. An ethics of the Real does not simply defer to the impossible
(or infinite Otherness) as an unsurpassable horizon that already marks every act as a failure, incomplete and so
on. Rather, such an ethics is one that fully accepts contingency but which is nonetheless prepared to risk the
impossible in the sense of breaking out of standardized positions. We might say that it is an ethics which is not only politically
motivated but which also draws its strength from the political itself.
For Zizek an ethics of the Real (or Real ethics) means that we
cannot rely on any form of symbolic Other that would
endorse our (in)decisions and (in)actions: for example, the ‘neutral’ financial data of the stockmarkets; the expert knowledge of Beck’s
‘new modernity’ scientists, the economic and military councils of the New World Order; the various (formal and informal) tribunals of political
correctness; or any of the mysterious laws of God, nature or the market. What Zizek affirms is a radical culture of ethical
identification for the left in which the alternative forms of militancy must first of all be militant with themselves.
That is to say, they must be militant in the fundamental ethical sense of not relying on any external/higher authority
and in the development of a political imagination that, like Zizek’s own thought, exhorts us to risk the impossible.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Ethics Impacts
Challenging global capitalism is the ultimate ethical responsibility – the current order guarantees social
exclusion on a global scale

Zizek and Daly , 4 (Slavoj and Glyn, Conversations with Zizek page 14-16)

For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that our ethico-political
responsibility is to confront the constitutive violence of today’s global capitalism and its obscene
naturalization / anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it throughout the world. Against the standardized
positions of postmodern culture – with all its pieties concerning ‘multiculturalist’ etiquette – Zizek is arguing for a politics that might be
called ‘radically incorrect’ in the sense that it break with these types of positions 7 and focuses instead on the very organizing principles
of today’s social reality: the principles of global liberal capitalism. This requires some care and subtlety.
For far too long, Marxism has been bedeviled by an almost fetishistic economism that has tended towards political morbidity. With the likes of
Hilferding and Gramsci, and more recently Laclau and Mouffee, crucial theoretical advances have been made that enable the transcendence of all
forms of economism. In this new context, however, Zizek argues that the problem that now presents itself is almost that of the opposite fetish. That is
to say, the prohibitive anxieties surrounding the taboo of economism can function as a way of not engaging with economic reality and as a way of
implicitly accepting the latter as a basic horizon of existence. In an ironic Freudian-Lacanian twist, the fear of economism can end up reinforcing a de
facto economic necessity in respect of contemporary capitalism (i.e. the initial prohibition conjures up the very thing it fears).
This is not to endorse any kind of retrograde return to economism. Zizek’s point is rather that in rejecting economism we should not lose sight of the
systemic power of capital in shaping the lives and destinies of humanity and our very sense of the possible. In particular we should not overlook
Marx’s central insight that in order to create a universal global system the forces of capitalism seek to conceal the
politico-discursive violence of its construction through a kind of gentrification of that system. What is persistently
denied by neo-liberals such as Rorty (1989) and Fukuyama (1992) is that the gentrification of global liberal capitalism is one whose
‘universalism’ fundamentally reproduces and depends upon a disavowed violence that excludes vast sectors of the
world’s populations. In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize capitalism by presenting its outcomes
of winning and losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound judgment in a neutral market place.
Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in
terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and degraded ‘life-
chances’ cannot be calculated within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains
mystified and nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the ‘developing world’). And Zizek’s point is that this mystification is
magnified through capitalism’s profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or
misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation. Instead of Bolshevism, the
tendency today is towards a kind of political boutiquism that is readily sustained by postmodern forms of consumerism and lifestyle.
Against this Zizek argues for a new universalism whose primary ethical directive is to confront the fact that our
forms of social existence are founded on exclusion on a global scale. While it is perfectly true that universalism can never
become Universal (it will always require a hegemonic-particular embodiment in order to have any meaning), what is novel about Zizek’s
universalism is that it would not attempt to conceal this fact or reduce the status of the abject Other to that of a
‘glitch’ in an otherwise sound matrix.

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Cap is slavery
Capitalism inevitably causes Ruthless exploitation and effectual enslavement of the worker
Yates, Michael D. is associate editor of Monthly Review. He was for many years professor of economics at the
University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. He is the author of Cheap Motels and a Hotplate, Longer Hours, Fewer
Jobs: Employment and Unemployment in the United States, Why Unions Matter, and Naming the System:
Inequality and Work in the Global System,
Radicals of every stripe believe that capitalist economies are incompatible with human liberation. That is,
while human beings have enormous capacities to think and to do, capitalism prevents the vast majority
of people from developing these capacities. Therefore if we want a society in which the full flowering of
human competencies can become a reality, we will have to bring capitalism to an end and replace it with
something radically different.
Marx believed that the new society would have to be one in which the means of production were controlled democratically
and collectively and in which the goal was to create a society in which labor was offered voluntarily for the good of the
whole and in which society’s outputs were distributed more or less equally. The primary agent of the transition from
capitalism to this new society would be the class of wage laborers created by capitalism itself.
The question which immediately comes to mind is whether the working class is capable of fulfilling the role Marx sets for
it. Today, the consensus among radicals is that it is probably not; it has had a lot of time to do so but so far has not. I
disagree, and in this paper I attempt to say why.
Before doing so, some preliminary remarks are necessary, to put the question in its proper context. The first thing to note
is that capitalism, like the class societies that preceded it, is an exploitive society. A class of property owners, capitalists,
extracts a surplus from the non-owning or working class which actually does the work of producing society’s output.
While the history of capitalism shows that the working class has often enough included slave and serf
labor, the largest and, over time, increasingly dominant part of this class consists of wage laborers,
workers formally free, in the double sense of being free to sell their ability to work to any employer and free
from the nonhuman means of production.
Second, unlike slaves and serfs, wage laborers are exploited not by direct coercion (although direct coercion
may be used either by the capitalists or by the capitalist state) but behind the veil of the market. Wage workers are
not owned by the capitalists nor do they pay a part of the output they produce directly to them. However, they are
exploited nonetheless, by virtue of their dependence as a class upon being hired by employers. Employers
use their ownership of the nonhuman means of production to compel wage workers to work longer hours than those
necessary for the workers to produce the output needed for their own subsistence. This extraction of surplus labor,
which is the source of the capitalists’ profits, is maintained in part by the creation of a reserve army of
labor, brought about by the very nature of the system itself.
Third, capitalism, again by its nature, is an expansionary economic system. It pushes local markets into national
markets and national markets into international markets. Since profits depend upon wage labor, the relentless
accumulation of capital, the drive to maximize both profits and growth, which is the very heart of
capitalism, tends to continuously enlarge the working class and more and more divide the world into two
classes: capitalists and wage laborers.

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A2: Econ Advantages/Turns

Proletariat Revolution, 99
(“The Specter of Economic Collapse” NO 58, http://www.lrp-cofi.org/PR/collapsePR58.html)

Since the financial crisis first hit in mid-1997, bourgeois analysts have been waxing cold and hot over the state of their economy. At
first there were trepidations; then came assurances that the U.S. is in great economic shape when the first tremors on Wall Street led
neither to an immediate crash nor to stagnation like Japan's. Then, when Russia's economy gave out last summer, worries of "global
economic meltdown" made headlines again. But by mid-Fall, triumphalist noises were again heard from Wall Street and Washington,
only to be followed by new rounds of ideological booms and busts.
Alan Greenspan, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, is a one-man barometer of ruling-class vacillations. In December 1996 he
complained about the stock market's "irrational exuberance." Then in June he told Congress that "it is possible that we have ... moved
beyond history," that is, conquered the business cycles that have plagued capitalism for two centuries and entered into an epoch of
endless growth. But this Fall he had to lower interest rates twice to keep growth from slowing, and then to engineer Wall Street's
bailout of the multibillion dollar Long Term Capital fund, managed by a team of economists who had just won the Nobel Prize for
their now-collapsed theories! When markets calmed down after the bailout, the New York Times (November 18) quoted a "senior
official of an international organization":
In those weeks it could have gone either way. And the fact is, we got lucky -- at least for a while.
Working-class people have no cause to jump on to any roller-coaster of expectations. We have to prepare for the worst. No sustained
capitalist recovery of the order of the post-World War II boom is possible, and a great depression even deeper than that of the 1930's is
inevitable if capitalism continues to rule the world. The financial crisis of the past year and a half marks a new stage in the post-boom
economic decline and has brought the world economy to the edge of depression.
It is even possible that a stock market crash like that of 1929 could occur at any time. But not every means the bourgeoisie has of
postponing depression has necessarily been exhausted. Capitalist confidence in the viability of superinflated stock-market portfolios
has been shaken. But the capitalists' states and central banks might further delay a cataclysmic crash by issuing new loans to postpone
bankruptcies and debt defaults, boosting state spending once again and controlling capital movements. The ruling class is aware of the
need for drastic action, and may be able to plug the financial dikes until leaks start springing up in too many places at once.
Most importantly, the low level of working-class struggle, organization and political leadership internationally gives the capitalists
opportunities to postpone their crisis further. They can potentially squeeze more profits out of the proletariat by deepening their
downsizing, austerity and speed-up campaigns. This can help sustain illusions in their system's invulnerability and future profitability
-- a key to maintaining the fictitious capital bubble on the world's stock markets.
But all these efforts can at best only postpone depression for a relatively short time, not prevent it. As has been true for a half-century,
the intertwining of the major capitalist entities internationally means that the collapse of any one of them risks bringing down the
entire financial structure. Hence there is no possibility of gradual recovery from the conditions of overproduction; further wipeouts are
inevitable even in the imperialist countries themselves. Japan is the weakest link in the imperialist "triad" at this point, and given
Japan's major financial links with the U.S. and Europe, the inevitable Japanese depression will not be limited to that country alone.
Further, the anarchy of bourgeois economics, reflected in the rivalry among imperialist states, prevents a coordinated response by the
ruling class internationally. At moments of crisis, even conscious awareness of the overall interests of global capitalism cannot
forestall nationalist steps like protectionism, competitive currency devaluations and other measures of economic warfare that in the
end only tighten the economic noose. The looming trade war between the U.S. and the European Union over banana imports shows
the arrogance of U.S. imperialism in dealing with even its economically powerful rivals.
And in this epoch, even a depression is not enough to recharge a failing world economy. The bourgeoisie's only real "solution" is
brutal repression of the masses, and world war.

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A2: Econ Advantages/Turns

Proletariat Revolution, 99
(“The Specter of Economic Collapse” NO 58, http://www.lrp-cofi.org/PR/collapsePR58.html)

So the deepening crisis claimed the least developed national economies as its first victims. The "third world" debt
emergency of the late 1970's and '80's saw nations only recently freed from direct domination by colonial powers unable
to achieve the economic development necessary to repay their loans from the imperialist banks. The imperialists in turn
saw the opportunity to tighten their grip on these neo-colonies. Led by the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, imperialist financiers extended loans at extortionate rates of interest, demanding in return intensified attacks by the
neo-colonial bourgeoisies on their workers and peasants, and increased access to their markets.
Capitalism has historically made use of depressions to rescue profits -- by pushing down workers' wages and forcing
weaker capitalists to sell their property at bargain prices. But in this century the world's banks and monopoly industries
have grown so large that the fall of a few threatens to drag down the rest. And the working class is an even greater
problem for the bourgeoisie: in the imperialist countries, it has undergone retreats and is rife with self-cynicism, but it has
suffered no major defeat for decades, of the order of Indonesia in 1965 or Chile in 1973. In the U.S., for example, the
"Vietnam syndrome" stands for the ruling class's fear of subjecting American working-class soldiers to a bloody war,
knowing as they do the explosiveness of a class that is not aware of its own strength. Likewise, workers cannot be trusted
to sit through a depression without resisting massively. So the ruling classes has sought to delay the onset of crisis.
The bleeding of the neo-colonies since the debt crisis has provided one method. But that was not enough. In the U.S., the
capitalists' desire to avoid depression led to government interventions to forestall economic collapses: the rescue of
Chrysler in 1979 under Jimmy Carter, the effective nationalization of the Continental Illinois Bank by Ronald Reagan, and
the Savings & Loan bailout by George Bush. Reagan also pioneered the deregulation of finance to allow much riskier
profits. As well, he greatly expanded military spending, in order to force-feed economic growth as well as drive the U.S.'s
Russian rival to the wall.
With the system's profits declining, capitalists turned to speculative financial deals that boosted their income on paper
without significantly expanding production or productivity. (Productivity is averaging less than 1 percent annual growth,
despite the fact that the U.S. economy has allegedly been booming for over seven years.) The long-term result of
speculation and unprecedented state and corporate borrowing was the balloon of fictitious capital whose collapse looms
ahead today. From the 1970's on, the imperialists also moved to take advantage of cheaper labor abroad, locating a great
deal of their own industrial production in the neo-colonies, and lending enormous funds to build up the economies of
several countries, including South Korea, Thailand, Brazil and Mexico.
Most importantly, the imperialist ruling classes launched an escalating offensive against the gains won by workers in their
post-war struggles. Massive privatizations dismantled nationalized industries, sweeping budget cuts dismantled welfare
and other benefits. In the U.S., the first steps were taken under the Democratic president Carter. But it was Republican
President Reagan, and British Prime Minister Thatcher whose names became synonymous with this sharp turn to austerity.
Reagan and Thatcher's free-market rhetoric, domestic austerity and aggressive pursuit of exploitation abroad became
known as neo-liberalism; it set a pattern that was soon followed by both openly capitalist and social-democratic parties
across the world. In the U.S., these policies have been loyally continued by the Clinton White House, with budget cuts, the
dismantling of welfare and attacks on health care hitting the oppressed hardest. As a result, industrial wages have been
declining for a quarter-century. (The slight upturn in real wages in the past year or two is temporary, reflecting the uneven
effects of the world financial crisis and consumer spending boosted by overblown stock market values.)

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>>>Alternative<<<

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Reject
We must reject capitalism and search out new models for social order

John Murphy Prof Of Sociology @ Univ Of Miami, Manuel Caro Asst. Prof Of Sociology @ Barry Univ and Jung Min
Choi Assoc Prof Of Sociology @ Sdsu 2004, Globalization With A Human Face Pg. 2-3
What is diabolical is that the market is touted to hold everyone’s future. Because persons no longer direct history, but are
simply products of this process, there appears to be no alternative to the spread of markets and their worldwide
integration. And anyone who chooses another approach to conceptualizing order—an alternative social or economic logic
—is simply obstinate and denying reality. The logic of the market is deemed irrefutable. Furthermore, the image that is
emanating from most political leaders in Europe and North America is that utopian thought is passé. The days of what
Marcuse called the “Great Refusal” are long past.4 For many observers, history has delivered the best of possible worlds—
an economic windfall to select groups that will eventually enhance everyone. What persons need now are patience and
perseverance, and the magic of the market will do the rest. But many groups are becoming restless. In their opinion,
the ideology of the market has become stale and an impediment to achieving a better life. Stated simply,
they have not abandoned their utopian ideals of fairness and justice, and are looking for ways to realize these aims. In
some cases, revolutionary fervor persists. But in general, they have decided to challenge the inherent ability of history to
deliver a more propitious future. They are saying “enough,” and are searching for alternative models of
economic regulation and social order. As a result, large numbers of persons have been protesting in most major
cities over the spread and costs of neoliberalism. Although most mainstream politicians have been deaf to these calls for a
more responsible order, the chants for a new direction continue. And contrary to the claims made by many
pundits, these protesters have not abandoned their utopian impulse and have decided to make a
different history. In other words, they have recognized that only ideology can bring history to an end, and
that the recent picture created by this political device is an illusion. They have understood, accordingly, that
history ends only when no more persons are left to decide their own fate. The invitation extended to join
the globalized world is thus considered by many to be a ruse to get persons to jettison their own
perspectives on the future. To prosper, all they have to do is assimilate to specific political mandates that have been
cloaked in historical necessity. But critics of globalization have decided to change the rules of history and defy this view of
progress. Their refusal, however, will not necessarily destroy civilization, as some conservative critics claim, but merely
expose how the newly globalized world has been rigged in favor of the rich and ignores the needs and
desires of most persons. The powerful and their supporters scream that these challenges are irrational
and doomed to fail. Without a doubt, if these powerful forces continue to meddle in the social
experiments of others, defeats will likely occur. But these failures have nothing to do with flaunting the
laws of history or human nature. They occur most often because the rich and powerful want to discredit
alternatives to their worldview and thus undermine any threats to their social or economic privileges.
Alternative – Reject – Each instance of rejection important

Capitalism evolves in EVERY SINGLE ITERATION – this round is a unique resistance point

Etienne Balibar, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Paris, 1996, Postmodern Materialism and the Future of
Marxist Theory, p. 116-9

Now, if we take some distance from Althusser's text, we might perhaps suggest the following interpretation: the root of
antagonism, first of all, is the fact that exploitation is something unbearable for individuals and, above all, for
collectivities. This would mean that, although capitalism actually succeeds in imposing the forms of "real subsumption"
upon the labor force—that is, transforming labor power into a commodity—there is an actual limit to this process. In the
last analysis, the form of human labor (both individual and collective) remains irreducible to the condition of a
commodity, which is exactly what we must understand under the name of "the unbearable." This would mean, then, that
the capitalist mode of production can never be reproduced in an identical manner. It is impossible for capitalism to keep
the relations of production in the same form in which they existed at a certain moment in history, in a certain phase of
accumulation. I agree on this point with all those Marxists who insist on the necessity of "historicizing" the analysis of the
capitalist mode and relations of production. Capitalism is forced to transform itself, its own modes of exploiting the labor
force, its mode of socializing individuals. It is therefore impossible for capitalism not to evolve, and this is the only
possible form of its "reproduction." This is capitalism's necessity. As a consequence, for us, too, it is impossible not to
evolve. At every moment (not only in some "final" or "catastrophic" stage) the capitalist system is moving at its edges. A
basic instability is underlying its apparent stability (or in less naturalistic, more political, Machiavellian terms, the reason
for its stability is not its intrinsic coherence or its productivity; it is only its ability to gain social strength through

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antagonism, its success in using antagonistic forces as its own means of reproduction in the class struggle). We must
admit, therefore, that the necessity for capitalism to continuously transform its own relations of production is also the
possibility of a social practice that is incompatible with the "system." It is the possibility for those anticapitalist forces that
the Marxist tradition identified with the working class or the proletariat, and also for other unpredictable forces or
movements, .to insert themselves into the play of the contradiction.

