CAPK

CAPK............................................................................................................................................ 1 1NCShell...............................................................................................................................418 Links ..........................................................................................................................................17 Link:Space........................................................................................................................................ 18 Link:Exploration........................................................................................................................ 195 Link:Development .................................................................................................................... 259 Link:Colonization ...................................................................................................................... 281 Link:SpatialFixes....................................................................................................................... 30 Link:SpaceControl........................................................................................................................ 31 Link:SpaceTourism.................................................................................................................. 325 Link:Resources........................................................................................................................... 358 Link:MarsColonization ............................................................................................................... 37 Link:Privatization ...................................................................................................................3840 Link:OverviewEffect.................................................................................................................... 40 Link:Frontier(survivorsKvers).............................................................................................. 41 Link:SpaceUtopianism................................................................................................................ 43 Link:Satellites...........................................................................................................................4451 Link:RemoteSensing ................................................................................................................... 51 Link:SpaceElevator...................................................................................................................... 52 Link:RLVs ......................................................................................................................................... 53 Link:Aliens....................................................................................................................................... 54 Link:Getofftherock..................................................................................................................... 55 Link:Cooperation .......................................................................................................................... 56 Link:AerospaceIndustry ............................................................................................................ 57 Link:GenericProgressivism/Ethics ........................................................................................ 58 Link:ProgressiveTech(SurvivorsKAff)............................................................................... 59 Link:Hegemony.......................................................................................................................... 603 Link:Democracy......................................................................................................................... 635 Link:EconomicDecline................................................................................................................ 65 Link:Growth .................................................................................................................................... 66 Link:ClimateChange .................................................................................................................... 67 Link:EnvironmentalProtection .........................................................................................6870 Link:EnvironmentalJustice ....................................................................................................... 70 Link:Competitiveness .................................................................................................................. 71 Link:DepoliticizationoftheEconomy .................................................................................... 72 Link:Realism ................................................................................................................................... 73 Link:Science .................................................................................................................................... 74 Link:TradeLiberalization .......................................................................................................... 75 Link:PowerAnalysis................................................................................................................. 768 Link:Levinas..............................................................................................................................7880 Link:Transhumanism .................................................................................................................. 80 Link:OpentheBorders ................................................................................................................ 81 GeneralIndustryI/LSatellitesSpecific............................................................................... 82 LobbiesInternalLink ................................................................................................................... 83

InternalLink:MilitaryIndustrialComplex ....................................................................... 846 InternalLink:QuickFix ............................................................................................................... 86 InternalLink:Cooption................................................................................................................ 87

Impacts......................................................................................................................................88 Impact:SpaceWars ................................................................................................................... 891 Impact:SpaceMil ....................................................................................................................... 913 Impact:Weaponization ................................................................................................................ 93 Impact:SpaceCapUnsustainable ............................................................................................. 94 Impact:SpaceAccidents .............................................................................................................. 95 Impact:FrontierMentality ......................................................................................................... 96 Impact:Imperialism............................................................................................................. 97100
Impact:EnviroDestruction ..................................................................................................1003 Impact:ValuetoLife ...................................................................................................................103 Impact:Ethics ................................................................................................................................104 Impact:Poverty ............................................................................................................................105 Impact:Inequality........................................................................................................................106 Impact:War....................................................................................................................................107 Impact:Genocide..........................................................................................................................108 Impact:Racism..............................................................................................................................109 Impact:Patriarchy .......................................................................................................................110 Impact:Oppression .....................................................................................................................111 Impact:Extinction....................................................................................................................1124

ImpactCalc ........................................................................................................................... 114 Proof:Concentrationofcapital ...............................................................................................115 Proof:Dominationoffinance ...................................................................................................116 Proof:Exportationofcapital ....................................................................................................117 Proof:EconomicDivision ..........................................................................................................118 Proof:PoliticalDivision* ...........................................................................................................119 Proof:Inequality...........................................................................................................................121
StructuralViolenceOutweighs............................................................................................1224 TaketheRisk .............................................................................................................................1246 Survivalism ................................................................................................................................1268 Fidelity.............................................................................................................................................128 Universalism..................................................................................................................................129

Alts........................................................................................................................................... 130 Alt:CommunistHypothesis ......................................................................................................131 Alt:Fidelity ....................................................................................................................................133 Alt:LostCause ...............................................................................................................................134 Alt:RepeatFailures .....................................................................................................................135 Alt:Refusal .....................................................................................................................................136 Alt:Withdraw ................................................................................................................................137 Alt:FW/RoleofBallotFidelity ..............................................................................................138
AltPrereqtoSpace ..................................................................................................................1396 Alt:Solvency...............................................................................................................................1469 Alt:NowKey...............................................................................................................................1491 AltSolvesTech ..............................................................................................................................151

A2 ............................................................................................................................................. 152
A2Perm .......................................................................................................................................1537 A2Alt>Violence .................................................................................................................. 15761 A2Alt>Totalitarianism ...........................................................................................................161 A2AltFails......................................................................................................................................162 A2AltCoopted...............................................................................................................................163 A2Capkeytoinnovation.......................................................................................................1648 A2CapSolvesPoverty ......................................................................................................... 16871 A2CapReducesInequality .......................................................................................................171 A2CapKeytoSpace.....................................................................................................................172 A2Capinspaceinev....................................................................................................................173 A2CapInev.................................................................................................................................1749 A2TransitionWars .....................................................................................................................179 A2Cap=humannature..............................................................................................................180 A2MakeCapBetter..................................................................................................................181 A2GibsonGraham...................................................................................................................1825 A2Framework ..............................................................................................................................185

Aff............................................................................................................................................. 186 Aff:Perm .....................................................................................................................................1879 Aff:OverviewEffect .....................................................................................................................189 Aff:AntiIntellectualism.............................................................................................................190 Aff:GlobalVillage .........................................................................................................................191 Aff:MetaphoricCondensation .................................................................................................192 Aff:Subrtraction .......................................................................................................................1935 Aff:PoliticsKey .............................................................................................................................195 Aff:StateKey..................................................................................................................................196 Aff:A2StructuralLink ................................................................................................................197
Aff:Alt>Violence...............................................................................................................198200 Aff:Transitionwars.....................................................................................................................200 Aff:Deontology .............................................................................................................................201 TotalizingCapBad .......................................................................................................................202 RejectionBad.................................................................................................................................204 TRIPerm .........................................................................................................................................205 CapInev ...........................................................................................................................................206 CapSustainable.............................................................................................................................207 CapGoodSelfCorrecting................................................................................................. 20810 CapGoodGrowth.......................................................................................................................210 CapGoodEnviro ........................................................................................................................211 CapGoodDemocracy ...............................................................................................................212 CapGoodWar ...................................................................................................................... 21318 CapGoodEthics .........................................................................................................................218 CapGoodFreedom/ValuetoLife.........................................................................................219 CapGoodKeytoSpace.............................................................................................................220

1NCSHELL

1NCSPACELINK
THE EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE IS SMOKE SCREEN FOR THE EXPANSION OF CAPITALISM, A SHORTTERM SOLUTION TO ECONOMIC AND SOCIETAL CRISIS ON EARTH. THE MILITARIZATION OF SPACE
LEADING TO SPACE WARS OVER RESOURCES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARKETS IN THE COSMOS IS AN INEVITABLECONSEQUENCEOFTHEAFF.

DICKENS, TEACHES AT THE UNIVERSITIES OF BRIGHTON AND CAMBRIDGE, UK, IN10

[Peter, The Humanization of the CosmosTo What End?, Monthly Review, Vol. 62 No. 6, http://monthlyreview.org/2010/11/01/thehumanization-of-the-cosmos-to-what-end] Instead of indulging in over-optimistic and fantastic visions, we should take a longer, harder, and more critical look at what is happening and what is likely to happen. We can then begin taking a more measured view of space humanization, and start developing more progressive alternatives. At this point, we must return to the deeper, underlying processes which are at the heart of the capitalist economy and society, and which are generating this demand for expansion into outer space. Although the humanization of the cosmos is clearly a new and exotic development, the social relationships and mechanisms underlying space-humanization are very familiar. In the early twentieth century, Rosa Luxemburg argued that an outside to capitalism is important for two main reasons. First, it is needed as a means of creating massive numbers of new customers who would buy the goods made in the capitalist countries.7 As outlined earlier, space technology has

extended and deepened this process, allowing an increasing number of people to become integral to the further expansion of global capitalism. Luxemburgs second reason for imperial expansion is the search for cheap supplies of labor and raw materials. Clearly, space fiction fantasies about aliens aside, expansion into the cosmos offers no benefits to capital in the form of fresh sources of labor power.8 But expansion into the cosmos does offer prospects for exploiting new materials such as those in asteroids, the moon, and perhaps other cosmic entities such as Mars. Neil Smiths characterization of capitals relations to nature is useful at this point. The reproduction of material life is wholly dependent on the production and reproduction of surplus value. To this end, capital stalks the Earth in search of material resources; nature becomes a universal means of production in the sense that it not only provides the subjects, objects and instruments of production, but is also in its totality an appendage to the production processno part of the Earths surface, the atmosphere, the oceans, the geological substratum or the biological superstratum are immune from transformation by capital.9 Capital is now also stalking outer space in the search for new resources and raw materials. Nature on a cosmic scale now seems likely to be incorporated into production processes, these being located mainly on earth. Since Luxemburg wrote, an
increasing number of political economists have argued that the importance of a capitalist outside is not so much that of creating a new pool of customers or of finding new resources.10 Rather, an outside is needed as a zone into which surplus capital can be invested. Economic and social

crisis stems less from the problem of finding new consumers, and more from that of finding, making, and exploiting zones of profitability for surplus capital. Developing outsides in this way is also a product of recurring crises, particularly those of declining economic profitability. These crises are followed by attempted fixes in distinct geographic regions. The word fix is used here both literally and figuratively. On the one hand, capital is being physically invested in new regions. On the other hand, the attempt is to fix capitalisms crises. Regarding the latter, however, there are, of course, no absolute guarantees that such fixes will really correct an essentially unstable social and economic system. At best, they are short-term solutions. The kind of theory mentioned above also has clear implications for the humanization of the cosmos. Projects for the colonization of outer space should be seen as the attempt to make new types of spatial fix, again in response to economic, social, and environmental crises on earth. Outer space will be globalized, i.e., appended to Earth, with new parts of the cosmos being invested in by competing nations and companies. Military power will inevitably be made an integral part of this process, governments protecting the zones for which they are responsible. Some influential commentators argue that the current problem for capitalism is that there is now no outside.11 Capitalism is everywhere. Similarly, resistance to capitalism is either everywhere or nowhere. But, as suggested above, the humanization of the cosmos seriously questions these assertions. New spatial fixes are due to be opened up in the cosmos, capitalisms emergent outside. At first, these will include artificial fixes such as satellites, space stations, and space hotels. But during the next twenty years or so, existing outsides, such as the moon and Mars, will begin attracting investments. The stage would then be set for wars in outer space between nations and companies attempting to make their own cosmic fixes.

1NCEXPLORATIONLINKSTRUCTURAL
THEAFFCANNOTHIDEBEHINDTHEIRGOODINTENTIONSOURARGUMENTISSTRUCTURAL.THEPLANDOESNT TAKEPLACEINTHEVACCUUMOFSPACEITSELF,BUTINTHEPOLITICALECONOMYOFTHESTATUSQUO,INWHICH NASAREPRESENTSMASSIVECOPORATEINTERESTSWHOOVERDETERMINETHEWAYTHATPLANISEXECUTED. THEY BLOAT THE BUDGETS OF THE SAME SPACEINDUSTRIAL COMPLEX THAT WILL ENSURE THAT THE AFF BECOMESAMARKETINGSTRATEGYORANEWRESOURCEPOOL. MARTIN PARKER, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, 2009. [CAPITALISTS IN SPACE, THESOCIOLOGICALREVIEW,VOLUME57,ISSUESUPPLEMENT1]
When David Scott went to the moon on Apollo 15 he took with him some firstday postal covers in his Personal Preference Kit (PPK). Taking items into space as souvenirs had been common since the Mercury programme, the idea being that the astronauts handed them out to friends and family. However, the practice had commercial aspects. Astronauts were not particularly well paid, and space objects sold well. But matters were getting out of hand with the PPKs. Even before Apollo 14 launched, the Franklin Mint (a company manufacturing commemorative memorabilia) was advertising medallions containing silver from the flight. Some members of Congress asked questions, the deal was never done, and Deke Slayton (Director of Flight Crew Operations) halved the number of medallions allowed in PPKs. But Scott, Irwin and Worden were later persuaded, with Slaytons knowledge, to take 400 first day covers with them, 100 each, and 100 for a dealer in Germany. After the flight, the deal was exposed, and the three astronauts were formally reprimanded. NASA also had to admit that many other astronauts had been profiting in similar ways for many years (Scott and Leonov, 2004: 328 331; Hansen, 2005: 524). This is not simply a story about corrupt astronauts, or poor auditing, but an everyday account of personal economics. Scott says he did the deal because he was promised that the money would go into a trust fund for his children. But do Scotts actions make his account of standing on the moon, blotting out the entire earth with his gloved thumb, any the less chilling (Scott and Leonov, 2004: 378)? Probably not. So it might be that exploring the implications of Webers problem cannot stay at the level of the individual, as if (in some Kantian sense) the purity of your heart could determine the purity of your motive. Buzz Aldrin did a commercial for Volkswagen in 1972, and Armstrong one for Chrysler in 1979, but does that mean that the one small step was demeaned?2 We must, at the start here, acknowledge that motives are complex, and that this is an enquiry into generalities, or ideal types. What happens when profit becomes the institutional motive? Nostalgia is a problem in any framing of such a question. NASA, in its Golden Age, was not an institution that relied on saintly scientists, dedicated administrators and heroic astronauts who had been commanded on a mission by a young and idealistic president. Even in general terms, the

foundation of NASA represented something of an unholy alliance between military hawks, big research institutions, defence contractors and politicians wanting the reflected sparkle of a little space dust or jobs for their state (DeGroot, 2007). There was a lot of money involved. According to Jones and Benson (2002: 22), in the 1960s, the US spent more than four per cent of Federal
expenditures on space exploration. Wachhorst (2000: 130) translates this into $24 billion for Apollo. NASAs budget peaked in 1965 at what was 5.3 percent of the total federal budget for that year. In 1966 NASA directly employed thirty-six thousand people, and close to half a million others via roughly 500 main contractors and around 20 thousand sub-contractors (Klerkx, 2004: 1656; Pyle, 2005: 8). Most of the money went to the big aerospace companies. Stage one was built by Boeing; stage two by North American Rockwell; stage three by McDonnell Douglas, and the rocket motors by Rocketdyne. The prime contractor for the Apollo Command and Service modules was North American Rockwell, the Lunar Module was built by Grumman, and the Lunar Roving Vehicle by Boeing. It should be clear enough that NASA, for a while, was a very effective way for a whole host of organizations to get secure contracts from the state. The politics of this were clear enough to the participants, as a speech by Werner Von Braun to a banquet for what he called the leaders and captains of the mainstream of American industry and life the day before Apollo 11 lifted off suggests. Without your success in building the economic foundations of this nation, the resources for mounting tomorrows expedition to the moon would have never been committed. (in Mailer, 1971: 73) Norman Mailers beautiful analysis of the contradictions of Apollo, of the real and true tasty beef of

capitalism (. . .) the grease and guts of it makes the clear point that Apollo would not have been possible without a capitalist who risks all the moral future of his soul on the gamble that God believes in capitalism and wants each man to enrich himself as part of Gods design (op. cit. p. 158). For Mailer, the sublime strangeness and mystery of Apollo the fire on the moon was only possible because of this combination of scientific rationalism and corporate greed. It was a sacred effort, held together by the most profane of motives. In addition, the high end research and development that Big Defence were being paid to do could also feed into the manufacture and sales of many other products. It was, effectively, an extra civilian funding stream in addition to the general budget for military hardware. By the late 1960s, as the Vietnam war became more and more expensive, the state gradually shrunk NASAs
budget, though this did not damage the profitability of many of the aerospace and defence contractors because they were now selling more jets, bombers and missiles for the killing fields of South-East Asia. There was lots of money in space for many other manufacturers too. The vogue for newness, science and streamlined technology meant that fabrics, wallpaper and furniture were often designed with a space theme. Clothing used whites, blues and new synthetic materials, often with metallic finishes, and innumerable childrens toys were manufactured (DeGroot, 2007: 184). Food became space food. Tang, the powdered orange drink used by John Glenn on the third Mercury flight;3 Space Food Sticks and so on. And, of course, people bought books, magazines, newspapers and watched TV to find out about Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Copies of the post-mission dinner invitation from the White House vied with pop singles and swimming pool inflatables for consumer spending. Even some products that had already been developed, such as Teflon, Velcro, the Fisher Space Pen and WD40,4 gained a huge boost from stories concerning their use on the space programme. Smith (1983) argues that selling the moon was part of the project of commodity scientism, a conjunction of nation building and consumption. The shareholders of all

of these organizations must have been grateful that the US economy allowed such generous state intervention, despite free market rhetoric. Space was, in an important sense, part of the general economy, even if NASA never officially endorsed

anything.5 As NASAs budgets declined, so was there an increasing pressure to find something that the agency could sell. However, during the 1970s and
80s NASA was still almost entirely funded by the US state, and was hence usually the purchaser of goods and services. The first sign that a commercial organization might buy something from NASA was a deal to explore space based pharmaceutical manufacturing signed by McDonnell-Douglas, Ortho Pharmaceuticals and NASA in 1975. This never materialized, but mutated into a series of suggestions about an Industrial Space Facility in the early1980s, backed by Boeing and Westinghouse (Klerkx, 2004: 81). At roughly the same time, the space shuttle was beginning to deliver commercial satellites into orbit, sometimes together with the first non-NASA or services personnel on board. Partly as an inducement to use the already heavily subsidized service, NASA took payload specialists from various companies on the shuttle in order to operate the cargo, and also gave free flights to foreign nationals in return for launching their satellites. But these were attempts at marketing, and not commercial transactions. 6 So Prince Sultan Salman Al-Saud (who flew with a Saudi communications satellite), was not a paying space tourist, but an advertisement for NASA. The same was true of the two Congressmen who flew into space, presumably as a reward and incentive for continued support for NASA budget requests. In any case, the Challenger disaster of 1986 ended flights for a while, as well as slowing their pace and increasing their cost. The massive historical irony is that it was the space programme that grew from state control that embraced the market first. After the collapse of the Soviet Union a rockets for roubles policy was all that could keep the Russian programme going. Just keeping Mir, the Russian space station, in orbit required large amounts of cash. The first clearly commercial traveller seems to have been Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese broadcaster who spent a week on Mir in 1990 for $12 million, paid for by the Tokyo Broadcasting System. The following year Glavkosmos, the Russian space administration, charged around $10 million to take the first UK astronaut, Helen Sharman, to Mir. The money was to be raised by industrial sponsorship and underwritten by the UK subsidiary of the Narodny Bank (Sharman, 1993). Later Mir was being kept aloft by a deal with NASA for International Space Station training, and there was even a proposal by an organization called MirCorp to buy and run the ailing station as a commercial project. However, according to Klerkx (2004: 44), this deal was eventually killed by NASA and Big Aerospace, partly because neither wanted any competition for the new International Space Station. The commercialization of the state space agencies continued during the 1990s, but with Russia very much in the lead. NASA took a generally more conservative position, and often acted to protect its monopoly, rather than breaking the alliances it had with both the US state and Big Aerospace. So it was the Russians who took the money on offer. In 1999 Pizza Hut paid one million dollars in order that a Russian Proton rocket would launch with a forty foot high Pizza Hut logo emblazoned on its side. Two years later, the Soyuz that took Dennis Tito (the first of five paying astrotourists so far) to the International Space Station also delivered a salami Pizza Hut pizza, copies of Popular Mechanics magazine, talking picture frames and Lego toys that 88became prizes in a competition (Klerkx, 2004: 2334). Tito paid between $12 and $20 million for his trip, which worked out at around 7 per cent of the budget of the entire Russian space programme that year. In comparison, 7 per cent of NASAs budget that year would have been about a billion dollars (Klerkx, 2004: 184). No wonder that a Pepsi commercial was filmed in Mir, whilst Radio Shack commercials have been filmed in the Russian part of the ISS. The Russians even signed an agreement with the creator of the TV show Survivor for a reality TV show entitled Destination Space. Contestants would train at Star City, with the winner going for a trip to the ISS (Commercial Alert, 2003). From the mid 1990s onwards, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin was arguing that financial and efficiency targets could be achieved by commercializing the programme. He mandated that 30% of the space on the new International Space Station should be used by private companies, and held talks with McDonalds and CocaCola about providing food for the station. Few deals actually happened though, unless you count existing relationships being renamed. Lockheed and Boeing formed a joint company called the United Space Alliance, which sells shuttle services, mainly maintenance, to NASA. In 2000, this contract was worth $1.6 billion (Klerkx, 2004: 100). There were some small, and perhaps symbolic, partnerships such as the contract with Lego to name the two Mars rovers, or with Dreamtime to produce high definition broadcasts from space. The shuttles were also beginning to carry (again heavily subsidized) commercial payloads. For example, the shuttle Columbia contained an experiment for International Flowers and Fragrances Inc. concerning the effects of low gravity on flower scent, as well as seven other experiments (Commercial Alert, 2003).7 The collapse of the stock market in 2001, combined with Columbias 2003 disintegration over Texas, again put paid to NASAs ambitions for a while. According to Dickens and Ormrod, space-related capitalism had generated nearly $1 trillion in the decade up to 2004 (2007: 1). This is a lot of money, and there is every reason to imagine that NASA would like some of it. However, there is an even more compelling reason to expect NASA to behave more like a corporation in future the beginnings of space tourism.

1NCSPACEIMPACT
CAPITALISM IN SPACE MAKES DISASTER INEVITABLE SPACE JUNK WILL PREVENT EXPLORATION, NUCLEAR POWERED SHIPS WILL CAUSE MILLIONS OF DEATHS, AND CAPITALIST WARS OVER RESOURCES WILL MAKE THE FUTUREAVIOLENTDYSTOPIA. Dickens, teaches at the Universities of Brighton and Cambridge, UK, in10
[Peter, The Humanization of the CosmosTo What End?, Monthly Review, Vol. 62 No. 6, http://monthlyreview.org/2010/11/01/thehumanization-of-the-cosmos-to-what-end]

But even if it were desirable, the success of a galactic colonialism is by no means guaranteed. This is because the very venture of space colonization brings new risks. The fifteenth-century Renaissance and the Enlightenment placed great faith in science as a means of bringing progress. Now such progress is regularly challenged. Furthermore, much scientific intervention today stems from the crises stemming from earlier intervention, or what some social scientists have called manufactured risk.19 This kind of risk, for which
no one agency or individual is usually culpable, is readily recognizable in space-humanization progress. Note, for example, that there are now around fourteen thousand tracked objects circling around the earth, known as space debris or space junk. Improved tracking systems will increase the number of smaller, observable tracked objects to around thirty thousand, many of these causing potential damage. Even whole satellites may collide. Such collisions are estimated at millions or even billions to one. But on February 10, 2009, such a collision actually happened. A defunct Russian satellite crashed into an American commercial satellite, generating thousands of pieces of orbiting debris.20 Space junk poses a serious

threat to the whole enterprise of space colonization, and plans are now afoot to launch even more satellites, designed to drag older satellites out of orbit in order to avoid collisions.21 Space colonization brings a number of other manufactured risks. The farther space vehicles penetrate the solar system, the more likely it is that they will be powered by nuclear, rather than solar, energy. It is not widely appreciated, for example, that the 1997 Cassini Mission to Saturns moons (via Jupiter and Venus) was powered by plutonium. One estimate is that if something had gone wrong while Cassini was still circling the earth, some thirty to forty million deaths could have occurred.22 No plans were in place for such an eventuality. Yet, as early as 1964, a plutonium-powered generator fell to earth,
having failed to achieve orbit. Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California, Berkeley, then argued that there was probably a direct link between that crash and an increase of lung cancer on Earth. Both President Obama and the Russian authorities are now arguing for generating electricity with plutonium in space, and building nuclear-propelled rockets for missions to Mars.23 Some of the wilder plans for space colonization also entail major risk. These include proposals for planetary engineering, whereby the climates of

other planets would be changed in such a way as to support life. Dyes, artificial dust clouds, genetically engineered bacteria, and the redirecting of sunlight by satellite mirrors are all being advanced as means of terraforming, or making parts of the cosmos more like earth. This and the Cassini example further demonstrate the nature of manufactured risk. Science and technology, far from creating Renaissance or Enlightenment-style optimism and certainty, are creating new problems that are unforeseen and extremely difficult to cope with. But even manufactured risks may be minimal in scope, compared with another risk stemming from cosmic colonization. This is outright war. Armed conflict has long been a common feature of past colonialisms; between colonizing nations as well as between the colonizers and aboriginal peoples. Satellites are already a means by which territories and investments on Earth are monitored and protected by governments operating on behalf of their economic interests. But the prospect of galactic colonialisms raises the distinct possibility of hostilities in space. Galactic wars may therefore be the product of galactic colonialism. Such a scenario was
prefigured by the Star Trek science fiction television series in which the main role of The Federation is the protection of capitalist mining colonies.24 It is a discomforting fact that both China and the United States are now actively developing their own versions of full spectrum dominance. China demonstrated its capabilities in January 2007 by shooting down one of its own defunct satellites. In February 2008, the U.S. Navy demonstrated a similar capability, destroying a faulty U.S. satellite with a sea-based missile. An arms race in outer space has already started

1NCIMPERIALISMIMPACT
AND CAPITALISM IS IMPERIALISM IT FUELS A GENOCIDAL FOREIGN POLICY THAT THREATENS GLOBAL DESTRUCTION.

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. stateisto 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 thatthe strategy of the American ruling class to expand the American Empire cannot

possibly succeed in the long run, and will prove to be its ownwehopenot the world'sundoing

1NCETHICSFIRST
MOREOVER, RESISTING THE ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF POPULATIONS IS THE ULTIMATE ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY THE CURRENT SOCIAL ORDER GUARANTEES SOCIAL EXCLUSION ON A GLOBAL SCALE WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLYANONYMIZINGVIOLENCEINAWAYTHATMAKESIMPACTCALCULATIONIMPOSSIBLE.

ZizekandDaly2k4(SlavojandGlyn,ConversationswithZizekpage1416)
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 todays 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 todays 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. Zizeks 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 Marxs 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 worlds 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 Zizeks point is that this mystification is magnified through capitalisms 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 Zizeks 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.

1NCALT
THUS OUR ALTERNATIVE IS AN UNCONDITIONAL COMMITMENT TO THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESIS. EVERY ETHICAL DECISION UP TO THE BALLOT ITSELF SHOULD BE INFUSED WITH ALL OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUMANITYS DESTINY. THE QUESTION REGARDING THE PLAN IS DOES IT CONFIRM OR CONTRADICT THE COMMUNIST HYPOTHESIS. IF WE WIN A LINK ARGUMENT, YOU SHOULD REJECT THE AFFIRMATIVE BECAUSE THEYREDUCELIFETOABARBARICRATRACEANDSTANDOPPOSEDTOUNIVERSALEMANCIPATION. ALAIN BADIOU, FORMER CHAIR OF PHILOSOPHY AT COLE NORMALE SUPRIEURE, 2008. [THE MEANING OF SARKOZY,PP.97103]
I would like to situate the Sarkozy episode, which is not an impressive page in French history, in a broader horizon. I Let us picture a kind of Hegelian fresco of recent world history - by which I do not, like our journalists, mean the triad Mitterrand-Chirac-Sarkozy, but rather the development of the politics of working-class and popular emancipation over nearly two centuries. Since the French Revolution and its gradually universal echo, since the most radically egalitarian developments of that revolution, the decrees of Robespierre's Committee of Public Safety on the 'maximum' and Babeuf's theorizations, we know (when I say 'we', I mean humanity in the abstract, and the knowledge in question is universally available on the paths of emancipation) that communism is the right hypothesis. Indeed, there is no other, or at least I am not aware of one. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately

resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy - the form of state suited to capitalism - and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities. What do we mean by 'communism'? As Marx argued in the 1844 ManUJcriptJ, communism is an idea regarding the destiny of the human species. This use of the word must be completely distinguished
from the meaning of the adjective 'communist' that is so worn-out today, in such expressions as 'communist parties', 'communist states' or 'communist world' - never mind that 'communist state' is an oxymoron, to which the obscure coinage 'socialist state' has wisely been preferred. Even if, as we shall see, these uses of the word belong to a time when the hypothesis was still coming-to-be. In its generic sense, 'communist' means first of all, in a negative sense - as we can read in its canonical text The Communist ManijeJto - that the logic of classes, of the fundamental subordination of people who

actually work for a dominant class, can be overcome. This arrangement, which has been that of history ever since antiquity, is not inevitable. Consequently, the oligarchic power of those who possess wealth and organize its circulation, crystallized in the might of states, is not inescapable. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour: every individual will be a 'multi-purpose worker', and in particular people will circulate between manual and intellectual work, as well as between town and country. The private appropriation of monstrous fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state separate from civil society, with its military and police, will no longer seem a self-evident necessity. There will be, Marx tells us - and he saw this point as his major contribution - after a brief sequence of 'proletarian dictatorship' charged with destroying the remains of the old world, a long sequence of reorganization on the basis of a 'free association' of producers and creators, which will make possible a 'withering away' of the state. 'Communism' as such only denotes this very general set of intellectual representations. This set is the horizon of any initiative, however local and limited in time it may be, that breaks with the order of established opinions - the necessity of inequalities and the state instrument for protecting these - and composes a fragment of a politics of emancipation. In other words, communism is what Kant called an 'Idea', with a regulatory function, rather than a programme. It is absurd to characterize communist principles in the sense I have defined them here as utopian, as is so often done. They are intellectual patterns, always actualized in a different fashion, that serve to produce lines of demarcation between different forms of politics. By and large, a particular political sequence is either compatible with these principles or opposed to them, in which case it is reactionary. 'Communism', in this sense, is a heuristic hypothesis that is very frequently used in political argument, even if the word itself does not appear. If it is still true, as Sartre said, that 'every anti-communist is a swine', it is because any political sequence that, in its principles or lack of them, stands in formal contradiction with the communist hypothesis in its generic sense, has to be judged as opposed to the emancipation of the whole of humanity, and thus to the properly human destiny of humanity. Whoever does not illuminate the coming-to-be of humanity with the communist hypothesis - whatever words they use, as such words matter little - reduces humanity, as far as its collective becoming is concerned, to animality. As we know, the contemporary - that is, the capitalist name of this animality - is 'competition'. The war dictated by self-interest, and nothing more. As a pure Idea of equality, the communist hypothesis has no doubt existed in a practical state since the beginnings of the existence of the state. As soon as mass action opposes state coercion in the name of egalitarian justice, we have the appearance of rudiments or fragments of the communist hypothesis. This is why, in a pamphlet titled De l'UJeologie, which I wrote in collaboration with the late lamented Francois Balmes and was published in
1976, we proposed to identity 'communist invariants'f Popular revolts, such as that of the slaves led by Spartacus, or that of the German peasants led by Thomas Munzer, are examples of this practical existence of communist invariants. However, in the explicit form that it was given by certain thinkers and activists of the French Revolution, the communist hypothesis inaugurates political modernity. It was this that laid low the mental structures of the ancien regime, yet without being tied to those 'democratic' political forms that the bourgeoisie would make the instrument for its own pursuit of power. This point is essential: from the beginning, the communist hypothesis in no way coincided with the

'democratic' hypothesis that would lead to present-day parliamentarism. It subsumes a different history and different events. What seems important and creative when illuminated by the communist hypothesis is different in kind from what bourgeois-

democratic historiography selects. That is indeed why Marx, giving materialist foundations to the first effective great sequence of the modern
politics of emancipation, both took over the word 'communism' and distanced himself from any kind of democratic 'politicism' by maintaining, after the lesson of the Paris Commune, that the bourgeois state, no matter how democratic, must be destroyed. Well, I leave it to you to judge

what is important or not, to judge the points whose consequences you choose to assume against the horizon of the communist hypothesis. Once again, it is the right hypothesis, and we can appeal to its principles, whatever the declensions or variations that these undergo in different contexts. Sartre said in an interview, which I paraphrase: If the communist hypothesis is not right, if it is not practicable, well, that means that humanity is not a thing in itself, not very different from ants or termites. What did he mean by that? If competition, the 'free market', the sum of little pleasures, and the walls that protect you from the desire of the weak, are the alpha and omega of all collective and private existence, then the human animal is not worth a cent. And it is this worthlessness to which Bush with his aggressive conservatism and crusader spirit, Blair the Pious with his militarist rhetoric, and Sarkozy with his 'work, family, country' discipline, want to reduce the existence of the immense majority of living individuals. And the 'Left' is still worse, simply juxtaposing to this vacant violence a vague spirit of charity. To morbid competition, the pasteboard victories of daddy's boys and girls, the ridiculous supermen of unleashed finance, the coked-up heroes of the planetary stock exchange, this Left can only oppose the same actors with a bit of social politeness, a little walnut oil in the wheels, crumbs of holy wafer for the disinherited - in other words, borrowing from Nietzsche, the bloodless figure of the 'last man. To put an end once and for all to May '68 means agreeing that our only choice is between the hereditary nihilism of finance and social piety. It not only means accepting that communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, not only acknowledging that the
Parti Communiste Francais has been wretchedly defeated, but also and above all it means abandoning the hypothesis that May '68 was a militant invention precisely aware ofthe failure of state'communism'. And thus that May '68, and still more so the five years that followed, inaugurated a new sequence for the genuine communist hypothesis, one that always keeps its distance from the state. Certainly, no one could say where all this might lead, but we knew in any case that what was at stake was the rebirth of this hypothesis. If the thing that Sarkozy is the name of succeeds in

imposing the necessity of abandoning any idea of a rebirth of this kind, if human society is a collection of individuals pursuing their self-interest, if this is the eternal reality, then it is certain that the philosopher can and must abandon the human animal to its sad destiny. But we shall not let a triumphant Sarkozy dictate the meaning of our existence, or the tasks of philosophy. For what we are witnessing in no way imposes such a renunciation of the communist hypothesis, but simply a consideration of the moment at which we find ourselves in the history of this hypothesis.

1NCALTF/W
FIDELITY
TO THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM MEANS SUBORDINATION OF ALL OTHER GOALS AND THE INCORPORATIONOFALLOTHERAGENDAS. THISDEBATEROUNDSHOULDBECONSIDEREDAREFERRENDUMON THEFUTURECASTYOURBALLOTINFAVOROFTHETRUTHOFCOMMUNISM.

BADIOU,FORMER CHAIROF PHILOSOPHYAT COLENORMALESUPRIEURE, 2010. [THE IDEAOF COMMUNISM PP.245260]

So we can now return to our subject, the communist Idea. If, for an individual, an

Idea is the subjective operation whereby a specific real truth is imaginarily projected into the symbolic movement of a History, we can say that an Idea presents the truth as if it were a fact. In other words, the Idea presents certain facts as symbols of the real of truth. This was how the Idea of communism allowed revolutionary politics and its parties to be inscribed in the representation of a meaning of History the inevitable outcome of which was communism.
Or how it became possible to speak of a 'homeland of socialism', which amounted to symbolizing the creation of a possibility - which is fragile by definition - through the magnitude of a power. The Idea, which is an operative mediation between the real and the symbolic, always presents the individual with something that is located between the event and the fac t. That is why the endless debates about the real status of the communist Idea are irresolvable. Is it a question of a regulative Idea, in Kant's sense of the term, having no real efficacy but able to set reasonable goals for our understanding? Or is it an agenda that must be carried out over time through a new post-revolutionary State's action on the world? Is it a utopia, if not a plainly dangerous, and even criminal, one? Or is it the name of Reason in History? This type of debate can never be concluded for the simple reason that the subjective operation of the Idea is not simple but complex. It involves real sequences of emancipatory politics as its essential real condition , but it also presupposes marshalling a whole range of historical facts suitable for symbolization. It does not claim (as this would amount to subjecting the truth procedure to the laws of the State) that the event and its organized political consequences are reducible to facts. But neither does it claim that the facts are unsuitable for any historical trans-scription (to make a Lacanian sort of play on words) of the distinctive characters of a truth. The Idea is a historical anchoring of everything elusive, slippery and evanescent in the becoming of a truth. But it can only be so if it admits as its O"tn real this aleatory, elusive, slippery, evanescent dimension. That is why it is incumbent upon the communist Idea to respond to the question 'Where do correct ideas come from?' the way Mao did: , 'correct ideas' (and by this I mean what constitutes the path of a truth in a situation) come from practice. 'Practice' should obviously be understood as the materialist name of the real. It would thus be appropriate to say that the Idea that symbolizes the becoming 'in truth' of correct (political) ideas in History, that is to say, the Idea of communism, therefore comes itself from the idea of practice (from the experience of the real) in the final analysis but can nevertheless not be reduced to it. This is because it is the protocol not of the existence but rather of the exposure of a truth in action. All of the foregoing explains, and to a certain extent justifies, why it was ultimately possible to go to the extreme of exposing the truths of emancipatory politics in the guise of their opposite, that is to say, in the guise of a State. Since it is a question of an (imaginary) ideological relationship between a truth procedure and historical facts, why hesitate to push this relationship to its limit? Why not say that it is a matter of a relationship between event and State? State and Revolution: that is the title of one of Lenin's most famous texts. And the State and the Event are indeed what are at stake in it. Nevertheless, Lenin, following Marx in this regard, is careful to say that the State in question after the Revolution will have to be the State of the withering away of the State, the State as organizer of the transition to the non-State. So let's say the following: The Idea of communism can project the real of a politics, subtracted as ever from the power of the State, into the figure of 'another State', provided that the subtraction lies within this subjectivating operation, in the sense that the 'other State' is also subtracted from the power of the State, hence from its own power, in so far as it is a State whose essence is to wither away. It is in this context that it is necessary to think and endorse the vital importance of proper names in all revolutionary politics. Their i mportance is indeed both spectacular and paradoxical. On the one hand, in effect, emancipatory politics is essentially the politics of the anonymous masses; it is the victory of those with no names,10 of those who are held in a state of colossal insignificance by the State. On the other hand, it is distinguished all along the way by proper names, which define it historically, which represent it, much more forcefully tban is the case for other kinds of politics. Why is there this long series of proper names? Why this glorious Pantheon of revolutionary heroes? Why Spartacus, Thomas MUntzer, Robespierre, Toussaint Louverture, Blanqui, Marx, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Mao, Che Guevara and so many others? The reason is that all these proper names symbolize historically - in the guise of an individual, of a pure singularity of body and thought the rare and precious network of ephemeral sequences of politics as truth. The elusive formalism of bodies-of-truth is legible here as empirical existence. In these proper names, the ordinary individual discovers glorious, distinctive individuals as the mediation for his or her own individuality, as the proof that he or she can force its finitude. The

anonymous action of millions of militants, rebels, fighters, unrepresentable as such, is combined and counted as one in the simple, powerful symbol of the proper name. Thus, proper names are involved in the operation of the Idea, and the ones I just mentioned are
elements of the Idea of communism at its various different stages. So let us not hesitate to say that Khrushchev's condemnation of 'the cult of personality', apropos Stalin, was misguided, and that, under the pretence of democracy, it heralded the decline of the Idea of communism that we witnessed in the ensuing decades. The political critique of Stalin and his terrorist vision of the State needed to be undertaken in a rigorous way, from the perspective of revolutionary politics itself, and Mao had begun to do as much in a number of his writings.11 Whereas Khrushchev, who was in fact defending the group that had led the Stalinist State, made no inroads whatsoever as regards this issue and, when it came to speaking of the Terror carried out under Stalin, merely offered an abstract critique of the role of proper names in political subjectivation. He himself thereby paved the way for the 'new philosophers' of reactionary humanism a decade later. Whence a very precious lesson: even though retroactive political actions may require that a given name be stripped of its symbolic function, this function as such cannot be eliminated for all that. For the Idea - and the communist Idea in particular, because it refers directly to the infinity of the people - needs the finitude of proper names. Let's recapitulate as simply as possible. A

truth is the political real. History, even as a reservoir of proper names, is a symbolic place. The

ideological operation of the Idea of communism is the imaginary projection of the political real into the symbolic fiction of History, including in its guise as a representation of the action of innumerable masses via the One of a proper name. The role of this Idea is to support the individual's incorporation into the discipline of a truth procedure, to authorize the individual, in his or her own eyes, to go beyond the Statist constraints of mere survival by becoming a part of the body-of-truth, or the subjectivizable body. We will now ask: why is it
necessary to resort to this ambiguous operation? Why do the event and its consequences also have to be exposed in the guise of a fact - often a violent one that IS accompanied by different versions of the 'cult of personality'? What is the reason for this historical appropriation of emancipatory politics? The simplest reason is that ordinary history, the history of individual lives, is confined within the State. The history of a life, with

neither decision nor choice, is in itself a part of the history of the State, whose conventional mediations are the family, work, the homeland, property, religion, customs and so forth. The heroic, but individual, projection of an exception to all the above - as is a truth procedure - also aims at being shared with everyone else; it aims to show itself to be not only an exception but also a possibility that everyone can share from now on. And that is one of the Idea's functions: to project the exception into the ordinary life of individuals, to fill what merely exists with a certain measure of the extraordinary. To convince my own immediate circle - husband or wife, neighbours and friends, colleagues - that the fantastic exception of truths in the making also exists, that we are not doomed to lives programmed by the constraints of the State. Naturally, in the final analysis, only the raw, or militant, experience of the truth procedure will compel one person or another's entry into the bodyof- truth. But to take him or her to the place where this experience is to be found - to make him or her a spectator of, and therefore partly a participant in, what is important for a truth the mediation of the Idea, the sharing of the Idea, are almost always required. The Idea of communism (regardless of what name it might otherwise be given, which hardly matters: no Idea is definable by its name) is what enables a truth procedure to be spoken in the impure language of the State and thereby for the lines of force by virtue of which the State prescribes what is possible and what i s impossible to be shifted for a time. In this view of things, the most ordinary action is to take someone to a real political meeting, far from their home, far from their predetermined existential parameters, in a hostel of workers from Mali, for example, or at the gates of a factory. Once they have come to the place where politics is occurring, they will make a decision about whether to incorporate or withdraw. But in order for them to come to that place, the Idea and for two centuries, or perhaps since Plato, it has been the Idea of communism - must have already shifted them in the order of representations, of History and of the State. The symbol must imaginarily come to the aid of the creative flight from the real. Allegorical facts must ideologize and historicize the fragility of truth. A banal yet crucial discussion with four workers and a student in an ill-lit room must momentarily be enlarged to the dimensions of Communism and thus be both what it is and what it will have been as a moment in the local construction of the True. Through the enlargement of the symbol, it must become visible that 'just ideas' come from this practically invisible practice. The fiveperson meeting in an out-of-the-way suburb must be eternal in the very expression of its precariousness. That is why the real must be exposed in a fictional structure. The second reason is that every event is a surprise. If this were not the case, it would mean that it "could have been predictable as a fact, and so would be inscribed in the History of the State, which is a contradiction in terms. The problem can thus be formulated in the following way: how can we prepare ourselves for such surprises? And this time the problem really exists, even if we are already currently militants of a previous event's consequences, even if we are included in a bodyof- trutb. Granted, we are proposing the deployment of new possibilities. However, the event to come will tum what is still impossible, even for us, into a possibility. In order to anticipate, at least ideologically, or intellectually, the creation of new possibilities, we must have an Idea. An Idea that of course involves the newness of the possibilities that the truth procedure of which we are the militants has brought to light, which are real-possibilities, but an Idea that also involves the formal possibility of other possibilities, ones as yet unsuspected by us. An Idea is always the assertion that a new truth is historically possible. And since the forcing of the impossible into the possible occurs via subtraction from the power of the State, an Idea can be said to assert that this subtractive process is infinite: it is always formally possible that the dividing line drawn by the State between the possible and the impossible may once again be shifted, however radical its previous shifts - including the one in which we as militants are currently taking part - may have been. That is why one of the contents of the communist Idea today as opposed to the theme of communism as a goal to be attained through the work of a new State - is that the withering away of the State, while undoubtedly a principle that must be apparent in any political action (which is expressed by the formula 'politics at a distance from the State' as an obligatory refusal of any direct inclusion in the State, of any request for funding from the State, of any participation in elections, etc.), is also an infinite task, since the creation of new political truths will always shift the dividing line between Statist, hence historical, facts and the eternal consequences of an event. With this in mind, I will now conclude by turningto the contemporary inflections of the Idea of communism.12 In keeping with the current
reassessment of the Idea of communism, as I mentioned, the word's function can no longer be that of an adjective, as in 'Communist Party', or 'communist regimes'. The Party-form, like that of the Socialist State, is no longer suitable for providing real support for the Idea. This problem moreover first found negative expression in two crucial events of the '60s and '70s of the last century: the Cultural Revolution in China and the amorphous entity called 'May '68' in France. Later, new political forms, all of which are of the order of politics without a party, were - and are still being tried OUt.13 Overall, however, the

modern, so-called 'democratic' form of the bourgeois State, of which globalized capitalism is the cornerstone, can boast of having no rivals in the ideological field. For three decades now, the word 'communism' has been either totally forgotten or practically equated with criminal enterprises. That is why the subjective situation of politics has everywhere become so incoherent. Lacking the Idea, the popular masses's confusion is inescapable. Nevertheless, there are many signs suggesting that this

reactionary period is coming to an end. The historical paradox is that, in a certain way, we are closer to problems investigated in the first half of the nineteenth century than we are to those we have inherited from the twentieth. Just as in around 1840, today we are faced with an utterly cynical capitalism, which is certain that it is the only possible option for a rational organization of society. Everywhere it is implied that the poor are to blame for their own plight, that Mricans are backward, and that the future belongs either to the 'civilized' bourgeoisies of the Western world or to those who, like the Japanese, choose to follow the same path. Today, just as back then, very extensive areas of extreme poverty can be found even in the rich countries. There are outrageous, widening inequalities between countries, as well as between social classes. The subjective, political gulf between Third World farmers, the unemployed and poor wage earners in our so-called 'developed' countries, on the one hand, and the 'Western' middle classes on the other, is absolutely unbridgeable and tainted with a sort of indifference bordering on hatred. More than ever, political power, as the current economic crisis with its one single slogan of 'rescue the banks' clearly proves, is merely an agent of capitalism. Revolutionaries are

divided and only weakly organized, broad sectors of working-class youth have fallen prey to nihilistic despair, the vast majority of intellectuals are servile. In contrast to all this, as isolated as Marx and his friends were at the time when the retrospectively famous Manifesto of the Communist Party came out in 1847, there are nonetheless more and more of us involved in organizing new types of political processes among the poor and working masses and in trying to find every possible way to support the re-emergent forms of the communist Idea in reality. Just as at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the victory of the communist Idea is not at issue, as it would later be, far too dangerously and dogmatically, for a whole stretch of the twentieth century. What matters first and foremost is its existence and the terms in which it is formulated. In the first place, to provide a vigorous subjective existence to the communist hypothesis is the task those of us gathered here today are attempting to accomplish in our own way. And it I insist, a thrilling task. By combining intellectual constructs, which are always global and universal, with experiments of fragments of truths, which are local and singular, yet universally transmittable, we can give new life to the communist hypothesis, or rather to the Idea of communism, in individual consciousnesses. We can usher in the third era of this Idea's existence. We can, so we must.

1NCALTKEYTOSPACE
THE ALTERNATIVE DOES NOT ABANDON SPACE BUT DEMANDS THAT ANY ATTEMPT AT GETTING THERE IS PRECEDED BY A REVALUATION OF VALUES. ESTABLISHING CRITICAL DISTANCE FROM THE IDEOLOGIES OF GLOBALCAPITALISMISANECESSARYPREREQUISITETOANETHICALSPACEPOLITICS. MARTIN PARKER, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, 2009. [CAPITALISTS IN SPACE, THESOCIOLOGICALREVIEW,VOLUME57,ISSUESUPPLEMENT1]
Uninvited or not, business interests will continue to find their way into space. A year before the Armstrongs were watching TV, Stanley Kubrick had placed a rotating Hilton hotel and a Pam Am shuttle plane in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The brands may change, and the future will not happen as quickly as we think, but unless we imagine massive state interventionism on a Soviet scale, capitalism will go into space. Dickens and Ormrod claim that it already has, at least in terms of near earth orbit, and that the key issue is to engineer a relationship with the universe that does not further empower the already powerful (2007: 190). In other words, a Marxist political economy of space would suggest that the militaryindustrial complex has already empowered the powerful, but would presumably be equally sceptical about the space libertarians claims to be representing the ordinary citizen. Of course we might conclude from this that the answer is simply to turn away from space. The whole programme has not been without its critics, whether of capitalism, imperialism,
patriarchy, techno-fetishism, bad science, bad policy making or even new world order conspiracy (Etzioni, 1964; DeGroot, 2007). Even at the height of space euphoria, in the summer of 1969, we find dissenting voices. The moon is an escape from our earthy responsibilities, and like other escapes, it leaves a troubled conscience said Anthony Lewis in the New York Times. An Ebony opinion leader, asking what we will say to extra-terrestrials, suggested We have millions of people starving to death back home so we thought wed drop by to see how youre faring. Kurt Vonnegut, in the New York Times Magazine, put it with characteristic lan. Earth is such a pretty blue and pink and white pearl in the pictures NASA sent me. It looks so clean. You cant see all the hungry, angry earthlings down there and the smoke and the sewage and the trash and sophisticated weaponry. (all cited in Smith, 1983: 207) In summary, the money could be better spent, and we would be better off tending our own gardens. But even the best, and only, Marxist sociology of space has its authors making claims that go beyond the economic materialism they deploy. They claim that the desire to go into space is cosmic narcissism, a sort of projection of capitalist individualism onto the universe (Dickens and Ormrod, 2007; Dickens this volume). This is, in Weberian terms, a value, even if it is a value that Dickens and Ormrod dislike. Presumably they would prefer more communitarian or collectivist understandings of human values, in which we look more carefully at others, and not merely our own reflections. I might well agree with their politics, but I think that we should not dispose of a radical imagination so rapidly. In other words, there are ways in which we can think about the future that escape the clutches of Virgin Galactic, and that can still leave us misty-eyed about Armstrong. Dickens and Ormrod are not keen on science fiction, seeing its utopianism as usually a distraction from hard thinking about the world. But a great deal of SF has been very engaged with the politics of its times, and persistently opened the possibility that the future (often, off earth and in the future) might be different. As a form of speculation suspended somewhere between utopias, fantasy and sociology, one definition of SF is that it involves systematically altering technological, social or biological conditions and then attempting to understand the possible consequences. Though much of SF has involved relocating cowboy plots into spaceships, or constructing fantasies which re-tell ancient myths, much has also involved political thought experiments. It is hardly surprising that many radicals (whether counter-cultural or political) have found in SF a mirror for their own longings (see Jameson, 2005; Shukaitis, this volume). As Mannheim put it Wishful thinking has always figured in human affairs. When the imagination finds no satisfaction in existing reality, it seeks refuge in wishfully constructed places and periods. Myths, fairy tales, other-worldly promises of religion, humanistic fantasies, travel romances, have been continually changing expressions of that which was lacking in actual life (1960: 184). But, for Mannheim, utopianism was also at the heart of political demands for change A state of mind is utopian when it is incongruous with the state of reality in which it occurs (1960: 173). As I suggested at the beginning, the idea that the world could be other than it is must be at the beginning for a demand that it can be different. Constance Penley suggests that the blended cultural text she calls NASA/Trek is radical in just this way (1997). The dreams of Apollo, the nostalgia for a space age that never arrived (Benjamin, 2004; Parker, 2007, 2008), the sheer enormity of seeing the earth from space, are all examples of a science fiction that actually happened. To assume that we know, in advance, that the future must be either Big Business, or Big State, is to close down the possibilities that make the future worth spending time thinking about. For me, there is something nauseating (or saddening) about imagining that the inhabitants of 47 Ursae Majoris would want Doritos, but I dont think that this means that space must be left for the capitalists. I dont share Kemps craven enthusiasm for Gaia capitalism (2007: 249), but I do find the pictures of Armstrong on the moon to be inspiring in ways that make me want the future, rather than being frightened of it. Mailer suggested that Apollo 11s paradox was that: American capitalism finally put together a cooperative effort against all the glut, waste, scandal, corruption, inefficiency, dishonesty, woe, dread, oversecurity and simple sense of boredom which hounded the lives of its corporate workers (Mailer, 1971: 175). Apollo promised something else. Not a solution, or a blueprint, though it generated enough of those, but literally something else. Perhaps even something sublime (Nye, 1994: 237 passim). The idea that our world might be different, both larger and smaller than we normally imagine, and that

human beings can do extraordinary things. An idea that makes me nostalgic for the future.

LINKS

LINK:SPACE
THE DRIVE TOWARDS SPACE IS JUST A REPLICATIONS OF CAPITALS CONTROL OVER THE PSYCHE THE NEGATIVESARGUMENTREFUSESTOCONFRONTTHECRISISOFEXPLOITATION Julien Tort, UNESCO (Working paper for the Ethical Working Group on Astrobiology and Planetary Protection of ESA (EWG) July 28, 2005Exploration and Exploitation: Lessons Learnt from the Renaissance for Space Conquest
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 Asimovs 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.

NOTHING

CHANGES IN SPACE

PROFIT MOTIVE MAKES RESOURCE EXPLOITATION INEVITABLE AND

UNQUESTIONEDUNDERTHEIRFRAMEWORK

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
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.

LINK:EXPLORATION
WHILE THE AFFIRMATIVE MAY OFFER RATIONAL JUSTIFICATION FOR THE PLAN, THE ADVANTAGES ARE ONLY SECONDARY. MOTIVATING SPACE EXPLORATION IN THE FIRST PLACE IS A PARTICULAR CONSTELLATION OF VALUESTHATISEXPLOITEDBYGLOBALCAPITALISMINORDERTOJUSTIFYITSENDLESSEXPANSION. MARTIN PARKER, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, 2009. [CAPITALISTS IN SPACE, THESOCIOLOGICALREVIEW,VOLUME57,ISSUESUPPLEMENT1]
This chapter explores a paradox.1 I want to believe that the

ends of space exploration rest on a certain orientation to the future, a possibility that what comes next might be substantially different from what happens at the present time. This, I believe, is a sort of utopian projection that lies at the heart of any radical politics. At the same time, the means for space exploration currently appear to require that certain rather everyday desires are projected outwards to a star as if it were a new market segment. So we
imagine 42 light years, and see PepsiCo in space. But I do not think that this is merely reducible to a matter of means or ends, as if the two never met. At the beginning of the 20th century Max Weber made a nice distinction between technical rationality (zweckrational) and value rationality (wertrational). The former refers to the sort of efficiency and organization that it is rational to adopt once you have decided on a particular course of action, and he claims that this is epitomised by the bureaucratic organizational form. Bureaucracy connects means to means, without hatred or passion, in order that ramified chains of cause and effect can be built that would otherwise stumble and evaporate. Without bureaucratic reason, we would not be able to administer a state, or manufacture a corn chip, or a Saturn V rocket. But states, corn chips and Saturn V rockets are insufficient to explain themselves, so Weber suggests that values must be the ultimate ends of action. Values, desires, are not rational in themselves, but provide a target for technique. But, he says, there is a sense in which his age was becoming an age in which means were becoming ends in themselves, and notions of calling, of value, were fading away. Where the fulfilment of the calling cannot be directly related to the highest spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need not be felt simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the field of its highest development, in the United

States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport. (Weber, 1930: 182) So the means become the end. The end is the playing of the game, and finds no justification beyond itself, and questions about ends, about values, are no longer asked. This, it seems to me, is the paradox of having capitalists in space. As if the distance between the Earth and 47 Ursae Majoris is a problem for marketing, and the sublime evaporates in the exhaust fumes of managerialism. But, at the same time, it is nave to imagine that Apollo and the rest have been free from such earthly entanglements. In the context, it doesnt matter that much whether we articulate these entanglements as nation building; party political interest; hidden subsidy of the military industrial complex, or research institutes; career and identity projects; needing to pay the mortgage; or compensating for small penis size. All these, and many more, have undoubtedly driven human beings to work on space exploration projects. But now, in an era of globalising capitalism, it seems that matters of profit and loss are becoming more relevant than ever in driving human beings to such work. Commercial space tourist flights will be the first clear example of what has, so far, been a tendency partly concealed by state and
state agency operations. But now, it seems, NASA is being pushed out of the way, in order that enterprise can be launched.

LINK:EXPLORATION
ALTHOUGHTHEAFFIRMATIVEISFRAMEDASABENIGNADVANCEMENTINTOTHEFINALFRONTIEROFSPACE,THE
VERY IDEOLOGY UNDERLYING THE CASE PROJECTS SPACE AS A NEW MARKET FOR CAPITALIST INTERESTS TO DOMINATE AND EXPLOIT, PROJECTING THE PATRIARCHAL TENDENCIES OF THE TERRITORIES

WEST

INTO FURTHER

DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 07 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMICSOCIETY:TOWARDSASOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSE,PGS142143,AU)
The humanization of outer space is at an early stage and attempts by social scientists to predict the future have almost always ended in failure. On the other hand, there are some important straws in the wind, indications of how societys relations with the cosmos are changing. To an

increasing extent capital is setting the pace, displacing governments and using outer space for commercial purposes. It may well be used, for example, as a means of harvesting energy for the Earth. It is also increasingly envisaged as a source of materials for investment in new circuits of capital. In the more distant future, investments may be made in outer space colonies.
Science fiction and forward-looking space scientists give some indication of the nature of these developments. This chapter is in part speculative, but there is also a sense in which the proposals for humanizing the universe are in themselves interesting illustrations of the way in which humanity imagines its future. Science fiction shows, for example, outer space being used as a refuge from disasters, or alien life confirming the superiority of Western democracy. But a number of sociological theories offer better insights into the future humanization of the cosmos. The Risk Society is being made cosmic, with projects supposedly beneficial to society actually generating considerable potential for disaster. Some authors borrowing from Marx might

interpret the colonization of outer space as an attempted resolution of the second contradiction of capitalism, with capital despoiling the natural environment to such an extent that it searches for new materials off-planet. The spread of society into an
external nature far beyond the Earth also raises ethical issues which already form part of a wider debate. What right does humanity have to model the cosmos in its own image? Finally, this chapter raises the possibility of a cosmic consciousness taking the form of an individualism which envisages the whole of the cosmos as within its reach. Signs of this subjectivity are already in evidence and we predict that, unless tempered, it will become a central feature of a cosmic society. A recurrent theme of this study is that of outer space being made an object rather than a subject by some classes of people. In the primitive societies such as those examined by Durkheim or in many of the older civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, the universe is seen as a subject: a force dominating and controlling affairs on Earth. Such societies were made to conform to the pattern of the cosmic order, with the social hierarchy reflecting, and being linked to, the cosmic order. In many instances these links are formalized through religious and spiritual architecture, temples and churches. These are the points of contact between societies and a dominating cosmos, with priests and kings being allowed special access (Krupp 1997). But visions of a universe subjecting society have undergone major change. The change in attitude started with the European Enlightenment, though only now are the full implications of Enlightenment thought about the cosmos being fully realized. To an

increasing extent the universe has been envisaged as an object, something to be constrained, managed and used towards human ends. Such a view is often equated with the philosophy of Francis Bacon (15611626). We saw in Chapter 1 the ways in which an enchanted
universe gave way to a material universe within the reach of humanity construed by a new cosmic elite of Enlightenment philosophers and scientists. Nature, Sir Francis Bacon argued, can be in three states: at liberty, in error or in bondage (Merchant 1980). The first state is one that

might have been recognizable to the philosophers of Ancient Greece. Here nature is managing herself as a living, growing, self-making being. The second state is one in which nature acts perversely, damagingly to human beings and therefore needing control and management. The third is one in which humanity interrogates nature, controls and bends it to the wishes of human society. Though Bacon could not have been aware of it, his view foreshadowed the prevailing attitude under later industrial capitalism. The gendered nature of Bacons discussion is of course very evident: examining and constraining nature is made equivalent to the
management of women. Feminist philosophers, including Plumwood (1993), have emphasized that contemporary power is exercised via a series of social constructions. These take the form of dualisms between superior and inferior realms. Some of the most familiar of these

dualisms are culture/ nature, male/female, mind/body, self/other, reason/emotion. The first half of all these pairings is associated with masculinity and dominance whereas the second half is inferior and associated with nature. We might now add society/universe with the universe as an inferior object to be colonized and subjugated. Our point is that the heavens are now being envisaged, at least by dominant social orders, in a form very similar to Earthly nature. They too are being made into Baconian objects, as means towards ends. They exist to be used, to be lived in, to be worked on and to be domesticated and dominated by society. Such a view has long been prevalent in human society, especially Western society. But now that access to outer space is becoming feasible the same values and orientation are being extended to outer space by extremely influential classes of people. The exploitation of space continues apace. Mary-Ann Elliott, for example, is a space broker working in this
sector. She has recently announced that over the last five years weve grown 1061 per cent. Jim Benson is another space broker. Natural resources in space, he informs us, are on a first come first served basis (ABC Australia 2005).

LINK:EXPLORATION
THEAFFIRMATIVESEXPANSIONINTOSPACESERVESONLYASAGUISEOFCAPITALISMSTRUEINTENTIONS TO
EXPLOIT SPACE AS A MEANS FOR UNLIMITED GROWTH SO AS TO RESOLVE PROBLEMS OF PRODUCTION CURRENTLYINEVITABLEWITHINTHESYSTEM

DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 07 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMICSOCIETY:TOWARDSASOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSE,PGS154157,AU)
Capitalism is necessarily an expanding and crisis-making type of society. But capital, in order to continue reproducing and expanding, necessarily encounters limits, resistances and barriers of different kinds. Indeed, it could be said that it requires limits, since these are the basis for capitals dynamism, its constant restructuring and reorganization. As Marx himself put it, The tendency to create the world market is directly given in the concept of capital itself. Every limit appears as a barrier to be overcome (1973: 408). As discussed in Chapter 3, todays main power blocs (the United States, the European Union and in due course other societies such as China and India) are beginning to scramble for outer space in much the same way as the European societies competed for African territory in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The establishment of property rights is central, as indeed it was when the African continent was subdivided by rival powers. As Rosa Luxemburg, one of Harveys antecedents, argued in developing her theory of imperialism, capital needs an outside beyond its boundaries, off which it feeds (Luxemburg 1968; Hardt and Negri 2000). This outside takes two main forms. First, capitalism expands by making other kinds of society in its own image; making feudal or aboriginal societies, for example, into capitalist forms. But zones outside capitalism can also be used as just a source of materials. This is where outer space is becoming significant. In the same way that gold and diamonds were taken from Peru and South Africa or sugar cane was taken from Jamaica and Java in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century forms of imperialism, so can the materials of the Arctic or of the Moon and Mars be incorporated into capitalist production processes. Assuming that the cost of reaching the Moon and the nearby planets is sufficiently low, this makes the Moon and nearby planets an attractive prospect for the further expansion of capital. But, in line with Marx, Luxemburg also went on to argue that by incorporating a non-capitalist society in either way, capital creates yet another barrier. The very commodities it needs (whether it be labour power or just materials) are now brought within its ambit. As regards materials, it will in due course use them up or make them prohibitively expensive to extract. This means that capital must find yet another source to satisfy its demand for infinite expansion. Regions such as the Arctic or outer space are good examples. So, as soon as the Moon is exhausted, capital will be seeking more resources on Mars, and so on. Resolving the second contradiction of capitalism? Outer space exploration can be seen as an attempted resolution of what some historical materialists call the second contradiction of capitalism (OConnor 1994, 1996). This contradiction was recognized by Marx and Engels,
though given little prominence by them. Here the contradiction is between the forces and relations of production on the one hand and the conditions of production on the other. The second contradiction points to crises in supply rather than demand. Conditions of production refers to inputs necessary to production: labour, nature, infrastructure and physical space. The last three are especially important for this discussion. Through the

degradation of the environment or the failure to make or maintain sufficient physical infrastructure, a crisis in supply is produced, one in which what Marx called the natural or external conditions of production are insufficient or have been degraded. This kind of crisis in supply is not usually, however, one in which there are absolute shortages of resources. Rather it takes the form of rising costs, which in turn threaten to undermine profits. Furthermore, social movements of different kinds can be expected to make greater demands for socialization of, and control over, the means of production. In a rather different language and with radically different political priorities, the early proponents of space travel and exploitation offered means by which the second contradiction can be resolved. For example: Shortage of resources is not a fact; it is an illusion born of ignorance. Scientifically and technically feasible improvements in launch vehicles will make departure from Earth easy and inexpensive. Once we have a foothold in space, the mass of the asteroid belt will be at our disposal, permitting us to provide for the material needs of a million times as many people as Earth can hold. Solar power can provide all the energy needs of this vast civilization (10,000,000 billion people) from now until the Sun expires. (Lewis 1996: 255) This perhaps suggests that there need no longer be problems or contradictions on Earth. The writer Trudy Bell (1981: 54) adopts the pro-space position that space industrialization does not simply fly in the face of the limits to growth; it makes them obsolete. But even if contradictions cannot be eliminated, they can be resolved by moving such problems away from Earth. As one enthusiast for the
private development of space reassuringly puts it: Continuing private investment in space development will ultimately allow us to move some polluting industries off the planet and to develop unique products, thereby improving our quality of life. The settlement of outer space will ensure the survival of our species in the event of a global catastrophe. (White 2002:124) On the other hand, some sociologists have started mirroring the arguments of pro-space advocates and are considering the development of space resources as a permanent resolution of the second contradiction, and working this into a fundamental critique of Marxs political economy (Thomas-Pellicer 2004). This raises some of the debates surrounding the second contradiction thesis. Like the proponents of capitalisms infinite expansion into an infinite outer space, the second contradiction thesis can be seen as depending on a form of catastrophism: the idea that society and nature are doomed. But, first, it is not clear that this is an accurate account of the Left version of the second contradiction. OConnor (1996) is the leading contemporary Marxist proponent of the second contradiction and he argues that it is most likely to be addressed by state intervention and limited state ownership of the means of production. But the picture of catastrophism, whether

propounded by Left or Right, is quite misleading. Whatever happens to the Earth and the cosmos there will still be some form of a nature there (Harvey 1996). Certainly some people, specifically the poor, may come off much worse than others as a result of such humanization. But this is a long way from saying that capitalism and nature will come to an end as a result of commodification and environmental degradation. As pro-space activists show, the

pessimism of the second contradiction thesis can easily be adopted not just by socialists but by the promoters of capitalism who would use the possibility of the Earths demise as an excuse to continue privatizing the cosmos. One example is the revenue
generated by Earth-imaging satellites, used largely to monitor climatic and environmental change. Harris and Olby (2000) projected a market of $6.5 billion in 2007 for Earth observation data and services. Developing the rest of the cosmos entails what Enzensberger (1996) might call the next stage of the ecoindustrial complex: providing economic opportunities for those in the business of rectifying the degradation caused by capitalism in the first instance. Humanizing nature on Earth or in the cosmos need be neither a complete disaster nor a complete triumph. The priority for historical materialism is to consider the implications of outer space humanization for particular societies, particular sectors of the population and particular species and ecological systems.

LINK:EXPLORATION
SPACE EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT IS CRITICAL TO THE SMOOTH FUNCTIONING OF CAPITALISM. FROM ONLINESHOPPINGTOCAPITALISTWARFIGHTING, DICKENS, TEACHES AT THE UNIVERSITIES OF BRIGHTON AND CAMBRIDGE, UK, IN10
[Peter, The Humanization of the CosmosTo What End?, Monthly Review, Vol. 62 No. 6, http://monthlyreview.org/2010/11/01/thehumanization-of-the-cosmos-to-what-end]

Yet among these plans and proposals, it is easy to forget that outer space is already being increasingly humanized. It has now been made an integral part of the way global capitalist society is organized and extended. Satellites, for example, are extremely important elements of contemporary communications systems. These have enabled an increasing number of people to become part of the labor market. Teleworking is the best known example. Satellite-based communications have also facilitated new forms of consumption such as teleshopping. Without satellite-based communications, the global economy in its present form would grind to a halt. Satellites have also been made central to modern warfare. Combined with pilotless Predator drones, they are now being used to observe and attack Taliban and Al-Qaida operatives in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This action is done by remote control from Creech Air Force Base at Indian Springs, Nevada. The 1980s Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars program, aimed to intercept incoming missiles while facilitating devastating attacks on supposed enemies. A version of the program is still being developed, with the citizens of the Czech Republic and Poland now under pressure to accept parts of a U.S.-designed missile defense shield. This is part of a wider strategy of Full Spectrum Dominance, which has for some time been official U.S. Defense Policy.4 Using surveillance and military equipment located in outer space is now seen as the prime means of protecting U.S. economic and military assets both on Earth and in outer space. Less dangerously, but still very expensively, a full-scale space-tourism industry has for some time been under active
development. Dennis Tito, a multi-millionaire, made the first tourist trip into outer space in 2001. Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic has now sold over three hundred seats at $200,000 apiece to its first tourists in outer space. The program is due to start in 2011, with spaceports for this novel form of travel now being built in Alaska, California, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, Wisconsin, the United Arab Emirates, and Esrange in Sweden. Excursions circling the moon, likely to cost the galactic visitors around $100,000,000, are now under development. Since the Renaissance period of the sixteenth century, the word humanization has been used to connote something beneficial, especially to human beings. As we will now see, humanizing the cosmos is regarded in just these terms by some influential proponents of space travel and space colonization. The Space Renaissance Initiative

One response to cosmic humanization is to welcome it as an early stage of a wholly beneficial cosmic human society, one eventually encompassing the solar system and beyond. Such is the view of the Space Renaissance Initiative, an international group of over
seventy private organizations now promoting the expansion of society into the cosmos. The aims and ideals of the Space Renaissance are made clear by the Initiatives manifesto published in 2010. It reads: Help the Space Economy Revolution! The global economy is entering a deep crisis, the worst since 1929. This is the second act of the Crisis of Closed-World Ideologies, which has been developing throughout the 20th century. In 1989 the fall of the Berlin wall was the Crisis of Collectivist Ideology. The recent massive failure of the financial system is the Crisis of Neo-Liberal Ideology. Both these ideologies failed because they are based upon a closed-world, terro-centric philosophy. There are now almost 7 billion humans making massive demands on planet Earth: we urgently need to open the frontier, and move to a wider vision of our world, so as to access geo-lunar system resources and energy. In short we need a new Open World Philosophy. The alternative would be the implosion and collapse of our civilization.5 In short, the Space Renaissance Initiative argues, society is undergoing massive social, environmental, and population crises because it is thinking too small. The energy of the sun can, for example, be made into a source of clean power from outer space, which would solve societys energy shortages at a stroke. The Initiative argues that opening up the cosmos to humanitycolonizing the solar system, and opening up resources in the moon, Mars, and the asteroidscould be central to social and environmental salvation. The progress made by the private sector in developing technologies and efficiencies for space tourism means that commercial enterprise can now start planning to venture still further afield. The philosophical roots of the Space Initiative are no less than the sixteenth-century Italian Renaissance and the Enlightenment. With the enlightened patronage of such families as the Medicis, an unprecedented new age of development took place: arts knew a wonderful age of innovation, culture took on some essential principles of classical Greek philosophy, and modern science was born, with men like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and later Copernicus and Galileo leading the way. This movement led to the Age of Enlightenment and its most famous offspring: the American and French Revolutions. The manifesto also praises the writings of Descartes, Voltaire, and Jefferson. The belief of these philosophers in the enterprising individual, in freedom, in liberty, and in reason all mean that political power should be vested in the common person and not in states, kings, and nobility. The Space Renaissance Initiative believes in these concepts, seeing them as the basis of a new, progressive, liberating, humanization of the cosmos. But there are surely major problems here. For example, any claim that the Medici family (and similar families such as the Borgias) helped overthrow feudalism is far-fetched. The Medicis were bankers and merchants who made their money at the center of an emerging global mercantilist capitalism, one based in Northern Italy. They used this money to enhance their position within their feudal societies. Members of the Medicis even made themselves into popes, thus further enhancing their wealth and that of their many illegitimate offspring. Another of the Medicis was made the Queen of France. The language used by intellectual elites of the day was Latin. This appealed to scholars across Europe but not to the great mass of individuals living in Florence, Milan, or Venice.6 The Medicis and individuals such as Leonardo are often celebrated as examples of The Renaissance Universal Man, one capable of spanning every kind of human practice such as art, music, and politics. This Man is perhaps best symbolized by Leonardos famous image of a male human being, stretched over the circle of the cosmos, his head in the heavens and his bowels located in earthly regions. But this Renaissance Manor Womancan also be seen as prefiguring the self-centered, narcissistic individualism of our own day, one seeing the whole of the cosmos at his or her command. This kind of modern human identity has since been enhanced by consumer-based capitalism and, given the problems it creates both for ourselves and our environment, there seems rather little reason to celebrate or restore it. The general point is that the vision of the Space

Renaissance Initiative, with its prime focus on the power of the supposedly autonomous and inventive individual, systematically omits questions of social, economic, and military power. Similarly, the Initiatives focus on the apparently universal benefits of space humanization ignores some obvious questions. What will ploughing large amounts of capital into outer space colonization really do for stopping the exploitation of people and resources back here on earth? The solution

seems to be simultaneously exacerbating social problems while jetting away from them. Consumer-led industrial capitalism necessarily creates huge social divisions and increasing degradation of the environment. Why should a galactic capitalism do otherwise? The Space Renaissance Initiative argues that space-humanization is necessarily a good thing for the environment by introducing new spacebased technologies such as massive arrays of solar panels. But such solutions are again imaginary. Cheap electricity is most likely to increase levels of production and consumption back on earth. Environmental degradation will be exacerbated rather than diminished by this technological fix. A simplistic and idealistic view of history, technology, and human agency therefore underpins the starting point of the Space Renaissance Initiative. Humanization in this shapeone now finding favor in official government circles
raises all kinds of highly problematic issues for society and the environment. What would an alternative, more critical, perspective on humanizing the cosmos tell us?

LINK:DEVELOPMENT
SPACE DEVELOPMENT AND RESOURCE HARVESTING IN SPACE, THOUGH ADVERTISED TO BE FOR THE COMMON GOOD,ISJUSTACOVERTOFEEDTHECAPITALISTELITESDESIREFORMOREWEALTH,FURTHERSEPARATINGTHE GAPBETWEENRICHANDPOOR. ALAN MARSHALL, THE INSTITUTEOF DEVELOPMENT STUDIESAT MASSEY UNIVERSITY, PALMERSTON NORTH, NEW ZEALAND, 1995, DEVELOPMENT ANDIMPERIALISMINSPACE
Why should expansionist development occur in outer space? What is there to motivate governments and private firms to develop space? Throughout the Space Age many officials in the US public sector, as well as many entrepreneurially minded space writers, have set their minds on the utilization of extraterrestrial resources. Some industries on Earth owe their existence (or a substantial amount of their
revenue) to the utilization of space resources (for instance; the telecommunications, weather forecasting and living marine resource industries). Other private firms owe their success not to the utilization of space resources but to the vague pursuit of space resource utilization. Such companies succeed by

campaigning their respective governments into giving them multi-million dollar contracts based on the precept that at some time in the future they will be able to utilize extraterrestrial resources commercially. Perhaps the most frequently elaborated rationale from human space expansion is the pursuit of new raw materials - raw materials which on Earth are unavailable or have become enormously rare. From this perspective, development in space is based upon the search for resources.
Historical precedents for such a model can be cited to support this idea. For instance, British colonialism in South East Asia secured a ready supply of tin for Englands industrial revolution. American economic imperialism in Latin America supplied the USAs burgeoning automobile industry with cheap rubber during the early twentieth century.

Those that advocate the development of the solar system in the search for raw materials often appeal to the neoMalthusianism with regards to the need to find ever more resources to satiate the expanding population of planet Earth.
Although the grand plan to develop outer space so as to remedy an over-populated and resource deficient world reeks of dubious economic principles, and transparent self-interest, Malthusian sentiments are still widely held by those within the astronautics industry (especially by those charged with promoting the virtues of the industry). Even if resource depletion was directly linked to the population of the planet, the development of even

more resources is not likely to provide for the necessities of most of the worlds people. New resources contribute to the consumptive wants of the wealthy, not to the needs of the populous poor.

LINK:DEVELOPMENT
THEAFFIRMATIVEISANATTEMPTATANEWBAILOUTFORAFAILINGSYSTEM. THEIRATTEMPTTOASCENDTO THE COSMOS IS NOTHING MORE THAN A BANDAID SOLUTION TO ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL CRISES ENDEMIC TO CAPITALISM. EVENIFTHEYSOLVEINTHESHORTTERM,THESTRUCTUREOFCAPITALISMENSURESCRISISWILL RECUR.
Dickens and Ormrod *Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex AND **Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Brighton 7 (Peter
and James, Cosmic Society: Towards a Sociology of the Universe pg 54-5, DS) Furthermore, under

conditions of economic and social crisis, investments are made in new projects which manage the crisis tendencies inherent to capitalism (Harvey 2001; Jessop 2006). These crises include overproduction of commodities, in which case the fix is opening up new markets. They include the overaccumulation of capital, in which case the fix is seeking new investment opportunities. They also include access to raw materials, in which case the fix is searching out new and cheaper sources. But, while capital builds and exploits new spaces and infrastructures in an attempt to deal with these crises, any solution is again provisional. Speculative development in commercial property was one of many desperate attempts to realize profits from the late 1970s onwards. But the attempts to fix capital in more profitable ways have still not brought profit levels back to the levels enjoyed during the long boom. Faith in the power of Keynesian intervention to avoid such crises was now thoroughly undermined. Using state
power in this way clearly had major limits. In the present day, as regards political economy, a number of measures to ameliorate levels of profit have been taken. The first was to restructure the primary circuit itself (Sheppard and Barnes 1990; Cox 1997). Borrowing from the practices of Japanese car makers such as Toyota, capital attempted to make more flexible types of workplace. Industrial enterprises had long been composed of large enterprises backed up by subcontractors. But in the new flexible workforce this process was further enhanced on a global scale. Interdependent networks of contracting and subcontracting enterprises were made, all of which were made more responsive to one another and to consumer demand. New forms of electronic communications were used, coordinating enterprises and linking them to consumers around the globe. Spatial fixes Importantly for Harvey and other Marxist geographers, these fixes commonly take on a spatial nature. They involve the geographic expansion of the circuits of capital as new territories, raw materials, workforces and markets are drawn into the capitalist system. For purposes of exposition, Harvey (2007) initially assumes a single and closed region in which production and realization of surplus values take place. But, he argues, the frontiers of the region can be rolled back or relief gained by exports of money capital, commodities or productive capacities of fresh labour powers from other regions (ibid.: 427).

The tendency towards overaccumulation within the original region remains unchecked, but devaluation is avoided by successive and ever grander outer transformations. This process can presumably continue until all external possibilities are exhausted or because other regions resist being treated as mere convenient appendages (ibid.: 427). But even Earthly spatial fixes may now be proving relatively exhausted, unprofitable or containing people resisting their appendage status. We therefore argue that Earthly fixes may be expanded to incorporate even more outer transformations. This time the fixes are in the cosmos. We therefore term them outer spatial fixes. Clearly there is no question of importing labour power from outer space to help out a failing region on Earth but, as we will discuss in Chapter 6, the raw materials of outer space are increasingly envisaged as a means of developing Earthly production processes. And, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, outer space is being used to manage flows of capital and information and to regulate social relations (including the social relations of production) on Earth. Once made, however, a spatial fix is likely to be destroyed or devalued in order to make way for a new spatial fix, one offering new possibilities for capital accumulation. Spatial fixes are only ever provisional and therefore offer only short-term resolutions to the contradictions inherent in capitalism. Whether
these fixes are (at least temporarily) effective depends on whether they are seen as profitable or, in the case of state and social expenditures, whether they fulfil their purpose of, for example, reproducing labour power or successfully managing social relations. We cannot overexaggerate the fact that success for Earthly or cosmic spatial fixes is by no means guaranteed.

LINK:DEVELOPMENT
THE
AFFIRMATIVES INVESTMENT INTO SPACE INEVITABILITY SPURS THE MARKETTHROUGH MANUFACTURING, AND SPINOFF TECHNOLOGIES. THIS FURTHER EMPOWERS THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXWHICHWILLMAKEUSEOFEVENSEEMINGLYBENIGNTECHLIKESATELLITESFORSURVEILLANCE.

DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG578,DS)
Investments are also made in what Harvey calls the tertiary circuit. These are again long term, the intention being to generate future productivity of capital. They include switches into scientific research and development. The phrase Paper NASA is often
used to refer to NASAs more speculative research and development department (Mean and Wilsdon 2004). Government finance is used here as a form of Keynesian regulation to keep scientists in jobs, with a vague hope that some of their ideas may pay off. Many scientific missions to the cosmos are bringing no obvious, or immediate, financial return. State interventions also include telescopes aimed at discovering how the universe

evolved in its earliest years, monitoring asteroids that might potentially hit Earth, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the possibilities for making other planets habitable. The telescopes, antennae, computers and other equipment used in these projects will have been made in a primary circuit and will have produced profits for their manufacturers, but their use offers
no immediate way in which profits will be produced. But, with governments again taking a central mediating roles (through, for example, the taxation system), profitable opportunities may be opened up in the future via this tertiary sector. Much government manipulation of

the circuits of capital occurs because of the perceived value of spin-offs. Spin-offs are the unintended commercial applications that spring from technology and science developed for another goal. The list of commercial technologies that were originally developed for
the space programme is long: Teflon, Velcro, Tang, temperopaedic mattresses, CAT scans, ISDN management technology, digital watches, mobile phones.

