Get documents about "Capitalism is Bad
Document Sample
ADI 10 1
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Capitalism is Bad K Index
Capitalism 1nc ............................................................................................................................... 3
Capitalism 1nc ............................................................................................................................... 4
Capitalism 1nc ............................................................................................................................... 5
Capitalism 1nc ............................................................................................................................... 6
Link – Beneficiary Eligibility ....................................................................................................... 8
Link – Beneficiary Eligibility ....................................................................................................... 9
Link – Queer Identity ................................................................................................................. 10
Link – General Visas .................................................................................................................. 11
Link – Reform ............................................................................................................................. 12
Link – Reform ............................................................................................................................. 13
Link – H1B Visa .......................................................................................................................... 14
Link – K of Borders .................................................................................................................... 15
Link – Race .................................................................................................................................. 16
Link – Whiteness/Cultural Race................................................................................................ 17
Link – Family Based Visas ......................................................................................................... 18
Link – Education/‘Aliens’ .......................................................................................................... 19
Link – Heg ................................................................................................................................... 20
Link – Heg ................................................................................................................................... 21
Link – Multiculturalism ............................................................................................................. 22
Impact -- Racism ......................................................................................................................... 23
Impact – Extinction..................................................................................................................... 24
Impact – Nuclear War ................................................................................................................ 25
Impact – War............................................................................................................................... 26
Alt Solves Immigration ............................................................................................................... 27
Alt Solves Immigration ............................................................................................................... 28
Alt Solves – Moral Obligation.................................................................................................... 29
AT Cap Inevitable ....................................................................................................................... 31
Alternative – Solvency ................................................................................................................ 32
Alternative – Solvency ................................................................................................................ 33
Alternative – Solvency ................................................................................................................ 34
AT: Framework 1/2 .................................................................................................................... 35
AT: Framework 2/2 .................................................................................................................... 36
ADI 10 2
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Aff Answers
Visas Key to Cap ......................................................................................................................... 37
Aff Perm....................................................................................................................................... 38
Aff Perm....................................................................................................................................... 39
Cap Inevitable ............................................................................................................................. 40
Reform Good ............................................................................................................................... 41
Reform Good ............................................................................................................................... 42
Alternative Doesn’t Solve – General ......................................................................................... 43
Cap Good – Genocide ................................................................................................................. 44
Cap Good – Terrorism ............................................................................................................... 46
Cap Good – War ......................................................................................................................... 47
Cap Good – AT: Cap Imperialism/War .............................................................................. 48
ADI 10 3
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Capitalism 1nc
Civic benefits, educational opportunities, and citizenship are used to sustain sovereignty
and capital control.
Maira, Associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis, 8