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A2: Alt not solve

The charge that there is no alternative comes from the capitalist mindset. Within this mindset,
capitalism is a given that can not be changed. Only through radical negation can we break down
bourgeois social control and preserve the human survival.

<Mészáros, István, author of Socialism or Barbarism: From the "American Century" to the Crossroads,
Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition, and The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time: Socialism in
the Twenty-First Century, The Monthly Review, April 2007>
It is not at all accidental or surprising that the proposition of "there is no alternative" occupies such a
prominent place in the socioeconomic and political conceptions formulated from capital's standpoint.
Not even the greatest thinkers of the bourgeoisie -- like Adam Smith and Hegel -- could be exceptions in this respect. For
it is absolutely true that the bourgeois order either succeeds in asserting itself in the form of dynamic
capital expansion, or it is condemned to ultimate failure. There can be really no conceivable alternative
to endless capital expansion from capital's standpoint, determining thereby the vision of all those who adopt it.
But the adoption of this standpoint also means that the question of "what price must be paid" for uncontrollable capital
expansion beyond a certain point in time -- once the ascendant phase of the system's development is left behind -- cannot
enter into consideration at all. The violation of historical time is therefore the necessary consequence of adopting capital's
standpoint by internalizing the system's expansionary imperative as its most fundamental and absolutely unalterable
determinant. Even in the conceptions of the greatest bourgeois thinkers this position must prevail. There can be no
alternative future social order whose defining characteristics would be significantly different from the already established
one. This is why even Hegel, who formulated by far the most profound historical conception up to his own time, must also
arbitrarily bring history to an end in capital's unalterable present, idealizing the capitalist nation state11 as the insuperable
climax of all conceivable historical development, despite his sharp perception of the destructive implications of the whole
system of nation states.
Thus, there can be no alternative to decreeing the pernicious dogma of no alternative in bourgeois
thought. But it is totally absurd for socialists to adopt the position of endless (and by its nature uncontrollable)
capital expansion. For the corollary idealization of -- again characteristically unqualified -- "consumption" ignores the
elementary truth that from capital's uncritical self-expansionary vantage point there can be no difference between
destruction and consumption. One is as good as the other for the required purpose. This is so because the commercial
transaction in the capital relation -- even of the most destructive kind, embodied in the ware of the military/industrial
complex and the use to which it is put in its inhuman wars -- successfully completes the cycle of capital's enlarged self-
reproduction, so as to be able to open a new cycle. This is the only thing that really matters to capital, no matter how
unsustainable might be the consequences. Consequently, when socialists internalize the imperative of capital
expansion as the necessary ground of the advocated growth, they do not simply accept an isolated
tenet but a whole "package deal." Knowingly or not, they accept at the same time all of the false
alternatives -- like "growth or no-growth" -- that can be derived from the uncritical advocacy of
necessary capital expansion. The false alternative of no growth must be rejected by us not only because
its adoption would perpetuate the most gruesome misery and inequality now dominating the world, with
struggle and destructiveness inseparable from it. The radical negation of that approach can only be a
necessary point of departure. The inherently positive dimension of our vision involves the fundamental redefinition
of wealth itself as known to us. Under capital's social metabolic order we are confronted by the alienating rule of wealth
over society, directly affecting every aspect of life, from the narrowly economic to the cultural and spiritual domains.
Consequently, we cannot get out of capital's vicious circle, with all of its ultimately destructive determinations and false
alternatives, without fully turning around that vital relationship. Namely, without making society -- the society of freely
associated individuals -- rule over wealth, redefining at the same time also their relation to time and to the kind of use to
which the products of human labor are put. As Marx had written already in one of his early works:
In a future society, in which class antagonism will have ceased, in which there will no longer be any classes, use will no
longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of production devoted to an article will be
determined by the degree of its social utility.12
This means an uncompromising departure from viewing wealth as a fetishistic material entity which
must ignore the real individuals who are the creators of wealth. Naturally, capital -- in its false claim to be
identical to wealth, as the "creator and embodiment of wealth" -- must ignore the individuals, in the self-
legitimating service of its own social metabolic control. In this way, by usurping the role of real wealth and
subverting the potential use to which it could be put, capital is the enemy of historical time. This is what must
be redressed for the sake of human survival itself.

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A2: Alt not Solve
They confuse uncertainty with inaction. Our alternative investigates the connection between capitalism
and injustice

Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy renowned authors and editors at The Monthly Review September 2000
http://www.monthlyreview.org/900editr.htm
There is much more to Singer's search for an alternative. This is not the place to delve into every component of his
outlook. We do, however, need to lay further stress on the fact that Singer does not dwell in fantasy. His idealism is
intertwined with a realistic sense of the enormity of the goals, the pitfalls, the length of the historical period required to
achieve socialist transformation, even after an overturn of capitalism. What happens in the long, postrevolutionary
transition, he emphasizes, will greatly affect how the ultimate goals turn out. There is no simplistic faith here in the
inevitability of socialism:
If we want to recover the dialectical link between the movement and its objective, we must draw clear distinctions between
actuality, necessity, and inevitability. Socialism may be a historical possibility, or even necessary to eliminate the evils of
capitalism, but this does not mean that it will inevitably take its place. This departure from the fatalistic conception is, in a
sense, a return to the more distant past, when socialism was not considered as bound to happen, since there was always
the possibility, to quote the terms of Rosa Luxemburg, that barbarism would win out. Above all, uncertainty as to the
ultimate result should not imply passivity, obedience, or resignation. On the contrary, it dictates greater
participation, more activity, and more militancy since, within limits of objective conditions, the future
will be what we shall make it. And this renewed conviction and activism would be particularly welcome
today, because the power of the ruling class and the arrogance of its ideologues is largely due to our
weakness, to our surrender, to our acceptance of the established rules of the game (272-273).
It should go without saying where we stand. MR was founded to spread the word on socialism and the struggle to attain it.
We find it hard to understand how people who hate social injustice in this country and elsewhere on the
planet can be uninvolved in one way or another with the pursuit of socialism. That is not to deny that we have
learned a great deal along the way. These lessons, however, have not altered the basic thrust of MR. Despite mistakes,
setbacks, and recognition that the road is long and arduous, we must not waver as we continue to study,
educate, and be missionaries for the transcendence of the social system of capitalism and the
development eventually in its place of a society of equals.

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Alternative – Socialism
Socialism is the only viable alternative to address the problems of capital on a global level. Attempts by
Capital to solve its own problems only bring more cause disaster.

<Mészáros, István, author of Socialism or Barbarism: From the "American Century" to the Crossroads,
Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition, and The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time: Socialism in
the Twenty-First Century, The Monthly Review, April 2007>
Another respect in which the absolute imperative to adopt a qualitatively different way of organizing economic and social
life appeared on the horizon in our time concerns the ecology. But again, the only viable way of addressing the
increasingly grave problems of our global ecology -- if we want to face up in a responsible way to the
aggravating problems and contradictions of the planetary household, from their direct impact on such
vital questions as global warming to the elementary demand for clean water resources and safely
respirable air -- is to switch from the existing order's wasteful husbandry of fetishistic quantification to a
genuinely quality oriented one. Ecology, in this respect, is an important but subordinate aspect of the necessary
qualitative redefinition of utilizing the produced goods and services without which the advocacy of humanity's
permanently sustainable ecology -- again: an absolute must -- can be nothing more than pious hope.
The final point to stress in this context is that the urgency to face up to these problems cannot be underrated,
let alone minimized, given capital's vested interests, sustained by its dominant imperialist state
formations in their insuperable rivalry among themselves. Ironically, although there is so much
propagandistic talk about "globalization," the objective requirements of making a rationally sustainable
and globally coordinated reproductive order of social interchanges work are constantly violated. Yet,
given the present stage of historical development, the irrepressible truth remains that with regard to all
of the major issues discussed in this article we are really concerned with ever aggravating global
challenges, requiring global solutions. However, our gravest concern is that capital's mode of social
metabolic reproduction -- in view of its inherently antagonistic structural determinations and their destructive
manifestations -- is not amenable at all to viable global solutions. Capital, given its unalterable nature, is
nothing unless it can prevail in the form of structural domination. But the inseparable other dimension
of structural domination is structural subordination. This is the way in which capital's mode of social
metabolic reproduction always functioned and always must try to function, bringing with it even the most
devastating wars of which we have much more than just a foretaste in our time. The violent assertion of the
destructive imperatives of global hegemonic imperialism, through the formerly unimaginable
destructive might of the United States as the global hegemon, cannot bring global solutions to our
aggravating problems but only global disaster. Thus, the unavoidable necessity to address these global
problems in a historically sustainable way puts the challenge of socialism in the twenty-first century -- the only
viable hegemonic alternative to capital's mode of social metabolic control -- on the order of the day.

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Alternative – Socialism
We must move in the direction of socialism to have a chance to reverse the environmental crisis

<Foster, John B., professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review, Capitalism’s
Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?, Monthly Review, December 2000>
Any attempt to follow out this contradiction in detail would take me well beyond the confines of the present essay. I agree
with Paul Sweezy, who said in “Cars and Cities,”
while I believe certain palliatives to be possible, at least in principle, within the framework of the present monopoly
capitalist system, I do not think that fundamental changes in the structure of cities and their relation to society as a whole
[or equally large changes within the structure of production and consumption] can be effected without a radical change in
the social order (17).
For Marx, the very nature of capitalist society from the very beginning had been built on a metabolic rift between city and
country, human beings and the earth—a rift that has now been heightened beyond anything that he could have imagined
(see Foster, “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift,” American Journal of Sociology, September 1999). There is an
irreversible environmental crisis within global capitalist society. But setting aside capitalism, a
sustainable relation to the earth is not beyond reach. To get there, we have to change our social relations.
Jevons had no answer to the paradox he raised. Britain could either rapidly use up its cheap source of fuel—the coal upon
which its industrialization rested—or use it up more slowly. In the end, Jevons said they should use it up rapidly: “If we
lavishly and boldly push forward in the creation of our riches, both material and intellectual, it is hard to over-estimate the
pitch of beneficial influence to which we may attain in the present. But the maintenance of such a position is physically
impossible. We have to make the momentous choice between brief but true greatness and longer continued mediocrity”
(The Coal Question, 459-460). Put in that way, the direction to be taken was clear: to pursue glory in the
present and a drastically degraded position for future generations. Insofar as Jevons’ paradox continues to
apply to us today—that is, insofar as technology by itself (given the present framework of production) offers no way
out of our environmental dilemmas, which generally increase with the scale of the economy—we must
either adopt Jevons’ conclusion or pursue an alternative that Jevons never discussed and which doubtless never
entered his mind: the transformation of the social relations of production in the direction of socialism, a
society governed not by the search for profit but by peoples’ genuine needs, and the requirements of
socio-ecological sustainability.*

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Alternative – Socialism
Our aim isn’t to reduce or alleviate oppression but to instead uproot it. Only by interrogating the system
of capitalism can we understand a way for a society of equals

Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy renowned authors and editors at The Monthly Review September 2000
http://www.monthlyreview.org/900editr.htm
Singer's call for unending struggle is not based on the illusion that it will be other than a long and
difficult one, full of twists and turns. To be effective, we need to learn what went wrong in the past and to
maintain a vision of the future that is both realistic and utopian. He does not promise or foretell a bright
future, but proposes an outlook that should guide a revitalized and militant socialist movement. But if we
are not going to be tied to the system, what alternatives should we work for? On that score, Singer puts
forward a long-neglected and downplayed left theme in his chapter, “A Society of Equals.” His handling
of this issue goes far beyond the usual views such as equality of opportunity or even equality of income.
“Our aim,” he writes “is to create the material and social conditions that not only give meaning to
people's work, but which enable them, by the same token, to seek the fulfillment of their desires and
their dreams. There is only one thing that we want to eliminate: social injustice, the possibility of
oppression or domination based on class, race, or gender. This we want to do thoroughly: not to
diminish, reduce or alleviate oppression, but to uproot it in the literal sense of the term.”

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Alternative – Socialism
It’s no longer a question of should but a question of need. Capitalism must be removed to rescue our
planet.
CWI (committee for a workers' international) 23 April 2008 http://socialistworld.net/eng/2008/04/23econoa.html
Fundamentally this means challenging the capitalist system itself. The financial crisis has seen bankers
running to governments demanding financial aid and help. The neo-liberal argument that the market
should be left to function on its own has collapsed, stabbed through the heart by the capitalists
themselves.
However, the state is not neutral. The state in capitalist countries, at the end of the day, acts to protect the
interests of the capitalists, as a whole. While welcome and a demonstration of the limits of capitalism,
nationalisation of individual companies or even sectors would not, on its own, mark a break with
capitalism. Public ownership, with democratic planning of the key economic sectors, is the real
alternative to the market system that produces regular convulsions.
Already in a number of countries it has been workers' organisations, like trade unions, that have been forced to
take the lead in defending living standards. The workers' movement has the responsibility to act to
prevent hunger and to offer an alternative. Part of this will be showing that there is a worldwide
alternative to the brutalities of capitalist globalisation; namely the possibility of working people
internationally owning and deciding the use of the world's resources.
However, it is not just a question of popularising the socialist alternative; it is an issue of what is done. This
week, Bolivian President Morales told a United Nations conference, in New York, that in order to "rescue our planet
capitalism must be removed". This is absolutely correct! But such verbal calls have to lead to concrete
conclusions or they will just be hot air. If Morales is serious, his government can set an example in
mobilising the Bolivian workers and poor to break the power of capitalism, and show, in practice, what
can be done, and appeal to workers and the poor in the rest of the world to follow the same course.

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Alternative – Socialism

Attempts to solve peak oil from within capitalism are naïve and doomed to fail – only revolutionary
change in the global economic system toward socialism can address the root cause of the affirmative
harms.
John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and Editor of the Monthly
Review, 2008 (“Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism,” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine,
Volume 60, Issue 3, July/August, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Elite,
p. 29-30 // MUDI—BB)
The supreme irony of the peak oil crisis of course is that the world is rapidly proceeding down the path of
climate change from the burning of fossil fuels, threatening within a matter of decades human
civilization and life on the planet. Unless carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption of such fuels
are drastically reduced, a global catastrophe awaits. For environmentalists peak oil is therefore not a
tragedy in itself since the crucial challenge facing humanity at present is weaning the world from
excessive dependence on fossil fuels. The breaking of the solar energy budget that hydrocarbons allowed
has generated a biospheric rift, which if not rapidly addressed will close off the future.43
Yet, heavy levels of fossil fuel, and particularly petroleum, consumption are built into the structure of the
present world capitalist economy. [end page 29] The immediate response of the system to the end of easy
oil has been therefore to turn to a new energy imperialism—a strategy of maximum extraction by any
means possible: with the object of placating what Rachel Carson once called "the gods of profit and
production."44 This, however, presents the threat of multiple global conflagrations: global warming, peak
oil, rapidly rising world hunger (resulting in part from growing biofuel production), and nuclear war—all in
order to secure a system geared to growing inequality.
In the face of the immense perils now facing life on the planet, the world desperately needs to take a new
direction; toward communal well-being and global justice: a socialism for the planet. The immense
danger now facing the human species, it should be understood, is not due principally to the constraints of
the natural environment, whether geological or climatic, but arises from a deranged social system wheeling
out of control, and more specifically, U.S. imperialism. This is the challenge of our time.

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Alternative – Socialism
Partial reform only pacifies the masses. Total replacement of capitalism is the only way to resolve the
root of environmental crises.

Paul Sweezy, Founding Editor, Monthly Review; renowned Marxist economist, 2004, “Capitalism and the Environment,”
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1004pms3.htm

Such is the inner nature, the essential drive of the economic system that has generated the present environmental crisis.
Naturally it does not operate without opposition. Efforts have always been made to curb its excesses, not only by its
victims but also in extreme cases by its more far-sighted leaders. Marx, in Capital, wrote feelingly about nineteenth-
century movements for factory legislation and the ten-hours bill, describing the latter as a great victory for the political
economy of the working class. And during the present century conservation movements have emerged in all the leading
capitalist countries and have succeeded in imposing certain limits on the more destructive depredations of uncontrolled
capital. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that without constraints of this kind arising within the system, capitalism by
now would have destroyed both its environment and itself. Not surprisingly, such constraints, while sometimes interfering
with the operations of individual capitalists, never go so far as to threaten the system as a whole. Long before that point is
reached, the capitalist class, including the state which it controls, mobilizes its defenses to repulse environmental-
protection measures perceived as dangerously extreme. Thus despite the development of a growing environmental
consciousness and the movements to which it has given rise in the last century, the environmental crisis continues to
deepen. There is nothing in the record or on the horizon that could lead us to believe the situation will significantly change
in the foreseeable future. If this conclusion is accepted—and it is hard to see how anyone who has studied the history of
our time can refuse, at the very least, to take it seriously—it follows that what has to be done to resolve the environmental
crisis, hence also to insure that humanity has a future, is to replace capitalism with a social order based on an economy
devoted not to maximizing private profit and accumulating ever more capital but rather to meeting real human needs and
restoring the environment to a sustainably healthy condition. This, in a nutshell, is the meaning of revolutionary change
today. Lesser measures of reform, no matter how desirable in themselves, could at best slow down the fatal process of
decline and fall that is already so far advanced. Is the position taken here in effect a restatement of the traditional Marxist
case for a socialist revolution? Yes, but with one crucial proviso: The socialism to be achieved must be conceived, as Marx
and Engels always conceived it, as the quintessential negation of capitalism—not as a society that eliminates the most
objectionable features of capitalism such as gross inequality of income, mass unemployment, cyclical depressions,
financial panics, and so on. It is capitalism itself, with its in-built attitude toward human beings and nature alike as means
to an alien end that must be rooted out and replaced. Humanity, having learned to perform miracles of production, must
at last learn to use its miraculous powers not to degrade itself and destroy its home but to make the world a better place to
live in for itself and its progeny for millennia to come.