They are valued because it means the initial investment in space technology drives the development of further commodities and increasingly efficient technology. These technologies generate more false needs amongst the public, and promote a further round of investment from product developers. This is one way in which the contradictions arising in the primary circuit can be
forestalled. Governments will also provide large outlays of capital in the hope of attracting investors to develop new primary circuits in their region. Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic space tourism company is the primary customer for Spaceport America, a planned $225 million spaceport in New Mexico. They also include other investments in social infrastructure such as education, health and military spending. Meanwhile, having been initiated by governments as Keynesian devices for stimulating the economy, space travel and privately financed missions into outer space are already under active development. They are now being deemed profitable in the relatively near future. Correspondingly, and under pressure from libertarian pro-space organizations, the role of government in Americas space programme was being re-evaluated at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Governments role was no longer the financer of an agency to explore and develop space, but to provide incentives for private sector investment. (President Bushs unexpected announcement in 2004 of a new government programme to send humans to the Moon and Mars has somewhat altered this direction.) Bills were put before Congress to offer a series of tax breaks for speculative space enterprises and for a series of financial prizes for private companies able to achieve particular technological goals in space. Some commentators such as Hickman (1999) still believe government will have to have a crucial role if enterprise is to expand beyond low-earth orbit (LEO). Surplus capital, combined with taxes on consumers, is channelled into other tertiary circuit elements. These

include social expenditures, such as welfare and military expenditure, in which immediate prospects of profitability for capitalism may again not be clear, though they contribute to ensuring the reproduction of the social system. Most importantly for
our subject, they are directed by military and industrial elites into expenditures that, as we later discuss, make increasing use of outer space. Similarly, and in parallel with other forms of military spending, they are being channelled into surveillance: monitoring subaltern populations

deemed socially or militarily problematic. Investments of this kind can be also be made in somewhat less sinister directions. These include the channelling of capital into satellites designed to monitor weather conditions or to assist refugees in their attempt to make a better life. Military expenditures, originally siphoned off from the primary circuit, have now been made
highly profitable, especially for the industries of developed countries. Indeed, the American economy now deeply depends on military spending, leading some to use the term warfare state (Edgerton 2005). The close working relations between the economy and the military are sometimes known as the military industrial complex. The military clearly requires the materials made by private defence contractors whereas the contractors are highly dependent on military spending as a steady revenue stream. Indeed, the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space has displayed posters campaigning to end aerospace corporation welfare: contracts given to major weapons and space manufacturers to keep them in business. Governments are again making investments siphoned off from the primary circuit in the form of taxes and ploughed into further primary circuits which, it is hoped, will become profitable

LINK:COLONIZATION
UNIQUE LINK: SPACE EXPLORATION AND COLONIZATION CULMINATE THE CAPITALIST PROJECT OF TOTAL DOMINATION.THECURRENTECONOMICCRISISOFFERSTHEPERFECTOPPORTUNITYTOBREAKWITHTHESIRENS CALLOFCAPITALEXPANSION. PHILGRAHAM,ISDIRECTOROFTHEINSTITUTEFORCREATIVEINDUSTRIESANDINNOVATIONANDPROFESSORINCULTUREANDCOMMUNICATIONATQUT, AND CHRISTY COLLIS IS A SENIOR LECTURER IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION IN THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES FACULTY, QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY,2009,(POLITICALGEOGRAPHIESOFMARS:AHISTORYOFMARTIANMANAGEMENT,MANAGEMENT&ORGANIZATIONALHISTORY20094: 247)
In order to

understand the politics of Martian spatiality, it is also necessary to briefly contextualize them within capitalism. The trajectory of western political economies has unquestionably been towards the monetization and commodification of everything imaginable. Behind this drive has been, first, the propertied classes of Europe and, latterly, a more universalized managerial class. What was to be owned, claimed, and commodified under capitalism was prefigured in the enclosures movement that began in the late 14th century. The shape of future capitalist commodification strategies became further evident in moves by early traders to gather up and concentrate the efforts of Europes traditional craft workers in a piecework system that de-localized the character of work (Weber 1930). Rather than being seen or experienced as an expression of accumulated history, tradition, and local knowledge, labour became oriented towards the future realization of a price, whether on the part of traders (as profits) or workers (as wages). The dominant tense of work thereby moved from past to future, from actual to potential, from a network of mutual obligations to motives of future personal gain (Graham 2001). By the late 20th century, the full expression of this movement came in the form of a massive debt bubble. Seen at its most abstract and general level, the current global financial crisis is nothing less than the commodification of future human life and energies. Thus the arc of
capitalist commodification can be seen to stretch from heritage, culture, and tradition broadly speaking, the Past to the commodification of all future social relations (Graham 2002).We see this as an inherent and inevitable function of contemporary managerial discourse, which today begins all

approaches to reality with a strategic plan: a technical device for defining, shaping, and controlling future environmental and factoral contingencies based on expectations of profit and personal gain, all of which is to be achieved through increased control and
efficiencies. Here is NASA on the matter of management: On April 24, 2002, the NASA Administrator directed the Agency to support the Presidents Freedom to Manage Initiative with the principal goal of removing barriers to more efficient management, with the expectations of improved accountability and performance. To support this government-wide initiative and achieve management excellence, the Administrator established a new policy. NASA Policy Directive 1280.1, NASA Management Systems Policy, provides for management systems rigor and discipline, while accommodating and providing flexibility to, the full range of mission risk managed at HQ and Centers. (NASA 2009a) NASA has situated itself firmly within strategic management discourse. As NASA is one of the primary agencies conducting missions to the planet, Mars has also become an object of strategic planning, managerial control, and capitalist commodification processes. Mars can therefore be seen in discourse as a synecdoche of capitalist value relations a distant and seemingly small part of the system in which the pattern and trajectory of the whole can be seen. This becomes most clear when the politics of Martian exploration, ownership, and control are investigated.

LINK:COLONIZATION
THE RHETORIC OF COLONIZATION CONCEALS AN AGENDA OF CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION AND DEVELOPMENT. COLONIZATION PROMOTES EXPORTING CONSUMERISM, MATERIALISM, AND CAPITALISM TO SPACE. THIS
KNOWLEDGE IS SYNTHESIZED FROM A SKEWED UNDERSTANDING OF THE HISTORY OF THE FRONTIER THAT INEVITABLYREPLICATESTHEWORSTCONSEQUENCESOFMANIFESTDESTINY.

BILLINGS, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE WITH THE SETI INSTITUTE, 2006 (LINDA, TO THE MOON, MARS, AND BEYOND: CULTURE, LAW, AND ETHICS IN SPACEFARING SOCIETIES, BULLETIN OF SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY200626:430,SAGE,HTTP://BST.SAGEPUB.COM/CONTENT/26/5/430,DS)
Although the social, political, economic, and cultural context for the U.S. civil space program has changed since the 1960s, the rhetoric, and, arguably, the substance, of space policy making has not. The space program and many of its advocates appear to be stuck in the 20th century in some important respects. In the 21st century, politicians and other space enthusiasts have been promoting the MoonMars thing as exploration for the sake of exploring and also as a means of opening up the solar system to private property claims, resource exploitation, and commercial development. In the words of one space advocate, The solar system is like a giant grocery
store. It has everything we could possibly want.12 This analogy has its weaknesses: for example, in a grocery store one must, of course, pay for what one wants. And in this vision, those with the means to get to the store first get all the goods; those who get there late may get nothinga system more in the spirit of imperialism than of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The rhetoric of space advocacy highlighted herein reflects an assumption that

the values of materialism, consumerism, and hyperconsumption prevalent today are values worth extending into the solar system. The conception of outer space advanced by these advocates embodies the idea of a solar system (and beyond) of wide-open spaces and limitless resourcesa space frontier. This frontier rhetoric, with its images of pioneering, homesteading, claim staking,
and conquest, has been persistent in American history, and the frontier metaphor has been, and still is, a dominant metaphor in rhetoric about space exploration (see, e.g., National Commission, 1986). Space frontier means different things to different people, and it is worth thinking about meanings invoked by the metaphor in considering what values are or might be embodied in the human endeavor of space exploration. American historian Frederick Jackson Turners (1994) turn-of-the-century essay, The significance of the frontier in American history, is perhaps the bestknown articulation of the metaphor. Later historians of the American West have deemed the idea of the frontier a myth, embodying a worldview in which the United States is a wide-open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top (Slotkin, 1973, p. 5; also see Slotkin, 1985, 1990). Historian Patricia Nelson Limerick (1994) observed that space advocates have tended to cling to the frontier metaphor,

continuing to conceive of American history [as] a straight line, a vector of inevitability and manifest destiny linking the westward expansion of Anglo-Americans directly to the exploration and colonization of space (p. 13). Critiquing this vision of a space frontier, Limerick observed: In using this analogy, space advocates have built their plans for the future on the foundation of a deeply flawed understanding of the past, [and] the blinders worn to screen the past have proven to be just as effective at distorting the view of the future. (p. 13; also see Limerick, 1999) Historian Stephen Pyne (Sagan & Pyne, 1988) examined space exploration as a cultural invention (p. 18) that reinforces and reinterprets . . . myths, beliefs, and archetypes basic to its originating civilization (p. 37). Modern Western (European-American) exploration functioned as a means of knowing, of creating commercial empires, of outmaneuvering political economic, religious, and military competitors it was war, diplomacy, proselytizing, scholarship, and trade by other means (Pyne, 2003, p. 5). The postmodern exploration of space is different, Pyne argued. Rationales advanced for space settlement, he said, are ultimately historical, culturally bound, and selectively anecdotal: that we need to pioneer to be what we are, that new colonies are a means of renewing civilization (p. 15). In the current cultural environment, he concluded, with neither a rambunctious imperialism nor an eager Enlightenment (p. 12) the case for colonizing space is not compelling (p. 15).

LINK:SPATIALFIXES
EXPANSIONINTOOUTERSPACEWILLINEVITABLYBEUSEDBYCORPORATIONSAS SPATIALFIXES,EXISTINGONLYTOBEEXPLOITED ANDUSEDASACRUTCHOFCAPITALISMANDTHENTOBEDISCARDEDASTHECAPITALISTSYSTEMISDISCARDINGTHEEARTH DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURERIN SOCIOLOGYATTHE UNIVERSITYOF BRIGHTON 07 (PETERAND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDSA SOCIOLOGYOF THEUNIVERSE,PGS5455,AU) Importantly for Harvey and other Marxist geographers,these fixes commonly take on a spatial nature. They involve the geographic expansion of the circuits of capital as new territories, raw materials, workforces and markets are drawn into the capitalist system.For purposes of exposition,Harvey (2007) initially assumes a single and closed region in which production and realization of surplus values take place. But, he argues,the frontiers of the region can be rolled back or relief gained by exports of money capital, commodities or productive capacities of fresh labour powers from other regions(ibid.: 427).The tendency towards overaccumulation within the original region remains unchecked, but devaluation is avoided by successive and ever grander outer transformations. This process can presumably continue until all external possibilities are exhausted or because other regions resist being treated as mere convenient appendages(ibid.: 427). But even Earthly spatial fixes may now be proving relatively exhausted,unprofitableor containing people resisting their appendage status.We therefore argue that Earthly fixes may be expanded to incorporate even more outer transformations. This time the fixes are in the cosmos. We therefore term them outer spatial fixes.Clearly there is no question of importing labour power from outer space to help out a failing region on Earth but, as we will discuss in Chapter 6, the raw materials of outer space are increasingly envisaged as a means of developing Earthly production processes.And, as discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, outer space is being used to manage flows of capital and information and to regulate social relations(including the social relations of production)on Earth. Once made, however,a spatial fix is likely to be destroyed or devalued in order to make way for a new spatial fix, one offering new possibilities for capital accumulation. Spatial fixes are only ever provisional and therefore offer only short-term resolutions to the contradictions inherent in capitalism.Whetherthesefixesare(atleasttemporarily)effectivedependsonwhethertheyareseenasprofitableor,inthecaseofstateandsocialexpenditures,whethertheyfulfiltheir
purposeof,forexample,reproducinglabourpowerorsuccessfullymanagingsocialrelations.WecannotoverexaggeratethefactthatsuccessforEarthlyorcosmicspatialfixesisbynomeans guaranteed.Thetwofurthercircuitsofcapitalareinvolvedinthemakingofthesenewouterspatialfixes

THEUSEOFOUTERSPACEASSPATIALFIXESTOPROPUPTHECAPITALISTSYSTEMWILLINEVITABLYLEADTOWARASSTATESWITH COMPETING INTERESTS EMPLOY SPACEBASED WEAPONRY TO DESTROY ENTIRE CIVILIZATIONS IN THE NAME OF CAPITALIST EXPANSION DICKENSANDORMROD07(PGS6465,AU) These fixes could easily become the basis for a new global war, one in which a militarized outer space would be an important part. This is because there is a potential and actual contradiction between regional fixes such as those attempted by China, India and Japan and the demands for capital to find new sources of accumulation. A regional fix is often made autarchic: a zone that, on account of active state intervention, allows limited trade with the outside world. As Harvey (2006) suggests, this may not be a problem so long as there are sufficient resources of capital and labour in the region in question for local capital to continue accumulation. But, if this is not the case, capital will inevitably move elsewhere. In the process, however, it confronts other capitalist enterprises over access to labour and resources. Nationally based private enterprises therefore finish up competing for shrinking opportunities for accumulation and this indeed is a recipe for potential armed conflict. As the next chapter discusses in more detail, China, Japan and India are amongst the countries now attempting to secure military presences in outer space. If Harveys theory is correct, these are means of protecting regional interests by ensuring that capital in these regions will have ready access to resources and labour beyond their own limits. Regional investments in outer space could thereby form an important form of future wars over resources, hostilities which could even include confrontations with the military might of the United States. Initially these conflicts might be land-based with satellites engaged in surveillance and the guiding of Earth-based weapons, but later they could easily be of a star wars type with hostilities taking place in outer space. As Harvey points out, war can be seen as the ultimate and most catastrophic form of devaluation: one in which whole societies are obliterated and the prospects for a new round of investment and accumulation may be started. But regional, government-organized alliances do not have to be formed for military
and surveillance purposes. Europe can also be seen as an attempted autarchy. It is making, albeit rather gradually, its own regional fix while raising trade barriers and pressurizing developing countries to open up markets. On the other hand, its outer space policy seems quite distinctive from that of other regions. The European Space Agency (ESA) does not appear to be imperialist in intent. It is relatively collaborative, allowing access to a range of players. These include public and private sector organizations and, perhaps surprisingly, a very substantial investment from China. ESAs Galileo system of thirty satellites circling the globe is to be used for peaceful purposes such as environmental monitoring and the satellite guidance of private vehicles. It is set to radically change how physical movements, especially on the roads, will be tracked. It will also pave the way for individualized road pricing, insurance pricing and monitoring. From a geopolitical viewpoint, however, the importance of Galileo is that it opens up the possibility of an independent force in outer space. It is will allow, for example, surveillance that cannot be controlled by the US. This is making American authorities treat the Galileo system with a high degree of suspicion (Mean and Wilsdon 2004).

LINK:SPACECONTROL
SPACECONTROLISABOUTCAPITALISTEXPANSIONISM. DUVALL & HAVERCROFT, 2008 (RAYMOND PROFOF POLI SCI @ UOF MINNESOTAAND JONATHAN PROF OFPOLISCI@UOFOKLAHOMA,TAKINGSOVEREIGNTYOUTOFTHISWORLD:SPACEWEAPONSANDEMPIRE OFTHEFUTURE,REVIEWOFINTERNATIONALSTUDIES34.4)
The doctrine of space control has emerged out of the belief that assets in space represent a potential target for enemies of the US. There are two kinds of vulnerable US assets: private-commercial; and military. One concern is that rivals may attack commercial satellites, thereby
disrupting the ow of information and inicting signicant harm on global markets. 39 Militarily, the concern is that, through increasing reliance on satellites for Earth-based military operations, the US has created an asymmetrical vulnerability. An adversary (including a non-state, terrorist organisation) could eectively immobilise US forces by disabling the satellites that provide communication, command, and control capabilities. Consequently, thproject of space control is designed to protect commercial and military satellites from potential attacks.

Its broader purpose, however,

is to prevent rivals from having any access to space for activities antithetical to US interests; this is the imperative for denial of the use of space to adversaries. Thus space control has dual functions it is both a privatising of the commons of orbital space and a military exclusion in a form of inclusive exclusion. Space control represents the extension of US sovereignty into orbital space. Its implementation would reinforce the constitutive eect identied in the previous section on missile defence, namely to reinscribe the hard shell border of the US, now extended to include the territory of orbital space. US sovereignty is projected out of this world and into orbit. Under Article II of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, Outer Space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means. The US project of space control would entail a clear violation of this article. In addition to expanding the scope of US sovereignty, however, this violation of international law has a second constitutive eect of importance, namely to produce a distinctly capitalist sovereignty. In Volume One of Capital, Marx chided classical political
economists for their inability to explain how workers became separated from the means of production. Whereas political economists such as Adam Smith argued that a previous accumulation of capital was necessary for a division of labour, Marx argued that this doctrine was absurd. Division of labour existed in pre-capitalist societies where workers were not alienated from their labour. Instead, Marx argued that the actual historical process of primitive accumulation of capital was carried out through colonial relations of appropriation by force. While not a perfect analogy, because of the lack of material labour, the value of which is to be forcibly appropriated in orbital space, space control is like such primitive accumulation in constituting a global capitalist order through the colonisation of space as previously common property. One of the purposes of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty was to preserve a commons where all states, regardless of technical ability or economic or military power, could participate in the potential benets space has to oer. In the years since this treaty was signed, the primary economic use of

space has been for commercial communications satellites. This industry has expanded dramatically in the last two decades. Total revenues for
commercial space-related industries in 1980 were $2.1 bn; by 2003 this gure had expanded to $91 bn and it was expected to increase at least as rapidly into the foreseeable future. Space control is about determining who has access to this new economy. Positions in orbit for satellites are

a new form of real estate. By controlling access to orbital space the US would be forcibly appropriating the orbits, in eect turning them into primitively accumulated private property. In this way, the US becomes even more than it is now the sovereign state for global capitalism, the global capitalist state.

LINK:SPACETOURISM
THE
AFFIRMATIVES PROMOTION OF SPACE TOURISM SERVES ONLY TO PROVIDE MORE FIXES FOR THE CAPITALISTSYSTEM,PERCEIVINGSPACEASANOBJECTTOBECOMMODITIZEDANDEXPLOITEDASANEWMARKET INORDERTOENSURECAPITALISMCONTINUESTOMOVEONFROMCRISES

DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 07 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMICSOCIETY:TOWARDSASOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSE,PGS127128,AU)
Given our earlier account of the interacting circuits of capital, explanation at the economic and political level is relatively simple. On

the one hand, here is capital again exploiting outer space, using it as another means of generating profits. It is a further outer spatial fix, capital still restlessly seeking out new markets, and new collaborations with state authorities, as demand for goods in other circuits declines and surplus capital needs profitable investment. Space tourism offers another way of making such a fix, the assumption of course being that there will be large numbers of space tourists able to make this into a profitable enterprise. Meanwhile, some analysts of Earth-bound tourism are becoming gloomy. A weakening of growth in the main tourism-generating countries (the United States, Germany and Japan) combined with the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, attacks on tourist sites such as Bali and Kenya and continuing hostilities in the Middle East are cited as underlying the declining number of tourist trips and tourist revenues worldwide (Cabrini 2003). Getting the industry off the ground, quite literally, has meant considerable risk in developing the infrastructure for space tourism. This includes investment in vehicles. According to some accounts, Burt Rutan invested over $100 million in order to win the $10 million X-Prize. This was done with the hope that the vehicle would go on to far outstrip this in terms of revenue generated. It also includes investment in terrestrial and orbital facilities, as Bob Bigelows hotel developments demonstrate. These are examples of money being siphoned off from primary circuits by previously successful businessmen and reinvested in a speculative new arena for the production of surplus value. The feats of outstanding private entrepreneurship now being witnessed rely, however, on government support. This tertiary circuit investment occurs in order to stimulate the development of new primary circuits. The government of the state of New Mexico, for example, has financed the new $225 million Spaceport America. This in turn has attracted major investors to the area, including their anchor tenant, Virgin Galactic.
The government has also assisted the space tourism industry through legislation concerning tax and safety (supported by the pro-space movement). Recent acts include the Invest in Space Now Act, the Zero Gravity, Zero Tax Act and the Spaceport Equality Act. The last allows the issue of tax-free bonds to those developing spaceports in the US. Zero Gravity, Zero Tax means a tax-free window on profits made from space enterprise. The government thus encourages renewed investment and gets into space without any immediate calculable cost. If plans are extended to actually landing and accommodating tourists on the Moon or nearby planets, a system of legalized private property rights beyond Earth will be required to

protect investments. A system of legalized commodification will be needed for this kind of imperialization of outer space. The fact that space law is under active discussion is a good indicator of that this process is very much under way.

LINK:SPACETOURISM
THE ACT OF HOLIDAYING IN SPACE IS NOT A NEUTRAL ACT. ALTHOUGH PROMOTED AS COMMON SENSE, INSTEAD, THE PROMOTION OF THIS TYPE OF EXCESSIVE CONSUMPTION SERVES TO DEFINE THE CULTURAL IDENTITIES OF PEOPLE, MAKING CLASS DISTINCTIONS EVER MORE CLEAR, PRECEDING ANY TYPE OF CLASS STRUGGLE DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 07 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMICSOCIETY:TOWARDSASOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSE,PGS128132,AU)

The possibility that those who can afford to do so would want to take a holiday to visit some very different place does not seem to require much explanation. It appears very much to be common sense. But the question of its social significance is not that easily answered. One long tradition of sociological analysis of leisure time has focused on the way in which leisure time creates and maintains social distinctions and identities, rather than on the sensuous experience of leisure. In his 1899 Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen (1973) examined the forms of conspicuous leisure practised by an eighteenth-century leisure class who were freed from labour. It was argued that extravagant forms of leisure incompatible with the daily toil of the rest of society helped to maintain class distinction.
Photographs of the conspicuous San Tropez holidaying of a new leisure class of film stars, musicians and sportspeople are now plastered all over tabloid newspapers and gossip magazines. For Veblen, the lower strata of society strove to emulate the conspicuous consumption, leisure and

waste of higher classes. Once the middle classes caught up with the latest fashions and pastimes of the leisure class, the latter evolved new forms of leisure and consumption to set them apart yet again. Tourism has since been subjected to the pressures and changes
affecting most other industries. First, it has been increasingly McDonaldized (Ritzer 2000). Principles of rationalization and scientific management applied to the fast-food chain have, at least since the 1920s, been extended to the production of a mass tourism. The original result, in the British case, was a Fordist holiday. Typically represented by the holiday camp, it was a form of mass holiday production consisting of standard holiday experiences undertaken at fixed times of the year. But, again like many other industries since the 1960s era, tourism has seen the continuing rise of

postfordist, variant types of vacation experience being targeted at particular niches or sectors of the tourism industry (Williams 2006). In particular, the production of holidays has been fused with aesthetic and cultural appeal to particular sectors of the middle classes, the aim being to make distinctive lifestyles and tastes in exotic places and throughout the year. The holiday industry is therefore no longer merely industrial. It promises distinctive lifestyles and adventures to people with different tastes and incomes. Adventure holidays are one such niche. The American company Incredible Adventures offers space exploration as one of a number of thrilling exploits being created by a postfordist tourist industry, including swimming with sharks and skydiving. Campbell (1987) criticizes the onedimensional focus on displays of wealth in Veblen, suggesting that leisure can be used to create and symbolize many different kinds of identity. How you holiday can be seen as one part of a much more reflexive project of creating the self in late modernity. Whichever kind of tourism is consumed and participated in, the chances are that it will help make and reinforce a particular kind of social identity. As a number of sociologists have argued, people do not simply consume holidays and images of holidays offered by brochures. They actively use this commodity, and its images, to literally make their selves (Britton 1991; Crang 2006; Crouch 2006). Another form of circuit is therefore involved here, one in which consumers are using purchased commodities to develop their aesthetic and cultural identities. It is well recognized that capitalism caters to the narcissistic personality type prevalent in late
modernity by offering consumer goods that claim to replace a widespread loss of identity. Consumption addresses the alienated qualities of modern social life and claims to be their solution: it promises the very things the narcissist desires attractiveness, beauty and personal popularity through the consumption of the right kinds of goods and services. Hence all of us, in modern social conditions, live as though surrounded by mirrors; in these we search for the appearance of an unblemished, socially valued self. (Giddens 1991: 172) Giddens is almost certainly wrong to suggest that literally all of us are narcissists searching for a sense of self. Rather, he is pointing to a certain tendency, one which particularly afflicts some classes of consumer. But the producers of commodities are recognizing these tendencies amongst the consumers and are producing new forms of aestheticized or cultural tourism (Lury 1996; Ateljevic and Doorne 2006; Oakes and Minca 2006). Space tourism forms part of this process, trips into space being

presented by the space tourism industry as an ultimate aesthetic and spiritual experience, and space tourists confirming that they have made new persons out of themselves as a result of their experience. Class and identity are brought together by Bourdieu (1984).
Tourism of all kinds can be analysed using what he termed cultural capital, a phrase referring to the form and level of education and upbringing that a person experiences. Bourdieus work also shows how social and economic processes relate to individuals identity. People, especially the middle classes, are able to exchange economic capital, or money, for cultural capital. The latter includes holidays offering not just sand, sea and shelter but nowadays a broadening of the mind, an uplifting of the spirit, an extreme experience and a confirmation of lifes meaning (Goss 2006). All this can be achieved, or so the tourism publicity assures us, via particular kinds of tourism. For some, particularly those middle classes

with high levels of education and cultural capital, vacations might be limited to historic sites such as parts of France or mediaeval and Renaissance towns of northern Italy. For others, particularly the socially dominant classes in finance and allied employment, vacations might be less cerebral. These classes are more prone to celebrating body culture in, say, the Caribbean or the south of France. They might also now include an adventure holiday, perhaps even to outer space. But typically, these classes with high levels of economic capital engage in both adventure holidays and the more cultural type of tour. Indeed, their social

dominance stems largely from their ability to sample any number of lifestyles and cultures, even if these are sometimes in contradiction
with each other. On the one hand, for example, they are indulging in cultures of health and the body while on the one hand they are engaging in adventure holidays which can be relatively dangerous (Savage et al. 1992). Those with little economic capital but plenty of cultural capital will meanwhile likely dismiss those who are signed with Space Adventures for a suborbital flight as having plenty of money but no real taste. The pleasure is simple sensual titillation (and is perhaps even infantile and irrational) rather than cerebral. Furthermore, the trip seems particularly extravagant during this phase when it is so expensive relative to other holidays. Cynically, they might ask if the high price tag adds

attraction to the holiday as a conspicuous flaunting of economic capital. As regards making class identities through tourism, there are some parallels here between contemporary space tourism and travel as it was created in the eighteenth century. The tourism experience was also then being made a way of improving the human self. Wealthy people now circulating in outer space are the twenty-first-century equivalents to those undertaking the Grand Tour of Europe. Travel to far distant parts of Europe, again particularly northern Italy, was then seen by social elites as a means of self-discovery. Elements of the landed aristocracy and gentry attempted to improve themselves as they visited Classical ruins as part of the Grand Tour (Urry 2002). It was a civilizing, improving mission. Later, a Romantic version of this progress developed, one inspired by the Romanticism endorsed by Rousseau and
others (Feifer 1985). The attractions became less a means of enlightenment through engagement with Classical culture and more a means of encountering new, more primitive qualities. Travels, usually made on foot, were made in frightening, awe-inspiring settings such as the Alps and the Lake District of Great Britain. Torrents, steep roads and rocks were actively sought out and visited, often at considerable danger. But these dangers were themselves seen as beneficial, allowing the development of a more fulfilled and spiritually robust self. The Romantics were trying to distinguish themselves from the Grand Tourists, making themselves men of the common people, rather than supporters of aristocracy. There are some parallels here with those tourists now engaging in dangerous outer space travel. But the latter are probably trying to distinguish themselves from the common people rather than trying to identify with them. Enlightening and frightening sights and experiences have again now been incorporated into mass tourism, one of the biggest industries on Earth. Fear and experience have been democratized and tamed to appeal to those without substantial funds or a serious desire to risk their lives. Over the past two hundred years, railways, ships and budget airlines have opened up the same places of unspoilt nature and society for the previously subordinated classes. Expanded selves are again to be made via touring the world but now on a mass scale. Making a new, or recovered, self by long-distance travel is now common sense. But, as subordinate classes buy into the myth of a Romantic reconnection with nature via tourism, the myth itself starts to go sour. The actual experience of mass travel again does not match the Romantic vision originally described by Wordsworth and now promoted by the travel brochures. This is a major problem for the dominant social orders with their high levels of economic capital (Urry 2002). They first flee to Mustique or some other Caribbean island where a really

authentic experience can be gained, one regenerating a sense of awe and mystery. Failing that someplace else must be found. Once there is no awe and mystery left on Earth, outer space is due to be the new Caribbean. Outer space is therefore the next, even final, stage in this game of social leapfrog; elites identifying themselves as elites by travelling somewhere no-one else has been. As Phillippe Starck, co-founder of Virgin Galactic and designer of SpaceShipTwo, puts it: There is nothing new to see at the moment, and it
will be replaced by something more conceptual like this (Baker 2006: 27).

LINK:RESOURCES
MININGRESOURCESFROMASTEROIDSORTHE MOONEXEMPLIFIESTHELOGICOFCAPITALISMSEXPLOITATION OFNEWSPACES. HOWEVER,SIMILARTO EARTHTHISCREATESANUNSUSTAINABLECYCLEOFALWAYSNEEDING ANOUTSIDETOENSURETHESMOOTHFUNCTIONINGOFCAPITALISM. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG1445,DS)
Outer space is now increasingly envisaged as providing inputs to the Earthly production process. It is, for example, seen as an unlimited source of metals for human use. Private companies have also been established working on the research and design for asteroidal and lunar mines. This is discussed in a number of books elaborating the commercial potential of outer space (e.g. Lewis 1996; Zubrin
1999; Hudgins 2002). The expansion of industry into space has been referred to by Harry G. Stine (1975) as the third industrial revolution and by Krafft Ehricke (1972) as the benign industrial revolution (as there were supposedly no environmental issues associated with it). Asteroids are receiving special attention (Lewis 1996). The Moon might seem an obvious first target for the acquisition and mining of resources, but

asteroids are currently seen as a better bet thanks to their metallic density. They have three hundred times as much free metal as an equal mass taken from the Moon. Metals found on the Moon are just the dispersed debris from asteroids. In the mid-1990s the market value of metals in the smallest known asteroid, known as 3554 Amun, was about $20 trillion. This included $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion worth of cobalt, and about $6 trillion in platinum-group metals (ibid.). As and when it is possible to launch thousands of people into orbit and build giant solar power satellites, Lewis argues, it should be possible to retrieve this and mine other asteroids to supply Earth with all the metals society will ever need. Extracting valuable helium-3 from the Moon is another possibility. One metric ton of helium-3 is worth $3 million, and one million tons could be obtained from the Moon. This has led Lawrence
Joseph to question in a New York Times article whether the Moon could become the Persian Gulf of the twenty-first century (cited in Gagnon 2006). Needless to say, we need to remain cautious in accepting these highly optimistic forecasts. Even the most enthusiastic pro-space activists see materials in space as useful only for building in space. The cost of returning materials to Earth would add so much to the cost of extracting them that this would never be financially viable. Research is also being conducted, however, into the production of fuel for further humanization from space materials (Zubrin and Wagner 1996). NASA has recently given the chemical engineer Jonathan Whitlow a grant of nearly $50,000 to develop computer models that could lead to the production of propellant from the lunar regolith or rock mantle (SPX 2004). The issue of ownership of means

of production is again vitally important here. United Nations legislation and the most optimistic proponents of space exploitation assume that space resources are infinite and there will be enough for everyone to own plenty of space. Considering the immensity of space as a whole, this is of course true. But it is overlooked that the nearer parts of space are those which are most profitable and viable to exploit. In reality, the part of space that is not yet owned and exploited will always become further and further from the Earth, and as this happens investors will need to be increasingly wealthy to afford to exploit it

LINK:RESOURCES
WE
MUST CHANGE OUR UNDERSTANDING OF HOW WE INTERACT WITH RESOURCESSTATUS QUO UNDERSTANDINGS ULTIMATELY CAUSE US TO RAPE AND PILLAGE OTHER SOURCES OF ENERGY AND RESOURCES UNSUSTAINABLY.

DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG1746,DS)
Of course, there is a counter-argument, mentioned by one respondent [D156], that it is better to mine in space than it is on Earth, on account of the absence of life there. The dilemma is acknowledged by some respondents: I think that this will raise interesting ethical issues: is it acceptable to disturb the ecology of a planet where there is no life, if it means we can take resources which will help humans? [F3137]. Others couched their ecological critique in less ethical terms, arguing that history shows that we cannot rely on natural resources because they are finite: Havent we learnt what

happens when we mine natural resources? We run out! Why are we so obsessed with taking materials from our universe rather than creating energy from what the Earth has provided us with? [C3210]. Another writer talked in similar terms about the specific
historical example of coal mining in Wales, and the problems caused when pits were closed and coal ran out [C1713]. As one young man notes, even the most cursory glance at human history suggests we are unlikely to be good stellar citizens [C3167]. The above line of thinking leads most of

these people to the conclusion that it is desirable that we use Earthly resources better rather than to seek solutions to our problems in space. I am far more concerned that our planet remains hospitable and viable for the vast majority of people who remain here on Earth . . . We should spend the money and effort in developing new resources on Earth and making more effective use of those we already have. [C2256] Some focus on the suggestion that we put more money into finding new sustainable sources of energy on Earth [B3010], whereas others point to the sufficiency of existing resources if only they were distributed more evenly, and greed and consumption were curtailed [B1509]. Greed and consumption are realized to be the major problems with Earthly society that also underlie the suggestion that we explore and develop space, an idea put very lucidly by this female recruitment advisor: We exploit and destroy planet Earth, which would supply everyones needs in abundance if only we could work in harmony with it and control our tendencies to hoard and covet. Developed nations crave ever more novelty and sense gratification while the Third World
suffers and, sadly, aspires to our meaningless lifestyle. They are surrounded by jewels but seek to sit on broken glass. We soil our own nest yet have the audacity to believe we have the wit to play God and conquer other planets. Its toys for boys on a grand scale and tainted by nationalism and politics. [B1218] This respondent clearly recognizes the narcissistic nature of our desire to conquer space. Many other respondents reflected on human nature as

represented in this desire, supporting our argument that the relationship we have with the universe has intimate ties with human nature. One woman said that man [sic] seems unable to see anything without wanting it, another statement of the insatiable nature of the late
modern personality, echoing Fromm and others. There was some hope amongst these writers that this insatiability might be curtailed, though there was a rather resigned quality to one mans romanticism about prenarcissistic man. Having seen a feature on Stone Age tribes on TV, he concluded that they had seemed to be happy and he would be content to still be living in the Stone Age. Yet, again, though many writers expressed dismay at the greed

behind space development plans, they too conceded that to fight against it was to fight human nature.

LINK:MARSCOLONIZATION
MARS COLONIZATION FEEDS THE EVERHUNGRY, INSATIABLE APPETITE OF CAPITALISM. STARTING NOT WITH THEPHYSICALEXPLORATIONTOMARS,CAPITALISMPLAGUESTHEVERYIDEOLOGIESATTHESTART,LEADINGTO THELAUNCHOFTHEFIRSTROCKET. PHILGraham,isdirectoroftheInstituteforCreativeIndustriesandInnovationandProfessorinCultureandCommunicationatQUT,AND CHRISTYCollisisaSeniorLecturerinMediaandCommunicationintheCreativeIndustriesFaculty,QueenslandUniversityofTechnology, 2009,(PoliticalgeographiesofMars:AhistoryofMartianManagement,Management&OrganizationalHistory20094:247)
Explorer missions set out, as do Mariners, Vikings, and Pathfinders. Their mission is to explore, map, and discourse has it, to possess new territories. While some groups plan exploration missions

thus, as this recognizable designing ever bigger and more expensive crafts others plan for colonization: testing building materials, gardening equipment, and determining who the best people might be to settle these spaces. The discursive field, as well as the practices here, are instantly recognizable, even hackneyed: this is colonialism, the project of which is to gain control of new territory and resources. The difference from other deployments of this discourse is the time and the place: the time is now, and the place to be colonized is not another continent, but another planet: Mars. Colonialism has a specific meaning here: rather than a vague pejorative portmanteau used to house a myriad of power relations, it refers to the creation of distant land as the property of a metropolitan state, generally for the economic benefit of the colonizer.1 As such, colonialism incorporates expansionist capitalism. Martian colonialism does not begin with the launch of the first exploration ships or at the moment the first rocket touches down on Mars. It begins with ideas, epistemologies, expectations, discourses, and pronouncements, an organizing of the world in a legal, logical, and managerial framework that demands colonization. Martian colonialism is therefore not science fiction fantasy: it has begun in earnest, with many millions of dollars already invested in its success.
There are political, strategic, marketing, and operational plans at work. In his 2004 announcement of the USAs new space policy, George W. Bush (2004) stated that Mars would be the next body on which the USAs human presence would be felt. Bushs Martian vision was not a new development in the USA. Since the 1986 US National Commission on Spaces declaration of its aim to settle on Mars and the Moon, Space colonialism has featured on US Space policy agendas.2 The European Space Agency, similarly, is investing heavily in robotic probes that will scour the Martian surface for optimal colonization sites (BBC 2006). China and Russia announced in March 2007 that they would send a joint mission to Mars by 2009. And in schools around the world, children design Martian colonies as part of their homework, with teachers being trained in how best to bring Mars into the classroom (Middle 2006), and companies offering schools ready-made Martian exploration simulation programs (Space Explorers 2007).

LINK:PRIVATIZATION
PRIVATECORPORATIONSWILLCOOPTGOVERNMENTPROJECTSINTOSPACEANDUSETHEMASMEANSTOGAIN PROFITSBYEXPLOITINGSPACEASCAPITALISMSNEWOUTSIDE DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 07 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMICSOCIETY:TOWARDSASOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSE,PGS144145,AU)
Private corporations have always been used to make and maintain space activities funded by the US government, but there is a
trend towards increasing private sector participation, especially through new competition schemes. This process is part of a much more general trend that has been experienced by almost all societies since the 1980s. Now, as we have seen, it is being extended to the military and to surveillance. Previously state-run activities are being contracted out to the private sector. But, furthermore, space activities are now being

envisaged as profitable in themselves, and so space activity is now becoming increasingly commercialized as well as privatized. This is another stage of Luxemburgs restless search for further profits or of what Harvey (2003) calls accumulation by dispossession. Using outer space as a source of raw materials is one suggestion under very active consideration. Harnessing the Suns rays with solar panels in space and beaming the energy to electricity grids via Earth-bound receivers is another kind of outer spatial fix under discussion, though it is not seen as profitable within the next twenty years. In the more distant future humanization will further encroach on its outside, making planets into zones appropriated for the further expansion of capitalism. Outer space is now increasingly envisaged as providing inputs to the Earthly production process. It is, for example, seen as an unlimited source of metals for human use. Private companies have also been established working on the research and design for asteroidal and lunar mines. This is discussed in a number of books elaborating the commercial potential of outer space (e.g. Lewis 1996; Zubrin 1999; Hudgins 2002). The expansion of industry into space has been referred to by Harry G. Stine (1975) as the third industrial revolution and by Krafft Ehricke (1972) as the
benign industrial revolution (as there were supposedly no environmental issues associated with it). Asteroids are receiving special attention (Lewis 1996). The Moon might seem an obvious first target for the acquisition and mining of resources, but asteroids are currently seen as a better bet thanks to their metallic density. They have three hundred times as much free metal as an equal mass taken from the Moon. Metals found on the Moon are just the dispersed debris from asteroids. In the mid-1990s the market value of metals in the smallest known asteroid, known as 3554 Amun, was about $20 trillion. This included $8 trillion worth of iron and nickel, $6 trillion worth of cobalt, and about $6 trillion in platinum-group metals (ibid.). As and when it is possible to launch thousands of people into orbit and build giant solar power satellites, Lewis argues, it should be possible to retrieve this and mine other asteroids to supply Earth with all the metals society will ever need. Extracting valuable helium-3 from the Moon is another possibility. One metric ton of helium-3 is worth $3 million, and one million tons could be obtained from the Moon. This has led Lawrence Joseph to question in a New York Times article whether the Moon could become the Persian Gulf of the twenty-first century (cited in Gagnon 2006). Needless to say, we need to remain cautious in accepting these highly optimistic forecasts. Even the most enthusiastic pro-space activists see materials in space as useful only for building in space. The cost of returning materials to Earth would add so much to the cost of extracting them that this would never be financially viable. Research is also being conducted, however, into the production of fuel for further humanization from space materials (Zubrin and Wagner 1996). NASA has recently given the chemical engineer Jonathan Whitlow a grant of nearly $50,000 to develop computer models that could lead to the production of propellant from the lunar regolith or rock mantle (SPX 2004). The issue of ownership of means of production is again vitally important here. United Nations legislation and the most optimistic proponents of space exploitation assume that space resources are infinite and there will be enough for everyone to own plenty of space. Considering the immensity of space as a whole, this is of course true. But it is overlooked that the nearer parts of space are

those which are most profitable and viable to exploit. In reality, the part of space that is not yet owned and exploited will always become further and further from the Earth, and as this happens investors will need to be increasingly wealthy to afford to exploit it

LINK:PRIVATIZATION
PRIVATECORPORATIONSARETHEENGINESOFCAPITALISM. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG144,DS)
Private corporations have always been used to make and maintain space activities funded by the US government, but there is a trend towards increasing private sector participation, especially through new competition schemes. This process is part of a much more general trend that has been experienced by almost all societies since the 1980s. Now, as we have seen, it is being extended to the military and to surveillance. Previously state-run activities are being contracted out to the private sector. But, furthermore, space activities are now being envisaged as profitable in themselves, and so space activity is now becoming increasingly commercialized as well as privatized. This is another stage of Luxemburgs restless search for further profits or of what Harvey (2003) calls accumulation by dispossession. Using outer space as a source of raw materials is one suggestion under very active consideration. Harnessing the Suns rays with solar panels in space and beaming the energy to electricity grids via Earth-bound receivers is another kind of outer spatial fix under discussion, though it is not seen as profitable within the next twenty years. In the more distant future humanization will further encroach on its outside, making planets into zones appropriated for the further expansion of capitalism

LINK:OVERVIEWEFFECT
THE VISION OF EARTH FROM SPACE SERVES NOT TO UNITE HUMANITY IN A COMMON CAUSE BUT RATHER TO PROMOTE THE ELITE LUCKY ENOUGH TO GO TO SPACE TO THE POSITION OF DEMIGOD, AS THE OVERVIEW EFFECTSERVESONLYASANADVERTISEMENTFORSPACETOURISMFORTHEEXPANSIONOFMARKETS DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 07 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMICSOCIETY:TOWARDSASOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSE,PG134,AU)
In his book charting the experiences of astronauts, The Overview Effect, Frank White (1987) reports on astronauts experiences of being in space. His concern is with the effect that looking back on the Earth from space has on ones perspective on the planet and on the self. The overview effect rests on a new appreciation of how small and precious the planet is, and on observing a world without political boundaries. As above, the experience of travelling into space has supposedly profoundly positive effects on the self. There is a real tension in Whites writing, which most probably reflects contradictions within the experiences of astronauts. On the one hand, he presents these new insights as steps towards humility. This can be seen as part of a historical de-centring of the planet, humanity and the self. It is often
recognized that Copernicus and Galileo, who were the early contributors to the scientific revolution pre-dating the Enlightenment, contributed to this progressive de-centring. They showed the Earth was not the centre of the universe. Darwin de-centred humanity by showing that Homo sapiens, along with all organic beings, is probably descended from one primordial form or creature. And Freud demonstrated that humans were not even masters of their own psyche (Freud 1973b; Craib 1998; Best and Kellner 2001: Tarnas 2006 provides a slightly different account). On the other hand, White seems more than well aware of the ways in which visiting outer space provides a sense of empowerment. Although rejecting the idea that space travel is inherently a spiritual experience, he acknowledges the power of the myth of the heavens as the dwelling place of God, and refers to the demi-god status of astronauts and cosmonauts based on their ability to travel to the heavens. Arguably they have been made the new intermediaries in the Great Chain of Being. White talks about the trip being like a death and rebirth, marking a

transition of the self. His desire to write the book came from his own feelings when flying over Washington DC and thinking how preposterous it was that the tiny beings down there were making decisions for him. It was like ants making laws for humans! (White 1987: 3). Clearly he envisages the overview effect as aggrandizing the self, this clearly being more a part of Space Adventures advertising campaign than is humility8

LINK:FRONTIER(SURVIVORSKVERS)
THEAFFAPPEALSTOAFRONTIERMENTALITYTHATREQUIRESNEWANDADAPTIVEENVIRONMENTSINORDER TO CONSOLIDATE COLLECTIVE HUMAN IDENTITY. THIS SAME MENTALITY PROMOTES THE LURE OF THE FREE
MARKET AND AUTHORIZES THE EXPANSION OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND ATTENDANT NEOLIBERAL FORMS OF GOVERNANCEINTOTHECOSMOS.

MARTIN PARKER, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, 2009. [CAPITALISTS IN SPACE, THESOCIOLOGICALREVIEW,VOLUME57,ISSUESUPPLEMENT1]
In 1862, in an essay titled Walking the American essayist Henry Thoreau said Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free. For Thoreau, the East was the site of the city, of civilization and constraint, whilst walking towards the setting sun signified wildness and freedom. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner, the US historian, gave a talk entitled The Significance of the Frontier in American History. According to Turner, the fact that the West

had now been won augured badly for the future of the USA. American character was defined by novelty, adaptation and growth, so without this imaginative geography of a frontier, there was a danger of atrophy (Morton, 2002: 258; Dickens and Ormrod,
2007: 164). The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development. Behind institutions, behind constitutional forms and modifications, lie the vital forces that call these organs into life and shape them to meet changing conditions. (Turner, in Klerkx, 2004: 298) For Turner, the wilderness, the edge of civilization, gave Americans their character as a nation who could tame the wild. From the earliest days of NASA, frontiers have often been articulated, because it allowed these new pioneers to imagine national identity once more. Turnerism, as Benjamin (2004: 249) calls it, might not be unique to the USA of course,8but was certainly built into the NASA PR line from Mercury onwards (DeGroot, 2007: 109). But the call to the frontier, to the setting sun, has other resonances too. Wyn Wachhorsts eulogy to space flight contains a family of related metaphors the child leaving the mother, the Renaissance, Columbus finding the new world, pilgrims leaving the homeland, and pioneers moving westwards (2000). Built into all these images is also the idea of escaping from a certain sort of repression the mummys boy, the closed mind, routine, those who would silence you, and the claustrophobia of the city. These are all ways of thinking about constraint, about some agency that prevents you from being what you might be. A space Turnerism now brings together ex-NASA employees, entrepreneurs and libertarian visionaries at annual conferences to bemoan the state bureaucrats who prevent citizen access to space (Spencer, 2004). Groups such as ProSpace, the Space Frontier Foundation, L-5 Society, the Planetary Society, the Mars Underground and the Mars Society all trade (to a greater or lesser extent) on this idea of a radical off-earth freedom. One of the early books that inspired this movement was Gerard ONeills TheHighFrontier(1989), elements of which have been borrowed by Robert Zubrin to justify his evangelical Mars Direct project. the ongoing bureaucratization of daily life will make it ever harder for strong spirits to find adequate means for expressing their creative drive and initiative on Earth. A confined world will limit opportunity for all and seek to enforce behavioural and cultural norms that will be unacceptable to many. (Zubrin, in Klerkx, 2004: 285) Similarly, for John Spencer, the founder, president and chief designer of Red Planet Ventures Inc, the conquest of space requires that enough people have the pioneering personality (2004: 19).9Spencer, ONeill, Zubrin etal. are also uniformly hostile to the state, to bureaucrats, and to NASAs attempt to regulate exploration and prevent competition (Klerkx, 2004; Morton, 2002: 254 passim). The fact that Virgin Galactics vehicle, SpaceShipOne, was developed by the private sector, after the Ansari X Prize was offered by the private sector, serves as proof that big government doesnt work. Yes, we are right at the beginning of a space renaissance. And it is happening because we are finally getting it that this renaissance is a private show. It is fuelled by you and me, not by mega-government agencies, not by skunk-black secret projects. (Spencer, 2004: 19) Dickens and Ormrod summarize these economically and political libertarian arguments as generally falling into five broad themes the freedom of the individual; the centrality of growth for humankind and the requirement for access to unlimited resources; the inspirational effects on the rest of mankind; the inherent nature of human curiosity; and the possibility of peace on earth as a result of all the above (2007: 165 passim). In other words, we

have wars and conflict on earth because there are too many people competing for scarce resources and being unable to express their curiosity and need for freedom. Its not a big jump from a defence of the frontier, as the only place where authentic humanity can be found, to a defence of the free market. This is a familiar translation, with freedom having both a spatial and an economic character. So, within the space libertarian community, there is much talk of deals with various companies the media, venture capitalists speculating on future income, sponsors who want publicity and so on. In 2002, the libertarian Cato
Institute of Washington DC published an edited collection entitled ], which included a contribution from Dennis Tito (Hudgins, 2002). According to these authors, NASA is now the problem, and needs to be moved out of the way or convinced that commercialisation is the only way, and not relying on tax payers dollars. NASA must become an organization that doesnt administer or regulate space, but assists in opening it up for private markets. This is a dramatic turnaround from a government-funded organization renowned for its arrogance and intellectual superiority. Even the Russians have shown the sort of entrepreneurial zeal more akin to American capitalism (Kemp, 2007: 50) The rhetoric of the pioneer, and of the frontier, suggests that ordinary honest citizens will be able to stake their claims. However, as Dickens and Ormrod argue, these selfdescribed space pioneers are not ordinary people, but members of a kind of cosmic elite (2007: 4). Reading Kemps description of the sort of people who are investing in these companies, it is easy to see what they mean (2007: 5). Added to Richard Branson

are the founders of Amazon.com, Microsoft, Pay Pal, Compusearch and a smattering of games designers and hotel magnates. The entry level costs are huge, and the risks are gigantic. Even the people who might be travelling as space tourists will have to be very
wealthy indeed. Virgin Galactic are currently asking $200,000 per flight, which is an expensive five minutes. Dickens and Ormrods materialist analysis of the space industries concludes that off-earth capitalism is pretty much like capitalism on earth, in the sense that it runs into periodic

crises that need to be fixed by the development and exploitation of new markets. These fixes are necessarily temporary, but the promise of the outer spatial fix is that it (potentially) opens a variety of ways in which capitalism might be extended

beyond the boundaries of the earth. Adopting some ideas from the geographer David Harvey, they argue that the commodification of space allows for various circuits of capital to be re-imagined and a hegemonic model of neo-liberalism to spread skywards.

LINK:SPACEUTOPIANISM
THEAFFSUTOPIANVIEWISONLYCOULTURALCONSTRUCTIONTHATMAKSCORPORATEEFFORTSTOCOLONIZE SPACEUNDERTHERUSEOFDEMOCRATIZATION
ParkerandBell,Prof@UofLeicesterSchoolofManagementandProf@UofLeeds,5/15/09 (MartinandDavid,Introduction:makingspace.TheSociologicalReview,57:15.)
There are also, of course, more sociological or cultural ways of making an argument about the contemporary importance of space programmes. As Constance Penley (1997) has argued, what she calls NASA/Trek articulates a sort of common-sense utopianism, a cultural text that blends technology and fiction to produce an image of a future that may well be better than the present. The commingling of the space programme and a science fiction programme produces a powerful, hopeful cultural resonance, of leaving Earthly troubles behind and starting anew. This sort of optimism is rare in policy and politics nowadays, and the innocence of people who might believe that rockets will make us happier seems laughable after Vietnam, Iraq, and global warming. But at Penleys more
everyday cultural level, NASA/Trek is alive and well in many, many different ways (see Smith, 2005, for example). The popular culture of space is as diverse and vibrant as ever, from collecting space memorabilia to consuming various forms of science fiction and speculative science, or forms of conspiracy theory related to UFOs and unexplained mysteries (Parker, 2008). Clearly, there is a lot of cultural work still being done to process the utopian dreaming (and dystopian foreboding) of going into space. It also shouldnt be forgotten that 2009 may well mark the first flight of the first

commercial space tourism provider, Virgin Galactic. A great many other companies are attempting to follow, most of them claiming that their efforts represent the democratization of space for the masses. Space is being opened up once more, by a new kind of frontiersman, the entrepreneurial astronaut. Finally, even if we acknowledge that the popular interest in space programmes
may well be less than it was in the 20th century in the USSR and the West, interest is growing in the 21st-century powers of India and China as they launch their own programmes, and new space racers gather at the starting line, eyeing each other nervously. So rather than merely reflecting a dubious past, space is a topic with contemporary resonances in popular culture, frontier capitalism, and the restructuring of superpower status in the coming century. In summary, there might be philosophical and sociological reasons not to dismiss Sunday July 21st 1969 too quickly, whatever the many criticisms that could be made about all that effort being expended sending two men 950 thousand miles to collect 40lbs of rock. As an event, we think it still matters, and wonder if its significance may not yet have been fully understood. The technological utopianism of the later 20th century found its most magnificent and pointless expression in the Apollo programme, but it has always been hard for social scientists to think and write about this topic for the disciplinary and political reasons we outlined above. Apollo is something we all know about, but rarely see any more. This book attempts to make space to see it again

LINK:SATELLITES
SPACE
SATELLITES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE ARE USED TO SPREAD HEGEMONIC PROPAGANDA, MONITOR POPULATIONS, AND SPREAD THE CAPITALIST CLASS SYSTEM ALL IN THE NAME OF NATIONALIST INTERESTS

DICKENS, LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX AND ORMROD LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 07 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMICSOCIETY:TOWARDSASOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSE,PGS6869,AU)
There are two quite distinct ways in which the humanization of outer space is implicated in the maintenance of hegemony. The first is that space technology has become central to the process of promoting dominant cultural forms throughout the global society. Satellites serve as a medium for the transmission of hegemonic worldviews, a form of electronic cultural imperialism, and for the surveillance of the population. As explored in Chapter 4, satellites help communicate hegemonic worldviews to living rooms around the world. As Mowlana has argued with specific reference to satellites: The Western-fuelled system of communications, capitalism, consumerism and continuous change contains seeds of a new form of conquest. This now surging e-sphere of information, communications, and capitalism seems to be seeking to conquer the culture and diverse human capacities of the world. (Mowlana 2004: 300) This e-sphere is certainly not imposed on audiences, who voluntarily wire themselves into it, but Mowlanas argument is that, despite the illusion of consumer choice, it is one way in which capitalism is able to spread an increasingly global culture. Hegemonic settlements made in the postwar period have been socially and spatially uneven. In the British case a series of moral panics was created by politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and sections of the media. The focus was on supposedly lawless and hedonistic groups of young people breaking the boundaries of respectable society and hence wrecking the entire social order (Hall etal. 1978). Authoritarian populism has been retained in the twenty-first century. Its forms are again unevenly developed but in most advanced Western societies it is a combination of appeals to old values such as religion, nation, home and duty with the neo-liberal values of possessive individualism. Moral panics over youth have been supplemented by panics over immigrants, Muslims and, latterly, terrorists. But dominant blocs and alliances can remain dominant only if subordinated classes actually adopt and internalize such values themselves. Subordinates therefore not only must be reconstituted but must reconstitute themselves as atomized individuals whose pressing priorities, like those in the dominant bloc, include consumerism, the acquisition of property and a dedication to hard work. Closely allied with these panics has been the increased surveillance of deviant populations, and even deviant states.
Subaltern groups are under pressure to accept as inevitable new forms of authoritarianism, and this is despite the massively increased social inequalities stemming from the neo-liberal experiment. Satellite technology is again central to this hegemonic project of surveillance, as discussed in Chapter 4. Restoring class hegemony is a difficult and ongoing enterprise. It needs constant renegotiation and has no guarantee of success. The second

way in which space is involved in hegemonic struggles is that space development and settlement are widely supported as solutions to the economic and environmental contradictions of capitalism. It has been seen as common sense that man (sic) should continue to explore and humanize the universe. But an intellectual who, to use Gramscis word, is organic to those resisting such common sense will demonstrate the ways in which it is actually being done. It entails capital accumulation, the maintenance of class relations, the growth of a militarized industry, the withdrawal of funds from education and welfare, increased social inequalities, increased levels of nationalism and so on. Bruce Gagnon and leading members of the Global Network could be seen as organic
intellectuals in this sense. Nobody has forced a particular view of common sense but it best serves the interests of dominant social orders. It is promoted and engaged in by intellectuals who are organic to the space industry and the social movement that supports it. It also tends to be promoted by what Gramsci called traditional intellectuals who claim to be politically unattached but who, perhaps unwittingly, perpetuate the social order.

LINK:SATELLITES
EXPANSIONANDUSEOFSATELLITESISARUSEFORMILITARYDEVELOPMENTTHE LOCATIONANDUTILITYWILLBEUSEDTOJUSTIFYPRIVITIZINGSPACEANDDEVELOPING WEAPONSTOPROTECTVENTUREINTERESTS Cooper 9 Faculty @ University of British Columbia [Brent, Lost in Space: A Realist and Marxist Analysis of US Space Militarization http://www.scribd.com/doc/38214957/Lost-in-Space-A-Realist-and-Marxist-Analysis-of-US-SpaceMilitarization#, Accessed 7/25/11]
The militarization movement challenges the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that aims in part to protect outer space as a commons, free and equal for all, apart from state power. The stipulation to protect space from state power should, assuming parties abide by the treaty, argue against neo-realist explanations that the state is the dominant actor. In privatizaing space, satellite orbit positions are being parceled into a from of real estate.49 This has occured because the control of space technology has been diffused between nations through transnational corporations (TNCs) such that Patrick Salin alludes to the US Department of Commerce and US Department of State being on separate wavelengths.50 Joan Jonson-Freese also points out that this proliferation accured despite export-control laws to contain it. This is an example of national political issues being subject to interests of TNCs.51 Perhaps world-systems theory falls short because it is trying to reconcile terrestrial interstate relationships while space Weaponization exists in a truly supranational dimension

LINK:SATELLITES
CAPITALISTDRIVENSPACEDEVELOPMENTONLYINTENSIFIESEXISTINGINEQUALITIES: SATTELITESPROVE SPENCE,1994(Martin,LostinSpace,Capital&Class52,pp5173)
If the space sector does develop on a capitalist basis, what will be its impact upon society? The example of satellite communication space's commercial success storymay give a clue. Satellite communication has followed the classic route of other new communications technologies, from the telegraph onwards. Firstly, it was sponsored and funded in its infancy by the State, and specifically by the military (De la Haye 1979); and more importantly, once introduced it has tended to intensify and consolidate existing patterns of accumulation and domination (Chanan 1985). Satellite communication based itself upon preexisting clusters of dense telecom links in the metropolitan capitalist countries and it then fed upon and intensified these links. It broadened and accelerated the pace of global business, speeding up deal-making through creating the capacity for global direct dialling by phone or fax, for computers in different continents to
speak to each other, and for the multiplication and increasingly naked commercialisation of TV images.

The process is now entering a new phase as space technology moves out beyond the metropolitan clusters to achieve a global reach for, and on terms dictated by. Western capital. Thtis the US Motorola corporation plans to spend $3.4 billion on 'Iridium', a system of 66
mini-satellites in low Earth orbit providing a global mobile telephone network {Financial Times 4/8/93). On another front, the US Space Marketing corporation intends to launch a space billboard into orbit, carrying advertising messages to a potential audience of billions (Mestel 1993).

LINK:SATELLITES
THE DISSEMINATION OF TECHNOLOGY INTO SPACE FUNDAMENTALLY ENTRENCHES A HEGEMONIC IDEOLOGY INTOLIFE,ANDENABLESINSIDIOUSMETHODSSURVEILLANCEUPONTHREATENINGPOPULATIONS. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG689,DS)
There are two quite distinct ways in which the

humanization of outer space is implicated in the maintenance of hegemony. The first is that space technology has become central to the process of promoting dominant cultural forms throughout the global society . Satellites serve as a medium for the transmission of hegemonic worldviews, a form of electronic cultural imperialism, and for the surveillance of the population. As explored in Chapter 4, satellites help communicate hegemonic worldviews to living rooms around the world. As Mowlana has argued with specific reference to satellites: The Western-fuelled system of communications, capitalism, consumerism and continuous change contains seeds of a new form of conquest. This now surging e-sphere of information, communications, and capitalism seems to be seeking to conquer the culture and diverse human capacities of the world.
(Mowlana 2004: 300) This e-sphere is certainly not imposed on audiences, who voluntarily wire themselves into it, but Mowlanas argument is that, despite the illusion of consumer choice, it is one way in which capitalism is able to spread an increasingly global culture. Hegemonic settlements made in the postwar period have been socially and spatially uneven. In the British case a series of moral panics was created by politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and sections of the media. The focus was on supposedly lawless and hedonistic groups of young people breaking the boundaries of respectable society and hence wrecking the entire social order (Hall et al. 1978). Authoritarian populism has been retained in the twenty-first century. Its forms

are again unevenly developed but in most advanced Western societies it is a combination of appeals to old values such as religion, nation, home and duty with the neo-liberal values of possessive individualism. Moral panics over youth have been supplemented by panics over immigrants, Muslims and, latterly, terrorists. But dominant blocs and alliances can remain dominant only if subordinated classes actually adopt and internalize such values themselves. Subordinates therefore not only must be reconstituted but must reconstitute themselves as atomized individuals whose pressing priorities, like those in the dominant bloc, include consumerism, the acquisition of property and a dedication to hard work. Closely allied with these panics has been the increased surveillance of deviant populations, and even deviant states. Subaltern groups are under pressure to accept as inevitable new forms of authoritarianism, and this is despite the massively increased social inequalities stemming from the neo-liberal experiment. Satellite technology is again central to this hegemonic project of surveillance, as discussed in Chapter 4. Restoring class hegemony is a difficult and ongoing enterprise. It needs constant renegotiation and has no guarantee of success. The second way in which space is involved in hegemonic struggles is that space development and settlement are widely supported as solutions to the economic and environmental contradictions of capitalism. It has been seen as common sense that man (sic) should continue to explore and humanize the
universe. But an intellectual who, to use Gramscis word, is organic to those resisting such common sense will demonstrate the ways in which it is actually being done. It entails capital accumulation, the maintenance of class relations, the growth of a militarized industry, the withdrawal of funds from education and welfare, increased social inequalities, increased levels of nationalism and so on. Bruce Gagnon and leading members of the Global Network could be seen as organic intellectuals in this sense. Nobody has forced a particular view of common sense but it best serves the interests of dominant social orders. It is promoted and engaged in by intellectuals who are organic to the space industry and the social movement that supports it. It also tends to be promoted by what Gramsci called traditional intellectuals who claim to be politically unattached but who, perhaps unwittingly, perpetuate the social order.

LINK:SATELLITES
SATELLITESARETHEFLUIDTHATMEDIATESTHEFLOWOFCAPITALTHROUGHOUTTHEECONOMY. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG1034,DS)
Communications satellites now provide an array of services central to the functioning of global society, and are often taken for granted, especially by those privileged citizens of the West best placed to take advantage of them. According to NASA figures there were 2,465 active payloads in orbit as of the year 2000 (with another 22,507 objects having been launched and now debris or decayed). There are 250300 satellites in geostationary orbit at the present time. There are also up to a thousand satellites in low-earth orbit (LEO) and
medium-earth orbit (MEO), with estimates of a thousand in LEO alone by 2012 (Salin 2001). There are 100 million satellite terminals on Earth capable of receiving transmissions via satellite (in homes, offices, ships, cars, etc.). Satellites have contributed a third of the $1 trillion revenue

generated by space activities over the last decade. In 2003 satellite communications were worth $40 billion worldwide, and $75 billion in directly related activities (Pelton et al. 2004). Satellite TV has enabled us to witness global events on a massive scale (3 billion of the worlds 6.6 billion population are believed to have watched some of the 2004 Olympics) as well as soap operas and indeed the output of 12,000 TV channels. They are vital in enabling the global liquid part of the economy to function. Capital is now less fixed to any investment or geographical locale. It can be switched and moved around instantaneously, a picture captured by Appadurais (1990) concept of finanscapes. Contemporary capitalism is characterized by the rise and rise of financial and/or state institutions with a central role in switching flows of capital between the three circuits of capital. This is done by electronic fund transfers (EFTs), in which stock and account transactions are processed electronically. Satellites are again central here. At any given time they can process $400 trillion in transactions (Pelton et al. 2004: xiv). Satellites also allow communications for diplomats and scientists and the spread of
electronic education and healthcare. Pagers and some mobile phones also rely on satellites, as witnessed by the chaos in 1998 when the Panamsat network of communications satellites went off-line and, apart from CNN going down, thousands of pagers (including those of many doctors) stopped working. Global positioning satellites are increasingly utilized in a range of applications from family cars (where devices are increasingly fitted as standard), to mountaineers and skiers, to the military, who use satellites to guide missiles. Civilians and the military also make use of a number of remote-sensing, reconnaissance and meteorological satellites. Many satellite services are utilized,

however, via the internet network. Although terrestrial fibre-optics carry most internet traffic on a local level, only half the worlds countries are connected together in this way, the rest relying on bouncing signals off satellites, bypassing in most instances the problem caused by huge distances and impassable terrain. Satellites support internet connections to countries that do not have fibre-optic connectivity or within countries that do not have a terrestrial internet network. This is very much the case in many African and Asian countries. In 2004 Pelton et al. projected a figure of $750 billion for internet and e-commerce in 2005, a
figure which has doubtlessly only risen since. The total number of webpages, if we include those dynamically created on request and the document files available through links, is now more than 600 billion or roughly one hundred webpages per person alive (Dennis 2007a). We discuss the implications of this later in the chapter

THE ABILITY TO MONITOR THE WORLD DESTROYS THE POSSIBILITY TO PROTEST AND EFFECTIVELY RESIST POWERSTRUCTURES. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG1201,DS)
Finally, panopticism

is also being extended to the monitoring of more exceptional threats to the social order. Resistance by trade unions may have been weakened or sidelined by the programme of accumulation by dispossession but new, very diverse, kinds of struggle are now a regular feature of contemporary society. Resistance to privatization and commodification, including programmes by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, is widespread, covering countries as far apart as India, Africa and Latin America. The rapidly growing antiglobalization movement, one with its own counter-hegemonic values and which regularly turns up at meetings of the World Trade Organization, requires regular, global surveillance. All these developments require monitoring and, if necessary, stopping by state authorities in many parts of the world. Even leading activists in the Global Network have been subjected to surveillance in recent years

LINK:SATELLITES
SPACESATELLITESLIKEGEOS,THOUGHCRUSADEDASBEINGFORTHEBENEFITTOHUMANS,FURTHEREXCLUDE THE POOR NATIONS OF THE EARTH AND ONLY MAKE THE DOMINANT NATIONS RICHER, REINFORCING GLOBAL CAPITALISM. ALAN MARSHALL, THE INSTITUTEOF DEVELOPMENT STUDIESAT MASSEY UNIVERSITY, PALMERSTON NORTH, NEW ZEALAND, 1995, DEVELOPMENT ANDIMPERIALISMINSPACE
Unfortunately such imperialistic tendencies are not just a prospect for the future, they are evident in current space activities. Not throughout the Solar System maybe, but certainly within the confines of the near space of Earth orbit. Imperialistic tendencies in this realm have provoked a growing sense of resentment amongst those nations being subjected to it. For instance, with the continued development of the

geostationary orbit, concern is being expressed that the space a satellite occupies in this type of orbit is becoming a scarce resource, and one which is becoming increasingly unavailable to non-space nations. Some of these nations have banded together under
the 1986 Bogota Declaration to express their right to benefits accumulating to users of geostationary orbits above their territories. Included in this group of nations are the Third World states of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Kenya, Uganda, Zaire and Indonesia. None of these states receives rent for the

occupation of their geostationary space, just as no satellite launching nation or company pays rent to the rest of the global community for occupying a common space that belongs to all the world. Those nations and firms that launch and operate satellites generally feel that the benefits accrued from satellite activities are offered throughout the world through the normal market procedures. However, unlike the free-riding satellite operators, user nations have to pay to receive satellite services. Additional to this is the ability of the space-capable nations to obtain information about resources in the territories of non-space-capable nations, which is either made unavailable to the latter or is sold to them at a profit. The highly technological nature of satellite launching and operations not only means that poorer nations have less access to the benefits of satellite technology, but also that they are unlikely to initiate their own independent satellite operations. Even when they do, they come up against the rules and practices of space operations as governed by the worlds dominant nations,
which are often inimical to Third World Space Development.

LINK:SATELLITES/GEOSS
EVEN IF DATA IS FREELY DISTRUBTED SATELLITE INVESTMENT AND CONTROL REMAINS IN THE HANDS OF WESTERN ELITES. THE IMPACT IS CONTINUED EXCLUSION OF DEVELOPINGCOUNTRIESFROMTHESTRUCTUREOFTHENEWECONOMY RATHMAN HAS A DOCTORATE IN ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, 99 (KIM, OUTER SPACE COMMERCIALIZATION AND ITS ETHICAL CHALLENGES TO INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLICY, TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIETY, DM)
This new era of commercial expansion into outer space, including new profitmaking opportunities and increased quality of life inherent in this expansion, is beginning to reveal the inadequacy of earlier space law to deal with the new problems being generated by space commerce. Space, once considered an arena for global cooperation among governments is now rapidly becoming an arena for international entrepreneurial competition. Space commercialization and its technologies are constructing an interdependent earth-space economy that has begun to force changes not only in the old (and rather exclusive) rules of the game, but in the ethical and legal principles needed to guide appropriate conduct relative to commercial space endeavors [8]. From an ethical perspective, however, little attention has been paid to the possible influence that the commercialization of space will have on U.S. foreign and economic relations with other nations. In light of moves by the developing nations toward a new international economic order, and their affirmation of the Common HeritageMankind principle [9] in relation to space resources, questions of space commercialization will only grow more intense. In addition, when discussion is focused on the ethical issues in this debate, it occurs largely as a
by-product of legal arguments between the two schools of thought that dominate the discussion in the literature: the natural law school championed by Andrew Haley and the positivist school led by Myres McDougal. The conflicting methodologies of these two schools characterize the debate between First and Third World countries in terms of whether there is a need to establish the rights and responsibilities of nations and private entities for space commercialization before extensive development of outer space resources takes place. Within this literature, the debate focuses on the legal status and policy implications of stipulations in the Moon Treaty as they relate to: (1) the geosynchronous orbit; (2) the legal status and commercialization of remote sensing data and mining rights on celestial bodies; and (3) the structure and function of the mandated international regime.4 Both the primary and secondary

literature on space commercialization discuss the importance of telecommunications in the global economy, international monetary and data flow systems, and the virtually invisible societal dependence these new satellite systems are creating as they take over one vital service after another. It is this growing dependence on new space technologies that is particularly alarming for Third World countries whose economies have neither the capital nor the industrial infrastructure to build and mount their own satellite systems. This leaves Third World countries vulnerable to First World economic and political power, and raises questions about the ability of developing countries to maintain any semblance of political and economic sovereignty or cultural integrity. As Jurgen Hausler and Georg Simonis point out, the failure of Third World countries to adapt to new space technologies will continue the cycle of underdevelopment and political and economic subservience [10]. Considering these
problems further, Marvin Soroos notes that the growing legal, political, and economic challenges generated for the global community by new space technologies cannot be solved by the usual policy approaches based purely on technical or engineering models of economics [11].

Satelliteimagesandinformationhavebecomecommoditiesthatareonlyavailabletothosewhocanaffordit. Dualusemeanssatellitesforbenignpurposeswillbeusedbythemilitary Warf,Prof.inDept.ofGeography@FloridaStateU,05(Barney,October,GeopoliticsoftheSatelliteIndustry,p.393)

The privatisation of the satellite industry also entailed the commodification of images, so that satellite data and photographs that were once the exclusive province of secretive intelligence communities have been released to anyone who can pay for them (Lane 1996). Private providers found a growing market among real estate developers, utilities, shipping and airline firms, petroleum companies and agribusiness. In 1986, the French company Spot Image began sale of satellite images with 10 metre resolution
(Monmonier 2002, p. 10). The first Bush administration granted licences for private craft with a three-metre resolution (Broad 1995a, b). In 1999, Ikonos successfully began sale of highresolution remotely sensed images, and Space Imaging launched the Ikonos system, which offers images via the Internet 30 minutes after the satellite camera shutter has clicked. In the same vein, the United States began to turn its spy satellites to civilian purposes such as measuring cloud cover, sea ice, deserts, flood and earthquake damage, and tropical rain forest destruction (Broad 1995c). Military satellites have been

used for boundary surveys, to detect marijuana fields, as digital leashes tied to ankle bracelets of prisoners confined to home, and in the development of location-based services. Opponents of the commercial sale of satellite images object on the grounds that satellite images constitute dual-use technology applicable to both military and non-military purposes (Monmonier
2002).

LINK:REMOTESENSING
THE COST OF REMOTE SENSING MEANS IT WILL NEVER REACH THE THIRD WORLD. THIS TECHNOLOGY IS ULTIMATELYEXPLOITEDBYMULTINATIONALCORPORATIONTOFURTHERTHEIRWEALTH. RATHMAN HAS A DOCTORATE IN ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, 99 (KIM, OUTER SPACE COMMERCIALIZATION ANDITSETHICALCHALLENGESTOINTERNATIONALLAWANDPOLICY,TECHNOLOGYINSOCIETY,DM)
The technological breakthrough of satellite remote sensing has presented Third World countries with both new opportunities for assessing the extent of their natural resources and new threats to their economic independence. The double-edged nature of this technological advance results from the costs of collecting and then enhancing the data. These costs many times place remote sensing data out of the reach of Third World nations, but not out of the reach of multinational corporations based in the First World. Remote sensing plays a key role in exploring, monitoring, evaluating, and developing the earths natural resources. Moreover, the
development and management of natural resources, particularly mineral resources, is foundational for the advancement of civilization and social achievement.11 Access to, and proper development of, natural resources can have a strong positive effect on the economic and

industrial growth of a country. The absence of proper resource management, however, can have catastrophic consequences on a countrys advancement toward social achievement and economic well-being.12

LINK:SPACEELEVATOR
THEAFFIRMATIVEREFLECTSAFAILEDECONOMICMODELOFSPACEDEVELOPMENTEVENIF THEGOVERNMENTASSUMESTHERISKTOSTIMULATEPRIVATEDEVELOPMENT,THEREISNO POTOFGOLDINTHESKY.ONLYTHEALTERNATIVECANPROVIDETHENECESSARY FRAMEWORKFORTRUEEXPLORATIONANDDEVELOPMENT Flores and Gangale. PacificSociologicalAssociationConference.September2007(TheGlobalizationofSpaceThe
AstrosociologicalApproach.DA:July24,2011.CH)

The libertarian mantra that Government is the problem. is nonsensical. Neither is government the entire solution, but it is a necessary partner in the solution--on land and on sea, in the air and in space. Building a transplanetary infrastructure is not something that private enterprise is going to accomplish, except in the far future. First must come the political vision to build rainbow bridges to the heavens, then will come the economic incentive to travel them. What makes libertarian rhetoric so seductive is that government seems to have dropped the ball. The Golden Age of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo is long gone. During that time, anything seemed possible. It was anticipated that there would be a fullyreusable launch system, a space station, a Moon base, and human expeditions to Mars, all by the early 1980s. The technology for all of this was either in hand or within reach, but there was no political necessity, and there certainly was no economic rationale. Clearly, if government were the problem, private enterprise failed to provide a solution. Private enterprise never built a space station or a Moon base, or sent humans to Mars. Is it likely to in the near future? Government has
been getting an increasingly bad rap in the space advocacy community since the end of the Apollo Era, but in truth the mad dash to the Moon was

progress against the Apollo standard reflects unrealistically high expectations. Apollo was a Cold War anomaly that has not been repeated, and that may have no analog in the future. Again, the central problem is infrastructure. When the Apollo program ended, it left some ground infrastructure (assembly and launch facilities later used by the Space Shuttle program) but no space infrastructure, and in that respect it was a developmental dead end. Political motivation for government to build lasting infrastructure is generated by private sector anticipation of colonizing a new human ecology in which it can produce profit.
unsustainable, and measuring subsequent This is the common thread in all of the aforementioned government infrastructure projects. In contrast, no government has bothered to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait; there are no roads on either side, and so there is little prospect of a sustainable human ecology there. This is not to say that there will never be a Bering Tunnel, just not any time soon. This may sound like a chicken-and-egg problem. Private enterprise is ill-positioned to develop

infrastructure that it requires to thrive. Technocracy.government-directed technological development.has its limits, and may be politically motivated to develop capabilities that have little or no economic utility. A case in point is the depopulation of
Siberia that has been occurring since the collapse of communism. The Soviet Union built infrastructure and forcibly moved population in a massive effort to colonize Siberia and extract its natural resources. Under a command economy, it was not clear that this was an uneconomical project, but as Russia has

transitioned to a market economy, an increasing number of people have found that they cannot make a decent living in Siberia despite its vast natural wealth. There are enormous costs associated with extracting those resources in the extreme environment, and
furthermore, there are considerable costs attached to transporting goods out of this remote region of the Earth to market. So, millions of Russians are abandoning the frontier to return to the bosom of Mother Russias European heartland. Now, Siberia is paradise next door compared to the distant and forbidding Moon and Mars, yet here private enterprise is retreating from an ecology that government established. Private enterprise only recently duplicated Alan Sheppards 1961 suborbital flight. How credible is it that private enterprise is going to blaze trails to the planets in our lifetime? It is about as credible as the hype about living on the Moon that Baby Boomers read in the WeeklyReader40 years ago, or the grand vision of solar power satellite constellations 30 years ago, or a fleet of commercially owned and operated Space Shuttles 20 years ago, or the Iridium mobile telephone satellite constellation 10 years ago. It seems like every time you turn around, space endeavors are being oversold, whether they are governmental or commercial. However, developing a spacefaring civilization is not an insoluble chicken-and-egg conundrum. It is more subtle than that, and there are solutions--not in all cases, but on the margins. Obviously, progress does occur, and while the pace of progress is not at a dead crawl, it does have constraints. The key conceptualization is of government and private enterprise in a push-pull relationship. When private interest becomes curious about what lies over the five year return-on-investment horizon, it nudges government to stand straight and see further over that horizon. If

the vista is promising, private interest encourages government to build the rainbow bridge to the pot of gold. Government then gets its piece of the action by taxing that pot of gold. The challenge is in recognizing that not every horizon hides a pot of gold, or if it does, it can be too costly to bring it home with the means at hand. Space technology is not a magic wand, and the High Frontier is not the Promised Land. Laissezfairelibertarianism is not the answer to space development any more than command economy technocracy was; rather what is required is, as John Kenneth Galbraith prescribed for the United States half a century ago, a social balance between public goods and private goods (Sackrey etal.2002).14 The concept of and need for sociopolitical balance between
various economic power centers in society, including government, corporations, organized labor, international civil society, etcetera,is also described in Raymond Millers Multicentric Organizational model of political economy (Miller 2000). For space development to proceed and to succeed there must be a partnership between government and enterprise as well as among governments and enterprises, a transnational partnership of governmental and nongovernmental entities (Dudley-Rowley 2001, Dudley-Rowley and Gangale 2006).15 It is not merely corporations or governments, but

all sectors of human society, that must go into space.

LINK:RLVS
RLVDEVELOPMENTISTHENEXTPHASEOFCAPITALEXAPNSIONTOSPACEREUSABLE VEHICLESAREONLYDEMONSTRATIONSTOTHEPRIVATESECTORTHATTHEGOVERNMENTIS WILLINGTOPUBLICIZETHERISKINTHENAMEOFPROFIT SPENCE,1994(Martin,LostinSpace,Capital&Class52,pp5173)
Half the argument in favour of the US space station was always that it would provide an experimentaland potentially commercial platform for US capital in the aerospace, pharmaceutical and other sectors. This was an argument that was entirely understood by Reagan and Bush, and seems now to be understood also by Clinton. If space station Alpha is built, or if Western capital
can gain unrestricted access to the Russian Mir station, it will be an important step towards a commercial space infrastructure. However, there are also other arguments currently being mounted for expanded public spending in space. The first is about developing new sorts of spacecraft: to give cheap and easy access to Earth orbit. This has practical appeal, as much of the cost of space travel today is taken up simply with getting away from the Earth's gravitational pull. The US, Russian and West European space agencies are all involved in studies on reuseable 'spaceplanes' which might fulfil these aims (Blase 1993).

LINK:ALIENS
ALIENS WILL BECOME ECONOMICALLY VALUABLE. IF WE WIN A LINK ARGUMENT, WELL TURNYOURANTHROPOCENTRISMSOLVENCYCLAIMS. BAUM, PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRPAHY AT PENN STATE UNIVERSITY, 2009(SETH,COSTBENEFITANALYSISOFSPACEEXPLORATIONSPACEPOLICY25)
One important question for CBA of space exploration is whether to give standing to extraterrestrials. This can include both any sentient extraterrestrials that humans might encounter as well as any non-sentient extraterrestrial life and the nonliving extraterrestrial environment (planetary rocks, atmospheric gasses, etc.). By granting standing to extraterrestrials, concern for them can be integrated into CBA beyond the concern that humans have for them. Implementing this concern may be more readily implemented if the CBA is not the common money-based form, because extraterrestrials, like non-humans on Earth, do not use money and thus cannot easily have their interests monetized.4 For example, following an ethical framework that values both human welfare and

intact extraterrestrial planets, it is possible to develop a framework for deciding when the costs to a planet of terraforming outweigh the benefits to humanity of increased resources and living space. Precisely how to develop such a framework may be an ambiguous and ambitious task, but it would not be inconsistent with the principles of CBA, broadly understood. It should be emphasized that the traditional money-based CBA can (and often does) place value on non-human phenomena and thus could be used to value extraterrestrials. As discussed above, this valuation includes both aspects of non-human phenomena that humans value because we use them (use value) and aspects that we value simply because they exist (existence value) [15]. However, these valuations remain anthropocentric in the sense that the non-human phenomena aspects are considered to hold value only to the extent that they are valued by humans

LINK:GETOFFTHEROCK
THEIR CALLS TO LEAVE EARTH ONLY ADVANCE THE AGENDAS OF PRIVATE CORPORATIONS DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE.EVENIFWEDIDLEAVETHEROCKITWOULDONLYBETHEELITETHATWOULDBEABLETO. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG1567,DS)
This kind of crisis in supply is not usually, however, one in which there are absolute shortages of resources. Rather it takes the form of rising costs, which in turn threaten to undermine profits. Furthermore, social movements of different kinds can be expected to make greater demands for socialization of, and control over, the means of production. In a rather different language and with radically different political priorities, the early proponents of space travel and exploitation offered means by which the second contradiction can be resolved. For example: Shortage of resources is not a fact; it is an illusion

born of ignorance. Scientifically and technically feasible improvements in launch vehicles will make departure from Earth easy and inexpensive. Once we have a foothold in space, the mass of the asteroid belt will be at our disposal, permitting us to provide for the material needs of a million times as many people as Earth can hold. Solar power can provide all the energy needs of this vast civilization (10,000,000 billion people) from now until the Sun expires. (Lewis 1996: 255) This perhaps suggests that there need no longer be problems or contradictions on Earth. The writer Trudy Bell (1981: 54) adopts the pro-space position that space industrialization does not simply fly in the face of the limits to growth; it makes them obsolete. But even if contradictions cannot be eliminated, they can be resolved by moving such problems away from Earth. As one enthusiast for the private development of space reassuringly puts it: Continuing private investment in space development will ultimately allow us to move some polluting industries off the planet and to develop unique products, thereby improving our quality of life. The settlement of outer space will ensure the survival of our species in the event of a global catastrophe. (White 2002:124) On the other hand, some sociologists have started mirroring the arguments of prospace advocates and are considering the development of space resources as a permanent resolution of the second contradiction, and working this into a fundamental critique of Marxs political economy (Thomas-Pellicer 2004). This raises some of the debates surrounding the second contradiction thesis. Like the proponents of capitalisms infinite expansion into an infinite outer space, the second contradiction thesis can be seen as depending on a form of catastrophism: the idea that society and nature are doomed. But, first, it is not clear that this is an accurate account of the Left version of the second contradiction. OConnor (1996) is the leading contemporary Marxist proponent of the second contradiction and he argues that it is most likely to be addressed by state intervention and limited state ownership of the means of production. But the picture of catastrophism,

whether propounded by Left or Right, is quite misleading. Whatever happens to the Earth and the cosmos there will still be some form of a nature there (Harvey 1996). Certainly some people, specifically the poor, may come off much worse than others as a result of such humanization. But this is a long way from saying that capitalism and nature will come to an end as a result of commodification and environmental degradation. As pro-space activists show, the pessimism of the second contradiction thesis can easily be adopted not just by socialists but by the promoters of capitalism who would use the possibility of the Earths demise as an excuse to continue privatizing the cosmos. One example is the revenue generated by Earth-imaging satellites, used largely to
monitor climatic and environmental change. Harris and Olby (2000) projected a market of $6.5 billion in 2007 for Earth observation data and services. Developing the rest of the cosmos entails what Enzensberger (1996) might call the next stage of the eco-industrial complex:

providing economic opportunities for those in the business of rectifying the degradation caused by capitalism in the first instance. Humanizing nature on Earth or in the cosmos need be neither a complete disaster nor a complete triumph. The priority for historical materialism is to consider the implications of outer space humanization for particular societies, particular sectors of the population and particular species and ecological systems

LINK:COOPERATION
CAPITLAISM MAKES TRASNFORMATIVE COOPERATION IMPOSSIBLE PRIVITIZATION AND MILITARISMWILLPREFIGURETHETERMSOFCOOPERATION PATRICKSALIN,2001,DOCTOROFCIVILLAWATMCGILLUNIVERSITY,PRIVATIZATIONANDMILITARIZATION IN THE SPACE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT, MCGILL UNIVERSITY, HTTP://WWW.SCIENCEDIRECT.COM/SCIENCE/ARTICLE/PII/S0265964600000503
We have tried to underline the close connection that exists between privatization and militarization, which is completed by a connection between militarization and exacerbated commercial competition. Intentionally, we did not touch on cooperation programs in order to underline the very real risks that naked competition can entail. We believe that many commercial space developments could be a lead to further military deployment by the nation fostering such commercial development. How can the proposition that one nation can have a greater interest in outer space than any other nation be sustained? It is still possible to slow down * or redirect * the irrepressible rush towards a substantial militarization and weaponization of outer space, especially in low-Earth orbits, in total contradiction of the words and spirit of the Outer Space treaties. Is cooperation the answer? Certainly, but cooperation as the result of forced political or industrial partnership is not an objective. The illustration provided by the ISS venture remains incomplete, with its spots of national sovereignty within the station itself, its complex patent dispositions and its features as an industrial partnership [44}46]. Beyond the whole ISS venture, one should really question the need' to rush into deep space projects, while ongoing and urgent development issues still plague three-quarters of humanity on Earth. Cooperation works if it is accompanied by some dose of devolution of power to a central a-national' authority and is geared towards real' needs [47]. For example, in the wake of Unispace III, proposals to consider Earth observation

as a public good vs. Earth observation as a commercial venture should be explored further and given much more attention than they are now [48].