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Alternative – Socialism
A revolutionary break with capitalist economics is key – a socialist ecology is the only way to prevent
inevitable extinction.
Minqi Li, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, 2008 (“Climate Change, Limits to
Growth, and the Imperative for Socialism,” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine,
Volume 60, Issue 3, July/August, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Elite,
p. 65-66 // MUDI—BB)
Frankly, only an extremely reactionary politician who has deep-in-the-heart hatred of the working class and socialism
could have made such outlandish comments. In one respect, however, Klaus is closer to the truth than all the mainstream
environmentalists. It does take global “central” planning for humanity to overcome the crisis of climate
change, if by “central” one is talking about self-conscious, rational coordination by democratic
institutions.
The technical requirements for climate stabilization are clear. The global energy infrastructure needs to
be fundamentally transformed to be based on renewables. Much of the world’s economic infrastructure
will have to be changed accordingly. Agriculture will need to be reorganized to follow sustainable
principles and to be freed from dependence on fossil fuels for fertilizers and machineries. The entire
transportation system will have to be re-built, with railways and public transportation operated by
renewable electricity playing prominent roles. The scale of the world economy will need to be reduced in
accordance with the emissions reduction objectives. All of these need to be accomplished without
undermining the basic needs of the world’s population.
It is clear that capitalism cannot accomplish these objectives. If we do not want to undermine the
ecological conditions that support civilization, what else can accomplish these goals other than socialism
with public ownership of the means of production and democratic planning?
So-called “market socialism” is not an option. Both theory and historical experience have demonstrated
that “market socialism” inevitably leads to capitalism. Those who object to socialist planning might argue that the
experience of historical socialisms suggested that socialist planning would be “inefficient.”
Leave aside the question that the future socialism would no doubt do better than the historical socialisms in democracy
and economic efficiency, given the extreme gravity of the global ecological crisis, “efficiency” is simply not a
relevant issue. The real question is: can socialism provide food, education, and health care to everyone
on the earth? We know that historical socialisms were able to, and Cuba is still able to accomplish this
with quite limited material resources. [end page 65]
Capitalism has always failed to provide food, education, and health care to at least hundreds of millions
of people. If the global ecological crisis is not overcome, then capitalism will eventually fail the entirety of
humanity. Is the choice not clear enough?

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Alternative – Socialism

We must resist the expansion of capitalism that threatens the fate of the world and promote an ecology
and social justice, challenging the higher immorality of money
John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon, 2002, (“Ecology Against
Capitalism,” Monthly Review Press, Accessed 07-23-2008, pp. 87-89, MUDI-KWL)
Like many advocates of ecological morality Leopold thus stopped short of any analysis of what in the present day must
be regarded as the crucial issue: what sociologist C. Wright Mills was later to call "the higher immorality." In a
society run by big money and the tyranny of the corporate bottom line, under the rule of the market, Mills pointed out,
"money is the one [end page 87] unambiguous criterion of success, and such success is still the sovereign American value. .
.in relation to which the influence of other values has declined, so men easily become morally ruthless in the pursuit of
easy money and fast estate building." This higher immorality, which unabashedly celebrates wealth while
commonly ignoring the poverty and environmental destruction generated in its wake, is in fact so
institutionalized in society that it hardly appears as immoral at all. Nevertheless all other moral
standards and bases of community are forced to give way before it. If land-the essential human connection to
the earth-is turned into mere real estate to be bought and sold by the highest bidder, if the commons are
enclosed and then exploited outside of any collective restraints, it is due to this reduction of everything to mere
economic value. Indeed, the problem, as Marx pointed out long ago, is that in bourgeois society "money. . . becomes the
real community, since it is the general substance for the survival of all, and at the same time the social product of all." In a
society of this kind, people are forced to regard everything about them-the land, the rivers, the natural
resources of the earth, as well as their own labor power-as mere commodities, to be exploited for greater
gain. No sustained progress can be achieved with respect to the preservation of the earth as we know it
without confronting this higher immorality head-on. Hence today we are seeing the rise throughout the
world of an ecological critique of the capitalist world economy (and of all societies that subordinate ecology and
human welfare to the treadmill of production), a critique that rests on three propositions: (I) that a system
geared to endless exponential growth and the infinite acquisition of riches, no matter how much it
rationalizes its use of natural resources, can never be anything but destructive in its relation to the earth,
and is in the long run (if not the short run) unsustainable; (2) that a system that disconnects people from all
sense of being native to some place and all ecological roots (a phenomenon now carried to extremes with the
growing globalization of production) is incompatible with ecological stability and a "land ethic"; and (3) that a
system that divides the planet, creating an "ecology of rich and poor," is likewise insupportable.
Rejecting the higher immorality, this new ecological conscience says that being green is about having
enough, not always more. This does not however mean the abandonment of those populations at the
bottom of the world system-for whom genuine economic development, insofar as it benefits the poorest
segments of society, remains essential. Indeed, as Tom Athanasiou has remarked in his Divided Planet, "History[end
page 88] will judge Greens by whether they stand with the world's poor." Ecology and social justice, as the
environmental justice movement of recent years has taught us, cannot be separated. I0 What genuine hope
there is for the continuing development of a collective ecological conscience under these circumstances derives ironically
from the very globalizing trend of the system and the "acceleration of history" that it has brought with it. Since 1950 the
world economy has grown by a factor of five, from $4 trillion to $20 trillion. Despite the fact that only 8 percent of
the world's population have cars, carbon dioxide emissions, primarily from automobiles, have grown to a level
that threatens the stability of the world's climate. Under these circumstances it is obvious to more and
more people throughout the world that the entire planet has become vulnerable to the expansion of the
most threatening biosphere culture of all, one that now has reached a scale that rivals the basic
biochemical cycles of the planet. The manifestations of this are all around us with the advent of such
planetary ecological threats as destruction of the ozone layer, global warming, rapid extinction of
species, loss of genetic diversity, impending food and water shortages, the proliferation of toxic wastes,
and the decline of ecosystems throughout the earth. The ecological consciousness that this crisis has generated is
not merely confined to the global level, however, but is giving rise to an ever more fervent commitment on the part
of radical environmentalists to struggle on the behalf of individual ecosystems and the communities attached
to them-in opposition to the current world economy, with its "sea of utilitarian brutality" (William Morris).
Everywhere the answer-it is being discovered by innumerable ecological activists-is to be found in the
defense of diversity, both ecological and cultural, and in the promotion of an ecology of social justice."

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>>>BLOCKS<<<

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A2: Gibson-Graham (1/2)

1. We control the Root Cause-Capitalism affects all people, all struggles, and all oppressed
groups. Everyone has to work for a system that has covered up social ills like racism, poverty,
immigrants’ rights, and women’s rights. This means that the alternative of replacing capitalism
is a pre-requisite to other movements. That’s CPUSA
2. Turn- Totalization Good- Totalizing visions are key to changing the lifestyle. When people
see that it’s a lifestyle, they will understand how to reject capitalism in everyday life. This turns
the claim that “totalizing hurts individual struggles.” While we have our eye on the capitalist
Juggernaut, we simultaneously work alongside it building our civilization, which calls for local
people to reject cap real world instance like not buying goods that profit corporations. That’s
Herod.
3. Only the Alt Solves-For the Left to overcome the ultra-right domination, we have to have a
combination of groups who work together to fight the capitalist system. Alt solves by including
all people.
CPUSA, 5.
(“The Road to Socialism USA: Unity for Peace, Democracy, Jobs and Equality” www.cpusa.org/filemanager/download/43/CPUSA_DraftProgram.pdf/)

The ultra-right is led by the most reactionary, militaristic, racist, anti-democratic sectors of the
transnationals. They gain support for their ultra-right agenda from other political trends and social
groups, most of which are misled as to their real interests, sometimes blinded by the propaganda of fear
and scapegoating. Every movement for change and progress is challenged by the power of the
corporations. Workers face corporate power in every contract negotiation. African Americans, Mexican
Americans and all other Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and women all face corporate
power when they seek real equality on the job and in their communities. Youth face corporate power
when they seek free quality education for all. Environmental organizations face corporate power
when they try to stop pollution, stop the dumping of industrial waste, or stop the ravaging of the remaining
wilderness areas for profit. The corporations and their paid hacks in the media constantly proclaim that
“competition” requires lower wages, fewer benefits, fewer holidays, gutted pension plans, continuing wage
differentials and discrimination, and the free export of capital and jobs to other countries. We don’t think
that is so. “Free trade” agreements, placing supra-national committees of capitalists above the laws of any
country, require ending environmental protections, allow the “free” export of capital and jobs, and remove
the ability of countries to restrict the rights and activities of corporate managers. Such agreements are only
free in that they give a “free” bonus of super-profits to the already rich and powerful at the expense of
democracy, sovereignty, and workers rights. All this is normal to the functioning of the capitalist system, but
greatly intensified by the dominance of the most reactionary section of the capitalist class. The solution to
this ultra-right domination lies in building the broadest, most inclusive unity among our
multinational, male/female, multigenerational working class, starting with the labor movement,
racially and nationally oppressed people, women, and youth. We must unite lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and straight people; professionals and intellectuals; seniors; and the disabled; and the mass
people’s movements including the peace, environmental, health care, education, housing, and other
movements. This all-people’s front to defeat the ultra-right is in the process of developing, learning, and
being tested in giant struggles for peace, to protect social programs and services, to win health care for all,
and to win control of all three branches of government from the right wing.Our country, our people, and
our environment are all being destroyed by the greed of a few obscenely wealthy capitalist groupings.
Our world is threatened by the ravages of capitalist globalization, by relentless efforts to drive wages down to the lowest possible level, by attempts to destroy
and won’t let this
unions and all protections won by workers through struggle, by the spread of toxic wastes, and by imperialist war. We can’t
continue. We need radical solutions, real democracy, and real unity. We, the workers and our allies, need
to take power from the hands of the wealthy few, their corporations, and their political operatives. We
need real solutions to real problems, not the empty promises of politicians and corporate bosses. We need peace, justice,
and equality. We need socialism.The United States has a proud history of radical and revolutionary struggles, of mass

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movements demanding and winning economic and social programs to meet the basic needs of the people, of protecting and
expanding democracy, and of uniting to overcome obstacles with initiative, energy, and innovation. The Communist Party is a
proud part of this country’s radical tradition.We believe that the millions of working people have the power, if organized and united, to run this country,
to create a government of, by, and for the people. The people of our country have the right and responsibility, faced
with an exploitative, oppressive economic system, to alter or abolish it. We can eject the fat-cat financial donors from the election
process, throw the scavengers out of the banks, eject the CEO’s from their golden parachutes, and elect regular, honest working
people to represent us in government instead of corporate lawyers and multi-millionaires.

*** If you have time***

4. Gibson and Graham are wrong
Diamanti, 97.
(dr. Diamanti, Filio, Hellenic Association of University Women. End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, The”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3780/is_199707/ai_n8758398 Captial and Class

Regarding their analysis of households where relations of class are brought in, I am rather sceptical of the viability of their project which is to
emphasise the existence of a feudal household within a capitalist mode of production. The idea of two separate modes of production
coexisting is not in itself unthinkable. but the notion that capitalism operates in public and feudalism in private life is rather problematic even if
space is left open for non-exploitative relations such as what the authoresses brand 'independent class processes' and 'noncapitalist
households'. Gibson-Graham's theoretical analysis attempts to go beyond the 'dual systems' project of Marxist feminists, who theorize a
domestic mode of production with separate spheres of production (capitalist economy) and reproduction (domestic economy), into one where
Gibson
those two spheres are both present, ie. noncapitalist class processes could be present in industrial class formations. J.K.
Graham claims that `it is not the homogeneity of the household that we are trying to
disrupt, but the homogeneity of economic representation' (p.236). Although I found most of the household
analysis interesting and to a certain extent I would agree with the authoresses that the household could be seen as a place of (class) struggle,
I would disagree with the use of the term 'feudal'. There is not sufficient space to explore this matter here in detail, but I would like to point
readers to Bringing It All Back Home: class, gender and power in the modern household, a volume that pioneered the term (Fraad et al, 1994).
Basically, the term 'feudal' emphasises relations of oppression and subordination; it is a term which cannot be used unproblematically to
describe the domestic situation. Also.
the idea that gender, exploitation, and power could be related to
each other in non-contradictory ways in, for example, noncapitalist communal relations is rather
unconvincing. Personally, I prefer Engels's description of women as the proletarians in the family. Although it
may not be absolutely accurate it brings into play the role of capitalism in a transformed patriarchal relationship
where the female of the species is exploited and dominated both economically and bodily
by the male. In the final chapter of the volume entitled 'Waiting for the Revolution...', the authoresses deal with the 'end of capitalism'.
They ask: 'What if capitalism were not an entire system of economy or a macrostructure or a mode of production but simply one form of
exploitation among many?', and their answer is as follows: 'The question is, how do we begin to see this monolithic and homogeneous
Capitalism not as our "reality" but as a fantasy of wholeness, one that operates to obscure diversity and disunity in the economy and society
alike?' (p.260, emphasis added).

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A2: Perm- Generic (1/3)

Cross apply this to all Perms-

1. Extend the Link Debate- The specificity of our evidence should be given priority over their
generic perm solvency cards.
2. Cross apply the Root Cause Debate- The risk of the link goes Neg, we solve the entirety of
the aff’s harms, meaning any risk that the perm corrupts solvency is net disadvantages.
3. I will answer any DA’s to our alt here
Their disads to the alt only prove our link—their impact turns are a “Breaking News” bulletin,
red herrings meant to distract us from violence necessary to sustain capitalist order.
Žižek 2008
[Slavoj, senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology @ Univ. of Ljubljana, Violence, p. 10-11]

Opposing all forms of violence, from direct, physical violence (mass murder, terror) to ideological
violence (racism, incitement, sexual discrimination), seems to be the main preoccupation of the tolerant
liberal attitude that predominates today. An SOS call sustains such talk, drowning out all other
approaches: everything else can and has to wait ... Is there not something suspicious, indeed
symptomatic, about this focus on subjective violence-that violence which is enacted by social agents, evil
individuals, disciplined repressive apparatuses, fanatical crowds? Doesn't it desperately try to distract
our attention from the true locus of trouble, by obliterating from view other forms of violence and thus
actively participating in them? According to a well-known anecdote, a German officer visited Picasso
in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the
modernist "chaos" of the painting, asked Picasso: "Did you do this?" Picasso calmly replied: "No,
you did this!" Today, many a liberal, when faced with violent outbursts such as the recent looting in the
suburbs of Paris, asks the few remaining leftists who still count on a radical social transformation:
"Isn't it you who did this? Is this what you want?" And we should reply, like Picasso: "No, you did this!
This is the true result of your politics!"
There is an old joke about a husband who returns home earlier than usual from work and finds his wife
in bed with another man. The surprised wife exclaims: "Why have you come back early?" The husband
furiously snaps back: "What are you doing in bed with another man?" The wife calmly replies: "I asked
you a question first-don't try to squeeze out of it by changing the topic!"4 The same goes for violence:
the task is precisely to change the topic, to move from the desperate humanitarian SOS call to stop
violence to the analysis of that other SOS, the complex interaction of the three modes of violence:
subjective, objective, and symbolic. The lesson is thus that one should resist the fascination of
subjective violence, of violence enacted by social agents, evil individuals, disciplined repressive
apparatuses, fanatical crowds: subjective violence is just the most visible of the three.

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4. DA to their Alt- BUREACRATISM –

a. Link-Maintaining even the residual administration of the plan jacks the transition

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PARTY 1994 (http://www.dsp.org.au/dsp/program/prog47.html)

there
In conditions where the supply of consumer goods is inadequate to meet everyone's needs but sufficient to give significant privileges to a minority,
is a tendency for the functionaries of the socialist state, who are in charge of administering and enforcing
the inequality of access to consumer goods that flows from capitalist norms of distribution, to become
bureaucrats, i.e., privileged officials who monopolise decision-making power. This tendency is particularly
accentuated in an isolated and economically backward socialist state (or group of socialist states). Here, the lack of administrative
knowledge and skills within the working class inevitably forces the socialist state to utilise the skills of
former capitalists, their managers and state officials, most of whom can only be persuaded to serve the
socialist state by being granted high salaries and privileged access to consumer goods. This creates the
danger of corruption and bureaucratic degeneration among those revolutionary workers who become
functionaries of the socialist state.

B. THE IMPACT IS STALINISM, WHICH TURNS ANY OFFENSE TO OUR ALT

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PARTY 1994 (http://www.dsp.org.au/dsp/program/prog49.html)
In order to maintain and expand its material privileges,
the Stalinist bureaucracy increasingly restricted the democratic
rights of workers. Since its ability to expand its privileged access to consumer goods depended on its
monopoly of political power, the bureaucracy suppressed both soviet democracy and the internal
democratic life of the Communist party. The soviets were transformed into ceremonial assemblies that rubber-stamped the bureaucracy's
policies. Most of the leaders and cadres of the Communist party who had served under Lenin's leadership were expelled, jailed and eventually executed. The
Communist party was destroyed as a revolutionary organisation of the working-class vanguard. It was converted into an administrative machine, a ``jobs
trust'' of the privileged middle-class layers in the bureaucratic apparatuses of the state, economic enterprises, trade unions, and the party itself, which
remained ``Communist'' and a ``party'' in name only.
These were the causes of the Stalinist bureaucracy's usurpation of the exercise of political power by the
Russian workers, of the gradual merger of the party apparatus, the governmental apparatus, and the
apparatus of economic management into a crystallised bureaucratic ruling caste, conscious that its
interests were opposed to workers' democracy.