LINK:AEROSPACEINDUSTRY
FUNDING
THE AEROSPACE DOESNT PROVIDE ECONOMIC BENEFITSIT FURTHERS THE CAPITALIST WEAPONIZATIONOFSPACE.

DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG856,DS)
Governments do not channel funds into the military merely as a form of industrial welfare they do so to ensure the geographic expansion of their capitalist economies. The new imperialism consisted, and still consists, of accumulation by dispossession. It was above all a reassertion of class power, with trade unions being marginalized, the creation of flexible labour markets and financial capital having a key role in allocating funds on a global scale. Keynesianism was largely rejected as flows of capital were now injected into newly commodified and privatized public goods and services. Investments
started to flow into the other parts of the capitalist economy that looked promising sources of accumulation. Structural Adjustment Programs were imposed by the International Monetary Fund on developing countries, opening up global markets and reducing state welfare spending. But new investments included, and still very much include, the Far East, particularly India and China. It is the necessity of overseeing capitals geographic expansion and

monitoring its social and political implications that gives space a revived significance over and above the demands of the militaryindustrialspace complex. This is where we can usefully return to Lenins understanding of monopoly capitalism as outlined in the previous chapter. Not only do regional monopolies represent a threat to global free trade, they represent a threat to peace. A militarized outer space becomes a medium through which some such monopolies can be protected. But for global capitalism outer space is a medium through which regional monopolies can be regulated and, if necessary, destroyed. Lefebvre (1976) refers
to the creation of super regions, which are now expanding themselves into space.

LINK:GENERICPROGRESSIVISM/ETHICS
THE AFFIRMATIVE IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE POLITICS OF DEFEATISM THAT PLAGUES THE LEFT AT THE END OF HISTORY. ABANDONING HOPE FOR FUNDAMENTAL AND VIOLENT CHANGE IN THE SOCIOECONOMIC ORDER, THE AFF SETTLES FOR THIRD WAY DEMOCRATIC POLITICS, IN HOPES OF MODESTLY REDUCING STATUS QUO INEQUALITY. THIS IS COWARDLY. THE BARBARIC VIOLENCE OF LATE CAPITALISM OBLIGATES US TO DEVOTEOURSELVESTOLOSTCAUSES. Zizek2008InDefenseofLostCausespage2 with regard to the old distinction between doxa (accidental/empirical opmion, Wisdom) and Truth, or, even more radically, empirical positive knowledge and abso- lute Faith,(the need for a strong state apparatus to maintain the market competition itsell, and so on),from Daniel Bell to Francis Fukuyama, The common sense of our era tells us that,one should draw a line between what one can think and do today.At the level of
common sense, the furthest one can go is en- lightened conservative liberalism: obviously, there are no viable alter- natives to capitalism; at the same time, left to itself, the capitalist dynamic threatens to undermine its own foundations.This concerns not only the economic dynamicbut, even more, the ideologico- political dynamics. Intelligent conservative democrats,are aware that contemporary global capitalism tends to undermine its own ideological conditionscapitalism can only thrive in the conditions of basic social stability, of intact symbolic trust, of individuals not only accepting their own responsibility for their fate, but also relying on the basic "fairness" of the systemWithin this horizon, the answer is thus neither radical liberal- ismnor crude conservatism,but a blend of economic liberalism with a minimally "author- itarian" spirit of communitythat counteracts the system's excesses in other words what Third Way social-democrats such as Blair have been developing. This,is the limit of common sense. What lies beyond involves a Leap of Faith, faith in lost Causes, Causes that, from within the space of skeptical wisdom, cannot but appear as crazy.The problem,is that, in a time of crisis and ruptures, skeptical empirical wisdom itself, constrained to the horizon of the dominant form of common sense, cannot provide the answers, so one must risk a Leap of Faith.(what, long ago. Bell called the "cultural contradictions of capitalism"):this
ideological background has to be sustained through a strong educational, cultural apparatus. la Hayek,still less clinging to old welfare- state ideals, (the emphasis on social stability', "values," and so forth)then,And the present book speaks from within this Leap of Faith but why?of course,

ANYETHICALSYSTEMBASEDONCAPITALISMISFOUNDEDONTHENATURALIZEDVIOLENCEANDEXPLOITATION OFTHEMARKET Zizek 2010LivingintheEndTimesp207208

Only in capitalism is exploitation "naturalized inscribed into the functioning of the economy, and not the result of extraeconomic pressure and violence. This is why, with capitalism, we enjoy personal freedom and equality: there is no need for explicit social domination, since domination is already implicit in the structure of the production process. This is also why the category of surplus-value is crucial here: Marx always emphasized that the exchange between worker and capitalist is "just" in the sense that workers (as a rule) get paid the full value of their labor- power as a commodity-there is no direct "exploitation" here; that is, it is not that workers "are not paid the full value of the commodity they are selling to the capitalists." The exploitation occurs because labor-power as a commodity has the paradoxical character of producing more value than it is itself worth. This process is obfuscated in "bourgeois" market ideology. Let us take as a contemporary example Tim Hartford, who begins his analysis of the market economy with a "flight of fantasy," imagining "the world of truth": a world where markets are complete, free and competitive. In reality we're about as likely to achieve a world with complete, free and competitive markets as hotshot lawyers are to start telling the truth to everyone.
You might therefore be asking yourself why you've read a chapter ... about some bizarre economist's fantasy. The answer is that the fantasy helps us understand why economic problems arise and also helps us to move in the right direction. We know that a world of perfect markets combined with the head start approach is as good as we're going to get. When real-world economies malfunction, we know to look for the market failures and to do our best to patch them Up.42

LINK:PROGRESSIVETECH(SURVIVORSKAFF)
THE POTENTIAL OF THE SPACE AFF DOES NOT LIE IN ITS PROMISES OF GLORIOUS EXPENDITURE. RATHER, CAPTIALISM WILL BE AFFIRMED IN TWO WAYS. FIRST, THE AFF WILL REPLICATE THE PROBLEMS OF TECHNOLOGICAL FETISHISM. SECOND, THE RIGHT, LIKE REAGAN, WILL USE THE UTOPIAN ELEMENTS TO USHER IN A NEW WAVE OF SPACE WEAPONRY
Shukaitis,UniversityofEssexandamemberoftheAutonomediaEditorialCollective,09(Stevphen;Spaceisthe (non)place:Martians,Marxists,andtheouterspaceoftheradicalimagination,TheSociologicalReviewVolume 57,IssueSupplements1,pages98113)
All the efforts expended on technological development and innovation, alas, largely failed to deliver on many of the promises on offer, including unlimited energy, artificial intelligence, robots that cleaned the home and eliminated the need for most manual labour, and so forth. To put it crudely, one could say that while most of the forms of technological achievement anticipated by people living in the early 20th century (cars, radio, rockets, television) were largely achieved by midway through the century, for the second half of the century this was not the case. In the second half of the century much more was promised than actually delivered. People thought that soon they would be engaging in outer space travel, driving flying cars, and other such wonderful things that never appeared. If anything, it seems that the main technologies developed during the second half of the century were mainly premised on their ability to simulate things rather than actually do them. Perhaps Baudrillard was waiting with great anticipation for anti-gravity boots and upon their non-arrival decided his only recourse was to conclude that only simulation was possible now? This does not mean that the imaginary future held out by the seductive sway of the promised future did not continue to have powerful effects. If anything that served to diminish the fascination of outer space and the techno-fetish, it is perhaps, as Barbrook (2007) points out, when people actually began to acquire personally ownable forms of these wonder technologies (personal computers, allegedly programmable VCRs), only to discover that they were far less intelli- gent and sensible than the mythology surrounding them would like to suggest. The actual technology delivered was somewhat less impressive than a
menacing HAL 9000, now reprogrammed for beneficent purposes, for every household. But more than just the disappointment of not receiving those anti-gravity boots for Christmas, techno-utopian space dreams often came with less desired attributes. It was often a case of desiring a transformative war machine, in Deleuze and Guattaris sense of the potentiality of exteriority and its transformation, and instead getting an actual war. To find oneself caught playing a bait and switch game of dreaming of space travel and getting Star Wars as a missile defence system instead. After all, this trick only worked for Reagan precisely because of his ability to tap into and draw from the utopian trace of space imagery. In order to justify and narrate a

nationalist-militarist project, Reagan very well might have been making policy decisions based on movies he remembered seeing (or acted in); but this was as much a source of ridicule as a certain kind of populist appeal derived out of his confusion. To some degree there is a
large population out there that wishes it was living in a movie set, and these desires congealed in Reagans confusion and rhetorical bombast. An analysis of this dynamic can be found in the work of Dean and Massumi (1992), who explore the relation between the role of the Emperors body in the first Chinese empire and the mass mediated role of Reagans body in the workings of the US Empire. Dean and Massumi argue that President Bush (the first one) attempted to engage in a similar kind of populist media politics, but failed. Extrapolating from this it seems arguable that the second President Bush attempted much the same, even attempting to revive the Star Wars missile defence system. Likewise this has been of mixed success. Many children, including the author, at one point during the 1980s wished to grow up to be the president like Reagan. It is likely that there are far fewer children making the same wish in regards to President Bush. And yet again, one premised on having to confront the all-menacing threat of the communist other and the evil empire. All this is to say that the imaginal space attached to technological development and dreams of space is highly ambivalent, dragging along with it a post-apocalyptic bad-new future

LINK:HEGEMONY
USHEGEMONYISNOTHINGMORETHENANATTEMPTTOSECURETHEGLOBALCAPITALISTWORLDORDER SakellaropoulosAsstProfofSocialPolicyPanteionUniversity& SotirisDepartmentofSociology, UniversityoftheAegean2008 Spyros&PanagiotisScience&Societyproquest
American neoconservative thinkers have the virtue of not retorting to cosmopolitan rhetoric, when talking about U. S. foreign policy. They insist that there is no alternative to American leadership. Many states have benefited from the world order created by U. S. power, and if the United States failed, the rest of the world would be in a much worse situation (Kagan, 1998).
Especially after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, many scholars argued for the necessity of a benevolent hegemony, which will have as its first objective the preservation and enhancement of U. S. predominance by strengthening its security, supporting its friends, advancing its interests and standing up for its principles around the world (Kristol and Kagan, 1996). Proponents of the "Benevolent Hegemon" Thesis discredit European criticisms of American policy; Europeans, it is said, are free to live in peace because there are Americans who safeguard diis peace (Kagan, 2002). For this benevolent hegemony to be consolidated, U. S. supremacy is necessary, together with the order it secures. The U. S. strategy appears in this view as an aggressive effort

to safeguard capitalist social relations on a global scale; to make sure that all the institutional arrangements necessary for the internationalization of capital are in place all over the world, and that there are no obstacles to capital accumulation. While U. S. strategy supports American firms and investments overseas, it also promotes a global collective capitalist interest. It defends U. S. hegemony in the imperialist chain as the most powerful capitalist state and the only state capable of safeguarding the longterm interest of all the major capitalist states, and in this way to make sure that there will be no contestation of U. S. predominance. It is on the basis of this effort to represent the global collective capitalist interest, and not sheer arrogance, that the national security
strategy is very clear: the United States will not hesitate to attack anyone (even a present ally) who opposes its dominant position.

LINK:HEGEMONY
WAKEUPFROMTHEAMERICANDREAM!EXPANDINGHEGEMONYMEANSEXPANDINGTHE STATESPOWERTOKEEPYOUCOMPLICITWITHCAPITALISMSDAMAGE.TOREJECT CAPITALISMASASYSTEMWEMUSTFIRSTRECOGNIZEITSHARMASANIDEOLOGY. Kaufman,DeAnzaCollegeInterim Director of the Institute for Community and Civic Engagement, 2009 (Cynthia, Liberation from Capitalism: Visions of a post-capitalist world and direction for getting there, p. 15-17)
Very few of the billions of people who are stuck in mind-numbingly boring jobs, with no sense that they can get out of their situations conceptualize that experience as caused by capitalism. Their pains are more likely comprehended, and therefore lived, as the results of personal failure, or bad managers and bosses. Many of the parents who come home from work just in time to say good night to their children carry a heavy burden of guilt and loss. The pain makes them wonder if they have made the right personal choices for their families. The rampant destruction of many towns in the US by developers building giant houses where there once was open land; the strip malls and big box stores that come in an undercut the small town center where people once walked and met each other, are usually blamed on individual developers or just accepted as unfortunate aspects of the way things are. That many communities of color in the US are ravaged by a lack of economic opportunities, an epidemic of incarceration, drugs, and gangs; that employers are often in a position to mistreat workers on the basis of their sexual identity; that millions of people in the US have no access to health care; that people without cars are often stuck in the suburbs without access to transportation or to a sense of community; are problems rarely associated with capitalism. When the US goes to war saying it needs to free some people from a brutal dictator, few see capitalisms ugly handprint on the decision of which dictator to take down when or on the policies that put that dictator in power in the first place. In all of these cases, there are social processes underlying the problems people experience. The problems are interrelated, and the concept capitalism" can be helpful for understanding the nature of those interrelations. And yet people dont experience these things as part of capitalism, and so they dont experience capitalism as the destructive force it is in their lives. Before the consciousness-raising phase of the second wave of the womens movement, many heterosexual women assumed that their frustrations
about who would do housework were the result of individual failings of themselves or their male partner. Feminist concepts helped them to put their experiences into a framework that was helpful for seeing a way forward in addressing the problems. Similarly, many people living under capitalism understand the devastation capitalism causes in their lives as caused by bad luck, their own personal weaknesses, some particular bad institution or person. They might blame immigrants for taking their jobs. They might believe that a return to family values will restore a sense of community and meaning to their lives. They might believe that locking people of color up in prisons will make them feel safer. Our experiences are deeply mediated by the ideas we believe, and a significant part of anti-capitalist organizing has to be to make these connections so that it is easier to experience capitalism as the problem, I will argue, it is. Antonio Gramsci, the great twentieth century Italian Marxist Philosopher, developed the concept hegemony to make sense of the relationship between the ways we experience

the world and the political processes underlying that experience. He argued that proponents of a system of domination develop ways of making the world make sense and making the domination seem to be a part of the things that people love and want. For him, a crucial part of political organizing has to be challenging dominant forms of hegemony and developing new ways to understand the world, or counter-hegemonies.12 Writing in Italy in the early part of the twentieth century. Gramsci saw that the
Catholic Church answered peoples needs for a sense of meaning and order in the world. But it also helped people to understand the world in ways that would encourage them to accept a very authoritarian political system, and an unequal economic system. The church was able to satisfy peoples needs for meaning while also making them docile and ready to accept ruling class interests. Gramsci saw that the challenge for the communist movement

was to find new ways to make the world make sense to people such that they would see that their interests were in conflict with the interests of the ruling class. According to Gramscis theory of hegemony and counter-hegemony, challenging idea systems is a crucial part of political practice. His theory implies that arguing for an alternative point of view requires more than simply making rational arguments. People will tend to hold on to dominant ways of seeing the world, in part because the dominant ways of seeing the world are structured to answer some deep desires and needs in their lives. One of the most powerful pulls capitalism has on our imaginations is the idea that it is the historical force that freed Europeans from feudalism and monarchy. The claim is that capitalism is importantly linked with democracy and freedom, and therefore is an important force for giving all of us the possibility of living well and of making important choices in our lives.

LINK:HEGEMONY
HEGEMONY PRODUCES AN ENDLESS CYCLE OF GENOCIDAL WARS IN THE NAME OF THE SUSTAINING CAPITAL TURNSTHEIRADVANTAGE Meszaros, Professor Emeritus, Philosophy and Political Theory, University of Sussex, in7
[The Only Viable Economy, Monthly Review, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0407meszaros.htm]

In our time, by contrast, we have to face up to the reality and the lethal dangers arising from global hegemonic imperialism, with the United States as its overwhelmingly dominant power.7 In contrast to even Hitler, the United States as the single hegemon is quite unwilling to share global domination with any rival. And that is not simply on account of political/military contingencies. The problems are much deeper. They assert themselves through the ever-aggravating contradictions of the capital system's deepening structural crisis. U.S. dominated global hegemonic imperialism is an -- ultimately futile -- attempt to devise a solution to that crisis through the most brutal and violent rule over the rest of the world, enforced with or without the help of slavishly "willing allies," now through a succession of genocidal wars. Ever since the 1970s the United States has been
sinking ever deeper into catastrophic indebtedness. The fantasy solution publicly proclaimed by several U.S. presidents was "to grow out of it." And the result: the diametrical opposite, in the form of astronomical and still growing indebtedness. Accordingly, the United States must grab to itself, by

any means at its disposal, including the most violent military aggression, whenever required for this purpose, everything it can, through the transfer of the fruits of capitalist growth -- thanks to the global socioeconomic and political/military domination of the United States -- from everywhere in the world. Could then any sane person imagine, no matter how well armored by his or her callous contempt for "the shibboleth of equality," that U.S. dominated global hegemonic imperialism would take seriously even for a moment the panacea of "no growth"? Only the worst kind of bad faith could suggest such ideas, no matter how pretentiously packaged in the hypocritical concern over "the Predicament of Mankind." For a variety of reasons there can be no question about the importance of growth both in the present and in the future. But to say so must go with a proper examination of the concept of growth not only as we know it up to the present, but also as we can envisage its sustainability in the future. Our siding with the need for growth cannot be in favor of unqualified growth. The tendentiously avoided real question is: what kind of growth is both feasible today, in contrast to dangerously wasteful and even crippling capitalist growth visible all around us? For growth must be also positively sustainable in the future

THEAIMOFHEGEMONYISTOSPREADCAPITALISM

FERGUSON, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY @ HARVARD, IN4

[Niall, Colossus, p. 10]

To the majority of Americans, it would appear, there is not contradiction between the ends of global democratization and the means of American military power. As defined by their president, the democratizing mission of the United States is both altruistic and distinct from the ambitions of past empires, which (so it is generally assumed) aimed to impose their own rule on foreign peoples. The difficulty is that President Bush's ideal of freedom as a universal desideratum rather closely resembles the Victorian ideal of "civilization." "Freedom" means, on close inspection, the American model of democracy and capitalism; when Americans speak of "nation building" they actually mean "state replicating," in the sense that they want to build political and economic institutions that are fundamentally similar, though not identical, to their own. They may not aspire to rule, but they do aspire to have others rule themselves in the American way. Yet the very act of imposing "freedom" simultaneously subverts it. Just as the Victorians seemed hypocrites when they spread "civilization" with the Maxim gun, so there is something fishy about those who would democratize Fallujah with the Abrams tank. President Bush's distinction between conquest and liberation would have been
entirely familiar to the liberal imperialists of the early 1900s, who likewise saw Britain's far-flung legions as agents of emancipation (not least in the Middle East during and after WWI.)

LINK:DEMOCRACY
Capitalism destroys democracy by its very nature; it creates a plutocratic society where wealth and therefore power are gradually concentrated in the hands of an elite minority who rule with total dominancethe result is a world where genuine movements are forced to beg for table scraps of change from the plutocratic dictatorship.

John Sanbonmatsu, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic University,

http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/may_jun_09_sanbonmatsu, June 2009 Capitalism's antagonism toward popular rule is structural-it is built into the political DNA of capitalism itself. By nature, if not by design, capitalism is a system in which a small minority of individuals controls the wealth, labor, production, political power, and cultural expression of the whole of society. Under capitalism, the demos is permitted to exert only the mildest, most indirect of influences on the direction of state and society. All of the truly important decisions-the ones that concern what kinds of technologies and commodities get produced, what kinds of laws will be passed, and which wars should be fought (or whether any should be fought at all)-are effectively left in the hands of a small clique whose members are drawn from the ranks of what C. Wright Mills famously called "the power elite." No matter how many finance reform laws are passed in Congress, the enactment of new laws alone will never be sufficient to neutralize the tremendous discrepancy in power between the wealthy few and the ordinary many. Secretly, we all know this. None among us is so naive as to believe that an ordinary plumber, teacher, or transit worker commands the same respect or influence on Capitol Hill, or in the Bundestag or the Knesset, as the chief executive officer of Siemens or Bechtel. And while we may profess to be
"shocked" upon learning that this or that politician (or presidential appointee) engaged in corrupt activities at the public's expense, in truth we are seldom surprised at all. Plato warned 2,500 years ago that "in proportion as riches and rich men are honored in the State, virtue and the virtuous are dishonored," an observation that holds as true today as it did then. The rich will always be with us.... That phrase, rather than the more familiar one from Matthew 26, is the one that haunts us deep inside, the one we truly heed. The rich may not be like you and me, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, but that doesn't keep us from identifying with them, or from feeling strangely grateful for remaining forever at their mercy. The steel worker is grateful "to have any job at all." The waitress smiles at having received a tip. The university president is so relieved that her fawning attentions to a wealthy patron have paid off that she doesn't mind naming the new science building after him. Like hostages taken prisoner by anonymous masked figures, we thus come to identify with our own kidnappers. Capitalism is the Stockholm Syndrome made into a universal condition of humanity. Thus, when a

coalition of progressive unions and grassroots organizations took out a full-page advertisement in the Times in March 2009, calling for a rally to protest drastic cuts in New York's health and public services, the group's sole demand was for "a modest increase for the top 5 percent of taxpayers." As if worried that even this demand might seem too forward, the group added: "After three decades of tax cuts, it's the fair way to avoid harsh cuts that will hurt all of us." All of us-because the wealthy will also suffer when their garbage isn't picked up, or the police respond slowly to a break-in because of cuts in public safety. Even the grassroots Left (the New York coalition included locals of such groups as the SEIU, the UAW, Acorn, and the Working Families Party) has grown so accustomed to seeing the power structure as inevitable and natural that it believes its only practical recourse lies in begging more crumbs from the tables of the wealthy.

LINK:DEMOCRACY
STRUGGLESFORDEMOCRACYREPLICATETHEIDEOLOGYOFCAPITALISMTHEYCANNOTSOLVETHEAFF Dean,AssociateProfessorofPoliticalTheoryatHobart&WilliamSmith,2005Jodi,Zizek against Democracy, jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/files/zizek_against_ democracy_new_version.doc
In this article, I take up Slavoj Zizeks critical interrogation of democracy. I specify and defend Zizeks position as an alternative left politics, indeed, as that position most attuned to the loss of the political today. Whereas liberal and pragmatic approaches to politics and political theory accept the

diminishment of political aspirations as realistic accommodation to the complexities of late capitalist societies as well as preferable to the dangers of totalitarianism accompanying Marxist and revolutionary theories, Zizeks psychoanalytic philosophy confronts directly the trap involved in acquiescence to a diminished political field, that is to say, to a political field constituted through the exclusion of the economy: within the ideological matrix of liberal democracy, any move against nationalism, fundamentalist, or ethnic violence ends up reinforcing Capital and guaranteeing democracys failure. Arguing that formal democracy is irrevocably and necessarily stained by a particular content that conditions and limits its universalizability, he challenges his
readers to relinquish our attachment to democracy: if we know that the procedures and institutions of constitutional democracies privilege the wealthy and exclude the poor, if we know that efforts toward inclusion remain tied to national boundaries, thereby disenfranchising yet again those impacted by certain national decisions and policies, and if we know that the expansion and intensification of networked communications that was supposed to enhance democratic participation serves primarily to integrate and consolidate communicative capitalism, why do we present our political hopes as aspirations to democracy, rather than something else? Why in the face of democracys obvious inability to represent justice in the social field that has emerged in the incompatibility between the globalized economy and welfare states to displace the political, do critical left political and cultural theorists continue to emphasize a set of arrangements that can be filled in, substantialized, by fundamentalisms, nationalisms, populisms, and conservatisms diametrically opposed to progressive visions of social and economic equality? The answer is that democracy is the form our

attachment to Capital takes. Faithful to democracy, we eschew the demanding task of politicizing the economy and envisioning a different political order.

THEIDEOLOGYOFDEMOCRACYCREATESASTOPGAPINTHOUGHTWHICHASSURESSUPERSTRUCTURESREMAIN THESAMECAPITALDOOMSTHEAFFIRMATIVEPROJECTTORADICALFAILURE Dean,AssociateProfessorofPoliticalTheoryatHobart&WilliamSmith,2005

Jodi,ZizekagainstDemocracy,jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/files/zizek_against_democracy_new_version.doc The second way to read democratic fundamentalism is in terms of this hegemony, this basic framework so apparently immune to contestation and renegotiation. Democracy today is not the living breathing, activity of politics. The apparent suspension of social hierarchy in elections is the form of its opposite: its a disavowal of the antagonisms rupturing the social. In this way, democratic fundamentalism attempts to ensure that nothing will happen. It precludes politics, if by politics we have in mind actions that can produce major change. This second sense of democratic fundamentalism thus refers to the way democracy conditions and binds our thinkinganything that is not

democratic is necessarily horrible, totalitarian, unacceptable to any rational person.

In sum, democratic universality appears in Zizeks early thinking as a necessary fiction, as an impossible universality that opens up because of an excess, obstacle, or stain that impedes it. In the wake of the demise of socialism and expansion and intensification of capital and racist fundamentalisms, Zizek finds that this opening no longer exists, that its been closed off. As I detail below, the empty place of democracy now appears as a politically

hopeless insofar as Capital, that other system that relies on disruption, crisis, and excess, displaces the excess necessary for democracy. Zizek writes, Insofar as we play the democratic game of leaving the place of power empty, of accepting the gap between this place and our occupying it (which is the very gap of castration), are wedemocratsall not . . . faithful to castration? Continued service to democracy today functions as our disavowal of the foreclosure of the political under global capital. Instead of a political practice structured around changewhat one might expect from electionswe have instead a democratic fundamentalism that renders change unthinkable. Contra Laclau, then, I read Zizeks questioning of democracy as genuine. When he says that the only question which confronts political philosophy today is whether liberal democracy is the ultimate horizon of our political practice, he means it. He asks the question repeatedly, drawing from psychoanalysis and Marxism to explain our inability to think something new. Accordingly, in the
following sections, I take up Zizeks questioning, setting out, first, his formal account of democracy and clarifying the link he posits between democracy, violence, and capitalism. With this account in place, I take up his more recent arguments regarding democratic fundamentalisms preclusion of politics. To this end, I contrast Zizeks concern with the loss of a space for the political with alternative positions prominent in Left critical cultural and political theory.

LINK:ECONOMICDECLINE
FEAROFECONOMICCRISISWILLALWAYSBEEXPLOITEDTOPREVENTRADICALSOCIALCHANGE.THESEFEARS ARENOTOBJECTIVE,BUTMAKESENSEONLYIFWETAKEFORGRANTEDTHELOGICOFCAPITALISM. IEK,1997[Slavoi,MULTICULTURALISM,OR,THECULTURALLOGICOFMULTINATIONALCAPITALISM,NEWLEFT
REVIEW#224,P.4547]
Today, financial crisis is a permanent state of things the reference to which legitimizes the demands to cut social spending, health care, support of culture and scientific research, in short, the dismantling of the welfare state. Is, however, this permanent crisis really an

objective feature of our socio-economic life? Is it not rather one of the effects of the shift of balance in the class struggle towards Capital, resulting from the growing role of new technologies as well as from the direct internationalization of Capital and the co- dependent diminished role of the Nation-State which was further able to impose certain minimal requirements and limitations to exploitation? In other words, the crisis is an objective fact if and only if one accepts in advance as an unquestionable premise the inherent logic of Capital
as more and more left-wing or liberal parties have done. We are thus witnessing the uncanny spectacle of social-democratic parties which came to power with the between-the-lines message to Capital we will do the necessary job for you in an even more efficient and painless way than the conservatives. The problem, of course, is that, in todays global socio-political circumstances, it is practically impossible effectively to call into

question the logic of Capital: even a modest social-democratic attempt to redistribute wealth beyond the limit acceptable to the Capital effectively leads to economic crisis, inflation, a fall in revenues and so on. Nevertheless, one should always bear inmind how the connection between cause (rising social expenditure) and effect (economic crisis) is not a direct objective causal one: it is always-already embedded in a situation of social antagonism and struggle. The fact that, if one does not obey the limits set by Capital, a crisis really follows, in no way proves that the necessity of these limits is an objective necessity ofeconomic life. It should rather be conceived as a proof of the privileged position Capital holds in the economic and political struggle, as in the situation where a stronger partner threatens that if you do X, you will be punished by Y, and then, upon your doing X, Y effectively
ensues

ATTEMPTSTOCURERECESSIONHAVELEADTOCONTINUEDCRISISFURTHERATTEMPTSTOREMEDYECONOMIC MELTDOWNWILLLEADTONEVERENDINGWARS Zizek2009SlavojFirstasTragedy,ThenasFarcepage1920

Against this tendency, one

should insist on the key question: what is the "flaw" in the system as such that opens up the possibility for such crises and collapses? The first thing to bear in mind here is that the origin of the crisis is a "benevolent" one: as we have noted, after the dotcom bubble burst, the decision, taken in a bipartisan fashion, was to facilitate real estate investment in order to keep the economy going and prevent recession-today's meltdown is thus simply the price being paid for the measures taken in the US to avoid recession a few years ago. The danger is thus that the predominant narrative of the meltdown will be the one which, instead of awakening us from a dream, will enable us to continue dreaming. And it is here that we should start to worry-not only about the economic consequences of the meltdown, but about the obvious temptation to reinvigorate the "war on terror" and US interventionism in order to keep the motor of the economy running, or at least to use the crisis to impose
further tough measures of "structural adjustment.

LINK:GROWTH
DONTASSOCIATECAPITALISMSGROWTHWITHYOUROWN.ITHASBECOMESO INGRAINEDINOURBEINGTHATWEFEELTHATWEBENEFITFROMECONOMICGROWTH, WHILETHATRHETORICEXISTSSIMPLYTODISTRACTTHEMAJORITYFROMTHEHORRORS OFCAPITALISM. Kaufman,DeAnzaCollegeInterim Director of the Institute for Community and Civic Engagement, 2009 (Cynthia, Liberation from Capitalism: Visions of a post-capitalist world and direction for getting there, p. 41-43)
In the more settled territories of capitalism, the extraction of profit, alienation, and exploitation all happen without much violence. In those settled territories, people go along with capitalism because they believe it is good for them. It provides them the jobs they need to live, it provides a tax base for funding schools, parks, and public services, and it offers means for producing the things people need to survive. We come to believe that in order to have those good things we want from society, we need to have a healthy economy. A healthy economy is assumed to be an economy with high levels of GDP, growth, and a rising stock market.55 For pro-capitalist thinkers, there is an equivocation around the meaning of the concept the economy. The economy sometimes refers to those things done to meet our needs through markets. At other times it refers to the totality of productive activity. The things we do to meet our needs that are not accomplished through buying and selling are rendered largely invisible by this conceptual slippage. Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, is often seen as a measure

of the size of an economy. And yet it only measures those things we do to meet our needs that are done through the capitalist market. When I take care of my own children I am not generating GDP. And, according to most economists, I am not being economically productive.
When I send my children to preschool, the pre-school worker who takes care of them is being productive. Not because she is taking care of more children, but because she is working for a wage. This way of measuring our economies makes it very difficult to analyze how well our

societies are doing in terms of how much time we get to engage in non-market activities, and it doesnt ask us to look at how well society is organized to provide the resources we need to engage in care giving activities 56 In her book IfWomenCountedNew Zealand politician and economist Marilyn Waring argues that because GDP counts all good and services traded on the market it cannot distinguish social goods from social bads. If an oil tanker runs aground and spills millions of gallons of oil, all of the work and products required to clean it up will count positively as part of the GDP. A related problem is that when people spend less time with their families, and so buy prepared food instead of cooking, the GDP will be positively impacted. So the ways that we measure economic performance helps promote the idea that more capitalist activity is good for everyone and less capitalist activity is bad.57 The claim that capitalism leads to a good economy becomes a tautology. The tools most economists and journalists use to measure the health of our economy are designed to show how well capitalists are doing. If we ask a broader set of question, such as
how are we doing at reducing poverty, what kinds of policies are good for the environment, or what kinds of policies allow people the time for fulfilled lives, we will get radically different answers. Progressive economists have developed alternative ways of measuring economies, so that what is measured is how well our social systems are serving our needs, as opposed to how much capitalist activity is happening. The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) includes household labor and volunteer work as productive activity and subtracts the costs of social bads such as pollution and a loss of leisure time.58 Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen argues that when we look at the world through the eyes of alternative measures, we can see that

many societies which are poor are in fact wealthy in terms of quality of life indicators, and many places in the wealthy countries are very poor.

LINK:CLIMATECHANGE
THEAFFIRMATIVECREATESTRANQUILITYWITHINTHEMASSESANDDESTROYSANDSTRUGGLEAGAINST CAPITALISMITUSESTHEFAADEOFENVIRONMENTALPROGRESSIVISMTOASSUREWENEVERCRITICIZETHE ECONOMY HARRISSWHITE,PROFESSOROFDEVELOPMENTSTUDIES,OXFORD,2006BARBARAUNDERMINING SUSTAINABLECAPITALISM:THEMARKETDRIVENPOLITICSOFRENEWABLEENERGY SOCIALISTREGISTER.COM/SOCIALISTREGISTER.COM/FILES/ECOLBHWEH19OCT06.DOC
First, aspirational utterance - the

priority, the urgent political cause - dominates the public presentation of climate change politics and renewable energy. Table 4 lists major climate change utterances which have been accompanied by targets since 1990. It shows how targets on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions have
been unstable. By and large they have become increasingly ambitious, moving from an original target of returning to the 1990 base line to - from 2000 onwards - a target of emissions 60% below that level . The velocity of production of statements about targets appears to have accelerated, while the target dates have receded into the future as notably as the targets have become more ambitious from 5 to 10 years

specified; the public is deluged with arbitrary slogans and binary choices (the dash for gas (which when relative prices changed became an under-publicised dash for imported coal);
at the start, to 45 99 years at present. The technological means and policy instruments by which these targets are to be reached have never been well

nuclear power versus gas; RE versus ever cleaner coal or nuclear power). The weighting of means and instruments also changes with a speed unrelated to the investment time spans required, and, despite scenario modelling, the means remain vague. The targets and target dates for RE are modest, yet are currently far from being on track. Policy is policy on climate change policy, and it is hard to see what it is doing other than serving as a mass tranquilliser. While the original

analgesic, religion, veiled the pain caused by the irrationalities of capitalist production, the politics of strategic vagueness may well enable the government to avoid either informing the public or facing practical questions. As of mid 2006, the government
had deliberately delayed by many months the publication of research evaluating the dangers of climate change; and Sir Nick Stern, the chief economist to the government and in 2005 the intellectual power behind the Commission for Africa, is not due to report on climate change policy until the autumn of 2006. David Camerons new Tory party has also discovered the allure of climate-change-policy policy, has put the environment at the heart of the repositioning of the party and is urging the government to re-state its absolute commitment..

LINK:ENVIRONMENTALPROTECTION
THE
AFFIRMATIVES STRATEGY OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION IS ANOTHER TACTIC OF A LARGER TRANSNATIONAL CAMPAIGN OF GLOBAL CAPITAL, THE USE OF INCENTIVES TO PRODUCE MEANINGFUL ECOLOGICAL REFORM SIMPLY SHIFTS CONSUMERIST IDEOLOGY INTO THE ENVIRONMENT WHICH RENDERS EVERYTHINGINTOCAPITALTOBECONSUMED

Luke,DepartmentofPoliticalScienceatVirginiaPolytechnicInstitute,1997TimothyW.,The (Un)Wise(Ab)UseofNature:EnvironmentalismasGlobalizedConsumerism? http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.htm

All of these environmentalizing initiatives reveal different aspects of Nature's infrastructuralization in the disorganized and incomplete transnational campaigns of environmentalized capital's terraforming programs. The actions of the Worldwatch Institute,
the Nature Conservancy, or the World Wildlife Fund, or the Sierra Club are frameworks within which a new habitus with its own environmentalized social relations of production and consumption can come alive by guarding habitat as the supremely perfect site of habitus. As Baudrillard observes, "the

great signified, the great referent Nature is dead, replaced by environment, which simultaneously designates and designs its death and the restoration of nature as simulation model....we enter a social environment of synthesis in which a total abstract communication and an immanent manipulation no longer leave any point exterior to the system."115 Rendering wildlife, air, water, habitat, or Nature into complex new systems of rare goods in the name of environmental protection, and then regulating the social consumption of them through ecological activism shows how mainstream environmentalists are serving as agents of social control or factors in political economy to reintegrate the intractable equations of (un)wise (ab)use along consummational rather than consumptive lines. Putting earth first only establishes ecological capital as the ultimate basis of life. Infrastructuralizing Nature renders everything on Earth, or "humanity's home," into capital--land, labor, animals, plants, air, water, genes, ecosystems. And, mainstream environmentalism often becomes a very special kind of "home eco nomics" to manage humanity's indoors and outdoors household accounts. Household consumption is always home consumption, because human economics rests upon terrestrial ecologics. Here the roots of ecology and economics intertwine through "sustainable development," revealing its truest double significance: sustainably managing the planet is the same thing as reproducing terrestrial stocks of infrastructorialized green capital. Whether or not environmentalists prevent the unwise abuse or promote wise use of natural resources is immaterial; everything they do optimizes the sign value of green goods and serves to reproduce global capital as environmentalized sites, stocks or spaces--an outcome that every Worldwatch Institute
State of the World report or Club Sierra ecotour easily confirms. Likewise, the scarcity measures of Nature Conservancy or World Wildlife Fund scare
campaigns show how everything now has a price, including wildlife preservation or ecological degradation, which global markets will mark and meet in their (un)wise (ab)use of environmentalized resources.

LINK:ENVIRONMENTALPROTECTION
THE AFFIRMATIVES ENVIRONMENTALISM ENCAPSULATES A WHOLE SERIES OF TACTICS FOR DISCIPLINING AND REGULATINGPOPULATIONSTHECONCEPTOFENVIRONMENTALPROTECTIONISINCORPORATEDINTOAGLOBAL STRUGGLEFORECONOMICDOMINANCEWHICHSIMPLYPOLICESTHEWORLDAROUNDUS Luke,DepartmentofPoliticalScienceatVirginiaPolytechnicInstitute,1997TimothyW.,The (Un)Wise(Ab)UseofNature:EnvironmentalismasGlobalizedConsumerism? http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.htm
A political, economic, and technical incitement to talk about ecology, environments, and Nature, first surfaced as the social project of "environmentalism" during the 1960s in the United States, but it plainly has become far more pronounced in the 1990s. Not much of this takes the form of general theory, because most of its practices have been instead steered toward analysis, stock taking, and classification in quantitative, causal, and humanistic studies. Nonetheless, one can follow Foucault by exploring how mainstream environmentalism in the United States operates as "a whole

series of different tactics that combined in varying proportions the objective of disciplining the body and that of regulating populations."3 The project of "sustainability," whether one speaks of sustainable development, growth or use in relation to Earth's ecologies, embodies this new responsibility for the life processes in the American state's rationalized harmonization of political economy with global ecology as a form of green geo-politics.
These interconnections become even more intriguing in the aftermath of the Cold War. Having won the long twilight struggle against communist totalitarianism, the United States is governed by leaders who now see "Earth in the balance," arguing that global ecologies

incarnate what is best and worst in the human spirit. On the one hand, economists, industrialists, and political leaders increasingly tend to represent the strategic terrain of the post-1991 world system as one on which all nations must compete ruthlessly to control the future development of the world economy by developing new technologies, dominating more markets, and exploiting every national economic asset. However, the phenomenon of "failed states," ranging from basket cases like Rwanda,
Somalia or Angola to crippled entities like Ukraine, Afghanistan or Kazakhstan, often is attributed to the severe environmental frictions associated with the (un)wise (ab)use of Nature by ineffective strategies for creating economic growth.4 Consequently, environmental protection issues--ranging from

resource conservation to sustainable development to ecosystem restoration--are getting greater consideration in the name of creating jobs, maintaining growth, or advancing technological development. Taking "ecology" into account, then, creates discourses on "the environment" that derive not only from morality, but from rationality as well. As humanity has faced "the limits of growth" and heard "the population bomb" ticking away, ecologies and environments became something more than what one must judge morally; they became things that state must administer. Ecology has evolved into "a public potential; it called for management procedures; it had to be taken charge of by analytical discourses," as it was recognized in its environmentalized manifestations to be "a police matter"--"not the repression of disorder, but an ordered maximization of collective and individual forces."5

LINK:ENVIRONMENTALJUSTICE
THEAFFIRMATIVESCALLFORENVIRONMENTALJUSTICESIMPLYCOMMODIFIESLIFEINTOCAPITAL Luke,DepartmentofPoliticalScienceatVirginiaPolytechnicInstitute,1997TimothyW.,The (Un)Wise(Ab)UseofNature:EnvironmentalismasGlobalizedConsumerism? http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.htm
Newer ecological discourses about total cost accounting, lifecycle management, or environmental justice may simply articulate more refined efforts to sustainably develop these bigger global processes of universal capitalization by accepting small correctives against particular capitalist interests. Admitting that poor people have been treated unjustly in siting decisions for environmental bads lets rich people redistribute these ecological costs across more sites so that they might benefit from the material and symbolic goods created by being just so environmental. Environmental justice movements perhaps are not so much about attaining environmental justice as they are about moving injustices more freely around in the environment, assuring the birth of new consumerisms for increased efficiency at risk management and broader participation ecological degradation in our terraformed Nature.

LINK:COMPETITIVENESS
THE
PURSUIT OF COMPETITIVENESS IS OVERDETERMINED BY ECONOMIC RATIONALITY INEQUALITY

INCREASE IN

BrownProfessorofSociologyattheUniversityofMarylandinCollegePark 2002RichardHarvey Rhetoric&PublicAffairs5.2projectmuse

The intrusion of market rationality into formerly autonomous social spheres, like nonprofit hospitals, public education, or voluntary blood drives, undermines the strength of civil society in relation to the corporate state. As the practices and institutions of civil society become "permeated by market principles, they lose their capacity to offset market outcomes or to offer alternative moralities. One recurrent market outcome is ever-increasing economic inequality." 7Similarly, [End Page 349] when state policy becomes infused with economic rationality, it exacerbates economic inequality rather than mitigating it. The 1981 U.S. tax law, passed in the name of increasing investment and national competitiveness, also contributed to a tremendous increase in economic inequality. The tax law of 2001 also is likely to starve public services, threaten social security, and further increase economic inequality between the top 20 percent and the rest of society. This trend is global. The United Nations reports that the incomes of the world's richest 20 percent grew three times faster than the incomes of the poorest 20 percent from 1960 to 1990. All these factors narrow public space and the possibilities of informed, active citizenship.

LINK:DEPOLITICIZATIONOFTHEECONOMY
THE DEPOLITICIZATION OF THE ECONOMY MEANS THEIR MOVEMENT CAN ONLY PROP UP THE IDEOLOGY OF CAPITAL

Zizek1999TheTicklishSubject,page352355
The big news of todays post-political age of the end of ideology is thus the radical depoliticization of the sphere of the economy: the way the economy functions (the need to cut social welfare, etc.) is accepted as a simple insight into the objective state of things. However, as long as this fundamental depoliticization of the economic sphere is accepted, all the talk about active citizenship, about public discussion leading to responsible collective decisions, and so on, will remain limited to the cultural issues of religious, sexual, ethnic and other way-of-life differences, without actually encroaching upon the level at which long-term decisions that affect us all are made. In short, the only way effectively to bring about a society in which risky long-term decisions would ensue from public debate involving all concerned is some kind of radical limitation of Capitals freedom, the subordinated of the process of production to social control the radical repoliticization of the economy. That is to say: if the problem with todays post-politics
(administration of social affairs) is that it increasingly undermines the possibility of a proper political act, this undermining is directly due to the
depoliticization of economics, to the common acceptance of Capital and market mechanisms as neutral tools/ procedures to be exploited. We can now see why todays post-politics cannot attain the properly political dimension of universality; because it silently precludes the sphere of economy from politicization. The domain of global capitalist market relations in the Other Scene of the so-called repoliticization of civil society advocated by the partisans of identity politics and other postmodern forms of politicization: all the talk about new forms of politics bursting out all over, focused on particular issues (gay rights, ecology, ethnic minorities), all this incessant activity of fluid, shifting identities, of building multiple ad hoc coalitions, and so on, has something inauthentic about it, and ultimately resembles the obsessional

neurotic who talks all the time and is otherwise frantically active precisely in order to ensure that something what really matters will not be disturbed, that it will remain immobilized. 35 So, instead of celebrating the new freedoms and responsibilities brought about by the second modernity, it is much more crucial to focus on what remains the same in this global fluidity and reflexivity, on what serves as the very motor of this fluidity: the inexorable logic of Capital. The spectral presence of Capital is the figure of
the bit Other which not only remains operative when all the traditional embodiments of the symbolic big Other disintegrate, but even directly causes this disintegration: far from being confronted with the abyss of their freedom that is, laden with the burden of responsibility that cannot be alleviated by the helping hand of Tradition or Nature todays subject is perhaps more than ever caught in an inexorable compulsion that effectively runs his life.

LINK:REALISM
THEIR UNDERSTANDING OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS SHOULD BE REJECTED ONLY AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF CLASSANALYSISCANEXPLAININTERNATIONALPOWERRELATIONS SakellaropoulosAsstProfofSocialPolicyPanteionUniversity& SotirisDepartmentofSociology, UniversityoftheAegean2008 Spyros&PanagiotisScience&Societyproquest
Traditional international relations theory concerns itself with rather simplistic notions of state tactics and strategies, based on narrow definitions of national interest or equally narrow mechanics of force. On the one hand, we have the narrow empiricism and methodological individualism of the Realist School,1 which considers states and their balance-of-power relations as the main forces shaping the international system, ignoring non-state relations and antagonisms. The main problem of Realism is that it tends to treat states as rational and self-conscious actors, leaving no theoretical space for any attempt to use class analysis as an explanation for the behavior of states. On the other hand, we have the varieties of idealism, or more generally speaking
normative conceptions of international relations, with their belief that norms can be more powerful than power relations. This standpoint appears in current theories of a possible cosmopolitan democracy arising out of the combination of globalization and global civil society institutions, a position that

underestimates the force of political and social conflicts and the role of capitalist states as political actors. What is missing is a more thorough theoretical definition of the very terms and notions that most mainstream varieties of international relations use. It is in this sense that we insist on the analytical superiority of a Marxist theory of imperialism. Marxism entails a definition of power that goes beyond the tautologies used in traditional political science, in which political power is simply taken as given. Marxism, instead, offers a definition of power as the "capacity of a social class to realize its specific objective interests" (Poulantzas, 1978, 104). This priority of exploitation over domination offers an explanation of power as class power. Social groups acquire the ability to control the extraction and distribution of surplus labor because of their specific objective structural class positions. The Marxist framework offers a possible explanation of the class character of power relations and struggles and therefore also of state apparatuses. The key point, in our view, is to stress at the same time the analytic priority of exploitation over
repression and domination, and the conception of political practice as the condensation of all the contradictions of the various levels of a social formation (Poulantzas, 1978, 41). This notion of the political escapes the shortcomings of mainstream political science's notion of political power as administrative command, and insists on the class character of political power. In light of the above we cannot take states as the primary forces in shaping the international plane, but instead look at the

different class alliances and power blocs and how these affect the formation of objective capitalist class interest. It is this class interest that is then expressed as political strategy, state policy and, consequendy, international policy. The importance of
Marxism is that it brings forward how states' behavior in the international arena is itself conditioned by the articulation of class contradictions and political strategies and the emergence of hegemonic power blocs. It offers the possibility to treat interstate relations as class-based relations, as relations (and conflicts) among different power blocs. Marxism stresses the importance of particular historical modes of production for interstate relations. Contrary to the ahistorical stance of traditional International Relations theory, Marxist theory provides a theoretical framework that helps understand how the emergence of the capitalist mode of production changes the very notion of international relations.2 Marxism offers a more comprehensive account of social

and political power and antagonism, one that goes beyond the mechanics-of-power versus normative-considerations dichotomy that marks mainstream International Relations theory. Marxism is not only a social theory or explanation of power as a crucial stake in international relations and a theory of possible changes in international relations due to changes in social relations. It is also a way to explain the interplay of political and ideological relations that induces the emergence of normative considerations.

LINK:SCIENCE
THEELEVATIONOFSCIENCETOAHEGEMONICPOSITIONENCOURAGESTHEPROLETARIATTOREAPPROPRIATE EXPLOITATIONWEMUSTINSTEADEMBRACEAMORERADICALNOTIONOFTHESUBSTANCELESSPROLETARIAT Zizek 2010LivingintheEndTimesp241
But today's

historical conjuncture does not compel us to drop the notions of the proletariat, or of the proletarian position - on the contrary, it compels us to radicalize it to an existential level beyond even Marx's imagination. We need a more radical notion of the proletarian subject, a subject reduced to the evanescent point of the Cartesian cogito, deprived of its substantial content. It would be easy, all too easy, to raise a critical "Marxist" argument against this universalization of the notion of the proletariat: one should distinguish the general process of "proletarianization" (reduction to the minimum of substanceless subjectivity) from the specific Marxian point regarding the "proletariat" as the exploited productive class deprived of the fruits of its labor. Indeed, it is obvious what distinguishes the Marxian "proletariat" from the "proletarianization" of the people living in an ecological wasteland, deprived of their collective "symbolic substance," reduced to a "post-traumatic" shell, and so on, is that only the Marxian "proletariat" is the exploited creator of wealth-which is why it is only the Marxian "proletariat" that can reappropriate it, recognizing within it its own "alienated" product. The problem is that the rise of "intellectual" labor (scientific knowledge as well as practical savoir -faire) to a hegemonic position (the "general intellect undermines the standard notion of exploitation, since it is no longer labor-time which serves as the source and ultimate measure of value. But what this means is that the concept of exploitation needs to be radically rethought.

LINK:TRADELIBERALIZATION
TRADEAGREEMENTSAREANEXTENSIONOFHEGEMONICCAPITALISM SakellaropoulosAsstProfofSocialPolicyPanteionUniversity& SotirisDepartmentofSociology, UniversityoftheAegean2008 Spyros&PanagiotisScience&Societyproquest
The role of international economic organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank was crucial, because they enforced neoliberal reforms and the lowering of trade and investment barriers. Equally important were the outcome of the GATT negotiations and the implementation of the WTO structure. This form of global political economy and the considerable influence exercised by the USA on these international institutions created a friendly environment for U. S. companies to maintain and expand their international activities. They also secured the support of business interests (and their political representatives) in other countries. At the same time, this strategy aimed at making sure that the dollar remained the global money; that U. S. and U. S.controlled financial institutions were the primary medium for international money flows; that the USA would keep the seignorage advantage it had since the Bretton-Woods agreements (Gowan, 1999). Ideologically this was justified by the "globalization" rhetoric that became dominant in the 1990s.7 The United States' open endorsement of aggressive capitalist policies, restructuring of capitalist production, attacks on the welfare state, defense of property rights (especially intellectual property rights), free trade and generally all forms of reinstatement of capital's power over labor

on a global scale was an essential part of its hegemonic role. It was not just a domestic policy. It was more a strategic choice of class interests and a social basis for an expansive internationalization of capital, the very basis of modern imperialism
(Wood, 2003). And although the growth of the financial sector has been described as a sign of the structurally weak and crisis-prone character of modern capitalism in general and the U. S. economy in particular (Brenner, 2002), we think that such a view underestimates the disciplinary character of international financial deregulation and the way it induces neoliberal policies and capitalist restructuring and enhances the hegemonic role of the United States (Rude, 2004). It was not only about the lower-ing of trade barriers or financial liberalization. It has more to do with the

removal of most forms of protection that had aimed at safeguarding less productive capitals and traditional petty bourgeois strata against international competition and at guaranteeing forms of class compromise. It was not only an open-market policy serving
U. S. firms; it also offered other capitalist social formations a way out of capitalist crisis and the use of international competition as pressure for capitalist restructuring. And this can explain why non-hegemonic formations might accept a global economic and financial architecture that actually puts greater stress on their domestic economies. We can say that with this internationalization of capital and capitalist restructuring there has been some

sort of objective dialectic of hegemony at work. The entire strategy of internationalization became a strategic consideration to incorporate all ex-socialist countries into the economic, political, and ideological practices of the imperialist chain by means of their adoption of free market policies, dismantling of all forms of social protection, abolition of all barriers to foreign investment and full compliance with the current American strategy (Gowan, 1990; Gowan, 1995).

Trade liberalization is an extension of imperialism justifies international conflict SakellaropoulosAsstProfofSocialPolicyPanteionUniversity& SotirisDepartmentofSociology, UniversityoftheAegean2008 Spyros&PanagiotisScience&Societyproquest
This effort to impose by any means possible the opening of markets and implementation of policies and regimes of accumulation that would facilitate foreign investment and internationalization of capital is also an important aspect of current imperial strategies. The occupation of Iraq was not only about strategic or geopolitical considerations. It was also an attempt to impose manu militari a gigantic program of privatization of infrastructures and of free-market reforms, the most farreaching attempt up to now to use military force to export the "free market," especially if we take into consideration the fact that in the oil
producing Middle East the prevailing economic model was a combination of public employment, state-run industries, subsidized public services, and restrictions on foreign capital (Lafer, 2004, 324).

LINK:POWERANALYSIS
THENOTIONTHATINTERROGATINGPOWERCANEMPOWERINDIVIDUALSANDINSPIREAGENCYISMISLEADING
THIS TRAPS STUDENTS AND ACADEMICS IN THE RUSE THAT COMBATING POWER RELATIONS WILL LEAD TO SOCIAL CHANGETHIS SATURATES THE INTELLECTUAL CLIMATE WITH THEORISTS WHO DISTRACT FROM MATERIALSTRUGGLESTHISENSURESCOMPLICITYWITHCAPITALISM

Zavarzadeh,DeptEnglish@Syracuse,1994

(Masud,TheStupiditythatConsumptionisJustasProductiveasProduction,TheAlternative Orange,V4,Fall/Winter,http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
Reading and writing as stories of power-and-resistance are now part of the curriculum of reading and interpretation in the ludic academy. Students are taught how to detect trajectories of power in TV texts, advertisements, novels, films, face-to-face conversations.... To occupy students with power

analysis is one of the devices that the pedagogy of pleasure uses to produce false consciousness in them: they think that through power analysis they have got hold of the logic of the society in which they live, and if they can put an end to power relations, a good society will emerge. All the have to do to make such a society possible is to notice the code of power in conversations between a man and a woman; an ad for an automobile; a body gesture of a white male to an African American... when in reality the logic of the social is formed in the site of production. The ludic protocol of reading produces false consciousness in students by teaching them that power is the key to agency: that people can in fact empower themselves by becoming aware of the workings of power and by learning, through such awareness, to speak for themselves." One can speak for oneself all one wants, but without economic access such speaking for oneself is simply one of many devices for reform and the suppression of revolutionary praxis in the radical democracy advocated by the post-al left. Empowerment is a material practice: it is achieved only by seizing ownership of the means of production from private owners. But the pedagogy of
pleasure substitutes descriptive code-reading for rigorous conceptual analysis, thereby producing half-literate subjects of labor whose main skill is to read cultural practices"reading the news, playing with the rhetorical moves of a political speech, detecting power signs all over the place.... These aconceptual, dialogic, anecdotal readers of codes of power form the reserve army of labor for capitalism. To teach students conceptual understanding of the world (scientific analysis of the everyday to develop class consciousness) is, in the pedagogy of pleasure, a violent act (banking pedagogy, or as R-2 puts it to bury you with books").

The complicity of the post-al left with capitalism through its pedagogy of pleasure is, of course, caused by the fact that any revolutionary change aimed at ending exploitation (not simply domination) will also end the class privileges of the post-al left. R4's text is quite telling on this point: in a moment of reflection, which in bourgeois rhetoric carries the signs of honesty," R-4 announces, I write these words as a an academic (neo)marxist whose health insurance, state retirement, and tax-deferred annuity are impeccably Republican." R-4's honest moment is a complicated warning to revolutionaries by reminding them that they are beneficiaries of the system," and if any really radical action (which goes beyond the reformism that she/he calls neo-marxism") is taken, their very privileges will be in danger. The un-said of this honest confession is, of course, that someone like me, who is working towards a revolutionary transformation (and OR 3's cartoon affirms R-4 on this point) is dis-honest and hypocritical: how could I be in the system and criticize it? How could I speak for the other"? I addressed some of these issues in my Reading My Readers," which has made R-4 to call it a site of violence ("a kind of textual Chernobyl"). The other un-said of R-4's confession is, of course, that a decent job that feeds a human being, a health care plan that attends to his/her human needs, a retirement plan that makes sure that in his/her old age she/he is not thrown into the streets should be provided only to those who accept the premises of the system. Jobs for reformists only! Health care for the supporters of the system only! Jobs, health care, retirement plans... are in R-4's confession, a bribe for cooperation, for going along, for being collegial, for being dialogical... to this neo-marxist, jobs (economic access) are not part of basic human rightsthey are graft for the reformist. This is the post-al left in its most lucid moment.

LINK:POWERANALYSIS
THEIR INFATUATION WITH POWER RELATIONS OBSCURES THE REALITY OF THE MATERIAL SOCIAL RELATIONS THATLEADTOOPPRESSION Zavarzadeh,DeptEnglish@Syracuse,1994(Masud,TheStupiditythatConsumptionisJustasProductiveas Production,TheAlternativeOrange,V4,Fall/Winter,http://www.etext.org/Politics/AlternativeOrange/4/v4n1_cpp.html)
The representation of revolutionary practices as violent is part of the larger project of the post-al left in which all practices are read as power practices and society itself is understood to be an ensemble of political struggle over contingent hegemony. In positing the social as political," the post-al left engages in an idealist move that erases the material base of the politicalthe forces of production that in fact shape social organizations. In such a ludic social theory, domination and not exploitation is the primary term. Post-al pedagogy has, thus, become a long lesson in mapping strategies of power; detecting trajectories of power in daily life with the final goal of self-empowerment, and enabling the subject to speak for her/him self and to become an active agent." Language," according to R-2, constitutes radical agency..." because access to language is access to power. The underlying theory of power in this ludic pedagogy is, as Foucauldian clichs have it, a diffuse (not localized and not the possession of one class but of collective ownership"), post-juridical, multidirectional practice. This power is always a

power from below and an effect of discourse, and not (as in classical Marxism) the hierarchical organization of the social that is the outcome not of discourse but of the social relations of production. The idea of power as a diffuse discourse to which everyone has access means there are is no clear line of demarcation between the powerful and the powerless (Foucault, History of Sexuality 1, 92-102). This is the central notion of the ludic view of power and the basis for the ludic erasure of the labor theory of value along with the materialist explanation of the social according to the dynamics of production. The complicity of the Foucauldian view of power (rehearsed by R-2) with the ruling class is made clear

in Foucault's insistence that everyone has access to power and more importantly that power is not repressive but in fact enabling ("Where there is power there is resistance," Foucault, 95). The ludic dogma that all people (regardless of their position in the social relations of production) have access to power is subtly deployed to argue that contrary to Marxist theories that power is in the hands of the powerful (owners of the means of production), power is in fact most effectively used by the powerless. It is, according to this complicit theory of power, the weak, as R-2 puts it, rather than the tenured that have power since the weak can always resist the tenured by not reading." Such a view of the weak as powerful is, of course, the post-alization of a reactionary religious quietism that the meek will inherit the earth and a ludic recirculation of the old, free-market, capitalist, moral maxim of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps. Furthermore, the power of the weak (resistance to reading) is a mere illusion of power,
since what R-2 regards to be the sign of a successful resistance ("the victory of the student's reluctance to read") is eventually a victory for the ruling class since encouraging non-readingas a mark of the free choice of a sovereign subjectis part of the very anti-conceptuality that the ruling class needs in order to produce false consciousness. Non-reading is represented in the commonsense of R-2's text as a liberation of the imagination from the oppressive schoolmaster who wants to bury you under books and prevent you from the real experience of the world through the body. The perniciousness of the theory of power as resistance (not production) and its complicity with capitalism in pacifying the masses becomes more clear in such reactionary tracts as Lyotard's On the Strength of the Weak (Semiotexte, 3, 2, 1978, 204-212) which serves as one of the main theoretical texts upon which the retrograde writings of Ross Chambers are foundedtexts which in turn serve as the master theory of reading in R-2. Chambers, in such books as Story and Situation: Narrative Seduction and the Power of Fiction and, more recently, Room to Maneuver: Reading (the) Opposition (in)Narrative, applies the lessons of Lyotard and Foucault to reading texts as sites of power and empowerment. (I put aside here the pacifying lessons that Chambers delivers in which, for example, prisoners are seen as empowering themselves through their graffiti when in fact such a reading of prison graffiti is designed to produce a false consciousness in which the prisoners misrecognize their situation and mistake freedom in writing on the walls within prison for emancipation through economic access in the world.) The lessons that Chambers gives are based on prefabricated formulas through which relations of exploitation are obscured by lines of domination

LINK:LEVINAS
LEVINASCONCEPTUALIZATIONOFTHEOTHERLEADSTOACLASSSYSTEMMENTALITYIN WHICHWEARETHEPRIVILEGEDGROUPTHATISMORALLYRESPONSIBLEFORTHE OTHER Dean,ProfessorofPoliticalScienceatHobartandWilliamCollege,06(Jodi,ZizeksCritiqueof Levinas,iCite,March15,http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2006/03/zizeks_critique.html)

In light of some of our recent discussions, I thought I would try to provide a preliminary sketch of what I take Zizek's critique of Levinas to be. I'm relying on Zizek's essay, "Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence," that appears in the book The Neighbor. Sections of this essay appear in The Parallax View. As I read him, Zizek's critique of Levinas has 3+1 elements, that is, three criticisms and a counter. The criticisms focus on: the big Other of the Symbolic order, the implicit privileging that results from the asymmetry of the call of the Other; and the Musselman. The counter involves Zizek's view that others are an ethically indifferent multitude. Put in most general terms, the disagreements might be thought in terms of the ethics of the other. Zizek rejects this view, as he must with his basic assumptions of the subject as lack and of the symbolic other has lacking, incomplete. Any fundamental emphasis on the call of the other would involve filling in/covering over/denying the lack in the subject and hence eliminate the very space necessary for freedom. Additionally, we might say that unlike Deleuze (and Agamben?) Zizek does not equate ethics and ontology and unlike Levinas Zizek does not think of the ethical as pre-ontological/transcendental. Rather, for Zizek, ethics emerges in and as the gap within immanence, as the split or that cuts through our relations or interactions with all sorts of differentiated others. This split might be thought of as a no to these relations, as a calling into question their givenness, as a withdrawal from their everydayness. 1. The Symbolic. Zizek argues that Levinas ultimately anchors the symbolic order of norms in the face. Why? Because the face is that which guarantees itself. It is always already there as an ethical a priori that establishes the conditions

of possibility for ethics. In Zizek's view, this grounding is fetishistic insofar as it covers over the lack in the symbolic, the fact that there is nothing that guarantees it and that it remains essentially non-all. Zizek does endorse one aspect of Levinas's ethics, however, the way that it is fundamentally anti-biopolitical, the way that it endorses something that is beyond mere life. 2. Asymmetry Zizek argues that the asymmetry in which I am always already responsible (hostage) to the Other ends up "privileging one particular group that assumes responsibility for all others, that embodies in a privileged way this responsibility." In support of this claim he cites a passage from Difficult Freedom regarding the ultimate duties of the chosen people and a moral consciousness that knows itself to be the center of the world. Yet, his argument also runs along a different course, namely, that what I'll call the hostage notion of subjectivity results in questioning one's own basic right to exist, as self-questioning that Zizek finds to be speculatively identical with selfprivileging: I am the center whose existence threatens all others. Ultimately, the matter is one of privileging, whether of a group or of a singular moral consciousness. Not surprisingly, Zizek's response emphasizes the subject as lack, the subject as the hole in the order
of being. 3. The Muselmann Zizek emphasizes that the Muselmann is one who cannot answer the call of the other and who cannot be seen as addressing us-he is faceless, a blank wall. He rejects the possibility that Levinasian ethics can include the Muselmann because of the way that the Muselmann is an overlap of innocence and evil, and hence subverts the sense of absolute authenticity to which the idea of the face is supposed to attest. +1 Justice is not with regard to the neighbor Zizek argues for a cold justice that chooses against the face for the third. For him, this is an uprooting of justice, one that severs the 'contingent umbilical link that renders it embedded in a situation' (and, my question here is whether this marks a disagreement with Badiou's ethics of the situation or an agreement insofar as it is indifference to difference.) More specifically, Zizek argues in this regard that grounding ethics in the relationship

to the Other's face is a priori impossible, since the limitation of our capacity to relate to Others' faces is the mark of our very finitude. In other words, the limitation of our ethical relation of responsibility toward the Other's face which necessitates the rise of the Third (the domain of regulations) us a positive condition of ethics, not simply its secondary supplement. If we deny this--in other word, if we stick to the postulate of a final translatability of the Third into a relation to the Other's face--we remain caught in the vicious cycle of 'understanding.' So, what is choosing the third? It is not choosing some kind of others with positive features; it is not recognition caught in some kind of imaginary or symbolic relationship to others. Rather, it is a kind of radical indifference to others, the abstraction of the law. This indifference is also the space of love, love for one who stands out from the multitude toward whom I am indifferent. And, this indifference is preferable to something like love for all insofar love for all relies on the logic of universality and its exception: there can only be an all whom I love insofar as there is one whom I hate.
(Preferable, then, is the reformulation in terms of the feminine formula of sexuation: there is nobody whom I do not love--which is connected with I do not love you all (the all remains incomplete, non-all).

LINK:LEVINAS
THEAFFIRMATIVESCONCEPTUALIZATIONOFETHICSLEADSONLYTOTHEJUSTIFICATION OFCAPITALISMANDSTODGYCONSERVATISM.BYBASINGWHATISGOODOFFOFWHATIS EVIL,NOGOODCANCOMEABOUT,TURNINGCASE Stavrakakis,ProfessorofPsychoanalysisattheUniversityofEssex,03(Yannis,Parallax,2003,
vol.9,no.2,5671ReActivatingtheDemocraticRevolution:ThePoliticsofTransformationBeyondReoccupation andConformismAU) This brings us to the whole discussion around the ethical turn in contemporary political philosophy. Even if one concludes that radical democracy can be a viable and fruitful project for a politics of transformation, what about the prioritization of ethics within recent radical democratic discourse? For example, at a fairly superficial level, it seems as if Zizek questions the importance of ethics in this field, and thus would also
seem to question the deployment of the radical democratic attitude at the ethical level. Consider, for example, his outright condemnation of the ethical turn in political philosophy: The return to ethics in todays political philosophy shamefully exploits the horrors of Gulag or Holocaust as the ultimate bogey for blackmailing us into renouncing all serious radical engagement.60 Surely, however, this cannot be a rejection of ethics in total. Even if only because Zizek himself has devoted a considerable part of his work elaborating the ethics of psychoanalysis in the Lacanian tradition.61 It follows then that it must be a particular form of ethical discourse that constitutes his target. The same is true of Alain Badious argument, to which we will now turn. Badious target is a particular type of ethics, of ethical ideology, which uses a

discourse of human rights and humanitarianism in order to silence alternative thought and politics and legitimize the capitalist order. This is an ethics premised on the principle that good is what intervenes visibly against an Evil that is identifiable a priori.62 What Badiou points to here, is what appears as a strange inversion; here the Good is derived from the Evil and not the other way round.63 The result of such an inversion is significant for the theory and politics of transformation: If the ethical consensus is founded on the recognition of Evil, it follows that every effort to unite people around a positive idea of the Good, let alone identify Man with projects of this kind, becomes in fact the real source of evil itself. Such is the accusation so often repeated over the last fifteen years: every revolutionary project stigmatized as utopian turns, we are told, into totalitarian nightmare. Every will to inscribe an idea of justice or equality turns bad. Every collective will to the Good creates Evil [] In reality, the price paid by ethics is a stodgy conservatism.64 This ethic, which is revealed as nothing but a mindless catechism, a miserable moralism,65 is an ethics that can have no relation to a transformative political agenda. 66 This ethics is presented in Badious argument as a distortion
of a real ethic of truths, which attempts to restore the logical priority of Good over Evil. Badious ethic of truths is an ethics related to the idea of the event, a category central for his whole philosophical and political apparatus. To put it briefly, the event here refers to a real break which destabilizes a given discursive articulation, a pre-existing order

LINK:TRANSHUMANISM
TRANSHUMANISM
REMAINS TOO HUMANIST THE PRESUMPTION THAT WE CAN MAKE A DECISION ABOUT THE TRANSITION TO TRANSHUMANISM PRESUPPOSE A RATIONAL DECIDING SUBJECT WHICH IGNORES THE CENTRAL QUESTION OF HOW BIOGENETIC INTERVENTIONS AFFECT THE DEFINITION OF HUMANITY

Zizek 2010LivingintheEndTimesp347
With all their warnings about how we are on the brink of a post- human era, transhumanists effectively remain too humanist. That is to say, when they describe the possibility of intervening in our biogenetic base and changing our very "nature," they somehow presuppose that the autonomous subject freely deciding on his or her acts will still be present, deciding on how to change its "nature." They thus take the split between the "subject of the enunciated" and the "subject of enunciation" to its extreme: on the one hand, as the object of my interventions, I am a biological mechanism whose properties, including mental ones, can be manipulated; on the other hand, I (act as if I) am somehow exempt from this manipulation, an autonomous individual who, acting at a distance, can make the right choices. But what about the prospect of the loop being closed, so that my very power of decision-making is already "meddled with" by biogenetic manipulation, and the autonomous individual is no longer there? This is why there always seems to be something shallow, boring even, about all transhumanist meditations: they basically ignore the problem and, like their critics, avoid the core of the question with which they appear to be dealing: how will biogenetic and other interventions affect the very definition of humanity? Both transhumanists and their critics unproblematically cling to the standard notion of a free autonomous individual-the difference is that transhumanists simply assume that it will survive the passage into the post-human era, while their critics see post-humanity as a threat to be resisted

LINK:OPENTHEBORDERS
A LACK OF BORDERS IS DISEMPOWERING, WE MUST CONCEIVE OF THE APPEAL TO LOCALITY AS ENABLING FOR SOCIALRESISTANCE Angus,ProfHumanities@SimonFraserUVancouver,2004 (Ian,Empire,Borders,Place,ACritiqueofHardtandNegrisConceptofEmpire,Theoryand Event,7:3)
The Canadian analysis of empire suggests that the expansive tendency of empire must be halted at a border in order for a different, non-imperial politics to begin. This other politics is of course not unaffected by the imperial politics that always attempts to reach over the border to annihilate the different. Nor is it always benign. The point is that it is not entirely explained, nor organized, by empire. Thus the border separating

Canada from the United States has allowed elements of a non-imperial politics to be articulated and survive. Examples: a universal medicare system, multiculturalism, gay marriage, a peace-keeping military, the separation of Nunavut, etc. Of course all of these are endangered by forces within Canada as well as from the empire. Still, none of them would be possible without the border. The border must be understood as enabling, not as simply a temporary limit which empire will overcome, but as itself the source of the alternative. With this understanding of border as enabling difference one can analyze contemporary social movements in a manner entirely different from Hardt and Negri. First of all, the resources of the nation-state in protecting a space for an experimentation with alternatives should not be written off entirely (even given its reduced resources in the era of globalization). Nor regional and city movements. If one poses the question, not from the perspective of empire, but from that of the alternative, attempts by a coalition of critical social movements to capture spaces of opportunity necessarily lead them to address the continuing functions of such governments (which operate only because they contain a border which hampers direct imperial rule). But even more important, I think that the critical role of contemporary movements themselves in defending and redesigning self-reliant and diverse communities can be articulated through this concept of a border.25 In short, it's all about geography -but as a politico-cultural space neither as a supposed bare determinism of 'the land just ran out' nor as a mathematical space. It's about how we will live here. That is the critical moment when all the global exchanges of empire hover to see whether they will win here, whether we will be just another anywhere, or whether this will be our place. This project has been underway for some time. We have
already begun to engage in the next step of a dialogue between places, the intersection between non-imperial locations, from which the anti-imperial coalition is being formed. Theory must catch up with these events and, in order to do this, must criticize the terms in which such events are rendered. I don't claim to have sustained a full alternative in this essay, but I do hope to have shown that the Hardt and Negri version, though much discussed, not only does not do the job, but muddies the key issues.

GENERALINDUSTRYI/LSATELLITESSPECIFIC
THE
PLAN IS NOT AN ISOLATED ADVENTURE IN SPACE IT NECESSITATES A WHOLE HOST OF OTHER DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS THAT LINE THE POCKETS OF GIANT CORPORATIONS AND DEMONSTRATE OUR LINK ARGUMENTS.

MARTIN PARKER, UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, 2009. [CAPITALISTS IN SPACE, THESOCIOLOGICALREVIEW,VOLUME57,ISSUESUPPLEMENT1]
Therelationbetweenthemilitaryindustrialcomplexandthewarstateiscrucial in this regard, withspacetechnologies including surveillance satellites, missile guidance, and the weaponization of space beingobviousgains.ThismuchisclearfromNASA onwards. However, thelinkbetween (for example) militarysatellites and communications andmonitoringdevicesisclearlyavery closeone. Hence, accesstothe military highgroundalsomeansaccesstosurveillanceandmediapowerovertheentire planet,andthisgoesforbothstatesanddefencecompanies. A further circuit is that of space tourism, clearly a domain only accessible to the hyper-rich, but further markets include the exploitation of materials from the moon, asteroids or planets; solar energy; off-earth manufacturing; colonies and terraforming projects. All of these would comewiththeirattendantspinoffindustries,suchasclearingupspacejunk, provisioningoffplanethabitats,accountingandlegalservices,securityandsoon.

LOBBIESINTERNALLINK
SPACE LOBBIES WILL DICTATE THE DIRECTION OF SPACE DEVELOPMENT FREE MARKET PRINCIPLESWILLCARVEOUTANDCONTROLRESOURCEEXTRACTION. PHIL GRAHAM,ISDIRECTOROFTHE INSTITUTEFOR CREATIVE INDUSTRIESAND INNOVATIONAND PROFESSOR IN CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION AT QUT, AND CHRISTY COLLIS IS A SENIOR LECTURER IN MEDIA AND COMMUNICATIONINTHE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES FACULTY, QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITYOF TECHNOLOGY, 2009, (POLITICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF MARS: A HISTORY OF MARTIAN MANAGEMENT, MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONALHISTORY20094:255)
The general assumption of corporate lobbying in relation to Space law is that the future of Space is a corporate future, that Space business entails significant risk, and that therefore, it is important that the best course of action is for the spacefaring nations to enact legislation which provides for property rights without territorial sovereignty (White 2009 cited in 4Frontiers Corporation 2009b). Along with 4Frontiers, corporate and government agencies have turned their interests to mining the cosmos (see
for instance Lucidian 20082009; Valentine 2002). Often such efforts are framed by a concern for the environment (ONeill 2000). In the tradition of managerial technocratic discourse (McKenna and Graham 2000), the threat of a catastrophic future is put forward as a reason for more the same, and for why Space cannot be profitably seen as terra communis. Valentine (2002), Director of the Space Studies Institute,

of

exhorts the private sector to mine the sky, defend the Earth, [and] settle the Universe. Free market managerialism naturally sees the private sector as central to such efforts and, clearly, the terra communis view of Space is due an enclosures movement of its own, first in discourse then in commercial and technical practice

INTERNALLINK:MILITARYINDUSTRIALCOMPLEX
THEIR PLAN IS IN FACT NOT IMPLEMENTED BY THEIR GOOD INTENTIONS BUT BY THE DEFENSE CONTRACTORS, WHO ASSUME MANUFACTURING AND CONTRACTS FOR GOVERNMENTAL SPACE POLICY. THIS ENSURES THE WEAPONIZATIONOFTHECOSMOS. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG834,DS)
What, meanwhile, of recent military and civilian aerospace spending? The highest Cold War levels may have declined, but the war on terror is now leading to the considerable revival and growth of this circuit of capital. Many of the major aerospace manufacturers, especially Boeing, Lockheed Martin and NorthropGrumman, have a central and direct involvement in military technology (Table 3.1). Lockheed is foremost in the profitable business of militarizing overseas states, including Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand and Egypt. These major corporate interests benefit from state purses for military contracts (which may be for space technology in any case) and civil space contracts. It is not uncommon to hear people refer to the militaryindustrialspace complex (Global Network 2006). Space contracts continue to be big business for these players. Lockheed Martin was awarded an $8.15 billion contract as part of the MoonMars Initiative. Its shares rose 7 per cent in the five weeks following NASAs announcement (Cook 2007). Furthermore, technologies developed for military purposes are now being made available for civil purposes (Salin
2001). Information to commanders with handheld receivers in the field (in ships, naval bases, air bases and army forts) uses global positioning system technology, a form of guidance now being widely introduced to private automobiles. Another sign of the times is that the new hypersonic space vehicles were of interest to Federal Express for freight delivery (Ullman and Wade 1998). This is just one instance (along with satellites for monitoring weather conditions) of the militarization of outer space being merged with the civil uses of the cosmos. The arms industry therefore remains a dominant player in the US economy (Del Rosario-Malonzo 2002), though for reasons already mentioned it is difficult to show its relative contribution to gross national product or to demonstrate how it is faring relative to other sectors. It is nevertheless clear that military developments, including the militarization and future weaponization of outer space, are being driven by some of the most powerful industrial classes and corporations on Earth. These are powerful political lobbyists. Furthermore, this sector drives Americas primary circuit of capital as a whole. One significant indicator of the importance of military production to the US economy is the fact that over one-third of all engineers and scientists in the US are now engaged in military-related jobs. And, even though Keynesian economic regulation no longer forms an official part of US government policy, this is in practice still military Keynesianism writ large. The US Department of Defense, combined with the above defence corporations, controls the largest coordinated bloc of economic power in the United States (Del Rosario-Malonzo 2002). It is greater than the combined defence budgets of the EU, China and Russia (Ferguson 2004). There are signs now of European countries combining their efforts to make joint spacecraft or military technologies (European Defence Agency 2006). And there are indications that rapidly industrializing societies such as China and India are now developing their own militaryindustrial enterprises. These developments are clearly important, but the American militaryindustrial complex, one now integrated with the space industry,

remains by far the most powerful. If anything it has become stronger in recent years with the active participation of a unilateralist neo-conservative right and its actively promoted war on terror. Eisenhower implied a distance between the political class
and the militaryindustrial complex. The link may well have been closer than Eisenhower owned up to; but whatever may have been the case forty years ago, the two are certainly allied now, as the militarization, if not the weaponization, of the cosmos continues (Box 3.1).

INTERNALLINK:MILITARYINDUSTRIALCOMPLEX
SPACE EXPLORATION IS DRIVEN FORWARD BY THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IN AN EVEREXPANDING SEARCH FOR NEW MARKETS TO FURTHER THE CAPITALIST ECONOMIC STATE. ATTEMPTS AT PROTEST BY THE AFFIRMATIVE SHOULD BE IGNORED, AS THEY UTILIZE THE SAME COMPANIES TO BUILD THEIR TECHNOLOGY THATBUILDTHEGUNSANDMISSILESUSEDTOEXPANDEMPIRE. ALAN MARSHALL, THE INSTITUTEOF DEVELOPMENT STUDIESAT MASSEY UNIVERSITY, PALMERSTON NORTH, NEW ZEALAND, 1995, DEVELOPMENT ANDIMPERIALISMINSPACE
While the cost of extracting Solar System resources may be prohibitively high to enable profitability, the astronautics industry itself is extremely profitable because of its link with the supply of military hardware. This may be viewed as an example of Rosa Luxemburgs model of the association of militarism with imperialism. According to this model of economic imperialism, military expenditure plays a part in substituting

for the lack of consumption in a free market since it absorbs much surplus capital and acts to produce economic growth as registered in the national accounts. Of course, national accounting systems, such as Gross Domestic Product, fail to register the opportunity cost of
state-funded investment; ie whether the same government investment could have yielded a greater return in other sectors.

With the end of the Cold War, those companies that made a living from the supply of military hardware to governments have experienced a drop in demand for their military goods and an associated drop in profitability. Thus they are seeking to extend their interests in the space part of their markets in order to secure profits from building rockets and space stations rather than missiles and military aircraft. The same companies that championed the causes of national defence against the communist threat through massive military deterence now extol the virtues of the benefits to be gained from massive investment in space activities. In the light of this analysis, it can be explained that the search for new fields into which surplus capital can be invested, may in fact be promoting human space expansion (despite the dubiety of it ever becoming a self-funding process). But its lack of success as a singly powerful
enough motivator of Solar System development is shown by the torpidity of current human expanionist practices into space.

INTERNALLINK:QUICKFIX
THE AFFIRMATIVES ACTION IS NOTHING MORE THAN A QUICK FIX FOR A SYSTEM THAT IS STRUCTURALLY UNSUSTAINABLE. THEPLANWILLBEUSEDASAMETHODOFSENDINGMILITARISM,CAPITALISM,ANDELITESTO SPACEATTHEEXPENSEOFTHEGLOBALPOOR. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG179,DS)
The main theme running through the later chapters of this book is that imperialism is now entering into a new phase, and that the humanized cosmos is central to this transition. The global market is proving increasingly unable to contain the many contradictions of capitalism. Global

society is in social, political, economic and environmental upheaval. The emergent form of cosmic society makes sense only when placed in this context of Earthly chaos. On the one hand, the most powerful classes of modern society are using the cosmos as a means of managing and controlling this chaos, attempting to fix it by military, economic and cultural means. But in the
meantime, further crisis and risk are being generated. These fixes may be organized by dominant economic and military powers such as the US, but they are almost certainly making the world more dangerous. Meszaros, writing of the growth of armaments in the late twentieth century, wrote we have entered the most dangerous phase of imperialism in all history (2001: 37). This danger is now being increased by its spread into outer space. On the one hand, as we have outlined in Chapters 4, 5 and 6, the cosmos is being increasingly used to regulate social relations, culture and military adventures on Earth. It is being used to manage the third stage of imperialism, including the economic and military demands of competing geopolitical powers. But Chapters 7 and 8 suggest that the cosmos is also integral to an imminent fourth stage: capitalism being

extended by the most powerful, again competing, elites and nations into outer space. The humanization of outer space is therefore being used to control or manage an earlier phase of imperialist expansion while ushering in a new one. Here again, the universe is conceived as an object that those with political and economic power can utilize to retain and extend social power. The result is the further development of narcissism, even to the point of what Ernest Jones (1913) describes as the God complex, amongst those with access to the heavens. For other, subaltern, populations, the increasing use of the cosmos for military and surveillance purposes increases their distance from it. At the same time, hegemonic messages are being asserted by this technology, technology which itself forms part of capitalisms hegemonic resolution to its own inherent crises

INTERNALLINK:COOPTION
WE SHOULD BE SKEPTICAL OF THE AFFIRMATIVES POLITICS HISTORY SUGGESTS THAT THE RIGHT IS MUCH MORE APT AT EXPLOITING TECHNOLOGICAL AND SPACE DEVELOPMENTNARRATIVESFORPOLITICALGAINTHANTHELEFT.
Shukaitis,UniversityofEssexandamemberoftheAutonomediaEditorialCollective,09(Stevphen;Spaceisthe (non)place:Martians,Marxists,andtheouterspaceoftheradicalimagination,TheSociologicalReviewVolume 57,IssueSupplements1,pages98113)
This is not to say that outer space memes and images of technological development have always played a totally progressive role. Indeed, aside

from space exploration and technology, there is a longer history of the relation between scientific innovation and discovery and their connection with right wing and conservative politics (Federici and Caffentzis, 1982). Richard Barbrook (2007) has shown quite convincingly that the imaginary futures formed around space and technology animated collective imaginaries across the entire political spectrum, with both the diffuse spectacle of Western capitalism clamoring towards supremacy through technology, and the concentrated spectacle of bureaucratic collectivism capitalism in the East trying to do much the same, albeit framing it in different terms. While early efforts toward cybernetic communism were initially developed within the Soviet Union (until they were crushed by the party who feared, rightly, that they could not control it), Barbrook notes ironically that the first working model of communism as social co-operation through technology was developed by the US military in the form of DARPA Net, which would later become the internet. Despite apparent vast differences across a communist-capitalist divide, there existed a more profound underlying agree- ment on technological development as a road to the liberation of human potential, one that was shared by autonomist currents who argued that movement toward increased automation of the labour process would reduce necessary
labour to almost zero, thus freeing up great amounts of time for activities other than repetitive labour.

Outer space, far from being a pure space that is always available for recomposing imaginal machines, also connects areas of political thought that veer off in strange and bizarre directions, showing that, as Deleuze and Guattari would concur in their more sober moments, absolute deterritorialization can easily end in death, insanity, or absurdity. The mere mention of alien invasion, coupled with anxiety about the worsening conditions of world affairs, famously led to outbursts of panic during the 1938 Mercury Theatre Halloween broadcast of a radio version of War of the Worlds that Orson Welles directed. And why is it that alien visitations seem to always happen in small, rural towns where the residents seem more likely to greet the visitors with shotguns rather than curiosity? Among the classic examples of space related judgment-impairment one can find the Heavens Gate cult led by Marshall
Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. In 1997, 39 members of the cult committed suicide to coincide with the Hale-Bopp comet passing the Earth, an act they believe would allow themselves to be transported to a spaceship following the comet, thus averting the impending wiping clean and recycling of the planet (Theroux, 2005).

IMPACTS
For Lenin, there are five characteristics of imperialism: 1 ) The concentration of production and capital developed to such a stage that it creates monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life. 2) The merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of "finance capital," of a financial oligarchy. 3) The export of capital, which has become extremely important, as distinguished from the export of commodities. 4) The formation of international capitalist monopolies which share the world among themselves. 5) The territorial division of the whole world among the greatest capitalist powers is completed. (Lenin, 1917,237.)

IMPACT:SPACEWARS
IMPERIALISM IN SPACE INEVITABLY LEADS TO CONFLICT. THIS MEANS THE PLAN ACTION ACTIVATES WARS IN SPACE. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG1790,DS)
But this new form of imperialism is not quite accumulation by dispossession in the classic sense outlined by Harvey and, before him, Luxemburg and Lenin. At the moment, at least, cosmic imperialism is not directly dispossessing anybody of anything. There are no people or societies out there protesting or rising up against this latest stage of domination and capital accumulation. But, of course, as and when elements of nearby outer space are legally subdivided and exploited by different private or state interests, this precludes public and private investments in probably more worthwhile projects on Earth. Furthermore, such imperialism also opens up the possibility of wars

between those powers gaining access to the Moon or other nearby parts of the cosmos. This form of imperialism and capital expansion may seem particularly attractive to ruling elites, given the contradictions and increasingly evident social and environmental crises of Earthly society. But the fact remains that this fourth stage of imperialism may in the long term simply reproduce Earthly conflicts, Earthly sociopolitical coalitions and environmental degradation into the cosmos. This raises the
question of what kinds of counter-hegemonic politics can be created to resist or at least modify these processes. How are social movements resisting these developments to be understood?

IMPACT:SPACEWARS
THEEXPANSIONOFSPACEISBUILTUPONTHE PRIVATIZATIONOFTHECOMMONS,WHICHARETHENUSEDFOR MILITARYINTERESTSINSPACE. THEMILITARIZATIONOFSPACEENABLESANEWTYPEOFCONFLICTINFINITELY MOREDANGEROUSAWARFROMSPACE. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG9195,DS)
President Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative was perhaps the most spectacular attempt to make war pure: a global conflict without conventional soldiers. X-ray lasers and particle beams from Earth were amongst the ground-based mechanisms to be used to defeat an offensive strike while space-based interceptors (known as Brilliant Eyes and Brilliant Pebbles) would have detected and destroyed incoming

It was then recognized during the two Gulf Wars that satellites had a major role to play in guiding bombs released by aircraft and assisting troops on the ground to communicate with their commanders and guide their directions. Elements of star wars are,
missiles. at the time of writing, still being used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, they are still under active development. Space-based laser systems being developed could destroy any target on Earth. It was announced at one point that ground-based interceptors were to be installed in the UK at Fylingdales. Meanwhile, space might be the fourth medium for warfare, but it also plays a central role in the digital war

the US military are planning towards the development of a new form of net-centric warfare. This is a totally new kind of war in which, via a secure internet accessible to every member of the military, intelligence and military activities would be fused and machines would communicate with one another. The resulting
fought in the fifth medium cyberspace (Oslund 2004). Encouraged by the private sector,

perspective on the battlefield would give soldiers a Gods eye view according to Lockheed Martin chief executive Robert J. Stevens. Thats real power, he adds (Weiner 2004). There can be few more obvious illustrations of the way in which powerful Earthly forces are seeking to replace God in the skies.

Coupled with the designs completed for so-called rods of God, tungsten rods suspended from satellites that can be dropped on targets on the ground with the impact of a nuclear explosion, the image of a punishing force from on high is alive and well, orchestrated by the US military. Yet we must be exceedingly careful not to be taken in by the possibilities of such a pure war. Winning wars by these means is actually proving to be much more difficult than either Virilio or shock and awe military planners expected. The pure war vision was apparently well implemented on 1 May 2003 when, at the assumed end of the attack on Iraq, President Bush
famously announced the completion of the war while standing under a banner saying Mission Accomplished on the USS Lincoln. The initial hostilities were a spectacular example of the society of the spectacle. The 9/11 attacks, to which of course the Iraq mission was a response, were themselves spectacular (Retort 2005). But, as is now much better appreciated, fast, spectacular, globalized electronic wars without damage to

those in power are a disastrous delusion. Space technology has found its limits in recent wars in the Middle East. Space weapons not only become the targets for insurgents (anti-coalition forces managing to jam US GPS guidance for missiles in 2003 (AFPN
2004)), but they fail to help soldiers on the ground in difficult conditions, where the realities of war are far from pure, but messy and full of ideological as well as physical contestations. One outcome of accumulation by dispossession has been the creation of many social and political resistances, including those from within the urban spatial fixes made in the rapidly emerging Muslim states (Retort 2005). The US military is now giving increasing prominence to what the Pentagon calls MOUT (Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain) (Davis 2006). But these

military initiatives still depend on the use of technology in outer space to some extent. Commanders still rely on satellites for orientation, communications and surveillance over potentially hostile populations. Militarization and surveillance There is now every sign that the power of the militaryindustrialspace complex will continue to be enhanced. This entails not only further weaponization of outer space but its use for military surveillance. (For a historical account of Americas surveillance satellites, see Burrows 1988.) This is a process
now very much caught up in the war on terror. As in the case of the internet, earlier military applications set the original pace for making technologies that use outer space in the exercise of power. During the Vietnam War, infra-red sensors, which could penetrate clouds and storms, enabled individual soldiers to be detected walking around on the ground (Fleming 2001). Using outer space for military surveillance has taken a great leap forward in recent years. Perhaps the most famous example was during the lead-up to the second Iraq war. In February 2003 Colin Powell (United States Secretary of State) presented US intelligence satellite images that purported to show evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These images were part of an attempt to justify unilateral war against Iraq. It now seems likely, however, that these images dated from an earlier period before the installations were removed. Furthermore, at least according to some websites, the satellite was out of action at the time and place the pictures were supposed to have been taken. The whole experience is reminiscent of Susan Sontags (2001) analysis of photography. On the one hand, photographs seem to offer a way of appropriating the objective reality of

A photograph may look very much like a neutral, finished, representation of an objective reality functioning of the world economy that there has been increasing tension amongst the cosmic superpowers over their vulnerability to attack, either from Earth-based weapons or from weapons mounted on other satellites. Star wars systems are conceived in part to protect space assets from perceived threats. If more people are going to be encouraged to
the world and understanding it. But photographs, a medium that has largely replaced print as a form of communication in modern society, are, in Sontags word, treacherous. invest in space technology, they will need guarantees from their governments that their investments will be protected. The US has historically been anxious about other nations attempting to control Earth orbit, and for that reason an American Space Station was proposed, one that would ensure that access to space was vetoed by American interests. Fortunately, the US decided, perhaps historically rather surprisingly, that in the post-Cold War climate cooperation with other countries in the project would be more beneficial than a unilateral solution, and so the American Space Station became the International Space Station. In 1989 a congressional study, Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years (Collins 1989), argued along similar lines that whoever held the Moon would control access to space. This echoed an older 1959 study, and appears to be a possible motive for the recent initiative to establish an inhabited Moon base by 2024. With a system of property rights already being drawn up for space resources, a military presence in space to ensure these rights is becoming an increasing priority. Historically, as many pro-space advocates point out, colonization has been established through the military. Pro-space activists have generally been divided over the issue of weapons in space (Michaud 1986). There are those who are against it per se, but even fewer see it as a positive use of space. There are, however, some who see it as a necessary

possible step in the eventual settlement of space. Harveys analysis of the new form of imperialism is again useful in understanding these military developments. It is unlike that typically pursued until the late nineteenth century. It does not entail one society invading another with a view to permanently occupying that society and using its resources. Rather, it entails societies (and particularly the US with its enormous fusion of capital and political power) privatizing and commodifying resources previously owned by the public sector or held in common in other ways. This process is developing within the advanced societies, such as the US. But, even more important, it is a strategy that is being spread throughout the cosmos.
evil in order to protect space assets and operations, and as a

IMPACT:SPACEMIL
THE EFFORT TO RAPIDLY EXPLORE AND DEVELOP SPACE CREATES A FORM OF SPACE RACE ERA PARANOID POLITICSTHATRESULTSINRAPIDMILITARIZATION
ParkerandBell,Prof@UofLeicesterSchoolofManagementandProf@UofLeeds,5/15/09 (MartinandDavid,Introduction:makingspace.TheSociologicalReview,57:15.)
We suspect, however, that the main reason for the neglect is simply that social

scientists (of whatever political persuasion) find it easier to be knowing critics than sycophantic fans; and in the case of the Space Race, there is an awful lot to be critical about. If you begin with V2s and ICBMs, and add the interests of cold war generals and big aerospace, you can tell a story about war, money and interests. This account can be augmented with the paranoid politics of the cold war, which provided a powerful series of reasons for the military-industrial complex and the state to combine in painting flags on the sides of rockets. Neither can it be forgotten that these were projects mostly sponsored and controlled by white men, so both phallic and imperialist readings are easy enough to construct. Further, in post-everything times when science is an object of scepticism, it would be surprising if the technological grand narratives of such enterprises were not treated with a certain sniffiness, subject only to knowing deconstruction. Even the sort of science we 21st century citizens seem to be interested in is largely virtual and microscopic, not gigantic and noisy. And finally, the trump card that all that money could have spent on eradicating poverty, building schools and keeping taxes down by leaving the nesting birds and alligators of Cape Canaveral alone. All that should be enough to ensure that this is a topic that people see little merit in exhuming. Of course, all of these assessments are correct; and they have been made convincingly by many commentators from the 1960s onwards (see, for example, Etzioni, 1964; DeGroot, 2007; Dickens and Ormrod, 2007). But for us, this
doesnt exhaust the sorts of things that might be said about Apollo and related matters. We think that there is something else of interest here, too, other stories to tell and to listen to. Something in the nature of myth, and a certain sort of promise that was never fulfilled. As Englishmen with childhood fascinations with space and science fiction, we could explain (away) this combination of nostalgia and fantasy biographically, as a form of adolescent sublimation (Bell, 2005: 80 passim; Parker, 2007). We should not assume that the desires and attachments of others are the same as ours, and we know that we is a word that should always be treated with suspicion. But all that being said, and a slight guilt about boys toys acknowledged, it still seems to us that this is an object with a certain sort of excess, in terms of disciplinarity for one thing, but also in terms of questions of effect and affect.

WECANNOTDISARTICULATESPACEEXPLORATIONFROMTHEMATERIALCONDITIONSTHATFACILITATEIT. ALL SPACE EXPLORATION, FROM INCEPTION TO COMPLETION, DEPENDS ON MILITARY KNOWLEDGE AND PRODUCTION. PASS, PHD IN SOCIOLOGY AND IS FOUNDER OF WEBSITE ASTROSOCIOLOGY , 06 (JIM, THE CULTURAL IMPERATIVE TO COLONIZESPACE:ANASTROSOCIOLOGICALPERSPECTIVE,AMERICANINSTITUTEOFAERONAUTICSANDASTRONAUTICS12)
It is probably best to start

with Tsiolkovskys famous quote, usually translated as: "Earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever." This sentiment succinctly defines the central argument made here. It refers to the cultural imperative to expand the human presence into new territories in order to allow human populations to improve their social lives. Humans have explored and
colonized each of the Earths land masses though the oceans remain largely uninvestigated.** It is, in fact, something of an irony that space has received greater attention. Some space phenomena are better understood than ocean phenomena of the Earth. And, while the oceans are much closer,

humankind has been drawn more strongly toward investigating space phenomena. Why is this so? The answer to this question involves societal issues characterized by practical underpinnings. Humanitys exploration of outer space is no accident of history. Rather, it represents a logical continuation of social and cultural development. One does not need to explore the ocean floor very much to operate submarines. However, there was a great deal of exploration, knowledge acquisition, and technological mastery involved in going to the Moon to win the Space Race, a major benchmark in winning the Cold War. There is a lot of know-how that has to go into imaging the Earth for technical intelligence (TECHINT) purposes or for the successful operation of weaponry that enters and exits space, in the case of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Much of what we know as the civil space effort is primarily an adjunct or spin-off of Cold War and military aims. When one of the
authors (Thomas Gangale) gained the clearances as a USAF aerospace engineer to work in the Black Sky Air Force, he was welcomed to the real space program by his supervisors and co-workers.

The historical impetuses that drove outer space production were tied to discrete events like the applications of rocketry in World War II and the following Cold War. Men and women who as children dreamed of traveling to other planets were put to work building the machines of war and participating in a Space Race. This outer space production has motivated weapons systems and reconnaissance systems used for defense and for making war. However, that production has also sent
humans to the Moon and generated much scientific knowledge for the benefit of humanity, to include the reconnaissance about weather and the environmental condition of our planet and a level of technology that allows for cellular phone communication and rapid financial transactions. Counterintuitively, the cultural imperative to colonize space has slowed in current times. When the Cold War wound down, the years following the United States Apollo program seemed like a rejection of human space travel to extraterrestrial destinations

IMPACT:SPACEMIL
CAPTIALISM IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF SPACE MILITARIZATION OUTER
TECHNOLOGIESTHATBLURTHEDISTINCTIONBETWEENCOMMERCIALANDMILITARY SPACE IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY MILITARIZED AS NATIONALIST PRIVATE COMPANIES GO INTO SPACE AND DEVELOP DUALUSE

PATRICKSALIN,2001,DOCTOROFCIVILLAWATMCGILLUNIVERSITY,PRIVATIZATIONANDMILITARIZATIONINTHESPACEBUSINESSENVIRONMENT, MCGILLUNIVERSITY,HTTP://WWW.SCIENCEDIRECT.COM/SCIENCE/ARTICLE/PII/S0265964600000503
We may consider that outer space should no longer be considered as a sanctuary safe from military operations as of 19 June 1999. On that day, a US Theater High- Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) rocket hit a target missile outside the Earth's atmosphere. Outer space is now undergoing a militarization process that is developing within a totally new framework, that of the privatization of space ventures and projects. The bipolar Cold War stage has been removed and gone is the threatening vision of nuclear warfare via all sorts of Earth-based and spaceborne weapons. Yet the big industrial concerns that manufactured the weapons of the Cold War have simply converted themselves and regrouped into mammoth civilian manufacturers, deploying constellations of civilian assets in outer space. Instead of procuring the much-criticized US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), they now produce dual-use goods that can be used in an undiferentiated manner for both civilian and military objectives [3,4]3. The borderlines between civilian and military high

technology goods that prevailed only a few years ago have become meaningless and technical parameters that qualifed equipment as being military, less than "five years ago, are now useless, commercial entities being able to sell these, once forbidden tools, as plain commercial gadgets.4 The confusion between the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of State over determining what is (or should be) subject to authorization and what is not is illustrative of this situation. Yet, thanks to the loopholes and inconsistencies of the international treaties on outer space, we may soon end up with exactly the same result as during the Cold War * Hollywood's Star Wars, live! We are slowly discovering that the militarization process of outer space seems to be a given, thanks to increasing competition within the space business environment. And, as privatization has accelerated during the last decade, we can clearly see an acceleration of the militarization process of outer space. This has become apparent through two main observations: (1) private space corporations are, more than ever, vanguards of national interests; and (2) commercial competition is another way for nations to impose their influence in space (and world) affairs. In the end, what is at stake here is the fragile equilibrium between world peace and tensions, now transported into outer space. Private corporations have grown in number as a consequence of the privatization of space activities and act in outer space like citizens that are not answerable to the international community THEAFFIRMATIVEISAPROPAGANDAPIECEFORWEAPONSMANUFACTURES DUALUSETECHNOLOGYENSURES THATIFSPACEEXPLORATIONISLEFTTOCAPITALDEVELOPOMENT,MILITARIZATIONISGUARANTEED

Havercroft,UniversityofBritishColumbia,2006(Johnathan,SpaceWeaponsandEmpireofthe Future,pg6) The placing of weapons in orbital space has an intimate relationship to space exploration, in that the history of the former is
embedded in the latter, while the impetus for space exploration, in turn, is embedded in histories of military development. Since the launch of Sputnik, states that have ability to accessand hence to exploreorbital space have sought ways in which that access could improve their military capabilities. Consequently, militaries in general and the U.S. military in particular have had a strong interest in the military uses of space for the last half century. Early on, the military interest in space had two direct expressions: enhancing surveillance; and developing rocketry technologies that could be put to use for earth-based weapons, such as missiles. (American) public of its space explorations, it is noteworthy that many of the technologies developed for those missions also have potential military use. The multiple interests that tie together space exploration and space weaponization have been
vigorously pursued and now are beginning to be substantially realized by a very small number of militaries, most notably that of the United States. For example, since the 1990 Persian Gulf War, the U.S. military has increasingly relied on assets in space to increase its C4ISR (Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) functions. Most of these functions are now routed through satellites in orbit. In addition, new precision weapons, such as JDAM bombs, and unmanned drones, such as the Predator, rely on Global

Positioning System satellites to help direct them to their targets, and often these weapons communicate with headquarters through satellite uplinks.29 For another instance, NASAs recently completed Deep Impact mission, which entailed smashing part of a probe into a
comet to gather information about the content of comet nuclei, directly served the U.S. military in developing the technology and the logistical capabilities to intercept small objects moving at very fast speeds (approximately 23,000 miles per hour).30 As such, the technologies can be adapted for

programs such as missile defense, where a similar problem of intercepting an object moving at a very high speed is confronted. So, in a certain sense, the military colonization of orbital space has already begun to a significant extentit is no longer a distant future vision, nor an unrealizable fiction. We are not in a position to detail all of the technological or strategic manifestations of
this important development. Pretending to be able to do so would distract from the purposes of this paper. Our concern, instead, is with the broad forms of space weaponization that are now being actively pursuedagain, especially by the U.S.and/or that are very much alive on the drawing board and in the U.S. military imagination.

IMPACT:WEAPONIZATION
WEAPONIZATIONISINTRISICTOCAPITALDEVELOPMENTTHETWOCANNOTBEDIVORCED. Cooper 9 Faculty @ University of British Columbia [Brent, Lost in Space: A Realist and Marxist Analysis of US Space Militarization]
The second theoretical argument views space weaponization as a capitalist process that maintains and promotes itself through the enrichment of the global elite class. Classical Marxism places emphasis on privatization and capital accumulation through the exploitation of resources and labour as the means for the dominant class to rule. John Lovering writes, in Military Expenditure and the Restructuring of Capitalism, that Marxists see defense expenditure as providing governments with provisional solutions to inherent problems in capitalism such as underconsumption.25 He argues that disarmament could be prosperous in the short-term, but would compromise a "significant source of stability and growth."27 The doctrine of space weaponization, therefore, in a classical Marxist sense, is an essential part of a continuing process of capital accumulation.26 In Taking Sovereignty Out of this World, Dual and Havercroft argue that dominating space is a from of privatization of the commons of outer space to the extent that it is effectively colonized and made safe for the capitalist interests that flow through it primarily information services at this point in time.29 The authors explain that through space weaponization the notion of sovereignty is transformed into a new global regime. They argue that sovereignty is being eroded and replaced by a new diffuse under a single logic of rule that they call Empire.31 They also challenge the neorealist assumption of sovereignty and anarchy as facts of international relations, arguing that sovereignty is socially constructed and constantly in flux.32Beyond the general principles of Marxism the international versions of Marxist theory are a harder fit to this issue. Dependency theory is largely inapplicable without a stretch of the imagination because it is largely contingent on terrestrial relations and processes. Dependency theorists describe states as falling into a core vs periphery dichotomy, where the global North exploits the global South. They suggest that the global bourgeoisie arose from a network of national bourgeoisie united in their defense of mutual interest in the world capitalist system. In this view, the exploitation of the South by the North is typically facilitated by monetary regimes as the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO. But would a dependency theorist really add space weapons to the list of instruments that the transnational capitalist class use to exploit the global South? It does not seem to fit. However, the fact that the outer space is becoming a domain reserved for developed liberal nations to which all other nations can only be clients lends some credence to dependency theory. The problem with applying world-systems theory or dependency theory to space -weaponization is that these so-called security measures do not fundamentally affect the world-economy system. What space weaponization does is enrich the global capitalist class by profiting from the sale of the weapons and securing unimpeded commerce as well as enhancing the power of the state that sponsors the agenda. To this extent, the theory includes an element of realism in that states are considered important actors, but the relatively narrow application of space weapons still has little impact on the core-semi-periphery-periphery relationship. The agenda of space weaponization is better understood as a new form of imperialism under the Marxist theory of imperialist war. The idea, as it will be shown, is to maximize the asymmetrical military advantage of the US so as to avoid major imperialist war and promote global homogeneity indirectly through technological omnipotence. Lenin wrote about a natural congregation of capitalist forces into "cartels, syndicates and trusts" into a high stage of imperialism.37 Such a description bears semblance to the military-industrial-complex (MIC) and its functional role in international relations in terms of US interests. It is ironic that while the Marxist lens sheds light on the MIC, the constituents of the MIC serve their own interests by promoting neorealist thinking within the state because ensuring security means large defense spending. Lenin explained that capitalism tended to monopoly and that imperialism is this ultimate stage of capitalism.36 Thus, finance capital inevitably strives to extend its territory economically and geographically and conglomerate into a homogenous entity.39 From a Marxist perspective, the MIC can be seen as a means to facilitate the establishment of a transnational capitalist class insofar as the military apparatus defends the economic interests of the entire system.40 In Eisenhower's farewell address, he
famously warned about the "unwarranted influence" of the MIC.41 This was because of the nature of capitalist enterprises, not so much the nature of state behavior according to neorealism. Naturally, the threat from the MIC itself is not as easily dramatized, let alone visible, than the threat

of an ICBM only "33 minutes" away, which is why superficially neorealism better explains the missile defense doctrine. But when you dig deeper you see that space weaponization is not really about missile defense. In an article in the International Socialist Review, scholar Noam Chomsky describes missile defense as a "small footnote" in the broader space weaponization agenda laid out in the Vision for 2020 document. The mission statement is, of course, "to protect US interests and investment."43 Chomsky writes that since poor countries would opt for anti-satellite weapons, rather than anti-missile, and the US needs satellites to operate the missile defense system, first-strike weapons in space are a requirement to achieve what the US calls "full-spectrum dominance."43 He parallels naval armament a century ago with space weaponization today by how the British Navy was charged with protecting British commercial interests in the 19t,h century.44 Also, US military expenditure laid the foundations for subsequent industries that the US would come to dominate for many years such as steel and automobile manufacturing.45Thus, it is clear that space weaponization represents the perpetuation of the US imperative to remain at the forefront of technological innovation, in addition to protecting its current assets in space. Furthermore, a report called GlobalTrends 2015 predicts the widening economic division between
"haves" and "have-nots."45 The perseverance of this space militarization agenda is coincidental with globalization. Space weaponization is being sold in terms of physical security but it is really about an insurance policy for a global economic dominance of haves over have-nots. As Chomsky summarizes,

investor rights."4

globalization will increase in the "preferred sense - meaning

IMPACT:SPACECAPUNSUSTAINABLE
THE
AFFIRMATIVES DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE TO SOLVE CAPITALISMS CONTRADICTIONS INEVITABLY REPRODUCESANELITECONSOLIDATIONOFPOWER,ATTHEEXPENSEOFTHEGLOBALPOOR. THESHORTTERM FIXES ALSO PRODUCE CONTRADICTIONS THAT MAKE EXPANSION INTO SPACE MORE DIFFICULT LIKE SPACE DEBRIS.

DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG667,DS)
It is not at all clear that the neo-liberal experiment has substantially delivered on its promises on Earth. The record is, to use Harveys diagnosis, nothing short of dismal (2005: 154). Large proportions of the population have fallen into poverty, especially in Russia and the old East European societies that fully adopted the neoliberal creed. Global indicators of health levels, life expectancy and infant mortality have worsened almost universally since the 1960s. Significant exceptions to this trend are those societies such as Sweden and Poland which have managed to resist or at least tame the neo-liberal experiment. Neo-liberalization has therefore consolidated class power in the economic, political and cultural spheres. But the human and environmental costs have been very high. Furthermore, neo-liberalization has largely failed to generate economic expansion. Aggregate growth rates have fallen from 3.5 per cent in the 1960s to 1.1 per cent at the present time (Harvey 2005; Keily 2007). Only East and South-East Asia, plus most recently India, have seen substantial economic growth. Capital is still looking for more profitable opportunities. New social, economic and political fixes will continue to be attempted. Some of these will be in outer space as the primary, secondary and tertiary circuits of capital look to make further parts of the cosmos into capitals appendages. But over-investment in the secondary and tertiary circuits typically creates its own contradictions. Investments in outer space, for example, may well undermine the profitability of enterprises on Earth. Harvey refers to the redirection of capital into the secondary and tertiary circuits as a spatial fix. But he also points to the ambiguity of the term. The fix involved is almost inevitably temporary and unstable. It is of the sticking-plaster variety. Equivalent social
and moral fixes intended by dominant orders to bind nations and military projects are similarly insecure. Meanwhile, high expenditures on outer space have been accompanied by reductions in social expenditures on Earth. Military order imposed by satellite-guided bombs from above has been paralleled by, even generated, social disorder below (Fox Piven 2004). In short, if the secondary and tertiary circuits are envisaged as devices for restoring profitability and the underlying capitallabour relation, then contrary tendencies towards disintegration must also be allowed for. New outer spatial fixes, new risks However, the outer spatial fix brings not only economic risk, but risks and unintended outcomes of other kinds. Human progress in the cosmos is already generating a major problem in the form of space debris, as 6,791 expended rockets and payloads are disintegrating around Earth orbit (NASA 2005). There are an estimated 110,000 man-made objects larger than 1 cm hurtling through space at up to 17,500 mph (Milne 2002). This has caused major problems for the International Space Station, and now threatens the entire space project (ibid.). One proposal for the forthcoming humanization of outer space includes the

use of atom-powered rocketry. Accidents may lead to increased radioactivity on Earth and in outer space. Chemicals from rocket fuels are already being found in high concentrations in food grown near launch sites. In the much longer term, the interventions
needed to change the climates of planets to make them habitable may result in much more profound unexpected and unwelcome consequences. The humanization of outer space is bringing its unique kind of risk, a cosmic equivalent to Becks global risk (Beck 1999). These risks are discussed further in Chapter 6

IMPACT:SPACEACCIDENTS
EXPLORATION OF SPACE RISKS ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE FROM NUCLEAR POWERED CRAFT. A SMALL AMOUNT COULD NOT ONLY ANNIHILATE LIFE ON EARTH BUT ALSO OTHER FORMS OF LIFE THROUGHOUT THE SOLAR SYSTEM.ITISETHICALLYUNJUSTIFIABLETOCONTINUEEXPLORATION. MCARTHUR AND BROWN, *ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT YORK UNIVERSITY **ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT YORK UNIVERSITY, 2004 (DAN, AND IDIL, AGENTCENTERED RESTRICTIONS AND THE ETHICS OF SPACE EXPLORATION, JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, VOL. 35 NO. 1, SPRING 2004, 148163,DS)
While thus far nothing has occurred as a result of human explorations that might be considered significantly damaging to any ecosystem that might exist on either of those worlds, the explorations conducted by space probes have nevertheless not been wholly satisfactory from the point of view we have been defending. Thus far forty-four space probes have included nuclearpowered electrical-power generation systems, including the Galileo, Cassini, and Voyager probes; some of these include quantities of plutonium238, a highly radioactive substance.17 Moreover, NASAs Prometheus Project will greatly increase the use of nuclear-powered electrical generation, both to power scientific instruments and eventually to serve as propulsion.18 Plans are in place, in fact, to include such power generation for the instruments on the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, which, as the name implies, will study Europa. Similar probes that also include nuclear propulsion are eventually to be sent to orbit and land on Mars. Accidents and failures involving satellites and space probes are not rare; many of the probes sent to Mars have foundered. Of rather more concern, there have already been three accidents quite near the Earth involving craft containing plutonium-238.19 Admittedly, none of these accidents were caused by the nuclear power, and no radioactive contamination occurred as a result of any of them. However, the potential for accidental contamination clearly exists. This situation is not a morally neutral one from the agent-centered restrictions standpoint. Setting aside concerns about accidentally scattering several dozen kilograms of dangerously radioactive compounds in our own atmosphere because of a launch mishap, such materials could do serious harm to the sort of extremely tenuous ecosystem that might possibly exist on Mars. The worry is not restricted to probes that descend to a planets surface; probes can crash
and sometimes do. The rarefied atmospheres of many of our solar systems bodies (such as Mars and Europa) provide insufficient atmospheric friction to pulverize objects as soon as they hit the atmosphere. As a result, dangerous materials could easily reach the ground intact and crash on the surface of the planet. A large quantity of plutonium-238 that, for example, melted its way under Europas ice might cause considerable harm to any organisms it encountered. So far, NASAs safety precautions for the use of nuclear materials have proved quite good, and no contamination has occurred as a result of nuclearpowered space probes. However, these safety precautions relate to the prevention of the release of the materials on Earth through launch mishaps and the like, and no specific and comparable precautions exist to deal with trouble that might occur on Mars or Europa. At this

stage, then, the ethics we are defending cannot endorse the past practices or current plans for the use of nuclear materials in the space program, because one restriction that is clearly implied involves action that poses a significant risk of spreading lethal contamination. And for the reasons we have outlined above, this restriction applies even if the benefits gained from taking such risks outweigh
the potential harms in the sense that a consequentialist has in mind. This is not to make an a priori, permanent prohibition on the use of nuclear-powered electrical generation on space probes, nor do we assert that technical solutions that address these safety concerns can never (in principle) be found. However,

the practice cannot be endorsed by our model until the risk of contamination is virtually eliminated, and this has not yet happened. Additionally, specific and robust plans for the prevention of contamination of potential ecosystems that might exist on Mars or Europa would
need to be implemented, along with the usual precautions designed to prevent contamination by a launch accident.20

IMPACT:FRONTIERMENTALITY
FRONTIER
DISCOURSE IS A RED HEREING FOR IMPERALISM BUSINESS AND MILITARY INTEREST WILL CONSOLIDATEUSEXCEPTIONALISMANDGIVETHESTATEUNBRIDLEDCONTROLOVERTHEENTIREGLOBE

HAVERCROFT, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, 2006 (JOHNATHAN, SPACE WEAPONS AND EMPIRE OF THEFUTURE,PG1012) Second, space control bears significantly on the production of political subjectivities. The original Star Trek series would begin with the
voice of Captain Kirk describing space as the final frontier. While

presenting the exploration of space as a largely peaceful enterprise, the TV show was also drawing upon its viewers memories of the western frontier of 19th century U.S. expansion. At least since the writings of Frederick Turner, there has been the notion that the frontier represents the well-spring of U.S. ingenuity, freedom, and creativity. According to Turner, because as they expanded westward settlers in the U.S. had to continually adapt to a new environment, they became increasingly American. The theme of the frontier as essential for American identity has had a significant discursive role in U.S. imperialist expansion.61 Although Turner concluded that the American frontier had closed by the late 1890s, he argued that the U.S. could
extend it frontier into new countries, such as Latin America. Theodore Roosevelt, influenced by the Turner thesis, concluded that in order to maintain the exceptional American identity new frontiers had to be opened overseas. The notion of frontiers, then, has been integral to the U.S. imperialist project since its outset. The doctrine of space control, seen in this light, is simply an extension of the imperial logic. By expanding into and taking control of the final frontier the U.S. is continuing to renew an exceptionalan exclusive

identity by adapting itself to the harsh realities of a new environment. So, the doctrine of space control can be read as extending U.S. sovereignty into orbit. While a clear violation of international law, this de facto expansion of U.S. sovereignty will have two effects. First, it enables a process of primitive accumulation, whereby orbital spaces around earth are removed from the commons initially established by the Outer Space Treaty, and places them under the control of the U.S. for use and perhaps even ownership by businesses sympathetic to U.S. interests. The U.S. becomes even more than it is now the state for global capitalism, the global capitalist state. Second, this doctrine of space control is part of the ongoing re-production of American subjects as Americans. Embedded within space control is the notion that space is a new frontier. Following the Turner thesis and Roosevelts doctrine of imperialist expansion, there has long been a drive for Americans to seek out new frontiers as a way of renewing the American identity and promoting American values of individuality, innovation, and exceptionalism .

IMPACT:IMPERIALISM
LENINWASRIGHT CAPITALISMISIMPERIALISM. THEQUESTIONISWHETHERWELLLEARNFROMHISLEGACY ORRESIGNOURSELVESTOANOTHERCENTURYOFBLOODYCAPITALISTRULE.
Christian Fuchs, Unified Theory of Information Research Group, University of Salzburg, Critical Globalization Studies: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis of the New Imperialism, Sdmce & Society, Vol. 74. No. 2, April 2010, 215-24 In this paper, I have tried to show that Lenin's notion of imperialism is important for analyzing contemporary capitalism. Contemporary capitalism is characterized by a new imperialism, in Lenin's meaning of the term. There has been a return to the fundamental characteristics of imperialism identified by Lenin, but at tlie same time these characteristics take on new forms. The data suggest that contemporary capitalism is an imperialistic capitalism in Lenin's sense, and that Lenin's five characteristics of imperialism can be reformulated for contemporary capitalism: 1. Capital concentration: Capital concentration remains an important characteristic of industry, services, and finance. 2. Finance capital: Finance capital is still the dominant form of capital today. There are, however, more than stocks and bonds on financial markets, as insurance companies, pension funds and investment funds have gained in influence, and there are new financial instruments such as finance derivatives. Neoliberalism has created volatile global deregulated financial markets. The 2008-09 financial crisis has resulted in losses in all parts ofthe economy, not only of finance, but finance is still predominant. 3. Capital export: this third characteristic of imperialism mentioned by Lenin, has in comparison to the period 1945-1975 become far more important; transnational corporations are in fact a qualitatively new development of this feature. 4. Economic division: asymmetric spatial division of the world economy remains valid today. The new aspects are the Increased weight of Europe in FDI and the emergence of Asia, especially China, as a major importer and exporter of capital. Finally, 5. Political division. Tbe U. S.-led war in Iraq and Afghanistan is the practical validation of the continuing presence of this filth characteristic of imperialism, Military conflicts that aim at territorial control and global hegemony and counter-hegemony are immanent features of the new imperialism. The USA is a global military hegemon, but not a global economic hegemon. It faces economic challenges by Europe and China. Lenin observed on the First World War and the imperialism of his time: Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the fmancial strangulation of the ovci^whclming majority of the population of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries. And this "booty" is shared between two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth (America, Great Britain, Japan), who are drawing the whole world into their war over the division of //iWr booty. (Lenin, 1999, 28.) Lenin described the First World War as "war for the division of the world" {Lenin, 1999, 27).The War was tbe expression of tbe politicaleconomic conflict between what Lenin termed imperialism's "great powers" (Lenin, 1917, 239). Imperialism is neces.sarily a system of political-economic competition between great powers. In present day conditions, military conflicts and economic conflicts do not coincide. Arab nations question Western hegemony with military means and Asian nations such as China with economic means. Lenin spoke of conflict between great powers, but this did not necessarily mean that these powers must be nation-states, or that economic and militaiy conflicts must always coincide. Militaiy conflicts have

economic dimensions and economic rivalries can, and in many cases do, result in wars, but if and when this happens is not predetermined, but a matter of tbe contingent complexity of societal power struggles. We simply do not know for example if in the future there will be a war between Cbina and the Western nations for political-economic hegemony. To assume that this will
necessarily be tbe case would reveal a deterministic understanding of history, sometbing that is unfortunately not alien to Marxism and has proved to be a failure in the past. The future cannot be predicted; we can, however, say that, unless alternatives to the global rule of capitalism

emerge in the 21st century, it will be another century of violence, with new territorial wars waged for political-economic reasons.

IMPACT:IMPERIALISM
CAPITALISM IS THE DRIVING ENGINE OF IMPERIALISM THE ROOT CAUSE DEBATE IS HISTORICALLY
UNDENIABLE

FOSTER RESEARCH AT THE NORTH SOUTH INSTITUTE 2003 JOHN IMPERIAL AMERICA AND WAR, MONTHLY REVIEW,MAY28HTTP://WWW.MONTHLYREVIEW.ORG/0503JBF.HTM
The reality of an informal imperialism of free trade (or imperialism without colonies) was never an enigma to Marxist theory, which viewed imperialism as a historical process associated with capitalist expansiononly secondarily affected by the particular political forms in which it manifested itself. The reason for characterizing the last quarter of the nineteenth century as the imperialist stage in the work of Lenin and most subsequent Marxist theorists, did not have to do mainly with a shift from informal to formal imperialism, or the mere fact of widespread annexations within the periphery, but rather with the evolution of capitalism itself, which had developed into its monopoly stage, creating a qualitatively new type of imperialism. It was this historically specific analysis of imperialism as a manifestation of capitalist development in all of its complexity (economic/political/militarycore and periphery) that was to give the Marxist theory of imperialism its importance as a coherent way of understanding the deeper globalizing tendencies of the system.In this interpretation, there was a sense in which imperialism was inherent in capitalism from the beginning. Many of the features of contemporary imperialism, such as the development of the world market, the division between core and periphery, the competitive hunt for colonies or semicolonies, the extraction of surplus, the securing of raw materials to bring back to the mother country, etc. are part of capitalism as a global system from the late fifteenth century on. Imperialism, in the widest sense, had its sources in the accumulation dynamic of the system (as basic as the pursuit of profits itself), which encouraged the countries at the center of the capitalist world economy, and particularly the wealthy interests within these countries, to feather their own nests by appropriating surplus and vital resources from the peripherywhat Pierre JalE9e called The Pillage of the Third World. By a variety of coercive means, the poorer satellite economies were so structuredbeginning in the age of conquest in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuriesthat their systems of production and distribution served not so much their own needs as those of the dominant metropoles. Nevertheless, the recognition
of such commonalities in imperialism in the various phases of capitalist development was entirely consistent with the observation that there had been a qualitative change in the nature and significance of imperialism that commenced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, sufficient to cause Lenin to associate this with a new stage of capitalism.Marxists have therefore often distinguished between an older imperialism and what was called the new imperialism that began in the final decades of the nineteenth century. What distinguished this new imperialism were primarily two things: (1) the breakdown of British hegemony and increased competition for control over global territories between the various advanced capitalist states; and (2) the rise of monopolistic corporationslarge, integrated industrial and financial firmsas the dominant economic actors in all of the advanced capitalist states. The new mammoth corporations by their very nature sought to expand beyond national bounds and dominate global production and consumption. As Harry Magdoff observed, The urge to dominate is integral to business. Monopolistic firms engaged in this imperial struggle were frequently favored by their own nation states. The Marxist theory of the new imperialism, with its focus on the rise of the giant firms, thus pointed to the changed global economic circumstances that were to emerge along with what later came to be known as multinational or global corporations. All of this became the context in which older phenomena, such as the extraction of surplus, the race for control of raw materials and resources, the creation of economic dependencies in the global periphery and the unending contest among rival capitalist powers, manifested themselves in new and transformed ways.It was this understanding of imperialism as a historical reality of capitalist development, one that took on new characteristics as the system itself evolved, that most sharply separated the Marxist approach from mainstream interpretations. The latter frequently saw imperialism as a mere policy and associated it primarily with political and military actions on the part of states. In the more widely disseminated mainstream view (from which realist economic historians like Gallagher and Robinson dissented), imperialism was present only in overt instances of political and territorial control ushered in by actual military conquest. In the contrasting Marxist view, imperialism occurred not simply through the policies of states but also through the actions of corporations and the

mechanisms of trade, finance and investment. It involved a whole constellation of class relations, including the nurturing of local collaborators or comprador elements in the dependent societies. Any explanation of how modern imperialism worked thus necessitated a description of the entire system of monopoly capitalism. Informal control of countries on the periphery of the capitalist world system by countries at the center of the system was as important, in this view, as formal control. Struggles over hegemony and more generally rivalries among the leading capitalist states were continuous, but took on changing forms depending on the economic, political and military resources at their disposal

IMPACT:IMPERIALISM
CAPITALISM CAUSES IMPERIALISM AND MILITARISM: MILITARISM AND IMPERIALISM ARE ROOTED IN CAPITALISMBECAUSECAPITALISMCALLSFOREXPANSIONSTOFINDTHECHEAPESTLABORANDRAWMATERIALS TOCREATEMORECAPITAL.

FOSTER, 5 PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON [MONTHLY REVIEW, NAKED IMPERIALISM, BELLAMYFOSTER,SEPTEMBER2005,HTTP://MONTHLYREVIEW.ORG/0905JBF.HTM]
Theargumentadvancedherepointstoadifferentconclusion.U.S.militarismandimperialismhavedeeprootsinU.S.historyand thepoliticaleconomiclogicofcapitalism.AsevensupportersofU.S.imperialismarenowwillingtoadmit,theUnitedStateshasbeenan empirefromitsinception.TheUnitedStates,BootwritesinAmericanImperialism?,hasbeenanempiresinceatleast1803, whenThomasJeffersonpurchasedtheLouisianaTerritory.Throughoutthe19thcentury,whatJeffersoncalledtheempireofliberty expandedacrossthecontinent.LatertheUnitedStatesconqueredandcolonizedlandsoverseasintheSpanishAmericanWarof1898andthe brutalPhilippineAmericanWarthatimmediatelyfollowedjustifiedasanattempttoexercisethewhitemansburden.AftertheSecondWorld WartheUnitedStatesandothermajorimperialiststatesrelinquishedtheirformalpoliticalempires,butretainedinformaleconomicempires backedupbythethreatandnotinfrequentlytherealityofmilitaryintervention.TheColdWarobscuredthisneocolonialrealitybutneverentirely hidit.ThegrowthofempireisneitherpeculiartotheUnitedStatesnoramereoutgrowthofthepoliciesofparticular

states.Itisthesystematicresultoftheentirehistoryandlogicofcapitalism.Sinceitsbirthinthefifteenthand sixteenthcenturiescapitalismhasbeenagloballyexpansivesystemonethatishierarchicallydividedbetween metropoleandsatellite,centerandperiphery.Theobjectiveoftheimperialistsystemoftodayasinthepastistoopen upperipheraleconomiestoinvestmentfromthecorecapitalistcountries,thusensuringbothacontinualsupplyof rawmaterialsatlowprices,andanetoutflowofeconomicsurplusfromperipherytocenteroftheworldsystem.In addition,thethirdworldisviewedasasourceofcheaplabor,constitutingaglobalreservearmyoflabor.Economies oftheperipheryarestructuredtomeettheexternalneedsoftheUnitedStatesandtheothercorecapitalistcountries ratherthantheirowninternalneeds.Thishasresulted(withafewnotableexceptions)inconditionsofunending dependencyanddebtpeonageinthepoorerregionsoftheworld.Ifthenewmilitarismandthenewimperialism arenotsonewafterall,butinlinewiththeentirehistoryofU.S.andworldcapitalism,thecrucialquestionthenbecomes:Why
hasU.S.imperialismbecomemorenakedinrecentyearstothepointthatithassuddenlybeenrediscoveredbyproponentsandopponentsalike? Onlyafewyearsagosometheoristsofglobalizationwithrootsintheleft,suchasMichaelHardtandAntonioNegriintheirbookEmpire(2000), werearguingthattheageofimperialismwasover,thattheVietnamWarwasthelastimperialistwar.Yet,today,imperialismismoreopenly embracedbytheU.S.powerstructurethanatanytimesincethe1890s.Thisshiftcanonlybeunderstoodbyexaminingthehistoricalchangesthat haveoccurredinthelastthreedecadessincetheendoftheVietnamWar.

IMPACT:ENVIRODESTRUCTION
CAPITALISMISTHEROOTCAUSEOFENVIRONMENTALDESTRUCTION. Bachtell,NationalSecretaryoftheCommunistPartyofUSA,2002.[John,Lifeinthebalance:Capitalismatwarwithnature andhumanity.http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/465/1/47/]
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

CAPITALISMCAUSESUNPARALLELEDENVIRONMENTALDEVASTATION. Bachtell,NationalSecretaryoftheCommunistPartyofUSA,2002.[John,Lifeinthebalance:Capitalismatwarwithnature andhumanity.http://www.cpusa.org/article/articleview/465/1/47/]

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."

Because of the interdependence of nature and society, human activity alters nature and this web of interactions. Marx defined this While humans have altered nature throughout civilization, capitalism ushered in a level of degradation and rapaciousness of nature never seen before. 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

IMPACT:ENVIRODESTRUCTION
HISTORYISSIMPLYONOURSIDE. ONEEXAMPLEAFTERANOTHERDEMONSTRATETHATCAPITALISMDESTROYS
THEENVIRONMENTANDTHESCIENTIFICCONSENSUSSAYSITSTRYORDIEFORALTERNATIVEFORMSOFSOCIAL ORGANIZATION.

Bachtell,NationalSecretaryoftheCommunistPartyofUSA,2002.[John,Lifeinthebalance:Capitalismatwarwithnature
andhumanity.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.

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.

IMPACT:ENVIRODESTRUCTION
CORPORATECONTROLOFTHEENVIRONMENTMEANSTHATCAPITALISMASSURESEXTINCTION ZizekSeniorResearcherattheInstituteforSocialStudies,Ljubljana1999Slavoj,TheTicklish Subject,page350351
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.

IMPACT:VALUETOLIFE
CAPITALISM KILLS THE VALUE TO LIFE TURNS PEOPLE INTO ENGINES OF CAPITALISM. WORKER WORK IN ORDERTOLIVE.THISTURNSTHEIRCONSCIOUSNESSARGUMENTS Marsh, Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, PhD from Northwestern University, in95
[James, Critique Action and Liberation, p 277]
Ideally, nature, workers'

own bodies, and the world around them, should be the vehicle of their conscious self-expression. In estranging human beings from object and process, capitalism estranges them from their own consciousness. It turns consciousness into a means of individual life or mere physical existence. Rather than living to work the worker works in order to live, to keep body and soul together. That which should be a means becomes an end, and that which should be the end becomes a means. Rather than nature being the environment in which human beings freely, consciously express themselves and realize themselves, nature is turned against them. Consciousness ceases to be an end and becomes a means to the realization of profit. Use value, the capacity of products for fulfilling real human needs, in capitalism becomes subordinate to the product's exchange value, the abstract labor time as measured in money. The consciousness of everyone, even the capitalist, is alienated in the pursuit of profit. Money becomes an all-consuming god devouring everything in its path. In this institutionalized reification in which things become more important than consciousness, what Marx calls the fetishism of commodities arises. Human beings forget that they are the source of value in their wealth and think that it is the source of their value.

IMPACT:ETHICS
CAPITALISM PRECLUDES ETHICS BECAUSE IT PREFERENCES ECONOMIC VALUATION TO ANY OTHER METHOD OF JUDGINGTHEWORLD MorgareidgeProfofPhilosophyatLewis&ClarkCollege1998ClaytonWhyCapitalismisEvil 08/22http://www.lclark.edu/~clayton/commentaries/evil.html
Now none of these philosophers are naive: none of them thinks that sympathy, love, or caring determines all, or even most, human behavior. The 20th century proves otherwise. What they do offer, though, is the hope that human beings have the capacity to want the best for each other. So now we must ask, What forces are at work in our world to block or cripple the ethical response? This question, of course, brings me back to capitalism. But before I go there, I want to acknowledge that capitalism is not the only thing that blocks our ability to care. Exploitation and cruelty were around long before the economic system of capitalism came to be, and the temptation to use and abuse others will probably survive in any future society that might supersede capitalism. Nevertheless, I want to claim, the putting the world at the disposal of those with capital has done more damage to the ethical life than any thing else. To put it in religious terms, capital is the devil. To show why this is the case, let me turn to capital's greatest critic, Karl Marx. Under capitalism, Marx writes, everything in nature and

everything that human beings are and can do becomes an object: a resource for, or an obstacle, to the expansion of production, the development of technology, the growth of markets, and the circulation of money. For those who manage and live from capital, nothing has value of its own. Mountain streams, clean air, human lives -- all mean nothing in themselves, but are valuable only if they can be used to turn a profit.[1] If capital looks at (not into) the human face, it sees there only eyes through which brand names and advertising can enter and mouths that can demand and consume food, drink, and tobacco products. If human faces express needs, then either products can be manufactured to meet, or seem to meet, those needs, or else, if the needs are incompatible with the growth of capital, then the faces expressing them must be unrepresented or silenced.
Obviously what capitalist enterprises do have consequences for the well being of human beings and the planet we live on. Capital profits from the production of food, shelter, and all the necessities of life. The production of all these things uses human lives in the shape of labor, as well as the resources of the earth. If we care about life, if we see our obligations in each others faces, then we have to want all the things capital does to be governed by that care, to be directed by the ethical concern for life. But feeding people is not the aim of the food industry, or shelter the purpose of the housing industry. In medicine, making profits is becoming a more important goal than caring for sick people. As capitalist enterprises these activities aim single-mindedly at the accumulation of capital, and such purposes as caring for the sick or feeding the hungry becomes a mere means to an end, an instrument of corporate growth. Therefore ethics, the overriding commitment to meeting human need, is left out of deliberations about what the heavyweight institutions of our society are going to do. Moral convictions are expressed in churches, in living rooms, in letters to the editor, sometimes even by politicians and widely read commentators, but almost always with an attitude of resignation to the inevitable. People no longer say, "You can't stop progress," but only because they have learned not to call economic growth progress. They still think they can't stop it. And they are right -- as long as the production of all our needs and the organization of our labor is carried out under private ownership. Only a minority ("idealists") can take seriously a way of thinking that counts for nothing in real world decision making. Only when the end of capitalism is on the table will ethics have a seat at the table.

IMPACT:POVERTY
ABANDONING
CAPITALISM IS THE ONLY WAY TO ALLEVIATE THE WORST EFFECTS OF POVERTY HUMAN NEEDS CAN ALL BE MET IF CONSUMPTION AT THE TOP IS DRAMATICALLY DECREASED.

ISTVNMSZROS, PROFESSOR EMERITUS IN PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL THEORY, 2007, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX.THEONLYVIABLEECONOMYHTTP://WWW.MONTHLYREVIEW.ORG/0407MESZAROS.HTM
That is where the incorrigible divorce of capitalistic growth from human need and use -- indeed its potentially most devastating and destructive counterposition to human need -- betrays itself. Once the fetishistic mystifications and arbitrary postulates at the root of the categorically decreed false

identity of growth and productivity are peeled away, it becomes abundantly clear that the kind of growth postulated and at the same time automatically exempted from all critical scrutiny is in no way inherently connected with sustainable objectives corresponding to human need. The only connection that must be asserted and defended at all cost in capital's social metabolic universe is the false
identity of -- aprioristically presupposed -- capital expansion and circularly corresponding (but in truth likewise aprioristically presupposed) "growth," whatever might be the consequences imposed on nature and humankind by even the most destructive type of growth. Forcapital's real concern can only be its own ever enlarged expansion, even if that brings with it the destruction of humanity.In this vision even the most lethal cancerous growth must preserve its conceptual primacy over (against) human need and use, if human need by any chance happens to be mentioned at all. The characteristically self-serving false alternative of "growth or no growth" is evident even if we only consider what would be

the unavoidable impact of the postulated "no growth" on the grave conditions of inequality and suffering in capital's social order. It would mean the permanent condemnation of humanity's overwhelming majority to the inhuman conditions which they are now forced to endure. For they are now in a literal sense forced to endure them, by their thousands of millions, when there could be created a real alternative to it. Under conditions, that is, when it would be quite feasible to rectify at least the worst effects of global deprivation: by putting to humanly commendable and rewarding use the attained potential of productivity, in a world of now criminally wasted material and human resources

ABANDONINGCAPITALISMISTHEONLYWAYTHATPOORERPEOPLESCANSURVIVE.
Trainer 95 (Ted Trainer is a professor at the School of Social Work, University of Wales, The Conserver Society; Alternatives for sustainability, pg.5)
The Third World problem has many causes but it is primarily due to the way the global economy distributes wealth, the overconsumption of the rich countries and the disastrously mistaken conception of development that has been pursued. Development has been defined essentially as an increase in business turnover, i.e., as indiscriminate economic growth. This inevitably results in the allocation of the lion's share to the rich few, inappropriate development, the neglect of the urgent needs of the poor majority, and in the application of most Third World productive capacity to the interests of the rich. There cannot be satisfactory, appropriate development in the Third World unless the rich countries move down to much lower per capita resource use, allow drastic redistribution of world wealth, and enable most Third World land, labour and capital to produce what Third World people need. In other words, 'The rich must live more simply so that the poor may simply live.'

POVERTYISTHEWORSTVIOLENCEOUTWEIGHSNUCLEARWAR. ABUJAMAL 98 (MUMIA, AWARDWINNING HTTP://WWW.FLASHPOINTS.NET/MQUIETDEADLYVIOLENCE.HTML)

PA

JOURNALIST,

9/19,

We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging "structural' violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes; By "structural violence" I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting "structural" with "behavioral violence" by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries
that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. --(Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.) This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it--really? Gilligan notes: [E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every

decade, throughout the world. [Gilligan, p. 196

IMPACT:INEQUALITY
I DIDNT WANT TO BE THE ONE TO TELL YOU THIS, BUT UNCLE SAM DOESNT GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOUR WELLBEING.DEMOCRACYISFORSALE.INFORMATIONISNOWACOMMODITIY.INCOMEINEQUALITYMEANSTHAT OVER10%OFYOURFELLOWHUMANSCOULDNTPAYFORYOURBOTTLEOFWATERWITH2DAYSINCOME.BUT DONTLOSEHOPE;T.I.N.A.ISALIE.MODERNCAPITALISMHASALTERNATIVESEVERYWHERE. Kaufman,DeAnzaCollegeInterim Director of the Institute for Community and Civic Engagement, 2009 (Cynthia, Liberation from Capitalism: Visions of a post-capitalist world and direction for getting there, p. 12-15)
While few see capitalism as a cause, it is widely understood that we are facing serious problems in the world. 1.37

billion people are living on less than $1.22 per day. Income inequality in the world is growing at an alarming rate with the top 20 percent of the worlds population receiving 70-90 percent of global income, and the bottom 20 percent receiving 1 to 2 percent.7 For the one billion people at the bottom, that means barely meeting caloric intakes, no access to clean water, almost no access to modern medical care, no real prospects for a better future, and an average life span of forty years.8 In the U.S., as in many other nations, the political system is controlled by money: anyone wishing to get elected to public office must spend vast quantities of money to get elected, and their reelection requires them to give those big donors what they paid for. The principle of one person, one vote gets subordinated to the more powerful principle of one million dollars, one million units of influence. Global warming is threatening to radically disrupt all forms of life on our planet. In the 1990s Exxon-Mobil spent millions of dollars to sow in the US public a sense of doubt about the level of certainty surrounding scientific claims about global warming.9 And as we begin to deal with making the transition to a carbon free economy, the oil industry continues to receive billions of dollars worth of government subsidies. As I am writing this, that same industry is working hard to undermine national legislation designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions. For some, these
kinds of problems are caused by bad capitalism. In his book, Capitalisms Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the Free-market System, international businessman Raymond W. Baker acknowledges that the worlds current form of capitalism has resulted in severe inequality and poverty. He believes that the major contributor to that outcome is what he calls dirty money. That is: money from illegal transactions, including such things as drug money, but also, and more importantly, all forms of tax evasion, and illegal accounting tricks. He argues persuasively that this dirty money results $500 billion a year of illegal proceeds streaming out of poor countries. Baker claims that for every $1 in aid that is given to the poor counties of the world $10 is taken out through illegal financial flows.10 And yet Baker is a deeply pro-capitalist thinker. He would like for us to return to the form of capitalism envisioned by Adam Smith, the author of both the Wealth of Nations, and Moral Sentiments. The foundation of Smiths philosophy rests on his view that man is fitted by nature to subsist only in society, that is in the company of others. All members of humanitys ranks stand in need of each others assistance. Through interlocking obligations afforded out of love, gratitude, friendship, and esteem, society flourishes and is happy. Baker emphasizes the Smith who believed that all people should live well, and that a market based economic system was one means to prosperity. Adam Smith was as smart, decent, and generous as any other figure in the past millennium. Observing the perversion of his core concepts would not enrage him: that was an emotion he did not exhibit. It would however, deeply, deeply grieve him. Enormous concentrations of income, while billions of people are left behind in poverty, is exactly the outcome he sought to avoid. And yet, nothing in Bakers book explains why those with resources, who are getting wealthier and more powerful off of the forms of devastation he describes so well would choose to give away the power and wealth they have worked so hard to accumulate. I will argue in this book that the bad capitalism Baker describes is intimately linked with the good capitalism of Adam Smith. The bad capitalism Russell Baker describes is related to the good capitalism he hopes for because capitalism allows those with resources the freedom to use those resources

as they please, including influencing political systems, buying media, transforming social policy to favor themselves, and leaving those without resources no moral claim to, and no practical means to gaining, what they need to survive. This chapter
begins with a discussion of the capitalist imaginary: the ways that people experience the world under forms of capitalist domination, and the ways that capitalism comes to look like something natural and inevitable in societies dominated by capitalist practices. It then develops an analysis of the ways that capitalism operates and the problems it causes. Critiques of capitalism are frequently met with a quick retort that we are shouldnt bother to challenge capitalism because there is no alternative.11 One of the goals of this book is to develop a

clear understanding of the nature of capitalism, and in the process to open up space for imagining the alternatives to capitalism that already exist all around us, and to develop strategies for expanding the non-capitalist realities that many of us already live. The view that we are surrounded by viable alternatives to capitalism, and the theory for how to liberate ourselves from capitalism by
expanding those already existing alternatives, is

IMPACT:WAR
GLOBAL CAPITALISM IS THE ORDERING FORCE THAT CREATES WAR AND PEACE ALIKE. WARS ARE ONLY THE SMOOTHINGOUTOFEMPIRESINTERNALCONTRADICTIONS.THISMAKESABSOLUTEDESTRUCTIONPOSSIBLE. MICHAELHARDT,ASSOCIATEPROFESSOROFLITERATUREANDROMANCESTUDIESATDUKEUNIVERSITY,AND ANTONIO NEGRI,FORMER LECTURERIN POLITICAL SCIENCEATTHE UNIVERSITYOF PARISANDA PROFESSOR OFPOLITICALSCIENCEATTHEUNIVERSITYOFPADUA,2000,EMPIRE,P.34546
Imperial control operates through three global and absolute means: the bomb, money, and ether. The panoply of thermonuclear weapons, effectively gathered at the pinnacle of Empire, represents the continuous possibility of the destruction of life itself. This is an operation of absolute violence, a new metaphysical horizon, which completely changes the conception whereby the sovereign state had a monopoly of legitimate physical force. At one time, in modernity, this monopoly was legitimated either as the expropriation of
weapons from the violent and anarchic mob, the disordered mass of individuals who tend to slaughter one another, or as the instrument of defense against the enemy, that is, against other peoples organized in states. Both these means of legitimation were oriented finally toward the survival of the =population. Today they are no longer effective. The expropriation of the means of violence from a supposedly self-destructive population tends to become merely administrative and police operations aimed at maintaining the segmentations of productive territories . The

second justification becomes less effective too as nuclear war between state powers becomes increasingly unthinkable. The development of nuclear technologies and their imperial concentration have limited the sovereignty of most of the countries of the world insofar as it has taken away from them the power to make decisions over war and peace, which is a primary element of the traditional definition of sovereignty. Furthermore, the ultimate threat of the imperial bomb has reduced every war to a limited conflict, a civil war, a dirty war, and so forth. It has made every war the exclusive domain of administrative and police power. From no other standpoint is the passage from modernity to postmodernity and from modern sovereignty to Empire more evident than it is from the standpoint of the bomb. Empire is defined here in the final instance as the "non-place" of life, or, in other words, as the absolute capacity for destruction. Empire is the ultimate form of biopower insofar as it is the absolute inversion of the power of life.

CAPITALISMMAINTAINSORDERTHROUGHPERPETUALWARANDTHROUGHITSCONTINUALCREATIONOFANEW ENEMYAGAINSTWHOMITCANFIGHT. Antonio Negri.. Taught at the Universit de Vincennes and the Collge International de philosophie after fleeing to France. Served a 13 year sentence in Italian jail. ReflectionsonEmpire. Pgs. 131-133. 2008.
The form of imper-ial biopower today is a war that contains control and discipline within it. Whereas in the modern tradition war was defined as the continuation of politics by other means, today it seems that the aphorism has been turned on its head: war is the foundation of politics, it is the basic way through which politics is formed. Already Foucault had proposed this reversal. But to say that war is the foundation of politics means to take as implicit a further transition, namely to recognize within war those capacities for producing subjectivity which discipline and control possessed. War, at this point, is not purely destructive power, but rather a regulating power, which is constituent, teleological, and thus inscribed within duration as a processual activity and at the same time inscribed in space as a selective and hierarchizing activity.War is long and never-ending. Furthermore, it is selective and hierarchical; it designates spaces and borders. There we have the definition of war in postmodemity. We could take this further. In modernity, war created order through peace. In Hobbes we see war as a conflictual moment of all against all and only at the end, through peace, was order delivered up. Today, on the contrary, order is not arrived at through the ending of war, but through a continuous promotion of war. It is through this permanent action of war that the functions of control and discipline are proposed and applied. If order is not arrived at through bringing war to an end, but by promoting discipline and control through a continuous promotion of war, if war is itself the very form of biopower, then the question of defining the enemy becomes central. Here the enemy needs to be continuously constructed and invented; paradoxically, he cannot be defeated, or, if he has been defeated, another enemy must immediately be found. The enemy is public danger, he is the symptom of a disorder needing to be ordered. In other words, he is the threat that is posed by the very presence of the multitude. This threat must in some way be disciplined and controlled. Every subject can be an enemy of the Empire. Every subject can be a public danger
and qua multitude of singularities, can be defined as a limit of power

IMPACT:GENOCIDE
Capitalism reduces all of humanity to their ability to produce monetary valuemaking genocide inevitable.

KOVEL02(JOEL,PROFESSOROFSOCIALSTUDIESATBARDCOLLEGE,THEENEMYOFNATURE,P.140141)
The precondition of an ecologically rational attitude toward nature is the recognition that nature far surpasses us and has its own intrinsic value, irreducible to our practice. Thus we achieve differentiation from nature. It is in this light that we would approach the question of transforming practice ecologically or, as we now recognize to be the same thing, dialectically. The monster that now bestrides the world was born of the conjugation of value and dominated labour. From the former arose the quantification of reality, and, with this, the loss of the
differentiated recognition essential for ecosystemic integrity; from the latter emerged a kind of selfhood that could swim in these icy waters. From this standpoint one might call capitalism a regime of the ego, meaning that under its auspices a kind of estranged self emerges as the mode of capitals reproduction. This self is not merely prideful the ordinary connotation of egotistical more fully, it is the ensemble of those relations that embody the domination of nature from one side, and, from the other, ensure the reproduction of capital. This ego is the latest version of the purified male principle, emerging aeons after the initial gendered domination became absorbed and rationalized as profitability and self-maximization (allowing suitable powerwomen to join the dance). It is a pure culture of splitting and non-recognition: of itself, of the otherness of nature and of the nature of others. In terms of the preceding discussion, it is the elevation of the merely individual and isolated mind-as-ego into a reigning principle. Capital produces egotistic relations, which reproduce capital. The isolated selves of the capitalist order can choose to become personifications of capital, or may have the role thrust upon them. In either case, they embark upon a pattern of non-recognition mandated by the fact that the almighty dollar interposes itself between all elements of experience: all things in the world, all other persons, and between the self and its world: nothing really exists except in and through monetization. This set-up provides an ideal culture medium for the bacillus of competition and ruthless self-maximization. Because money is all that counts, a peculiar heartlessness characterizes capitalists, a tough-minded and cold abstraction that will sacrifice species, whole continents (viz. Africa) or inconvenient sub-sets of the population (viz. black urban males) who add too little to the great march of surplus value or may be seen as standing in its way. The presence of value screens out genuine fellow-feeling or compassion, replacing it with the calculus of profit-expansion. Never has a holocaust been carried out so impersonally. When the Nazis killed their victims, the crimes were accompanied by a racist drumbeat; for global capital, the losses are regrettable necessities.

IMPACT:RACISM
CANTSOLVERACISMWITHOUTADDRESSINGCAPITALISM. Young,NEWYORKUNIVERSITY,2006(ROBERT,PUTTINGMATERIALISMBACKINTORACETHEORY:TOWARDA
TRANSFORMATIVETHEORYOFRACE,REDCRITIQUE.ORG)

<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 effectsin 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 capitalisma 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 racea 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 societya 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.

PURSUIT OF THE FREE MARKET NECESSITATES SEGREGATION OF PEOPLES THEIR ECONOMIC EGOTISM IS THE NEW WAVE OF RACIST EXTREMISM IF THEIR POLITICS ARE RACIST ITS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM TO PRODUCE LIBERTYTURNSTHEETHICSIMPACT Zizek2008SlavojViolencep101104
A couple of years ago, an ominous decision of the European Union passed almost unnoticed: the plan to establish an all-European border police force to secure the isolation of Union territory and thus to prevent the influx of immigrants. This is the truth of globalisation: the construction of new walls safeguarding prosperous Europe from the immigrant flood. One is tempted to resuscitate here the old Marxist humanist opposition of relations between things and relations between persons: in the much-celebrated free circulation opened up by global capitalism, it is things (commodities) which freely circulate, while the circulation of persons is more and more controlled. We are not dealing now with globalisation as an unfinished project but with

a true dialectics of globalisation: the segregation of the people is the reality of economic globalisation. This new racism of the developed is in a way much more brutal than the previous ones: its implicit legitimisation is neither naturalist (the natural superiority of the developed West) nor any longer culturalist (we in the West also want to preserve our cultural identity), but unabashed economic egotism. The fundamental divide is one between those included in the sphere of (relative) economic prosperity and those excluded from it.

IMPACT:PATRIARCHY
CAP
IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF PATRIARCHY: PATRIARCHY CANNOT BE CHANGED WITHIN THE CAPITALIST STRUCTURE.THEREFOREONEMUSTGETRIDOFCAPITALISMINORDERTOACHIEVEEQUALITY.

Meszaros, Istvan (Hungarian Marxist philosopher and Professor Emeritus at U. Sussex. Beyond Capital: Toward a
Theory of Transition. p. 289) Thus, given the economically secured extraction of surplus-labour and the corresponding mode of political decision making under the private capitalist order of social metabolic reproduction, there can be absolutely no room in it for the feminist agenda of substantive equality which would require a radical restructuring of both the constitutive cells and the overall structural framework of the established system. No one in their right mind could even dream about instituting such changes through the political machinery of the capitalist order, in no matter how high an office, without exposing themselves to the danger of being
labelled female Don Quixotes. There is no danger of introducing the feminist agenda even by surprise in capitalist systems, since there can be no room at all for it in the strictly circumscribed framework of political decision making destined to the role of facilitating the most efficient economic extraction of surplus-labour. Thus it is by no means accidental that the Indhira Gandhis, Margaret Thatchers and Mrs Bandaranaikes of this

world -and the last one despite her original radical left credentials -did not advance in the slightest the cause of women's emancipation; if anything, quite the opposite. The situation is very different in the postcapitalist systems of social metabolic reproduction and
political decision making. For, in virtue of their key position in securing the required continuity of surplus-labour extraction, they can initiate wholesale changes in the ongoing reproduction process through direct political intervention. Thus the determination of the political personnel is of a very different order here, in that its potential orientation is in principle much more open than under capitalism. For notwithstanding the mythology of the 'open Society (propagandized by authoritarian enemies like Hayek and Popper), under capitalism the objectives and mechanisms of 'market society' remain unreliable taboos, strictly delineating the mandate and the unquestioning orientation of the political personnel who cannot and would not contemplate seriously interfering with the established economic extraction of surplus-labour; not even in its socialdemocratic embodiment. This difference in potential openness in the two systems creates in principle also a space for introducing elements of the feminist agenda, as indeed the shortlived postrevolutionary attempts testify to it in Russia. However, the potential openness cannot be actualized on a lasting basis under the postcapitalist rule of capital, since the hierarchically managed extraction of surplus-labour reasserts itself as the crucial determining characteristic of the social metabolism also under the changed circumstances. Thus the whole question of political mandate must be suitably redefined, nullifying the possibility of both 'representation' (characteristic of the capitalist parliamentary setup, with the totally unquestioning mandate of the representatives towards the established economic mode of surplus-labour extraction and capital accumulation) and 'delegation', which used to characterize much of the socialist literature on the subject. An absolutely unquestionable,

depersonalized political authority the Party of the Party-state -must be superimposed over the individual political personnel under the postcapitalist rule of capital, articulated in the form of the strictest hierarchical command structure, oriented towards the maximal politically regulated extraction of surplus-labour. This is what apriori excludes all possibility of 'making room for the feminist agenda'. Given the significantly different role of politics in the two systems, under capitalism women may be safely allowed to occupy at times even the highest political position, whereas under posrcapitalist conditions they must be unceremoniously excluded from it. Under the postcapitalist system, therefore, even the limited attempts of women to establish a new type of family relation in furtherance of their age-old aspirations, which spontaneously surfaced in the immediate postrevolutionary years, must be liquidated. For inasmuch as the politically secured and safeguarded maximal extraction of surplus-labour remains the vital orienting principle of the social metabolism, with its necessarily hierarchical command structure, the question of women's emancipation, with its demand for substantive equality -and by implication: for a radical restructuring of the established social order, from its smallest constitutive cells to its most comprehensive coordinating organs -cannot be entertained for a moment.

IMPACT:OPPRESSION
CAPITALISMISTHEROOTCAUSEOFOPPRESSION Scott,ProfPostColonialLit&Theory@UVermont,2006 (Helen, Reading the Text in its Worldly Situation: Marxism, Imperialism, and Contemporary Caribbean Womens Literature, Postcolonial Text, 2.1,
http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/viewArticle/491/174) For Gedalofs study, the material coordinates of oppression are secondary to the conceptual space where the social and the self meet within particular discourses of gender, race, national and class identities (2). Her focus is on narratives and discourses and she subscribes to a Foucauldian understanding of power as not just a privilege possessed by a dominant group; it is rather exercised by and through us all, situated as we are in multiple networks of nonegalitarian and mobile relations (19). This formulation effectively jettisons the primacy of social structures and class

antagonism and instead generalizes power as something omnipresent, equating the expression of a system of ideas with the exercise of social domination.[6] It thus has much in common with the post-Althusserian rejection of economism and reprioritization of
ideology and disposal of Althussers rather nebulous but necessary affirmation of the primacy of the material in the last instance in favor of a conception of ideology as absolutely autonomous (Brenner 12-13). The problem with discourse theory is that once ideology is severed from material reality it no longer has any analytical usefulness, for it becomes impossible to posit a theory of determination of historical change based on contradiction (Brenner, paraphrasing Michle Barrett, 13). Marxists understand class in contrast not as an identity but rather as a material relationship to the governing mode of production.[7] In extension, all forms of oppression racial, national, gender and sexual have specific material causes and effects and are shaped by the compulsions of capitalism.[8] As Deborah Levenson-Estrada maintains in a study of women union activists in 1970s Guatemala: There is no more important or prior issue class or gender these are inside one another, and the struggle against gender conventions and sexist ideologies is integral to any project of liberation. A critical consciousness about class needs a critical consciousness about gender, and vice versa (227).

IMPACT:EXTINCTION
CAPITALISMDRIVESMILITARISTICEXPANSIONISMTHATTHREATENSALLLIFE. Foster5(John Bellamy, Oregon University Department of Sociology Professor. Monthly Review, Naked Imperialism September 2005. http://www.monthlyreview.org/0905jbf.htm AD 7/8/09)
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 Istvn Mszros 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 planetno matter how largeputting 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 meanseven the most

extreme authoritarian and, if needed, violent military onesat 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 administrations refusal to sign the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the Kyoto Protocol as a first step in controlling global warming. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense (in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) Robert McNamara stated in an article entitled Apocalypse Soon in the MayJune 2005 issue of Foreign Policy: The United States has never endorsed the policy of no first use, not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been and remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weaponsby the decision of one person, the presidentagainst 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 fitsetting 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 worlds total) has become the greatest obstacle to addressing global warming and the worlds growing environmental problemsraising the possibility of the collapse of civilization itself if present trends continue.

UNRESTRAINEDCAPITALISMLEADSTOEXTINCTION Harman,EditoroftheSocialstWorker1997(Chris,Economicsofthemadhouse,Pg901)
The system may have entered a new phase. But the way it operates is not new. It is, in its essentials exactly the way described by Marx The only sense in which Marx is outdated is not that the system is more rational than he thought but rather his picture understates the destructiveness of the system.

Capitalists do not merely battle against each other on the markets. They also use the state to force rival capitalists to accept their dictates, supplementing economic competition with displays of military prowess. American capitalism seeks to persuade
European and Japanese capitalism to accept its dictates by proving that it alone has the power to wage war in the vital oil rich regions of the middle east; Iranian and Turkish capitalists rely on the help of their states as they compete with each other for influence and contracts in the southern belt of the former USSR; Turkish and Greek capitalists encourage a mini-arms race as each seeks to establish a dominate role in the Balkan countries once controlled by Russia; Germany backs Croatia, the US backs Bosnian Muslims, and Greece backs the Serbs to the horrific wars in the former Yugoslavia; the Russian military wage vicious wars to hang onto vital oil pipelines through Chechnya and in the Tadjik republic bordering Afghanistan; China the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam clash over control of the oil reserves thought to lie close to the uninhabited islands in the China Sea; Israel tries to carve Egypt out from economic influence in the Arabian peninsula. The result is that at any point in time there are half a dozen wars or civil wars using

the most horrendous forms for conventional weaponry in one part of the world or another. Alongside the slaughter and devastation afflicting ever wider sections of humanity is another threat to us all which is hardly visible in Marxs time- the threat of destruction of the environment we depend on to survive. Marx and Engels were fully aware that the mad drive to capital accumulation led to
pollution, the poisoning of the ground and air, the adulteration of foodstuffs and the spread of horrific epidemics. Engels wrote vividly of these things in his book Anti-duhring. But they lived in a time when capitalist industry was confined to relatively small areas of the globe and the devastation was local devastation, affecting chiefly the workers employed in a particular factory, mill or mining village. Today capitalist industry operates on a global scale and its impact is on the global environment- as is shown by the way in which radioactive clouds over Chernobyl spread across the whole of Europe, by the way in which the seas are being fished clean of fish, by the damage to the ozone layer by the gases used in aerosols and refrigerators. Above all there is the threat of the greenhouse gases destabilizing the whole worlds climate, flooding low lying countries turning fertile regions into desert

IMPACT:EXTINCTION
CAPITALISMMAKESEXTINCTIONINEVITABLE. CALLINICOS, DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN STUDIES AT KINGS COLLEGE, IN 04 [ALEX, THE REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS OF KARL
MARX, 2004 PG. 196-197]

Capitalism has not changed its spots. It is still based on the exploitation of the working class, and liable to constant crises. The conclusion that Marx drew from this analysis, that the working class must overthrow the system and replace it with a classless society , is even more urgent now than in his day. For the military rivalries which are the form increasingly assumed by competition between capitals now threaten the very survival of the planet. As Marxs centenary approached, the fires of war flickered across the globein Lebanon,
Iran and Iraq, Kampuchea, southern Africa, the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan and the South Atlantic. The accumulation of vast armouries of nuclear destruction by the superpowers, missilerattling in the Kremlin, talk of limited and protracted nuclear war in Washingtonthese cast a shadow over the whole of humanity. Socialist revolution is an imperative if we are to change a world in the grip of economic depression and war fever, a world where 30 million rot on Western dole queues and 800 million go hungry in the Third World. To that extent, Marxs ideas are more relevant today than they were 100 years ago. Capitalism has tightened its grip of iron on every portion of the planet since 1883, and is rotten-ripe for destruction, whether at its own hands through nuclear war, or at the hands of the working class. The choice is between workers power or the common ruination of the contending classesbetween socialism or barbarism. Many people who genuinely wish to do something to remedy the present state of the world believe that this stress on the working class is much too narrow. The existence

of nuclear weapons threatens everyone, whether workers or capitalists or whatever. Should not all classes be involved in remedying a problem which affects them all? What this ignores is that what Edward Thompson has called exterminism the vast and competing military apparatuses which control the arms raceis an essential part of the working of capitalism today. No sane capitalist desires a nuclear war (although some insane ones who believe that such a war would be the prelude to the Second Coming now hold positions of influence in Washington). But sane or insane, every capitalist is part of an economic system which is bound up with military competition between nation-states. Only a class with the interest and power to do away with capitalism can halt the march to Armageddon. Marx always conceived of the working class as the class whose own self emancipation would also be the liberation of the rest of humanity. The socialist revolution to whose cause he devoted his life can only be, at one and the same time, the emancipation of the working class and the liberation of all the oppressed and exploited sections of society. Those who accept the truth of Marxs views cannot rest content with a mere intellectual commitment. There are all too many of this sort around, Marxists content to live off the intellectual credit of Capital, as
Trotsky described them. We cannot simply observe the world but must throw ourselves, as Marx did, into the practical task of building a revolutionary party amid the life and struggles of the working class. The philosophers have interpreted the world, wrote Marx, the point, however, is to change it. If Marxism is correct, then we must act on it.

ABSENTATRANSITIONAWAYFROMCAPITALISM,SOCIETYWILLSUCCUMBTOANIRRATIONALHYSTERICIZATION OFSELFPRESERVATION,CAUSINGECOLOGICALCATASTROPHE,FAMINE,DISEASE,WAR,ANDEXTINCTIONOFALL LIFEONTHEPLANET.

Deborah Cook, Professor of Philosophy, University of Windsor, 2006, Staying Alive: Adorno and Habermas on Self-Preservation Under Late Capitalism.
In the final analysis, society

must be fundamentally transformed in order rationally to accommodate instincts that now run wild owing to our forgetfulness of nature in ourselves. By insisting on mindfulness of nature in the self, Adorno champions a form of rationality that
would tame self-preservation, but in contrast to Habermas, he thinks that the taming of self-preservation is a normative task rather than an accomplished fact. Because self-preservation remains irrational, we now encounter serious environmental problems like those connected with global warming

and the greenhouse effect, the depletion of natural resources, and the death of more than one hundred regions in our oceans. Owing to self-preservation gone wild, we have colonized and destabilized large parts of the world, adversely affecting the lives of millions, when we have not simply enslaved or murdered their inhabitants outright. Famine and disease are often the result of ravaging the land in the name of survival imperatives. Wars are waged in the name of self-preservation: with his now notoriously invisible weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was said to represent a serious threat to the lives of citizens in the West. The war against terrorism, waged in the name of self-preservation, has seriously undermined human rights and civil liberties; it has also been used to justify the murder, rape, and torture of thousands. As it now stands, the owners of the means of production ensure our survival through profits that, at best, only trickle down to the poorest members of society. Taken in charge by the capitalist economy, selfpreservation now dictates that profits increase exponentially to the detriment of social programs like welfare and health care. In addition, self-preservation has gone wild because our instincts and needs are now firmly harnessed to commodified offers of satisfaction that deflect and distort them. Having surrendered the task of self-preservation to the economic and political systems, we remain in thrall to untamed survival instincts that could well end up destroying not just the entire species, but all life on the planet.

IMPACTCALC

PROOF:CONCENTRATIONOFCAPITAL
CAPITALISASCONCENTRATEDASEVER.LENINWASRIGHT. CHRISTIAN FUCHS, UNIFIED THEORY OF INFORMATION RESEARCH GROUP, UNIVERSITY OF SALZBURG, CRITICAL GLOBALIZATION STUDIES: AN EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NEW IMPERIALISM, SDMCE & SOCIETY, VOL. 74. NO. 2, APRIL 2010,
215-24
"Theenormousgrowthofindustryandtheremarkablyrapidprocessofconcentrationofproductionineverlargerenterprisesrepresentoneofthe mostcharacteristicfeaturesofcapitalism"(Lenin,1917,178).Lenin identified an antagonism between competition and monopolies an immanent feature of capitalism(180,185,236,260f).TheformationofmonopoliesandtheconcentrationofcapitalareforLeninnotan exceptiontotheruleofcompetition,butanecessaryoutcomeofcapitalistcompetition.ConcentrationindicatorsthatLeninusedincluded:the developmentofthenumberoflargeenterprises,theshareofworkersintheeconomythatareemployedbylargeenterprises,andtheshareof outputinanindustrythatisproducedbylargeenterprises.In order to assess if there is a new imperialism, one has to find out if capital concentration is a feature of contemporary capitalism.Withinsuchaframework,onecananalyzeconcentrationintheinformation sector. Concentration generally means that a small number of enterprises controls a large share of assets (suchascapital,workers, infrastructure).DatafromEurostattellthestor):Large companies in the EUs 27 countries(thosewithmorethan250employees)

account for only 0.2% of the total number of enterprises, but for 32.9% of all employees, 42.5% of total turnover, and 42.4% of total value added.Industries have become more concentrated throughmergersandacquisitions(M&A).Soasharpriseinthetotal numberandvalueofmergersandacquisitionsislikelytoindicateincreasingconcentrafion.The total value of annual worldwide mergers and acquisitions has sharply increased, from US$74.5 billion in 1987 to 880.5 billion in 2006(Table1).In total numbers of M&:<\
this means an increase from 863 annual M&A in 1987 to 6974 in 2006 (Table 1). Figure 1 shows that the finance sector accounted for the largest share of these M&A in 2006: 24.6% (1717) of all M&A, whereas the transport, storage and commtmication sector accotinted for 5.4% (379) of all M&A and tbe printing and ptiblishing indttstries accounted for 2.0% ( 142). All of these sectors have experienced dramatic rises in the ntimber of M&A. but the largest and most rapid increase is in finance, which is an indication that finance is the most heavily concetUrated sector (finance is excluded ftom the Eurostat data cited above). The data presented in this section suggest that the first characteristic of Lenin's definition of imperialism, capital concentration, is valid today. Manufacturing, seivices, and finance are highly concentrated industries.