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5. Appeasement DA-
The perm is a form of appeasement to discourage resistance- this masks
capitalism’s true nature and kills the perm’s solvency.
Aberdeen, 3.
(http://richardaberdeen.com/uncommonsense/theway.html, Richard Aberdeen is the president of The Aberdeen Foundation, a non-profit public Human
Rights foundation centering on helping the sick and poor. The Aberdeen foundation.)

No economic or political organization and no political or social cause exists unto itself but rather, individual members power a collective
agenda. A workers’ strike has no hope of succeeding if individual workers do not perceive a personal benefit. And similarly, a
corporation will not exploit workers if doing so is not believed to be in the economic best interest of those who run the corporation and
who in turn, must answer (at least theoretically) to individuals who collectively through purchase or other allotment of shares, own the
corporation. Companies have often been known to appear benevolent, offering both higher wages and improved benefits, if doing so is
perceived to be in the overall economic best interest of the immediate company and/or larger corporate entity. Non-unionized
business enterprises frequently offer ‘carrots’ of appeasement to workers in order to discourage them
from organizing and historically in the United States, concessions such as the forty-hour workweek, minimum
wage, workers compensation and proscribed holidays have been grudgingly capitulated to by greedy
capitalist masters as necessary concessions to avoid profit-crippling strikes and outright revolution.
It is important to understand that so-called workers ‘rights’ and benefits were not volunteered by
American capitalists or their political stooges (including several U.S. presidents) without extreme and often violent
worker coercive persuasion over a great many years of prolonged strikes and similar worker revolts. Modern supply-
side Adam Smith inspired economic pipe dreams of unencumbered markets freely moving toward the
common good are clearly and fundamentally, based on outright lies and not very well-masked,
deliberate capitalist deception (again, see Gallo Brothers for more information.) Those who proclaim the twisted gospel of
modern supply-side economic theory are generally those who have a lot to gain from its acceptance, both economically and politically.

6. No Solvency-We don’t ignore the state but involving the state in the process of the alternative
eventually guts solvency- any reforms we make to capitalism are taken back by the violent
hierarchy.

John Holloway Ph.D Political Science-University of Edinburgh and Alex Callinicos Ph.D Philosophy University of
Oxford, former Professor of Politics- University of York August 16, 2005
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5616
The trouble is that the state won't leave us alone and that is because capitalism itself, the system that
different states sustain, won't leave us alone. Capitalism today is invading the gardens of the world to
carve them up and turn them into branches of agribusiness or suburban speculation and won't leave us
alone. We cannot ignore the state, because the state is the most concentrated single form of capitalist power. This
means strategically we have to be against the state, to pursue the revolution against the state. Does this
mean we ignore the existing state and do not ever put demands on the capitalist state? No. The existing
capitalist states try to legitimise themselves to win the consent of those they oppress and exploit. This
means that if we organise effectively, we can force reforms out of capitalism. Also, if we ignore the state, that
means we will be indifferent to struggles over privatisation. For example, at the minute George Bush wants to privatise the
pensions system in the US. Do we say we don't care about that because the social security system in the US is organised by
the state? I think, no. Finally, many workers these days are employed by the state. Part of the process of privatisation
means those employees of private companies replace these workers. Often that means the service to the public is worse
and the conditions and wages of those employed by those companies get worse. But if we are not indifferent to the
state, that does not mean we can rely on it. In the long run capitalism and the state which seeks to sustain
it will seek to take back any reforms it concedes temporarily. That is what they are seeking to do at the
present time. Moreover, as John has highlighted, the state is a hierarchical organisation which organises
violence to keep the mass of society subordinated.

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A2: Perm Do Alt

1. Great- we agree- you should reject the capitalism the affirmative plan props up
and vote neg.
2. Perm is Severance- The only way they could do this is by not defending the 1AC
3. Severance destroys debate- without a stable advocacy the affirmative can always say, no
just kidding to our args. Given that they have the last speech, no neg would ever be able to win.
This is the critical internal link to fairness and education.
4. This is New Link- Commoditization- the very idea that our alternative could become the
affirmative’s by them simply saying perm: do the alt, is the idea that the affirmative can simply
buy the fruits of our labor by with their linguistic dollars. This logic is indicted by both Herod
and CPUSA.
5. Risk of A Link Goes Neg- They don’t have a Net benefit to this perm, so any risk of a link is
Neg ballot.

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A2: Perm Do all non competitive parts of the Alt

1. This perm still links- Our alt says we can’t use the structures of capitalism at all, but rather
we should hollow them out and build an alternative society to replace the capitalist system. If
we any link we solve.
2. Alt solves all the Aff Case harms this means risk of Link goes neg- That’s above.

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A2: Perm Do Alt and All parts of Plan that don’t link

1. Don’t be fooled this is just Perm do the alt: because if we win the link debate no part of
the Plan would be left to do.
2. This means the Perm has no Net Bennifit- so risk Calc goes Neg.

***Cross apply from Perm do Alt Answers or

3. Perm is Severance- The only way they could do this is by not defending the 1AC
4. Severance destroys debate- without a stable advocacy the affirmative can always say, no
just kidding to our args. Given that they have the last speech, no neg would ever be able to win.
This is the critical internal link to fairness and education.

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A2 Your Evidence is Biased

TURN – IVORY TOWER CONSERVATISM – Capitalists control the media and

universities making dissent less likely – That Lo
And, Our evidence is only under-qualified to the extent that your institutions
exclude workers, a new link – Also, intellectualism kills millions, a disad to your
standard
MARTIN 1999 (Brian, UofWollongong, Ghandi Marg, 21(3), http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/99gm.html)
A key group involved in shaping belief systems is intellectuals. Although universities are attacked by right-wing
commentators as havens for left-wing radicals, in practice most academics, journalists, teachers, policy analysts
and other knowledge workers support or accept the basic parameters of the capitalist system.
Through advertising, public relations, policy development and public commentary,
intellectuals give legitimacy to beliefs supportive of capitalism. Many of the most vehement intellectual disputes,
for example over employment, public ownership and taxation, are about how best to manage capitalism, not how to transcend it.
Intellectuals as a group are not passive tools of capitalists, though, having their own interests. Intellectuals
tend to support the state in its management of society, since this puts intellectuals in a
privileged position.[31] Close scrutiny needs to be made of any anticapitalist movement led by
intellectuals, to ensure it is not a way to put a group of them in a privileged position. Radical
intellectuals may become involved in revolutionary parties.[32] Successful socialist revolutions almost always are
led by intellectuals (Lenin and Mao are the most prominent examples) and result in power to a stratum of intellectuals.[33] However, as noted before, this
strategy has been a failure in challenging capitalism, and has led to misery for millions.

*** IF You have time

THE STATE SPREADS DISINFORMATION TO ENSURE CAPITAL’S SUSTAINANCE

– YOUR EVIDENCE IS MORE BIASED THAN OURS.
MARTIN 2001 (Brian, Nonviolence versus capitalism, 2001)
Information -- including records, computer programs, correspondence, and much else -- plays an ever
larger role in capitalist economies. This causes additional factors to come into play that make
exposure of capitalist oppression more difficult. Governments use "disinformation" -- intentional telling
of lies and half-truths -- to advance their interests. Corporations and governments use public relations
to give their messages the right "spin," both to boost favourable images and block damaging stories.
Advertising fosters a mind-set in which it is natural to assume that commodities are the solution to
problems, hindering critical thinking about the whole commodity system. Hollywood filmed
entertainment creates attractive but deceptive images of what life can be like. The result is an
information-rich environment that is immensely enticing. Contrary viewpoints, although sometimes
censored, are often tolerated on the margins, giving the impression that there is a genuine
marketplace of ideas.

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A2 China is Communist

Don’t believe the hype – China isn’t communist, its a central part to global
capitalism
Achcar 05 [Gilbert, International Viewpoint, “China – Capitalist Superpower?” June 2005]

What are the implications of China’s integration into the global capitalist economy for its geopolitical importance? There
are several implications. Let’s just mention a few crucial ones: on the one hand, the more China plays a key role
in the world capitalist market the more this market becomes dependent on the state of the
Chinese economy and the more global capitalism will have a stake in the stability of China.
China has become a huge market as well as a huge exporter: it thus belongs to a completely different
category than Iran, for instance. Washington would be quite happy with a destabilization of Iran, which would not
necessarily affect Iranian oil exports, whereas a seriously destabilized China would usher into a very dangerous crisis for
the global capitalist economy. On the other hand, China is increasingly dependent not only on the US market, but also on
the good standing of the US economy, as it holds already considerable amounts of US dollars, bonds and obligations, and
is starting to move into the US stock market. This means also that the Chinese government will act more and
more in solidarity with the global capitalist system — contrarily to the illusions of those who believe that
China wil be the next USSR in a renewed global bipolarity. In reality, China deserves much more than Russia to be on the
G summit of rich countries.

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A2 Russian Revolution failed (1/2)

Lenin’s Revolution wasn’t genuine – His regime fell back into the same capitalist
mindset and policies that the Party criticized.

Avrich 84 [Paul, The Russian Review, Vol. 43 1984. “Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin.”//ct]
During Lenin's years in power, from October 1917 until his death in January 1924, a number of groups
took shape within the Russian Communist Party-the Democratic Centralists and the Workers' Opposition
are the best known-which criticized the Bolshevik leadership for abandoning the principles of the
revolution. The revolution, as sketched by Lenin in The State and Revolution and other works
had promised the destruction of the centralized bureaucratic state and its replacement with a
new social order, modeled on the Paris Commune of 1871, in which the direct democracy of the workers would be realized. The
cardinal feature of this "commune state," as Lenin called it, was to be its repudiation of bureaucratic authority. The workers themselves
would administer the government through grass-roots organizations, of which the soviets were the foremost example. Workers' control,
through factory committees and trade unions, would function similarly in economic life, replacing private ownership and management
with a system of industrial democracy and self-administration in which the rank and file would shape their own destiny. Mistakes would
be made, Lenin conceded, but the workers would learn by experience. "The most important thing," he declared, "is to instill in the
oppressed and laboring masses confidence in their own power."' Such was Lenin's vision before October. Once in power,
however, he saw things from a different perspective. Overnight, as it were, the Bolsheviks
were transformed from a revolutionary into a governing party, from an organization that
encouraged spontaneous action against existing institutions into one that sought to contain it.
As time went by, moreover, they faced a growing array of difficulties-civil war, economic dislocation, rising popular
discontent, sheer physical exhaustion-that threatened their very survival. Lenin and the Central Committee sought to
come to terms with the problems that crowded in around them. In the process, theories were modified or
abandoned, principles compromised or shelved. The retention of power dwarfed all other objectives. The
party of opposition and revolt had become the party of discipline and order. Under mounting
pressures, the Bolshevik leadership assumed an increasingly dictatorial position. One by one, the goals of 1917
proletarian democracy, social equality, workers' self-management-were thrust aside. The institutions of the new society
were recast in an authoritarian mold, and a new bureaucratic edifice was constructed, with its attendant corruption and red
tape. In government and party, in industry and army, hierarchy and privilege were restored. For
collective management of the factories Lenin substituted one-man management and strict labor
discipline. He reinstated higher pay for specialists and managers, along with piece rates and
other discarded features of capitalism. Soviets, trade unions, and factory committees were transformed into
tools of the state apparatus. Authority was increasingly concentrated in the hands of a party elite.
Such policies could not fail to arouse opposition. What had they to do with the original goals of the party?
Was it for this that the revolution had been made? Questions of this sort troubled a growing number of Bolshevik stalwarts. Unable to
remain silent, dissidents on the left wing of the party raised their voices in protest. Among them was Gavriii ll'ich Miasnikov, a
metalworker from the Urals and a Bolshevik since 1906. One of the most vocal of the early oppositionists, he is also one of the most
obscure. Yet during the early 1920s he blazed into prominence as a critic of Lenin's policies, posing questions of the utmost importance:
Who is to decide what is in the interests of the workers? What methods are permissible in resolving disputes among revolutionaries? At
what point does honest criticism of party officials become "deviation" or insubordination? Miasnikov, seeing his deepest revolutionary
aspirations thwarted, evolved an elaborate and penetrating critique of the dictatorship in the making, pointing to dangers whose full
consequences were not yet apparent.

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A2 Russian Revolution Failed (2/2)

Their turns aren’t responsive – Russia’s revolution failed b/c it wasn’t truly anti-
capitalist – the status quo proves that Russia is falling back into a capitalist-run
economy that benefits only private corporations

Radygin 04 [Alexander, Doctor of Science (Economics), is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for the
Economy in Transition. Russia en Route to State Capitalism? April 13//ct]

First, the Russian president has his personal opinion about the proper place of a big private company within the Russian
state; actually President Putin expressed his views to the European media during his visit to Italy and the EU summit in
November 2003. Second, even though the construction of a ‘federal power vertical’ has been quite successful, regional
leaders (particularly those having succeeded in building their own financial and industrial groups) are still able to resist the
federal authorities. Finally, many measures have been definitely positive, namely the attempts to radically reform the
federal unitary enterprise system, liquidate Russian ‘domestic offshore centers’ (soon after the amendments to Article 25
of the Tax Code took effect on January 1, 2004), limit the application of tolling schemes, etc. Since the beginning of
the new millennium, the following trends have been prevailing: the state authorities’ property
expansion, attempts to establish (broaden) control over the main financial flows in the
Russian economy and, broadly speaking, guaranteeing that businesses depend upon government
institutions – despite any decisions concerning deregulation, administrative reform and privatization
plans.
This policy may result in the formation of a model for ‘state capitalism’ characterized by a
combination of the following:
1. significantly expanding the sphere of application of the standard mechanisms of state
entrepreneurship;
2. creating favorable conditions for the functioning of a narrow range of loyal private
companies which have acquired a reputation for being ‘state-oriented’ and relying on the support of
the highly centralized state machinery that is controlled by the President (including the legislature and the judiciary);
3. using (selectively) show trials and punitive actions against economic entities that fail to fit into
the model;
4. drawing a dividing line between the national interests of Russia and the inviolability of the
private property principle.
It is worth noting here that the notion of ‘state capitalism’ in its traditional sense does not
embrace all of the specifics of the model under construction. ‘Bureaucratic capitalism’ would,
perhaps, be a more accurate term with respect to the realities of modern Russia. The current system
differs essentially from the so called ‘oligarchic capitalism’ of the 1990s, when the relationship between big business and the authorities
was based on the direct involvement of major financial and industrial groups in formulating the most important political decisions.
Another characteristic was that they were imposing upon the authorities those decisions that yielded direct commercial benefits.

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A2: People Are Greedy

Capitalism fosters greed - this destroys any possibility for true compassion
towards others.
Jenson, 7.
(Robert, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. April 30, “An
Unsustainable System Anti-Capitalism in Five Minutes”

There is a theory behind contemporary capitalism. We're told that because we are greedy, self-
interested animals, an economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior if we are to
thrive economically.
Are we greedy and self-interested? Of course. At least I am, sometimes. But we also just as obviously are
capable of compassion and selflessness. We certainly can act competitively and aggressively, but we
also have the capacity for solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging. Our actions are
certainly rooted in our nature, but all we really know about that nature is that it is widely variable. In situations
where compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where
competitiveness and aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior.
Why is it that we must choose an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects
of our nature and strengthens the most inhuman? Because, we're told, that's just the way people are.
What evidence is there of that? Look around, we're told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we
see greed and the pursuit of self-interest. So, the proof that these greedy, self-interested
aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system that rewards greed and
self-interested behavior, people often act that way. Doesn't that seem just a bit circular?

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A2: “The alternative will spur a counter-revolution”

1. This proves how wretched capitalism is. No, we aren’t advocating that we will go out shooting
people who disagree, but that capitalists are so afraid of losing power that they will literally
exterminate who get in the way of their practices. We know the revolution will be a struggle, we
told you in our 1NC that capitalists will try to use brutality and coercion like they always have.
Only when the capitalist perpetuates this against us that we will stand up and defend ourselves.

2. More evidence-

Malcolm X 63 (“Message to the Grassroots,” delivered on 10 Nov, 1963 in Detroit, MI,

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/malcolmxgrassroots.htm)

A revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise.

Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting
around here like a knot on the wall, saying, "I'm going to love these folks no matter how much they
hate me." No, you need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock
arms, as Reverend Cleage was pointing out beautifully, singing "We Shall Overcome"? Just
tell me. You don't do that in a revolution. You don't do any singing; you're too busy
swinging. It's based on land. A revolutionary wants land so he can set up his own nation, an
independent nation. These Negroes aren't asking for no nation. They're trying to crawl back on the
plantation.

3. Herod also says this will not be an overnight war with tanks, but an everyday struggle to deny
capitalism.

4. We control root cause of war. That’s above.

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A2: Alternative Energy Already Coming

1. Their evidence assumes the status quo, not a world post-alternative. Of course alternative
energy is coming now, that’s the problem with capitalism.
2. The alternative solves this- we will work alongside the current system until our civilization is
built and ready to replace what we’ve gutted out.
3. This means you link more- you had a choice to act within the current system, or say no to
capitalism, you chose to go with the flow, this is why we have see the impacts of our CPUSA
evidence. When you don’t stand up against what the corporations are doing, they exploit
workers to no end.
4. Another link- saying that “it’s coming, we can’t stop it” is a reason why the AFF links and the
perm can’t solve. Changing our lifestyle in the context of the alternative means rejecting what’s
happening in the squo, not accepting it.
5. Li says that this is the typical line of argument used by the capitalists. They can’t see how the
alternative would work since they are in the system.