PROOF:DOMINATIONOFFINANCE
THEGLOBALECONOMYISOVERWHELMINGLYDOMINATEDBYFINANCEMARKETS.LENINWASRIGHT.
Christian Fuchs, Unified Theory of Information Research Group, University of Salzburg, Critical Globalization Studies: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis of the New Imperialism, Sdmce & Society, Vol. 74. No. 2, April 2010, 215-24 Einance capital "is the bank capital of the few big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist combines of manufacturers" (Lenin, 1917, 237). Under imperialism, finance capital commands "almost the whole of the money capital of all the capitalists and small businessmen and also a large part of the means of production and of the sources of raw materials of the given countiy and of a number of countries" (Lenin, 1917, 190). The banks' control of the flow of investment money that is used for operating corporations gives them huge economic power for controlling the capitalist economy (194). Lenin mentioned that banks are influential in accelerating technical progress (202). Capital concentration and the formation of finance capital are connected developments (203). Finance capital aims at generating extraordinarily high rates of profit (210). A finance oligarchy consisting of rentiers emerges in the imperialist stage (213). The indicators that Lenin used for verifying this second characteristic of imperialism included: the percentage of total deposits controlled by banks of a certain size (measured by total controlled capital) ; the number of holdings and establishments of certain banks; the number of letters received and dispatched by certain banks; the amount of capital held by certain banks; the capital invested by certain banks in a country; the profit rate of certain banks; and the total securities issued by certain banks. I have analyzed the Forhe,s 2000 list of the world's 2000 biggest companies in 2008, by sector. The results are presented in Eigure 2. Finance

companies and financial service corporations together accounted for the vast share of capital assets in 2008 (75.96%). The second largest sector was oil, gas, and utilities (5.82%). The third largest sector was the information sector (4.63%),
comprised (for Statistical reasons) of the following subdomains; telecommunications, technology hardware and equipment, media content, software, and semiconductors. The data indicate an economic predominance of finance. The data in Figure 2 are for the year 2007. Data for 2008, the year a new worldwide economic crisis started, show that the fmancial sector suffered tremendoiLs losses: The world's biggest 176 diversified financial corporations had combined losses of $46,27 billion, the world's 92 largest insurance companies had losses of $61.8 billion. Nonetheless, the fuiancial sector still accounted for 74.9% of all assets of the world's 2000 largest corporations, oil, gas 8c utilities for 6.2% and the information economy for 4.6%. This are only minor changes in comparison to 2007, which shows that the economic crisis did not undermine the intra-capitalist hegemony of financial capital. Figure 3 shows the growth of financial asset transactions by investment fLmds, insurance corporations, and pension funds for two selected countries, the United States and Japan. The value of financial transactions by U. S. insurance corporations and pension funds

increased from 51.7% ofthe U. S. GDP in 1980 to 122.92% of GDP in 2007; the value of financial transactions by U. S. investment funds increased from 5.3% of GDP in 1980 to 85.9% of GDP in 2007. In Japan, insurance and pensions corporations and
pension funds increased the value of their financial tran.sacl,ions from 21.6% of GDP in 1980 to 75.6% of GDP in 2006; investment funds from 16.0% to 72.7%. The perception that speculative finance capital dominates contemporary economies has in recent years resulted in the emergence of concepts such as finance market capitalism (Bischoff. 2006; Huffschmid, 2002) or financial accumulation regime {Aglietta, 2000; Chesnais, 2004; Zeiler, 2004b) for describing contemporai7 society. Statistical data confirm that today the second criterion of Lenin's definition of imperialism is valid . Finance capital has grown tremendously in the past 30 years and commands "almost the whole of the money capital" (Lenin, 1917, 190). Its assets are so large that it has the power to infiuence all other economic sectors. Since the beginning ofthe 1980s, finance capital has increased its infiuence, importance, and concentration after it was subsumed under industrial capital in the 60 years preceding 1980. The emergence of liberalized global financial markets has enabled these developments. There are new qualities of finance capital today that were not present at the time of Lenin. Today, the financial market is more than stocks and bonds: there is the powerful influence of insurance companies, pension funds, investment funds, and there are new financial instrutnents stich as finance drivtes (exchange-traded futures, exchange-traded options, over-the-counter swaps, over-the-counter futures, over-the-counter options), insurance markets, foreign exchange markets. These mechanisms have increased short-tenn financial profits, but simultaneously advanced the gap between financial values (what Marx termed fictitious capital) and actually accumulated values (between finance and economic commodity prodtiction) so tbat finance markets have become highly volafile. Excellent examples are stibprime lending and mortgage-backed securities, high-risk financial mechanisms that have been at the heart of the financial crisis that originated in the financialization of the U. S. housing market and hit the world economy in 2008. Finance capital is the dominant fraction of capital, which shows that an important characteristic of imperialistic capitalism is present today.

PROOF:EXPORTATIONOFCAPITAL
THEGLOBALECONOMYISENTIRELYDEPENDENTONEXPORTEDCAPITAL.LENINWASRIGHT.
Christian Fuchs, Unified Theory of Information Research Group, University of Salzburg, Critical Globalization Studies: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis of the New Imperialism, Sdmce & Society, Vol. 74. No. 2, April 2010, 215-24 "Under modern capitalism, when monopolies prevail, the export of capital has become tbe typical feature"(Lenin,1917,215).

The goal is to achieve high profits by exporting capital to countries where "capital is scarce, the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap"(Lenin,1917,216).IndicatorsthatLeninusedforverifyingthethirdcharacteristicof
imperialismincludedtheabsoluteamountofcapitalinvestedabroadbycertainnations,andthegeographicaldistributionofforeigndirect investment.Foreigndirectinvestment(FDI)asanindicatorforcapitalexportrepresentsonlyafractionoftotalinvestmentinoverseasproduction (Held,etai,1999,237;HeldandMcGrew,2007,91;theseauthorsmentionashareof25%).HirstandThompson(1999,77,79,87)arguethatFDI measuresonlywhatcompaniesinvestintheirforeignaffiliates,butnotwhattheyinvestintheirhomecountries.AlthoughFDImightnotbefully reliableastheonlyindicator,itnonethelessgives an indication of the level of global activities of corporations.Tables2and3showthat

FDI flows have increased from approximately 0.5% of world GDP at the beginning of the 1970s to a share between 2% and 4.5% since the end of the millennium.FDI stocks have increased from a level of about 5% of world GDP at the beginning of the 1980s to 25% of world GDP in 2006. This does not prove that capital accumulation is global, but it is an indication that in comparison to the phase of Fordist capitalism, capital export through global outsourcing of production in order to t educe labor costs and fixed costs has become more important. The economy has become more global in the past 30 years in comparison to tbe years 1945-1975. The trans nationality
index provided by the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is calculated as the average of ibur shares: FDI inf iows into a country as a percentage of gross fixed capital formation for the past three years; FDI inward stocks as a percentage of GDP; valtie added of foreign affiliates as a percentage of GDP; and employment of foreign affiliates as a percentage of total employment in 2005. The simple average for developed countries for the year 2005 is 24.4%, for developing countries 21.8%, and for transition countries 19.6% (World Inve.stment Report, 2008). These data seem to confirm calculations by Hirst and Thompson (1999,79-87) that show that "between 65 and 70 per cent of MNG value-added continues to be produced on the home territory" (Hirst and Thompson, 1999, 95). In the EU27 countries, 16% of the companies engage in international sourcing, 4% plan to engage in it, and 80% do not engage and do not plan to engage in it (Eurostat). In 2006, the top 100 TNGs listed in the World Investment Report had an average transnationality index of 61.6% (WIR, 2008, 28), which shows that large multi- and trans- nationals indeed do have transnational value sources. The biggest 2000 TNCs had sales of $1414.95 billion in 2007 (calculation based on Forbes 2000, 2008). In 2007, world GDP was 54,347,037,614,014 current $US. Worldwide compatiy revenues made up 27% of world GDP, which is approximately $14,673 billion (World Development Indicators). So the biggest 2000 TNGs accounted for 9.6% of the worldwide reventues in 2007. These data show that we do not fully live in a globalized economy, but that transnational corporations have become vexy important economic actors that manage to centralize

a significant share of worldwide value generated to a large degree not in their home economies, but at the transnational level. Transnationalization is an important tendency in the contemporar)' capitalist economy. The most important reason for international sourcing for European companies is the reduction of labor costs: 45% of EU27 companies with sourcing activities say that this is an very important motivational
factor, 28.5% say it is an important one, and only 9.9% say it is an unimportant factor (Eurostat). The two other most important reasons mentioned are reduction of costs other than labor costs and access to new markets. This confirms that transnational sourcing .should be conceptualized within a theory of imperialistic capitalism. Foreign direct investments have significantly increased in the past 30 years, as production has become more global. The world economy is still significantly rooted in national economies, but transnational corporations engage in global outsourcing of labor in order to save labor and other costs and to increase profits. By transnational production and investment activities, they have managed to centralize a significant share of worldwide economic value. Capital export, the third characteristic of imperialism mentioned by Lenin, has in comparison to the period 1945-1975 become far more important, perhaps qualitatively so. The growth of FDI inflows and outflows shows that the economy has become more global in the past 30 years in comparison to 1945- 1975. The largest TNCs in the world have operations that are predominantly global, i.e., located outside the home bases of these firms. This applies for sales, assets, and employees of these companies. The data confirm the

presence of Lenin's third characteristic of imperialism today.

PROOF:ECONOMICDIVISION
THEWORLDISINCREASINGLYSTRIATEDALONGCORPORATELINES.LENINWASRIGHT.
Christian Fuchs, Unified Theory of Information Research Group, University of Salzburg, Critical Globalization Studies: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis of the New Imperialism, Sdmce & Society, Vol. 74. No. 2, April 2010, 215-24 Lenin argued that under imperialism, big companies dominate the economy. They divide among themselves spheres of influence and markets and make use of cartels, syndicates, and trusts. Finance capital struggles "for the sources of raw materials, for the export of capital, for 'spheres of influence,' i.e., for spheres of good business, concessions, monopolist profits, and so on; in fine, for economic territory in general" (Lenin, 1917, 266). Lenin used the following indicators for the fourth characteristic: tbe number of sub-companies of certain corporations, the development of turnover, number of employees, and net profits of specific big companies. Whereas the third characteristic focuses more on economic activities that cross nation-state borders and the economic benefits that derive from them, the fourth characteristic covers the spatial dimension of tbese activities. This distinction is indicated by the term "division of the world among capitalist combines" (characteristic four) in contrast to the term "the export of capital" (characteristic three). The two characteristics are nonetheless certainly closely linked. Figure 4 shows that the share of developed

countries in total FDI inflows has fluctuated between 55% and 90% and the share of developing countries between 10% and 45%. Overall, capital export has remained an unequal affair. The vast bulk of transnational investments stays within developed countries. Developing countries remain marginalized, although there are times when they achieve significant increases. In 1970, the developing
economies accounted for 28.7% of FDI inflows, in 2006 for 29.0%. So overall, there has not been much change. FDI outflows have continuously been very unequal since the 1970s, although the developing countries have increased their overall share (Table 4). The preponderance of investment comes from developed countries. The developed countries' share in FDI outflows has dropped from 99.6% in 1970 to 84.1% in 2006. There is a more significant change in FDI outflows than in inflows. Lenin (1917,217) cited a statistic that displays the distribution of the total foreign direct investments of Great Britain, France, and Germany in 1910: 32.1% were invested in Europe, 36.4% in America, and 31.4% in Asia, Africa, Australia. This shows that capital export was at the beginning of the 20th centuiy, just as at the beginning of the 21st, shaped by global inequality. Figure 5 shows that Europe is the most important receiver o FDI. In 2006, it accounted for 44% of all FDI iriflows, North America for 19.2%. ' : The most important change in FDI since the 1970s has been the increase of FDI inflows in Asian developing economies (Figure 6). The FDI infiow share of developing economies in Asia increased from 6.4% in 1970 to 19.9% in 2006; the infiow share of Latin America changed from 11.9% in 1970 to 12.7% in 2004 and 6.4% in 2006; the infiow share of Africa decreased from 9.4% in 1970 to 2.7% in 2006. Africa and large parts of Latin America are excluded from capital investment. Asia has attracted significant infiows. This is an important qtialitative change in the landscape of capital export. China is the most important developing location for FDI inflows; it increased its share from 0.000187% in 1970 to 13.3% in 1994, wbich then again dropped to 9.5% in 2003 and 5.3% in 2006. Nonetheless, the data show that China has become an important location for capital exports. Another significant change in capital export has been the decline of the United States as leading investor and the rise of Europe as leading investing region. In 2006, Europe accounted for 55.0% of FDI outflows and North America for 21.9% (see Figure 7). North America's leading position at the beginning of the 197()s has vanished; its capita! exports have decreased by 40 percentage points, from a 60% share to a 20% share. Developing economies in Asia have become more important in capital export (Eigure 8): They accotuited for only 0.007% of FDI outflows in 1970 and for 9.6% in 2006. Ghina (including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) accounted for 5.6% of these 9.6% in 2006. The rise of China as important capital exporter and importer has been the most significant change in the past 30 years in the world ecotiomy. In terms of capital export, China is now more important than Japan, which accounted for 3.8% of capital exports in 2006. Latin America increased its share in world capital exports from 0.2% in 1970 to 4.0% in 2006, Africa's share changed from 0.21 % to 0.7%. Africa is defacto excluded from capital export and import. The world economy has remained in

the past 50 years a geographically strongly divided class system. Lenin's fourth characteristic of imperialism, the asymmetric spatial division of the world economy, is valid today.

PROOF:POLITICALDIVISION*
GLOBAL CAPITALISM NECESSARY RESULTS IN A NEW AND MORE INTENSE FORM OF IMPERIALISM. IRAQ AND AFGHANISTANPROVETHATGLOBALPOWERWARSAREPRINCIPALLYABOUTTHEEXPANSIONOFCAPITAL.
Christian Fuchs, Unified Theory of Information Research Group, University of Salzburg, Critical Globalization Studies: An Empirical and Theoretical Analysis of the New Imperialism, Sdmce & Society, Vol. 74. No. 2, April 2010, 215-24

Lenin defined the fifth characteristic of imperialism as the "monopolistic possession of the territories of the world which have been completely divided up" (Lenin, 1917, 237). Each dominant state exploits and draws super-profits from a part ofthe world.
"Each of them, by means of trusts, cartels, finance capital, and debtor and creditor relations, occupies a monopoly position on the world market" (253). Lenin argues that under imperialism, all territories on the globe have come under the inlluence of capitalist countries. A re-division would be possible at any time, but not a new seizure. In imperialism, there are not just simply colonies and colony-owning countries, but also semi-colonies, politically independent countries, which are "enmeshed in the net of financial and diplomatic dependence" (234). Normal dependence under imperialism becomes "a link in the chain of operations of world finance capital" (235). Indicators that Lenin uses for the fifth characteristic include: the development of the percentage of territories that belong to the European colonial powers, and the area and population under the control of certain colonial powers. Panitch and Gindin (2004, 2005) argue that the failure of classical theories of imperialism was their focus on inter-imperial rivalry and a reduction of state power to the economy (a similar critique of Lenin is made by Ahmad, 2004). Lenin never spoke of "inter-imperialist rivalry" as a characteristic feature of imperialism, but he did say that the division of the world has come to an end under imperialism (226f). This means that there is a global rule of capitalist structures. Whether one, two, or more countries dominate,

whether they enter military conflict or economic confiict these circumstances can all be explained as specific historical expressions of this characteristic. Lenin stressed the dynamic character of this division and therefore .speaks of possible re-divisions (Lenin, 1917,
227). The only time Lenin mentioned rivalry in chapter VI of Imperialism was when he said that capitalist corporations try to "make it impossible for their rivals to compete" (232). He wrote that finance capital is the driving force of territorial conflicts: "Finance capital strives to seize the largest possible amount of land of all kinds and in any place it can" (233). This does not mean that there is necessarily an inter-imperialist military rivahy between countries. But it is wrong to conclude that there is no rivalry)- today. So for example the European Union sees the United States as its

biggest economic competitor and has therefore set itself the goal to become "the most competitive and dynamic knowledgebased economy in the worid" until 2010 (Lisbon Agenda). There certainly is economic rivalry, although no major military rivalries between the major countries are present today. However, military interventions such as in Afghanistan and Iraq on the one hand and global terrorism on the other hand show that today there is militaiy rivalry among great powers concerning world influence and in certain parts of the globe. Both economic rivalry and military conflicts are indicative of what Lenin described as conflicts for hegemony between great powers (which must not necessarily be nation-states because "great powers" are powerful
actors, which can also be corporations, not only nationstates) that constitute "an essential feature of imperialism": "rivalry between a number of great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves, as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony" (239). Tbe

United States certainly is the dominant global military power today and has been successful in imposing its will by military means without much resistance by Europe, Rvissia, (^hina, or other countries. The difference in military power can be gauged, for example, by government expenditures. In 2006, tbe EU2.'i countries devoted 10.8% of their total government expenditures to
defen.se, 12.9% to education, and 18.8% to health. By contrast, tbe corresponding shares for the LJnited States in 2008 were 17.1% on defense, 3.2% on education, and 11.2% on health. That the United States is a dominant global military power means only that it bas been successful in being hegemonic, which does not mean that it will never again be challenged by others witb military means. 9 Finance capital today is the dominant form of capital. If there were really a fully American Empire, as Panitch and Gindin say. then finance capital would have to be fully dominated by U. S. institutions. However, of 495 companies that are listed under the categories banking and diversified financiis in the Forbes

20()()\\?,i of the world's biggest companies in 2008, 100 (20.2%) are from the United States, 114 from the European Union (23.0%), and 178 (36.0%)
from countries in East Asia/Southeast Asia/South Asia (China. Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand). This shows that there is not an American finance empire, as claimed by Panitch and Gindin (2005), but that U. S. capital stands in fierce

competition with European and Asian capita!. There are several competing explanations for the U. S. invasion of Afghanistan
and Iraq (see Callinicos, 2003a, 2005, 2007; Harvey, 2005. 2006; Panitch and Gindin, 2004, 2005; Wood, 2003b): securing access to oil as economic resource, securing worldwide geopolitical hegemony, the expansion of U. S. economic power in tbe face of deterioration of the U. S. position in export of capital and commodities and the strong position of Europe and China, the conquest of strategic countries in the Middle East iu order tt) be better equipped for limiting the infiuence of Islamic nations and groups that challenge Western world dominance, or the struggle for the extension of ueoliberal capitalism all over the world. It is imaginable that the these wars are caused by a combination of some or all of these elements. No matter which factors one considers important, the war against Afghanistan and Iraq, global terrorism, and potential future wars against countries like Iran, Pakistan. Syria, Lebanon, Venezuela, or Bolivia, shows that war for securing geopolitical and economic infiuence and hegemony is an inherent feature of the new imperialism and of imperialism in general. Although investment, trade, concentration,

transnationalization, neohberalization, structural adjustment, and financialization are economic strategies of imperialism that do not resort to militaiy means, it is likely that not all territories can be controlled by imperialist powers and that some resistance emerges. In order to contain these counter-movements, overcome crises, and secure economic infiuence for capital, in the last instance warfare is the ultimate outcome, a continuation of imperialism by non-economic means in order to foster economic ends. Statistical data show that economic ends can be important influencing factors for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Table 5 shows that foreign investments have boomed in Afghanistan since 2002 and in Iraq since 2003. Oil is the main economic resource in Iraq. In 2002, 99.3% of all exports from Iraq were fuels. In 2006, this level remained ata high level of 93.9% (UNGTAD). In 2006. the value

of annual Iraq oil exports was 2.3 times the 2002 value. Table 6 shows the increase of Iraq fuel exports in absolute terms. In the same period (2002-2006), as fuel exports from Iraq climbed, the value of oil imports by the US increased by a factor of 2.8 and the value of oil imports by the UK by a factor of 3.8 (Table 7). These data suggest that investment opportunities and resotirce access are important, but certainly not the only factors in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and the UK. In 1988, the annual military expenses of the United States were $484 billion. There was a drop in spending after the end of the Cold War (1998: $329 billion). The new wars in Afghanistan and Iraq resulted in a rise to $441 billion in 2003 and $547 billion in 2007 (all valties in constant US$) (SIPRI Military
Expenditure Database). In 2007, the United States accotmted for the largest share of world military spending (45%), followed by the UK and Ghina (each 5%) {SIPRJ Yearbook 2008). Gomparing annual U. S. military spending for the years 2001 and 2006 shows a growth of 30% for overall expenditure, 47% for military operations and maintenance, and 58% for research, development, test and evaluation {SIPRI Yearbook 2007, 276). In 2006 41 U. S. companies accounted for 63% of the sales of tbe top 100 arms-producing companies in the world (ibid.). In the period 1998-

new imperialism is based on U. S. military hegemony in military outlays and activities. The U. S.-led war in Iraq and -Afghanistan is tbe practical validation of the presence of the fifth characteristic of imperialism today. Military conflicts that aim at territorial control and global hegemony and counterhegemony are immanent features of the new imperialism. Lenin (1917, 264) argues tbat imperialism is leading to annexation and increased oppression and consequently also to increased resistance. 9/11 and the rise of global terrorism can be interpreted as a reaction to global U. S. economic, political, and cultural influence. This has resulted in a vicious cycle of global war that creates and secures spheres of Western infiuence and global terrorism that tries to destroy Western lifestyIes and Western dominance. At the time of Lenin, there was an organized labor movement that resisted imperialism and culminated in the October Revolution. Under the
2007, annual world military expenditures increased by 45%. These data show that the new imperialism, the political left is marginal and hardly influences worid pohtics, which are dominated by Western imperialists and Islamic hardliners. Therefore today there seem to be much less political grounds for emancipatory transformations than at the time of Lenin. In the early 21st century, the formula no longer is "socialism or barbarism," but rather "barbarism or barbarism

PROOF:INEQUALITY
NEOLIBERALCAPITALISMEMPIRICALLYINCREASESINCOMEINEQUALITY,EVENASITPERFORMSWELLBYOTHER ECONOMICMEASURES. Amy Quark, William and Mary College, 2008. [Social Exclusion in the New Economy: Beyond the Digital Divide, Currents 7.2]
While neoliberal policies that structure post-Fordism have been successful overall in terms of economic indicators of success, Diaz et al. (2001) claim that the benefits of economic development, such as wealth, income and formal, stable employment, have been unequally distributeda claim that gains even more cogency when the exploitation of nature is given serious attention. Byrne (1999) suggests that this shift is demonstrated most explicitly in social space through changing patterns of income distribution and available social mobility. The Fordist era of state-mediated capitalism was characterized by rising real living standards and a considerable degree of upward social mobility through expanding educational and occupational opportunities. In contrast, the current era is depicted as creating increasing income inequality and a closure of mobility chances, generated as a result of three broad neoliberal tendencies, specifically: a shift in the share of incomes from labour to capital; a cut in cash welfare transfers to households; and increasing disparities in earned incomes (Byrne, 1999). While the general tendency during the Keynesian era was declining income inequalities (Goodman, Johnson, & Webb, 1997), the income distribution of advanced capitalism, according to Therborn (1985), is undergoing a Brazilianization, characterized by a tripartheid division in social space. In particular, a super-exploitative class of the super rich are contrasted with a squeezed middle of relatively but not absolutely secure workers and a large and emmiserated poor (Byrne, 1999, p. 64). Diaz et al. (2001) explain this phenomenon in terms of a dual process of marginalization and concentration. A few people are experiencing increasing concentration and control of capital; however, to facilitate this, large sectors of the population have been marginalized both from the profits and the security produced by these economic changes. Byrne (1999) insists that this emerging social norm based on a flexible labour market and structural social exclusion is driven by the neoliberal capitalist ideology, the manipulation of political processes, and
the subordination of policies to business interests

STRUCTURALVIOLENCEOUTWEIGHS
THEIR PREOCCUPATION WITH SUBJECTIVE FLASHPOINTS OF VIOLENCE SHOULD BE REJECTED IT CREATES A STOPGAPWHICHPREVENTSCRITICISMSOFTHEROOTCAUSEOFOUTBURSTSOFVIOLENCE.ONLYTHEAFFALONE CANPRODUCEEFFECTIVEPOLITICSAGAINSTCAPITAL Zizek2008SlavojViolencep14
If there is a unifying thesis that runs through the bric-a-brac of reflections on violence that follow, it is that a similar paradox holds true for violence. At

the forefront of our minds, the obvious signals of violence are acts of crime and terror, civil unrest, international conflict. But we should learn to step back, to disentangle ourselves from the fascinating lure of this directly visible subjective violence, violence performed by a clearly identifiable agent. We need to perceive the contours of the background which generates such outbursts. A step back enables us to identify a violence that sustains our very efforts to fight violence and to promote tolerance. This is the starting point, perhaps even the axiom, of the present book: subjective violence is just the most visible portion of a triumvirate that also includes two objective kinds of violence. First, there is a symbolic violence embodied in language and its forms,
what Heidegger would call our house of being. As we shall see later, this violence is not only at work in the obviousand extensively studiedcases of incitement and of the relations of social domination reproduced in our habitual speech forms: there is a more fundamental form of violence still that pertains to language as such, to its imposition of a certain universe of meaning. Second, there is what I call systemic violence, or the often

catastrophic consequences of the smooth functioning of our economic and political systems. The catch is that subjective and objective violence cannot be perceived from the same standpoint: subjective violence is experienced as such against the background of a non-violent zero level. It is seen as a perturbation of the normal, peaceful state of things. However, objective violence is precisely the violence inherent to this normal state of things. Objective violence is invisible since it sustains the very zero-level standard against which we perceive something as subjectively violent. Systemic violence is thus something like the notorious dark matter of physics, the counterpart to an all-too- visible subjective violence. It may be invisible, but it has to be taken into account if one is to make sense of what otherwise seem to be irrational explosions of subjective violence.
When the media bombard us with those humanitarian crises which seem constantly to pop up all over the world, one should always bear in mind that a particular crisis only explodes into media visibility as the result of a complex struggle. Properly humanitarian considerations as a rule play a less important role here than cultural, ideologico-political, and economic considerations. The cover story of Time magazine on 5 June 2006, for example, was The Deadliest War in the World. This offered detailed documentation on how around 4 million people died in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the result of political violence over the last decade. None of the usual humanitarian uproar followed, just a couple of readers lettersas if some kind of filtering mechanism blocked this news from achieving its full impact in our symbolic space. To put it cynically, Time picked the wrong victim in the struggle for hegemony in suffering. It should have stuck to the list of usual suspects: Muslim women and their plight, or the families of 9/11 victims and how they have coped with their losses. The Congo today has effectively re-emerged as a Conradean heart of darkness. No one dares to confront it head on. The death of a West Bank Palestinian child, not to mention an Israeli or an American, is mediatically worth thousands of times more than the death of a nameless Congolese

Do we need further proof that the humanitarian sense of urgency is mediated, indeed overdetermined, by clear political considerations? And what are these considerations? To answer this, we need to step back and take a look from a different position. When the U.S. media reproached the public in foreign countries for not displaying enough sympathy for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, one was tempted to answer them in the words Robespierre addressed to those who complained about the innocent victims of revolutionary terror: Stop shaking the tyrants bloody robe in my face, or I will believe that you wish to put Rome in chains.1 Instead of confronting violence directly, the present book casts six sideways glances. There are reasons for looking at the problem of violence awry. My underlying premise is that there is something inherently mystifying in a direct confrontation with it: the overpowering horror of violent acts and empathy with the victims inexorably function as a lure which prevents us from thinking. A dispassionate
conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth. The problem here is part of the solution: the very factual deficiencies of the traumatised subjects report on her experience bear witness to the truthfulness of her report, since they signal that the reported content contaminated the manner of reporting it. The same holds, of course, for the so-called unreliability of the verbal reports of Holocaust survivors: the witness able to offer a clear narrative of his camp experience would disqualify himself by virtue of that clarity.2 The only appropriate approach to my subject thus seems to be one which permits variations on violence kept at a distance out of respect towards its victims.

STRUCTURALVIOLENCEOUTWEIGHS
THEAFFSELEVATIONOFISOLATEDEXAMPLESOFVIOLENCEOROPPRESSIONISAMODEOFBLACKMAILMEANT
TO COMPEL YOU TO TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION TO REMEDY A PARTICULAR ABUSE RATHER THAN INVESTIGATE THE SYSTEM OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE THAT SUSTAINS SOCIAL RELATIONS. YOU SHOULD RENOUNCE THEIR FASCINATION WITH PURELY SUBJECTIVE VIOLENCE THE RESULT OF ALL THEIR TRYING TO SUPERFICIALLY CHANGETHINGSISTHATEVERYTHINGREMAINSTHESAME.

Zizek2008SlavojViolencep1112
Thereisanoldjokeaboutahusbandwhoreturnshomeearlierthanusualfromworkandfindshiswifeinbedwithanotherman.Thesurprised wifeexclaims:Whyhaveyoucomebackearly?Thehusbandfuriouslysnapsback:Whatareyoudoinginbedwithanotherman?Thewifecalmly replies:Iaskedyouaquestionfirstdonttrytosqueezeoutofitbychangingthetopic!Thesamegoesfor 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.Thelessonisthusthatone 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. The notion of objective violence needs to be thoroughly historicised: it took on a new shape with capitalism .Marxdescribedthe
mad,selfenhancingcirculationofcapital,whosesolipsisticpathofparthenogenesisreachesitsapogeeintodaysmetareflexivespeculationson futures.It is far too simplistic to claim that the spectre of this self-engendering monster that pursues its path disregarding any human or environmental concern is an ideological abstraction andthatbehindthisabstractiontherearerealpeopleandnaturalobjects onwhoseproductivecapacitiesandresourcescapitalscirculationisbasedandonwhichitfeedslikeagiganticparasite.The problem is that this abstraction isnotonlyinourfinancialspeculatorsmisperceptionofsocialreality,butthatitis real in the precise sense of

determining the structure of the material social processes: the fate of whole strata of the population and sometimes of whole countries can be decided by the solipsistic speculative dance of capital, which pursues its goal of profitability in blessed indifference to how its movement will affect social reality.SoMarxspointisnotprimarilytoreducethisseconddimensiontothefirst one,thatis,todemonstratehowthetheologicalmaddanceofcommoditiesarisesoutoftheantagonismsofreallife.Ratherhispointisthatone cannot properly grasp the first (the social reality of material production and social interaction) without the second: it is the self-propelling metaphysical dance of capital that runs the show, that provides the key to real-life developments and catastrophes. Therein resides the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, much more uncanny than any direct pre capitalist socio-ideological violence: this violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their evil intentions, but is purely objective, systemic, anonymous.Here we encounter the Lacanian difference between reality and the Real: reality is the social reality of the actual people involved in interaction and in the productive processes, while the Real is the inexorable abstract, spectral logic of capital that determines what goes on in social reality. One can experience this gap in a palpable way when one visits a country where life is obviously in shambles. We see a lot of ecological decay and human misery. However, the economists report that one reads afterwards informs us that the countrys economic situation is financially soundreality doesnt matter, what matters is the situation of capital...

TAKETHERISK**
PARTANDPARCELOFFIDELITYISTHEACCEPTANCEOFTHEINHERENTRISKANDPOSSIBILITYOFCATASTROPHE
THAT ACCOMPANIES AN IDEA WHICH RADICALLY CHANGES THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL COORDINATES OF EXISTENCE. THE REFUSAL TO RISK THE COMFORTS OF THE STATUS QUO IS A DEATH WISH FOR PROGRESSIVE POLITICS

ZIZEK2009[SLAVOJFIRSTASTRAGEDY,THENASFARCEPAGE7477]
We all know the anti-communist characterization of Marxism as "the Islam of twentieth century:' a secularization of Islam's abstract fanaticism. Pierre-Andre Taguieff, the liberal historian of anti-Semitism, has turned this characterization around: Islam is turning out to be "the Marxism of twenty-first century:' prolonging, after the decline of communism, its violent anti-capitalism. If we take into account Benjamin's idea of fascism occupying the place of the failed revolution, the "rational core" of such inversions can easily be accepted by Marxists. However, it would be totally wrong to draw from this the

conclusion that the most the Left can do is hope that the crisis will be limited, and that capitalism will continue to guarantee a relatively high standard of living for a growing number of people-a strange radical politics whose main hope is that circumstances will continue to render it inoperative and marginal . . . This seems to be the conclusion drawn by some Leftists such as
Moishe Postone and his colleagues: since every crisis which opens up a space for the radical Left also gives rise to anti-Semitism, it is better for us to support successful capitalism and hope there will be no crisis. Taken to its logical conclusion, this reasoning implies that, ultimately, anti- capitalism is, as such, anti-Semitic. It is against such reasoning that one has to read Badiou's motto "mieux vaut un desastre qu'un desetre": one has to take the risk of

fidelity to an Event, even if the Event ends up in an "obscure disaster The best indicator of the Left's lack of trust in itself is its fear of crisis; such a Left fears for its own comfortable position as a critical voice fully integrated into the system, ready to risk nothing. Which is why today, more than ever, Mao Zedong's old motto is pertinent: "Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is
excellent.

A true Left takes a crisis seriously, without illusions, but as something inevitable, as a chance to be fully exploited. The basic insight of the radical Left is that although crises are painful and dangerous they are ineluctable, and that they are the terrain on which battles have to be waged and won. The difference between liberalism and the radical Left is that, although they refer to the same three
elements (liberal center, populist Right, radical Left), they locate them in a radically different topology: for the liberal center, the radical Left and the Right are two forms of the same "totalitarian" excess; while for the Left, the only true alternative is the one between itself and the liberal mainstream, the populist "radical" Right being nothing but the symptom of liberalism's inability to deal with the Leftist threat. When today we hear a politician or an ideologist offering us a choice between liberal freedom and fundamentalist oppression, triumphantly asking (purely rhetorical) questions such as "Do you want women to be excluded from public life and deprived of their elementary rights? Do you want every critic or mocker of religion to be punishable by death?" what should make us suspicious is the very self-evidence of the answer-who would have wanted that? The problem is that such a simplistic liberal universalism long ago lost its innocence. This is why, for a true Leftist, the conflict between liberal permissiveness and fundamentalism is ultimately a

false conflict-a vicious cycle in which two opposed poles generate and presuppose each other. Here one should take an Hegelian step backwards, placing in question the very measure from which fundamentalism appears in all its horror. Liberals
have long ago lost their right to judge. What Horkheimer once said should also be applied to today's fundamentalism: those who do not want to talk (critically) about liberal democracy and its noble principles should also keep quiet about religious fundamentalism. And, even more pointedly, one should emphatically insist that the conflict between the State of Israel and the Arabs is a false conflict: even if we will all come to perish because of it, it is a conflict which only mystifies the true issues. How are we to understand this reversal of an emancipatory thrust into fundamentalist populism? In authentic Marxism, totality is not an ideal, but a critical notion-to locate a phenomenon in its totality does not mean to see the hidden harmony of the Whole, but to include within a system al its "symptoms:' it antagonisms and inconsistencies, as integral parts. In this sense then, liberalism and fundamentalism form a "totality:' for their opposition is structured so that liberalism itself generates its opposite. Where then do the core values ofliberalism-freedom, equality, etc.-stand? The paradox is that liberalism itself is not strong enough to save its own core values from the fundamentalist onslaught. Its problem is that it cannot stand on its own: there is something missing in the liberal edifice. Liberalism is, in its very notion, "parasitic:' relying as it does on a presupposed network of communal values that it

under- mines in the course of its own development. Fundamentalism is a reaction-a false, mystificatory reaction of courseagainst a real flaw inherent within liberalism, and this is why fundamentalism is, over and again, generated by liberalism. Left to itself, liberalism will slowly undermine itself-the only thing that can save its core is a renewed Left. Or, to put it in the well-known terms of 1968, in order for its key legacy to survive, liberalism will need the brotherly help of the radical Left.

TAKETHERISK
TAKETHERISKOFTHEIRIMPACT. SOMETHINGS LIKETHEPRIORITIZATIONOFPEOPLEOVERPROFIT ARE WORTHDYINGFOR. ZIZEK,PROF.OFSOCIOLOGY,UNIVERSITYOFL2003(SLAVOJ,THEPUPPETANDTHEDWARF)
Insofar as "death" and "life" designate for Saint Paul two existential subjective positions, not "objective" facts, we are fully justified in raising the old Pauline question: who is really alive today'?' What if we are "really alive" only if and when we engage ourselves with an excessive intensity which puts us beyond "mere life"? What if, when we focus on mere survival even if it is qualified as "having a good time," what we ultimately lose is life itself? What if the Palestinian suicide bomber on the point of blowing himself (and others) up is, in an emphatic sense, "more alive" than the American soldier engaged in a war in front of a computer screen hundreds of miles away from the enemy, or a New York yuppie jogging along the Hudson river in order to keep his
body in shape? Or, in terms of the psychoanalytic clinic, what if a hysteric is truly alive in her permanent, excessive, provoking questioning of her existence, while an obsessional is the very model of choosing a "life in death"? That is to say, is not the ultimate aim of his compulsive rituals to prevent

the "thing" from happening- this "thing" being the excess of life itself? Is not the catastrophe he fears the fact that, finally something will really happen to him? Or, in terms of the revolutionary process, what if the difference that separates Lenin's era from Stalinism is,
again, the difference between life and death? There is an apparently marginal feature which clearly illustrates this point: the basic attitude of a Stalinist Communist is that of following the correct Party line against "Rightist" or "Leftist" deviation-in short, to steer a safe middle course; for authentic Leninism, in clear contrast, there is ultimately only one deviation, the Centrist one-that of "playing it safe," of opportunistically avoiding the risk of clearly and excessively "taking sides." There was no "deeper historical necessity," for example, in the sudden shift of Soviet policy from "War Communism" to the "New Economic Policy" in 1921it was just a desperate strategic zigzag between the Leftist and the Rightist line, or, as Lenin himself put it in 1922, the Bolsheviks made "all the possible mistakes." This excessive "taking sides," this permanent imbalance of zigzag, is ultimately (the revolutionary political) life itself-for a Leninist, the ultimate name of the counterrevolutionary Right is "Center" itself, the fear of introducing a radical unbalance into the social edifice. It is a properly Nietzschean paradox that the greatest loser in this apparent assertion of Life against all transcendent Causes is actual

life itself What makes life "worth living" is the very excess of life: the awareness that there is something for which we are ready to risk our life (we may call this excess 'freedom," honor,' dignity, autonomy, etc.). Only when we are ready to take this risk are we really alive. So when Holderlin wrote: To live is to defend a form," this form is not simply a Lebensform, but the form of the excessof-life, the way this excess violently inscribes itself into the life-texture. Chesterton makes this point apropos of the paradox of courage:

A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine

SURVIVALISM
DO NOT GIVE IN TO THE IMPULSE TO PRIORITIZE SURVIVAL OVER MEANINGFUL SOCIAL CHANGE. CAPITALISM
HAS HISTORICALLY EXPLOITED THIS COMPULSION IN A WAY THAT AUTHORIZES THE MOST VICIOUS AND UNSPEAKABLEVIOLENCEIMAGINABLE. IRONICALLY,ITISJUSTTHEURGETOPURSUESURVIVALINTHEFACEOF EVERYTHINGDECENTTHATPUTSALLLIFEONEARTHONTHEBRINKOFEXTINCTION.

Cook,Prof.ofPhil.Univ.Windsor,2006[Deborah,STAYINGALIVE:ADORNOANDHABERMASONSELFPRESERVATION UNDERLATECAPITALISM,RethinkingMarxism,18(3):433447]

In the passage in Negative Dialectics where he warns against self-preservation gone wild, Adorno states that it is only as reflection upon selfpreservation that reason would be above nature (1973, 289). To rise above nature, then, reason must become cognizant of its own natural essence (1998b, 138). To be more fully rational, we must reflect on what Horkheimer and Adorno once called our underground history (1972, 231). In other words, we must recognize that our behavior is motivated and shaped by instincts, including the instinct for self-preservation (Adorno 1998a, 153). In his lectures on Kant, Adorno makes similar remarks when he summarizes his solution to the problem of self-preservation gone wild. To remedy this problem, nature must first become conscious of itself (Adorno 2000, 104). Adopting the Freudian goal of making the unconscious conscious, Adorno also insists that this critical self-understanding be accompanied by radical social, political, and economic changes that would bring to a halt the selfimmolating domination of nature. This is why mindfulness of nature is necessary but not sufficient to remedy unbridled self-preservation. In the final analysis, society must be fundamentally transformed in order rationally to accommodate instincts that now run wild owing to our forgetfulness of nature in ourselves. By insisting on mindfulness of nature in the self, Adorno champions a form of rationality that would tame self-preservation, but in contrast to Habermas, he thinks that the taming of self-preservation is a normative task rather than an accomplished fact. Because self-preservation remains

irrational, we now encounter serious environmental problems like those connected with global warming and the greenhouse effect, the depletion of natural resources, and the death of more than one hundred regions in our oceans. Owing to selfpreservation gone wild, we have colonized and destabilized large parts of the world, adversely affecting the lives of millions, when we have not simply enslaved or murdered their inhabitants outright. Famine and disease are often the result of ravaging the land in the name of survival imperatives. Wars are waged in the name of self-preservation: with his now notoriously invisible weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein was said to represent a serious threat to the lives of citizens in the West. The war against terrorism, waged in the name of self-preservation, has seriously undermined human rights and civil liberties; it has also been used to justify the murder, rape, and torture of thousands As it now stands, the owners of the means of production ensure our survival through profits that, at best, only trickle down to the poorest members of society. Taken in charge by the capitalist economy, self-preservation now dictates that profits increase exponentially to the detriment of social programs like welfare and health care. In addition, self- preservation has gone wild because our instincts and needs are now firmly harnessed to commodified offers of satisfaction that deflect and distort them. Having surrendered the task of selfpreservation to the economic and political systems, we remain in thrall to untamed survival instincts that could well end up destroying not just the entire species, but all life on the planet.

SURVIVALISM
REJECTTHEIRSURVIVALIMPERATIVE.ITMAKESLIFEAMEANINGLESSENDINITSELFANDJUSTIFIESTHEWORST FORMSOFVIOLENCE,IRONICALLYRISKINGEXTINCTION.REALSELFPRESERVATIONMEANSARADICAL REORGANIZATIONOFSOCIETYTOENSURETHATSURVIVALMEANSSUCHFOREVERYONE,ANDNOTJUSTTHE PRIVILEGED. Cook,Prof.ofPhil.Univ.Windsor,2006[Deborah,STAYINGALIVE:ADORNOANDHABERMASONSELFPRESERVATION UNDERLATECAPITALISM,RethinkingMarxism,18(3)
Adorno and Habermas obviously disagree about the character of self-preservation under late capitalism. Where Habermas believes that survival imperatives are now harnessed to communicative and functionalist reason, Adorno claims that self-preservation has not yet come under rational control because reason itself is blindly impelled by this drive. Against Habermas one could certainly argue that, even if self-preservation is

rational in his procedural sense of that term, it remains destructive and self-destructive insofar as we do not consciously attempt to satisfy the goal of preserving the species as a whole. Self-preservation is now the exclusive prerogative of the owners of the means of production in Western countries who, in their relentless and self-interested pursuit of profit and power, continue to threaten the material survival of everyone. In fact, given the obvious damage that continues to be inflicted on the environment, the wars that have been fought and continue to be waged in the name of self-preservation, and the famine, disease, poverty, and malnutrition that destroy the lives of most human beings on the planet , I would argue that Habermas's view of what is required for self-preservation to be rational is seriously flawed and must therefore be rejected. On the one hand, even if citizens in the West were to steer the economy toward normative ends, they could agree to act destructively and self-destructively and remain rational on Habermas's procedural definition of rationality. On the other hand, it is difficult to see how the surrender of self- preservation to blind economic forces that currently threaten everyone's survival can plausibly be described as rational. To give the last word to Adorno: our lives, which are really no more than a means to the end of self-preservation, have nonetheless become bewitched and fetishized as an end. Our current predicament consists in an antinomy: the individual is debased and liquidated while simultaneously being thrown back on the fact that he no longer has anything but this atomized self which lives our life (Adorno 2001, 110). Consequently, Adorno argues, the concept of ends, to which reason rises for the sake of consistent self- preservation, ought to be emancipated from the idol in the mirror. Self-preservation, which currently confuses means with ends, obscures the fact that an end would be whatever differs from the subject, which is a means (1973, 349). If we were to make conscious to ourselves the ways in which our behavior has unconsciously been driven by survival imperatives, and win the energy of selfpreservation for more substantive ends, reason would be emancipated from its instinctual fetters and self-preservation would finally become rational. Again, the goal of self-preservation is the preservation of humanity as a whole: to be rational in the more emphatic sense of that term, individuals need to direct their efforts toward the preservation of the species on which their own lives depend. To preserve the species, society must ultimately be transformed: the preservation of the species will only find its end in a reasonable organization of society. Adorno adds that a society is rationally organized solely to the extent that it preserves its societalized subjects according to their unfettered potentialities. If self-preservation were ever to become more fully rational, humanity would gain the
potential for that self-reflection thatcould finally transcend the self-preservation to which it was reduced by being restricted simply to a means (Adorno 1998d, 2723).

FIDELITY
FIDELITY TO AN ETHICAL EVENT NECESSITATES A REFUSAL OF THEIR STRATEGY. THE AFF MAKES FIDELITY IMPOSSIBLEBECAUSEITREFUSESPOLITICSINFAVOROFAFEAROFCATASTROPHICCONSEQUENCES THEONLY ETHICALACTISTOEMBRACETHEWORSEINTHENAMEOFPOLITICS

Zizek,SeniorResearcherattheInstituteforSocialStudies,Ljubljana,Slovenia,1999Slavoj,The TicklishSubject,page377
One should reread Lacan's matrix of the four discourses as the three modes of coming to terms with the trauma of the (analysts) act; 63 to these three strategies of disavowal of the act, on should add the fourth, properly psychotic one: since an authentic act involves the choice of the Worse, since it is by definition catastrophic and the act will somehow occur (therein lies the desperate terrorist act of trying to sober the masses lulled into ideological sleep, from the RAF in the Germany of the early 1970s to the Unabomber). While this temptation must, of course,

be resisted, one should no less firmly resist the opposite temptation of the different modalities of dissociating the act from its inherent catastrophic consequences.
In so far as the political act par excellence is a revolution, two opposing strategies arise here; one can endeavour to separate the noble Idea of the Revolution from its abominable reality (recall Kants celebration of the sublime feeling the French Revolution evoked in the enlightened public all over Europe, which goes hand in hand with utter disdain for the reality of the revolutionary act itself, and bemoans its regrettable but unavoidable later betrayal (recall the nostalgia for Trotskyite and other radical Leftists for the early days of the Revolution, with workers councils popping up spontaneously everywhere, against the Thermidor, that is, the later ossification of the Revolution into a new hierarchical state structure). Against all these temptations, one should

insist on the unconditional need to endorse the act fully in all its consequences. Fidelity is not fidelity to the principles betrayed by the contingent facticity of their actualization, but fidelity to the consequence entailed by the full actualization of the (revolutionary) principles. Within the horizon of what precedes the act, the act always and by definition appears as a change from Bad to Worse (the usual criticism of conservatives against revolutionaries: yes, the situation is bad, but your solution is even worse ). The proper heroism of the act is fully to assume this Worse.

UNIVERSALISM
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO SOLVE ANY SITUATION WITHOUT SOLVING THEM ALL ONLY A CRITICISM WHICH
ATTACKS THE UNIVERSAL OF CAPITALISM CAN SOLVE THEIR IMPACTS AND THE INEVITABLE DESTRUCTION OF THEEARTHANDITSPEOPLE

Zizek,SeniorResearcherattheInstituteforSocialStudies1989Slavoj,TheSublimeObjectof Ideology,page34
It is upon the unity of these two features that the Marxist notion of the revolution, of the revolutionary situation, is founded: a situation of

metaphorical condensation in which it finally becomes clear to the everyday consciousness that it is not possible to solve any particular question without solving them all - that is, without solving the fundamental question which embodies the antagonistic character of the social totality. In a 'normal', pre-revolutionary state of things, everybody is fighting his own particular battles (workers are striking for better wages, feminists are fighting for the rights of women, democrats for political and social
freedoms, ecologists against the exploitation of nature, participants in the peace movements against the danger of war, and so on). Marxists are using all their skill and adroimess of argument to convince the participants in these particular struggles that the only real solution to their problem is to be found in the global revolution: as long as social relations are dominated by Capital, there will always be

sexism in relations between the sexes, there will always be a threat of global war, there will always be a danger that political and social freedoms will be suspended, nature itself will always remain an object of ruthless exploitation. . . . The global revolution will then abolish the basic social antagonism, enabling the formation of a transparent, rationally governed society.

ALTS

ALT:COMMUNISTHYPOTHESIS
THEALTERNATIVEISANABSOLUTEFIDELITYTOTHECOMMUNISTHYPOTHESIS.THISMEANSREPEATINGAGAIN AND AGAIN THE IMPULSE TOWARD COMMUNISM. WHILE NO PARTICULAR REVOLUTIONARY GESTURE CAN ABSOLUTE GUARANTEE SUCCESS, FAITH IN THE HYPOTHESIS MEANS WE CAN CONSTANTLY LEARN TO FAIL BETTER. Zizek2009SlavojFirstasTragedy,ThenasFarcepage8794
In Kierkegaardian terms, a

revolutionary process involves not a gradual progress, but a repetitive movement, a movement of repeating the beginning again and again. And this is exactly where we find ourselves today, after the "obscure disaster" of 1989, the definitive end of the epoch which began with the October Revolution. One should therefore reject any sense of continuity with what the Left meant over the last two centuries. Although sublime moments like the Jacobin climax of the French Revolution and the October Revolution will forever remain a key part of our memory, the general framework has to be surpassed, and everything should be re-thought, beginning from the zero-point. This beginning is, of course, what Badiou calls "the communist hypothesis": The communist hypothesis remains the right hypothesis, as I have said, and I do not see any other. If this hypothesis should have to be abandoned, then it is not worth doing anything in the order of collective action. Without the perspective of communism, without this Idea, nothing in the historical and political future is of such a kind as to interest the philosopher. Each individual can pursue their private business, and we won't mention it again . . . . But holding on to the Idea, the existence of the hypothesis, does not mean that its first form of presentation, focused on property and the state, must be maintained just as it is. In fact, what we are ascribed as a philosophical task, we could say even a duty, is to help a new modality of existence of the hypothesis to come into being. New in terms of the type of political experimentation to which this hypothesis could give rise.> One should be careful not to read these lines in a Kantian way, conceiving communism as a "regulative Idea:' thereby resuscitating the specter of an "ethical socialism" taking equality as its a priori norm-axiom. One should rather maintain the precise reference to a set of actual social antagonisms which generates the need for communism-Marx's notion of communism not as an ideal, but as a movement which reacts to such antagonisms, is still fuly relevant. However, if we conceive of communism as an "eternal Idea:' this implies
that the situation which generates it is no less eternal, i.e., that the antagonism to which communism reacts will always exist. And from here, it is only one small step to a "deconstructive" reading of communism as a dream of presence, of abolishing all alienated re-presentation, a dream which thrives on its own impossibility. How then are we to break out of this formalism in order to formulate antagonisms which will continue to generate the communist Idea? Where are we to look for this Idea's new mode? It is easy to make fun of Fukuyama's notion of the "End of History:' but most people today

are Fukuyamean, accepting liberal-democratic capitalism as the finally found formula of the best possible society, such that all one can do is to try to make it more just, more tolerant, and so on. A simple but pertinent question arises here: if liberal-democratic capitalism obviously works better than all known alternatives, if liberal- democratic capitalism is, if not the best, then at least the least worst form of society, why do we not simply resign ourselves to it in a mature way, even accept it wholeheartedly? Why insist, against all hope, on the communist idea? Is such an insistence not an exemplary case of the narcissism of the lost cause? And does such narcissism not underlie the predominant attitude of academic Leftists who expect a theoretician to tell them what to do?-they desperately want to commit themselves, but not knOWing how to do so effectively, they await the answer from a theoretician. Such an attitude is, of course, in itself false, as if a theory will provide the magic formula, capable of resolving the practical dead- lock. The only correct answer here is that if you really do not know what to do, then nobody can tell you, and the cause is irremediably lost. This deadlock is hardly new-the great defining problem of Western Marxism was the lack of a revolutionary subject or agent. Why is it that: the working class does not complete the passage from in-itself to for-itself: and constitute itself as a revolutionary agent? This problem was the main motivation for the turn to psychoanalysis, evoked
precisely in order to explain the unconscious libidinal mechanisms which were preventing the rise of class consciousness, mechanisms inscribed into the very being (social situation) of the working class. In this way, the truth of Marxist socio-economic analysis could be saved, and there was no need to give ground to "revisionist" theories about the rise of the middle classes. For this same reason, Western Marxism was also engaged in a constant search for other social agents who could play the role of the revolutionary subject, as understudies who might replace the indisposed working class: Third World peasants, students, intellectuals, the excluded . . . The failure of the working class as a revolutionary subject lies already at the very core of the Bolshevik revolution: Lenin's skill lay in his ability to detect the "rage potential" of the disappointed peasants. The October Revolution took place under the banner of "land and peace:' addressed to the vast peasant majority, seizing the brief moment of their radical dissatisfaction. Lenin had already been thinking along these lines a decade earlier, which is why he was so horrified at the prospect of the success of the Stolypin land reforms, aimed at creating a new and stronger class of independent farmers. He was sure that if Stolypin succeeded, the chance for revolution would be lost for decades. All successful socialist revolutions, from Cuba to Yugoslavia, followed the same model, seizing a local opportunity in an extreme and critical situation, co-opting the desire for national liberation or other forms of rage capital Of course, a partisan of the logic of hegemony would here point out that this is the "normal" logic of revolution, that the "critical mass is reached precisely and only through a series of

equivalences among multiple demands, a series which is always radically contingent and dependent on a specific, unique even, set of circumstances. A revolution never occurs when all antagonisms collapse into the Big One, but only when they synergetically combine their power. But the problem is here more complex: the point is not just that revolution no longer rides on the train of History, following its Laws, since there is no History, since history is an open, contingent process. The

problem is a different one. It

is as if there is a Law of History, a more-or-less clear and predominant line of historical development, but that revolution can only occur in its interstices, "against the current:' Revolutionaries have to wait patiently for the (usually very brief) moment when the system openly malfunctions or collapses, have to exploit the window of opportunity, to seize powerwhich at that moment lies, as it were, in the street-and then fortify their hold on it, building up repressive apparatuses, and so forth, so that, once the moment of confusion is over and the majority sobers up only to be disappointed by the new regime, it is too late to reverse things, for the revolutionaries are now firmly entrenched. The case of communist ex-Yugoslavia is typical here:
throughout World War II, the communists ruthlessly hegemonized the resistance against the German occupying forces, monopolizing their role in the antifascist struggle by actively seeking to destroy al alternative ("bourgeois") resisting forces, while simultaneously denying the communist nature of their struggle (those who raised the suspicion that the communists planned to grab power and foment a revolution at the end of the war were swiftly denounced as spreading enemy propaganda). After the war, once they did indeed seize full power, things changed quickly and the regime openly displayed its true communist nature. The communists, although genuinely popular until around 1946, nonetheless cheated almost openly in the general election of that year. When asked why they had done so-since they could easily have won in a free election anyway-their answer (in private, of course) was that this was true, but then they would have lost the next election four years later, so it was better to make clear now what kind of election they were prepared to tolerate. In short, they were fully aware of the unique opportunity that had brought them to power. An awareness of the communists' historical failure to build and sustain genuine long-term hegemony based on popular support was thus, from the very beginning, taken into account. Thus again, it is not enough simply to

remain faithful to the communist Idea; one has to locate within historical reality antagonisms which give this Idea a practical urgency. The only true question today is: do we endorse the predominant naturalization of capitalism, or does today's global capitalism contain antagonisms which are sufficiently strong to prevent its indefinite reproduction? There are four such
antagonisms: the looming threat of an ecological catastrophe; the inappropriateness of the notion of private property in relation to so-called "intellectual property"; the socio- ethical implications of new techno-scientific developments (especially in biogenetics); and, last but not least, the creation of new forms of apartheid, new Walls and slums. There is a qualitative difference between this last feature-the gap that separates the Excluded from the Included-and the other three, which designate different aspects of what Hardt and Negri call the "commons;' the shared substance of our social being, the privatization of which involves violent acts which should, where necessary, be resisted with violent means: the commons of culture, the imediately socialized forms of "cognitive" capital, primarily language, our means of communication and education, but also the shared infrastructure of public transport, electricity, the postal system, and so on; -the commons of external nature, threatened by pollution and exploitation (from oil to rain forests and the natural habitat itself); -the commons of internal nature (the biogenetic inheritance of humanity); with new biogenetic technology, the creation of a New Man in the literal sense of changing human nature becomes a realistic prospect. What the struggles in all these

domains share is an awareness of the potential for destruction, up to and including the self-annihilation of humanity itself, should the capitalist logic of enclosing the commons be allowed a free run. Nicholas Stern was right to characterize the climate crisis as
"the greatest market failure in human historY:'3 So when Kishan Khoday, a UN team leader, recently wrote: "There is an increasing spirit of global environmental citizenship, a desire to address climate change as a matter of common concern of all humanity;'4 one should give all weight to the terms "global citizenship" and "common concern"- that is, to the need to establish a global political organization which, neutralizing and channeling market mechanisms, expresses a properly communist perspective. It is the reference to the "commons" which justifies the resuscitation of the

notion of communism: it enables us to see the progressive "enclo- sure" of the commons as a process of proletarianization of those who are thereby excluded from their own substance. We should certainly not drop the notion of the proletariat, or of the proletarian position; on the contrary, the present conjuncture compels us to radicalize it to an existential level well beyond Marx's imagination. We need a more radical notion of the proletarian subject, a subject reduced to the evanescent point of the Cartesian cogito. For this reason, a new emancipatory politics will stem no longer from a particular social agent, but from an explosive combination of different agents. What unites us is that, in contrast to the classic image of proletariat who have "nothing to lose but their chains;' we are in danger of losing everything: the threat is that we will be reduced to abstract subjects devoid of all substantial content, dispossessed of our symbolic substance, our genetic base heavily manipulated, vegetating in an unlivable environment. This triple threat to our entire being renders us all proletarians, reduced to "substanceless subjectivity;' as Marx put it in the Grundrisse. The ethico-political challenge is to recognize ourselves in this figure-in a way, we are all excluded, from nature as well as from our symbolic substance. Today, we are all potentially a homo sacer, and the only way to stop that from becoming a reality is to act preventively. If this sounds apocalyptic, one can only retort that we live in apocalyptic times. It is easy to see how each of the three processes of proletarianization refer to an apocalyptic end point: ecological breakdown, the biogenetic reduction of humans to manipulable machines, total digital control over our lives . . . At al these levels, things are approaching a zero-point; "the end of times is near. " Here is Ed Ayres's description: We are being confronted by
something so completely outside our collective experience that we don't really see it, even when the evidence is overwhelming. For us, that "something" is a blitz of enormous biological and physical alterations in the world that has been sustaining us.

ALT:FIDELITY
ANDFIDELITYTOTHECOMMUNISTIDEAISKEYREVOLUTIONARYPOLITICSITISANECESSARYETHICALMOVE INTHEFACEOFLIBERALCAPITALISMSIDEOLOGICALEMBRACEOFHEDONISTICUTILITARIANISMWHICH REDUCESLIFETONIHILISM. ZIZEK2010[LIVINGINTHEENDTIMESPXIIIXV]
The locus communis "You have to see it to believe it!" should always be read together with its inversion: "You have to believe in it to see it!" Though one may be tempted to oppose these perspectives-the dogma- tism of blind faith versus an openness towards the unexpected-one should nevertheless insist on the truth contained in the second version: truth, as opposed to knowledge, is, like a Badiouian Event, something that only an engaged gaze, the gaze of a subject who "believes in it," is able to see. Take the case of love: in love, only the lover sees in the object of love that X which is the cause of his love, the parallax-object; in this sense the structure of love is the same as that of the Badiouian Event, which also exists only for those who recognize themselves in it: there can be no Event for a non-engaged objective observer. Lacking this engaged position, mere descriptions of the state of things, no matter how accurate, fail to generate emancipatory effects ultimately, they only render the burden of the lie still more oppressive, or, to quote Mao again, "lift up a rock only to drop it on their own feet."
When, in 1948, Sartre saw that he was likely to be maligned by both sides in the Cold War, he wrote: "if that were to happen, it would prove only one thing: either that I am very clumsy, or that I am on the right road."7 As it happens, this is often how I also feel: I am attacked for being anti-Semitic and for spreading Zionist lies, for being a covert Slovene nationalist and an unpatriotic traitor to my nation,8 for being a crypto-Stalinist defending terror and for spreading bourgeois lies about Communism ... So maybe, just maybe, I am on the right path, the path of fldeJity to freedom.9 In the otherwise all too sentimental-humanist dialogue of Stanley Kubrick's Spartaclld, there is an exchange between Spartacus and a pirate who offers to organize transport for the slaves across the Adriatic. The pi rate asks Spartacus frankly whether he is aware that the slave rebellion is doomed, that sooner or later the rebels will be crushed by the Roman army; would he continue to fight to the end, even in the face of inevitable defeat? Spartacus's answer is, of course, affirmative: the slaves' struggle is not merely a pragmatic attempt to ameliorate their position, it is a principled rebellion on behalf of freedom, so even if they lose and are all killed, their fight will not have been in vain since they will have asserted their unconditional commitment to freedom-in other words, their act of rebellion itself, whatever the outcome, already counts as a success, insofar as it instantiates the immortal idea of freedom (and one should give to "idea" here its full Platonic weight). The present book is thus a book of struggle, following Paul's surprisingly relevant definition: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, outagainst leaders, against authorities, against the world rulers [kosmorkatoras] of this darkness, against the spiritual wickedness in the heavens" (Ephesians 6:12). Or, translated into today's language: "Our struggle is not against actual corrupt individuals, but against those in power in general, against their authority, against the global order and the ideological mystification which sustains it." To engage in this struggle means to endorse Badiou's formula mieux vaut un desastre quun destre: better to take the risk and engage in fidelity to a Truth-Event, even if

it ends in catastrophe, than to vegetate in the eventless utilitarian-hedonist survival of what Nietzsche called the "last men." What Badiou rejects is thus the liberal ideology of victimhood, with its reduction of politics to a program of avoiding the worst, to renouncing all positive projects and pursuing the least bad option. Not least since, as Arthur Feldmann, a Viennese Jewish writer bitterly noted: the price we usually pay for survival is our lives.

ALT:LOSTCAUSE
WESHOULDSTRIVEFOR CAUSESNOTCOMPROMISE THEAFFIRMATIVETRIESTODOMESTICATERADICALITY, THEYREUNWILLINGTORISKTHEIMPOSSIBLEWEMUSTRENDERTHEIRMETHODPROBLEMATICWEARENOT AN EMBRACE OF TERROR OR VIOLENCE INSTEAD WE MUST BE WILLING TO RISK VIOLENCE FIDELITY TO THE CAUSEISBETTERTHENINDIFFERENCEWHICHNEGATESTHEMEANINGOFEXISTENCE Zizek2008InDefenseofLostCausespage67 This book is unashamedly committed to the "Messianic " standpoint of the struggle for universal emancipation.No wonder, then, thatto the partisans of the "postmodern" doxa the list of lost Causesdefended heremust appear as a horror show of their worst nightmares embodied, a depository of the ghosts of the past they put all their energies into exorcizing:Heidegger's politics as the
extreme case of a philosopher seduced by totalitarian politics; revolutionary terror from Robespierre to Mao; Stalinism; the dictatorship of the proletariat . . . In each case,the predominant ideology not only dismisses the cause, but offers a replace- ment, a "softer" version of it: not

totalitarian intellectual engagement, but intellectuals who investigate the problems of globalization and fight in the public sphere for human rights and tolerance, against racism and sexism; not revolutionary state terror, but the self-organized decentralized multi- tude; not the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the collaboration among multiple agents(civil-society initiatives, private money, state regulation . . .).The true aim of the "defense of lost causes" is not to defend Stalinist terror, and so on, as such,but to render problematic the all-too-easy liberal-democratic alternative.Foucault's and, especially, Heidegger's political commitments, while acceptable in their basic motivation, were clearly "right steps in the wrong direction";the misfortunes of the fate of revolutionary terror confront us with the need not to reject terror in tote, butto reinvent it; the forthcoming ecological crisis seems to offer a unique chance of accepting a reinvented version of the dictatorship of the proletariat.The argument is thus that, while these phenomena were, each in its own way, a historical failure and monstrosity(Stalinism was a nightmare which caused perhaps even more
human suffering than fascism; the attempts to enforce the "dictatorship of the proletariat" produced a ridiculous travesty of a regime in which precisely the proletariat was reduced to silence, and so on),this is not the whole truth: there was in each of them a redemptive moment which gets

lost in the liberal-democratic rejection and it is crucial to isolate this moment. One should be careful not to throw out the baby with the dirty water although one is tempted to turn this metaphor around, and claim that it is the liberal-democratic critique which wants to do this (say, throwing out the dirty water of terror, while retaining the pure baby of authentic socialist democracy), forgetting thereby that the water was originally pure, that all the dirt in it comes from the baby. What one should do, rather,is to throw out the baby before it spoils the crystalline water with its excretions,so that, to paraphrase Mallarm, rien que l'eau n'aura eu lieu dans le bain de l'histoire. Our defense of lost Causes is thus not engaged in any kind of deconstructive gamein the style of "every Cause first has to be lost in order to exert its efficiency as a Cause."On the contrary, the goal is to leave behind, with all the violence necessary, what Lacan mockingly referred to as the "narcissism of the lost Cause," and to courageously accept the full actualization of a Cause, including the inevitable risk of a catastrophic disaster.Badiou was right when, apropos the disintegration of the Communist regimes, he proposed the maxim: mieux vaut un dsa,itre qu'un dstre.Better a disaster of fidelity to the Event than a non-being of indifference towards the Event.To paraphrase Beckett's memorable phrase, to which I shall return many times later,after one fails, one can go on and fail better, while indifference drowns us deeper and deeper in the morass of imbecilic Being.

ALT:REPEATFAILURES
WEREPEATWHATCOMMUNISMFAILEDTODO THEDISCONNECTBETWEENTHESEPOLITICSANDTHESTATUS QUOSHOULDPROVETHEINSUFFICIENCYOFOURERASPOLITICS Zizek,SeniorResearcherattheInstituteforSocialStudies,Ljubljana,Slovenia,1997 Slavoj, RepeatingLenin,http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm
Consequently, to

REPEAT Lenin does NOT mean a RETURN to Lenin - to repeat Lenin is to accept that "Lenin is dead," that his particular solution failed, even failed monstrously, but that there was a utopian spark in it worth saving. 68 To repeat Lenin
means that one has to distinguish between what Lenin effectively did and the field of possibilities that he opened up, the tension in Lenin between what he effectively did and another dimension, what was "in Lenin more than Lenin himself." To repeat Lenin is to repeat not what Lenin DID, but what he FAILED TO DO, his MISSED opportunities. Today, Lenin appears as a figure from a different time-zone: it's not that his notions of the centralized Party, etc., seem to pose a "totalitarian threat" - it's rather that they seem to belong to a different epoch to which we can no longer properly relate. However, instead of reading this fact as the proof that Lenin is outdated, one should, perhaps, risk the opposite conjecture: what if this

impenetrability of Lenin is a sign that there is something wrong with OUR epoch? What if the fact that we experience Lenin as irrelevant, "out of sync" with our postmodern times, impart the much more unsettling message that our time itself is "out of sync," that a certain historical dimension is disappearing from it?69 If, to some people, such an assertion appears dangerously close to the
infamous Hegel's quip, when his deduction why there should be only eight planets circulating around the Sun was proven wrong by the discovery of the ninth planet (Pluto): "So much worse for the facts!", then we should be ready to fully assume this paradox.

ALT:REFUSAL
ANSWERING NO RELENTLESSLY TO EVERY INSTANCE OF CAPITALISM PUTS PRESSURE ON THE FISSURES AND CRACKSOFEXPLOITATIVECAPITAL CALLINICOS & HOLLOWAY 5 TROTSKYIST POLITICAL THEORIST AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRE FOR EUROPEAN STUDIES AT KING'S COLLEGE LONDON, JOHN HOLLOWAY IS PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF PUEBLA; LEVERHULME VISITING PROFESSOR, SCHOOL OF GEOGRAPHY, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS AND AUTHOR OF CRACK CAPITALISM, JANUARY 27, 2005 (ALEX, JOHN, CAN WE CHANGE THE WORLD WITHOUTTAKINGPOWER?,HTTP://WWW.ISJ.ORG.UK/INDEX.PHP4?ID=98,BOCKMON)
I dont know the answer. Perhaps we can change the world without taking power. Perhaps we cannot. The starting pointfor all of us, I thinkis uncertainty, not knowing, a common search for a way forward. Because it becomes more and more clear that capitalism is a

catastrophe for humanity. A radical change in the organisation of society, that is, revolution, is more urgent than ever. And this revolution can only be world revolution if it is to be effective. But it is unlikely that world revolution can be achieved in one single blow. This means that the only way in which we can conceive of revolution is as interstitial revolution, as a revolution that takes place in the interstices of capitalism, a revolution that occupies spaces in the world while capitalism still exists. The question is how we conceive of these interstices, whether we think of them as states or in other ways. In thinking about this, we have to start from where we are, from the many rebellions and insubordinations that have brought us to Porto Alegre. The world is full of such rebellions, of people saying NO to capitalism: NO, we shall not live our lives according to the dictates of capitalism, we shall do what we consider necessary or desirable and not what capital tells us to do. Sometimes we just see capitalism as an all-encompassing system of domination and forget that such rebellions exist everywhere. At times they are so small that even those involved do not perceive them as refusals, but often they are collective projects searching for an alternative way forward and
sometimes they are as big as the Lacandon Jungle or the Argentinazo of three years ago or the revolt in Bolivia just over a year ago. All of these insubordinations are characterised by a drive towards self-determination, an impulse that says, No, you will not tell us what to do, we shall decide for ourselves what we must do. These refusals can be seen as fissures, as cracks in the system of capitalist domination. Capitalism is not (in the first place) an economic system, but a system of command. Capitalists, through money, command us, telling us what to do. To refuse to obey is to break the command of capital. The question for us, then, is how do we multiply and expand these refusals, these cracks in the texture of domination? There are two ways of thinking about this. The first says that these movements, these many insubordinations, lack maturity and effectiveness unless they are focused, unless they are channelled towards a goal. For them to be effective, they must be channelled towards the conquest of state powereither through elections or through the overthrowing of the existing state and the establishment of a new, revolutionary state. The organisational form for channelling all these insubordinations towards that aim is the party. The question of taking state power is not so much a question of future intentions as of present organisation. How should we organise ourselves in the present? Should we join a party, an organisational form that focuses our discontent on the winning of state power? Or should we organise in some other way? The second way of thinking about the expansion and multiplication of insubordinations is to say, No,

they should not be all harnessed together in the form of a party, they should flourish freely, go whatever way the struggle takes them. This does not mean that there should be no coordination, but it should be a much looser coordination. Above all, the principal point of reference is not the state but the society that we want to create

ALT:WITHDRAW
OUR ALTERNATIVE IS TO COMPLETELY WITHDRAW FROM THE IDEOLOGY OF CAPITAL THIS IS ESSENTIAL TO DESTROYTHEFETISHTHATALLOWSCAPITALTOSURVIVE Johnston,interdisciplinaryresearchfellowinpsychoanalysisatEmoryUniversity,2004 Adrian,Psychoanalysis,Culture&Society,Decemberv9i3p259pageinfotrac
Perhaps the absence of a detailed political roadmap in Zizek's recent writings isn't a major shortcoming. Maybe, at least for the time being, the most important task is simply the negativity of the critical struggle, the effort to cure an intellectual constipation

resulting from capitalist ideology and thereby to truly open up the space for imagining authentic alternatives to the prevailing state of the situation. Another definition of materialism offered by Zizek is that it amounts to accepting the internal inherence of what fantasmatically
appears as an external deadlock or hindrance (Zizek, 2001d, pp 22-23) (with fantasy itself being defined as the false externalization of something within the subject, namely, the illusory projection of an inner obstacle, Zizek, 2000a, p 16). From this perspective, seeing through ideological fantasies by

learning how to think again outside the confines of current restrictions has, in and of itself, the potential to operate as a form of real revolutionary practice (rather than remaining merely an instance of negative/critical intellectual reflection). Why is this the case? Recalling the
analysis of commodity fetishism, the social efficacy of money as the universal medium of exchange (and the entire political economy grounded upon it) ultimately relies upon nothing more than a kind of "magic," that is, the belief in money's social efficacy by those using it in the processes of exchange. Since the value of currency is, at bottom, reducible to the belief that it has the value attributed to it (and that everyone believes that everyone else believes this as well), derailing capitalism by destroying its essential financial substance is, in a certain respect, as easy as dissolving the mere belief in this substance's powers. The "external" obstacle of the capitalist system exists exclusively on the condition that subjects, whether consciously or unconsciously, "internally" believe in it--capitalism's life-blood, money, is simply a fetishistic crystallization of a belief in others' belief in the socio-performative force emanating from this same material. And yet, this point of capitalism's frail vulnerability is

simultaneously the source of its enormous strength: its vampiric symbiosis with individual human desire, and the fact that the late-capitalist cynic's fetishism enables the disavowal of his/her de facto belief in capitalism, makes it highly unlikely that people can simply be persuaded to stop believing and start thinking (especially since, as Zizek claims, many of these people are convinced
that they already have ceased believing). Or, the more disquieting possibility to entertain is that some people today, even if one succeeds in exposing them to the underlying logic of their position, might respond in a manner resembling that of the Judas-like character Cypher in the film The Matrix (Cypher opts to embrace enslavement by illusion rather than cope with the discomfort of dwelling in the "desert of the real"): faced with the choice between living

the capitalist lie or wrestling with certain unpleasant truths, many individuals might very well deliberately decide to accept what they know full well to be a false pseudo-reality, a deceptively comforting fiction ("Capitalist commodity fetishism or the truth? I
choose fetishism").

ALT:FW/ROLEOFBALLOTFIDELITY
THE ROLE OF THE BALLOT IS TO RADICALLY AFFIRM A MILITANT PROCEDURE OF THE TRUTH EVENT. THE DECISIONTOESTABLISHCONVICTIONTOTHETRUTHEVENTOFTHEALTERNATIVEISESSENTIALTOFIDELITY WRIGHT LECTURER IN CRITICAL THEORY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL STUDIES AT NOTTINGHAM 2008 COLINTHEORY&EVENT11.2PROJECTMUSE
For Badiou, too, the

evental decision is indispensable. The event, as we have seen, confronts a situation with its void, but for this to have political, transformative consequences, for this to have been a truth, the event must be taken up in a militant truthprocedure. For such a procedure to get underway, a subject must decide to be faithful to the consequences of an event (or rather, a subject only emerges through such a decision). Since the event, like the exception, finds no reference in the encyclopaedia, this decision once again has a quasi-religious structure: it is a conviction held in the face of all evidence to the contrary, and yet, in its very 'irrational' intransigence, it forms the principle of a militant praxis. The subject stubbornly believes there is a truth, or that a new situation can be forced in which there will have been a truth, and she sustains her militancy through this radically immanent confidence (see meditation 35 in Badiou: 2006a). This Maoist "confidence in confidence" (see Badiou: 1982) has variously been called 'charity',
'sacrifice', and 'salvation' (in the wake of the Christ-event); 'party', 'revolution' and 'politics' (in the wake of the Lenin-event); and even 'sets', 'ordinals' and 'cardinals' (in the wake of the Cohen-event). Yet the subject of a truth herself cannot know what that truth 'is': it is this very ignorance that makes the decision to be faithful to its consequences pure, auto-referential, and singular. Like Schmitt's overt decisionism then, and echoing his discussion of juridical form (Schmitt: 2005, pp. 26-29), Badiou's evental decision necessarily emphasises form over and against content. Indeed, for the situation and the subjects who are themselves parts of that situation, there is no content of the evental truth: its only content is, from the perspective of the situation, void, even if what is at stake is nothing less than its pure because predicateless claim to 'be'. Moreover, Badiou's appeal to set-theory in order to formalise the being-qua-being of this apparent nothingness makes of the evental decision an even purer self-sustaining novelty insofar as it becomes axiomatic. As Daniel Bensad has put it, "the axiom is more absolute than any definition. Beyond every proof or refutation, the axiom, in sovereign fashion [my emphasis], engenders its objects as pure effects" (Hallward: 2004, p. 105). Thus, on the level of the subjectivization of an event in what Badiou calls an 'historical' or non-ontological situation, the decision becomes an axiomatic intervention based on faith; while even on the level of the ontological situation, the mathematical decision becomes an axiom of choice which is also 'illegal' insofar as it is made in the total absence of any rule or formula (see mediation 22 in Badiou: 2006a). In both cases, the Badouian evental and mathematical decisions seem to resemble the "decision in absolute purity" described by Schmitt (Schmitt: 2005, p. 13). There are thus profound -- but, I hope to show, misleading -- resonances between Schmitt's claim that the sovereign is the one who decides in the terrain of the undecidable on the one hand, and Badiou's definition of the subject on the other, as "that which decides an undecidable from the standpoint of an indiscernible" (Badiou: 2006a, p.407). It is this resonance that rightly leads Hallward to point out that "[t]he logic of sovereignty is an exemplary version of the generic logic of actively nonrelational singularity" (Hallward: 2004, p.286) which Badiou describes as a 'truth-procedure'.

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ADVANCINGTHECOMMUNISTYHYPOTHESISCHANGESTHENATUREOFTHEDEABTECRITICIZINGCAPITAL DOMINATIONWOULDATTUNEUSTOEXPLOITATIVEOUTCOMESANDNEWPOSSIBILITIESFORSPACE.THISISTHE MOSTPRODUCTIVEPOLITICALQUESTIONTOASK. SPENCE,1994(Martin,LostinSpace,Capital&Class52,pp7981)
Humanity's presence in space today, and its possible presence in space in the foreseeable future, inevitably reflects the capitalist reality which dominates human affairs. Does this mean that the left should oppose space projects as such? Are such projects irredeemably anti-working class? There are no simple answers, but there are some important questions here which socialists and other radicals should consider. Firstly, there are complex issues on the ecology of outer space which need to be debated. The key ideas of the green movement, on
sustainability and humanity's relationship with the biosphere, have inevitably been framed by reference to this single, unique planet. But do those ideas still bear any meaning when applied to other, lifeless planetary bodies? If humanity expands into deep space, it will be to mine such bodies for

their minerals. What should be our attitude to this? Should we oppose it on the grounds that the money could be better spent on Earth? Should we oppose it on the grounds that interplanetary capitalism means interplanetary environmental destruction? Should we campaign for the
Moon to be declared a 'Planetary Park' equivalent to Antarctica? Or should we welcome the opportunity to take the pressure off this planeton which all known life dependsby exploiting the resources of these other, lifeless planetary bodies? Either position could be characterised as 'ecological'. Secondly, the prospect of a permanent human presence in space opens up a whole set of questions on the nature of human labour, and poses the possibility of new forms of class struggle. Long-term exposure to weightlessness brings about physiological changes in the human body: degeneration of muscles, loss of bone calcium, reduced hormone production. Yet the economic

exploitation of deep space implies that humans, initially with the status of 'scientist' but then increasingly simply as 'workers', would be exposed to low- or zero-gravity for long periods. It may become physiologically impossible for such workers to return to the Earth,
but at the same time their skills and experience would command a high price within their specialised niche of the labour market.

We might therefore imagine whole communities of workers in space, whose livelihoods would depend on servicing the terrestrial economy, whose skills were essential to that economy, but who would effectively be banished from Earth. What sort of class consciousness, and what forms of class struggle, might arise in such circumstances? What might this mean for our
concept of 'disability'? What new visions of human liberation and creativity might emerge within such communities? A long time ago, and in a different context, Marx wrote: 'The social revolution... cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future' (Marx 1968, 98). Despite the different context, his central insight holds true.

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INSTEAD OF THE TOTALIZING LOGIC OF CAPITALISM WHICH NORMALIZES WAR, WE PROPOSE A MODEL A RESISTANCETOCONTROLOFOUTERSPACE. WESHOULDUSETHISDEBATEASAPUBLICSITEOFRESISTANCETO THELOGICSOFIMPERIALISMANDCAPITALISM. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG1001,DS)
War is no longer an occasional disturbance to an otherwise peaceful society. Rather, it has been made a permanent feature of the social order. Outbreaks of peace are made more the exception than the rule. War is both a recognition and a cause of the fact that making a hegemonic stability via the battle for hearts and minds is proving difficult. War, at least as recently waged by the US government, has now been made pre-emptive, preventing supposed future attacks rather than merely responding to hostilities. But we have insisted on a historical materialism, one focussing on capital accumulation and imperialism as underlying war. These processes are protected and enhanced on a global scale via the increasing militarization of industry combined with attempts to exert military control at a distance over the globe and nearby parts of outer space. So, in sum, what is the militarization
and future weaponization of outer space actually all about? What are the implications of using satellites to acquire global panopticism? It has long been recognized that struggles over space on Earth are intimately connected to social struggles, to contests between classes and others . As we have seen, this is a central feature of Lefebvres work and it is taken up by Harvey in his studies of the Paris revolutions of 1848 and 1871 (1989a). Harvey invokes what he calls a simple rule that those who command space can always control the politics of place even though, and this is a vital corollary, it takes control of some place to command space in the first place (Harvey 1989b: 234). As President Lyndon B. Johnson argued in 1958: there is something more important than the ultimate weapon. That is the ultimate position the position of total control over the Earth that lies somewhere out in space. That is [. . .] the distant future, though not so distant as we may have thought. Whoever gains that position gains control, total control, over Earth, for the purposes of tyranny or for the service of freedom. (cited in Air Force 2006) Sadly now, those interests

monopolizing and controlling the use of outer space are those attempting to monopolize and control social relations, social processes and forms of subjectivity on Earth. It is possible to imagine the total militarization of the public sphere from space, civilians every move being watched and targeted. In short, the current way of humanizing outer space is again about exerting the hegemony of the powerful. Imperialist adventures abroad are, however, inherently unstable. They breed resistances. One form of resistance is localized social movements now being made international in scope (Figure 3.2). The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space makes many of the key points raised in this chapter. Unlike the mass observation respondents, it certainly does not accept the humanization of outer space as inevitable. The Global Network aims not just to prevent the arms race moving into space but to demonstrate the link between this process and the protection and enhancement of private property on Earth. Domination of outer space is seen by them as no more and no less than a means towards the domination of global society by a bloc of interests. The central implication of the Global
Network, though not one clearly spelt out, is that humanization of outer space is not necessarily of itself a bad thing. The question is who is doing the humanizing, and what kind of society is being reproduced into the cosmos

THEACTOFCRITICISMCANCHALLENGETHELOGICSANDFRAMEWORKTHATMAKECAPITALISTDOMINATIONOF SPACE DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG189,DS)
The science of outer space is now being deployed to humanize the cosmos in ways that not only reproduce the social order, but extend this order indefinitely into the cosmos. But an explanatory critique hopefully also shows that there is nothing inevitable about this process. Social and political alliances can be, and are being, forged against this particular form of humanization. New types of common sense can be constructed. Contemporary forms of subjectivity which are alienated from the cosmos and dreaming about being part of it are not inevitable. They are the product of recent times and can certainly undergo change in a more socially progressive direction.