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A2: Nuclear War outweighs

1. We control the root cause- a. alternative solves for nuclear war beause capitalism and the need
to make a profit through war created nuclear weaponry. And we solve the motive for wanting to
go to war. Herod says we must change our need to seek capital gain and live autonomously. B.
the impacts of the 1AC are inevitable in a capitalist world. Even if there’s one scenario they
don’t mention and don’t present in their 1AC, this is a reason why the alt is preferable.

2. This should not be a game of who has more nuclear war scenarios, we know ONE nuclear war
causes extinction or something very close to extinction, and therefore we should be concerned
with stopping the structural causes which allow that war to exist.

3. The past 20 years of debate prove anything can lead to nuclear war- capitalism is a systemic
impact, this means you vote on probability first.

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A2: Capitalism Inevitable

1. This is completely non-responsive to our presentation of an alternative. Capitalism is inevitable to

the extent that we sit around and let it take over our lives. Our Herod evidence clearly says that
revolutions don’t just happen, you have to make them happen.
2. Now it’s a question of alternative solvency. Herod says we can gut cap and replace it with
something new.
3. CAPITALISM IS NEITHER INEVITABLE NOR IDEAL – ALTERNATE ORGANIZING
PRINCIPLES EXIST

MARTIN 2001 (Brian, Nonviolence versus capitalism, 2001)

Actually, it is absurd to say that capitalism is inevitable. This is really just an excuse for doing
nothing to examine and promote improvements and alternatives. The way society is organised
is due to the actions of people, and these actions can change. History shows a tremendous
range of possibilities for human patterns of interaction. Furthermore, technological
development is creating new options for the structuring of work, communication and
interaction. Considering that capitalism is only a few hundred years old and continues to
change, and that there is nothing approaching agreement that the current system is ideal, the
assumption of inevitability is very weak indeed.
Defenders of capitalism assume that there are only two basic options: either capitalism or
some sort of system based on authoritarian government, either state socialism or some other
sort of dictatorship. (Capitalism is assumed to go hand in hand with representative
government, but this ignores those countries with capitalist economies and authoritarian
politics, including fascism and military dictatorship.) But of course there are more than these
two options. There are other ways of organising economic and social life. The challenge is to
figure out which ones are worthwhile and worth pursuing.
Even setting aside options that are completely different, capitalism is by no means a fixed and
final system. It will be transformed and will transform itself in coming decades. It could become
better or it could become worse, depending on what people do about it.

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A2: Util

1. Cross-apply Dillion 99, calculation is the zero Point of the holocaust.

2. Their utilitarian calculus only disguises the totalitarian impulse behind their
decision making.
Zizek and Daly 2k4 (Slavoj and Glyn, Professor of Sociology at Univ. of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts
and Social Sciences, University College Northampton. Conversations with Zizek, pg. 132)
Despite this tradition, you maintain that today’s (Western) societies are generally oriented towards
utilitarian ethics. This form of ethics not only leads in a different direction from that of Kantian-Sadean
ethics but also possesses totalitarian propensities. Can you comment further on this?
The true opposite of both Sade and Kanth is utilitarian ethics – the entire line from Bentham to Peter
Singer – precisely because utilitarian ethics is the ethics of non-autonomy. The public position of
utilitarian ethics is that each individual has the right or the natural propensity to follow his or her own
pleasures. And this sounds nice: why shouldn’t I have the right to maximize pleasures and not to be
terrorized by some abstract moral injunction? But there is an underside to utilitarian ethics. The true
wager of utilitarian ethics is that we are not autonomous: we try to maximize our pleasure, and this is
a mechanism which determines our behavior. And the one who knows this is in a position to control
and manipulate our behaviour. So in utilitarian ethics there was always this totalitarian/social
engineering aspect. The idea of the utilitarian subject was never simply a neutral cognitive stance.
For Bentham, the central concern is with how a wise ruler should take into account what moves
people in order to organize a society where people would be conditioned to act in such a way that
their acts will bring as much good as possible not only to themselves but to society. The idea being
that if I know what moves you, if I know the causes that determine how you will act, then I can
manipulate you according to these causes; I can master you. So again, what we have is this radical
opposition: utilitarianism as the ethics of non-autonomy versus autonomy.

*** Read if you have time

Utilitaranism means you vote neg – structurally impossible to achieve greatest
happiness for the greatest number under capitalism
Meszaros 95 (Beyond Capital, www.marxists.org/archive /meszaros/works/beyond-capital /ch03-2.htm
A great deal has been written about the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ concerning ‘pleasure’ and the
‘desirable’ in utilitarian discourse. However, the real fallacy of utilitarian philosophy – fully embraced in
one form or another by the representatives of marginal utility theory – is to talk about ‘the greatest
happiness of the greatest number’ in capitalist society. For the suggestion that anything even
remotely approaching the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings can be
achieved under the rule of capital, without even examining let alone radically changing the
established power relations, constitutes a monumental vacuous assumption, whatever the subjective
intentions of the major utilitarian philosophers behind it. Marginal utility theory, instead of acting in this
respect as a corrective to Bentham and Mill, makes everything worse by asserting not only that it is
possible to maximise every individual’s utility within the established framework of production and
distribution, but also that the desired maximisation is actually being accomplished in the ‘normal’
processes of self-equilibrating capitalist economy. People who deny the reality of such a happy state
of affairs are dismissed even by the enlightened paternalist Alfred Marshall by saying that ‘they nearly
always divert energies from sober work for the public good, and are thus mischievous in the long run’.
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A2: Econ Advantages

1. Free market capitalism destroys financial markets

Korten 98 David holds MBA and PhD degrees from Stanford Business School and taught for five years at Harvard
Business School. The FEASTA Review, November 1998.

We are often told that deregulation and economic globalisation are necessary to free the market. In fact, efficient market
function depends on both regulation and borders. What deregulation and economic globalisation actually free are the
forces of capitalism's attack on democracy and the
market. Without regulation and borders, financial markets merge into a single unregulated
electronic system able to create money with reckless abandon through bank lending to
support speculative excesses. Similarly, global corporations consolidate and concentrate their
power through mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances beyond the reach of any state.
Economic power becomes formally delinked from concern for any person or place as
absentee ownership and its dysfunctions becomes institutionalised on a global scale through the
aggregation of savings into professionally managed retirement, trust, and mutual funds that have a legal fiduciary
responsibility to maximise financial returns to their clients without regard to social and environmental consequences.

2. Recent Financial crisis proves our argument- AIG and other financial institutions
where insuring banks mortgages they gave out, literally creating imaginary markets.

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A2: Alt Vague

1. No-cross apply analysis from the alt debate

2. New Link- DEMANDS FOR A MORE SPECIFIC ALTERNATIVE BUY INTO THE
FANTASY OF CAPITALIST CONTROL

HERSHOCK 1999 (Peter, fellow in the Asian Studies Development Center at the East West Center, Reinventing
the Wheel, p. 272-282)

How things will change as a result--what new circumstances we shall arrive at--cannot be said in
advance. The school of our choice may not accept us, the job we want may not appear, the person we're madly in love with may not return our
affections. All that can be ensured is that the direction in which our narration carries us will be consonant
with the orientation of our attention and appreciation. After all, the interdependence of all things means that there can be no
real boundaries between our desires and their realization, between us and what we appreciate. `Subjects' and `objects', like `selves' and `others', are
abstractions, not irreducible entities. The critical importance of not confusing directions and destinations--like that between values and beings or desires
and wants--is crucial to Huineng's teaching that enlightenment is not a state of consciousness or experiential release but rather a function of our
readiness to awaken, to live a life fully committed to "according with the situation, responding as needed." Such a life does not have to be put off until we
Enlightenment is not about "getting things right" or
can appropriately change (and so control) our circumstances or our `selves'.
always "being correct," but about righting things that have gone awry and correcting the orientation of
what has gone astray. In spite of the Buddhist claim that each moment of enlightenment is the birth of an entire buddha-realm, this is
not some gargantuan undertaking that might well require marshaling an entire universe's worth of
resources to realize. It is what naturally occurs when we simply but continually relinquish our horizons
for what we see as relevant, what we see as our responsibility, and what we see as the extent of our
readiness. In short, all that is required to change the world is an unwavering willingness to express a
true beginner's mind. Still, we want to know how this is to be done. How are we to resist the centripetal momentum of our
Janus-faced tendency toward both narcissism and nihilism? How are we to free ourselves from the yoke of the new
colonialism? And how do we feed ourselves in the meantime? Do we have to immediately burn our
computers and televisions? Do we have to use our microwaves and our answering machines for landfill? Which institutions
should we take immediate aim on and destroy, and which can we keep for a while longer-at least until
our new modes of commerce and communication, our new patterns of entertainment and intimacy have fully taken root?
Questions like this cry out for answers. They are the frantic efforts of the controlling ego to retain its
"charge," to remain central to the way things are and will come to be. And from a Buddhist perspective, it is
precisely this expressed hope of "making things change for the better" that stands between us and a
wholly unexpected and dramatically meaningful narration. Wanting answers to such questions is the
last bastion of the valorization of control.

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A2 Socialism Indicts
Their socialism bad arguments don’t assume the new way the alternative works

Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy renowned authors and editors at The Monthly Review September 2000
http://www.monthlyreview.org/900editr.htm
Some wags claim that it is the conservatives who fear socialism, while the radicals believe that
capitalism will last forever. Conservatives, they say, fear widespread popular discontent, while radicals
abandon hope of a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. An exaggeration? Of course. Even so, this
witticism is not inappropriate. Many on the left have indeed retreated from class and a vision of a
democratic, egalitarian socialism. The important social issues of our day—race, gender, and the
environment—more often than not are divorced from the role of class structure. The rule of the capitalist
class and the class struggle are shoved to the back burner. Whether consciously or not, the implicit
assumption underlying the retreat from class is that capitalism will somehow or other go on and on
as it creates miraculous new technology. Best then to stick to making those adjustments in social
conditions that the system will presumably allow.
This retreat from class is often reinforced by the categorical dismissal of the possibility of socialism.
The evidence for this comes from a superficial and ahistorical examination of the kind of socialism
that emerged in the Soviet bloc. Thus, the contradictions of “socialism from above” and the
emergence of privileged sectors of society disappear from view. Ignored are the wide differences
among the people, between elite and masses, between town and country, and between less developed and
advantaged regions. Also not taken into account is the interest of the ruling elite in new property
relations as a way of ensuring their and their children's privileged positions. Instead of observing
the tensions arising from conflicting interests, a leading tendency among radicals is to zero in on the
presumably inevitable failure of central planning as the essential cause of the collapse.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

A2 Intersectionality

Intersectional identities will be consumed without a universal critique of capital

Stacey Alaimo, 2000 (MELUS, “Multiculturalism and Epistemic Rupture: The Vanishing Acts of Guillermo
Gomez-Pena and Alfredo Vea Jr.”, 6/22, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-67532180.html)
Multicultural soundbites do nothing to promote cross-cultural understanding; instead, they offer up easy-to-
digest tidbits for consumption. As bell hooks argues, "the commodification of difference promotes paradigms of
consumption wherein whatever difference the Other inhabits is eradicated, via exchange, by a consumer
cannibalism that not only displaces the Other but denies the significance of that Other's history through a
process of decontextualization' ("Eating the Other" 31). Decontextualization whitewashes bloody histories and
current systemic inequities in order to offer up a banquet of cultures that can be blithely consumed. As an angry
white woman in John Sayles's Lonestar retorts during a heated debate about whose version of history should be taught in the schools, "If you're talking
food and music I have no problem with that, but if you're talking about who did what to whom" forget it. Indeed, a "utopian discourse of sameness,"
Guillermo Gomez-Pena argues, helps us to forget: "if we merely hold hands and dance the mambo together, we can effectively abolish ideology, sexual
and cultural politics, and class differences" ("The Border" 57). The mambo dream induces historical amnesia and diverts our attention from systemic
oppression by substituting cultural inclusion for social change. As E. San Juan, Jr. argues, "multiculturalism may be conceived as the latest reincarnation
of the assimilationist drive to pacify unruly subaltern groups" (60).

Intersectional identities intermesh with consumer capitalism. The Anglo is still at

the center of knowledge trying to know other peoples
Stacey Alaimo, 2000 (MELUS, “Multiculturalism and Epistemic Rupture: The Vanishing Acts of Guillermo
Gomez-Pena and Alfredo Vea Jr.”, 6/22, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-67532180.html)
While there have been many thoughtful and incisive critiques of the politics of multiculturalism, little attention has been paid to the
epistemological framework that undergirds it. Multiculturalism has so readily become a paradigm of mastery and
consumption not only because of its obvious ties to global systems of consumer capitalism, but also
because as a curricular framework it intermeshes with a dominant epistemological paradigm that
seeks to distance, order, and control its "objects" of knowledge. Despite its celebration of "other
cultures," the hegemonic form of multiculturalism places an Anglo consciousness at the center as the
knower and marginalizes other peoples and cultures as static objects of knowledge. The consciousness of the
knower remains unmarked and thus transcendentally confident about the clarity its perspective affords. This paradigm both insists that Students need to
learn more about "other cultures" and encourages them to feel that they can readily master--if, indeed, they haven't already--what Native Americans
believe or what "Asians" are like. "Culture" so readily substitutes for and masks the workings of race, class, and gender, as E. San Juan Jr. argues,
partly because "culture" fits so neatly into epistemologies that erase the positionality of the knower. Whereas the far-reaching, criss-crossing matrix of
race, class, gender, and sexuality enmeshes, positions, even constitutes all its subjects, the paradigm of knowledge as mastery over a delimited object
or distant "field" allows one to "learn" about some other circumscribed "culture" without any ramifications for one's own subject position.(3)

119
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
A2: State Good

Their appeal to the state as a source of salvation is the root cause of war and
genocide
Beres 94, Professor of International Law in the Department of Political Science at Purdue
University, 1994 (Louis Rene, Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law, Spring, 1994, p.
13-14)
The State requires its members to be serviceable instruments, suppressing every glimmer of
creativity and imagination in the interest of a plastic mediocrity. Even political liberty within particular States does
nothing to encourage opposition to war or to genocide in other States. Since "patriotic self-sacrifice" is demanded even
of "free" peoples, the expectations of inter-State competition may include war and the mass
killing of other peoples. In the final analysis, war and genocide are made possible by the
surrender of Self to the State. Given that the claims of international law are rendered impotent by Realpolitik, this commitment to so-
called power politics is itself an expression of control by the herd. Without such control, individuals could discover
authentic bases of personal value inside themselves, depriving the State of its capacity to
make corpses of others.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
A2: Realism Inevitable

1. Realism is leaves too many factors unexplained - it has nothing to say about the increased role of
transnational businesses, non-state actors such as terrorist organizations, international regulatory agencies like
IMF or WTO or the erosion of borders that has coincided with globalization.

2. Realism is descriptive not prescriptive- none of their analysis explains why the action of past historical events
will be indicative of future decisions states make.

3. Mearsheimer and other realists are wrong- states don’t act always act rationally, they can act morally.
Rosecrance, 2.
(Richard N is a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the principal investigator of the ucla Carnegie Project on
Globalization, Self-Determination and Terrorism. “War and Peace” World Politics 55.1 (2002) 137-166, Project Muse)

In response to these assertions, however, one can argue that expensive Western interventions to reduce civil conflict
in the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti, and elsewhere can scarcely be accounted to the normal calculations of power or
promptings of interest. 22 None of them were designed to oppose another great power. Few of them were in the strict
interest of the interveners, unless one tautologically includes humanitarianism as a part of self-interest. 23 For
Mearsheimer, however, the narrow strictures of national egoism determine all action.

Yet a closer reading of history would suggest different conclusions. Nations do have choices that are actuated by more
than considerations of rational power. The major difficulty with Mearsheimer's whole analysis is that he fails to
recognize that there are powerful but nonaggressive states. The United States and Britain really have been less
aggressive, ceteris paribus, than many other equally powerful countries. 24 And some smaller states like Vietnam in the
1970s or eighteenth-century Prussia have been more aggressive than their power base would appear to permit. In
Mearsheimer's hands all states are equally aggressive, leaving us with the conclusion that Monaco would really
like to conquer the globe. But we know in the real world that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were more
aggressive than most other states. 25 Some [End Page 143] strong states, by contrast, are not only self-abnegatory but
actually very generous. A state can decide to help another state even though its only long-term benefit may come in the
form of some indefinable "good will." 26 States can even give other great powers their most high-level military technology.
27
If nations are free to choose their actions independently of the compulsions of interest, those choices can be
evaluated from both moral and legal points of view. There remains a realm in which moral judgment can operate.

4. Capitalism Destroys ethics-Reduces worldview to mechanics which makes life meaningless

Daly 96 (Herman, U of MD-Public Affairs, Beyond Growth, p. )

The desirability of aggregate growth is limited by the corrosive effects on moral standards resulting
from the very attitudes that foster growth, such as glorification of self-interest and a scientistic-
technocratic worldview. On the demand side of commodity markets, growth is stimulated by greed
and acquisitiveness, intensified beyond the "natural" endowment from original sin by the multibillion-
dollar advertising industry. On the supply side, technocratic scientism proclaims the possibility of
limitless expansion and preaches a reductionistic, mechanistic philosophy which, in spite of its
success as a research program, has serious shortcomings as a worldview. As a research program it very
effectively furthers power and control, but as a worldview it leaves no room for purpose, much less for
any distinction between good and bad purposes. "Anything goes" is a convenient moral slogan for
the growth economy because it implies that anything also sells. To the extent that growth has a well-
defined purpose, then it is limited by the satisfaction of that purpose. Expanding power and shrinking
purpose lead to uncontrolled growth for its own sake, which is wrecking the moral and social order
just as surely as it is wrecking the ecological order (Hirsch 1976).