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FINALLY, THE ALTERNATIVE SOLVES THE AFF. ONLY BY COMBINING THE RESOURCES OF THE WORLD AND WORKING FOR A COMMON GOOD, CAN WE SPREAD HUMAN LIFE INTO SPACE. ITS TRY OR DIE FOR THE ALTERNATIVE. WoodsandGrant, founding members of the Militant Tendency, an influential Trotskyist group in the United Kingdom, in95
[Alan and Ted, Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science, http://www.marxist.com/rircontents.htm] The possibility of long distance space travel beyond the confines of our own solar system will not forever remain in the realms of science fiction. Let us not forget that only a hundred years ago, the idea of flying faster than the speed of sound seemed beyond the bounds of credibility, let alone travelling to the moon. The history of the human race in general, and that of the last 40 years in particular, shows that there is no problem too great that men and women cannot solve, given time. In about four billion years from now, our sun will begin to swell in size, as its helium core slowly shrinks. The planets near the sun will be subjected to unimaginable temperatures. Life on earth will become impossible, as the oceans boil away, and the atmosphere is destroyed. Yet the end of life in one small corner of the universe is not the end of the story. Even as our star dies, other

stars will be born. Among the billions of galaxies in the visible universe, there are a vast quantity of suns and planets like our own where the conditions for life exist. Beyond doubt, many of these will be inhabited by advanced forms of life, including thinking beings like
ourselves. Very few scientists now doubt this proposition, and fewer still since the complicated molecules needed to create living organisms have been found even in space itself. At the end of The Dialectics of Nature, Engels expresses a vibrant optimism about the future of life: "It is an eternal cycle in which matter moves, a cycle that certainly only completes its orbit in periods of time for which our terrestrial year is no adequate measure, a cycle in which the time of highest development, the time of organic life and still more that of the life of beings conscious of nature and of themselves, is just as narrowly restricted as the space in which life and self-consciousness come into operation; a cycle in which every finite mode of existence of matter, whether it be sun or nebular vapour, single animal or genus of animals chemical combination or dissociation, is equally transient, and wherein nothing is eternal but eternally changing, eternally moving matter and the laws according to which it moves and changes. "But however often, and however relentlessly, this cycle is completed in time and space; however many millions of suns and earths may arise and pass away, however long it may last before, in one solar system and only on one planet, the conditions for organic life develop; however innumerable the organic beings, too, that have to arise and to pass away before animals with a brain capable of thought are developed from their midst, and for a short span of time find conditions suitable for life, only to be exterminated later without mercywe have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore, also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it." (52) Now, however, we are entitled to go further than this. The staggering advances of science over the hundred years since Engels died mean that the death of the sun will not necessarily mean the death of the human race. The development of powerful spacecraft,

capable of travelling at speeds which at present seem impossible, could prepare the ground for the ultimate adventure, involving emigration to other parts of the solar system, and, eventually, other galaxies. Even at one percent of the speed of lighta clearly
attainable goalit would be possible to reach inhabitable planets in the course of a few hundred years. If this seems a long time, we should remember that it took early humans millions of years to colonise the world, setting out from Africa. Moreover, the journey would probably take place in stages, establishing colonies and staging-posts along the way, like the early Polynesian settlers who colonised the Pacific, island by island, over several centuries. The technological problems will be immense, but we will have at least three billion years to resolve them. If we consider that Homo sapiens has only been in existence for about 100,000 years, that civilisation has only existed for about 5,000 years of that, and that the pace of technological advance has tended to increase ever more rapidly, there is no reason whatever to draw pessimistic conclusions about the future of humanityon one condition: that class rule, that atrocious relic of barbarism, is replaced by a system of co-operation and planning, which will unite all the resources of the globe in one common cause.

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THEAFFIRMATIVEREFLECTSAFAILEDECONOMICMODELOFSPACEDEVELOPMENT EVENIFTHEGOVERNMENT ASSUMES THE RISK TO STIMULATE PRIVATE DEVELOPMENT, THERE IS NO POT OFGOLD IN THE SKY. ONLY THE ALTERNATIVECANPROVIDETHENECESSARYFRAMEWORKFORTRUEEXPLORATIONANDDEVELOPMENT Flores and Gangale. PacificSociologicalAssociationConference.September2007(TheGlobalizationofSpaceThe
AstrosociologicalApproach.DA:July24,2011.CH)

The libertarian mantra that Government is the problem. is nonsensical. Neither is government the entire solution, but it is a necessary partner in the solution--on land and on sea, in the air and in space. Building a transplanetary infrastructure is not something that private enterprise is going to accomplish, except in the far future. First must come the political vision to build rainbow bridges to the heavens, then will come the economic incentive to travel them. What makes libertarian rhetoric so seductive is that government seems to have dropped the ball. The Golden Age of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo is long gone. During that time, anything seemed possible. It was anticipated that there would be a fullyreusable launch system, a space station, a Moon base, and human expeditions to Mars, all by the early 1980s. The technology for all of this was either in hand or within reach, but there was no political necessity, and there certainly was no economic rationale. Clearly, if government were the problem, private enterprise failed to provide a solution. Private enterprise never built a space station or a Moon base, or sent humans to Mars. Is it likely to in the near future? Government has
been getting an increasingly bad rap in the space advocacy community since the end of the Apollo Era, but in truth the mad dash to the Moon was unsustainable, and measuring subsequent progress against the Apollo standard reflects unrealistically high expectations. Apollo was a Cold War anomaly that has not been repeated, and that may have no analog in the future. Again, the central problem is infrastructure. When the Apollo program ended, it left some ground infrastructure (assembly and launch facilities later used by the Space Shuttle program) but no space infrastructure, and in that respect it was a developmental dead end. Political motivation for government to build lasting

infrastructure is generated by private sector anticipation of colonizing a new human ecology in which it can produce profit.
This is the common thread in all of the aforementioned government infrastructure projects. In contrast, no government has bothered to build a tunnel under the Bering Strait; there are no roads on either side, and so there is little prospect of a sustainable human ecology there. This is not to say that there will never be a Bering Tunnel, just not any time soon. This may sound like a chicken-and-egg problem. Private enterprise is ill-positioned to develop

infrastructure that it requires to thrive. Technocracy.government-directed technological development.has its limits, and may be politically motivated to develop capabilities that have little or no economic utility. A case in point is the depopulation of
Siberia that has been occurring since the collapse of communism. The Soviet Union built infrastructure and forcibly moved population in a massive effort to colonize Siberia and extract its natural resources. Under a command economy, it was not clear that this was an uneconomical project, but as Russia has

transitioned to a market economy, an increasing number of people have found that they cannot make a decent living in Siberia despite its vast natural wealth. There are enormous costs associated with extracting those resources in the extreme environment, and
furthermore, there are considerable costs attached to transporting goods out of this remote region of the Earth to market. So, millions of Russians are abandoning the frontier to return to the bosom of Mother Russias European heartland. Now, Siberia is paradise next door compared to the distant and forbidding Moon and Mars, yet here private enterprise is retreating from an ecology that government established. Private enterprise only recently duplicated Alan Sheppards 1961 suborbital flight. How credible is it that private enterprise is going to blaze trails to the planets in our lifetime? It is about as credible as the hype about living on the Moon that Baby Boomers read in the WeeklyReader40 years ago, or the grand vision of solar power satellite constellations 30 years ago, or a fleet of commercially owned and operated Space Shuttles 20 years ago, or the Iridium mobile telephone satellite constellation 10 years ago. It seems like every time you turn around, space endeavors are being oversold, whether they are governmental or commercial. However, developing a spacefaring civilization is not an insoluble chicken-and-egg conundrum. It is more subtle than that, and there are solutions--not in all cases, but on the margins. Obviously, progress does occur, and while the pace of progress is not at a dead crawl, it does have constraints. The key conceptualization is of government and private enterprise in a push-pull relationship. When private interest becomes curious about what lies over the five year return-on-investment horizon, it nudges government to stand straight and see further over that horizon. If

the vista is promising, private interest encourages government to build the rainbow bridge to the pot of gold. Government then gets its piece of the action by taxing that pot of gold. The challenge is in recognizing that not every horizon hides a pot of gold, or if it does, it can be too costly to bring it home with the means at hand. Space technology is not a magic wand, and the High Frontier is not the Promised Land. Laissezfairelibertarianism is not the answer to space development any more than command economy technocracy was; rather what is required is, as John Kenneth Galbraith prescribed for the United States half a century ago, a social balance between public goods and private goods (Sackrey etal.2002).14 The concept of and need for sociopolitical balance between
various economic power centers in society, including government, corporations, organized labor, international civil society, etcetera,is also described in Raymond Millers Multicentric Organizational model of political economy (Miller 2000). For space development to proceed and to succeed there must be a partnership between government and enterprise as well as among governments and enterprises, a transnational partnership of governmental and nongovernmental entities (Dudley-Rowley 2001, Dudley-Rowley and Gangale 2006).15 It is not merely corporations or

governments, but all sectors of human society, that must go into space.

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WECANCHANGETHEWAYTHATWECHOOSETOENTERINTOSPACEDRASTICALLYCHANGESTHEOUTCOME. IT IS POSSIBLE TO EXPLORE AND DEVELOP SPACE AND BENEFIT THE DISPOSSESSED ON EARTH. FLOATING PIK SOLVES. DICKENSANDORMROD*VISITINGPROFESSOROFSOCIOLOGYATTHEUNIVERSITYOFESSEXAND**LECTURER IN SOCIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON 7 (PETER AND JAMES, COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGYOFTHEUNIVERSEPG190,DS)
Alternatively, rather

than being founded on the interests of capital, and individualist fantasies, the humanization of outer space could emphasize collective responsibilities on Earth and try to ensure that any gains made through space exploration were spread throughout to improve the lot of the dispossessed on Earth (as was the original aim of the United Nations Moon Agreement). To quote Etzioni, As we move deeper into space we should be facing Earth and allow our deprived world to set the pace (1964: 198). In theory, so long as funds are not diverted from more socially necessary projects, this is not incompatible with scientific exploration of outer space aimed at simply discovering how the universe is structured. Earth imaging technology available freely to all can be used to
track refugee populations, or chart changes in the environment caused by global warming. So long as it is not motivated by fear and panic, space for peace could also include diverting risk stemming from Earth-bound asteroids: a plan under active development by NASA and the European Space Agency (Gray 2007). As President Kennedy acknowledged in 1962, whether space science is used for good or ill depends on man. He was confident himself that space can be explored without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours (Kennedy 1962). There are signs that perhaps the European space programme will cease treating the universe as an object for the exercise of power and instead ensure space technology is used for the public good (Mean and Wilsdon 2004). Alternatively, and much more ambitiously, humanization could attempt to emulate the early twentieth-century Russian cosmists by spreading a socialist or

communist society throughout the whole of nearby outer space. This is a highly human-centred project and, as such, can be criticized for simply imposing humanitys priorities, albeit communist priorities, on the cosmos as a whole . But any project is going to be human or anthropocentric. Is a cosmos reproducing and expanding a socialist or communist society necessarily a problem? Perhaps the significance of the utopian cosmists is that they prefigured the possibility of alternative types of space humanization

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THIS DEBATE IS ABOUT COMPETITING IMAGINARIES FOR SPACE DEVELOPMENT. VOTE NEGATIVE TO AFFIRM A VISION GUIDED BY THE LABOUR OF COLLECTIVE IMAGINATION THAT CAN MOTIVATE AND INSPIRE NEW LEFTIST POLITICAL POTENTIAL. THIS DEBATE ROUNDISKEY.
Shukaitis,UniversityofEssexandamemberoftheAutonomediaEditorialCollective,09(Stevphen;Spaceisthe (non)place:Martians,Marxists,andtheouterspaceoftheradicalimagination,TheSociologicalReviewVolume 57,IssueSupplements1,pages98113)
Joe Hill, the famous labour activist and songwriter, in a letter he wrote the day before his execution, said that the following day he expected to take a trip to Mars during which, upon his arrival, he would begin to organize Martian canal workers into the Industrial Workers of World. Why did he do this? After all, it might seem a bit odd that Hill, famous in his songwriting and reworking for consistently mocking the promises and deceits of religious reformers offering pie in the sky (and thats a lie) to oppressed and exploited migrant workers more concerned about getting some bread in the belly (and maybe some roses, ie dignity, too). Hill continues to say that with the canal worker hell sing Wobbly songs so loud the learned star gazers on Earth will for once and all get positive proof that the planet Mars is really inhabited (Smith, 1984: 164). So why the reference to some form of other worldly-ness, one in which, rather than promising salvation or escape from the trials and tribulations of this world, Hill rather imagines himself as extending and continuing the very same social antagonism that brought him to the day before his execution in the first place? Aside from the personal characteristics of Hills immense wit and humor (Rosemont, 2002), this chapter will argue that there is something more than that, something about the particular role outer space and extraterrestrial voyage play within the radical imagination. It will explore the idea of voyages out of the world as an imaginal machine for thinking and organizing to get out of this world that we want to leave behind. In other words, how themes and

imagery of space take part in the construction and animation of socially and historically embedded forms of collective imagination and cre ativity; how they operate as nodal points in ever-fluctuating networks of collec- tive intelligence animated through the shaping of social reality. For if utopia has no place in this world, no spatiality on our maps, the dream to leave this earth can hold quite a seductive sway for those who desire to found a new earth upon escape from this one. Within the imaginal space created through the imagery of space travel one can find an outer space of social movement, a smooth space and exteriority made inhabitable through a labour of collective imagination. The image and idea of space, through its circulation and elaboration within stories, myths, and artistic forms, composes a terrain of possibility that operates as an outside to the world as is. For even if it is not possible literally to step outside the world or existing reality, the capacity to imagine other possible worlds creates a terrain where it becomes possible to work towards the creation of another world. Perhaps the best
example of this is Visit Port Watson, an unsigned fake travel pamphlet written by Hakim Bey/Peter Lamborn Wilson and included in the Semiotext(e) SF Collection (Rucker et al., 1991). When Wilson received mail and questions about actually visiting the utopian destination of Port Watson described in the pamphlet, he responded by saying that Port Watson is that place where one is in the moment where one actually is when you believe that Port Watson could exist: a mobile territory of possibility rather than a fixed location. Port Watson is the location of realizing possible utopias that begins from the space of possibility opened in the imagination. At its best outer space operates in the same way, opening a space of possibility within the present through which other realities become possible. It is this labour of collective imagination that draws together into collective imaginaries such diverse phenomena as the Misfits suburban New Jersey punk anthems (Teenagers from Mars, I Turned into a Martian, etc) with Sun Ras cosmic madness and mythopoetic self-institution, that ties together the Association of Autonomous Astronauts call for a worldwide network of community based spaceship construction with Red Pilot/Noordung Cosmokinetic Theaters usage of retrofuturist Soviet space design as fodder for their collective imaginings (Dubravka and Suvakovic, 2003; Monroe, 2005). In these spaces of collective creativity, outer space operates as an effective meme

because it creates a space for engagement with weighty issues (exodus, escape, racial politics, otherness, militarization, global catastrophe, etc) while allowing an enticing playfulness to be employed. Indeed, one could argue that through much of leftist politics runs the notion of an apocalyptic moment, of some magical event (usually revolution), followed by the creation of a new and better world. The event, or the visitation, can both act as a pole of imaginal recomposition, or a projected hope that provides an excuse for acting in the world as it is, even if to find ways to escape from it. It is the process of negotiating these ambivalences in social movements, making contact with the other to come, where it becomes possible to build, in Bifo Berardis words, spaceships capable of navigating upon the ocean of chaos: rafts for all the refugees that depart from the bellicose and arid lands of late-modern capitalism (2008: 140)..

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THIS DEBATE CAN POLITICIZE THE NOTION OF THE SPACE COMMONS RATHER THAN BEGIN FROM NATIONAL CORPORATE INTEREST OUR ALTERNATIVE ASSERTS THAT GLOBALPUBLICINTERESTOUGHTTODETERMINETHECOURSEOFSPACEDEVELOPMENT PATRICKSALIN,2001,DOCTOROFCIVILLAWATMCGILLUNIVERSITY,PRIVATIZATIONANDMILITARIZATION IN THE SPACE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT, MCGILL UNIVERSITY, HTTP://WWW.SCIENCEDIRECT.COM/SCIENCE/ARTICLE/PII/S0265964600000503
What is really at stake here and should be the object of a widespread and open democratic debate is the notion of &public interest'. We question what should eventually prevail: is it the so-called national'' public interest, or should it not rather be a global public interest, which goes well beyond the limited list of corporations or professional associations that reply to and comment on a proposed new set of regulations. Private operators must launch risky adventurous projects in order to survive. Extravagant promises in terms of financial returns or technical prowess, as in the case of Iridium, play an important role in attracting investors with the lure of high dividends, but may not satisfy customers with more basic needs, who are looking for practical functionality at a reasonable cost [31]. Competition includes price wars, which, in the end, kill weaker competitors. One space market analyst has said that `Iridium's business plan met 1980 s needs with 1990 s technology and died spectacularly in 2000a [32].19 This only means that Iridium was unfortunately conceived in another era, that of the Cold War, and it did not survive the new paradigm we previously referred to, that of exacerbated global competition as a consequence of the shift from the public sector to the private sector. Its difficulty stemmed from the fact that many analysts did not take into account this change of
paradigm in their own professional practice: `... a company whose managers have a history of dealing with defense and other government markets does not worry about marketing ...a [33].20 This is not a new discovery: private business and military affairs do not follow the same logic. This was once openly expressed by a senior official at the US Department Commerce: In space, our national security, foreign policy, and economic security are inexorably linked [35].21 However, we can * without hesitation * assert here that the Mahan doctrine (on the influence of sea power upon history) is not applicable within the context of space law. What is good for America is not necessarily good for the rest of the world.

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DONTEVALUATETHEALTERNATIVEBASEDONITSLIKELIHOODTO SUCCEED. THEFUTURECANNOTBEOUR EXCLUSIVEPOLITICALCRITERIONTHISJUSTIFIESREVOLUTIONARYTERROR.RATHER,THEALTERNATIVEISAN ENACTEDUTOPIA. REGARDLESSOFITSOUTCOME,ATRULYREVOLUTIONARYGESTUREINVOLVESEXPERIENCING EVERYDECISIONASTHEREVOLUTIONASSUCH. IEK, 2004 [SLAVOJ, REVOLUTION AT THE GATES: IEK ON LENINTHE 1917 WRITINGS, P.259260]
As Deleuze saw very clearly, we

cannot provide in advance an unambiguous criterion which will allow us to distinguish "false" violent outburst from the "miracle" of the authentic revolutionary breakthrough. The ambiguity is irreducible here, since the "miracle" can occur only through the repetition of previous failures. And this is also why violence is a necessary ingredient of a revolutionary political act. That is to say: what is the criterion of a political act proper? Success as such clearly does not count, even if we define it in the dialectical terms of Merleau-Ponty: as the wager that the future will retroactively redeem our present horrible acts (this is how Merleau-Ponty, in Humanism and Terror, provided one of the more intelligent justifications of the Stalinist terror: retroactively, it will become justified if its final outcome is true freedom); 129 neither does reference to some abstract-universal ethical norm. The only criterion is the absolutely inherent one: that of the enacted utopia. In a genuine revolutionary breakthrough, the utopian future is neither simply fully realized, present, nor simply evoked as a distant promise which justifies present violence it is rather as if in a unique suspension of temporality, in the short circuit between the present and the future, we are as if by Grace briefly allowed to act as if the utopian future is (not yet fully here, but) already at hand, there to be seized. Revolution is experienced not as a present hardship we have to endure for the sake of the happiness and freedom of future generations, but as the present hardship over which this future happiness and freedom already cast their shadow in it, we are already free even as we fight for freedom; we are already happy even as we fight for happiness, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Revolution is not a Merleau-Pontyan wager, an act suspended in the future anterieur, to be legitimized or de-legitimized by the long-term outcome of present acts; it is, as it were,its own ontological proof, an immediate index of its own truth.
THESYSTEMOFCAPITALCREATESANETHICALDILEMMABECAUSEITSEEMSTHATALLACTIONOUTSIDEOFITS CONFINES WILL NECESSARILY FAIL ETHICS WILL NEVER BE POLITICAL IF WE DONT INSIST ON RISKING THE IMPOSSIBLEOFASUCCESSFULREVOLUTIONAGAINSTCAPITALISM WERADICALLYRESTRUCTURETHEETHICO POLITICALIMAGINATIONTOINCLUDETHEPOSSIBILITYOFSUCCESSFULACTIONSAGAINSTDOMINATION

ZizekandDaly2k4(SlavojandGlyn,ConversationswithZizekpage1819)
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

ALT:SOLVENCY
FIDELITY
ORDER TO THE

COMMUNIST IDEA

UNDERMINES THE TOTALITY OF THE LIBERAL-CAPITALIST WORLD

Zizek,2001 [Slavoj,RethinkingMarxismVolume13,Number2,summer, http://www.egs.edu/faculty/zizek/zizekcanlenintellusaboutfreedomtoday.htmlSenior ResearcherattheInstituteforSocialStudies,Ljubljana,Slovenia]

As such, Lenin's politics is the true counterpoint not only to the Third Way pragmatic opportunism, but also to the marginalist Leftist attitude of what Lacan called le narcissisme de la chose perdue. What a true Leninist and a political conservative have in common is the fact that they reject what one could call liberal Leftist "irresponsibility" (advocating grand projects of solidarity, freedom, etc., yet ducking out when one has to pay the price for it in the guise of concrete and often "cruel" political measures): like an authentic conservative, a true Leninist is not afraid to pass to the act, to assume all the

consequences, unpleasant as they may be, of realizing his political project. Rudyard Kipling (whom Brecht admired) despised
British liberals who advocated freedom and justice, while silently counting on the Conservatives to do the necessary dirty work for them; the same can be said for the liberal Leftist's (or "democratic Socialist's") relationship towards Leninist Communists: liberal Leftists reject

the Social Democratic "compromise," they want a true revolution, yet they shirk the actual price to be paid for it and thus prefer to adopt the attitude of a Beautiful Soul and to keep their hands clean. In contrast to this false radical Leftist's position
(who want true democracy for the people, but without the secret police to fight counterrevolution, without their academic privileges being threatened), a Leninist, like a Conservative, is authentic in the sense of fully assuming the consequences of his choice, i.e. of

being fully aware of what it actually means to take power and to exert it. The return to Lenin is the endeavor to retrieve the unique moment when a thought already transposes itself into a collective organization, but does not yet fix itself into an Institution (the established Church, the IPA, the Stalinist Party-State). It aims neither
at nostalgically reenacting the "good old revolutionary times," nor at the opportunistic-pragmatic adjustment of the old program to "new conditions," but at repeating, in the present world-wide conditions, the Leninist gesture of initiating a political project that would undermine the totality of the global liberal-capitalist world order, and, furthermore, a project that would unabashedly

assert itself as acting on behalf of truth, as intervening in the present global situation from the standpoint of its repressed truth. What Christianity did with regard to the Roman Empire, this global "multiculturalist" polity, we should do with regard to today's
Empire.1

ALT:SOLVENCY
ETHICAL
DECISION MAKERS MUST ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE UNIVERSAL APPLICATION OF THEIR ETHICAL JUDGMENTS. THE ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSALIZES THE COMMUNIST IDEA THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE POLITICSETHICAL.

VIGHI&FELDNER10 [HTTP://ZIZEKSTUDIES.ORG/INDEX.PHP/IJZS/ARTICLE/VIEW/239/325;CARDIFFUNIVERSITYUKFABIO
&HEIKOINTERNATIONALJOURNALOFZIZEKSTUDIES4.1] Let us recall that the process of subjectivation is our answer to the uncanny otherness we experience in external reality. Our
identities are constituted through the circulation of desire accompanied by its inseparable correlative, fantasy. How exactly? As anticipated, what setsour desire in motion, allowing us to construct those historically-specific fantasies that help us to constitute what we perceive as our unique identity, is always our indecision vis--vis the others desire. In other words, we form our selves against the background of a troublesome question that threatens to undermine our relationship with external reality, inclusive of all its others. This question is Lacans famous Che vuoi? (what do you want?), which tells us that what is at stake in desire is not our fantasy (what do I want?), but the others fantasy (what does he/she want from me?). As in the case of Freuds little daughter Annas dreaming about strawberries,7 our desires are effectively an answer to the bothering gaze of the other, a gaze invested by jouissance. In Zizeks interpretation of Freuds daughters dream, the crucial feature is that while she was voraciously eating a strawberry cake, the little girl noticed how her parents were deeply satisfied by this spectacle, by seeing her fully enjoying it (Zizek 1997: 9). Despite Zizeks somewhat inventive reading of Freuds text (the strawberries become a strawberry cake which might work as a Freudian slip in its own right and the whole added part on Annas parents looking at her while she was eating) his Lacanian point about the reflexivity of desires remains instructive. If, then, our identity emerges as an intrinsically desperate strategy to answer the others desire, this

means that by stripping our desire of its protective function we get precisely what we seek to avoid: the radical inconsistency that marks the status of subjectivity proper. That is to say: if the process of subjectivation designates the space where we recognize ourselves through the other, the subject proper is the non-symbolisable fracture/excess that compels us to construct our identity via the socio-symbolic network. It is at once the driving force and the limit of all forms of subjectivation, and thus correlative to the Real.
Here we should go back to the crucial question of free will, which Zizek understands in connection with the German idealist account of the term, arguing that the idea of subjectivity there proposed does endorse access to freedom of will provided, however, that we conceive of this freedom as a destabilising encounter with contingency. Zizeks point is that free will hinges on the paradox of the frightful disconnection from causality brought about by drive,8 i.e. an encounter with our radical finitude, which ultimately coincides with the radical contingency of reality itself. In short, necessity covers both the actual causal link (the inevitability of what happens to us) and its virtual background of multiple un-actualised possibilities and directions. And freedom is consubstantial with necessity in so far as it sabotages causality by endorsing it fully inclusive, that is, of its un-actualised background. By so doing, freedom triggers the retroactive choice of a different causal link, i.e. it changes the future by changing the past (Zizek 2006: 203). Thus conceived, subjective freedom implies a form of self-determination which begins with the thwarting intervention of drive

followed by the redefinition of my causality: it corresponds to my ability to choose/determine which causes will determine me. Ethics, at its most elementary, stands for the courage to accept this responsibility (Zizek 2006: 203). This positing the presuppositions (Hegel) is the minimal but crucial power of the subject, through which we can retroactively assume a new causal link. Put differently, the causal link in which we are embedded creates an effect it cannot contain, an effect which threatens to subvert the cause itself. This is why freedom, for Zizek, has the form of a loop: we have a chance to disconnect and opt for a different cause, i.e. choose a process of subjectivation with a different content. The whole point is that while I cannot choose directly what I will be in the future (as that would entail bypassing the process of subjectivation), I can nevertheless embrace change by transforming my past, identifying with one of my past historys un- actualised causal chains. The key move towards liberation thus hinges on my perceiving my cause as virtual. From a political angle, the Zizekian defence of a lost cause (such as Communism) is precisely the attempt to actualise an opportunity that was missed at a given point in the past and that, if actualised, could change the future.9 This is why Zizek endorses Hegels claim that infinity is not to be conceived as endless expansion but active self-limitation (self-determination) (Zizek 2006: 205). Why? Once again, because nothing escapes necessity,
inclusive of its own excess:

The question of freedom is, at its most radical, the question of how this closed circle of fate can be broken. The answer, of course, is that it can be broken not because it is not truly closed, because there are cracks in the texture, but, on the contrary, because it is overclosed, that is, because the subjects very endeavor to break out of it is included in advance. That is to say: since our attempts to assert our freedom and escape fate are themselves instruments of fate, the only real way to escape fate is to renounce these attempts, to accept fate as inexorable. [...] accept fate as inevitable, and you will break its grasp on you
(Zizek 2006: 207)

If we agree with this understanding of freedom as over-identification with the causal chain, inclusive of its un-actualised causes, then the key political questions, simple as they may sound, can be put along these lines: what is it that brings about the dimension of drive? How can drive be connected to a specific political project that actualises our lost causes?

ALT:NOWKEY
THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS MAKES THE ALTERNATIVE ALL THE MORE URGENT. ABSENT SUSTAINED RESISTANCE,THECRISISWILLAFFORDANOPPORTUNITYFORMORECAPITALISTIMPERIALISM. Zizek2009SlavojFirstasTragedy,ThenasFarcepage1718
Will the financial meltdown be a sobering moment, then, the awakening from a dream? It all depends on how it comes to be symbolized, on what ideological interpretation or story imposes itself and determines the general perception of the crisis.
When the normal run of things is traumatically interrupted, the field is then opened up for a "discursive" ideological competition-as happened, for example, in Germany in the early 1930S, when, invoking the Jewish conspiracy, Hitler triumphed in the competition over which narrative best explained the causes for the crisis of the Weimar Republic and offered the best way to escape from that crisis. Likewise, in France in 1940 it was Marshal Petain's narrative which won out in the struggle to explain the reasons for France's defeat. Any naive Leftist expectation that the current financial and economic

crisis necessarily opens up a space for the radical Left is thus without doubt dangerously short -Sighted. The primary immediate effect of the crisis will not be the rise of a radical emancipatory politics, but rather the rise of racist populism, further wars, increased poverty in the poorest Third World countries, and greater divisions between the rich and the poor within all
societies.

While crises do shake people out of their complacency, forcing them to question the fundamentals of their lives, the most spontaneous first reaction is panic, which leads to a "return to the basics": the basic premises of the ruling ideology, far from being put into doubt, are even more violently reasserted. The danger is thus that the ongoing melt-down will be used in a similar fashion to what Naomi
Klein has called the "shock doctrine." There is, indeed, something surprising about the predominantly hostile reactions to Klein's recent book: they are much more violent than one would expect; even benevolent left liberals who sympathize with some of her analyses deplore how "her ranting obscures her reasoning" (as Will Hutton put it in his review of the book in the Observer). Clearly, Klein has touched some very sensitive nerves with her key thesis: The history of the contemporary free market was written in shocks. Some of the most infamous human rights violations of the past thirty- five years, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by anti-democratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market reforms.

ALT:NOWKEY
WEMUSTACTNOW;THEEXISTENTIALTHREATOFENVIRONMENTALANDGENETIC DESTRUCTIONMAKESALLOFUSPROLETARIATSSUBJECTTOEXTINCTIONIFCAPITALISM CONTINUESTORUNAMOK.THEALTERNATIVEISKEYTOSOLVINGTHESEPROBLEMSAND PREVENTINGASHIFTTOSOCIALISM Zizek,professorofphilosophyandpsychoanalysisattheEuropeanGraduateSchool, 10(IdeasofCommunismeditedbySlavojZizekandCostasDounzinas,pgs212214)
Again, then,

it is not enough to remain faithful to the communist Idea one has to locate it in real historical antagonisms which give this Idea a practical urgency. The only true question today is: do we endorse the predominant naturalization of capitalism, or does today's global capitalism contain antagonisms powerful enough to prevent its indefinite reproduction? There are four such antagonisms: the looming threat of ecological catastrophe, the inappropiateness of the notion of private property for so-called 'intellectual property', the socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific developments (especially in biogenetics), and, last but not least, new forms of apartheid, new Walls and slums. There is a qualitative difference between the last feature the gap that separates the Excluded from the Included and the other three, which designate the domains of what Hardt and Negri call the 'commons', the shared substance of our social being, the privatization of-which involves violent acts which should also, where necessary, be resisted with violent means: the command of culture, the immediately socialized forms of 'cognitive' capital, primarily language, our means of communication and education, but also the shared infrastructure of public transport, electricity, post, etc. (if Bill Gates were to be allowed a monopoly, -we would have reached the absurd situation in -which a private individual would literally own the software texture of our basic network of communication); the commons of external nature,, threatened by pollution and exploitation (from oil to rain forests and the natural habitat itself); _ the commons of internal nature (the biogenetic inheritance of humanity); with new biogenetic technology, the creation of a New Man in the literal sense of changing human nature becomes a realistic prospect. What the struggles in all these domains share is an awareness of the potential for destruction, up to and including the self-annihilation of humanity itself, if the capitalist logic of enclosing the commons is allowed a free run. Nicholas Stern -was right to characterize the climate crisis as 'the greatest market failure in human history'.3 So -when Kishan Khoday, a UN
team leader, recently-wrote, 'There is an increasing spirit of global environmental citizenship, a desire to address climate change as a matter of common concern to all humanity'/ one should give all weight to the terms 'global citizenship' and 'common concern' the need to establish a global political organization and engagement -which, neutralizing and channelling market mechanisms, expresses a properly

. It is this reference to the 'commons' -which justifies the resuscitation of the notion of communism: it enables us to see the progressing 'enclosure' of the commons as a process of proletanzation of those -who are thereby excluded from their own substance. Today's historical situation not only does not compel us to drop the notion of proletariat, of the proletarian position on the contrary, it compels us to radicalize it to an existential level -well beyond Marx's imagination. We need a more radical notion of the proletarian subject, a subject reduced to the evanescent point of the Cartesian cogito, deprived of its substantial content. For this reason, the new emancipatory politics will no longer be the act of a particular social agent, but an explosive combination of different agents. What unites us is that, in contrast to the classic image of proletarians having 'nothing to lose but their chains', we are in danger of losing everything: the threat is that we -will be reduced to an abstract empty Cartesian subject deprived of all substantial content, dispossessed of our symbolic substance, our genetic base heavily manipulated, vegetating in an unlivable environment. This triple threat to our entire being makes us all in a -way proletarians, reduced to 'substance less subjectivity', as Marx put it in the Grundru Me, The figure of the 'part of no-part' confronts us with the truth of our own position, and the ethicopolitical challenge is to recognize ourselves in this figure - in a way, we are all excluded, from nature as well as from our symbolic substance. Today, we are all potentially a homo sacer, and the only way to defend against actually becoming so is to act preventively. This proletarianization alone, however, is not sufficient if we want to be counted as communists. The ongoing enclosure of the commons concerns the relations of people to the
communist perspective objective conditions of their life-process, as well as relations between people: the commons are privatized at the expense of the proletarianized majority. There is nevertheless a gap between these two aspects the commons can also be restored to collective humanity without communism, in an authoritarian-communitarian regime; the de-substantialized, 'rootless' subject, deprived of its substantial content, can also be counteracted in the direction of communitarianism, by finding its proper place in a new substantial community. In this precise sense, Negri was on the mark with his anti-socialist title Good Bye Mr. Socialism-.

communism is to be opposed to socialism, which m place of the egalitarian collective, offers a solidary organic community Nazism was national socialism, not national communism There can be a socialist anti-Semitism, there cannot be a communist one (If it appears otherwise, as in Stalin's last years, it is only as an indicator of a lack of fidelity to the revolutionary event.) Eric Hobsbawm recently published a column with the title: 'Socialism failed, capitalism is bankrupt. What comes next?' The answer is: communism. Socialism wants to solve the first three antagonisms without the fourth one, without the singular universality of the proletariat. The only way for the global capitalist system to survive its long-term antagonism and simultaneously to avoid the communist solution, will be to reinvent some kind of socialism - in the guise of communitarianism, populism, capitalism with Asian values, or whatever. The future will be communist... or socialist. This is why we should insist on the qualitative difference between the last antagonism the gap that separates the Excluded from the Included and the other three: it is only the reference to the Excluded that justifies the term communism.
There is nothing more 'private' than a State community which perceives the Excluded as a threat and worries how to keep them at a proper distance. In other words, in the series of the tour antagonisms, that between the Included and the Excluded is the crucial one: without it, all others lose their subversive edge. Ecology turns into a problem of sustainable development, intellectual property into a complex legal challenge, biogenetics into an ethical issue.

ALTSOLVESTECH
ALT SOLVES TECH ADVANCEMENT PEOPLE WOULDNT DO USELESS REPETITIVE TASKS FOR MONEY, THEY
WOULDHAVEMORETIMEFORINTELLECTUALFREEDOMWHICHWOULDRESULTINBETTERTECHNOLOGYPOST ALTERNATIVE. THEONLYTHINGTHATCHANGESISTHEMOTIVATIONSFORWORK INSTEADOFDOINGTHINGS FORPROFITTHINGSAREDEVELOPEDFORTHEGOODOFSOCIETY

Callinicos, Director of the Centre for European Studies at Kings College, in04
[Alex, The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx, pg. 175-176] Within the framework of capitalist relations of production these changes take an antagonistic formunemployment for many workers, speed-up for those left on the job, the deskilling of craft labour. But they create the potential for a society in which the

drudgery of heavy, repetitive manual labour has been abolished, in which people are no longer tied daily to many hours of backbreaking and boring physical work. The resulting reduction of the working week to a fraction of its present lengthhotly resisted by capitalists because it would reduce their profitswould free people to develop their intellectual powers and physical skills. In communist society, thanks to the development of the productive forces and their subjection to common social control, many of the Utopian socialists dreams would become reality. As Fourier had anticipated, the barrier between work and play could be broken downlabour for the sake of physical survival and labour for sheer enjoyments sake would no longer be separated from, and
opposed to each other. Engels argued that the antithesis between town and country would also be abolished, with the establishment of communes like those advocated by Fourier and Robert Owen in which both agriculture and industry would be carried on. The development of new forms of technology

in recent years requiring decentralised units of production linked together by advanced communications systems has made such arrangements more feasible. Marx emphasised that all this depended on the development of the productive forces: The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true end of freedom, which can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite (C iii 820). Communism thus both drastically reduces the burden of extracting a living from nature, freeing us for other pursuits, and subjects the labour process, the realm of necessity, to rational and collective control. In Engels words, it is humanitys leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom (AD 336).

A2

A2PERM
CALLS FOR DIRECT ACTION ARE JUSTIFIED BY A FUNDAMENTAL STOP GAP OR PAUSE IN THE PROCESS OF THINKING THE AFFIRMATIVES RELIANCE ON DOING SOMETHING IS ALWAYS JUSTIFIED BY IGNORING THE FUNDAMENTALQUESTIONSOFHOWTHATACTIONTREATSTHOSEWHOARESUBORDINATED Johnston,interdisciplinaryresearchfellowinpsychoanalysisatEmoryUniversity,2004 Adrian,Psychoanalysis,Culture&Society,Decemberv9i3p259pageinfotrac
The height of Zizek's philosophical traditionalism, his fidelity to certain lasting truths too precious to cast away in a postmodern frenzy, is his conviction that no worthwhile praxis can emerge prior to the careful and deliberate formulation of a correct conceptual framework. His references to the Lacanian notion of the Act (qua agent-less occurrence not brought about by a subject) are especially strange in light of the fact that he seemingly endorses the view that theory must precede practice, namely, that deliberative reflection is, in a way, primary. For Zizek, the foremost "practical" task to be accomplished today isn't some kind of rebellious acting out, which would, in the end, amount to nothing more than a series of impotent, incoherent outbursts. Instead, given the contemporary exhaustion of the socio-political imagination under the hegemony of liberal-democratic capitalism, he sees the

liberation of thinking itself from its present constraints as the first crucial step that must be taken if anything is to be changed for the better. In a lecture given in Vienna in 2001, Zizek suggests that Marx's call to break out of the sterile closure of abstract intellectual ruminations through direct, concrete action (thesis eleven on Feuerbach--"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it") must be inverted given the new prevailing conditions of late-capitalism. Nowadays, one must resist succumbing to the temptation to short-circuit thinking in favor of acting, since all such rushes to action are doomed; they either fail to disrupt capitalism or are ideologically co-opted by it.

NOT

DOING THE AFFIRMATIVE, RESISTING THEIR DEMAND FOR ACTION, IS CRITICAL TO INAUGURATE

ALTERNATIVEPOLITICALPOSSIBILITIES.

Zizekin2004SlavojIraq:TheBorrowedKettle,page7171
The stance of simply condemning the postmodern Left for its accommodation, however, is also false, since one should ask the obvious difficult question: what, in fact, was the alternative? If

todays post-politics is opportunistic pragmatism with no principles, then the predominant leftist reaction to it can be aptly characterized as principle opportunism: one simply sticks to old formulae (defence of the welfare state, and so on) and calls them principles, dispensing with the detailed analysis of how the situation has changed and thus retaining ones position of Beautiful Soul. The inherent stupidity of the principled Left is clearly discernable in it standard criticism of any analysis which proposes a more complex picture of the situation, renouncing any simple prescriptions on how to act: there is no clear political stance involved in your theory and this from people with no stance but their principled opportunism. Against such a stance, one should have the courage to affirm that, in a situation like todays, the only way really to remain open to a revolutionary opportunity is to renounce facile calls to direct action, which necessarily involve us in an activity where things change so that the totality remains the same. Todays predicament is that, if we succumb to the urge of directly doing something (engaging in the anti-globalist struggle, helping the poor) we will certainly and undoubtedly contribute to the reproduction of the existing order. The only way to lay the foundations for a true, radical change is to withdraw from the compulsion to act, to do nothing thus opening up the space for a different kind of activity.

PERMUTATIONDOESNTSOLVEITSUPPLEMENTSTHESYSTEMITDOESNOTDISTURB Zizek2008InDefenseofLostCausespage33
The "worldless" character of capitalism is linked to this hegemonic role of scientific discourse in modernity, a feature clearly identified already by Hegel who wrote that, for us moderns, art and religion no longer obey absolute respect: we can admire them, but we no longer kneel down in front of them, our heart is not really with them today, only science (conceptual knowledge) deserves this respect. "Postmodernity" as the "end of grand narratives" is one of the names for this predicament in which the multitude of local fictions thrives against the background of scientific discourse as the only remaining universality deprived of sense. Which is whythe politics advocated by many a leftist today, that of countering the devastating worlddissolving effect of capitalist moder- nization by inventing new fictions, imagining "new worlds"(like the Porto Alegre slogan "Another world is possible!"),is inadequateor, at least, profoundly ambiguous:it all depends on how these fictions relate to the

underlying Real of capitalism do they just supplement it with the imaginary multitude, as the postmodern "local narratives" do, or do they disturb its functioning? In other words,the task is to produce a symbolic fiction (a truth) that intervenes into the Real, that causes a change within it.29

A2PERM/COALITIONS
THEIRCOALITIONALPOLITICSRELYONAFUNDMANETALNATURALIZATIONOFECONOMICARRANGEMENTSAND RENDERDOCILEACRITICISMOFCAPITALISM IEK,1997[Slavoi,MULTICULTURALISM,OR,THECULTURALLOGICOFMULTINATIONALCAPITALISM,NEWLEFT REVIEW#224,P.4547]
Do we not witness the same phenomenon today, and in even stronger shape, with the growth of an underclass excluded, sometimes for generations, from the benefits of affluent liberal-democratic society? Todays exceptionsthe homeless, the ghettoized, the permanently unemployedare the symptom of the late capitalist universal system, a growing and permanent reminder of how the immanent logic of late capitalism works: the proper capitalist utopia is that, through appropriate measures (for progressive liberals, affirmative action; for conservatives, a return to self-reliance and family values), this exception could bein the long term and in principle, at leastabolished. And is not a homologous utopia at work in the notion of a rainbow coalition: in the idea that, at some utopian future moment, all progressive strugglesfor gay and lesbian rights, for the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, the ecological struggle, the feminist struggle, and so onwill be united in the common chain of

equivalences? Again, this necessity of failure is structural: the point is not simply that, because of the empirical complexity of the situation, all particular progressive fights will never be united, that wrong chains of equivalences will always occursay, the enchainment of the fight for African-American ethnic identity with patriarchal and homophobic ideologybut rather that emergencies of wrong enchainments are grounded in the very structuring principle of todays progressive politics of establishing chains of equivalences: the very domain of the multitude of particular struggles with their continuously shifting displacements and condensations is sustained by the repression of the key role of economic strugglethe leftist politics of the chains of equivalences among the plurality of struggles is strictly correlative to the silent abandonment of the analysis of capitalism as a global economic system and to the acceptance of capitalist economic relations as the unquestionable framework.

A2PERM/CEDEPOLITICAL
THE POLITICS OF COMMUNISM IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE STATE. ANY SUCH ATTEMPT INEVITABLY LEADS TO THE CORRUPTION OF REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. THE TIME FOR LOOKING TO THE STATE TO IMPLEMENT CHANGE HAS PASSED; IT IS NOW THE TIME FOR THEPROLETARIATTOSHAPETHEWORLD BALSO,PROFESSOROFPOETRYATTHEEUROPEANGRADUATESCHOOL,10(JUDITH,THEIDEAOFCOMMUNISM, EDITEDBYSLAVOJZIZEKANDCOSTASDOUZINAS,PGS2526,AU)
Politics proceeds on its own: I want to unpack that statement -with reference to several points. Politics proceeds on its own because it has no appointment with history. If it is still true that the history of humanity has been the history of class struggle, politics is not to be confused with class struggle, and revolution is no longer the vector of politics. In my view, we have arrived at the end - not only necessary but salutary - of the idea that one carries out political work in order to see better days tomorrow. Today, the cynical reverse of this is the democratic practice of apologizing and expressing regrets for past times. As an African Jaiw-papierd friend told me: 'What we -want is for

people to be treated well right now. Not that apologies are made tomorrow for the harm it has done to people today.' There is no rendezvous of politics with history. Politics takes as a guiding principle that it is the present that matters, a principle which imposes upon it the obligation of having always to begin again. Politics proceeds on its own because it must be organized without reference to a party. The Stalinist party-State and the democratic State parties are proof of the fact that party fuses with State, and politics grows corrupt and criminal when it fuses with the State. Mao's project continued to search for a
political space defined by the party and the State. It gave organized forms to their dialectic and conflictual opposition, rather than their Stalinist fusion. But it did not establish a principle of disjunction and a distance between the State and politics. On this point, I refer you to Sylvain Lazarus's forthcoming text: 'Chercher ailleurs et autrement'.11 Politics proceeds on its own because it is not expressive of a class nor does it take, as its point of reference, an already constituted people nor groups already in existence. Today, it is strictly a matter of decisions that are both personal and voluntary. Any political capacity belongs to those who have volunteered themselves for politics, and this is as true of the workers as of anyone else. Politics proceeds on its own because it must proceed at a distance from State politics, but also at a distance from people who have been capture by ideas and categories created by the State. Neither the social nor movement or the struggle can provide the categories proper to politics. Politics proceeds on its own because its thought must be intrinsic to itself, and because this thought can derive no knowledge from any assessment of previous political processes unless, at the same time, it thinks' each question anew. Politics proceeds on its own because pronouncing on the State is not a matter of objective analysis, but is only possible from a perspective of a new political space that has been instituted at a distance from the State. The State is politically mobile. It is not only a 'system' or a 'machine'; it is also involved in a political process of constant change and readjustment. Marx asserted that the Commune was the direct antithesis of Empire. This is true, but one has to add that the Third Republic was, in its turn, the direct antithesis of the Commune; similarly the Welfare State was the corollary of the Stalinist State. Politics proceeds on its own, but it has multiple and variable sites: hostels for foreign workers (foyers ouvrier), popular neighbourhoods (quatiers), factories, schools . . . This is the case not only because these are places where people live. It is also because these are the places where people organize themselves in order to declare -what it

means for each to count for what he is, where he is. And what each individual counts for must be articulated through different names and different norms from those supplied by the State. One doesn't exchange the workers for 'the people' as one changes one's clothes. It is a matter of constituting political sites other than those organized by the State, and doing so among the people themselves. This is the condition for a politics organized as interior to people rather than from above. Finally, politics proceeds on its own because we are in an era when American and European war is devastating the world. The war in Gaza is a distillation of this new kind of war, which followed the 'Cold War'-era war. War today asserts the principle of pure power, of the State against people; it is an endless -war, because it is not accompanied by a concept of peace. What does facing up to war in this new mode of existence entail, when no revolution can any longer hope to conjure war away, and when no State desires peace any longer?

A2PERM/STATECHECKCAP
THE STATE AND CAPITALISM ARE COPRODUCTIVE. RELYING ON THE STATE TO CHECK THE VIOLENCE OF CAPITALISM TOTALITARIANISMANDIMPERIALISM. Bamyehteachescomparativecivilizationsandpoliticaltheory@NYU2000MohammedA.Social Text18.1 Projectmuse
It is in the light of such a magnificent transformation that certain old habits and myopias must be reexamined. In particular, I am referring to the old leftist habit of focusing on global capitalism as the worst enemy of humanity, and in that focus ignoring the problem of the state. Thus it is not uncommon for

leftist critics of globalization to call for strengthening the state, so that it can regulate global capitalism. How this is supposed to work, no one ventures to tell. Nor do any of those commentators venture to consider the totalitarian prerequisites entailed in such a cavalier proposal. If global capitalism has become much more flexible, entrenched, and widespread, then a regulatory state would be expected to be equally entrenched and even more far-reaching in its power than has ever been attempted. You might fantasize that that might not be a problem if you were the state. But "you" are not the state, and you are unlikely to know how to use such a state in the highly improbable event that it is handed over to you. There is no guarantee, instrumental or otherwise, that under current or conceivable conditions the state can or would use such enhanced power to govern on behalf of some "common interest," especially since there is no common interest against globalization. This lack means precisely that the state will use any enhanced power to play the only game available to it now, namely that of the new imperialism in the international arena if it has the means, or that of symbolic power domestically.

A2ALT>VIOLENCE
THEBOURGEOISIEWOULDHAVEYOUBELIEVETHATTHEREISNOPEACEFULALTERNATIVE TOCAPITALISM,BUTTHESYSTEMCANBECHANGED.ONLYWHENTHEWORKERSUNITE ANDANATOMIZECAPITALISMCANPEACEFULMOVEMENTSWORK,CAUSECHAINSOF PROTESTANDRESISTTHESYSTEMTHATCOOPTSALLDESIREANDCREATIVITYWHILE SIMULTANEOUSLYEXPLOITINGTHEWORKERSANDMOTHEREARTH. Kaufman,DeAnzaCollegeInterim Director of the Institute for Community and Civic Engagement, 2009 (Cynthia, Liberation from Capitalism: Visions of a post-capitalist world and direction for getting there, p. 3-5)
I first came to political consciousness around the movement to oppose US support for a dictatorial government in El Salvador. At that time, I began reading and talking to people about radical politics. I quickly came to believe that capitalism was a significant aspect of the problems I saw in the world. But almost just as quickly I came to see that talking about capitalism was one of the best ways to get my ideas dismissed as extreme, as in favor of authoritarian communism, or as unrealistic. In this book I will argue that capitalism is a problem because it allows those with resources to use them without regard for the needs of others. That disregard leads to the destruction of communities, to

millions of people around the world not having access to the basic things they need to live healthy lives, and to environmental degradation. It is the primary force responsible for the fact that people do not have time to do what they love. It is the primary force responsible for the devastating forms of inequality we see in our world. It is largely to blame for the slow response we are seeing in facing the global catastrophe being caused by climate change. Capitalism is a set of economic relations in which private
entities control significant economic resources and invest those resources based on the profit motive. Private control over capital for investment becomes a problem when significant amounts of the resources available to society are invested on that basis. It also becomes a problem when cultural and political systems get transformed to primarily serve the private accumulation of profits, such that other ways of living and using resources come to be drowned out. This, I will argue, is what has happened as capitalism has developed. Being against capitalism does not necessarily make one opposed to all uses of market mechanisms, trade, or entrepreneurship. In Chapter 4 I will argue that each of those things can play a positive role in an economy, under the right circumstances. No matter how anti-capitalist one is, if you live in a society dominated by capitalism, you will probably need to work for a wage. You will probably try to use what money you have wisely. It is virtually impossible for those living in a capitalist society to not be deeply implicated into it: to find pleasures in buying consumer products, to enjoy forms of culture that are brought to us through the commercial media, to experience desire as desire for something to buy. We spend many of our waking ours at work and much of our leisure time shopping and consuming commercial culture. We are deeply implicated into the structure of capitalism, it is a core part of the fabric of society we inhabit. Capitalist ways of desiring are in our souls. They help structure our interactions with the most intimate people in our lives. We express love by buying things for people. We judge people by the products they use. We cure our sense of anomie by shopping. When market logics dominate society, when all other ways of meeting our needs are devalued and pushed out, when governments operate to serve the interests of privately owned capital, rather than the needs of people, and when the only ways to be creative and use our creativity to serve the common good are through the profit motive, then we have a serious problem , and I call that problem capitalism. In 2000, bowing to demands of the World Bank, the Bolivian government attempted to privatize the water supply of the city of Cochabamba, putting the water system in the hands of a private consortium, Aguas del Tunari, led by the multinational corporation Bechtel. Once Aguas del Tunari took over, they immediately raised water rates 35%. Now people who were making $70 per month were paying $20 per month for water. Immediately after the imposition of the rate hike, people took to the streets. They closed down the city of Cochabamba in a general strike that lasted four days. Protests spread throughout the country. One of the organizations involved in the protests was the party Movimiento al Socialismo, whose candidate, Evo Morales became the countries president in 2005. 1 The actions in Cochabamba were an important inspiration for the protests against the World Trade Organization at its meeting in Seattle in 1999. Could movements against the privatization of things like water, lead to the end of capitalism? Older theories of anti-capitalism have tended to argue that the only thing that would really matter was a revolution. And people working to challenge things like privatization and globalization have tended to not talk much about capitalism in their organizing. At first they talked solely about globalization. Later it became corporate globalization, or neoliberalism. The movement was anti-globalization and then shifted to being pro-global justice. Many within that movement have more recently begun to name capitalism as their antagonist. The critique of capitalism has grown as people within the movement have come to see that the problems they are fighting against are linked together. You cannot raise wages in one country without having corporations move operations to another. When a movement succeeds in gaining more resources to be allocated for health care or schools for the poor, governments are often overthrown, or pressured by transnational organizations, such as the IMF and World Bank, to roll back those gains. Similarly, around the world, and especially among the middle class, strong sentiments are developing against corporations and in favor of locally grown food, environmentally friendly inventions, and small-scale locally oriented economies. There is quite a bit of promise in the social forms that are developing out of those sentiments. Rural agriculture, that is environmentally and socially sustainable, is flourishing in many places where it had been destroyed. People are using their creative energies to develop new technologies to help us make the transition to a post-petroleum economy. And people are trying to develop ways of organizing towns and cities that encourage walking, a sense of community, and a sense of being a part of a place. Those initiatives are developing in important ways, and usually without any analysis of the nature of capitalism. Because I believe that capitalist processes surround those projects, and form powerful systems of constraints in which those projects operate, I believe that

people in those movements would benefit from a look at the ways that capitalism operates.

A2ALT>VIOLENCE
THISISPROPAGHANDATHATOBSCURESTHEHORRIFICVIOLENCENATURALIZEDBYCAPITALISM. BADIOU,FORMER CHAIROF PHILOSOPHYAT COLENORMALESUPRIEURE, 2010. [THE IDEAOF COMMUNISM PP.24]
For various reasons, this propaganda machine is now obsolete, mainly because there is no longer a single powerful state claiming to be communist, or even socialist. Many rhetorical devices have of eourse been recycled in the 'war against terror' which, in France, has taken on the guise of an anti-Islamist crusade. And yet no one can seriously believe that a particularist religious ideology that is backward-looking in terms of its social vision, and fascistic in both its conception of action and its outcome, can replace a promise of universal emancipation supported by three centuries of critical, international and secular philosophy that exploited the resources of science and mobilized, at the very heart of the industrial metropolises, the enthusiasm of both workers and intellectuals. Lumping together Stalin and Hitler was already a sign of extreme intellectual poverty: the norm by which any

collective undertaking has to be judged is, it was argued, the number of deaths it causes. If that were really the case, the huge colonial genocides and massacres, the millions of deaths in the civil and world wars through which our West forged its might, should be enough to discredit, even in the eyes of 'philosophers' who extol their morality, the parliamentary regimes of Europe and America. What would be left for those who scribble about Rights? How could they go on singing the praises of bourgeois democracy as the only form of relative Good and making pompous predictions about totalitarianism when they are standing on top of heaps of victims? Lumping together Hitler, Stalin and Bin Laden now looks like a black farce. It indicates that our democratic West is none too fussy about the nature of the historic fu el it uses to keep its propaganda machine running. It is true that , these days, it has other fish to fry. After two short decades of cynically unequal prosperity, it is in the grip of a truly historical crisis and has to fall back on its 'democratic' pretensions, as it appears to have been doing for some time, with the help of walls and barbed-wire fe nces to keep out foreigners, a corrupt and servile media, overcrowded prisons and iniquitous legislation. The problem is that it is less and less capable of corrupting its local clientele and buying off the fero cious fore ign regimes of the Mubaraks and Musharrafs who are responsible for keeping watch on the flocks of the poor.

THE NEGATIVES PIECEMEAL AVOIDANCE OF FLASH POINTS OF VIOLENCE CAN DO NOTHING TO CHANGE THE INEVITABILITY OF CATASTROPHE WE MUST INSTEAD ACCEPT THE CATASTROPHE OF THE DA AND EMBRACE THECOMMUNISTIDEAINORDERTOCHANGETHEVERYCOORDINATESWHICHMAKECATASTROPHEPOSSIBLE Zizek2009InternationalJournalofZizekStudies http://zizekstudies.org/index.php/ijzs/article/view/174/265
The same loop also holds for the future: if we are to confront properly the threat of a (cosmic or environmental) catastrophe, we have to introduce a new notion of time. Dupuy calls this time the time of a project, of a closed circuit between the past and the future: the future is causally produced by our acts in the past, while the way we act is determined by our anticipation of the future and our reaction to this anticipation. This, then, is how Dupuy proposes to confront the catastrophe: we should first perceive it as our fate, as unavoidable, and then, projecting ourself into it, adopting its standpoint, we should retroactively insert into its past (the past of the future) counterfactual possibilities (If we were to do that and that, the catastrophe we are in now would not have occurred!) upon which we then act today.10 Therein resides Dupuys paradoxical formula: we have to accept that, at the level of

possibilities, our future is doomed, the catastrophe will take place, it is our destiny and, then, on the background of this acceptance, we should mobilize ourselves to perform the act which will change destiny itself and thereby insert a new possibility into the past. For Badiou, the time of the fidelity to an event is the future anterieur: overtaking oneself towards the future, one acts now as if the future one wants to bring about is already here. The same circular strategy of future anterieur is also the only truly efficient when we are confronting the prospect of a catastrophe (say, of an ecological disaster): instead of saying the future is still open, we still have the time to act and prevent the worst, one should accept the catastrophe as inevitable, and then act to retroactively undo what is already written in the stars as our destiny

A2ALT>VIOLENCE
WE ARE NOT A FETISHIZATION OF VIOLENCE WE ARE SIMPLY A RECOGNITION THAT LIBERATION IS A DANGEROUSANDPAINFULSTRATEGY Zizek 2003Slavoj,LiberationHurtsaninterviewwithZizek,9/29,http://evans experientialism.freewebspace.com/rasmussen.htm
In the first act of liberation, as I develop it already in The Fragile Absolute, where I provide lots of violent examples - from Keyser Sze in The Usual Suspects, who kills his family (which Ill admit, got me into lots of trouble) to a more correct example, Toni Morrisons Beloved. But, of course, now, Im not saying what Elizabeth Wright, who edited a reader about me, thought. I love her, an English old lady. I had tea with her once, and she said, I liked your book, The Fragile Absolute, but something bothered me. Do I really have to kill my son to be ethical? I love this total navet. Of course not! My point was to address the problem of totalitarian control. The problem is: how does a totalitarian power keep you in check? Precisely by offering

you some perverse enjoyment, and you have to renounce that, and it hurts. So, I dont mean physical violence, or a kind of fetishization of violence. I just mean simply that liberation hurts. What I dont buy from liberals is this idea of, as Robespierre would have put it, revolution without revolution, the idea that somehow, everything will change, but nobody will be really hurt. No, sorry, it hurts.

LIBERATIONHURTSVIOLENCEISNECESSARYTOREVOLUTION Zizek,SeniorResearcherattheInstituteforSocialStudies,Ljubljana,Slovenia,2001 Slavoj,aninterviewonspikedonline,November15,http://www.spiked online.com/Articles/00000002D2C4.htm

But at the same time I must confess that the

left also deeply disappointed me. Falling back into this safe pacifist attitude - violence never stops violence, give peace a chance - is abstract and doesn't work here. First, because this is not a universal rule. I always ask my leftist friends who repeat that mantra: What would you have said in 1941 with Hitler. Would you also say: 'We shouldn't resist, because violence never helps?' It is simply a fact that at some point you have to fight. You have to return violence with violence. The problem is not that for me, but that this war can never be a solution.

THEVIOLENCEWEENACTISSIMPLYBREAKINGOUTOFTHEFORECLOSURESCREATEDBYCAPITALISM Dean,AssociateProfessorofPoliticalTheoryatHobart&WilliamSmith,2005 Jodi,Zizekagainst Democracy,jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/files/zizek_against_democracy_new_version.doc

A couple of years ago, I saw a large advertisement painted on a wall in Budapest. The wall was on one of the streets in the heavily trafficked tourist area near the citys center. The advertisement, for a restaurant, was written in English; its promiserisk free dining! Unlike Hardt and Negri, Zizeks assumes that politics involves risk, indeed, violence and exclusion. This does not necessarily mean armed conflict, though it could.

Rather, what the understanding of universalitys exclusion of and dependence on violence and division does is try to break out of the suffocating foreclosure of the political in the post-political totality of global capital

A2ALT>VIOLENCE
THISARGUMENTISBLACKMAILMEANTTODISCOURAGEANYREVOLUTIONARYPOLITICS. Zizekin2000SlavojContingency,Hegemony,Universality,page127
TheproblemwithtodaysphilosophicopoliticalsceneisultimatelybestexpressedbyLeninsoldquestionWhat is to be done?

how do we reassert, on the political terrain, the proper dimension of the act? The main form of the resistance against the act today is a kind of unwritten Denkverbot (prohibition to think) similar to the infamous Berufsverbot (prohibition to be employed by any state institution) from the late 1960s in Germany the moment one shows a minimal sign of engaging in political projects that aim seriously to change the existing order, the answer is immediately: Benevolent as it is, this will necessarily end in a new Gulag! The return to ethics in todays political philosophy shamefully exploits the horrors of Gulag or Holocaust as the ultimate bogey for blackmailing us into renouncing all serious radical engagement. In this way, conformist liberal scoundrels can find hypocritical satisfaction in their defense of the existing order: they know there is corruption, exploitation, and so on, but every attempt to change things is denounced as ethically dangerous and unacceptable, recalling the ghosts of Gulag or Holocaust. And this resistance against the act seems to be shared across a wide spectrum of (officially) opposed philosophical positions. Four
philosophers as different as Derrida, Habermas, Rorty, and Dennett, would probably adopt the same left-of-centre liberal democratic stance in practically political decisions; as for the political conclusions to be drawn from their thought, the difference between their positions is negligible. On the other hand, already our immediate intuition tells us a philosopher like Heidegger on the one hand, or Badiou on the other, would definitely adopt a different stance. Rorty, who made this perspicacious observation, concludes from it that philosophical differences do not involve, generate, or rely on political differences politically, they do not really matter. What, however, if philosophical differences do matter politically? And if, as a consequence, this political congruence between philosophers tells us something crucial about the pertinent philosophical stance? What if, in spite of the great passionate public debates between deconstructionists, pragmatists, Habermasians and congnitivists, they none the less share a serious of philosophical premises what if there is an unacknowledged proximity between them? And what if the task today is precisely to break with this terrain of shared premises?

A2ALT>TOTALITARIANISM
OFCOURSETHEYLLSAYTHATTHEALTERNATIVEISUTOPIANANDRISKSTOTALITARIANISM.THESAMETHREAT HASBEENUSEDSINCETIMEIMMEMORIALTOKEEPCAPITALISMFUNCTIONING. INREALITY,ITISTHEIRDREAM OFAHUMANECAPITALISMTHATISUTOPIAN.INTHEFACEOFTHIS,YOUSHOULDPOLITICIZETHEIMPOSSIBILITY OFBREAKINGFREE.TAKETHERISK. IEK,2000[SLAVOJ,CONTINGENCY,HEGEMONY,UNIVERSALITY,P.324326]
The first thing to note about this neoliberal clich is that the neutral reference to the necessities of the market economy, usually invoked in order to categorize grand ideological projects as unrealistic utopias, is itself to be inserted into the great modern utopian projects. That is to say as Fredric Jameson has pointed out what characterizes utopia is not a belief in the essential goodness of
human nature, or some similar naive notion, but, rather, belief in some global mechanism which, applied to the whole of society, will automatically bring out the balanced state of progress and happiness one is longing for and, in this precise sense, is not the market precisely the name for such a mechanism which, properly applied, will bring about the optimal state of society? So, again, the first answer of the Left to those Leftists themselves who bemoan the loss of the utopian impetus in our societies should be that this impetus is alive and well not only in the Rightist 'fundamentalist' populism which advocates the return to grass-roots democracy, but above all among the advocates of the market economy themselves.12 The second answer should be a clear line of distinction between utopia and ideology: ideology is not only a utopian project of social transformation with no realistic chance of actualization; no less ideological is the anti-utopian stance of those who `realistically'

devalue every global project of social transformation as `utopian,' that is, as unrealistic dreaming and/or harbouring 'totalitarian' potential today's predominant form of ideological 'closure' takes the precise form of mental block which prevents us from imagining a fundamental social change, in the interests of an allegedly realistic and mature attitude. In his Seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis,13Lacan developed an opposition between 'knave' and 'fool' as the two intellectual attitudes: the right wing intellectual is a knave, a conformist who considers the mere existence of the given order as an argument for it, and mocks the Left for its 'utopian' plans, which necessarily lead to catastrophe; while the left-wing intellectual is a fool, a court jester who publicly
displays the lie of the existing order, but in a way which suspends the performative efficiency of this speech. In the years immediately after the fall of Socialism, the knave was a neoconservative advocate of the free market who cruelly rejected all forms of social solidarity as counterproductive sentimentalism; while the fool was a deconstructionist cultural critic who, by means of his ludic procedures destined to 'subvert' the existing order, actually served as its supplement. Today, however, the relationship between the couple knavefool and the political opposition Right/Left is more and more the inversion of the standard figures of Rightist knave and Leftist fool: are not the Third Way theoreticians ultimately today's knaves, figures

who preach cynical resignation, that is, the necessary failure of every attempt actually to change something in the basic functioning of global capitalism? And are not the conservativefools those conservatives whose original modern model is Pascal and who as it were
show the hidden cards of the ruling ideology, bringing-to light its underlying mechanisms which, in order to remain operative, have to be repressed far more attractive? Today in the face of this Leftist knavery it is more important than ever to hold this utopian place of the global alternative open, even if it remains empty, living on borrowed time, awaiting the content to fill it in. I fully agree with Laclau that after the exhaustion of both the social democratic welfare state imaginary and the 'really-existing-Socialist imaginary, the Left does need a new imaginary (a new mobilizing global vision). Today, however, theoutdatedness of the welfare state and socialist imaginaries is a clich the real dilemma is what to do with how the Left is to relate to the predominant liberal democratic imaginary . It is my contention that Laclau's and Mouffe's 'radical democracy' comes all tooclose to merely 'radicalizing' this liberal democratic imaginary, while remaining within its horizon. Laclau, of course, would probably claim that the point is to treat the democratic imaginary as an 'empty signifier', and to engage in the hegemonic battle with the proponents of the global capitalist New World Order over what its content will be. Here, however, I think that Butler is right when she emphasizes that another way is also open: it is not'necessary to occupy the dominant norm in order to produce an internal subversion of its terms. Sometimes it is important t refuse it terms to let the term itself wither, to starve it of its strength' (JB, p. 177). This means that the Left has a choice today: either it accepts the predominant liberal

democratic horizon (democracy, human rights and freedoms . . .), and engages in a hegemonic battle within it, or it risks the opposite gesture of refusing its very terms, of flatly rejecting today's liberal blackmail that courting any prospect of radical change paves the way for totalitarianism. It is my firm conviction, my politico-existential premise that the old '68 motto Soyons ralistes demandons l'impossible! still holds: it is the advocates of changes and resignifications within the liberal-democratic horizon who are the true utopians in their belief that their efforts will amount to anything more than cosmetic surgery that will give us capitalism with a human face. In her second intervention, Butler superbly deploys the reversal that characterizes the Hegelian dialectical process: the
aggravated 'contradiction' in which the very differential structure of meaning is collapsing, since every determination immediately turns into its opposite, this 'mad dance', is resolved by the sudden emergence of a new universal determination. The best illustration is provided by the passage from the 'world of selfalienated Spirit' to the Terror of the French Revolution in The Phenomenology of Spirit: the pre-Revolutionary 'madness of the musician "who heaped up and mixed together thirty arias, Italian, French, tragic, comic, of every sort; now with a deep bass he descended into hell, then, contracting his throat, he rent the vaults of heaven with a falsetto tone, frantic and soothed, imperious and mocking, by turns" (Diderot, Nephew of Rameau)' ,14 suddenly turns into its radical opposite: the revolutionary stance pursuing its goal with an inexorable firmness. And my point, of course, is that today's 'mad dance', the dynamic proliferation of multiple shifting identities also awaits its resolution in a new form of Terror. The only 'realistic' prospect is to ground a new

political univeralisty by opting for the impossible, fully assuming the place of the exception with no taboos, no a priori norms ('human rights', `democracy'), respect for which would prevent us also from 'resignifying' terror, the ruthless exercise of power, the spirit of sacrifice if this radical choice is decried by some bleeding-heart liberals as fascist, so be it!

A2ALTFAILS
EVEN IF DIRECT ATTACKS ON THE SYSTEMS APPEAR TO FAIL, THEY CAN DOVETAIL INTO FUTURE MOVEMENTS AND DESTABILIZE CAPITALISM AT DIFFERENT CORES Kaufman, De Anza College InterimDirectoroftheInstituteforCommunityandCivicEngagement, 2009(Cynthia,LiberationfromCapitalism:Visionsofapostcapitalistworldanddirectionforgettingthere,p.137138)
And yet, it has also seemed valuable that as time has gone on, more

people in that movement have come to see their work as anticapitalist. They began to see that the problem is not with a few companies, like NIKE, who are exploiters of low wage labor. Rather they have seen that a system that is based on the pursuit of profit will always put pressure on labor to work for as little as possible, and will put pressure on companies to pay wages as low as possible. In the anti-sweatshop movement, it made good tactical sense to target NIKE, as a symbol, to open a conversation. But many organizers knew all the time, that NIKE was never the real opponent. The anti-NIKE campaign helped lead to the development of global institutions to monitor transnational labor practices and to the development of codes of conduct that all players in the industry would have to adhere to. An anti-capitalist analysis helps people in the movement direct their tactics to the right targets, and to have their work build to real successes. We need to be clear within our movements how the problems that we are fighting are connected as aspects of capitalism, and we need to talk among ourselves, and people who are open to the analysis about the systemic nature of the problem we are fighting. The development of an anti-capitalist consciousness is important if our movements are to grow in depth and sophistication. The
fights against racism and sexism, while very far from over, turned an important political corner sometime in the 1970s when those forms of domination began to be delegitimized. In earlier phases of the anti-racist movement in the US, people fought against practices, such as

lynching, that were fundamentally racist but they fought them on the basis of their being inhumane. You couldnt use the charge of racism to undermine support for lynching, because racism was not widely understood to be a problem. As the movement developed, a critique of racism was consolidated among those in it. Externally, as different horrific practices were challenged, the connection to their common underlying social pattern, racism, was increasingly made. In a dynamic process, an anti-racist consciousness spread as racist practices were challenged, on the basis of more widely held moral values. We are at a time when even people who are opposed to capitalism have been afraid to talk about it. Their theories of how it could be
challenged have led them to believe that working against capitalism in the present time was deeply unpromising. If the analysis in this book is correct, then

there is much work to be done breaking out of that pessimistic view of the nature of capitalism and anticapitalism, and developing a rich and coherent picture of what is wrong with capitalism, of what the alternatives to it might look like, and what oppositional practices should be developed. This internal work is crucial for paving the way to broader conversations with people who do
not share a sense that there is something wrong with capitalism

A2ALTCOOPTED
THEIRFEAROFVIOLENTCOOPTATIONISTHETRUESTFUNCTIONOFIDEOLOGY THEIRMODESTPOLITICSSIDE STEPSTHEPOSSIBILITYOFUNIVERSALEMANCIPATION. WESHOULDINSTEADREMAINEDRESOLVEDTOPURSUE THEACTUALITYOFCOMMUNISM. KaneUniversityofDundee,UK2009ReidInternationalJournalofZizekStudies3.4 zizekstudies.org Zizeks wager,on the other hand,is that the utopian dimension of revolt,while perhaps bearing a necessary relation to its own closure in a new order,isnonethelessnot extinguished, but transposed into a virtual state.(ibid: 394)This dimension, while potentially opening
onto emancipatory politics, equally and essentially leaves one open to truly monstrous potentials as well. It is for this reason that Zizek devotes so much effort to the analysis of Stalin and the catastrophic failure of Bolshevism.In the face of the monstrous potential that lurks within us, both as individuals and as social bodies, it is easy to hide beyond the mask of our true inner selves, our identities as transparent and unremarkable, and on the basis of which politics is reduced to the negotiation of the interests deducible from this inner essence.Yet Zizek claims that this is the predominant form of ideology today,viiiand as such it tempts us into a cowardly resignation in the face of politics,which is to say,in the face of the possibility of universal emancipation. Zizek claims thatFoucault fell into such an ideological trap with his aesthetics of the self, which was ultimately a defense against the monstrous potentials lurking in the utopian dimension of revolt. Zizek,on the contrary,champions resoluteness in the face of these potentials, which emerge precisely when struggle is organized around the part of no part, rather than the particular interests of private groups.(ibid: 116)Only such a struggle can culminate in the institution of a new order that, rather than simply reinstating cynical-pragmatic realpolitik, instead organizes the State on the basis of the excluded even if this requires a dangerous foray into a world that is no longer covered by any authority.

A2CAPKEYTOINNOVATION
IN THE FACE OF INNOVATION, CAPITALISM NEVER FAILS TO STIFLE ADVANCEMENTS THAT COULD THREATEN PROFITS. EMPIRICALLY, WHEN COMPETITION IS TAKEN OUT OF THE EQUATION,INNOVATIONBENEFITSPROFUSELY.
PALECEK, DURING THE 1990S HE WAS A REPORTER FOR SMALL-TOWN NEWSPAPERS IN NEBRASKA, IOWA, MINNESOTA. IN
2000 HE WAS THE IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINEE FOR THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FIFTH DISTRICT, HE IS ALSO A RENOWNED MARXIST AUTHOR, IN 9 [MIKE, CAPITALISM VERSUS SCIENCE, HTTP://WWW.MARXIST.COM/CAPITALISM-VERSUS-SCIENCE.HTM]
The manufacturing industry in particular is supposed to be where capitalist innovation is in its element. We

are told that competition between companies will lead to better products, lower prices, new technology and new innovation. But again, upon closer inspection we see private interests serving as more of a barrier than an enabler. Patents and trade secrets prevent new technologies from being developed. The oil industry in particular has a long history of purchasing patents, simply to prevent the products from ever coming to market.
Competition can serve as a motivator for the development of new products. But as we have already seen above, it can also serve as a motivator to prevent new products from ever seeing the light of day. Companies will not only refuse to fund research for the development of a product that

might hurt their industry, but in some cases they will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent anyone else from doing the same research. The 2006 documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" goes into great detail about the role of big oil companies, auto manufacturers, and the US Federal Government in preventing an alternative vehicle from hitting the road. The filmmaker claims that auto companies would lose out if an electric vehicle was ever produced because of the simplicity of their maintenance. The replacement parts side of the auto industry would be decimated. Oil companies would see a dramatic reduction in the demand for their products as the world switched to electric vehicles. It is claimed that hydrogen fuel cells, which have very little chance of being developed into a useful technology, are used as a distraction from real alternatives. The film maker blasts the American government for directing research away from electric vehicles and towards hydrogen fuel cells. But the most damning accusations are against major oil companies and auto manufacturers. The film suggests that auto companies have sabotaged their own research into electric cars. Whats worse, is that oil companies have purchased the patents for NiMH batteries to prevent them from being used in electric vehicles. These are the same batteries that are used in laptop computers and large batteries of this type would make the electric vehicle possible. But Chevron maintains veto power over any licensing or use of NiMH battery technology. They continue to refuse to sell these batteries for research purposes. Some hybrid vehicles are now using NiMH batteries, but hybrid vehicles, while improving mileage, still rely on fossil fuels. While the purchasing of patents is an effective way of shelving new innovations, there are certainly other ways the capitalist system holds back research and development. The very nature of a system based on competition makes collaborative research impossible. Whether it be the pharmaceutical industry, the auto industry or any other, capitalism divides the best engineers and scientists among competing corporations. Anyone involved in research or product development is forced to sign a confidentiality agreement as a condition of employment. Not only are these people prevented from working together, they are not even allowed to compare their notes! Peer review is supposed to be an important piece of the scientific method. Often, major advancements are made, not by an individual group researchers, but by many groups of researchers. One team develops one piece of the puzzle, someone else discovers another and still another team of scientists puts all of the pieces together. How can a system based on competition foster such collaborative efforts? Simply stated, it cant. The governments of the world clearly recognize this as a problem; every time they are met with a serious crisis, they throw their free-market ideals out the window and turn to the public sector. It has been argued many times that World War Two was won by nationalization and planning. Capitalism in Britain was essentially put on hold, so that the war effort could be effectively organized. In the
United States, such large scale nationalization did not take place, but when it came to research and development, the private sector was not trusted to handle it on their own. Fearing that the Nazis were developing the atomic bomb, the US government initiated a massive public program to ensure they were the first to wield a weapon of mass destruction. The Manhattan project succeeded where private industry could not. At one point, over 130,000 people were working on the project. The worlds best and brightest were brought together into a massive collaborative undertaking. They discovered more about nuclear fission in the span of a few years, than they had in the decades since the first atom was split in 1919. Regardless of what one thinks of the atom bomb, this was doubtlessly one of the greatest scientific advancements of the 20th century.

A2CAPKEYTOINNOVATION
THE USSR WAS NOT PERFECT, BUT THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE ECONOMY RESULTED IN MASSIVEIMPROVEMENTSINTHEQUALITYOFSCIENTIFICADVANCEMENTANDEDUCATION. CAPITALIST COMPETITION HAS A STRANGLEHOLD ON INNOVATION; THE ALTERNATIVE IS THEBESTHOPEFORHUMANADVANCEMENT.
PALECEK, DURING THE 1990S HE WAS A REPORTER FOR SMALL-TOWN NEWSPAPERS IN NEBRASKA, IOWA, MINNESOTA. IN
2000 HE WAS THE IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY NOMINEE FOR THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FIFTH DISTRICT, HE IS ALSO A RENOWNED MARXIST AUTHOR, IN 9 [MIKE, CAPITALISM VERSUS SCIENCE, HTTP://WWW.MARXIST.COM/CAPITALISM-VERSUS-SCIENCE.HTM] The ultimate proof of capitalisms hindrance of science and technology comes not from capitalism, but from the alternative. While the Soviet Union under Stalin was far from the ideal socialist society (something which we have explained extensively elsewhere), its history gives us valuable insight into the potential of a nationalized planned economy. In 1917 the Bolsheviks took control of a backwards, semi-feudal, third world country that had been ruined by the First World War. In a matter of decades, it was transformed into a leading super-power. The USSR would go on to be the first to put a satellite into orbit, the first to put a man in space, and the first to build a permanently manned outpost in space. Soviet scientists pushed the frontiers of knowledge, particularly in the areas of Mathematics, Astronomy, Nuclear Physics, Space Exploration and Chemistry. Many Soviet era scientists have been awarded Nobel prizes in various fields. These successes are particularly stunning, when one considers the state the country was in when capitalism was overthrown. How were such advancements possible? How did the Soviet Union go from having a population that was 90% illiterate, to having more scientists, doctors and engineers per capita than any other country on Earth in just a few decades? The superiority of the nationalized planned economy and the break from the madness of capitalism is the only explanation. The first step in this process was simply the recognition that science was a priority. Under capitalism, the ability of private companies to develop science and technology is limited by a narrow view of what is profitable. Companies do not plan to advance technology, they plan to build a marketable product and will only do what is necessary to bring that product to market. The Soviets immediately recognized the importance of the overall development of science and
technology and linked it to the development of the country as a whole. This broad view allowed them to put substantial resources into all areas of study. Another vital component of their success was the massive expansion of education. By abolishing private schools and providing free education at all levels, individuals in the population were able to meet their potential. A citizen could continue their studies as long as they were capable. By contrast, even many

advanced capitalist countries have been unable to eliminate illiteracy today, let alone open up university education to all who are able. Under capitalism, massive financial barriers are placed in front of students, which prevent large portions of the population from reaching their potential. When half of the worlds population is forced to live on less than two dollars a day, we can only conclude that massive reserves of human talent are being wasted. The soviet government immediately tore down all the barriers on science that strangle innovation within the capitalist system. Patents, trade secrets, and private industry were eliminated. This allowed for more collaborative research across fields and a free flow of information between institutions. Religious prejudices that
had long held back rational study were pushed aside. One only has to look at the ban on stem-cell research under the Bush regime to see the negative effects religious bigotry can have on science. But it wasnt all good news under Stalinism. Just as the bureaucracy hindered the development of the economy, it also hindered certain areas of study. While the many barriers of capitalism were broken down, in some cases new ones were erected as the direction of scientific study was subjugated to the needs and desires of the bureaucracy. In the most extreme cases, certain fields of study were outlawed entirely and leading scientists were arrested and sent to labour camps in Siberia. One of the most outrageous cases was Stalins contempt for chromosomal genetics. The study of genetics was banned and several prominent geneticists, including Agol, Levit and Nadson were executed. Nikolai Vavilov, one of the Soviet Unions great geneticists was sent to a labour camp, where he died in 1943. This ban wasnt overturned until the mid 1960s. These crimes were not crimes of socialism, but of Stalinism. Under a democratically planned economy, there would be no reason for such atrocities. Today, it is the task of those interested in science and socialism to learn the lessons of history. Science is being held back by private interests and industry. A lack of resources for education and research keep doors closed to young aspiring minds. Religious interference locks science in a cage and declares important fields of study off-limits. The chains of the free-market prevent meaningful research from being done. Private

companies refuse to let new technologies out of their back rooms. Private collectors hold unique and important specimens for their own personal amusement. Potential cures for deadly diseases are tossed aside to clear the way for research into the latest drug to cure erectile dysfunction. This is madness. Capitalism does not drive innovation, but hinders it at every step. Humanity today is being held back by an economic system designed to enslave the majority for the benefit of a minority. Every aspect of
human development is hindered by the erroneously-named free-market. With the development of computers, the internet and new technologies, humanity stands at the doorstep of a bright future of scientific advancement and prosperity. We are learning more and more about every aspect of our existence. What was once impossible, is now tangible. What was once a mystery, is now understood. What was once veiled, is now in plain sight. The advancement of

scientific knowledge will one day put even the farthest reaches of the universe at our fingertips. The only thing that stands in our way is capitalism.

A2CAPKEYTOINNOVATION
CAPITALISMKILLSINNOVATION.ALIENATIONOFTHEWORKINGCLASSSTIFLESINNOVATIONAND TURNS TECHNOLOGY THAT COULD WORK FOR COLLECTIVE SURVIVAL INTO MECHANISMS OFDOMINATION. PASS, PHD IN SOCIOLOGY AND IS FOUNDER OF WEBSITE ASTROSOCIOLOGY , 06 (JIM, THE CULTURAL IMPERATIVE TO COLONIZE SPACE: AN ASTROSOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICSANDASTRONAUTICS,PAGE6)
Patrick Nolan and Gerhard Lenski,7 following V. Gordon Childe have

described these events of innovative downturn that emerge despite the presence of increasing population, increased intersocietal contacts, and a greater store of information available to potential innovators. Under such Circumstances, one expects to see the production of higher rates of innovation, especially in technology. However, in rare instances, major technological advances can generate negative feedback that diminishes the effect of the force of the original innovations. Changes in social organization and ideology that were themselves consequences of technological advances can affect a slowed rate of technological innovation and advance. Nolan and Lenski8 give the example of the shift from horticulture to agriculture. The plow, like the microchip, created a quantum leap in human production. As an older system of militia that included all of a societys able-bodied men was replaced by professional standing armies, the power of the governing class increased. New ideologies emerged to legitimate the new system that reinforced it and made it worse. The governing class found it easier to extract most of the economic surplus from the peasantry. The peasants, in turn, lost the incentive for innovation, knowing that the governing class would appropriate any benefit deriving from it. In their tenuous position of only having the bare necessities of life, any loss could jeopardize their survival. In time, the governing class no longer had the necessary knowledge and experience with agrarian technology to produce crops, much less make innovations. Nolan and Lenski have summarized the picture,9 In short, expertise and incentive were inadvertently divorced, with disastrous results for technological progress. How agrarian governing classes dealt with this was to increase warfare and conquest as the best means to increase their wealth. More than ever before, the resources of societies were turned from the conquest of nature to the conquest of people.

A2CAPKEYTOINNOVATION/TECH
THEIDEATHATCAPITALISMISKEYTOINNOVATIONISAPIECEOFIDEOLOGICALPROPAGANDA COMMODIFICATIONANDPROFITDRIVIENDEVELOPMENTFULLYLIMITTHEPOTENTIALOFCAPITALISMTO PRODUCEWHATITSAYSITCAN Palecek2K9(Mike,Aug.12,CapitalismVersusScience,http://www.marxist.com/capitalismversus science.htm,InDefenceofMarxism,DM)
We are constantly bombarded with the myth that capitalism drives innovation, technology, and scientific advancement. We are told that competition, combined with the profit motive, pushes science to new frontiers and gives big corporations incentive to invent new medicines, drugs, and treatments. The free market, we are told, is the greatest motivator for human advance. But in fact, the precise opposite is true. Patents, profits, and private ownership of the means of production are actually the greatest fetters science has known in recent history. Capitalism is holding back every aspect of human development, and science and technology is no exception. The most recent and blatant example of private ownership serving as a barrier to advancement can be found in the Idafossil. Darwinius masillae is a 47 million year old lemur that was recently discovered. Anyone and everyone interested in evolution cheered at the unveiling of a transitional species, linking upper primates and lower mammals. Ida has forward-facing eyes, short limbs, and even opposable thumbs. What is even more remarkable is the stunning condition she was preserved in. This fossil is 95% complete. The outline of her fur is clearly visible and scientists have even been able to examine the contents of her stomach, determining that her last meal consisted of fruits, seeds, and leaves. Enthusiasts are flocking to New Yorks Museum of Natural History to get a glimpse of the landmark fossil. So what does Ida have to do with capitalism? Well, she was actually unearthed in 1983 and has been held by a private collector ever since. The collector didnt realize the significance of the fossil (not surprising since he is not a paleontologist) and so it just collected dust for 25 years. There is a large international market for fossils. Capitalism has reduced these treasures, which rightly belong to all of humanity, to mere commodities. Privately held fossils are regularly leased to museums so that they may be studied or displayed. Private fossil collections tour the world, where they can make money for their owners, instead of undergoing serious study. And countless rare specimens sit in the warehouses of investment companies, or the living rooms of collectors serving as nothing more than a conversation piece. It is impossible to know how many important fossils are sitting, waiting to be discovered in some millionaires office.

A2CAPSOLVESPOVERTY
YOU ARE SIMPLY ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY. ALL OF THE OBJECTIVE AND RECENT DATA POINTS UNMISTAKEABLYTOTHECONCLUSIONTHATCAPITALISMCREATESGROSSERANDMOREVIOLENTINEQUALITIES, YOURARGUMENTSTOTHECONTRARYAREIDEOLOGICALLYOBTUSE. CHRISTIAN FUCHS, UNIFIED THEORY OF INFORMATION RESEARCH GROUP, UNIVERSITY OF SALZBURG, CRITICAL GLOBALIZATION STUDIES: AN EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF THE NEW IMPERIALISM, SDMCE & SOCIETY, VOL. 74. NO. 2, APRIL 2010,
215-24
These definitions have in common not only emphasis on the increasing qtianlity. scale, and speed of social interactions, but also characterization of globalization as a general pbenomenon. If, for example, one considers world religions, the Roman empire, tbe empire of Han Cbina, tbe British Empire, tbe world market, colonialism, migration Hows that resulted from tbe Irisb potato bligbt, the system of submarine cables established in tbe middle of the 19tb century that formed tbe first global .system of communication, or the Internet, tben it becomes clear ihat globalization indeed seems to have

general aspects. However, general definitions pose the threat of constructing mythologies that see only positive sides of globalization and ignore the negative consequences of contemporary globalization processes. This can create the impression that society neither needs change nor can be altered by collective political action. It is therefore no wonder that some of tbe
abovementioned authors are fairly optimistic about tbe effects of contemporary globalization. Tbey speak of globalization resulting in the acceleration of tlie "consciousness of tbe global whole in the twentieth century. . . . tbe intensification of consciousne.ss of the world as a whole" (Robertson, 1992, 8), "emergent fonns of world interdependence and planetary consciousness" (Giddens, 1990,175), tbe creation ol "agrowing collective awareness or consciousness of the world as a shared social space" (Held and McGrew, 2007, 3), or argue that "htiman beings assume obligations towards tbe world as a whole" (Albrow, 1997, 83). Such formulations imply that contemporary globalization is bringing about increasing freedom and equality, despite tbe fact that we live in a world of global inequality. One compelling example is the ratio of the average salary of Cbief Executive OIFicers (CEOs) of large U. S. corporations to that of an average U. S. worker, which currently stands at 245 to 1 (Sutcliffe, 2007). The developed world accounts for approximately 25% of the world's population, but has accounted for more than 70% of the world's wealth on a continuous basis since 1970 (Fuchs, 2008). The least developed countries' share of wealth has dropped from above 3% to just over 1% since 1980 (Fuchs, 2008). In 2008, the total sales of the ten top-selling worldwide companies (US$2533.5 billion) were 2.3 times as large as the total gross domestic product (GDP) of the 22 least developed

countries (US$1{)81.H billion) (Fuchs, 2008). These data indicate that we live in a world of persisting inequality that is a global phetiomenon, and that therefore people are not moving closer together, but tend to be more separated. Class divisions have been widening, not closing. Wealth and its distribtition are objective foundations of global consciotisness. If there are widening class divisions, then focusing on positive concepts such as global consciottsness for describing the contemporain world turns into an ideology. One can therefore conclude that uncritical optimism regarding globalization can easily turn into mythologizing. To refer to and to reload Lenin for explaining contemporary
globalization is a demythologizing move that cotinters the globalization optimism advanced by bourgeois thinkers. It furthermore serves the political task of repeating "in the present global conditions, the 'Leninian' gesture of reinventing the revolutionary project in the conditions of imperialism, colonialism, and world war" (Budgen, Kouvelakis and Zi2ek, 2007, 3).

A2CAPSOLVESPOVERTY
THEGLOBALECONOMYLITERALLYDEPENDSONINCOMEINEQUALITY. DISMISSTHEIRIMPOSSIBLEPROMISES INEQUALITYISWRITTENINTOANDCELEBRATEDBYINTERNATIONALECONOMICTHEORY. MartynaliwaisLecturerinManagementattheUniversityofEssexintheUK,andamemberofEssexManagementCentre, 2007[Globalization,InequalitiesandthePolanyiProblem,criticalperspectivesoninternationalbusiness3.2]
Globalization may be read as a political, social, and cultural process (Banerjee and Linstead, 2001), and its impact on society can be considered from a variety of theoretical perspectives. To remain consistent with the focus of this journal, and in order to expose the need for a critical appraisal of, and alternative engagement with questions addressed by authors on international business, this section offers examples of how issues of economic inequalities within and between societies are addressed in the mainstream international business literature. Through doing so, it is pointed out that this literature tends to consider inequalities between and within societies as an enabler and an important condition of globalization

of businesses, rather than as a negative phenomenon.

Within the IB literature, discussion of demand-side issues places emphasis on the power of consumers, and their role in determining what type of products and services will be delivered by the suppliers. For example, a number of authors (e.g. Balabanis et al., 2001; De Mooij, 2000; Keillor et al., 2001) argue that consumers in different countries continue to demonstrate differences in demand for goods, whilst other writers (e.g. Douglas and Wind, 1987; Duysters and Hagedoorn, 2001; McAuley, 2004) point out that the existence of local tastes and preferences leads companies to continue developing country-specific products in response to increasing diversity of consumer requirements. Within this discourse, the issue of multinational enterprises (MNEs)

having a vested interest in maintaining economic inequalities, and ensuring that not all members of the societies in which they operate have the purchasing power to become the consumers of their products and services, remains unstated. Its existence,
however, becomes clear upon a consideration of the literature discussing supply-side matters from the point of view of strategies pursued by capitalist organizations at a global level. For example, it is recognized that individual firms configure their production processes on a global scale (Howells and Wood, 1993). In doing so, they seek to attain sustainable competitive advantage by implementing cost- or differentiation-based strategies (Porter, 1985), and by maximizing ownership, internalization and location advantages (Buckley and Casson, 1998; Dunning, 1993), in order to achieve low cost and high profit levels. The possibilities for a global configuration of value-adding activities are underpinned by the existence of structural discrepancies across countries and regions, and by firms' abilities to exploit them (Jones, 2002). These are exemplified in Porter's (1990) diamond framework in relation to elements that are both value-adding such as knowledge and technology; and cost-reducing for example, availability of cheap labor and other resources.

The international business literature does not only explicitly acknowledge the existence of earnings differentials between populations, as exemplified by countries and regions offering cheap labor, but treats them as opportunities and potential sources of competitive advantage, in response to which companies become transnational (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1995) or heterarchical (Hedlund,
1986), balancing global coordination with local responsiveness (Dicken, 1992). Following the logic of the argument advocating the desirability of lowering the costs of production, those who are wanted and used as labor by global companies will, by definition, attract a low level of earnings. This, in turn, will translate into their low purchasing power, and thus, the lack of ability to buy all products and services that they might wish to purchase. The language of international corporate strategies and competitive advantages masks issues of poverty and economic exclusion, rather than addressing them from the point of view of ethics and social responsibility. Also, the question of power that MNEs have over the members of societies within which they operate is not discussed. This power is exercised through, on the one hand, setting the prices for products and services the companies deliver, and on the other, through dictating the conditions of employment, including the levels of remuneration for work. To a large extent, the ability of individuals to participate in consumption and in production is not

necessarily determined by personal tastes and preferences, but is an outcome of the activities of multinational and global organizations, in pursuit of their goals of profitability and growth. Whilst Bauman (1998) contends that the rich do not need the poor any more, the above argument suggests that the opposite is the case: not only do the rich still need the poor, but, as those who manage multinational organizations belong to the category of the rich, they are also in the position to decide how poor the poor are going to remain. Because of this, the gap between those who serve global companies as cheap labor and hence are largely excluded from participating in the global consumption; and those who thanks to their high purchasing power, are important consumers at a global level, continues to exist. Moreover, as is argued later in this article, this situation is to a large extent
accompanied by a state of social stability and cohesion. In an aim to contribute to the debate on the resolution of the Polanyi problem, as presented below, mechanisms for promoting social stability in current circumstances are discussed, drawing upon some ideas found in Huxley's (1994) Brave New World.

A2CAPSOLVESPOVERTY
CAPITALISM CANT SOLVE POVERTY: CAPITALISM IS STRUCTURALLY INCAPABLE OF ADDRESSING POVERTY BECAUSEITMAKESEXCEPTIONSTHERULESUCHAS EVERYONEWILLEVENTUALLYBENEFITFROMCAPITALISM SOPEOPLEIGNORETHEHORRIFYINGAFFECTSOFIT. ISTIVANMESZAROSPROFESSOREMERITUSATTHEUNIVERSITYOFSUSSEX,BEYONDCAPITAL,PG.XIII1995
The attempt at divorcing effects from their causes goes hand in hand with the equally fallacious practice of claiming the status of a rule for the exception. This is how it can be pretended that the misery and chronic underdevelopment that necessarily arise from the neo-colonial domination and exploitation of the overwhelming majority of humankind by a mere handful of capitalistically developed countrieshardly more than the G7do not matter at all. For, as the self-serving legend goes, thanks to the (never realized) modernization of the rest of the world, the population of every country will one fine day enjoy the great benefits of the free enterprise system. The fact that the rapacious exploitation of the human and material resources of our planet for the benefit of a few capitalist countries happens to be a non-generalizable condition is wantonly disregarded.
Instead, the universal viability of emulating the development of the advanced capitalist countries is predicated, ignoring that neither the advantages of the imperialist past, or the immense profits derived on a continuing basis from keeping the Third World in a structural dependency can be universally diffused, so as to produce the anticipated happy results through modernization and free-marketization.Nottomentionthefactthateven if the

history of imperialism could be re-written if a sense diametrically opposed to the way it actually unfolded, coupled with the fictitious reversal of the existing power relations of domination and dependency in favour of the underdeveloped countries, the general adoption of the rapacious utilization of our plants limited resourcesenormously damaging already, although at present practiced only be the privileged tiny minoritywould make the whole system instantly collapse.

A2CAPREDUCESINEQUALITY
THEIDEATHATCAPREDUCESINEQUALITYISALIEMEANTTOPROMOTETHEEXPANSIONOFUSHEGEMONYAND MARKETECONOMICS. TariqAli(Historian,novelist,commentator,Activist,Introduction,Antiimperialism:aguideforthe movement,Pages23)March2003
As both the Chinese and Russian states embraced the market, the triumph of global capitalism appeared to be complete. The victory of the US was real, not imagined. It created a two- decade hiatus, during which many on the left made their peace with the victors while European social democracy (of which the wretched Blair is only the most extreme example) virtually abandoned its entire program. Despair reigned supreme, until hope re-emerged with the eruption of a new anti-capitalist movement in Seattle. It would be foolish to pretend, and the movement did not, that they possessed all the answers to the problems of the world. What was important was that the search for an alternative had begun. The process has, in general, been a creative one, but in the desperation for something `new' it has occasionally
led some of the movement's thinkers to veil themselves from reality. It became fashionable to accept that the dispersal of manufacturing industry meant that it was no longer possible to talk of a First World and a Third World. There was widespread euphoria that the Washington consensus would lead rapidly to the trickling down of wealth, and that every citizen in Africa, Latin America and Asia could only gain from such a process. These thoughts, often written in essays and books, were somewhat premature. History has not been kind to this type of thinking. Global inequalities have increased-86 percent of the total world income inequality is inter-country. The economies of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the first laboratories for the neoliberal experiment, collapsed dramatically. In the case of Argentina the 'cure' killed the patient. Then the enforcers of the IMF and World Bank turned their attentions elsewhere. One result has been the eruption of giant anti-neoliberal movements in almost every Latin American country. The whole continent is now in revolt. How could anyone have imagined that the triumph of capitalism would lead to global harmony and that military interventions would only be `humanitarian' in intent? In the case of the Soviet Union, it was never thus before the revolution of 1917, and it was foolish to think that it would be any different after its collapse in 1989. In reality, the US was now posed with a slight problem. In a world without enemies, how could it enforce its hegemony over other major capitalist countries? The invention of a new enemy was helped by the events of II September, but few seriously believe that an organization of 2,5oo to 3,ooo religious fundamentalists poses a serious threat in any form. Behind the scenes a different debate was taking place. In mid-1997 a gang of US neo-conservatives launched the Project for the New American Century, chaired by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, a veteran of the Reagan and first Bush administrations. The aim was straightforward-the preservation of US global hegemony via a massive boost in defense expenditure. Also, frontal assaults on regimes hostile to our interests and values, active promotion of political and economic

freedom abroad', and recognition of America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles. In short, imperialism.

A2CAPKEYTOSPACE
CAPITALISMISNOTKEYTOSPACETHEUSSRPROVES.STRIPPINGTHEPROFITMOTIVEFROM TECHNOLOGICALDEVELOPMENTISABETTERALTERNATIVEFRAMEWORKFOREXPLORATIONAND DEVELOPMENT Palecek2K9(Mike,Aug.12,CapitalismVersusScience,http://www.marxist.com/capitalismversus science.htm,InDefenceofMarxism,DM)
The ultimate proof of capitalisms hindrance of science and technology comes not from capitalism, but from the alternative. While the Soviet Union under Stalin was far from the ideal socialist society (something which we have explained extensively elsewhere), its history gives us valuable insight into the potential of a nationalized planned economy. In 1917 the Bolsheviks took control of a backwards, semi-feudal, third world country that had been ruined by the First World War. In a matter of decades, it was transformed into a leading super-power. The USSR would go on to be the first to put a satellite into orbit, the first to put a man in space, and the first to build a permanently manned outpost in space. Soviet scientists pushed the frontiers of knowledge, particularly in the areas of Mathematics, Astronomy, Nuclear Physics, Space Exploration and Chemistry. Many Soviet era scientists have been awarded Nobel prizes in various fields. These successes are particularly stunning, when one considers the state the country was in when capitalism was overthrown. How were such advancements possible? How did the Soviet Union go from having a population that was 90% illiterate, to having more scientists, doctors and engineers per capita than any other country on Earth in just a few decades? The superiority of the nationalized planned economy and the break from the madness of capitalism is the only explanation. The first step in this process was simply the recognition that science was a priority. Under capitalism, the ability of private companies to develop science and technology is limited by a narrow view of what is profitable.
Companies do not plan to advance technology, they plan to build a marketable product and will only do what is necessary to bring that product to market.

The Soviets immediately recognized the importance of the overall development of science and technology and linked it to the development of the country as a whole. This broad view allowed them to put substantial resources into all areas of study. Another vital component of their success was the massive expansion of education. By abolishing private schools and providing free education at all levels, individuals in the population were able to meet their potential. A citizen could continue their studies as long as they were capable. By contrast, even many advanced capitalist countries have been unable to eliminate illiteracy today, let alone open up university education to all who are able. Under capitalism, massive financial barriers are placed in front
of students, which prevent large portions of the population from reaching their potential. When half of the worlds population is forced to live on less than two dollars a day, we can only conclude that massive reserves of human talent are being wasted. The soviet government immediately tore down

all the barriers on science that strangle innovation within the capitalist system. Patents, trade secrets, and private industry were eliminated. This allowed for more collaborative research across fields and a free flow of information between institutions. Religious prejudices that had long held back rational study were pushed aside. One only has to look at the ban on stem-cell research under the Bush regime to see the negative effects religious bigotry can have on science

A2CAPINSPACEINEV
CAPITALISTSPACEDEVELOPMENTISNOTINEVITABLEONLYTHEPLANPUBLICIZESTHE RISKTOMAKEITPRIVATELYLUCRATIVEFORVENTURECAPITALISTS. SPENCE,1994(Martin,LostinSpace,Capital&Class52,pp5173)
There is no necessary, predestined reason why a capitalist space sector should develop at all beyond this point. There is no manifest destiny pushing humanity out into the universe. Space may simply be used as a place to put more and more communication satellites and orbiting billboards, until saturation point is reached. And yet, there are profits to be made in deep space, profits to be made
from microgravity production or lunar mining, if only private capital can gain access. The obstacles to such access are political and financial rather than technical. There is nothing new about microgravity manufacturing: the Russians have been doing it for years. There is nothing exotic about a lunar base: existing space hardware is quite adequate for the task (Furniss 1993). But setting up an orbiting factory or a lunar base are high-risk ventures: private capital alone will not undertake such projects.

A commercial expansion into deep space will only take place on the back of a publicly-funded infi'astructure providing regular and cheap access to Earth orbit and beyond. The key challenge for private capital is to use public investment to underwrite its own operations in space.

A2CAPINEV
Bullshit bailouts and stimulus prove socialism is alive it just benefits the rich. McLaren, Prof. of Education @ UCLA, 2-19-09 (Peter, http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/88/39/)
Teachers need to develop anti-capitalist pedagogies. They need to involve their students in a discussion of the current global economic crisis and not be afraid to use the word capitalism. We need to stress the class dimension of the crisis in Marxian terms. We need to enter
into discussions about how capitalism works and how the question of politics pervades questions of the economy and the distribution of wealth and class power. And how all these questions have a moral dimension (can morality exist within capitalism?) as well as a political basis. There is a tremendous fear about socialism in the US these days, but we must remember that the ruling class only fears socialism for the poor because the entire system is protected via socialism for the rich, a system that is comfortably in place although it needs to be unmasked as socialism for the rich. The great US polymath, Gore Vidal, pointed out that the US government prefers that "public money go not to the people but to big

business. The result is a unique society in which we have free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich" and we can clearly discern the truth in that statement when we look at the recent nationalisation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac where you
can see clearly that the US is a country where there exists socialism for the rich and privatisation for the poor, all basking in what Nouriel Roubini calls the glory of unfettered Wild West laissez-faire jungle capitalism and what Marxist theorist David Harvey argues has led to a financial Katrina that

has allowed the biggest debt bubble in history to fester without any control, causing the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. Indeed, socialism is only condemned when it profits the poor and the powerless and threatens the rich. But capitalists are quick to embrace a socialism for the rich which really is what neo-liberal capitalism is all about. But of course,
its called free-market capitalism and is seen as synonymous with the struggle for democracy. But free-market ideology cannot fix a crisis created by freemarket ideology. I look around me to the decaying infrastructures of the cities here and I feel I am living in some kind of slow-motion demolition of civilisation, in a film noir comic book episode where denizens of doom inhabit quasi-feudal steampunk landscapes of wharfs and warehouses and rundown pubs, roaches sliding off laminated table cloths, in an atmosphere of dog-eat-dog despair. Those whose labour is exploited in the production of

social wealth that is, the wage and salaried class are now bearing most of the burden of the current economic crisis in the US and, quite simply, what is called for is a mass uprising like we saw in Argentina in 2001-2002 when four presidents were forced out in
less than three weeks, like we saw in Venezuela when the popular majorities rescued President Hugo Chavez during a CIA-supported coup, or like we saw in Bolivia, when the indigenous peoples put Evo Morales in power or what we are seeing in Iceland, in Latvia, in Greece, in South Korea today. We need to cry "Que se vayan todos!" ("All of them must go!") And flush contemporary deregulated capitalism down the toilet. But the interminably overcast political world and the media/videosphere in the US provide the US public with what Paul Valry described as the succour of that which does not exist in this case, a belief that free-market capitalism is still the best of all possible systems and needed to keep

democracy safe from the feral hordes of barbarians who might turn to the evil of socialism if we are not vigilant in protecting our way of life. As educators, we are faced with a tough challenge in teaching about and against capitalism

A2CAPINEV
THE ARGUMENT THAT WE CANNOT OVERCOME CAPITALISM SAPS THE CRITICAL ENERGY FROM REVOLUTION THE SYSTEM IS ONLY STRONG BECAUSE WE THINK IT IS ZIZEKIN1995SLAVOJ,IDEOLOGYBETWEENFICTIONANDFANTASY,CARDOZOLAWREVIEW,PAGELEXIS Theproblematicof"multiculturalism"thatimposesitselftodayisthereforetheformofappearanceofitsopposite,ofthe massive
presence of Capitalism as universal world system: itbears witness to the unprecedented homogenization of today's world. It is effectively as if, since the horizon of social imagination no longer allows us to entertain the idea of an eventual demise of Capitalism - since, as we might put it, everybody seems to accept that Capitalism is here to stay - the critical energy found a substitute outlet in fighting for cultural differences which leave the basic homogeneity of the capitalist world-system intact. So we are fighting our PC battles for the right of ethnic minorities, of gays and lesbians, of different "life-styles," etc., while Capitalism pursues its triumphant march - and today's critical theory, in the guise of "cultural studies," is doing the ultimate service to the unrestrained development of Capitalism by actively contributing in the ideological effort to render its massive presence invisible: in a typical postmodern "cultural critique," the very mention of Capitalism as world system tends to give rise to the accusation of "essentialism," "fundamentalism," etc.

LIES!COMMUNISMISALREADYHERE.ITSJUSTBEINGCONTROLLEDBYCAPITLISTSINTHESTATUSQUO.

Graeber 09 (Adbusters Magazine. March/April 2009. Tactical Briefing. By David Graeber. U.S. Edition.)
We are dearly on the verge of another mass resurgence of the popular imagination. It shouldn't be that difficult. Most of the elements are already there. The problem is that our perceptions have been twisted into knots by decades of relentless propaganda and we are no longer able to see them. Consider the term ~communism. Rarely has a term come to be so utterly reviled. The standard line. which we accept more or less unthinkingly, is that communism means state control of the economy. History
has shown us that this impossible utopian dream simply "doesn't work.~ Thus capitalism, however unpleasant, is the only remaining option. In fact, communism really just means any situation where people act according to this principle: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. This is, in fact, the way pretty much everyone acts if they are working together. If, for example, two people are fixing a pipe and one says hand me the wrench," the other doesn't say "and what do] get for itT' This is true even if they happen to be employed by Bechtel or Citigroup. They apply the principles of communism because they're the only ones that really work. This is also the reason entire cities and countries revert to some form of rough-

and-ready communism in the wake of natural disasters or economic collapse - markets and hierarchical chains of command become luxuries they can't afford. The more creativity is required and the more people have to improvise at a given task, the more egalitarian the resulting form of communism is likely to be. That's why even Republican computer engineers trying to develop new
software ideas tend to form small democratic collectives. It's only when work becomes standardized and boring (think production lines that t becomes possible to impose more authoritarian, even fascistic forms of communism. But the fact is that even private companies are internally organized

according to communist principles. Communism is already here. The question is how to further democratize it. Capitalism. in turn, is just one possible way of managing communism. It has become increasingly dear that it's a rather disastrous one.
Clearly we need to be thinking about a better alternative. preferably one that does not systematically set us all at each others' throats. All this makes it much easier to understand why capitalists are willing to pour such extraordinary resources into the machinery of hopelessness. Capitalism is not just a

poor system for managing communism, it also periodically falls apart. Each time it does, those who profit from it have to convince everyone that there is really no choice but to dutifully paste it all back together again

A2CAPINEV
THETRANSITIONISHERE.WELLDECIDETHEFUTURE. THORP & BRADY, LECTURED IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC STUDIES AT LONDON GUILDHALL UNIVERSITY & VISITING LECTURER IN THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATIONATTHEUNIVERSITYOFNORTHAMPTON.2007(GERALDINE&PAT,RENEWINGDIALOGUESINMARXISMANDEDUCATION,P. The changes in education have a context.WehavearguedthatMarxsdialecticalmethodoftreatingpoliticaleconomyprovidesan explanationthatallowsustoseethatcapitalism is in decline and with it all its institutions.Wehaveoutlinedanexampleofhisdialecticin
thecommodity.Anotherexampleisfoundinthehistoricalprocessofthedivisionoflabor,whichhesawasprocessofseparationoftheunityof humanityandnaturethatwaspositedinitsoppositeinthewagelaborandcapitalrelation(1973:489).Politicaleconomyinvolvesthedialectical movementbetweenobjectivelawsofmotionarisingfromthecontradictionsintheeconomiccategoriesandthesubjectiveactionsofindividuals andclasses.Contemporary society is in a transitional period from capitalism to socialism .Wehavearguedthatcapitalismhasa beginning,middle,andend.It is today in the process of decline and competing with the burgeoning movements of the future

society. The mediations holding the system together are working less well in the present period as seen in the need to combine the contradictory forms of market and state. One reason for this is the collapse of mediations such as Stalinism, the cold war, and with them, social democracy, all of which held back the working class. The system needs unemployment and war but cannot not return to the 1930s or any earlier form. Finance capital is the abstract, parasitic form that commands capitalism in decline. It subordinates industrial capital and in so doing destroys its host.Itssphereiscirculationthroughwhichit developsglobal markets.Theseare in crisis, forcing finance capital to feed off pensions, construction, and the public sector.The
dominanceoffinancecapitalexplainsgovernmentseeminglycontradictorypolicyandeducationalchangetoday.Theinternaldynamicsof capitalismandclassstrugglenecessarilybringaboutthedemiseofitslawsofmotion.Its governing law of value is brought into decline

by

competition, concentration, and automation. In the same process, it creates the possibility for humanity to liberate itself by eliminating living labor from the production process.Inotherwords,itcreatesitsowngraveyardanditsowndiggersthemodern
proletariat.MarxsummedupthestruggleasThusatthelevelofmaterialproduction...wefindthesamesituationthatwefindinreligionatthe ideologicallevel,namelytheinversionofsubjectintoobjectandviceversa.Viewed

historically this inversion is the indispensable transitionwithoutwhichwealthassuch,i.e.therelentlessproductiveforcesofsociallabour,which alone can form the material basis of a free human society,couldnotpossiblybecreatedbyforceattheexpenseofthemajority.This antagonistic stage cannot be avoided....
Whatweareconfrontedbyhereisthealienation...ofmanfromhisownlabour.Tothatextenttheworkerstandsonahigherplanethanthe capitalistfromtheoutset,sincethelatterhashisrootsintheprocessofalienationandfindsabsolutesatisfactioninitwhereasrightfromthestart theworkerisavictimwhoconfrontsitasarebelandexperiencesitasaprocessofenslavement.(Marx,1976:990,Italicsinoriginal)The task for

theworkingclassandtherestof humanity is to raise subject over object in the struggle for emancipation. Education plays a

crucial role in this by which the educator becomes educated

A2CAPINEV
WEALSOHAVEISSUESPECIFICUNIQUENESS!!!THEEDUCATIONALSPHEREISUNIQUELYKEYINTHISTIME OFTRANSITIONAWAYFROMCAPITALISM. MARTIN, LECTURERINTHE SCHOOLOF EDUCATIONAND PROFESSIONAL STUDIESAT GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY, 2007 (GREGORY, RENEWING DIALOGUES INMARXISMANDEDUCATION,P251)
Within the university, the core of the problem at

this historical time of transition is that scholarly research involves political choices made manifest in the clash between professional/entrepreneurial and activist discourses. In the contemporary political climate, intellectuals on the academic Left have increasingly found themselves on the bad-edge of academic entrepreneurialism as research agendas, now forced to compete for limited resources, are increasingly freighted toward greater market compliance. This, of course, has left progressive scholars with even fewer funded opportunities to support community based organizations working to secure social and economic justice. The commodification of education stems in part from its subordination to both the ideology and practice of neoliberal economic policy. Given this situation, it is a sobering fact that the decision to devote ones energy to developing models of intellectual engagement that are personally and politically committed to changing the material conditions the current social order forces upon us in life and struggle does not occur in a social vacuum (Martin, 2005). As our cashstarved public schools and universities are subjected to the discipline of market forces, many functions and activities are becoming commodified as consumer goods (objects of trading) and individual forms of investment (human capital) related to the buy now-pay later credit system (Lapavitsas, 2003: 65). In a nutshell, the social character of education in this pragmatic, anti-intellectual paradigm is being reduced to the delivery of marketable, prepackaged knowledge (e.g., online courses, videos, and CDs) to be added onto useful skills and practices such as problem solving and critical thinking deemed to be of relevance and economic benefit to all the differing national capitals (Ebert, 1997: 47; see also Hill, 2004b; Rikowski, 1999).

A2CAPINEV
THEREFUSALTOACCEPTTHEENDOFCAPITALISMISAPSYCHOLOGICALPLOYEMBRACINGTHISINEVITABILITY ISKEYTOLIBERATINGPOLITICS ZIZEK2010LIVINGINTHEENDTIMESPXXII
The underlying premise of the present book is a simple one: the

global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its "four riders of the apocalypse" are comprised by the ecological crisis, the conse- quences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions.
To take up only the last point, nowhere are the new forms of apartheid more palpable than in the wealthy Middle Eastern oil states-Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai. Hidden on the outskirts of the cities, often liter- ally behind walls, are tens of thousands of "invisible" immigrant workers doing all the dirty work, from servicing to construction, separated from their families and refused all privileges:> Such a situation clearly embodies an explosive potential which, while now exploited by religious funda- mentalists, should have been channeled by the Left in its struggle against exploitation and corruption. A country like Saudi Arabia is literally "beyond corruption": there is no need for corruption because the ruling gang (the royal family) is already in possession of all the wealth, which it can distribute freely as it sees fit. In such countries, the only alternative to fundamentalist reaction would be a kind of social-democratic welfare state. Should this situation persist, can we even imagine the change in the Western "collective psyche" when (not if, but precisely when) some "rogue nation" or group obtains a nuclear device, or powerful biological or chemical weapon, and declares its "irrational" readiness to risk all in using it? The most basic coordinates of our awareness will have to change, insofar as, today, we live in a state of collective fetishistic disavowal: we know very well that this will happen at some point, but nevertheless cannot bring ourselves to really believe that it will. The US attempt to prevent such an occurrence through continuous pre-emptive activity is a battle that has been lost in advance: the very notion that it might succeed relies on a fantasmatic vision. Amorestandardformof"inclusiveexclusion"aretheslumslargeareasoutsideofstategovernance.'Vhilegenerallyperceivedasspacesinwhich gangsandreligioussectsflghtforcontrol,slumsalsoofferthespaceforradicalpoliticalorganizations,asisthecaseinIndia,wherethe~laoist movementofNaxalitesisorganizingavastalternatesocialspace.ToquoteanIndianstateofficial:"Thepointisifyoudon'tgovernanarea,itisnot yours.Exceptonthemaps,itisnotpartofIndia.AtleasthalfofIndiatodayisnotbeinggoverned.Itisnotinyourcontrol...youhave0createa completesocietyinwhichlocalpeoplehaveverysignificantstakes.We'renotdoingthat...AndthatisgivingtheMaoistsspacetomovein."4 Although similar signs of the "great disorder under heaven" abound, the truth hurts, and we desperately try to avoid it. To explain how, we can turn to an unexpected guide. The Swiss-born psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross proposed the famous scheme of the five stages of grief, which follow, for example, upon learning that one has a terminal illness: denial (one simply refuses to accept the fact: "This can't be happening, not to me"); anger (which explodes when we can no longer deny the fact: -How can this happen to me? "); bargaining (in the hope that we can some- how postpone or diminish the fact: "Just let me live to see my children graduate"); depression (libidinal disinvestment: "I'm going to die, so why bother with anything?"); and acceptance ("I can't fight it, so I may as well prepare for it"). Later, Kubler-Ross applied the same scheme to any form of catastrophic personal loss Goblessness, death of a loved one, divorce,drug addiction), emphasizing that the five stages do not necessarily come in the same order, nor are they all experienced by every patient.5

One can discern the same five figures in the way our social conscious- ness attempts to deal with the forthcoming apocalypse. The first reaction isoneofideological denial: there is no fundamental disorder; the second "is exemplified by explosions of anger at the injustices of the new world order; the third involves attempts at bargaining(if we change things here and there, life could perhaps go on as before"); when the bargaining fails. depression and withdrawal set in;finally,after passing through this zero-point, the subject no longer perceives the situation as a threat, but as the chance of a new beginningor,asMaoZedong
putit:"Thereisgreatdisorderunderheaven,thesituationisexcellent."

A2TRANSITIONWARS
THE ALTERNATIVE IS NOT BASED ON STALE IDEAS OF A MASSIVE OVERTHROW OF THE SYSTEM. A PROCESS OF SYSTEMATIC REJECTION OF ALLOWS FOR GRADUAL AND NONVIOLENT TRANSITION TO NON-CAPITALISM Kaufman,DeAnzaCollegeInterim Director of the Institute for Community and Civic Engagement, 2009 (Cynthia, Liberation from Capitalism: Visions of a post-capitalist world and direction for getting there, p. 9-11)
One of the core claims of this book is that we

should replace the dominant anti-capitalist imaginary according to which capitalism is a system that should be overthrown, with the image of capitalism as a set of interrelated practices that need to pulled out from the tapestry that is our social world. Capitalist elements of the social fabric need to be pulled out and replaced with other social forms. The pulling, cutting and reweaving that need to take place, must happen at many social locations. Pulling threads on one place, causes holes on other places, and as we reweave society we need to attend to the short term problem our actions can create, and we need to build a better world from within the fabric of the one we want to challenge. We are constantly
making and remaking society though our everyday interactions. The image of reweaving a tapestry is intended to bring to mind the idea, of a constant remaking, of the intimate nature of capitalist processes, and of the ways that change on a macro scale is made up of changes on a micro scale. I follow the ideas outlined in Pierre Bourdieu's The Logic of Practice, where he claims that social structures are something we live through, and which are constructed by the every day practices of those who inhabit those structures. Overthrowing a system brings to mind the image of solid and distinct thing, standing on its own, that can be knocked down. I will argue that this way of looking at capitalism is not very helpful. Rather, we should see capitalism as a set of practices, implicated into and structuring an immense variety of aspects of life. And

destroying it will be more a matter of transforming all of those networks than of overturning a structure. The image of overthrow encourages a politics that looks for fulcrums and tipping points. I would like to replace that image with one of a set of projects before us that take place on a variety of completely different social locations all at the same time, with an undetermined sense of how all of those operations will come together to achieve their ultimate goal. We can push back against the devastations caused by capitalism from where we are right now. As capitalism is pushed back, life can become better in the short term as we build toward a total elimination of the practices we call capitalism. Sometimes political movements involve creative thought. There are
marvelous moments when people challenging systems of power spend all night talking about what theyre doing and, with their friends in struggle, come up with concepts that capture the meaning of what theyre doing. When people are actively thinking about what theyre doing, the concepts they use are likely to be expressive of what they are trying to accomplish. The desires and intentions of the movement come to have a focus and richness that inspires and guides. Movements often then go into periods of elaboration, where the foundations and pathways forged in those crucible moments come to be accepted as given. In those times, people often shun ideas, and carry on using the ideas that were formed in the crucible. For a while the ideas usually work just fine. Later they can come to weigh a movement down and keep it from responding in new ways to new circumstances. Those advocating for a world free from the devastations caused by capitalism are working in a time of incredible ferment, after many years of dormancy. Possibilities for making a difference

and making connections are developing at an unprecedented rate. And yet, the categories we are using remain deeply fossilized. This book attempts to break that fossilization in order to facilitate deeper forms of praxis, where our theory resonates with and helps inform our practice, and where our practice informs our theory. With a fresh understanding of what we are doing we are much more likely to be able to build a politics that is effective at eradicating capitalism

A2CAP=HUMANNATURE
THEIRHUMANNATURECLAIMSAREFALSEIFWEWEREDIRECTLYRELIANTONHUMANNATUREWEWOULDBE NAKEDSEARCHINGFORFOODRIGHTNOW,INSTEADOFINADEBATEROUND. WILKINSON, POLICY ANALYST AT THE CATO INSTITUTE, 2005 (WILL, CAPITALISM AND HUMAN NATURE, CATOPOLICYREPORTVOL.XXVIINO.1JANUARY/FEBRUARY2005,DS)
First, a word of caution: Wecannotexpecttodrawanystraightforwardpositivepoliticallessonsfromevolutionary

psychology.Itcantellussomethingaboutthekindofsocietythatwilltendnottowork,andwhy.Butitcannottellus whichofthefeasibleformsofsocietyweoughttoaspireto.Wecannot, it turns out, inferthenaturalnessofcapitalism fromthemanifestfailureofcommunismtoaccommodatehumannature. Norshouldwebetemptedtoinferthat naturalisbetter.Foraginghalfnakedfornutsandberriesisnatural,whiletheNewYorkStockExchangeandopen heartsurgerywouldboggleourancestors'minds. What evolutionary psychology really helps us to appreciate is just what an unlikely
achievement complex, liberal, market-based societies really are. It helps us to get a better grip on why relatively free and fabulously wealthy societies like ours are so rare and, possibly, so fragile. Evolutionarypsychologyhelpsustounderstandthatsuccessfulmarketliberalsocieties

requirethecultivationofcertainpsychologicaltendenciesthatareweakinStoneAgemindsandthesuppressionor sublimationofothertendenciesthat

A2MAKECAPBETTER
THEREISNOIDEALIZEDCAPITALISMTHEEXPLOITATIONTHATRUNSRAMPANTINTHEGLOBALECONOMYAND THETRENDOFENVIRONMENTALDEGRADATIONARENECESSARYOUTCOMESOFCAPITALSEXPANSION. Kovel2(Joel,AlgerHissProfessorofSocialStudiesatBardCollege,TheEnemyofNature:The EndofCapitalismortheEndoftheWorld?pg7273)
As globalization propagates the mechanisms of accumulation around the globe, society after society is swept into the vortex of eco-destruction. Dependent and unequal development accompanied by massive debt becomes the midwife of this process.
Wherever a debt is incurred, there will be pressure to discharge it by sacrificing ecological integrity Indonesian President Suharto, a great friend of globalization, put this clearly after the imposition of a structural adjustment programme. No need to worry, said the amiable leader of the worlds fourth largest nation, Indonesia could always exchange its forests for the money owed to the banks. The devastating effects of global debt on nations of the South25 are discomfiting to global capital indeed, Jesse Helms, like the Walrus and the Carpenter, was reduced to tears by testimony to this effect. The scandal has led to a flurry of efforts to bring the load down, with some $50 billion in debts being retired in 2000. Alas, the South owed at the time about $2.3 trillion twenty-six times as much nor do the terms of forgiveness free it from the wheel of accumulation. As a recent account reported, The IMF, the World

Bank, the United States and others say that African countries must open up to the global economy and control wasteful internal spending and inflation if debt relief is to be put to lasting use. In other words: give us your forests and cheap labour by other means, and we will forgive the debt that you cant pay under any circumstances. Because of debts injustice, the IMF is
usually considered the heavy villain in the regime of globalization. Doctor Death, Time magazine called it recently, in an impressive sign that elite opinion is fracturing.2 This is a reasonable assessment of the organization that has brought at least 90 poor nations under its spell. But the IMF, or bad cop of globalization, should not be singled out as the source of the problem, an impression fostered in a recent essay by Joseph Stiglitz, chief economist of the World Bank from 1996 to November 1999. We met Stiglitz, you may recall, in the last chapter, joining the chorus of world economic leaders extolling the wonders of unlimited growth. Now, however, he has become something of a whistleblower, and caused something of a sensation by an article in the .New Republic that confirmed all the worst suspicions as to how utterly secretive, anti- democratic and ruthlessly attentive to short-term profitability is the IMF. Using as examples the handling of the Asian and Russian fiscal crises of 199799, Stiglitz leaves no doubt that the placing of profits over

people, as the saying has it, has caused calamities of Holocaust proportions throughout much of the world. However, he has no intention of calling into question the capitalist system as a whole, but would have us believe that this disaster was the fault of bad capitalists at the IMF and the Treasury Department, and that their sin lay in not taking the advice of the World Bank, with its superior economists and good capitalism. The fantasy is widespread that somewhere a virtuous and all-knowing capitalist can be found, a fairy prince who will rescue the mismanaged global economy. As the World Bank plays good cop in this scheme of things, and no doubt has some well
intentioned individuals working for it (just like any bank, or indeed, Monsanto, Chevron, etc., etc., even the IMF), many are disposed to believe that the Stiglitzs of the world can rescue us with their superior technical wisdom. When plain people go to Lourdes in search of miracle cures, the intelligentsia proclaim them superstitious. Yet many are willing to trust a profit-making Bank that puts technical intelligence in the service of

accumulation, a bank that helped finance enterprises such as Union Carbides plant in Bhopal, and put into place the ecodestructive Green Revolution for which Bhopal was built, and was a great supporter of Suharto, and has built huge fossil-fuel-consuming projects throughout the South while prating of the need to control global warming. Those persuaded by recent propaganda to think that this leopard has changed its spots might ponder the case of Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. Having been pressured by the Bank to sell off its airline, electric utilities and national train service to private interests, the desperate nation was at length coerced into selling chunks of its water system to a consortium headed by the US construction giant, the Bechtel
corporation, along with partners from Italy, Spain and four Bolivian companies an authentic spectacle of globalization at work, commodifying an essential substratum of life. Thanks to the Bank, the investors only had to put up less than $20,000 initial capital for a water system worth millions. With Bank loans, the consortium set about diverting various rivers no doubt with the ecological cart that usually attends enterprises of this sort and then, to cover the costs, attempted, again with the Banks blessing, to force through price increases of as much as $20 a month this in a country where the median working family income is $100 a month

A2GIBSONGRAHAM
GIBSON GRAHAMREDUCEPOLITICSTODISCOURSEAND,THEIRKRITIKOF MARXISMRELIESONAFLAWED ANDDISTORTEDCONCEPTIONOFMARXSWORK Poitevin,PhDCandSociol@UCDavis,2001
(ReneFrancisco,Theendofanticapitalismasweknewit:ReflectionsonpostmodernMarxism,TheSocialistReview, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891) TheEndofCapitalism(AsWeKnowIt)
The first thing that jumps out after reading The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy is the way in which there

are at least two ways of smashing the capitalist state: we can have the Leninist revolution or we can change the definition of capitalism and make it disappear. J.K. Gibson-Graham succeeds in doing the latter: in a kind of theoretical abracadabra, capitalism is definitely gone by the end of their book. But despite the theoretical sophistication of their work - a no-holds barred embracing of post-structuralist theory - once the epistemological fireworks dissipate, the argument of the book is actually rather simple. If what is wrong with Left politics "is the way capitalism has been 'thought' that has made it so difficult for people to imagine its supersession,"16 then it logically follows that what is to be done is to change its definition so that it can be "thought" differently - and therefore be made easier to get rid of. And if the problem of why U.S. radical politics has been so ineffective for the last two
decades is the stubborn Marxist insistence upon "the image of two classes locked in struggle," a situation that "has in our view become an obstacle to, rather than a positive force for, anticapitalist endeavors,"17 then how about getting rid of this whole class struggle thing and "reimagine" labor and capital as allies rather than enemies?18 Would not that make the whole task of social transformation much easier? Perhaps, but as we will see shortly, getting rid of capitalism is easier said than done. The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) begs another question: Who are they going after? Is it capitalism or is it Marx? Their book spends so much time on what is supposedly wrong with Marxism that at times it reads more like The End of Marxism As We Knew It. This approach is typical of a pattern that, to quote Wendy Brown, "responds less to the antidemocratic forces of our time than to a ghostly philosophical standoff between historically abstracted formulations of Marxism and liberalism. In other words, this effort seeks to resolve a problem in a (certain) history of ideas rather than a problem in history."19 Simply put, postmodern Marxist politics has more to do with the micropolitics of the ivory tower than with the plight of the workers who clean their campuses. However, once it becomes clear that a necessary condition for the primacy of postmodern theory and politics is that Marxism has to go (otherwise you do not have to become a postmodern to address their concerns), J.K. Gibson-Graham's anti-Marxist hostility, while actively embracing the Marxist label in order to render it useless, makes a lot of sense. And once again, all this is done with impeccable logic: Given that Marxism is still the only doctrine that calls for the systematic overthrow of capitalism, getting rid of Marx(ism) is also to get rid of the need for revolution with a big "R."20 One of the problems with trying to make the case for postmodern Marxism is that in order to get rid of Marxism and declare its tradition obsolete, you have to distort its legacy by constructing a straw man. This straw man-reading

of Marx is predicated upon the double maneuver of collapsing Marxist history into Stalinism, on the one hand, and reducing Marxist theory to "essentialism," "totality," and "teleology," on the other. As J.K. Gibson-Graham themselves acknowledge, without any regrets, "Indeed, as many of our critics sometimes charge, we have constructed a 'straw man.'"21 What is left out of
their quasi-humorous dismissal of Marxism is the complicity of such a straw man in the long history of red-baiting and anti-Marxist repression in this country and around the world. Also left out is the rich Marxist scholarship that was addressing their concerns long before there was a postmodern Marxist school. The fact is that postmodern Marxist's "contributions" are not as original nor as profound as they might have us believe. For example, what about the bulk of the Western Marxist tradition since the Frankfurt School? Has it not been predicated on a rejection of the economic reductionism embedded in the passage from the Preface to the Introduction to A Critique of Political Economy in which the (in)famous base/superstructure metaphor of society gets set in stone as the "official" definition of historical materialism? Or what about Horkheimer and Adorno's relentless critique of instrumental rationality? Marxism, in spite of what the postmodern Marxists want us to believe, has long been making the case for the centrality of culture and its irreducibility to economic laws, as anybody who has read Walter Benjamin or Antonio Gramsci can certify. Furthermore, postcolonial Marxism and critical theory have also been theorizing at more concrete levels of analyses the irreducibility of subjectivity to class.22 And despite the postmodern Marxist excitement when talking about class as a relational process, in fact it is impossible to tell that they are not the first ones to talk about class as a relational process, lots of Marxists before the Amherst School have been theorizing and clarifying the relational mechanisms embedded in class politics.23Postmodern Marxism also ignores Lefebvre's urban Marxist contribution: his emphasis on the importance of experience and the everyday in accounting for social processes.24 And Marxist feminist contributions on the intersection of agency and gender with race, class, and sexuality are conveniently erased from J.K. Gibson-Graham's reduction of Marxism to a straw man.25 The fact is that when one looks at Marxism not as a distorted "straw man" but on its own terms, taking

into account its richness and complexity, Marxist theory starts to appear all of a sudden less "totalizing," "essentializing," and "reductionist" and instead as more rich in possibilities and more enabling. Excursion Filosofica A third feature of J.K. Gibson-Graham's
work, in particular, and of the whole radical democracy tradition, in general, is its post-structuralist extremism.26 For postmodern Marxists it is not enough to point out that, as both Foucault and Habermas argue, we inhabit an intellectual regime characterized by a paradigm shift from the "philosophy of consciousness" to the "philosophy of language."27 Nor is it good enough for postmodern/post-Marxists to recognize the pitfalls embedded in Hegelian epistemology and argue instead, as Spivak does, for strategic-- uses-of-essentialism as a corrective to the excesses of teleological thinking and fixed notions of class.28 No way. As far as postmodern Marxism is concerned, the only way to compensate for constructions of capitalism that

are too totalizing is through the unconditional surrender of the Marxist project. As J.K. Gibson-Graham themselves make clear, "to even conceive of 'capitalism' as 'capitalisms' is still taking 'capitalism' for granted."29 And to try to redistribute the heavy
theoretical and political burden placed upon the proletariat by reconfiguring political agency through "race-class-gender," as opposed to just class, is still a futile endeavor: essentialism is still essentialism whether one essentializes around one or three categories. This strand of post-structuralism, one that once again, can be directly traced back to Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy,30 is predicated on the faulty epistemological premise that what really matters is "discourse." As Laclau and Mouffe clarify, "our analysis rejects the distinction between discursive and nondiscursive practices. It offirms that every object is constituted as an object of discourse."31 The problem with this approach is that once we

enter this world of epistemological foundationalism predicated on the claim that there is "nothing but discourse," we enter a world of relativism in which all we can do is "create discursive fixings," as J.K. Gibson-Graham themselves prescribe, that will guarantee that "any particular analysis will never find the ultimate cause of events."32 It is this ideological postmodern insistence on reducing all of social reality to discourse that ultimately overloads its theoretical apparatus and causes it to buckle beneath them. The Amherst School's "provisional ontology" is incapable of escaping the performative trap of trying to get rid of essentialism by essentializing all of reality as "discursive." The postmodern Marxist approach to ontology boils down to substituting in political practice every occurrence of "continuity" with "discontinuity" as a way to get rid of essentialism and macro-narratives. Even Foucault, the great master of discontinuity, distances himself from such mirror-reversal solutions when theorizing the
limits of discourse and accounting for the "divergence, the distances, the oppositions, the differences" that constitute the episteme of a period.33In a (rarely cited) interview titled "Power and the Study of Discourse," Foucault goes to great length to emphasize the importance of the nondiscursive (which he defines as "a whole play of economic, political and social changes"34) as a necessary condition for the successful application of "discourse" to Left politics." When explicitly asked whether "a mode of thought which introduces discontinuity and the constraints of system" does "not remove all basis for a progressive political intervention"36 (in other words, is post-structuralist politics friend or foe of Left politics), Foucault does three things before he can answer in the affirmative. First, he defends the need for "discourse" and "discontinuity" in unmasking the hidden teleologies embedded in metanarratives of universal history and so forth, in other words, in unmasking the myth of "the sovereignty of the pure subject."Next, and this is crucial in understanding the role of discourse in post-structuralist analysis, Foucault proceeds to triangulate "discourse" as an interplay between three separate levels of analysis: intradiscursive, interdiscursive, and extradiscursive transformations. Taken together, these three levels of analysis constitute the basic "schemes of dependence" that define the conditions that regulate discursive historical transformations and social change. An example of the intradiscursive, for Foucault, is the relationship between the objects, operations, and concepts that constitute a single discipline, let's say math. How "math" constitutes itself with all its many subfields, rules, and definitions is an example of intradiscursive. Interdiscursive, on the other hand, deals with the relationship between one discipline (Foucault uses the example of medical discourse) and other disciplines, in this example other disciplines outside of medicine, such as economics or natural history. And the extradiscursive level of analysis, the one relevant for us in our assessment of postmodern Marxism, deals between the discursive and those "transformations outside of discourse."37 Foucault talks about the connections between "medical discourse and a whole play of economic, political, and social changes" as an example of extradiscursive processes. Notice how careful and unequivocal Foucault's analysis is in emphasizing and making sure that we do not reduce all of reality to some simple notion of "discourse." The irreducibility of the nondiscursive cannot be summarily dismissed as irrelevant, as postmodern/postMarxists do. The key point in assessing the postmodern/post-Marxist epistemological and ontological viability is this: None of Foucault's subtleties in theorizing the "nondiscursive" are present in the postmodern/post-- Marxist model. Not only is Foucault's notion of "discourse" more complex and nuanced than the one presented in postmodern/post-Marxism, the "nondiscursive" is defined as constituted by "institutions, social relations, economic and political conjuncture" - and as explicitly nonreducible to discourse.38 This is why the postmodern/post-Marxist's incapability and/or refusal to

account for the irreducibility of the nondiscursive aspects of institutions and the economy ultimately disqualifies them from articulating a viable Left project. To retort by saying that it is OK to not deal with the centrality of the nondiscursive (e.g., the institutional) because "every object is constituted as an object of discourse"39 misses the point that the moment of the nondiscursive and extradiscursive is both irreducible and essential. How many more Ptolemaic circles of "discursive fixings" is it going to take before it becomes clear that postmodern Marxism's bankrupt epistemology/ontology cannot articulate a viable project for radical politics?

A2GIBSONGRAHAM
GIBSONGRAHAMS ARGUMENT IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN APPEAL TO LIBERAL REFORMS WITHIN CAPITALISMTHISSHORTCIRCUITSTHENECESSITYOFREVOLUTIONSANDISMEREAPOLOGISTFORCAPITALISM Poitevin,PhDCandSociol@UCDavis,2001
(ReneFrancisco,Theendofanticapitalismasweknewit:ReflectionsonpostmodernMarxism,TheSocialistReview, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3952/is_200101/ai_n8932891)

But by far the most anticlimactic and disappointing outcome of the postmodern Marxist approach is that in its desire to get rid of "capitalocentrism,"44 they end up actually reconfiguring the very beast they seek to eliminate by disguising liberal reform as "noncapitalism." Nowhere is this more obvious than in J.K. Gibson-Graham's celebratory reading of The Full Monty, a film about a group of British
steelworkers who lose their jobs due to deindustrialization, and end up refashioning themselves as strippers as a way to reclaim their economic agency.45 The movie shows how the tragic loss of the town's steel mill creates a cascade effect that ends up reconfiguring the social fabric of that community. By the end of the movie, the ex-steelworkers are forced to rethink and renegotiate many types of relationships and identities, from constructions of masculinity and gender roles to economic identities even their wives have to get service jobs to make ends meet. Of particular interest for J.K. Gibson-Graham are the ways in which the movie overlaps with some of the themes of The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It), especially with the ways in which The Full Monty "hinted at different narratives of class transformation, new awareness of class politics and an expanded range of class emotions."46 They also welcomed the way in which the unemployed men "are unable to draw sustenance from old models of resistance-style politics" (i.e., they cannot use the "old" labor/capital class struggle thing) and the way in which the characters in the film pursue what J.K. Gibson-Graham call "non-- capitalist economic relations." Never mind that old predictable "feeling of regret that the climactic one-night-stand striptease is so economically inconsequential" to the well-being of the ex-steelworker strippers, their families, and the community. Even though the ex-steelworkers are still poor at the end of the movie, what matters, according to J.K. Gibson-Graham, is that there was a process of "becoming" that allowed the community to come together, not as ex-workers and ex-managers, or as husbands and wives, but as a "communal economic identity based upon selfvalue and identification across difference."47 This is important because it is the "communal economic identity" of the successful striptease venture that constitutes the precondition for imagining and engaging in "noncapitalist commodity production," such as worker collectives or self-employed workers. A key part of the ex-steelworkers' success, and an important strategy in postmodern Marxist politics, is that the ex-steelworkers do not pursue the "orthodox" line of worker's challenging capitalist control of industrial property, nor do they seem to care about circuits of capital or structural needs of accumulation. The problem with J.K. Gibson-Graham's celebratory reading of The Full Monty is that regardless of how sound the process of "becoming" might be for that community, and regardless of how well they might manage to get along afterwards, calling their striptease enterprise a "noncapitalist commodity production" that is "full of potential and possibilities" is wishful thinking at best and totally ludicrous at worst. Am I the only one who realizes that what JK. Gibson-Graham refer to as "noncapitalist commodity production" is actually sex work? Would JK. Gibson-Graham still embrace as "noncapitalist economic relations" exmaquila workers along the U.S.-Mexican border deciding to do sex work a la The Full Monty as long as it brings the community together? Is prostitution OK as long as the prostitute's surplus is not being appropriated by someone else? My main point here is that throughout The Full Monty - and in J.K. Gibson-Graham's

review of the relations are never questioned or challenged. In the postmodern/post-Marxist "noncapitalist" world, corporations get to keep ownership of the means of production and their profits, while working class communities continue to lap dance their way through "identification across difference" rather than doing union organizing. That this kind of argument can be
film as well - property presented not only as "noncapitalist" but also as Marxist thinking should be enough to demonstrate the political bankruptcy of this paradigm. It is also interesting that JK Gibson-Graham maintain that challenging their analysis of The Full Monty, or not endorsing the politics of the film, "is inherently conservative and capitalocentric."48 I disagree strongly. The politics advocated by J.K. Gibson-Graham through their reading of The Full Monty

is nothing but liberal politics with post-structuralist delusions of grandeur. It is one thing to say that we are at a political conjuncture in which the thing to do is to work hard for reform, not "revolution." But it is another thing to argue that revolutionary practice cannot happen on epistemological grounds, and that all we can do is make capitalism as user friendly as possible while obscuring and co-opting the Marxist tradition. J.K. Gibson-Graham's reading of The Full Monty is both liberal and reactionary. What the postmodern Marxist's reading of The Full Monty demonstrates is that in their desire to get rid of "capitalocentrism" - the alleged obsession of Marxists with seeing "capitalism" everywhere - they end up reconfiguring and consolidating capitalism back in. In their unreflective romanticizing of reform, and in their haughty contempt for revolutionary thinking and politics, J.K-.Gibson-Graham's style of postmodern/post-Marxism delivers what boils down to good old-fashioned liberalism: a mild, state-administered "economic justice" platform centered around individual private liberties, neatly packaged in postmodern gift wrapping. The bottom line is this: When one looks closely at what postmodern/post-Marxist theory actually offers, and after it is done "representing capitalism through the lens of overdetermination,"49 all one can strategize about is how to make capitalism more "user friendly." Gone is the project of getting rid of it. Strangely enough, postmodern/ post-Marxists do not regard these positions as a
surrender of the Marxist project at all, but rather, as the exact fulfillment of that commitment.50

A2FRAMEWORK
KNOWLEDGE ITSELF IS AN INSTRUMENTAL COMMODITY. THEIR INTERPRETATION WOULD TURN US ALL INTO TECHNOCRATSINCAPABLEOFAUTONOMOUSTHOUGHT,FACILITATINGTHEFUNCTIONINGOFCAPITAL.
Fotopoulos, political philosopher and economist, 2008 (Takis, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 4, No. 4 (October 2008), http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol4/vol4_no4_takis_academic_rep_PRINTABLE.htm)
The transnational elite, in neoliberal modernity, works on a pilot scheme on education that is effectively based on the US case. This
becomes obvious if we consider the drastic changes attempted at present in the European educational space and their consequences on the systemic limitations of academic freedom. Thus, as early as 1999, the EUs Declaration of Bologna prescribed the creation of a European Space of Higher Education that would ensure: * The international * The effective linking of higher education to the needs of society and those of the European labour market. The latter represents a direct linking of education to market needs, in contrast to the corresponding indirect linking during the statist (social democratic) era. competitiveness of European Higher Education and In this sense, it summarises the content of neoliberal globalisation as far as education and research are concerned and has defining implications with respect to their content and, of course, their financing. Thus, it

is explicitly being declared now that the University is in the service of private enterprise, while at the same time the financing only of those courses and research projects which serve societys needs (as far as they are identified with market needs), is being introduced, through various direct and indirect methods. Knowledge, like everything else in a market economy/society, is becoming an instrumental commodity in the main aim of serving the market economy and the elites controlling it, irrespective of the real needs of society, the desires of educators and the educated and, by implication, the pure cognitive needs of science. It is not, therefore, surprising that in social-liberal Britain one can observe, as from the beginning
of the last decade, a continuous shrinking in the number of theoretical courses being offered (History, Political Economy, Philosophy, Arts, etc.[23]), in order to make way for practical courses directly linked to the market (marketing, business studies, finance management, computing and so on). Needless to add that non-mainstream

economics, politics, and similar social sciences courses have been simply phased out in all universities apart from some elite universities on the grounds that such courses are not related to the demands of the market, as expressed by publications in
mainstream journals and similar considerations. No wonder that the British theoretical journal Capital & Class, on the basis of a well-documented study,[24] predicted ten years

Furthermore, a similar process is in action in natural sciences as well, with Chemistry, Physics, and other departments closing down in response to market demands and being replaced by courses in forensic science and applied physics such as nanotechnology. Thus, according to the Royal Society of
ago that non-mainstream economics will have been eliminated by now from British economic departments. Chemistry, 28 chemistry departments closed in recent years, including the famous Kings College London department where the double helix structure of DNA was investigated![25] All this was not the result of a satanic plot by the elites, but the inevitable outcome of neoliberal globalisation policies, which prescribe drastic cuts in tax rates (corporation tax, personal income tax, etc.) for the benefit of the privileged social strataalways for the sake of competitivenessfinanced through corresponding cuts in public spending in general and social spending (including spending on education) in particular. This

has inevitably led to the creation of an internal market, in the education sector and to an indirect privatization of study and research from below. Thus, * On the demand side, university
applicants, facing todays rising unemployment and underemployment, select objects of study which are in demand in the job market, and therefore choose the corresponding degree courses, indirectly helping the channelling of more public funds towards them. Also, * On the supply side, such practical courses easily secure sponsorship and No wonder that this process has already led to the mass production of pure technocrats, with superficial general knowledge and, of course, without any capability of autonomous thought beyond the narrow and specialized contours of their discipline. This is consistent with the fundamental private financing in general, both of which complement the dwindling public financing of education imposed by neoliberal globalisation. aim of education in neoliberal modernity, which is the production of similar narrow-minded scientists, who are called upon to solve the technical problems faced by private enterprise in a way that will maximise economic efficiency. Naturally, this kind of mass production of similar scientists by no means implies that scientific rationalism has

well-known scientists within their own disciplines (even in the natural sciences!) are religious, or adopt various irrational systems of thought whose central ideas have been drawn not through rational methods (reason and/or empirical evidence) but through intuition, instinct, feelings, mystical experiences, revelation, etc. The outcome of this is a Jekyll-and-Hyde scientist who is compelled to use the rational methodology of
finally prevailed in thought. In the US, for instance, where this system of education has always been dominant,

scientific research while wearing his/her scientific hat, yet who becomes an irrationalist of the worse kind once this hat is removed. This was a relatively rare phenomenon in Europe before neoliberal modernity, but the present direct or indirect privatization of European universities is making such

schizophrenic identities increasingly frequent.

AFF

AFF:PERM
PERM SOLVES: WE NEED TO PURSUE INCREMENTAL CHANGE AND REFORM. IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO BE RADICAL AND PRAGMATICREFORM ENABLES TO DRIVE FORWARD REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE. DIXON, ACTIVIST AND FOUNDING MEMBER OF DIRECT ACTION NETWORK, 2001 (SUMMER, CHRIS, REFLECTIONS ON PRIVILEGE, REFORMISM, AND ACTIVISM, GOOGLE, DS)
To bolster his critique of 'reformism,' for instance, he critically cites one of the examples in my essay: demanding authentic public oversight of police. "[This] might be a small step for social change in some general sense," he argues, "but ultimately it is a step backwards as it strengthens the legitimacy of the police and of imposed decision." I respect the intent of this critique; it makes sense if one is privileged enough to engage with the police on terms of one's own choosing. Yet in real life, it's both simplistic and insulated. Look at it this way: accepting sasha's argument, are we to wait until the coming insurrectionary upheaval before enjoying an end to police brutality? More specifically, are African-American men to

patiently endure the continued targeting of "driving while Black"? Should they hold off their demands for police accountability so as to avoid strengthening "the legitimacy of the police and of imposed decision"? And if they don't, are they 'reformists'? Many folks who experience daily police occupation understand that ending the "imposed decision" (often epitomized by police) will require radical change, and they work toward it. At the same time, they demand authentic public oversight of police forces. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. I'll even suggest that they can be complementary, especially if we acknowledge the legacies of white supremacy and class stratification embedded in policing. Ultimately, we need a lucid conception of social change that articulates this kind of complementarity. That is, we need revolutionary strategy that links diverse, everyday struggles and demands to long-term radical objectives, without sacrificing either. Of course, this isn't to say that every so-called 'progressive' ballot initiative or organizing campaign is necessarily radical or strategic. Reforms are not all created equal. But some can fundamentally shake systems of power, leading to enlarged gains and greater space for further advances. Andre Gorz, in his seminal book Strategy for Labor, refers to these as "non-reformist" or "structural" reforms. He contends, "a struggle for non-reformist reforms--for anticapitalist reforms--is one which does not base its validity and its right to exist on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationales. A non-reformist reform is determined not in terms of what can be, but what should be." Look to history for examples: the end of slavery, the eight-hour workday, desegregation. All were born from long, hard struggles, and none were endpoints. Yet they all struck at the foundations of power (in these cases, the state, white supremacy, and capitalism), and in the process, they created new prospects for revolutionary change. Now consider contemporary struggles: amnesty for undocumented immigrants, socialized health care, expansive environmental protections, indigenous sovereignty. These and many more are arguably non-reformist reforms as well. None will singlehandedly dismantle capitalism or other systems of power, but each has the potential to escalate struggles and sharpen social contradictions. And we shouldn't misinterpret these efforts as simply meliorative incrementalism, making 'adjustments' to a fundamentally flawed system.

PERMUTATION SOLVES BEST ETHICAL PROJECTS ATTUNED TO DIFFERENCE AND LOCALITY RESOLVE LEFTIST FACTIONALIZATIONANDPRODUCEAREPRESENTATIONMORECONDUCIVETOSTRUCTURALTRANSITION
J.K.GibsonGraham,feministeconomist,1996,EndofCapitalism(asweknewit)
Part of what produces the disarray of the left is the vision of what the left is arrayed against. When capitalism is represented as a unified system coextensive with the nation or even the world, when it is portrayed as crowding out all other economic forms, when it is allowed to define entire societies, it becomes something that can only be defeated and replaced by a mass collective movement (or by a process of systemic dissolution that such a movement might assist). The revolutionary task of replacing capitalism now seems outmoded and unrealistic, yet we do not seem to have an alternative conception of class transformation to take its place. The old political economic "systems" and "structures" that call forth a vision of revolution as systemic replacement still seem to be dominant in the Marxist political imagination. The New World Order is often represented as political fragmentation founded upon economic unification. In this vision the economy appears as the last stronghold of unity and singularity in a world of diversity and plurality. But why can't the economy be fragmented too? If we theorized it as fragmented in the United States, we could begin to see a huge state sector (incorporating a variety of forms of appropriation of surplus labor), a very large sector of self-employed and family-based producers (most noncapitalist), a huge household sector (again, quite various in terms of forms
of exploitation, with some households moving towards communal or collective appropriation and others operating in a traditional mode in which one adult appropriates surplus labor from another). None of these things is easy to see or to theorize as consequential in so-called capitalist social formations. If capitalism takes up the available social space, there's no room for anything else. If capitalism cannot

coexist, there's no possibility of anything else. If capitalism is large, other things appear small and inconsequential. If capitalism functions as a unity, it cannot be partially or locally replaced. My intent is to help create the discursive conditions under which socialist or other noncapitalist construction becomes a "realistic" present activity rather than a ludicrous or Utopian future goal. To achieve this I must smash Capitalism and see it in a thousand pieces. I must make its unity a fantasy, visible as a denial of
diversity and change.

AFF:PERM
PERM SOLVES REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE NEEDS SUPPORT FROM A WIDE RANGE OF MOVEMENTS, THAT BEGINS WITH LOCALIZED CHANGE. CARROLL, FOUNDING DIRECTOR OF THE SOCIAL JUSTICE STUDIES PROGRAM AT THE UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA, 2010 (WILLIAM, CRISIS, MOVEMENTS, COUNTER-HEGEMONY: IN SEARCH OF THE NEW, INTERFACE 2:2, 168-198, DS)
Just as hegemony has been increasingly organized on a transnational basis through the globalization of Americanism, the construction of global governance institutions, the emergence of a transnational capitalist class and so on (Soederberg 2006; Carroll 2010) counter-hegemony has also taken on transnational features that go beyond the classic organization of left parties into internationals. What Sousa Santos (2006) terms the rise of a global left is evident in specific movement based campaigns, such as the successful international effort in 1998 to defeat the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI); in initiatives such as the World Social Forum, to contest the terrain of global civil society; and in the growth of transnational movement organizations and of a democratic globalization network, counterpoised to neoliberalisms transnational historical bloc, that address issues of North-South solidarity and coordination (Smith 2008:24). As I have suggested elsewhere (Carroll 2007), an incipient war of position is at work here a bloc of oppositional forces to neoliberal globalization encompassing a wide range of movements and identities and that is global in nature, transcending traditional national boundaries (Butko 2006: 101). These moments of resistance and transborder activism do not yet combine to form a coherent historical bloc around a counter-hegemonic project. Rather, as Marie-Jose Massicotte suggests, we are
witnessing the emergence and re-making of political imaginaries, which often lead to valuable localized actions as well as greater transborder solidarity (2009: 424). Indeed, Gramscis adage that while the line of development is international, the origin point is national, still has currency. Much of the

energy of anti-capitalist politics is centred within what Raymond Williams (1989) called militant particularisms localized struggles that, left to themselves are easily dominated by the power of capital to coordinate accumulation across universal but fragmented space (Harvey 1996: 32). Catharsis, in this context, takes on a spatial character. The scaling up of militant particularisms requires alliances across interrelated scales to unite a diverse range of social groupings and thereby spatialize a Gramscian war of position to the global scale (Karriem 2009: 324). Such alliances, however, must be grounded in local conditions and aspirations. Eli Friedmans (2009) case study of two affiliated movement organizations in Hong Kong and mainland China, respectively, illustrates the
limits of transnational activism that radiates from advanced capitalism to exert external pressure on behalf of subalterns in the global South. Friedman recounts how a campaign by the Hong Kong-based group of Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior to empower Chinese mainland workers producing goods for Hong Kong Disneyland failed due to the lack of local mobilization by workers themselves. Yet the same group, through its support for its ally, the mainland-based migrant workers association, has helped facilitate self-organization on the shop floor. In the former case, well-intentioned practices of solidarity reproduced a paternalism that failed to inspire local collective action; in the latter, workers taking direct action on their own behalf, with external support, led to psychological empowerment and movement mobilization (Friedman 2009: 212). As a rule, the more such solidarity

work involves grassroots initiatives and participation, the greater is the likelihood that workers from different countries will learn from each other, enabling transnational counter-hegemony to gain a foothold (Rahmon and Langford 2010: 63).

AFF:OVERVIEWEFFECT
CELESTIALWITNESSINGJOLTSIDEOLOGICALCONTROLITOPENSUPAGAPWITHRADICAL POTENTIALFORTRANSFORMATION
ParkerandBell,Prof@UofLeicesterSchoolofManagementandProf@UofLeeds,5/15/09 (MartinandDavid,Introduction:makingspace.TheSociologicalReview,57:15.)
One way of beginning to explain what is going on here is simply to note that political

and aesthetic judgements do not necessarily coincide. A person can be awestruck by something which is clearly dangerous and threatening. This is, of course, the central insight of hundreds of years of writing on the sublime, recently translated into questions of technology (including Apollo) by David Nye (1994). More recently still, the sublime has become rather politicized, with a variety of authors claiming that it represents a sort of gap in understanding that can open to radical change (Shaw, 2006). In other words, whether witnessing the towering mountain peak, or the Saturn V on a pillar of fire, the contingency of the everyday is exposed and (for a while) the world doesnt look quite the same. This is the sort of opening that many commentators have also found in science fiction, as a sort of longing for the world to be otherwise than it is (Jameson, 2005). So any form of alterity, whether expressed in terms of great distances in time and space, or objects of great power and size, might do enough to displace the observer from common sense, and allow them to see the world differently

AFF:ANTIINTELLECTUALISM
THE UNITED STATES BEARS THE REPSONSIBILITY TO REIGNITE INTEREST IN SPACE EXPLORATION THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO AVOID EXTINCTION AND CHALLENGE THE FORCESOFANTIINTELLECTUALISMTHATKEEPUSTERRESTRIALBOUND PASS, PHD IN SOCIOLOGY AND IS FOUNDER OF WEBSITE ASTROSOCIOLOGY , 06 (JIM, THE CULTURAL IMPERATIVE TO COLONIZE SPACE: AN ASTROSOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE, AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICSANDASTRONAUTICS34)
Still,

industrially developed societies are the most space-capable and, therefore, bear the most responsibility for being the most situationally aware about Planet Earth. Without our expansion of our instruments and people into space, humanity could conceivably perish. Scientists who advocate the hardest for outer space production, like the late Carl Sagan, liked to exemplify this possibility with an
asteroid or cometary collision with the Earth. And, certainly, that possibility is obvious from the scars and effects of previous impacts on the Earth. Less cataclysmic, but potentially as deadly all the same, will be the more severe or unexpected effects of global warming and other serious environmental factors, and the decline of science, technology, and the arts. Epochal climatic and geographic change owing to global warming and effects of supervolcanoes, tsunamis, and pandemics in an increasingly more populous world require a larger number of minds working on offsets of these problems. Yet, here in the United States, one of just a few space-capable societies in the world system, the nation that took humans to

the Moon, we see shortsightedness, failures of imagination, and an increasing inability to think outside of the box. Much of this revolves around the resistance to and obstacles to American knowledge production.
An anti-intellectual strain has always run in an undercurrent in American society. The rugged individualist frontiersman with little book-learning, himself a type of noble savage, has been exalted in the American psyche since the entre into the New World by European settlers. Anti-intellectualism is

alive and well today and currently expressed in the paucity of funding to American schools and postsecondary institutions and in policies that have bottom line agendas

AFF:GLOBALVILLAGE
THENEGATIVEISTOOPESSIMISTICINTHEIRASSESSMENTOFTHEAFFIRMATIVEEVENIF ELEMENTSOFCAPTIALAREINVOLVEDINSPACEEXPLORATION,SPACECREATESA FRAMEWORKFORGLOBALCOOPERATIONANDCOMMITMENT,LONGTERMDEVELOPMENT ANDISCRITICALTOHUMANSURVIVAL Flores and Gangale. PacificSociologicalAssociationConference.September2007(TheGlobalizationofSpaceThe
AstrosociologicalApproach.DA:July24,2011.CH)

With communication that permeates national boundaries, there is an awareness among people throughout the world of each other.s living conditions. While globe-trotting journalists and early radio and television did plenty toward this end, satellite broadcasting and the
Internet have brought a hard reality, a sense of urgency, and a next-door-neighborliness that Marshall McLuhan called in the sixties .the global village.. The global village has never been so real as it is now. The atrocities of those nationalities that battled in the Balkans were like atrocities against your own neighbors. This breeds a concern for equal rights that doesnt require the nicety of abstract thought to comprehend. It comes from a concrete level of seeing something as it happens with one.s own eyes. And, from this, we learn to care not only for those getting hurt

and disrespected in distant places, but for all individuals in all places in all aspects of their lives, their pains and their joys. Global recognition was once reserved for nation-states and rare others. It is now being extended to the individual. This process
gets at the taproot of innovation. While modern communication and transportation have made available the teachings and technologies of the world.s cultures to nearly everyone, it also makes available the wacko ideas of Rudy the Skinhead and Leroy Bandanna, as well as Joe Six-Pack making a better mousetrap in his basement. Of course, some shoppers in the great Mall of Ideas will not be able to discern the bad merchandise from the good and roll their carts down the aisles of intellectual and evolutionary dead-ends. But, most folks will not be suckered. They will know the difference between the teachings of Martin Luther and the writings of the Unabomber; the teachings of the Buddha and the ravings of teenage boys in trench coats with guns in their book bags. They will shop and compare, and most importantly, compare notes. It is a mathematical inevitability thatever develop nanotechnology. That.s because this technology will require a vast quantity of data to be processed and a great deal of memory storage. What about economic growth and the global economy as we know it in the present? This is usually the phenomenon that most people associate with globalization. It emerges from of all these categories of interactive phenomena. Only an interdependent global economy could provide the capital mass or the financial avenues to bankroll the application of breakthrough ideas, truly effective global organizations, the enhancement of each individual, to assess the environmental degradation and climatic shift of a whole planet and repair it, and to extend the human ecology to other venues. deeper global understanding in all its many facets . and those yet to be discovered . will emerge. The quest for breakthrough ideas is in no danger of being called off. The quest for breakthrough ideas. The infrastructure that has spread from the satellite and the computer is the Gutenberg Press of our time. And, it was all made possible by the human exploration of space. One such truly breakthrough idea is molecular nanotechnology that could, virtually overnight, change technology as we know it. Nanotechnology techniques can construct materials and alter the structure of matter at a molecular level. Nanotechnology is the logical extension of the miniaturization effort that began in the early days of space exploration. While we are nowhere near that overnight transition, we are certainly able to conceptualize about nanotechnology and its applications now. Without computer technology inspired by space exploration, we could not ever develop nanotechnology. That.s because this technology will require a vast quantity of data to be processed and a great deal of memory storage. What about economic growth and the global economy as we know it in the present? This is usually the phenomenon that most people associate with globalization. It emerges from of all these categories of interactive phenomena. Only an interdependent global economy could provide the capital mass or the financial avenues to bankroll the application of breakthrough ideas, truly effective global organizations, the enhancement of each individual, to assess the environmental degradation and climatic shift of a whole planet and repair it, and to extend the human ecology to other venues. Space exploration does not stand apart from the globalization process. It is part and parcel of the thing it has magnified. The globalization process, therefore, requires us to re-think the exploration of space. Societies leapfrogging to advanced industrial status like China and India are getting in on outer space production. And, because they have many blueprints to follow from those societies that have gone before, they can be expected to make a sharp gradient of progress once they get going. Will they cooperate with each other and with a variety of others or compete one-against-all? One thing is certain: the two traditional competitors of the Cold War and the Space Race are doing a lot more cooperation these days, as are their many allies. There is an historic trail to their collaborations, stepping to increasingly longer duration space missions. Anymore, long-duration space operations are necessary to almost anything of value done in space, regardless of it being a robotic or manned mission. Mastering long-duration space exploration is a prerequisite to human permanency in space, which is nothing short of the expansion of the human ecology off the Earth. Yet, on the verge of longer-duration missions, as in a manned mission to Mars by the United States, conceptualized for the 1980s, events of American history intervened . namely in the form of the decisions of the Nixon administration. In the meantime, the potential for global manmade destruction in the form of nuclear madness has been replaced with the decline side of oil, global warming, and large-scale natural disasters in ever-increasing populated areas. Nukes are no longer the concern

they once were, but Nature and how humans stand in relation to her sure are. Once again, humanity wonders if it will survive

AFF:METAPHORICCONDENSATION
DONTREADTHEAFFIRMATIVEASASIMPLEANDPRAGMATICINTERVENTIONINTOEXISTINGPOLITICS,ITIS ALSOARADICALGESTURETOWARDREDEFININGTHEEXISTINGSOCIOPOLITICALCOORDINATES. Zizek,Prof.ofSoc.@Ljubljana,2004.(Slavoj,FromPoliticstoBiopoliticsandBack,TheSouth AtlanticQuarterly,103:2/3Spring/Summer)
Second, there are (also) political acts: politics

cannot be reduced to the level of strategic-pragmatic interventions. In a radical political act, the opposition between a crazy destructive gesture and a strategic political decision momentarily breaks downwhich is why it is theoretically and politically wrong to oppose strategic political acts, as risky as they can be, to radical suicidal gestures la Antigone, gestures of pure self-destructive ethical insistence with, apparently, no political goal. The point is not simply that, once we are thoroughly engaged in a political project, we are ready to put everything at stake for it, inclusive of our lives, but, more precisely, that only such an impossible gesture of pure expenditure can change the very coordinates of what is strategically possible within a historical constellation.This is the key point: an act is neither a strategic intervention into the existing order, nor its crazy destructive negation; an act is an excessive, transstrategic, intervention that redefines the rules and contours of the existing order

AFF:SUBRTRACTION
THE PLAN IS A NECESSARY SUBTRACTION FROM THE STATE. SUPPLEMENTING STATE MILITARISM AND TOTAL UTOPIAN WITHDRAW FROM THE STATE ARE BOTH APOLITICAL ONLY FORCING THE STATE TO ACT IN NON STATALWAYSCANRUPTURETHEVIOLENCEOFTOTALITARIANSTATESTRUCTURES ZIZEK2009[SLAVOJFIRSTASTRAGEDY,THENASFARCEPAGE128131
The true question here is: how

is externality with regard to the state to be operationalized? Since the Cultural Revolution signals the failure of the attempt to destroy the state from within, to abolish the state, is the alternative then simply to accept the state as a fact, as the apparatus which takes care of "servicing the goods:' and to operate at a distance towards it (bombarding it with prescriptive proclamations and demands)? Or is it, more radically, that we should aim at a subtraction from the hegemonic field which, Simultaneously, violently intervenes into this field, reducing it to its occluded minimal difference? Such a subtraction is
extremely violent, even more violent than destruction/purification: it is reduction to the minimal difference of part(s)/ no-part, 1 and 0, groups and the proletariat. It is not only a subtraction of the subject from the hegemonic field, but a subtraction which violently affects this

field itself, laying bare its true coordinates. Such a subtraction does not add a third position to the two positions whose tension characterizes the hegemonic field (so that we now have, along with liberalism and fundamentalism, a radical Leftist emancipatory politics). The third term rather "denaturalizes" the whole hegemonic field, bringing out the underlying complicity of the opposed poles that constitute it. Therein resides the dilemma of subtraction: is it a subtraction withdrawal which leaves the field from which it
withdraws intact (or which even functions as its inherent supplement, like the "subtraction" or withdrawal from social reality into one's true Self proposed by New Age meditation); or does it violently perturb the field from which it withdraws? "Subtraction" is thus what Kant called an amphibious concept. Paraphrasing Lenin, one can say that everything, up to and including the fate of radical emancipatory movements today, hinges on how we read this concept, on what word which will be attached to it or dissociated from it. Badiou's "subtraction:' like Hegel's Aufhebung, contains three different layers of meaning: (1) to withdraw, disconnect; (2) to reduce the complexity of a situation to its minimal difference; (3) to destroy the existing order. As in Hegel, the solution is not to diferentiate the three meanings (eventually proposing a specific term for each of them), but to grasp subtraction as the unity of its three dimensions: one should withdraw from being immersed in a situation in such a way that the withdrawal renders visible the "minimal difference" sustaining the situation's multiplicity, and thereby causes its disintegration, just as the withdrawal of a single card from a house of cards causes the collapse of the entire edifice. Of course, egalitarian-emancipatory "de-territorialization" is not the same as the postmodern-capitalist form, but it nonetheless radically changes the terms of the emancipatory struggle. In particular, the enemy is no longer the established hierarchical order of a state. How, then, are we to revolutionize an order whose very principle is constant self-revolutionizing? More than a solution to the problems we are facing today, communism is itself the name of a problem: a name for the difficult task of breaking out of the confines of the marketand-state framework, a task for which no quick formula is at hand. "It's just the simple thing that's hard, so hard to do:' as Brecht put it in his "In Praise of Communism:' The Hegelian answer is that the problem or deadlock is its own solution-but not in the simple or direct sense that capitalism is already in itself communism, and that only a purely formal reversal is needed. My suggestion is rather this: what if to day's global capitalism, precisely insofar as it is "world-less:' involving a constant disruption of all fixed order, opens up the space for a revolution which will break the vicious cycle of revolt and its reinscription, which will, in other words, no longer follow the pattern of an evental explosion followed by a return to normality, but will instead assume the task of a new "ordering" against the global capitalist disorder? Out of revolt we should shamelessly pass to enforcing a new order. (Is this not one of the lessons of the ongoing financial meltdown?) This is why the focus on capitalism is crucial if we want to reactualize the communist Idea: contemporary "world-less" capitalism radically changes the very coordinates of the communist struggle-the enemy is no longer the state to be undermined from its point of symptomal torsion, but a flux of permanent self-revolutionizing. Consequently, I want to propose two axioms concerning the relationship between the state and politics: (1) The failure of communist state-party

politics is above all and primarily the failure of anti-statal politics, of the endeavor to break out of the constraints of the state, to replace statal forms of organization with "direct" non-representative forms of self-organization ("councils"). (2) If you have no clear idea of what you want to replace the state with, you have no right to subtract/ withdraw from the state. Instead of taking a distance from the state, the true task should be to make the state itself work in a non-statal mode. The alternative "either struggle for state power (which makes us the same as the enemy we are fighting) or resist by withdrawing to a position of distance from the state" is false-both its terms share the same premise, that the state-form, in the way we know it today, is here to stay, so that all we can do is either take over the state or take a distance towards it. Here, one should shamelessly repeat the lesson of Lenin's State and Revolution: the goal of revolutionary violence is not to take over state power, but to transform it, radically changing its functioning, its relationship to its base, and so on.lS Therein resides the key component of the "dictatorship of the proletariat:' The only appropriate conclusion to be drawn from this insight is that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is a kind of (necessary) oxymoron, not a state-form in which proletariat is now the ruling class. We are dealing with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" only when the state itself is radically transformed, relying on new forms of popular participation. This is why there
was more than mere hypocrisy in the fact that, at the highest point of Stalinism, when the entire social edifice had been shattered by the purges, the new constitution proclaimed the end of the "class" character of Soviet power (voting rights were restored to members of classes previously excluded), and the socialist regimes were called "people's democracies" -a sure indication indeed that they were not "dictatorships of the proletariat:' But, again, how are we to achieve such a "dictatorship"?