5. Cross-Apply Dillion- their system of evaluation leads creates the Zero point of the
Holocaust.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Cap Collapsing
The Collapse of Capitalism is inevitable- It is impossible to revive the system because the current climate of fear
has created a self-fulfilling downward spiral. High food prices, the bailout, and high gas prices are the outgrowth
of a failed system.
Senner, 9/26/08.
(Madis, “Why the Bailout Will Fail” CounterPunch.org,)

The bailout is an attempt to bring confidence back to the lending market that has seized up in fear and is not making loans. The concern is
that the cessation of liquidity and lending will exacerbate the meltdown on Wall Street and ripple broadly into the
economy. The Paulson plan fails to address the issue of fear that is behind the crisis.
History shows the Plan is Doomed to Fail
Over the past few weeks we have been consistently told that we face an epic crisis comparable to the 1929 stock market crash with its ensuing Great Depression of the
1930’s. So why are the lessons of the Great Depression being ignored?
During the Great Depression lending similarly dried up and confidence swooned. Lending and borrowing came to a standstill. The
Lesson of the Great Depression was that it is next to impossible to get institutions to lend and companies/consumers
to borrow once fear sets in. Renowned economist John Maynard Keynes said that trying to get banks to lend and borrowers to borrow during a banking
crisis is like trying to “push on a string”—in other words it is impossible. Similarly in the 1990’s the Bank of Japan found trying to
resuscitate lending in the wake of the Japan’s stock market collapse was impossible. The Bank of Japan even went
to the extreme of making interest rates negative, in other words they paid you to borrow, and it proved ineffectual.
While pushing on a string refers to monetary policy, which the Fed has kept lose, and the Paulson plan is about buying assets they are similar because they are attempts
to get banks to lend. Buying the bad assets of institutions is going to at best provide a temporary return to lending.
Ultimately you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.
“All we to Fear is Fear Itself” In his first inaugural speech FDR voiced the greatest challenge facing America and the world at the time when he said, “All we have to
fear is fear itself”. Today fear has again set into the financial markets and is beginning to spread. Turning this tide is next
to impossible.
The market runs from the extremes of greed to fear and once a mentality sets in its stays for a very, very long time.
Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Mundell described the renitence of consumers to buy things in the 1930’s as
a deflation (falling prices) mentality. Because demand fell off a cliff retailers were forced to reduce prices to sell their
products. Consumers eventually realized that by postponing their purchases they could save money. As they held
off buying retailers were forced to reduce prices further to entice buyers. This created a self fulfilling spiral
pushing prices lower that eventually had many buyers forgoing buying totally.
Admit that Reaganomics and Free Markets Don’t Work
The unfortunate thing is that the Bush Administration
and Republicans refuse to admit that the problem we are suffering
from today is the failure of free market and Reaganomic ideology. The cause of our current problems from the
meltdown on Wall Street, to higher gas prices, to higher food prices can be traced squarely to the failure of free
market/neoliberalism/Reaganomics ideology.( See “Higher Gas Prices: The Failure of Free Markets and Reaganomics)
Government needs to regulate and get rid of the excesses created by the free market’s binge of the past few decades. Bold and aggressive initiatives such as the
government seizing control of financial institutions are needed at this time. Fear has set in and throwing good money at bad as we have done successively with bailouts
since the 1987 stock market crash have not worked. Bailouts create a moral hazard and reckless behavior that necessitate further
bailouts where eventually you reach a point where the size of the bailout bill is insurmountable. Today we are being
forced to fork over a massive $700 billion.
Capitalism is failing again as it did during the 1930’s with the Great Depression. They say “fool me once shame on
you, fool me twice shame on me.” How many more times will we allow our self to be fooled? Free market ideology
does not work! Bold initiatives that empower “we the people” are needed.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

Collapse inevitable
Growth necessitates inequality—the profit motive ensures the rich-poor gap will only increase, making
system-wide catastrophe inevitable.
Dr Trainer, is an academic in the Department of Social Work, Social Policy and Sociology, University of New South Wales
and the author of numerous books on the environment and population issues. May 29, 2003 (Ted, OUR ECONOMIC
SYSTEM: WHY IT MUST BE SCRAPPED. http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/09c-Our-Economic-
System.html#Unemployment)

Our economy is extremely productive. It churns out enormous quantities of goods, many of them luxuries. But at the same
time there is huge unsatisfied need. In Australia thousands of people want basic housing. We need more and better
hospitals. Millions of Australians live under or just above the poverty line, going without things most people regard as
basic. One billion people in the world are extremely poor. Why do these needs go unmet?
The answer is, because it is not an economy in which we ask what needs producing and then organise our
productive capacity to meet the need. It is an economy in which the productive machinery is owned by a
very few people and they decide what to produce by asking what will make most money for themselves.
They can always make most money producing relatively luxurious or more expensive things to sell to people who have
higher incomes than they could by producing the cheapest possible necessities for the most needy people, or by developing
the industries that are best for the society as a whole.
It cannot be overemphasised that the thing which motivates our economy is the drive to accumulate capital, i.e., the
determination of those with capital to invest in whatever will make most profit, in order to have even more capital next
year to again invest where it will make as much money as possible, in a never-ending spiral. Sometimes this process
generates benefits for all, but the main argument in this document is that an economy based on this principle will
in time work less and less well for people in general and will lead us into catastrophic problems.

123
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

AT: Turn – Affirmative = socialism (1/2)

Only the alternative can solve – capitalism makes the affirmative harms inevitable and guarantees
extinction. No single policy has the power to overcome this.
John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and Editor of the Monthly
Review, et al., with Brett Clark, Assistant Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University, and
Richard York, coeditor of Organization & Environment and Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of Oregon, 2008 (“Ecology: The Moment of Truth—An Introduction,” Monthly Review: An
Independent Socialist Magazine, Volume 60, Issue 3, July/August, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via Academic Search Elite, p. 6-9 // MUDI—BB)
None of this should surprise us. Capitalism since its birth, as Paul Sweezy wrote in "Capitalism and the Environment,"
has been "a juggernaut driven by the concentrated energy of individuals and small groups single-
mindedly pursuing their own interests, checked only by their mutual competition, and controlled in the
short run by the impersonal forces of the market and in the longer run, when the market fails, by
devastating crises." The inner logic of such a system manifests itself in the form of an incessant drive for
economic expansion for the sake of class-based profits and accumulation. Nature and human labor are
exploited to the fullest to fuel this juggernaut, while the destruction wrought on each is externalized so as
to not fall on the system's own accounts.
"Implicit in the very concept of this system," Sweezy continued, "are interlocked and enormously powerful
drives to both creation and destruction. On the plus side, the creative drive relates to what humankind can get out
of nature for its own uses; on the negative side, the destructive drive bears most heavily on nature's capacity to respond to
the demands placed on it. Sooner or later, of course, these two drives are con- tradictory and incompatible." Capitalism's
overexploitation of nature's resource taps and waste sinks eventually produces the negative result of
undermining both, first on a merely regional, but later on a world and even planetary basis (affecting the
climate itself). Seriously addressing environmental crises requires "a reversal, not merely a slowing down,
of the underlying trends of the last few centuries." This, however, cannot be accomplished without
economic regime change.11
With climate change now more and more an establishment concern, and attempts to avert it now
increasingly institutionalized in the established order, some have pointed to the "death of
environmentalism" as an oppositional movement in society.12 However, if some environmentalists have moved
toward capitalist-based strategies in the vain hope of saving the planet by these means, others have moved in the opposite
direction: toward a critique of capitalism as inherently ecologically destructive. A case in point is James Gustave Speth.
Speth has been called the "ultimate insider" within the environmental movement. He served as chairman of the Council on
Environmental Quality under President Jimmy Carter, founded the World Resources Institute, co-founded the Natural
Resources [end page 6] Defense Council, was a senior adviser in Bill Clinton's transition team, and administered the
United Nations Development Programme from 1993 to 1999. At present he is dean of the prestigious Yale School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies. Speth is a winner of Japan's Blue Planet Prize.
Recently, however, in his Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to
Sustainability (2008), Speth has emerged as a devastating critic of capitalism's destruction of the environment. In this
radical rethinking, he has chosen to confront the full perils brought on by the present economic system, with its pursuit of
growth and accumulation at any cost. "Capitalism as we know it today," he writes, "is incapable of sustaining the
environment." The crucial problem from an environmental perspective, he believes, is exponential economic
growth, which is the driving element of capitalism. Little hope can be provided in this respect by so-
called "dematerialization" (the notion that growth can involve a decreasing impact on the environment), since it can
be shown that the expansion of output overwhelms all increases in efficiency in throughput of materials
and energy. Hence, one can only conclude that "right now…growth is the enemy of [the] environment.
Economy and environment remain in collision." Here the issue of capitalism becomes unavoidable.
"Economic growth is modern capitalism's principal and most prized product." Speth favorably quotes Samuel
Bowles and Richard Edwards's Understanding Capitalism, which bluntly stated: "Capitalism is differentiated from
other economic systems by its drive to accumulate, its predisposition toward change, and its built-in
tendency to expand."
The principal environmental problem for Speth then is capitalism as the "operating system" of the modern
economy. "Today's corporations have been called 'externalizing machines.'" Indeed, "there are
fundamental biases in capitalism that favor the present over the future and the private over the public."
Quoting the system's own defenders, Robert Samuleson and William Nordhaus, in the seventeenth (2001) edition of their
textbook on Macroeconomics, Speth points out that capitalism is the quintessential "Ruthless Economy,"
engaged "in the relentless pursuit of profits."

(continued)

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
AT: Turn – Affirmative = socialism (2/2)
(continued)

Building on this critique, Speth goes on to conclude in his book that: (1) "today's system of political economy,
referred to here as modern capitalism, is destructive of the environment, and not in a minor way but in a way
that profoundly threatens the planet"; (2) "the affluent societies have reached or soon will reach the point
where, as Keynes put it, the economic problem has been solved...there is enough to go around"; (3) "in the
more affluent societies, modern capitalism is no longer enhancing [end page 7] human well-being"; (4) "the
international social movement for change—which refers to itself as 'the irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism'—
is stronger than many imagine and will grow stronger; there is a coalescing of forces: peace, social justice,
community, ecology, feminism—a movement of movements"; (5) "people and groups are busily planting the
seeds of change through a host of alternative arrangements, and still other attractive directions for
upgrading to a new operating system have been identified"; (6) "the end of the Cold War...opens the
door...for the questioning of today's capitalism."
Speth does not actually embrace socialism, which he associates, in the Cold War manner, with Soviet-type societies in
their most regressive form. Thus he argues explicitly for a "nonsocialist" alternative to capitalism. Such a system would
make use of markets (but not the self-regulating market society of traditional capitalism) and would promote a "New
Sustainability World" or a "Social Greens World" (also called "Eco-Communalism") as depicted by the Global Scenario
Group. The latter scenario has been identified with radical thinkers like William Morris (who was inspired by both Marx
and Ruskin). In this sense, Speth's arguments are not far from that of the socialist movement of the twenty- first century,
which is aimed at the core values of social justice and ecological sustainability. The object is to create a future in
which generations still to come will be able to utilize their creative abilities to the fullest, while having
their basic needs met: a result made possible only through the rational reorganization by the associated
producers of the human metabolism with nature.13
Such rational reorganization of the metabolism between nature and society needs to be directed not
simply at climate change but also at a whole host of other environmental problems. Some of these are
addressed in the present issue: the geopolitics of peak oil (John Bellamy Foster), the production of biofuels as a liquid fuel
alternative and its consequences (Fred Magdoff), the economics of climate change (Minqi Li), the science of climate
change (John W. Farley), the ocean crisis (Brett Clark and Rebecca Clausen), the problem of large dams (Rohan D'Souza),
and the world water crisis (Maude Barlow). Other ecological crises of great importance are not, however, dealt with here:
species extinction (and loss of biological diversity in general), deforestation, desertification, soil degradation, acid rain, the
proliferation of toxic wastes (including in living tissues), market-regulated biotechnology, urban congestion, population
growth, and animal rights. No single issue captures the depth and breadth of what we call "the
environmental problem," which encompasses all of [end page 8] these ecological contradictions of our
society and more. If we are facing a "moment of truth" with respect to ecology today, it has to do with the
entire gamut of capitalism's effects on natural (and human) reproduction. Any attempt to solve one of
these problems (such as climate change) without addressing the others is likely to fail, since these
ecological crises, although distinct in various ways, typically share common causes.
In our view, only a unified vision that sees human production as not only social, but also rooted in a
metabolic relation to nature, will provide the necessary basis to confront an ecological rift that is now as
wide as the planet. Such a unified vision is implicit in the articles included in this issue. A more explicit treatment of the
political aspects of this struggle will appear in a second special issue of Monthly Review on ecology (meant to complement
this one) to be published this coming fall.

125
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

AT: Reform
Growth necessitates inequality—the profit motive ensures the rich-poor gap will only increase, making
system-wide catastrophe inevitable.
Dr Trainer, is an academic in the Department of Social Work, Social Policy and Sociology, University of New South Wales
and the author of numerous books on the environment and population issues. May 29, 2003 (Ted, OUR ECONOMIC
SYSTEM: WHY IT MUST BE SCRAPPED. http://ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/09c-Our-Economic-
System.html#Unemployment)

Our economy is extremely productive. It churns out enormous quantities of goods, many of them luxuries. But at the same
time there is huge unsatisfied need. In Australia thousands of people want basic housing. We need more and better
hospitals. Millions of Australians live under or just above the poverty line, going without things most people regard as
basic. One billion people in the world are extremely poor. Why do these needs go unmet?
The answer is, because it is not an economy in which we ask what needs producing and then organise our
productive capacity to meet the need. It is an economy in which the productive machinery is owned by a
very few people and they decide what to produce by asking what will make most money for themselves.
They can always make most money producing relatively luxurious or more expensive things to sell to people who have
higher incomes than they could by producing the cheapest possible necessities for the most needy people, or by developing
the industries that are best for the society as a whole.
It cannot be overemphasised that the thing which motivates our economy is the drive to accumulate capital, i.e., the
determination of those with capital to invest in whatever will make most profit, in order to have even more capital next
year to again invest where it will make as much money as possible, in a never-ending spiral. Sometimes this process
generates benefits for all, but the main argument in this document is that an economy based on this principle will
in time work less and less well for people in general and will lead us into catastrophic problems.

Anything less than revolution is not sufficient to solve the ills of capitalism. Reforms can only slow the
process of decline.
Sweezy, Doctorate from the London School of Economics, 1989
(Paul M., Capitalism and the envrioment, p. 92-93)
Not surprisingly, such constraints, while sometimes interfering with the operations of individual capitalists, never
go so far as to threaten the system as a whole. Long before that point is reached, the capitalist class, including
the state which it controls, mobilizes its defenses to repulse environmental-protection measures
perceived as dangerously extreme. Thus despite the development of a growing environmental
consciousness
and the movements to which it has given rise in the last century, the environmental crisis continues to
deepen. There is nothing in the record or on the horizon that could lead us to believe the situation will significantly
change in the foreseeable future. If this conclusion is accepted—and it is hard to see how anyone who has studied the
history of our time can refuse, at the very least, to take it seriously—it follows that what has to be done to resolve the
environmental crisis, hence also to insure that humanity has a future, is to replace capitalism with a social
order based on an economy devoted not to maximizing private profit and accumulating ever more capital
but rather to meeting real human needs and restoring the environment to a sustainably healthy
condition. This, in a nutshell, is the meaning of revolutionary change today. Lesser measures of reform,
no matter how desirable in themselves, could at best slow down the fatal process of decline and fall that
is already so far advanced.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
AT: Neoliberalism (1/5)

Neoliberal rationality culminates in collective suicide as more and more of the population is designated
disposable for the sake of a very narrowly defined “greater good”.
Boaventura De Souza Santos, director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, 2003
(http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/63/santos.html)
According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it should try to save humanity by
destroying part of it. This is a salvific and sacrificial destruction, committed in the name of the need to radically
materialize all the possibilities opened up by a given social and political reality over which it is supposed to have total
power. This is how it was in colonialism, with the genocide of indigenous peoples, and the African slaves. This is how it
was in the period of imperialist struggles, which caused millions of deaths in two world wars and many other colonial
wars. This is how it was under Stalinism, with the Gulag, and under Nazism, with the Holocaust. And now today, this is
how it is in neoliberalism, with the collective sacrifice of the periphery and even the semiperiphery of the world system.
With the war against Iraq, it is fitting to ask whether what is in progress is a new genocidal and sacrificial illusion, and
what its scope might be. It is above all appropriate to ask if the new illusion will not herald the radicalization and the
ultimate perversion of the Western illusion: destroying all of humanity in the illusion of saving it.
Sacrificial genocide arises from a totalitarian illusion manifested in the belief that there are no alternatives to the present-
day reality, and that the problems and difficulties confronting it arise from failing to take its logic of development to
ultimate consequences. If there is unemployment, hunger and death in the Third World, this is not the result of market
failures; instead, it is the outcome of market laws not having been fully applied. If there is terrorism, this is not due to the
violence of the conditions that generate it; it is due, rather, to the fact that total violence has not been employed to
physically eradicate all terrorists and potential terrorists.
This political logic is based on the supposition of total power and knowledge, and on the radical rejection of alternatives; it
is ultra-conservative in that it aims to reproduce infinitely the status quo. Inherent to it is the notion of the end of history.
During the last hundred years, the West has experienced three versions of this logic, and, therefore, seen three versions of
the end of history: Stalinism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the plan; Nazism, with its logic of racial superiority;
and neoliberalism, with its logic of insuperable efficiency of the market. The first two periods involved the destruction of
democracy. The last one trivializes democracy, disarming it in the face of social actors sufficiently powerful to be able to
privatize the state and international institutions in their favor. I have described this situation as a combination of political
democracy and social fascism. One current manifestation of this combination resides in the fact that intensely strong
public opinion, worldwide, against the war is found to be incapable of halting the war machine set in motion by
supposedly democratic rulers.
At all these moments, a death drive, a catastrophic heroism, predominates, the idea of a looming collective suicide, only
preventable by the massive destruction of the other. Paradoxically, the broader the definition of the other and the efficacy
of its destruction, the more likely collective suicide becomes. In its sacrificial genocide version, neoliberalism is a mixture
of market radicalization, neoconservatism and Christian fundamentalism. Its death drive takes a number of forms, from
the idea of "discardable populations", referring to citizens of the Third World not capable of being exploited as workers
and consumers, to the concept of "collateral damage", to refer to the deaths, as a result of war, of thousands of innocent
civilians. The last, catastrophic heroism, is quite clear on two facts: according to reliable calculations by the Non-
Governmental Organization MEDACT, in London, between 48 and 260 thousand civilians will die during the war and in
the three months after (this is without there being civil war or a nuclear attack); the war will cost 100 billion dollars,
enough to pay the health costs of the world's poorest countries for four years.
Is it possible to fight this death drive? We must bear in mind that, historically, sacrificial destruction has always been
linked to the economic pillage of natural resources and the labor force, to the imperial design of radically changing the
terms of economic, social, political and cultural exchanges in the face of falling efficiency rates postulated by the
maximalist logic of the totalitarian illusion in operation. It is as though hegemonic powers, both when they are on the rise
and when they are in decline, repeatedly go through times of primitive accumulation, legitimizing the most shameful
violence in the name of futures where, by definition, there is no room for what must be destroyed. In today's version, the
period of primitive accumulation consists of combining neoliberal economic globalization with the globalization of war.
The machine of democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction.