AFF:SUBTRACTION
TOTAL REFUSAL OF STATE POLITICS DOES NOTHING TO CHALLENGE DOMINATION ONLY PICKING THE THIRD OPTIONOFDECREASETHESTATESABILITYTODOVIOLENCECANRESTRICTTHESTATE

KaneUniversityofDundee,UK2009ReidInternationalJournalofZizekStudies3.4 zizekstudies.org
Zizek warns that the logic of Badiou's position demands radical politics should seek neither to destroy the state, nor to seize control of it, but only to supplement the order imposed by the State by ordering localities that fall in the latter's blind spots, hence being particularly vulnerable to the corrosive forces of capital. (ibid: 402-3) Against this resignation, Zizek conceives of an ordering which would not shy away from State power: if the state is here to stay, if it is impossible to abolish the state (and capitalism), why act with a distance towards state? Why not

act with(in) the state? ... [I]f the space of emancipatory politics is defined by a distance towards the state, are we not abandoning the field (of the state) all too easily to the enemy? Is it not crucial what form state power takes? (ibid: 402) Zizek rejects the alternative of withdrawal from or seizure of State power, which determines the nature of Badiou's proposed 'ordering', once again opting for the excluded third option: Instead of taking a distance from the state, the true task should be to make the state itself work in a non-statal mode. The alternative "either struggle for state power (which makes us the same as the enemy we are fighting) or resist by withdrawing to a position of distance from the state" is false both its terms share the same premise, that the state-form, in the way we know it today, is here
to stay, so that all we can do is either take over the state or take a distance towards it. Here, one should shamelessly repeat the lesson of Lenin's State and Revolution: the goal of revolutionary violence is not to take over state power, but to transform it, radically changing its functioning, its relationship to its base... (Zizek 2009: 130-1)

The way out of the deadlock with which we began is not an abstract negation of capitalist disorder through a return to traditional order, either in the active form of championing the state, or in the passive form of withdrawing into its interstices. Rather, the negation of traditional order by capitalist disorder must itself be negated, resulting in a determinate negation distinct from the original starting point: we must impose a new order intent on its own transformation, employing disorder rather than excluding it, so as to combat a disorder intent on its own permanence, which instrumentalises order rather than abolishing it
THEALTCANNOTSOLVECAPITALISM

Zizek2007Slavoj,ResistanceisSurrender,LondonReviewofBooks,11/15 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html
The response of some critics on the postmodern Left to this predicament is to call for a new politics of resistance. Those who still insist on fighting state power, let alone seizing it, are accused of remaining stuck within the old paradigm: the task today, their critics say, is to resist state power by withdrawing from its terrain and creating new spaces outside its control. This is, of course, the obverse of accepting the triumph of capitalism. The politics of resistance is nothing but the moralising supplement to a Third Way Left.

AFF:POLITICSKEY
Thealternativeisaproperprincipledapproachtopoliticsbutmustgivewaytostrategicpolitical interventionsorriskholocausts. SlavojZizek,Elvisofculturaltheory.RepeatingLenin.http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm2001.
So how are we to respond to the eternal dilemma of the radical Left: should one strategical support center-Left figures like Bill Clinton against the conservatives, or should one adopt the stance of "it doesn't matter, we shouldn't get involved in these fights - in a way, it is even better if the Right is directly in power, since, in this way, it will be easier for the people to see the truth of the situation"? The answer is the variation of old Stalin's answer to the question "Which deviation is worse, the Rightist or the Leftist one?": THEY ARE BOTH WORSE. What one should do is to adopt the stance of the proper dialectical paradox: in principle, of course, one should be indifferent towards the struggle between the liberal and

conservative pole of today's official politics - however, one can only afford to be indifferent if the liberal option is in power. Otherwise, the price to be paid may appear much too high - recall the catastrophic consequences of the decision of the German Communist Party in the early 30s NOT to focus on the struggle against the Nazis, with the justification that the Nazi dictatorship is the last
desperate stage of the capitalist domination, which will open eyes to the working class, shattering their belief in the "bourgeois" democratic institutions. Along these lines, Claude Lefort himself, whom no one can accuse of communist sympathies, recently made a crucial point in his answer to Francois Furet: today's liberal consensus is the result of 150 years of the Leftist workers' struggle and pressure upon the State, it incorporated demands which were 100 or even less years ago dismissed by liberals as horror. As a proof, one should just look at the list of the demands at the end of the Communist Manifesto: apart from 2 or 3 of them (which, of course, are the key one), all others are today part of the consensus (at least the disintegrating Welfare State one): the universal vote, the right to free education, universal healthcare and care for the retired, limitation of child labor

AFF:STATEKEY
THEIR ANTISTATAL ETHICS GIVES POLITICS TO FUNDAMENTALISTS, RACISTS AND JERKS. PREFER THE 3RD OPTION DonahueEnglishDeptGonzaga2001BrianPostmodernCultureprojectmuse
This conception of Zizek as a political cipher is perhaps understandable on a first reading of a text like Looking Awry or even The Sublime Object of Ideology and on a hasty categorization of him as a "poststructuralist psychoanalytic theorist" (a categorization that would require considerable elaboration). But in light of careful analysis of a wide selection of his writings, it would be difficult to insist on Zizek's political inscrutability. On the contrary, his work

evinces a general ideological commitment to a radical democracy that is critical of both the globalizing capitalism of the present and the bureaucratic state socialism of the recent past. Thus, he advocates an (admittedly somewhat nebulous) "third way" for the future while acknowledging the need for nation-states in the present as a counter both to the increasing transnationalism of capital and to the dialectically codetermined phenomenon of increasing ethnic and religious "fundamentalist" violence and racism. While
Zizek does not frequently perform detailed analysis of specific policy issues, he does write consistently from within the broad ideological framework I have described above--contrary to the effort of Gigante to build an entire argument on the premise that Zizek's "subjective transparency is precisely his point" (154) and of Homer to chastise him for failing to draw connections between his critical writing and the political sphere. Indeed, the following passage provides a clear statement of his ideas about at least one major topic of recent political philosophy, the "civil society" of late capitalism:

People have this ethics of the bad state and good civic, independent structures. But sorry, in Slovenia I am for the state and against civil society! In Slovenia, civil society is equal to the right-wingers. In America, after the Oklahoma bombing, they suddenly discovered that there are hundreds of thousands of jerks. Civil society is not this nice social movement but a network of moral majority conservatives and nationalist pressure groups, against abortion, for religious education in schools: a real pressure from below. ("Japan," par. 24)

AFF:A2STRUCTURALLINK
DONT THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER EXPLOITATION IS THE DECISION OFAFEWGREEDYBUSINESSPEOPLE.ITISNOTSTRUCTURALLYBUILTINTOTHESYSTEM CLARENCE WILLIAMS, MBAIN ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIORANDPOLITICALAUTHOR, APRIL 20, 2007, THE ESSENCEOFCAPITALISM
Having welcomed labor to the compact, capitalism nonetheless meets its greatest challenge at the juncture of labor, economy and social order. The mother society ensures the welfare of all its members (or is not stable enough to support capitalism), and the capitalist compact follows suit. There is little doubt that labor is the most vulnerable member in the dynamic environment suitable to capitalism. After all, they have essentially traded the opportunity to be risky entrepreneurs for the safety of a steady income, and everyone benefits because capitalism fails without risk-averse labor. Thus, safety nets, retraining programs and other aspects of social welfare are required to assuage the personal disruptions inevitable under a vibrant economy, and are an integral part of the capitalist compact effectuated and enforced by its members. The capitalist entrepreneur who derives profits solely by exploiting other members (like labor) is not meeting the standards of the capitalist compact, and other members are free to enforce a penalty. This also requires a free labor market, so individuals can effectively wield their power. Free, competitive markets (including the labor market) are integral to capitalism, and their necessary nature represents the third great misunderstanding of capitalism: They are unfair. To the contrary, monopolies, deceptions (e.g., product or service misrepresentations) and other acts serving to give any member unfair advantages are, by definition, violations of the capitalist compact. A free society may choose to permit spurious business practices (like egregiously false advertising so pervasive in America), to abet rapacious, unprincipled activity, but they do not represent capitalism. Creating an innovative profit strategy resulting in greater wealth for an enterprises owners and workers is not unfair, but if, for instance, job opportunities are too scarce (for any reason), the market is not free. The capitalist compact ensures an appropriate adjustment, and, if prolonged injustice is suffered by the compacts most numerous members, forces already present in the mother society will take action, namely government

AFF:ALT>VIOLENCE
THEIRALTERNATIVEISBASEDONANIDEAOFLINEARTIMEUNFOLDINGINAREVOLUTIONTHATRECONCILES PASTGRIEVANCES.THISIDEADEHUMANIZINGPEOPLE,TREATINGTHEMASAMEANSTOANDENDANDISWHY REVOLUTIONSBECOMEVIOLENT.PREFERTHEAFFWHICHSEEKSTOREARRANGESOCIALSTRUCTURESINSUCHA WAYASMAKEREVOLUTIONIMMANENT. Holloway,2000(John Holloway, professor at the Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Puebla,
Zapatismo and the Social Sciences. This is the text of a talk presented to the congress of SCOLAS (Southwest Council of Latin American Studies) in Puebla in March 2000. To think in the non-existing school of zapatismo is exciting but frightening. Gone are the certainties of the old revolutionaries. After

Auschwitz, after Hiroshima, there can no longer be a concept of historical certainty. When humanity possesses the capacity to annihilate itself tomorrow, there can be no guarantee of a happy ending. As Adorno correctly stressed, we must reject the notion of a dialectic which reconciles everything in the end, we must think rather of the dialectic as a negative dialectic, a movement through negation with no guarantees, a negative movement of possibility. It seems clear too that the concept of revolution can no longer be instrumental. Our traditional concept of revolution is as a means to achieve an end, and we know that in practice this has meant using people as a means to an end. If dignity is taken as a central principle, then people cannot be treated as means: the creation of a society based on dignity can only take place through the development of social practices based on the mutual recognition of that dignity. We walk, not in order to arrive at a promised land, but because the walking itself is the revolution. And if instrumentalism falls as a way of thinking, so too does the lineal time that is implicit in the traditional concept of revolution, the clear distinction between before and after. There is no question of first revolution, then dignity: dignity itself is the revolution.

AFF:ALT>VIOLENCE
THEIR ALTERNATIVE FAILSMARXIST REGIMES HAVE CAUSED MORE VIOLENCE THAN ANY OTHER EVENT IN HUMANHISTORY. RUMMEL, PROF. EMERITUS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII, 2004 (RUDOLPH, THE KILLING MACHINE THAT IS MARXISM, ONLINE, HTTP://WWW.FREEREPUBLIC.COM/FOCUS/F NEWS/1588725/POSTS,DS)
Of all religions, secular and otherwise, that of Marxism has been by far the bloodiest bloodier than the Catholic Inquisition, the various Catholic crusades, and the Thirty Years War between Catholics and Protestants. In practice, Marxism has meant bloody terrorism, deadly purges, lethal prison camps and murderous forced labor, fatal deportations, man-made famines, extrajudicial executions and fraudulent show trials, outright mass murder and genocide. In total, Marxist regimes murdered nearly 110 million people from 1917 to 1987. For perspective on this incredible toll, note that all domestic and foreign wars during the 20th century killed around 35 million. That is, when Marxists control states, Marxism is more deadly then all the wars of the 20th century, including World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. And what did Marxism, this greatest of human social experiments, achieve for its poor citizens, at this most bloody cost in lives? Nothing positive. It left in its wake an economic, environmental, social and cultural disaster. The Khmer Rouge (Cambodian communists) who ruled Cambodia for four years provide insight into why Marxists believed it necessary and moral to massacre so many of their fellow humans. Their Marxism was married to absolute power. They believed without a shred of doubt that they knew the truth, that they would bring about the greatest human welfare and happiness, and that to realize this utopia, they had to mercilessly tear down the old feudal or capitalist order and Buddhist culture, and then totally rebuild a communist society. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of this achievement. Government the Communist Party was above any law. All other institutions, religions, cultural norms, traditions and sentiments were expendable. The Marxists saw the construction of this utopia as a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism and inequality and, as in a real war, noncombatants would unfortunately get caught in the battle. There would be necessary enemy casualties: the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, "wreckers," intellectuals, counterrevolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, the rich and landlords. As in a war, millions might die, but these deaths would be justified by the end, as in the defeat of Hitler in World War II. To the ruling Marxists, the goal of a communist utopia was enough to justify all the deaths. The irony is that in practice, even after decades of total control, Marxism did not improve the lot of the average person, but usually made living conditions worse than before the revolution. It is not by chance that the world's greatest famines have happened within the Soviet Union (about 5 million dead from 1921-23 and 7 million from 1932-3, including 2 million outside Ukraine) and communist China (about 30 million dead from 1959-61). Overall, in the last century almost 55 million people died in various Marxist famines and associated epidemics a little over 10 million of them were intentionally starved to death, and the rest died as an unintended result of Marxist collectivization and agricultural policies. What is astonishing is that this "currency" of death by Marxism is not thousands or even hundreds of thousands, but millions of deaths. This is almost incomprehensible it is as though the whole population of the American New England and Middle Atlantic States, or California and Texas, had been wiped out. And that around 35 million people escaped Marxist countries as refugees was an unequaled vote
against Marxist utopian pretensions. Its equivalent would be everyone fleeing California, emptying it of all human beings. There is a supremely important lesson for human life and welfare to be learned from this horrendous sacrifice to one ideology: No one can be trusted with unlimited power. The

more power a government has to impose the beliefs of an ideological or religious elite, or decree the whims of a dictator, the more likely human lives and welfare will be sacrificed. As a government's power is more unrestrained, as its power reaches into all corners of culture and society, the more likely it is to kill its own citizens

AFF:TRANSITIONWARS
____CRISISWITHINCAPITALISMDOESNTCAUSEITTOCOLLAPSE,JUSTCAUSESMAJORWAR AfricaNewsService, Dec 10, in2 INthelate19thCentury,thechiefauthoroftheCommunistManifesto,KarlMarx,arguedthatthe contradictionsofcapitalismwouldonedaydestroythecapitalistsystem.Hispredictionswere followedbytwoworldwarsinthefirsthalfofthe20thCentury.The19141918FirstWorldWar wasfollowedbyaMarxistLeninistrevolutioninRussiain1917andthe19391945SecondWorld WarwasfollowedbyaMaoistRevolutioninChinain1949.TheGreatDepressionintheWestin the1930sseemedtoindicatethatKarlMarxhadbeenright.Butthereissomethingparadoxical aboutaneconomicsystemwhichisbasedonthelawofthejungle,euphemisticallyreferredtoas "themarketforcesofsupplyanddemand".Itgoesthroughperiodicalcrises,inwhichitleaves behindalotofcasualties,butthebasicpillarsofthesystemalwaysremainintact.Becauseofthe attractionofhumangreed,thesystemisalsoalwaysabletospawnupdemagogicdiscipleswho reviveitsfortunesbytellingusthatanyeconomicsystemwhichdoesnottakeintoaccounthuman selfishnessandindividualflairandcreativityinitsobjectivesisboundtofail. AND,CAPITALISTELITESWILLRESIST,CAUSINGGLOBALWAR Harris, Atlanta Writer, in2
[Lee, Policy Review, December, p3(13) The intellectual origins of America-Bashing]

ThisistheimmiserizationthesisofMarx.AnditiscentraltorevolutionaryMarxism,sinceif capitalismproducesnowidespreadmisery,thenitalsoproducesnofatalinternalcontradiction:If everyoneisgettingbetteroffthroughcapitalism,whowilldreamofstrugglingtooverthrowit? Onlygenuinemiseryonthepartoftheworkerswouldbesufficienttooverturnthewhole apparatusofthecapitaliststate,simplybecause,asMarxinsisted,thecapitalistclasscouldnotbe realisticallyexpectedtorelinquishcontrolofthestateapparatusand,withit,themonopolyof force.Inthis,Marxwasabsolutelycorrect.Nocapitalistsocietyhaseverwillinglyliquidateditself, anditisutopiantothinkthatanyeverwill.Therefore,inordertoachievethegoalofsocialism, nothingshortofacompleterevolutionwoulddo;andthismeans,inpointoffact,afullfledged civilwarnotjustwithinonesociety,butacrosstheglobe. TRANSITIONWARSAWAYFROMCAPOMNICIDE Kothari, Prof. of Poli Sci @ U. of New Delhi, in82
[Towards a Just Social Order, P. 571]

Attemptsatglobaleconomicreformcouldalsoleadtoaworldrackedbyincreasingturbulence,a greatersenseofinsecurityamongthemajorcentersofpowerandhencetoafurthertightening ofthestructuresofdominationanddomesticrepressionproducingintheirwakean intensificationoftheoldarmsraceandmilitarizationofregimes,encouragingregional conflagrationsandsettingthestageforeventualglobalholocaust.

AFF:DEONTOLOGY
A
DEONTOLOGICAL MODEL OF ETHICS IS THE MOST MORALLY JUSTIFIABLE IN THE CONTEXT OF SPACE EXPLORATION.

MCARTHUR AND BROWN, *ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT YORK UNIVERSITY **ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AT YORK UNIVERSITY, 2004 (DAN, AND IDIL, AGENTCENTERED RESTRICTIONS AND THE ETHICS OF SPACE EXPLORATION, JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, VOL. 35 NO. 1, SPRING 2004, 148163,DS)
We have defended what we call an agent-centered restrictions approach to an ethics of space exploration. This approach is consistent with a general Kantian approach to ethics and as such adheres to the dictum that sometimes we have a duty to restrict our recourse to actions even if they might lead to the greatest benefits. And as our case study demonstrates, such an analysis puts strong limitations on actions currently under contemplation by space agencies. Specifically, our position demands a much more cautious approach to the use of nuclear materials on space probes than is currently the case. This perspective, we have shown, is superior to the sort of skeptical approach that asserts that we can never formulate any coherent approach to an ethics of space exploration. This is so because, as our arguments make clear, it is not necessary to share a physiological or physical makeup with our moral interlocutors in order to have duties toward them. This is the case here on Earth as well as in some other new environment. And this is made clear by our ethical obligations to the young and mentally infirm, who also fail to share our moral sentiments or psychological makeup. One quite plausible approach to an ethics of space exploration that we discuss proceeds by extending conceptions of
environmental ethics into the new environments we will encounter in the course of such exploration. While the approach we defend is certainly consistent with this, we point out that not all such proposals are equally plausible. Marshall, for instance, suggests extending to extraterrestrial environments an intrinsic-value approach to environmental ethics. However, it is clear that such an approach is unworkable both on Earth and in new environments, because not only is the notion of intrinsic value irretrievably problematic, but such views lack the resources to adjudicate among competing moral claims. The

agent-centered restrictions approach that we advocate can also respond to criticism of the sort proposed by opponents of a deontological approach to an ethics of space exploration, such as Scherer, because contrary to Scherers contention, it is not necessary to define a common teleological account of life in order to identify duties we might have to other life forms. Indeed, we have shown that a viable approach to an ethics of space exploration merely requires that we human beings, as rational and autonomous agents, be capable of recognizing our potential to do great harm and restrict our actions accordingly.

TOTALIZINGCAPBAD
THENEGATIVEDEPICTIONSOFCAPITALISMARETOTALIZING.THISDISCOURSEERASESTHECOMPLEXITYOFTHE ECONOMY ELIMINATING THE MULTIPLE IDENTITIES THAT ARE PRESENT IN TODAYS ECONOMY. VOTE AFFIRMATIVETOENDORSEANEWKINDOFLOCALETHICALSUBJECT. GIBSONGRAHAM, FEMINIST ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHERS, 2001 (JULIE GRAHAM AND KATHERINE GIBSON, AN ETHICSOFTHELOCALINRETHINKINGMARXISM,MAY2001)
I want to turn now to thinking about how we as local subjects might cultivate ourselves in accordance with the principles of a local ethics, and to describe as a vehicle for that cultivation process a multi-continental program of research that is attempting to create social and discursive spaces in which ethical practices of self-formation can occur. In introducing that research program, I invoke the term politicsbecause I see these practices of resubjectivation or making ourselves anew as ultimately (if not simply) political (Connolly 1999).7 The research projects I will describe are

focused on transforming ourselves as local economic subjects, who are acted upon and subsumed by the global economy, into subjects with economic capacities, who enact and create a diverse economy through daily practices both habitual (and thus unconscious) and consciously intentional. But these practices of self transformation rely on an initial and somewhat difficult move. If we are to cultivate a new range of capacities in the domain of economy, we need first to be able to see noncapitalist activities and subjects (including ones we admire) as visible and viable in the economic terrain. This involves supplanting representations of economic sameness and replication
with images of economic difference and diversification. Feminist economic theorists have bolstered our confidence that such a representation is both possible and productive. Based on a variety of empirical undertakings, they argue that the noncommodity sector (in which unpaid labor produces goods and services for nonmarket circulation) accounts for 30-50 percent of total output in both rich and poor 7 This research program has strong affinities with the work of Arturo Escobar (2001) and Arif Dirlik (2000b) on the politics of place. 11 countries (Ironmonger 1996). According to the familiar definition of capitalism as a type of commodity production, this means that a large portion of social wealth is noncapitalist in origin. And even the commodity sector is not necessarily capitalistcommodities are just goods and services produced for a market. Slaves in the antebellum U.S. south produced cotton and other commodities, and in the contemporary U.S. worker-owned collectives, self employed

people, and slaves in the prison industry all produce goods and services for the market, but not under capitalist relations of production.8 Arguably, then, less than half of the total product of the U.S. economy is produced under capitalism. From this perspective, referring to the U.S. or any economy as capitalist is a violent act of naming that erases from view the heterogeneous complexity of the economy. Working against this process of erasure, our research is trying to produce a discourse of economic
difference as a contribution to the ethical and political practice of cultivating a diverse economy. In projects underway in Australia, Asia, the Pacific, and the United States, we are attempting to generate and circulate an alternative language of economy, one in which capitalism is not the master signifier, the dominant or only identity in economic space. This eclectic language, emerging from conversations both academic and popular, provides the conceptual infrastructure for re-presenting economic subjects and multiplying economic identities (Gibson-Graham 2001). Two of our projects have moved beyond the planning and early implementation phase and are beginning to reveal their specificity as ethical practices and political experiments.9 One is based in the Latrobe Valley in southeastern Australia (Cameron and Gibson 2001). 8 There is a tendency to conflate all market-oriented (i.e.,

commodity) production with capitalism. We need to resist that tendency if we are to theorize economic difference in the market sphere, and to acknowledge the many types of economic organization that are compatible with commodity production. 12 The other is underway in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, the region that stretches north-south along the Connecticut River in the
northeastern U.S. (Community Economies Collective 2001). While the Latrobe Valley is a single industry region (based on mining and power generation) with a recent history of downsizing and privatization, the Pioneer Valley mixes agriculture, higher education, and recognized economic alternatives, supplementing this unusual mixture with a small manufacturing sector that is suffering the lingering effects of deindustrialization. In both of these regions globalization sets the economic agendawe are all being asked to become better subjects of capitalist development (though the path to such a becoming does not readily present itself) and to subsume ourselves more thoroughly to the global economy. The two research projects provide a social context for Foucaults second moment of moralitycultivating the ethical subjectwhich involves working on our local/regional selves to become something other than what the global economy wants us to be. But what actual processes or techniques of self (and other) invention do we have at our disposal? Foucault is not forthcoming here, at the microlevel of actual practices. And when we embarked on these projects we did not imagine how difficult the process of resubjectivation would be. In both the U.S. and Australia, for example, we have come up against the patent lack of desire for economic difference in the regions where we are working. We have encountered instead the fixation of desires upon capitalismindividuals want employment as wage workers, policymakers want conventional economic development. It was only after months of resistance, setbacks, and surprising successes that we could see the deeply etched contours of existing subjectivities and the complexity of the task of re-subjecting we were 9 Here it has become necessary to shift to the first person plural since the projects we are discussing are collective efforts involving large numbers of people (see acknowledgments below). Invaluable in helping us to conceptualize and negotiate this complexity was the work of William Connolly. Whereas we had stumbled through the process of cultivating alternative economic subjects, Connollys work on self-artistry and micropolitics allowed us retrospectively to see steps and stages, techniques and strategies. Connolly is concerned with the subject as a being that is already shaped and as one that is always (and sometimes deliberately) becoming. In his view active selftransformation working on oneself in the way that Foucault has describedfunctions as a micropolitical process that makes macropolitical settlements possible. If we are to succeed in promoting a diverse economy and producing new subjects and practices of economic development, there must be selves who are receptive to such an economy and to transforming themselves within it. How do we nurture the micropolitical receptivity of subjects to new becomings, both of themselves and of their economies? Micropolitics can be understood as an assemblage of techniques and disciplines that impinge on the lower registers of sensibility and judgment without necessarily or immediately engaging the conscious intellect (Connolly 2001, 33). One object of such a politics is what Connolly calls the visceral domain where thought-imbued intensities below the reach of feeling (1999, 148) dispose the individual in particular ways, with a seldom acknowledged impact on macropolitical interactions. In a discussion of the public sphere, where he argues that the visceral register cannot be excluded from public discourse and the process of coming to public

consensus, Connolly (1999, 35-36) puts forward a set of norms for discourse across differences. Instead

of attempting to tame or exclude the body, reducing public discourse to rational argument, he advocates developing an appreciation of positive possibilities in the visceral register of thinking and discourse as a way of 14 beginning to creatively produce and respond to the emergence of new identities. This appreciation of positive possibilities in the body, he suggests, might be supplemented by an ethic of cultivation that works against
the bodily feelings of panic experienced when naturalized identities are called into question. And rather than expecting people to transcend their differences in order to be or behave like a community, he suggests the possibility of a generous ethos of engagement between constituencies in which

differences are honored and bonds are forged around and upon them. All these attitudes and practices could make possible ethically sensitive, negotiated settlements between potentially antagonistic groups and individuals in the construction of communities. We are drawn to Connollys italicized arsenal of stances and strategies because they take into account the stubborn, unspoken bodily
resistances that stand in the way of individual becoming and social possibility; and at the same time they acknowledge the visceral register of discourse as a positive resource for social creativity. For us, retrospectively, they offer a cultivators manual for the ethical practice of cultivating different local economic subjectssubjects of capacity rather than debility, subjects whose range of economic identifications exceeds the capitalist order. Though Connolly did not intend them this way, for us they have become a way of organizing our narrative of local resubjectivation in the Latrobe and Pioneer Valleys

REJECTIONBAD
TOTAL REJECTION OF CAPITALISM FAILS.. WHAT IS NEEDED IS AN ACCEPTANCE OF DIFFERENT ENGAGEMENT WITHALLPEOPLEANDALLSYSTEMSTHATRESPECTTHESHORTCOMINGSANDNECESSITYFORALLECONOMIES. ONLYBYENGAGINGINTHISTYPEOFETHICSCANANYTRUESOCIALANDECONOMICCHANGEBEBROUGHTABOUT GIBSONGRAHAM, FEMINIST ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHERS, 2001 (JULIE GRAHAM AND KATHERINE GIBSON, AN ETHICSOFTHELOCALINRETHINKINGMARXISM,MAY2001)
An ethos of engagement is an aspect of a politics of becoming, where subjects are made anew through engaging with others.
This transformative process involves cultivating generosity in the place of hostility and suspicion. But such affective predispositions are not displaced easily, which means that the process involves waiting as well as cultivating. One of the Pioneer Valley researchers reflected on the patience that must accompany actively fostering a different economy, and she came back to the relation of language and affect that we began with earlier. Not only does one need a language of the diverse economy but one also needs trust among the potential subjects who may inhabit that economy and take on the task of building it together. And trust can only be engendered through multiple opportunities for engagement (the terms she uses are conversations and relationships): I think it comes back to the point that Sr. Annette [of the Pioneer Valley Project, a coalition of labor and churches] made, which is the knitting together is not just a language. Its creating contexts for that language to circulateand so its relationships and being patient enough to have conversations and talk to peopleand even if only five people come out, you value their time and make something out of itand thats where the knitting happens. Yknow, how difficult it is to create a context of trust where things can actually be builtand youve just got to be patientand its just a lot of talkand the people that are doers, that are too impatient, you just hold a place at the table for them. Cultivating local capacity, respecting difference and otherness, recognizing particularity and contingency. These three principles are tangled together now, after all we have been through, and difficult to distinguish. We have affirmed them in relation to the discourse of globalization, with its emphatic insistence that the world we share is a (capitalist market) economy. This unrelenting emphasis presses upon us, and the counterpressure we are impelled to exert traces the principled

contours of a local ethics: working to undermine universals in the guise of economic commonalities; refusing unity brought about by economic inevitability; refiguring victim-ized subjects whose economic futures are bound into and bounded by capitalist development. Starting with a practice of respecting difference and otherness, our two projects storied and inventoried the diversity of the local noncapitalist economy. Coming to a new language and vision of economy turned out to be an affirmation
not only of difference but of economic capacity. The people engaged in our research conversations had a chance to encounter themselves differentlynot as waiting for capitalism to give them their places in the economy but as actively constructing their economic lives, on a daily basis, in a range of noncapitalist practices and institutions. In this way they glimpsed themselves as subjects rather than objects of economic development, and development became transformed as a goal by giving it a different starting place, in an already viable diverse economy. But there was more to the ethics of difference and otherness than enlivening economic diversity. Converting this principle into a practice of the self has involved us in nurturing local capacities for community. We are not speaking here of the community of commonality that presumes subjects can understand one another as they understand themselves (Young 1990, 302). Rather than convening people on the basis of presumed or constructed similarities, our

projects seemed to foster communities of compearance20 in which being together, or being-in-common, was both the ground and fullness of community. The awakening of a communal subjectivity did not emerge from common histories or qualities but from
practices and feelingsof appreciation, generosity, desire to do and be with others, connecting with strangers (no matter who), encountering and transforming oneself through that experience: To be completely sincerethe greatest pride that I have working as a community leader is my being able to share and develop myself within the community. To meet the person I don't know. And for the people who never met me, didn't have the chance to meet me, that they meet me. (Jaime, Pioneer Valley)21 Linda Singer suggests that we understand community as the call of something other than presence (1991, 125), the call to becoming, one might say. And the capacity for becoming is the talent we have perhaps been most actively fosteringthrough individuals opening to one another, and to the inescapable fact of their own existence as possibility or potentiality (Agamben 1993, 43). Indeed, this is how we might summarize our practices of cultivating local capacity. Almost every meeting and engagement associated with the project stimulated desires for alternative ways to be, and each of these desires operated as a contagion or revealed itself as a multiplicity. What emerged, for example, from the awakening of a communal subjectivity was a faint but discernible yearning for a communal (noncapitalist) economy. This was not an easy yearning to stimulate or cultivate.

The ability to desire what we do not know, to desire a different relation to economy, requires the willingness to endanger what now exists and what we know ourselves to be.22 Because they require a death of sorts, an offering up of the self to the unfamiliar, desires for existence outside the capitalist order are difficult to engender. When restructuring devastates a regional
economy, unemployed workers may have little interest in economic alternatives. Instead they desire to be employed, to continue their social existence as workers. (As do we.) In the face of this fixation upon capitalism, we came to see that one of our tasks as researchers was to help set desire in motion again (not unlike the task of the Lacanian psychoanalyst). If we could release into fluidity desire that was stuck, perhaps some of it would manifest in perverse (noncapitalist) dreams and fantasies. From the outset we saw our projects as bringing desire into language, in part by constituting a new language of economy. But as we came late to understand, with the help of Foucault and Connolly, the subject is not constituted through language alone. It is formed through real practices that act upon the body (Foucault 1997, 277) or through tactics or disciplines not entirely reducible to the play of symbols (Connolly 1999, 193). These disciplines fix dispositional patterns of desire (Connolly 1995, 57) that become part of what we experience as subjectionto capitalism or commun(al)ism, or whatever the alternatives might be.

TRIPERM
THE MOVE TO THEORIZE OUTERSPACE IS NOT ALWAYS COOPTED BY CAPITALISM INTEREST IN UFOLOGY ARE THE EXPRESSIONS OF NEW COLLECTIVE COMMUNIST MOVEMENTS POSITIONED AGAINST CAPITAL EXPASION. THE AFF IS A NEW EXPRESSION OF THESEMOVEMENTS
Shukaitis,UniversityofEssexandamemberoftheAutonomediaEditorialCollective,09(Stevphen;Spaceisthe (non)place:Martians,Marxists,andtheouterspaceoftheradicalimagination,TheSociologicalReviewVolume 57,IssueSupplements1,pages98113)

Whatisofinteresthereistherelationbetweenthedisappearanceanddestructionofcertain formsofcollectivism,andtheirreappearanceinothers.AsStimsonandSholetteobserve,the disappearanceofcollectivismfromthepoliticalrealmleadtotheseformsreturninginamutated andoftencontradictoryformwithintheculturalrealm(2007:8).Itmeansthattheriseofscience fictionfilmsinthe1950swiththeirimageryofbizarrealienracesfunctioningbysomesortof incomprehensibletotalitariancollectivism,inmanywaysreflecttherecodedandredirected imageryofcommunism(Smithetal.,2001).ThespectreofcommunismreappearsasaUFO.This isperhapsnotanewargumentinitself,fortheimageryusedingenresciencefictionhasbeen interpretedascodedforcommunismbefore,withInvasionoftheBodySnatchers(1956)asthe mostcommonlyusedexample(Brosnan,1978;McCarthyandGorman,1999;VonGundenand Stock,1982).ButwhatisinterestingabouttheStimsonandSholettespinistheirargumentfora displacementofenergiesfromtheeconomicandpoliticalsphere,embodiedinworkingclass resistance,intomutatedformsintheculturalsphere.Thiscanbereadasaformofrecuperationor cooptioninsomesenses;butitisnotsostraightforward.AsIhavepreviouslyargued(2007),the Plan9fromthecapitalistworkplaceisnotaclearcutcaseoftheintegrationofenergiesofsocial resistanceintotheworkingsofcapitalism,notonethatisirreversible.Themutatedand contradictoryformsofcollectivismthatappearmightstartwithimageryofanallegedcollectivist communisttotalitarianism,buttheirambivalenceisalsoaspaceofpossibility,onethatcanbe turnedtootheruses.Thedespisedotherisoftenalsothesecretlydesiredother,adynamicthat canbeviewedasimaginalforms,heldoutasexamplesofanOthertoberejected,starttobedrawn backintootherformsofpolitics,otherformsofusage,andthepleasureoftheseusages.Thisisa dynamicthatemergesmoreclearlyinthe1960sand1970s,astheutopiantracesofarepressed communism,congealedwithintheimaginalformofouterspaceimagery,areslowlyreclaimedand broughttootheruses.

CAPINEV
THEY CANT SOLVE DOMINANT HIERARCHIES ARE INEVITABLE. ONLY IN A FREE CAPITALIST SOCIETY CAN EFFECTIVELIMITSBEPLACEDONTHESEORGANIZATIONS. WILKINSON, POLICY ANALYST AT THE CATO INSTITUTE, 2005 (WILL, CAPITALISM AND HUMAN NATURE, CATOPOLICYREPORTVOL.XXVIINO.1JANUARY/FEBRUARY2005,DS)
Emory professor of economics and law Paul Rubin usefully distinguishes between "productive" and "allocative" hierarchies. Productive hierarchies are those that organize cooperative efforts to achieve otherwise unattainable mutually advantageous gains. Business organizations are a prime example. Allocative hierarchies, on the other hand, exist mainly to transfer resources to the top.
Aristocracies and dictatorships are extreme examples. Although the nation-state can perform productive functions, there is the constant risk that it becomes dominated by allocative hierarchies. Rubin warns that our natural wariness of zero-sum allocative hierarchies, which helps us to guard

against the concentration of power in too few hands, is often directed at modern positive-sum productive hierarchies, like corporations, thereby threatening the viability of enterprises that tend to make everyone better off. There is no way to stop dominance-seeking behavior. We may hope only to channel it to non-harmful uses. A free society therefore requires that positions of dominance and status be widely available in a multitude of productive hierarchies, and that opportunities for greater status and dominance through predation are limited by the constant vigilance of "the people"the ultimate reverse dominance hierarchy. A
flourishing civil society permits almost everyone to be the leader of something, whether the local Star Trek fan club or the city council, thereby somewhat satisfying the human taste for hierarchical status, but to no one's serious detriment.

CAPITALISMISINEVITABLETHEREISANINBUILTRESPECTFORPROPERTYRIGHTSANDTOTRADE. WILKINSON, POLICY ANALYST AT THE CATO INSTITUTE, 2005 (WILL, CAPITALISM AND HUMAN NATURE, CATOPOLICYREPORTVOL.XXVIINO.1JANUARY/FEBRUARY2005,DS)
The problem of distributing scarce resources can be handled in part by implicitly coercive allocative hierarchies. An alternative solution to the problem of distribution is the recognition and enforcement of property rights. Property rights are prefigured in nature by the way animals mark out

territories for their exclusive use in foraging, hunting, and mating. Recognition of such rudimentary claims to control and exclude minimizes costly conflict, which by itself provides a strong evolutionary reason to look for innate tendencies to recognize and respect norms of property. New scientific research provides even stronger evidence for the existence of such property "instincts." For example, recent experimental work by Oliver Goodenough, a legal theorist, and Christine Prehn, a neuroscientist, suggests that the human mind evolved specialized modules for making judgments about moral transgressions, and transgressions against property in particular. Evolutionary psychology can help us to understand that property rights are not created simply by strokes of the legislator's pen. Mutually Beneficial Exchange is Natural Trade and mutually beneficial exchange are human universals, as is the division of labor. In their groundbreaking paper, "Cognitive Adaptations for Social Exchange," Cosmides and Tooby point out that, contrary to widespread belief, hunter-gatherer life is not "a kind of retro-utopia" of "indiscriminate, egalitarian cooperation and sharing." The archeological and ethnographic evidence shows that hunter-gatherers were involved in numerous forms of trade and exchange. Some forms of huntergatherer trading can involve quite complex specialization and the interaction of supply and demand. Most impressive, Cosmides and Tooby have shown through a series of experiments that human beings are able easily to solve complex logical puzzles involving reciprocity, the accounting of costs and benefits, and the detection of people who have cheated on agreements. However, we are unable to solve formally identical puzzles that do not deal with questions of social exchange. That, they argue, points to the existence of "functionally specialized, content-dependent cognitive adaptations for social exchange." In other words, the human mind is "built" to trade.

CAPSUSTAINABLE
CAPITALISMISSUSTAINABLEGOVERNMENTINTERVENTIONENSURESITSRESILIENCY FOSTER, SENIOR FELLOW IN THE ECONOMICS OF FISCAL POLICY AT THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION, 09 (J.D., MARCH 11, IS CAPITALISM DEAD? MAYBE, HTTP://WWW.NPR.ORG/TEMPLATES/STORY/STORY.PHP?STORYID=101694302,DM)
Capitalism is down. It may even be out. But it's far from dead. Capitalism is extremely resilient. Why? Because here, as in every
democratic-industrial country around the world, it has always had to struggle to survive against encroachments both benign and malevolent of the state. At the moment, capitalism is losing ground most everywhere. But when the economic crisis passes, capitalism and the freedoms it engenders will recover again, if only because freedom beats its lack. It is said that the trouble with socialism is socialism; the trouble with capitalism is capitalists. The socialist economic system, inherently contrary to individual liberties, tends to minimize prosperity because it inevitably allocates national resources inefficiently. On the other hand, a truly capitalist system engaged in an unfettered pursuit of prosperity is prone to occasional and often painful excesses, bubbles and downturns like the one we are now experiencing globally. When capitalism slips, governments step in with regulations and buffers to try to moderate the excesses and minimize the broader consequences of individual errors. Sometimes these policies are enduringly helpful. Severe economic downturns inflict collateral damage on families and businesses otherwise innocent of material foolishness. Not only are the sufferings of these innocents harmful to society, but they are also downright expensive. A little wise government buffering can go a long way. The trick, of course, is the wisdom part. A good example of a wise government buffer is deposit insurance at commercial banks. Without it, depositors would have withdrawn their funds en masse, leading to a rapid collapse of the banking system. It happened in years gone by. But today, deposits have flowed into the banking system in search of safety, helping banks staunch their many severe wounds. Yet for every example of helpful government intervention, there are many more that do more harm than good. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac leap to mind. These congressional creatures helped create, then inflate the subprime market. When that balloon popped, it triggered a global economic meltdown. The current financial crisis clearly has

capitalism on its back foot. Government ownership of the largest insurance company, the major banks, and Fan and Fred are awesome incursions into private markets. But, as President Obama has underscored, these incursions are only temporary. In time, these institutions even Fan and Fred will be broken up and sold in parts. It will leave government agents with stories to tell their grandkids, and taxpayers stuck with the losses. But the power of the state will again recede, and another new age of freedom and capitalism will arrive and thrive... until we repeat the cycle again sometime down the road.

CAPITALISM IS SUSTAINABLE SELF CORRECTING AS RESOURCES PROVE SULLUM 00(Jacob, Senior Editor Reason Magazine and Syndicated Columnist The National Review, Growing Gains, Reason Magazine
Online, 1-5, http://reason.com/sullum/010500.shtml) The Competitive Enterprise Institute offers a cogent response to that position in Earth Report 2000 (McGraw-Hill), a collection of illuminating essays edited by Ronald Bailey, Reason magazines science correspondent. As Bailey notes in the first chapter, the Malthusian view has been thoroughly discredited by experience. For one thing, production has more than kept up with population growth. "Between 1820 and 1992," writes Bailey, "world population quintupled even as the worlds economies grew 40-fold." Malthus was also wrong to think that "population...invariably increase[s] where there are means of subsistence." In fact, notes Bailey, "we find that the countries that are the wealthiest and have the greatest access to food--

CAPGOODSELFCORRECTING

the United States, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, France--are precisely those countries that have the lowest birth rates, all of them below replacement levels." Likewise, the neo-Malthusians are wrong to think that economic growth inevitably leads to environmental degradation. In fact, as Baileys book shows with data on air pollution and other indicators, "greater affluence means an improving natural environment, not a worsening one." Its true enough, as opponents of growth constantly remind us, that the earths resources are finite. But what Malthus missed, and what his ideological heirs fail to appreciate, is the human ingenuity that enables us to arrange those resources in an infinite variety of combinations. The improvements in agriculture that we have seen in the last century, on a scale beyond anything that Malthus imagined, are just one example of that ingenuity. "The United States uses less than half of the land for farming in the 1990s than it used in the 1920s," Bailey notes, "but it produces far more food now than it did then." Market incentives constantly drive people to find ways of doing more with less, to devise better "recipes" for the things they need and want.
"Two centuries after Malthus," Bailey concludes, "we now know that the exponential growth of knowledge, not of our numbers, is the real key to understanding the promising future that lies ahead for humanity and for the earth."

INNOVATIONSOVLESRESOURCESSCARCITY

Simon96. Julian Simon, professor of business administration at the University of Maryland, 1996, TheUltimateResourceII,URL:
www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR03A.txt Now I'll restate this line of thought into a theory that will appear again and again in the book: More people, and increased income, cause resources to become more scarce in the short run. Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to search for solutions. Many fail in the search, at cost to themselves. But in a free society, solutions are eventually

found. And in the long run the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had not arisen. That is, prices eventually become lower than before the increased scarcity occurred. It is all-important to recognize that discoveries of improved methods and of substitute products are not just luck. They happen in response to an increase in scarcity - a rise in cost. Even after a
discovery is made, there is a good chance that it will not be put into operation until there is need for it due to rising cost. This point is important: Scarcity and technological advance are not two unrelated competitors in a Malthusian race; rather, each influences the other

CAPGOODSELFCORRECTING
CAPITALISMSUSTAINABLESELFCORRECTING

Serwetman97 (Will,CritiqueofMarx'sPoliticalTheory,http://www.ninjalawyer.com/writing/marx.html,AG,wedontendorsethe
genderedlanguage) If one disagrees with the way Marx sees mankind, however, and takes a more Nietzschean view, the Marxist ideal is a prescription for disaster. Due to our naturally distrustful, greedy, and ambitious natures, which precede capitalism, humans will not motivate themselves to do anything unless there is a reward. Their survival instinct won't let them. Competition isn't just good for men--it's necessary. If there were no competition for the things we need, we would just take them and copulate and nothing else. While the species might survive, it would not progress, and we can live better. Competing for resources forces us to establish our identities and do more than just sit there and exist. Our will to power drives us to accumulate food, money, and control in order to maximize our chances of survival and reproduction. As long as our nature remains unchangeable, We will never be able to adjust to life in a Marxist society. Marx's economic theory is flawed as well, since it ignores the role of individuals and looks only at groups. The genius of a few individuals is all that has kept mankind raised from the life in nature that Hobbes called "brutish, nasty and short." The individuals responsible for these achievements were generally not rewarded until the advent of capitalism and is industrial revolution, which has increased our rates of progress exponentially. If these few contributors weren't punished for their differ ences , they spent their lives working humbly under the "patronage" of feudal lords. Capitalism encourages individuals to make their contributions and spread them throughout the world, raising all of mankind higher and higher from our natural, animal-like existence. Marx utilizes the Hegelian dialectic in his attempt to prove that capitalism will inevitably collapse from the crisis of overproduction and the class conflict caused by enmiseration and alienation. Capitalism, he felt, would inevitably be replaced by s ocialism. Marx died waiting for this revolution to come about, and it never has. Even the Russian and Chinese revolutions cannot be viewed as results of capitalism collapsing, nor can they be seen as socialist states because they retain post-revolutionary class structures and are not radical democracies. While Rosa Luxemberg wrote that while the capitalism will inevitably consume itself and that socialism is a possible option, I go so far as to question the Marxist logic that capitalism is doomed to c ollapse. The capitalist that Marx evokes in his work is only a caricature of the behavior of capitalists and does not reflect reality as history has shown it to be. Successful capitalists are smart enough to plan for long-term profits in addition to the short-term. Like anyone else, they will make mistakes and learn from them. There is a Darwinian process to capitalism, and those unable to account for factors beyond their short-term profits will be replaced by those who can. How many buffalo-fur coat business es do we see? Despite the various crises of the past century, capitalism thrives and shows no major signs of strain. Despite Marx's predictions, capitalism is perfectly capable of inventing new markets to replace saturated ones. If stereo manufacturers can no longer find a market for their goods, they close down and invest their money in a new industry, such as cable television or computers. The crisis of overproduction will never happen because capitalism is flexible and will

sacrifice it's short term goals to achieve its long term ones.

CAPGOODGROWTH
CAPITALISMKEYTOSUSTAINABLEGROWTHFORALLPROVIDESINCENTIVE

BUTTERS 7 (ROGER B., PH.D., PRESIDENT NEBRASKA COUNCIL ON ECONOMIC EDUCATION, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS UNIVERSITY OF
NEBRASKA AT LINCOLN, TEACHING THE HTTP://WWW.HILLSDALE.EDU/IMAGES/USERIMAGES/AFOLSOM/PAGE_6281/BUTTERS.PDF) BENEFITS
OF

CAPITALISM,

The miracle of market competition is that not only does it reduce material scarcity it creates wealth for every participant. Both the buyer and seller are wealthier for having participated: The seller for having sold something for more than the opportunity cost of production, the buyer for having acquired something for less than the value it imparts. Entrepreneurial activity, the second consequence of capitalism, is inextricably connected to competition. In competitive markets the only way to accrue wealth to oneself is by creating and providing a product that others value. Furthermore, you must create and provide that product at a cost that is less than the value perceived by your
customer. In order to capture a profit the entrepreneur must create something newer, better, cheaper or more appealing. He must find a way to induce someone to voluntarily surrender value to him and to do that he must create value himself. The creative process is risky and as a result people will only assume risk if the expected reward exceeds the expected costs. Property rights, via a patent or copyright, guarantee that if the entrepreneur creates something of value he will be able to capture, and retain, the profits from its sale. Without that guarantee, entrepreneurial activity slows and innovation and invention cease. The former Soviet Union created some of the greatest minds in the world and yet little or no invention and innovation occurred. The reason why is simple; there was no incentive to do so. Since the scientists had no right to their creation, since businessmen stood to earn no profits, and since entrepreneurs would never be allowed to compete in the marketplace no innovation occurred. The institutions of capitalism, on the other hand, conspire to find new and better ways to do everything in an effort to impart a fractional advantage when competing in the market place

GROWTHKEYTOPREVENTEXTINCTION

ZEY98(MICHAEL,EXECUTIVEDIRECTOREXPANSIONARYINSTITUTE,PROFESSOROFMANAGEMENTMONTCLAIRSTATEUNIVERSITY,SEIZING
THEFUTURE,P.34,3940)

However, no

outside force guarantees the continued progress of the human species, nor does anything mandate that the human species must even continue to exist. In fact, history is littered with races and civilizations that have disappeared without a trace. So, too, could the human species. There is no guarantee that the human species will survive even if we posit, as many have, a special purpose to the species existence. Therefore, the species innately comprehends that it must engage in purposive actions in order to maintain its level of growth and progress. Humanitys future is conditioned by what I call the Imperative of Growth, a principle I will herewith describe along with its several corollaries. The Imperative of Growth states that in order to survive, any nation, indeed, the human race, must grow, both materially and intellectually. The Macroindustrial Era represents growth in the areas of both technology and human development, a natural stage in the evolution of the species continued extension of its control over itself and its environment. Although 5 billion strong, our continued existence depends on our ability to continue the progress we have been making at higher and higher levels. Systems, whether organizations, societies, or cells, have three basic directions in which to move. They can grow, decline, or temporarily reside in a state of equilibrium. These are the choices. Choosing any alternative to growth, for instance, stabilization of production/consumption through zero-growth policies, could have alarmingly pernicious side effects, including extinction . The fifth corollary of the Imperative of Growth claims that a society can remain in a state of equilibrium only temporarily. In reality, a society seemingly in a phase where it neither improves nor regresses is actually in a transition to either growth or decline. Such periods easily seduce their contemporaries into a false sense of security, that their institutions will last forever, they have
all the science they need, and there are no more challenges. In fact, during such periods some imagine that they have reached their golden age, perhaps even the end of history. During such periods of supposed equilibrium, the population ceases to prepare itself for new challenges and becomes risk averse. Importantly, they reject the idea that growth and progress are necessary for their survival. The sixth corollary evolves from the fifth. If the system chooses not to grow, it will decline and eventually disappear, either because other

organisms or systems overtake it or because it is impossible to maintain itself even at static levels without in some way deteriorating. This is the Law of Spiraling Regression. It is indeed a curiosity of the late-twentieth-century culture that this truism has been ignored. In the morass of claims about the risks of technological growth and its impact on the ecosystem, the mainstream media and orthodox academics have decided not to consider what harm the full pursuance of zero growth or non growth might inflict on the sociotechnical system, which includes our technological infrastructure, culture, and standard of living

CAPGOODENVIRO
CAPITALISMKEYTOTHEENVIRONMENT Wilson97(JamesQ.,ProfessorofGovernmentHarvardUniversity,TheMoralityof Capitalism,1015,http://www.cis.org.au/Events/JBL/JBL97.htm#Wilson)
Capitalism brings three advantages to the environmental task: (i) It creates and maintains a private sphere of action. A private sphere of action makes capitalism possible because you can operate free of government control. But by maintaining a private sphere you also provide a protected place for people to stand who wish to make controversial proposals. You create a world in which the critics of capitalism those who wish to see capitalism restrained in order to protect the environment have an opportunity to move. No such world existed for them in the Soviet Union, and no such world exists for them today in the Peoples Republic of China. The absence of a private sphere means the absence of an environmental ethic. (ii) Secondly, capitalism produces prosperity, and prosperity changes the minds of people, especially young people. It endows them what we in the social science business call in our professional journals, post-materialist or postindustrial goals. That is a fancy way of saying that when society becomes rich enough for everybody to be fed and where no-one has to struggle day and night to put food on their table, we begin to think of other things we can use resources for. Those other things include taking care of animals, protecting the environment, preserving land and the like. The prosperity induced by capitalism produces of necessity an environmental
movement. How that environ-mental movement is managed of course is a very real question; sometimes it is managed very badly, other times it is managed reasonably well. Environmental policies in capitalist systems will vary greatly from the inconsequential through the prudent to the loony but they will scarcely exist at all in non-capitalist ones. (iii) The final thing capitalism brings to this task is that it creates

firms that can be regulated. You may think that this is a trivial statement. You all know that business firms are regulated sometimes to the advantage of the firm, sometimes to its disadvantage. But I dont think you realise the importance of this fact. Consider the alternative. Suppose the government ran everything. What would be regulated? The main reason why Eastern Europe was a vast toxic waste dump, and why many parts of China are becoming a vast toxic waste dump, is because the government owns the enterprises and one government agency does not cannot regulate another government agency. This is because neither the regulator nor the regulatee has any personal motives to
accept regulation. But they can regulate firms, and so when firms are producing wealth and people decide that the distribution of wealth ought to be made to accord to an environmental ethic, capitalism makes that possible.

IMPACTISEXTINCTION Diner1994(MajorDavidN.Diner,JudgeAdvocateGeneral'sCorps,TheArmyandthe EndangeredSpeciesAct:WhosEndangeredNow?143Mil.L.Rev.161,Winter1994

Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist species, filling narrow ecological niches. These ecosystems inherently are more stable than less diverse systems. "The more complex the ecosystem, the more successfully it can resist a stress. . . . [l]ike a net, in which each knot is connected to others by several strands, such a fabric can resist collapse better than a simple, unbranched circle of threads -- which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." n79 By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction. Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, n80 [hu]mankind may be edging

closer to the abyss.

CAPGOODDEMOCRACY
CAPITALISMKEYTOSPREADDEMOCRACY Griswold4(Daniel T., Associate Director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies Cato Institute, Trading Tyranny for Freedom: How Open Markets Till the Soil for Democracy, Cato Trade Policy Analysis, 1-6, http://www.freetrade.org/node/37)
Political scientists have long noted the connection between economic development, political reform and democracy. Increased trade and economic integration promote civil and political freedoms directly by opening a society to new technology, communications and democratic ideas. Economic liberalization provides a counterweight to governmental power and creates space for civil society. And by promoting faster growth, trade promotes political freedom indirectly by creating an economically independent and politically aware middle class. In an April 2002 speech urging Congress to grant him trade promotion authority, President Bush argued, "Societies that are open to commerce across their borders are more open to democracy within their borders." In a new study for the Cato Institute, "Trading Tyranny for Freedom: How Open Markets Till the Soil for Democracy," I conclude that that those assumptions rest on solid ground. Around the globe, the recent trend towards globalization has been accompanied by a trend toward greater political and civil liberty. In the past 30 years, cross-border flows of trade, investment and currency have increased dramatically, and far
faster than output itself. During that same period, political and civil liberties have been spreading around the world. Every year, the New York-based human rights think tank Freedom House (search) rates every country in the world according to its political and civil freedom. It classifies countries as either "Free"-where governments are freely elected and civil liberties are fully protected; "Partly Free"--where there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties; and "Not Free"--where basic political rights are absent and basic civil liberties were widely and systematically denied. According to Freedom House, the share of the world's population living in countries that are "Free" has jumped from 35 percent to 44 percent.

IMPACTISEXTINCTION

Larry Diamond, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, December, PROMOTING DEMOCRACY IN THE 1990S, 1995, p. http://www.carnegie.org//sub/pubs/deadly/diam_rpt.html // Nuclear, chemical and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty and openness. The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments

CAPGOODWAR
CAPITALISMKEYTOPREVENTWAR Bandow5(Doug,SeniorFellowTheCatoInstitute,SpreadingCapitalismisGoodforPeace, TheKoreaHerald,1110,http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5193)
In a world that seems constantly aflame, one naturally asks: What causes peace? Many people, including U.S. President George W. Bush, hope that spreading democracy will discourage war. But new research suggests that expanding free markets is a far more important factor, leading to what Columbia University's Erik Gartzke calls a "capitalist peace." It's a reason for even the left to support free markets. The capitalist peace theory isn't new: Montesquieu and Adam Smith believed in it. Many of Britain's classical liberals, such as Richard Cobden, pushed free markets while opposing imperialism. But World War I demonstrated that increased trade was not enough. The prospect of economic ruin did not prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security fears from trumping the power of markets. An even greater conflict followed a generation later. Thankfully, World War II left war essentially unthinkable among leading industrialized - and democratic - states. Support grew for the argument, going back to Immanual Kant, that republics are less warlike than other systems. Today's corollary is that creating democracies out of dictatorships will reduce conflict. This contention animated some support outside as well as inside the United States for the invasion of Iraq. But Gartzke argues that "the 'democratic peace' is a mirage created by the overlap between economic and political freedom." That is, democracies typically have freer economies than do authoritarian states. Thus, while "democracy is desirable for many reasons," he notes in a chapter in the latest volume of Economic Freedom in the World, created by the Fraser Institute, "representative governments are unlikely to contribute directly to international peace." Capitalism is by far the more important factor. The shift from statist mercantilism to high-tech capitalism has transformed the economics behind war. Markets generate economic opportunities that make war less desirable. Territorial aggrandizement no longer provides the best path to riches. Free-flowing capital markets and other aspects of globalization simultaneously draw nations together and raise the economic price of military conflict. Moreover, sanctions, which interfere with economic prosperity, provides a coercive step short of war to achieve foreign policy ends. Positive economic trends are not enough to prevent war, but then, neither is democracy. It long has been obvious that democracies are willing to fight, just usually not each other. Contends Gartzke, "liberal political systems, in and of themselves, have no impact on whether states fight." In particular, poorer democracies perform like non-democracies. He explains: "Democracy does not have a measurable impact, while nations with very low levels of economic freedom are 14 times more prone to conflict than those with very high levels." Gartzke considers other variables, including alliance memberships, nuclear deterrence, and regional differences. Although the causes of conflict vary, the relationship between economic liberty and peace remains. His conclusion hasn't gone unchallenged. Author R.J. Rummel, an avid proponent of the democratic peace theory, challenges Gartzke's methodology and worries that it "may well lead intelligent and policy-wise analysts and commentators to draw the wrong conclusions about the importance of democratization." Gartzke responds in detail, noting that he relied on the same data as most democratic peace theorists. If it is true that democratic states don't go to war, then it also is true that "states with advanced free market economies never go to war with each other, either." The point is not that democracy is valueless. Free political systems naturally entail free elections and are more likely to protect other forms of liberty - civil and economic, for instance. However, democracy alone doesn't yield peace. To believe is does is dangerous: There's no panacea for creating a conflict-free world. That doesn't mean that nothing can be done. But promoting open international markets - that is, spreading capitalism - is the best means to encourage peace as well as prosperity. Notes Gartzke: "Warfare among developing nations will remain unaffected by the capitalist peace as long as the economies of many developing countries remain fettered by governmental control." Freeing those economies is critical. It's a particularly important lesson for the anti-capitalist left. For the most part, the enemies of economic liberty also most stridently denounce war, often in near-pacifist terms. Yet they oppose the very economic policies most likely to encourage peace. If market critics don't realize the obvious economic and philosophical value of markets - prosperity and freedom - they should appreciate the unintended peace dividend. Trade encourages prosperity and stability; technological innovation reduces the financial value of conquest; globalization creates economic interdependence, increasing the cost of war. Nothing is certain in life, and people are motivated by far more than economics. But it turns out that peace is good business. And capitalism is good for peace.

CAPGOODWAR
CAPITALISMPRODUCESPEACEITTAKESAWAYTHEMOTIVATIONSTOGOTOWAR. GARTZKE FORMERASSOCIATEPROFOFPOLSCI, COLUMBIA, 5 (ERIK, FUTURE DEPENDSON CAPITALIZINGON CAPITALIST PEACE, FORMER ASSOCIATE PROF OF POL SCI, USCD. PHD IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, FORMAL/QUANTITATIVE METHODS FROM U IOWA, 1 OCTOBER 2005, HTTP://WWW.CATO.ORG/PUB_DISPLAY.PHP?PUB_ID=5133,DS)
With terrorism achieving "global reach" and conflict raging in Africa and the Middle East, you may have missed a startling fact - we

are living in remarkably peaceable times. For six decades, developed nations have not fought each other. France and the United States may chafe, but the resulting conflict pitted french fries against "freedom fries," rather than French soldiers against U.S. "freedom fighters." Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac had a nasty spat over the EU, but the English aren't going to storm Calais any time soon. The present peace is unusual. Historically, powerful nations are the most war prone. The conventional wisdom is that democracy fosters peace but this claim fails scrutiny. It is based on statistical studies that show democracies typically don't fight other democracies. Yet, the same studies show that democratic nations go to war about as much as other nations overall. And more recent research makes clear that only the affluent democracies are less likely to fight each other. Poor democracies behave much like non-democracies when it comes to war and lesser forms of conflict. A more powerful explanation is emerging from newer, and older, empirical research - the "capitalist peace." As predicted by Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Norman Angell and others, nations with high levels of economic freedom not only fight each other less, they go to war less often, period. Economic freedom is a measure of the depth of free market institutions or, put another way, of capitalism. The "democratic peace" is a mirage created by the overlap between economic and political freedom .
Democracy and economic freedom typically co-exist. Thus, if economic freedom causes peace, then statistically democracy will also appear to cause peace. When democracy and economic freedom are both included in a statistical model, the results reveal that economic freedom is considerably more potent in encouraging peace than democracy, 50 times more potent, in fact, according to my own research. Economic freedom is highly statistically significant (at the one-per-cent level). Democracy does not have a measurable impact, while nations with very low levels of economic freedom are 14 times more prone to conflict than those with very high levels. But, why would free markets cause peace? Capitalism is not only an immense generator of prosperity; it is also a revolutionary source of economic, social and political change.

Wealth no longer arises primarily through land or control of natural resources. New Kind of Wealth Prosperity in modern societies is created by market competition and the efficient production that arises from it. This new kind of wealth is hard for nations
to "steal" through conquest. In days of old, when the English did occasionally storm Calais, nobles dreamed of wealth and power in conquered lands, while visions of booty danced in the heads of peasant soldiers. Victory in war meant new property. In a free market economy, war destroys immense

wealth for victor and loser alike. Even if capital stock is restored, efficient production requires property rights and free decisions by market participants that are difficult or impossible to co-ordinate to the victor's advantage. The Iraqi war, despite Iraq's immense oil wealth, will not be a money-maker for the United States. Economic freedom is not a guarantee of peace. Other factors, like ideology or the perceived need for self-defence, can still result in violence. But, where economic freedom has taken hold, it has made war less likely. Research on the capitalist peace has profound implications in today's world. Emerging democracies, which have not stabilized the institutions of economic freedom, appear to be at least as warlike - perhaps more so - than emerging dictatorships. Yet, the
United States and other western nations are putting immense resources into democratization even in nations that lack functioning free markets. This is in part based on the faulty premise of a "democratic peace." It may also in part be due to public perception. Everyone approves of democracy, but "capitalism" is often a dirty word. However, in recent decades, an increasing number of people have rediscovered the economic virtues of the "invisible hand" of free markets. We now have an additional benefit of economic freedom - international peace. The actual presence of peace in much of the world sets this era apart from others. The empirical basis for optimistic claims - about either democracy or capitalism - can be

tested and refined. The way forward is to capitalize on the capitalist peace, to deepen its roots and extend it to more countries through expanding markets, development, and a common sense of international purpose. The risk today is that faulty analysis and anti-market activists may distract the developed nations from this historic opportunity

CAPGOODWAR
CAPITALISMISTHEBESTOPTIONFORPRODUCINGPEACE.WEHAVEEMPIRICALEVIDENCE. BANDOW,SENIORFELLOWATTHECATOINSTITUTE,5(DOUG,SPREADINGCAPITALISMISGOODFORPEACE, HTTP://WWW.CATO.ORG/PUB_DISPLAY.PHP?PUB_ID=5193,DS)
In a world that seems constantly aflame, one naturally asks: What causes peace? Many people, including U.S. President George W. Bush, hope that spreading democracy will discourage war. But new research suggests that expanding free markets is a far more important factor, leading to what Columbia University's Erik Gartzke calls a "capitalist peace." It's a reason for even the left to support free markets. The capitalist peace theory isn't new: Montesquieu and Adam Smith believed in it. Many of Britain's classical liberals, such as Richard Cobden, pushed free markets while opposing imperialism. But World War I demonstrated that increased trade was not enough. The prospect of economic ruin did not prevent rampant nationalism, ethnic hatred, and security fears from trumping the power of markets. An even greater conflict followed a generation later. Thankfully, World War II left war essentially unthinkable among leading industrialized - and democratic - states. Support grew for the argument, going back to Immanual Kant, that republics are less warlike than other systems. Today's corollary is that creating democracies out of dictatorships will reduce conflict. This contention animated some support outside as well as inside the United States for the invasion of Iraq. But Gartzke argues that "the 'democratic peace' is a mirage created by the overlap between economic and political freedom." That is, democracies typically have freer economies than do authoritarian states. Thus, while "democracy is desirable for many reasons," he notes in a chapter in the latest volume of Economic Freedom in the World, created by the Fraser Institute, "representative governments are unlikely to contribute directly to international peace." Capitalism is by far the more

important factor. The shift from statist mercantilism to high-tech capitalism has transformed the economics behind war. Markets generate economic opportunities that make war less desirable. Territorial aggrandizement no longer provides the best path to riches. Free-flowing capital markets and other aspects of globalization simultaneously draw nations together and raise the economic price of military conflict. Moreover, sanctions, which interfere with economic prosperity, provides a coercive step short of war
to achieve foreign policy ends. Positive economic trends are not enough to prevent war, but then, neither is democracy. It long has been obvious that democracies are willing to fight, just usually not each other. Contends Gartzke, "liberal political systems, in and of themselves, have no impact on whether states fight." In particular, poorer democracies perform like non-democracies. He explains: "Democracy does not have a measurable impact, while nations with very low levels of economic freedom are 14 times more prone to conflict than those with very high levels." Gartzke considers other variables, including alliance memberships, nuclear deterrence, and regional differences. Although the causes of conflict vary, the relationship between economic liberty and peace remains. His conclusion hasn't gone unchallenged. Author R.J. Rummel, an avid proponent of the democratic peace theory, challenges Gartzke's methodology and worries that it "may well lead intelligent and policy-wise analysts and commentators to draw the wrong conclusions about the importance of democratization." Gartzke responds in detail, noting that he relied on the same data as most democratic peace theorists. If it is true that democratic states don't go to war, then it also is true that "states with advanced free market economies never go to war with each other, either." The point is not that democracy is valueless. Free political systems naturally entail free elections and are more likely to protect other forms of liberty - civil and economic, for instance. However, democracy alone doesn't yield peace. To believe is does is dangerous: There's no panacea for creating a conflict-free world. That doesn't mean that nothing can be done. But promoting open international markets - that is, spreading capitalism - is the best means to encourage peace as well as prosperity. Notes Gartzke: "Warfare among developing nations will remain unaffected by the capitalist peace as long as the economies of many developing countries remain fettered by governmental control." Freeing those economies is critical. It's a particularly important lesson for the anti-capitalist left. For the most part, the enemies of economic liberty also

most stridently denounce war, often in near-pacifist terms. Yet they oppose the very economic policies most likely to encourage peace. If market critics don't realize the obvious economic and philosophical value of markets - prosperity and freedom - they should appreciate the unintended peace dividend. Trade encourages prosperity and stability; technological innovation reduces the financial value of conquest; globalization creates economic interdependence, increasing the cost of war. Nothing is certain in life, and people are motivated by far more than economics. But it turns out that peace is good business. And capitalism is good for peace.

CAPGOODWAR
FREETRADEANDCAPITALISMAREBESTATSOLVINGALLTYPESOFWAR.WARISNOLONGERPROFITABLE. GRISWOLD,DIRECTOROFTHECATOINSTITUTE CENTERFORTRADEPOLICYSTUDIES, 2005 (DANIEL, PEACE ON EARTH? TRY FREE TRADE AMONG MEN, HTTP://WWW.CATO.ORG/PUB_DISPLAY.PHP?PUB_ID=5344, DS)
Buried beneath the daily stories about car bombs and insurgents is an underappreciated but comforting fact during this Christmas season: The world has somehow become a more peaceful place. As one little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story recently reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say." According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the number of armed conflicts around the world has been in decline for the past half-century. In just the past 15 years, ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to 18, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. As 2005 draws to an end, no two nations in the world are at war with each other. The death toll from war has also been falling. According to the AP story, "The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Those estimates are down sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean War. Many causes lie behind

the good news -- the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them -- but expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role. Far from stoking a "World on Fire," as one misguided American author has argued, growing commercial ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war, for three main reasons. First, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and democracies don't pick fights with each other. Freedom to trade nurtures democracy by expanding the middle class in globalizing countries and equipping people with tools of communication such as cell phones, satellite TV, and the Internet. With trade comes more travel, more contact with people in other countries, and more exposure to new ideas. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are democracies -- a record high. Second, as national economies become more integrated with each other, those nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the economic cost of war. Third, globalization allows nations to acquire wealth through production and trade rather than conquest of territory and resources. Increasingly, wealth is measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Those are assets that cannot be seized by armies. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home. Of course, free trade and globalization do not guarantee peace. Hot-blooded nationalism and ideological fervor can overwhelm cold economic calculations. But deep trade and investment ties among nations make war less attractive. Trade wars in the 1930s deepened the economic depression, exacerbated global tensions, and helped to usher in a world war.
Out of the ashes of that experience, the United States urged Germany, France, and other Western European nations to form a common market that has become the European Union. In large part because of their intertwined economies, a general war in Europe is now unthinkable. In East Asia, the extensive and growing economic ties among Mainland China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan is helping to keep the peace. China's Communist rulers may yet decide to go to war over its "renegade province," but the economic cost to their economy would be staggering and could provoke a backlash among Chinese citizens. In contrast, poor and isolated North Korea is all the more dangerous because it has nothing to lose economically should it provoke a war. In Central America, countries that were racked by guerrilla wars and death squads two decades ago have turned not only to democracy but to expanding trade, culminating in the Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States. As the Stockholm institute reports in its 2005 Yearbook, "Since the 1980s, the introduction of a more open economic model in most states of the Latin

American and Caribbean region has been accompanied by the growth of new regional structures, the dying out of interstate conflicts and a reduction in intra-state conflicts." Much of the political violence that remains in the world today is concentrated in the Middle
East and Sub-Saharan Africa -- the two regions of the world that are the least integrated into the global economy. Efforts to bring peace to those regions must include lowering their high barriers to trade, foreign investment, and domestic entrepreneurship. Advocates of free trade and globalization have long argued that trade expansion means more efficiency, higher incomes, and reduced poverty. The welcome decline of armed conflicts in

the past few decades indicates that free trade also comes with its own peace dividend

CAPGOODWAR
CAPITALISMMAKESWARTOOEXPENSIVE.SUSTAININGTRADEALLOWSFORGREATERGAINSPEACEFULLY. GARTZKE, PHD ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT UC SAN DIEGO, 2007 (ERIK, THE CAPITALIST PEACE, 1/5/07, HTTP://DSS.UCSD.EDU/~EGARTZKE/PUBLICATIONS/GARTZKE_AJPS_07.PDF, DS)
Conflict is inherent in the allocation of resources among two or more parties, but need not result in violence if the stakes are literally not worth fighting over or when bargains preempt fighting. Imagine two countries attempting to divide up a bundle of goods
(resources, territory). Comparison of available allocations is zero-sum; any shift from one allocation to another benefits one country only at the expense of the other country. In this framework, a mutual preference for peace requires that the value of winning be small relative to the cost of fighting (Morrow 1989; Powell 1999). Peace advocates have long championed factors thought to make war prohibitively expensive.Cobden, for example, claimed optimistically that Should war break out between two great nations I have no doubt that the immense consumption of

material and the rapid destruction of property would have the effect of very soon bringing the combatants to reason or exhausting their resources ([1867] 1903, 355). Yet, if war is a process where competitors inflict costs on one another, making war more expensive
will affect who wins, or how long fighting lasts, but not whether a contest occurs (Levy andMorgan 1984). War costs are also endogenous; if fighting is prohibitive, countries will make themselves a nice little war.30 Increasing the cost of fighting, or alternately increasing the benefits of

peaceeven when possibleshape what each actorwill accept in lieu of fighting, but do not tell us which bargains are forged before warfare, and which after. Even the prospect of nuclear annihilation did not deter disputes during the cold war (Schelling 1960). If, on the other hand, the value of resources in dispute is small or varies with ownership, then states can be disinclined to fight. Nations have historically used force to acquire land and resources, and subdue foreign populations. War or treaties that shifted control of territory changed the balance of resources, and power. Sovereigns, and to a lesser extent citizens, prospered as the state extended its domain. Development can alter these incentives if modern production processes de-emphasize land, minerals, and rooted labor in favor of intellectual and financial capital (Brooks 1999, 2005; Rosecrance 1996). If the rents from conquest decline, even as occupation costs increase, then states can prefer to buy goods rather than steal them.31 As the U.S. invasion of Iraq illustrates, occupying a reluctant foreign power is extremely labor intensive. If soldiers are expensive, then nations can be better off outsourcing occupation to local leaders and obtaining needed goods through trade.32 At the same time that development leads states to prefer trade to theft, developed countries also retain populations with common identities, cultural affinities, and political, social, and economic ties. These states may be reluctant to conquer their neighbors,
but they are equally opposed to arbitrary contractions of their borders. Residents of Gibraltar, for example, prefer British rule, even while Spain, which has fought over this lump of rock for centuries, is today unwilling to provoke a war.33 The combination of a lack of motive for territorial

expansion and continued interest in serving and protecting a given population ensures a decline in conflict among states with developed economies, especially where developed countries are geographically clustered (Gleditsch 2003). Since most territorial
disputes are between contiguous states (Vasquez 1993), I hypothesize that developed, contiguous dyads are more powerful than either developing or noncontiguous dyads.34

CAPGOODETHICS
CAPITALISMISETHICALPROVIDESMEANSTOBETTERLIVES

Saunders7 fellow, Center for Independent Studies (Peter, Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul,
http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer%2007-08/saunders_summer07.html) What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a growth fetish has resulted in one hour of work today delivering twenty-five times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other soul-enriching pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an imbalance between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than they would had they belonged to any previous generation in history. There is another sense, too, in which capitalism has freed individuals so they can pursue worthwhile lives, and that lies in its record of undermining tyrannies and dictatorships. As examples like Pinochets Chile and Putins Russia vividly demonstrate, a free economy does not guarantee a democratic polity or a society governed by the rule of law. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, these latter conditions are never found in the absence of a free economy.(12) Historically, it was capitalism that delivered humanity from the soul-destroying weight of feudalism. Later, it freed millions from the dead hand of totalitarian socialism. While capitalism may not be a sufficient condition of human freedom, it is almost certainly a necessary one. [continues] Wherever populations have a chance to move, the flow is always towards capitalism, not away from it. The authorities never had a problem keeping West Germans out of East Germany, South Koreans out of North Korea, or Taiwanese out of Communist China. The attraction of living in a capitalist society is not just that the economy works. It is also that if your version of the good life leads you to turn your back on capitalism, you dont have to pick up sticks and move away. If you dont like capitalism, there is no need to bribe people-smugglers to get you out of the country. You simply buy a plot of land, build your mud-brick house, and drop out (or, like Clive, you set up your own think tank and sell books urging others to drop out).

CAPGOODFREEDOM/VALUETOLIFE
CAPITALISMISTHEBESTSYSTEMITSOLVESPOVERTY,ANDVALUETOLIFE. SAUNDERS 7 FELLOW, CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT STUDIES (PETER, WHY CAPITALISM IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL,HTTP://WWW.CIS.ORG.AU/POLICY/SUMMER%200708/SAUNDERS_SUMMER07.HTML)
If we want to know if capitalism is bad (or good) for the soul, it probably makes more sense to approach the question metaphorically rather than theologically. Approached in this way, saying something is good for the soul implies simply that it enhances our capacity to live a good life. On this less literal and more secular interpretation of the soul, capitalism fares rather well. We have known since the time of Adam Smith that capitalism harnesses self-interest to generate outcomes that benefit others. This is obvious in the relationship between producers and consumers, for profits generally flow to those who anticipate what other people want and then deliver it at the least cost. But it also holds in the relationship between employers and employees. One of Karl Marxs most mischievous legacies was to suggest that this relationship is inherently antagonistic: that for employers to make profit, they must drive wages down. In reality, workers in the advanced capitalist countries thrive when their companies increase profits. The pursuit of

profit thus results in higher living standards for workers, as well as cheaper and more plentiful goods and services for consumers. The way this has enhanced peoples capacity to lead a good life can be seen in the spectacular reduction in levels of global poverty, brought about by the spread of capitalism on a world scale. In 1820, 85 percent of the worlds population lived on todays equivalent of less than a dollar per day. By 1950, this proportion had fallen to 50 percent. Today it is down to 20 percent. World poverty has fallen more in the last 50 years than it did in the previous 500. This dramatic reduction in human misery and despair owes nothing to aging rock stars demanding that we make poverty history. It is due to the spread of global capitalism. Capitalism has also made it possible for many more people to live on Earth and to survive for longer than ever before. In 1900, the average life expectancy in the less developed countries was just 30 years. By 1960, this had risen to 46 years. By 1998, it was 65 years. To put this extraordinary achievement into perspective, the average life expectancy in the poorest countries at the end of the 20th century was 15 years longer than the average life expectancy in the richest country in the world Britainat the start of that century. By perpetually raising productivity, capitalism has not only driven down poverty rates and raised life expectancy, it has also released much of humanity from the crushing burden of physical labor, freeing us to pursue higher objectives instead. What Clive Hamilton airily dismisses as a growth fetish has resulted in one hour of work today delivering 25 times more value than it did in 1850. This has freed huge chunks of our time for leisure, art, sport, learning, and other soulenriching pursuits. Despite all the exaggerated talk of an imbalance between work and family life, the average Australian today spends a much greater proportion of his or her lifetime free of work than he would had he belonged to any previous generation in history. There is another sense, too, in which capitalism has freed individuals so they can pursue worthwhile lives, and that lies in its record of undermining tyrannies and dictatorships. As examples like Pinochets Chile and Putins Russia vividly demonstrate,
a free economy does not guarantee a democratic polity or a society governed by the rule of law. But as Milton Friedman once pointed out, these latter conditions are never found in the absence of a free economy. Historically, it was capitalism that delivered humanity from the

souldestroying weight of feudalism. Later, it freed millions from the dead hand of totalitarian socialism. While capitalism may not be a sufficient condition of human freedom, it is almost certainly a necessary one

CAPGOODKEYTOSPACE
CAPITALISMISKEYTOSPACEEXPLORATIONCORPORATERESOURCES Matsunaga,Mamber,andHumphriesin94
[Matthew, Hawaii State Senator, Jeffrey, Managing Director, American Operations, Frederick, President Florida A&M University, Session 4: What is the Economic Value of Space Exploration? (Part II), http://cmex.ihmc.us/cmex/data/vse/session4.html]
"The maturation of American-style capitalism" has led to a global economy that thrives on transactions not among nations but among multinational corporations. "No area is more poised to further blur the traditional political boundaries than tomorrows space

exploration, [which] will require the resources of a multiplicity of corporations, working with international organizations, all powered by international capital," Mamber said. "Thus engaged, and perhaps only thus engaged, can we dare to think about a defense conversion that can bring about an era of job creation and not just the down-sizing now inflicting both the former Soviet Union and the United States. "The mobilization for Apollo was a war-time effort. The war is over, the question today is how to advance our societys values of democracy, of trade, of equality. That is the value today of human space exploration," he said. "Put differently, a robust exploration of space...has the potential to finally separate space exploration from military exploitation. Until that separation takes place, the space programs of Russia and the U.S. will remain in the shadow of our military programs as they have done since the beginning of the Space Age." "The [way] to a robust space industry is not to have Martin Marietta or Deutsche Aerospace or NPO Energia make only toasters.... That is not a doable defense conversion," he continued. We need to build a truly commercial space infrastructure that can stand apart from the military-industrial complex. "A true space exploration program is such a project: new space transportation vehicles unrelated to ballistic missiles, cargo ships from low Earth orbit to moon orbit,...housing on the moon for hundreds of workers, astronomy centers on the far side of the moon."