127
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

AT: Neoliberalism (2/5)

The assumption that free markets promote economic freedom is a myth put forth by neoliberal elitists.
The removal of external restraints- aka subsidies- only dooms society to continued exploitation and
ethical emptiness.

John Murphy Prof Of Sociology @ Univ Of Miami, Manuel Caro Asst. Prof Of Sociology @ Barry Univ and Jung Min
Choi Assoc Prof Of Sociology @ Sdsu 2004, Globalization With A Human Face Pg. 148-149)
Advocates of neoliberalism continue the quest for moral absolutes and find them in the laws of free
trade. This claim, of course, is predicated on the reification of the market. For example, recent Latin American
writers have criticized neoliberalism for supporting what they call a Total Market. Stated simply, the market is granted
a sui generis status and assumed to require no moral basis outside of its own logic. Consistent with
utilitarianism, neoliberals hold that the “goodness” of any specific action is evaluated on the basis of
material gain, associated with pleasure. Neoliberals assume that people are, by nature, hedonistic and
competitive. Any impediment to this natural human tendency is considered to be anathema to a free society.
Accordingly, a moral order is one where people are free to exercise their innate desire for pleasure/profit
without facing external restraints—other people. In effect, others become potential obstacles to personal
achievement; others are impediments to the exercise of freedom. In this sense, freedom is the liberty to act on the basis of
essential drives that have no bearing on the social context that may shape human desires and interests. This neoliberal
version of freedom is tied to the Cartesian ego cogito, or what Enrique Dussel refers to as the “transcendental I” that
subsumes everything into its own image of the world, while doubting, denying, and eventually
annihilating the integrity/autonomy of others.7 For this reason, critics of neoliberalism hold that the
freedom fostered by this model is a little more than the liberty to exploit others, or the freedom to choose
one’s exploiter.8 Nonetheless, a survival of the fittest type of social arrangement is morally justified by
neoliberalism because the freedom to act in self-interest presumably promotes a fair and ethical order
where social and economic positions are simply reflections of an individual’s merit, talent, or ambition.
In fact, even dismal social conditions related to extreme inequality and poverty are assumed to be neutral outcomes that
carry no ethical burden, for they reside outside human purpose and reflect fundamental differences in people’s worth and
abilities. Yet, by allowing people to compete freely, the market itself—as if by some miracle—organizes all
individual actions into an optimal (and moral) order that Frederich Hayek refers to as “spontaneous.”9
Neoliberalism, in this sense, is predicated on a type of cosmology or foundationalist metaphysics,
although such claims are not officially a part of this theory. Important to understand at this juncture is that the power
structure supported by neoliberalism and the Total Market is much more sophisticated than that
supported by older forms of imperialism. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, for example, contend that the
imposition of power and control in the current market order is not simply maintained through social institutions such as
prisons, factories, universities, and so on. Rather, power is now maintained through mechanisms of command
that are also “interiorized” by the subjects themselves, as people follow market norms and adopt values
and habits that are accepted as rational and necessary for both personal and social improvement.10 In
this sense, people become self-policing, as even rationality is confined to market norms that are assumed
to be rational, ethical, but yet divorced from social concerns. After all, because neoliberals defend the
generation of wealth as an end in itself, social conditions and human needs become an afterthought. In
the end, the Total Market supported by neoliberals is simply another reified archetype that promotes the
usual ethical emptiness that is present throughout much of the Western tradition. Here again, a form of
dualism is retained whereby the “pure” logic of the market is said to be perfectly ethical, even if the rules of trade are
clearly disassociated from social concerns.

128
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

AT: Neoliberalism (3/5)

Leadership expands neoliberal economics- the expansion of military power is increasingly used to
enforce and integrate markets into the global economy

Remy Herrera researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research Monthly Review, May 2006
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0506herrera.htm
Even the regulating mechanisms of global capitalism are in crisis. Today, the fundamental feature of the power of
global finance under U.S. hegemony is its militarization. This is measured less by the rise in the “military
burden” indicator—military spending as a percentage of GDP—than by the aggressive expansion of U.S. military bases
worldwide, as well as by the growing presence of transnational corporations within the military-industrial
complex. The name of globalization is imperialism, and an imperialism more and more openly enforced by
war. Finance is at war against whoever tries to carry out or affirm autonomous development, and such development is the
basic cause of the imperialist wars supporting finance. In Iraq, for instance, there is the obvious desire of capital to control
the oil. However, there is a still more decisive reality: what is at stake and what makes this and other wars
necessary for high finance is the reproduction of the conditions that allow capital’s power to be
maintained and to grow. The capitalist class can no longer retain its power except by war. It is interesting
to note that neoclassical economists have begun in earnest to develop a defense economics, but so far
they have been unsuccessful. One reason for this failure is the inability of neoclassical economics to deal with conflict,
a real problem in an analysis of war!

129
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

AT: Neoliberalism (4/5)

Perceived US supremacy only continues the destruction of development-based neoliberalism

Remy Herrera researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research Monthly Review, May 2006
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0506herrera.htm
As the ways followed by its pioneers were not those of the mainstream, and as the social forces carrying it were losing
ground, postwar development theory could only be considered by the neoclassical orthodoxy as a backwater of unscientific
decline. The failures of development policies, especially import substitution industries, became obvious in the
1980s, the period of the advent of neoliberalism. It is in this context of the retreat of workers and people of
the periphery that the global offensive of the neoliberal ideology in managing the capital expansion crisis
must be understood. Its dogmas are known. At the national level, it is a question of carrying out an aggressive anti-
state strategy by: (1) deforming the structure of capital ownership to the benefit of the private sector, (2) reducing public
spending for social purposes, and (3) imposing wage austerity as a key priority in fighting inflation. At the global level,
the objectives are to perpetuate the supremacy of the U.S. dollar over the international monetary system,
and to promote free trade by dismantling protectionism and liberalizing capital transfers. The
standardization of this planetary deregulation strategy is one of the functions of the major international
organizations (primarily the International Monetary Fund [IMF], the World Bank, and World Trade Organization
[WTO]), and the local monetary-financial institutions (“independent” central banks). The entire edifice is thus
brought under the control of the United States, whose military supremacy guarantees the global
functioning of the system. As a consequence, any idea of development outside of neoliberal capitalism is
prohibited, as well as any independence of development theory as a discipline distinct from the
dominant neoclassical corpus. Since the beginning of the 1990s, international organizations, especially the IMF, have
been lavishing upon their “client countries” recommendations for “good governance.”4 The IMF seeks to promote
good governance covering “all aspects of the conduct of public affairs,” aiming to make policy decisions
more transparent, to make available a maximum of information regarding public finances and audit
procedures, and, more recently, to “combat the financing of terrorism.”5 What is at stake is the shaping
of the policies of national states to create those institutional environments most favorable to the South’s
opening up to globalized markets.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
AT: Neoliberalism (5/5)

Neoliberalism utilizes perceived truth in economics to institute social control

John Murphy Prof Of Sociology @ Univ Of Miami, Manuel Caro Asst. Prof Of Sociology @ Barry Univ and Jung Min
Choi Assoc Prof Of Sociology @ Sdsu 2004, Globalization With A Human Face Pg. 31
Globalization is often identified with the advancement of freedom, but as opposed to the political ideal of
human liberty, the meaning of freedom is increasingly restricted to an economistic concept associated
with the unfettered movements of consumers within an idealized marketplace.24 The centrality of this
concept in contemporary discourse is one illustration of the impoverished politics that has followed the
advance of globalization. Zygmunt Bauman has noted that the lexicon of terms Enlightenment thinkers and their
followers used to imagine a global order and orient political activity has largely been forgotten: Just like the concepts
of “civilization,” “development,” “convergence,” “consensus” and many other key terms of early- and classic-
modern thinking, the idea of “universalization”—conveyed the hope, the intention, and the determination of order
making; on top of what the other kindred terms signaled, it meant a universal order—the ordermaking on a universal,
truly global scale. Like the other concepts, the idea of universalization was coined on the rising tide of the modern power’s
resourcefulness and the modern intellect’s ambitions. The entire family of concepts announced in unison the will to make
the world different from what it had been and better than it had been, and expand the change and the improvement to a
global, species-wide dimension. If one hears such terms today within public discourse, like the recent
refurbishment of “civilization,” such ideas are typically refracted through the prisms of neoliberal
economics or realist school of political science.26 Yet both these schools of thought lack a substantive
critical component without which any process of globalization loses its link with democratic ideals. The
limitations of the way Enlightenment philosophers and their positivist successors conceptualized reason
are well known. Their abstract, universalized, and, later, scientific definition of rationality became
increasingly autocratic and eventually extinguished the ability to forward a substantive critique of
society. As already discussed, this constricted definition of rationality merely ends up generating
technocratic, and in the context of globalization, imperialistic forms of social control.27 Yet at the tore of
this enterprise there remained an ideal, however incompletely thought out or forfeited in practice, of judging what exists
in the light of reason and of linking such judgments with theoretically attuned practice. ‘this discourse of rationality, in
short, at least recognizes the ability of human beings to reconstruct their world in light of an ideal of “truth”— an ideal that
may yet be refurbished to include justice and beauty as valid goals of a well-ordered society. <p31>

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
AT: Capitalism is Natural

Capitalism converts nature into commodities of exchange value which makes ecological destruction
inevitable. Pollution control only feeds into this system of profitability calculation.
Kovel 02 (Joel, Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies at Bard College, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or
the End of the World? pg 39-40) JXu

The combination makes an ever-growing ecological crisis an iron necessity so long as capital rules, no
matter what measures are taken to tidy up one corner or another. We need to examine why we talk of
capital as though it has a life of its own, which rapidly surpasses its rational function and consumes ecosystems in
order to grow cancerously. Capital is not in itself a living organism, needless to say. It is rather a kind of relationship like
that set UI) by a cancer-causing virus that invades living human beings, forces them to violate ecological integrity, sets up
self-replicating structures and polarizes the giant force field. It is humans living as capital, people who become
capital’s personfica1ions, who destroy ecosystems. The Faustian bargain that gave rise to this way of being arose
through the discovery that fabulous wealth could be achieved by making money first of all, and things through the making
of money. Those who do not know yet that capitalist production is for profit and not use can learn it right
away from watching Wall Street discipline corporations that fail to measure up to standards of
profitability Capitalists celebrate the restless dynamism that these standards enforce, with its drive for
innovation, efficiency and new markets. They fail to recognize because a kind of failure of recognition is built into their
being that what looks like resourcefulness and resilience from one side becomes on the other an addiction and a treadmill
to oblivion. Commodities appeared at the dawn of economic activity, and commodity production became generalized with
the advent of capital. The germ of capital is inserted into each commodity, and can be released only through exchange, and
with this, the conversion of what is desirable into money. To employ a formalism employed by Marx, which we shall find
helpful to express our ideas as we proceed, every commodity is a conjunction of a ‘use-value’ and an ‘exchange-
value’.8 Use-value signifies the commodity’s place in the ever-developing manifold of human needs and
wants, while exchange-value represents its ‘commodity-being’, that is, its exchangeability, an abstraction
that can he expressed only in quantitative terms, and as money. Broadly speaking, capital represents that regime in
which exchange-value predominates over use-value in the production of commodities — and the problem
with capital is that, once installed, this process becomes self-perpetuating and expanding. If production be for profit - that
is, for the expansion of the money value invested in it then prices must be kept as high as possible and costs as low as
possible. As prices will tend to be held down by the competition endemic to the system, in practice, cutting costs becomes
a paramount concern of capitalists. But costs of what? Clearly, of what enters into the production of commodities. Much of
this can be expressed in terms of other commodities for example, fuel, machinery, building materials, and so on, and,
crucially, the labour-power sold by workers for wages at the heart of the capitalist system. However, if the same analysis is
done upon the latter, at some point we arrive at entities that are not produced as commodities, yet are treated as such in
the great market that defines capitalism. These are the above-mentioned ‘conditions of production’, and they include
publicly produced facilities, i.e., infrastructure, the workers themselves, and, last but certainly not least, nature - even if
this nature already expresses, as it almost always does, the hand of prior human activity. The process is a manifestation of
the ascendancy of exchange-value over use-value, and entails a twofold degradation. In the first place, we have the
commodification of nature, which includes human beings, and their bodies. However, nature, as we shall examine
further in Part II, simply does not work in this way, No matter what capital’s ideologues say, the actual
laws of nature never include monetization; they exist, rather, in the context of ecosystems whose internal
relations are violated by conversion to the money- form. Thus the ceaseless rendering into commodities,
with its monetization and exchange, breaks down the specificity and intricacy of ecosystems. lb this is
added the devaluation, or basic lack of caring, which attends what is left over and unprofitable. Here arise the so-
called ‘externalities’ that become the repositories of pollution. To the extent to which the capital relation, with
its unrelenting competitive drive to realize profit, prevails, it is a certainty that the conditions of production at some point
or other will be degraded, which is to say that natural ecosystems will be destabilized and broken apart. As James
O’Connor has demonstrated in his pioneering studies of this phenomenon, this degradation will have a contradictory
effect on profitability itself (the ‘Second Contradiction of Capital’), either directly, by so fouling the natural ground of
production that it breaks down, or indirectly, as in the case that regulatory measures, being forced to pay for the health
care of workers, and so on, re-internalizes the costs that had been expelled into the environment.’ in a case such as
Bhopal, numerous insults of this kind interacted and became the matrix of a ghastly ‘accident’. For
Bhopal, degradation was concentrated in one setting, while the ecological crisis as a whole may be
regarded as its occurrence in a less concentrated but vastly more extended field, so that the disaster is
now played out more slowly and on a planetary scale. it will surely be rejoined to this that a great many
countervailing techniques are continually introduced to blunt or even profit from the degradation of
conditions of production - for example. pollution-control devices, making commodities of pollutants. and
so on. To some degree these are bound to be effective. Indeed, if the overall system were in equilibrium. then the effects
of the Second Contradiction could be contained, and we would not be able to extrapolate from it to the ecological crisis.
But this brings us to the other great problem with capital, namely, that confinement of any sort is
anathema to it.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
AT: Population growth is root cause

Population control will not be enough to solve the problems of capitalism. The mindset of “accumulate,
accumulate” overrides any benefit from a change in population growth.

<Foster, John B., professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review, Capitalism’s
Environmental Crisis—Is Technology the Answer?, Monthly Review, December 2000>
Although Jevons is credited deservedly for introducing his paradox, the full force of the problem he raises is not addressed
in The Coal Question. As one of the early neoclassical economists, Jevons had abandoned the focus on class and
accumulation that characterized the work of the classical economists. His economic analysis was primarily static
equilibrium theory, ill-equipped to deal with dynamic issues of accumulation and growth. Jevons, who in many ways
naturalized capitalism, could provide no more convincing explanations for continuously increasing demand than to point
to individual behavior and Malthusian demographics.
Here it is important to acknowledge that capitalism is a system that pursues accumulation and growth for its own sake. It
is a juggernaut driven by the single-minded need on the part of business for ever-greater accumulation of capital.
“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the Prophets!” wrote Marx in Capital (vol. 1, chapter 24, section 3). The only
real checks on this process are those generated by mutual competition and impersonal market forces, and, over the long
run, periodic crises.
To be sure, mainstream economists since the days of Adam Smith have claimed that capitalism is a system devoted
directly to the pursuit of wealth but indirectly to the pursuit of human needs. In reality, the first goal entirely overrides
and transforms the second. Capitalists do not restrict their activities to the production of commodities that satisfy basic
human needs, such as food, clothing, shelter, and the amenities essential to the reproduction of human beings and society.
Instead, the production of more and more profits becomes an end in itself, and the types of goods produced or their
ultimate usefulness becomes completely immaterial. The use value of commodities is more and more subordinated to their
exchange value. Use values that are devoted to ostentatious consumption, and that are even destructive to human beings
and the earth (in the sense of rendering it unusable for human purposes), are manufactured and the desire for these
destructive goods is manufactured along with them through the force of modern marketing (see Paul M. Sweezy,
“Capitalism and the Environment,” Monthly Review, vol. 41, no. 2, June 1989).*
It is this singleminded obsession with capital accumulation that distinguishes capitalism from all other social systems,
explaining why it can never stand still. A “stationary capitalism,” as Joseph Schumpeter observed, is a “contradictio in
adjecto” (Essays, p. 29). Competition, of the sort that forces upon capital continual trans-formations in the means of
production in order to maintain and enhance profitability, provides the essential motor behind this drive to accumulate.
This is what Schumpeter, in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, called capitalism’s tendency toward “creative
destruction;” its creation through innovation of new and more efficient forms of production and distribution, and at the
same time its destruction of previous forms of production and distribution. Caught up in this unrelenting process of
accumulation and creative destruction, the system runs roughshod over each and every thing that stands in its path: all
human and natural requirements that interfere with the accumulation of capital are considered barriers to be overcome.
The exponential growth of capitalism and the increasing consumption of raw materials and energy that goes with it have
resulted in a rapidly compounding environmental problem. It is this that lies behind what the Worldwatch Institute, in its
State of the World 1999, called “the acceleration of history”—by which they mean the increasingly rapid transformation of
the planetary environment and destruction of ecosystems.
Since there is no way in which the earth’s fundamental capacity to supply the rapidly increasing demands that are being
placed on it can increase, the only way in which the problem can be solved is by somehow reducing these demands. There
are three ways of conceiving this: stabilization and even reduction of world population; improvements in technology; and
more far-reaching socioeconomic transformations. Since most demographers agree that population is gradually stabilizing
but that this will not in itself solve the problem, given that per capita consumption of materials and energies continues to
rise exponentially, the search for a solution invariably focuses on the other two aspects of the problem, and usually on the
technological component.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
AT: Green Companies (1/2)

Plan allows corporations to Greenwash the public. This diverts attention from real environmental
change & ultimately maintains the status quo.
Geoffrey Johnson, program coordinator of a nonprofit environmental organization, 2004 ('Greenwashing' Leaves a Stain
of Distortion, LA Times, Aug 22, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0823-11.htm)

And most greenwashing is more subtle, dealing in lies of omission. The claims made aren't false exactly - but they're only a
tiny portion of the truth. Ford is making a hybrid vehicle. BP is investing in alternative energy. But when considered in the
context of the company's other endeavors, emphasizing those things presents a highly skewed picture.
Corporate executives often lament that they would gladly supply greener products if only there were sufficient demand.
It's Economics 101, they say. But their logic neglects an essential lesson from the same course: Unless consumers have
access to accurate information about products, such as their environmental and social costs, then the market will not
reflect people's true considerations. The greenwash marketing strategy helps companies preserve the status quo by
attracting progressive customers whose purchasing power might otherwise be channeled to genuinely green businesses
that are struggling to get a foothold in the marketplace.
In the end, the slick images and exaggerated claims of greenwashing by Ford and others divert our attention from the
corporate-fueled environmental destruction taking place all around us. And that means that greenwashing, far from
promoting a better world, is itself a serious environmental problem.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
AT: Green Companies (2/2)

The plans incentives will let polluters greenwash their image and continue environmental destruction
Geoffrey Johnson, program coordinator of a nonprofit environmental organization, 2004 ('Greenwashing' Leaves a Stain
of Distortion, LA Times, Aug 22, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0823-11.htm)

The launching of the 2005 Ford Escape Hybrid this fall marks an auto industry first: the coupling of a hybrid electric
engine, containing the most energy-efficient fuel system available, with an SUV, the least efficient class of passenger
vehicle. Conscious of the symbolism of its innovation, Ford made the Escape Hybrid the centerpiece of a multimillion-
dollar environmental ad campaign titled "The Greening of the Blue Oval." Printed on glossy, pullout inserts in Time,
National Geographic, Mother Jones and other publications, the ads declare, "Finally, a vehicle that can take you to the
very places you're helping to preserve." Ford certainly could use a touch of green. The company's gas-guzzling lineup -
featuring the Explorer (the bestselling SUV), the Excursion (the biggest) and the F-150 ("Built Ford Tough") - has been a
source of pride and profit for Ford. But it hasn't been good for the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency
recently found that Ford Motor Co. had the worst fleetwide fuel economy - a truer gauge of an automaker's commitment to
the environment than whether or not it produces a hybrid - of any major U.S. auto manufacturer for the fifth consecutive
year. The Model T got better gas mileage than the average Ford vehicle today.
Is the Escape Hybrid capable of driving Ford from laggard to leader? Hardly. The company expects to sell only 20,000
annually, or 0.5% of its total sales. Ford has offered no guarantees that it will boost supply even if already high demand for
hybrids climbs higher. And even if more of the hybrids were on the road, the environmental effect wouldn't be huge:
Though decisively better in city driving, the Escape Hybrid gets only two miles a gallon better highway mileage than the
nonhybrid Escape, according to the EPA. The expected revenues from the Escape Hybrid certainly don't justify its
advertising budget: So why is Ford spending so much to promote its new SUV? It's a clear-cut case of "greenwashing."
Ford hopes to mold a public perception that Ford has gone green, that the company is a model of corporate responsibility.
Ford - and CEO Bill Ford, who calls himself an environmentalist - are popular targets of environmental activists. By
hyping its hybrid and winning kudos from former critics, the company hopes to turn a token of environmentalism into a
publicity pot of gold.
Ford certainly didn't invent greenwashing. The Escape Hybrid is just the latest incarnation of a pervasive business
phenomenon. Shell has spent big money on ad space romanticizing its relationship with the Flower Garden Banks
National Marine Sanctuary, to which the Shell Foundation has donated money. But that can't gloss over the fact that Shell
drills for oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico, where the sanctuary is located. What's more, global warming caused by the
burning of fossil fuels is a leading threat to coral reefs worldwide. Pacific Lumber, an infamous logger of Northern
California's redwood stands, has rechristened itself with the pleasant sounding name Palco and has advertised its
"environmental commitment" widely as part of its rebranding. What it hasn't done is stop clear-cutting. No company has
gone to such great lengths to project a green energy as energy giant BP. In 2000, a year after BP ventured into renewable
energy by scooping up Solarex for $45 million, it paid more than four times as much on rebranding, dropping its full name
of British Petroleum to become simply BP while adopting the environmentally friendly slogan "Beyond Petroleum" and
putting up billboards to promote itself as an alternative-energy company. But has the company really moved beyond
petroleum? The BP website tells it straight: "Our main activities are the exploration and production of crude oil and
natural gas; refining, marketing, supply and transportation; and the manufacture and marketing of petrochemicals."
Greenwashing is often employed by industries hoping to avoid new environmental regulation. Earlier this year, in an
unsuccessful attempt to defeat a Mendocino County ballot initiative prohibiting the planting of genetically modified crops,
biotechnology companies spent more than $500,000 to publicize the environmental and health benefits of genetically
modified food. Last November, the Environmental Working Group acquired a leaked memo from PR firm Nichols-
Dezenhall asking chemical companies to fund a $120,000 campaign to quash Californians' support for enacting the
"better safe than sorry" precautionary principle into laws governing approval of new chemicals. Some would argue that
greenwashers are merely exercising their right to free speech in political advocacy and advertising. Yet the point of
greenwashing is to subvert grass-roots democracy and sucker consumers with deceptive environmental advertisements
that get around the Federal Trade Commission's truth-in-advertising rules.

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K

There is no such thing as benevolent welfare. Increases in social services gloss over the inadequacy of the
welfare state and directly prevent revolution against capitalism. ....................................................1
ALT EXT-................................................................................................................................................................9
ALT EXT...............................................................................................................................................................10
>>>LINKS<<<......................................................................................................................................................11
Link- Abortion.......................................................................................................................................................12
Abortion is the pinnacle of a capitalist society...............................................................................12
Eugene McCarraher, 2001, Eugene McCarraher on abortion and capitalism, Vox Nova, ...12
http://vox-nova.com/2008/08/22/eugene-mccarraher-on-abortion-and-capitalism/ ............12
Link---Immigration................................................................................................................................................13
Allowing immigrants into the army, grants capitalist rulers utter control over them, and allows them to play a
key role in capitalism......................................................................................................................13
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race
Relations, 1972, New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism,
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800 ...............13
..............................................................................................................................................................................13
Link---Immigration................................................................................................................................................14
Racism towards immigrants exists in the status quo due to capitalism .........................................14
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race
Relations, 1972, New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism,
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800 ...............14
Link---Immigration................................................................................................................................................16
The immigrant army serves as the icing on the cake in a capitalist economy................................16
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race
Relations, 1972, New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism,
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800 ...............16
Link---Immigration 1/2..........................................................................................................................................17
Immigrant labor serves as the basic structure of capitalism...........................................................17
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race
Relations, 1972, New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism,
Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800................17
Link---Immigration 2/2..........................................................................................................................................18
Link: Broadband / Internet.....................................................................................................................................19
Expanding broadband internet services ensure pure unadulterated capitalism. ............................19
Link: Discourse......................................................................................................................................................20
Understanding social services and welfare through economic terms guarantees a capitalist response. Their
language is the newspeak of a totalitarian society. ........................................................................20
Bourdieu and Wacquant 01 (Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant “Neoliberal newspeak: notes on the new
planetary vulgate”)................................................................................................................20
Links: Health Care.................................................................................................................................................21
Those impoverished by capitalism are more susceptible to health problems.................................21
Richard Levins, September 2000, Is Capitalism a Disease? The Crisis in U.S. Public Health, Monthly
Revview, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_4_52/ai_65805749/pg_5/?tag=content;col1,
Professor of Population Studies............................................................................................21
The few receiving healthcare are part of a sick society, profits fueling both sickness and treatment..............21
Richard Levins, September 2000, Is Capitalism a Disease? The Crisis in U.S. Public Health, Monthly
Revview, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_4_52/ai_65805749/pg_5/?tag=content;col1,
Professor of Population Studies............................................................................................21
Link---Health Care.................................................................................................................................................22
Though the United States is ranked 37th in quality of healthcare, we are ranked number one in most capitalist
136
CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
health care country..........................................................................................................................22
Paul Dean, contributing author to Dissident voice, 09, Dissident Voice, June 19th, 2009, Health Care
Reform And Carburetor Tweaking, http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/health-care-reform/ 22
Capitalist health care is a problem that is occurring now in the United States. It is favoring the rich over the
poor and will lead to our nation’s downfall. ..................................................................................22
Paul Dean, contributing author to Dissident voice, 09, Dissident Voice, June 19th, 2009, Health Care
Reform And Carburetor Tweaking, http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/06/health-care-reform/ 22
Link---Employment...............................................................................................................................................23
Capitalism alienates and marginalizes its workers.........................................................................23
Shane Gunster 04 School of Communication at Simon Fraser University “You Belong Outside-
advertising, nature, and the SUV”.........................................................................................23
Capitalism people to exclude themselves from society. ...............................................................23
Shane Gunster 04 School of Communication at Simon Fraser University “You Belong Outside-
advertising, nature, and the SUV”.........................................................................................23
Link---Disease.......................................................................................................................................................24
Human development causes disease transmition and single-minded thought stops prevention.. . .24
Richard Levins, September 2000, Is Capitalism a Disease? The Crisis in U.S. Public Health, Monthly
Revview, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_4_52/ai_65805749/pg_5/?tag=content;col1,
Professor of Population Studies........................................................................................24
Link- Local/Ind Solutions to the Enviro................................................................................................................25
Religion Link.........................................................................................................................................................26
Women Link..........................................................................................................................................................27
Liberate Women Link............................................................................................................................................28
War to protect women Link ..................................................................................................................................29
Family link.............................................................................................................................................................30
aid Link..................................................................................................................................................................31
Race Link ..............................................................................................................................................................32
Heg link.................................................................................................................................................................33
Link: Hegemony....................................................................................................................................................34
1American hegemony is violent imperialism. It authorizes genocidal violence and results in
counterbalancing and asymmetrical warfare which exacerbate global conflict. The impact is extinction. ...34
>>>Implications<<<..............................................................................................................................................36
CAP BAD- Laundry List.......................................................................................................................................37
CAP BAD- Laundry List.......................................................................................................................................38
Cap Threatens Survival .......................................................................................................................................39
Try or Die 1/4........................................................................................................................................................40
Try or Die 2/4........................................................................................................................................................41
Try or Die 3/4........................................................................................................................................................42
Try or Die 4/4........................................................................................................................................................43
Cap  Extinction..................................................................................................................................................44
Cap War.............................................................................................................................................................45
Root Cause- War....................................................................................................................................................46
Cap Inequality....................................................................................................................................................47
A2: Cap Key to Freedom/Demo............................................................................................................................48
Cap is anti-democratic...........................................................................................................................................49
Greed destroys compassion...................................................................................................................................50
Cap= Racist/sexist.................................................................................................................................................51
Cap=Racism...........................................................................................................................................................52
Root Cause -Racism (African Americans)............................................................................................................53
Wasteful/Unsustainable.........................................................................................................................................54

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
This means Cap is unsustainable. .........................................................................................................................54
Root Cause-Starvation and Public Health.............................................................................................................55
Root Cause-Terrorism............................................................................................................................................56
Root cause - Violence Against Women..................................................................................................................57
Root cause - Violence Against Women .................................................................................................................58
Root Cause – Oppression of women.....................................................................................................................59
The capitalist need to control the means of production defines the gendered bifurcation of nature—the male
is induced to associate the feminine with the dominated...............................................................59
Joel Kovel, Former Professor Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Faculty in the New
School for Social Research, Green Party Presidential Nominee, 2007 (The Enemy of Nature: The End of
Capitalism or the End of the World, Zed Books, Accessed 07-25-2008, pp. 127-129//MUDI-Darxlice). . .59
Cap  Starvation..................................................................................................................................................60
Marxism Solves Environmental Problems ..........................................................................................................61
A2: socialism hurts environment...........................................................................................................................62
Cap Destroys enviro..............................................................................................................................................63
Cap Environmental Destruction........................................................................................................................64
Cap Enviro Destruction 1/2...............................................................................................................................65
Cap Enviro Destruction 2/2...............................................................................................................................66
Socialism Solves Environment 1/2........................................................................................................................67
Socialism Solves Environment 2/2........................................................................................................................68
Cap deforestation and Pollution.........................................................................................................................69
Capitalism Environmental Destruction..............................................................................................................70
Root cause- Global Warming.................................................................................................................................71
Root cause- Global Warming.................................................................................................................................72
Racial/Indigenous domination...............................................................................................................................73
Root Cause – Native American Oppression (1/3)..................................................................................................74
Root Cause – Native American Oppression (2/3)..................................................................................................75
Root Cause – Native American Oppression (3/3)..................................................................................................76
Root Cause – Self-Determination .........................................................................................................................77
Cap Space Exploitation......................................................................................................................................78
Ethics Impacts........................................................................................................................................................79
Ethics Impacts .......................................................................................................................................................80
Cap is slavery.........................................................................................................................................................81
A2: Econ Advantages/Turns.................................................................................................................................82
A2: Econ Advantages/Turns.................................................................................................................................83
>>>Alternative<<<................................................................................................................................................84
Reject.....................................................................................................................................................................85
A2: Alt not solve....................................................................................................................................................87
A2: Alt not Solve...................................................................................................................................................88
Alternative – Socialism .........................................................................................................................................89
Alternative – Socialism..........................................................................................................................................90
Alternative – Socialism..........................................................................................................................................91
Alternative – Socialism .........................................................................................................................................92
Attempts to solve peak oil from within capitalism are naïve and doomed to fail – only revolutionary change
in the global economic system toward socialism can address the root cause of the affirmative harms...........93
John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and Editor of the Monthly
Review, 2008 (“Peak Oil and Energy Imperialism,” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine,
Volume 60, Issue 3, July/August, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Elite,
p. 29-30 // MUDI—BB).......................................................................................................93
Alternative – Socialism .........................................................................................................................................94

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CDI 2009____________________________________________Cap K
Alternative – Socialism .........................................................................................................................................95
A revolutionary break with capitalist economics is key – a socialist ecology is the only way to prevent
inevitable extinction........................................................................................................................95
Minqi Li, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Utah, 2008 (“Climate Change, Limits to
Growth, and the Imperative for Socialism,” Monthly Review: An Independent Socialist Magazine,
Volume 60, Issue 3, July/August, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Academic Search Elite,
p. 65-66 // MUDI—BB).......................................................................................................95
We must resist the expansion of capitalism that threatens the fate of the world and promote an ecology and
social justice, challenging the higher immorality of money...........................................................96
John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon, 2002, (“Ecology Against
Capitalism,” Monthly Review Press, Accessed 07-23-2008, pp. 87-89, MUDI-KWL).......96
A2 Your Evidence is Biased................................................................................................................................106
A2 China is Communist.......................................................................................................................................107
A2 Russian Revolution failed (1/2).....................................................................................................................108
A2: Alt Vague.......................................................................................................................................................117
A2 Socialism Indicts............................................................................................................................................118
A2 Intersectionality..............................................................................................................................................119
Cap Collapsing.....................................................................................................................................................122
Collapse inevitable...............................................................................................................................................123
AT: Turn – Affirmative = socialism (1/2)............................................................................................................124
Only the alternative can solve – capitalism makes the affirmative harms inevitable and guarantees extinction.
No single policy has the power to overcome this.........................................................................124
John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and Editor of the Monthly
Review, et al., with Brett Clark, Assistant Professor of Sociology at North Carolina State University, and
Richard York, coeditor of Organization & Environment and Associate Professor of Sociology at the
University of Oregon, 2008 (“Ecology: The Moment of Truth—An Introduction,” Monthly Review: An
Independent Socialist Magazine, Volume 60, Issue 3, July/August, Available Online to Subscribing
Institutions via Academic Search Elite, p. 6-9 // MUDI—BB)..........................................124
AT: Turn – Affirmative = socialism (2/2)............................................................................................................125
AT: Reform .........................................................................................................................................................126

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