Sunaina Maira, , “Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire: South Asian Muslim Youth in Post-9/11 America”
American Quarterly, Volume 60, Number 3, September 2008, Project Muse
Ong argues that the flexibility of state sovereignty allows it to use the logic of “exception to create new
economic possibilities, spaces, and techniques for governing the population,” and “the neoliberal
exception thus pries open the seam of sovereignty and citizenship, generating successive degrees of
insecurity for low-skilled citizens and migrants who will have to look beyond the state for the
safeguarding of their rights.”19 Ong extended her work on flexible citizenship to develop the concept of
“latitudinal citizenship,” embedded in “horizontal spaces of market rights” and emerging from ethnic
networks and [End Page 704] labor relations that span national borders under neoliberal capitalism,
tying together an analysis of Asian American communities and global capitalism.20 Flexible citizenship
does not only resist or only serve global capitalism but often manages to do both, as illustrated by the
stories of the youth above and their transnational family networks. They migrated to the United States
with their families to try to avail themselves of perceived economic and educational opportunities but
ended up as low-wage workers in the service sector—with the exception of Ismail, whose family was
slightly more affluent and educated, but whose aspirations to transnational entrepreneurship were still a
distant vision. There has been a “globalization” and “flexibilization” of citizenship with the increasing
flows of people and capital across national borders, but this has not led to greater flexibility of rights
for all.21 South Asian Muslim immigrant youth understood that their transnational vision for mobility
and collective advancement, as well as re-creation of family ties, was necessarily linked to formal
citizenship and legal belonging in the nation-state. Nasreen’s family was one of several that had been
divided by immigration regulations of entry and citizenship and so all these immigrant youth acknowledged
the importance of nation-state membership in defining who could travel, work, or vote. About half of these
immigrant youth had green cards already; the remaining were a mix of citizens and undocumented
immigrants. Nearly all of them desired a U.S. passport because of what they perceived as economic and
civic benefits, including the right to vote. For example, Nasreen said that she wanted to take advantage of
federal financial aid for college, and several said that they wanted to be able to travel freely between the
United States and South Asia, to be mobile in work and family life. After 9/11, of course, naturalization
seemed to become less a matter of choice for immigrants—particularly Muslim, South Asian, and Arab
Americans—than a hoped-for shield against the abuses of civil rights, which Nasreen worried were being
eroded even for U.S. citizens. In fact, students such as Ismail were surprised that I had not obtained
citizenship yet in the fall of 2001 and wanted to know why it had taken me so long to obtain the vital
documents. I had to explain that by the time my own parents became naturalized and could sponsor me for a
green card, I had already advanced into the “adult children over twenty-one” category that was a low priority
for permanent residency; I was still waiting for U.S. citizenship, which I had decided to apply for only after
9/11. This reflexive discussion of citizenship momentarily shifted my relationship with these young
immigrants, as they perceived themselves to have advanced a small [End Page 705] step further on the legal
road to official belonging to the state, and worried about my own vulnerability.
ADI 10 4
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Capitalism 1nc
The process of citizenship is masked in capital control and is a banner for US imperialism
Maira, Associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis, 8
Sunaina Maira, , “Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire: South Asian Muslim Youth in Post-9/11 America”
American Quarterly, Volume 60, Number 3, September 2008, Project Muse
The ideologies and practices of flexible citizenship are in dialectical relationship with those of what I
call “flexible empire”—the imperial regimes of governmentality that regulate bodies and ideas of
belonging, excluding certain subjects who are deemed undeserving of rights under national or
international law due to the threat they pose to Western “civilization” or “our way of life.” One of the
arguments I make in the larger project is that U.S. empire is itself characterized by flexibility and secrecy in
its political and military interventions; it is historically based on indirect rather than direct territorial control,
relying on covert operations, proxy wars, and client states. The ambiguity of this “flexible empire” has
contributed to the collective denial of U.S. imperial power that is being challenged by a new generation
of theorists of U.S. empire, building on earlier work on this peculiar form of “imperialism without
colonies.”52 Amy Kaplan points out that the U.S. brand of imperialism led to the creation of new
designations of overseas territories, under varying degrees of U.S. control, and new categories of
persons and citizens serving imperial interests while obscuring the nature of U.S. imperialism. 53 This
process has continued to the present day and is illustrated by the contradictory national space
occupied by Guantánamo Bay, neither fully under Cuban or U.S. sovereignty but clearly under U.S.
control, and ambiguous designations of “enemy combatants” not entitled to the legal rights of the
Geneva Convention.
ADI 10 5
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Capitalism 1nc
Impact: Capitalist logic justifies hegemonic expansion promoting aggressive instability
resulting in nuclear war, environmental destruction, and planetary collapse
Foster, Oregon University Department of Sociology Professor, 05
(John B., Monthly Review, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0905jbf.htm,)
From the longer view offered by a historical-materialist critique of capitalism, the direction that would be
taken by U.S. imperialism following the fall of the Soviet Union was never in doubt. Capitalism by its very
logic is a globally expansive system. The contradiction between its transnational economic aspirations and
the fact that politically it remains rooted in particular nation states is insurmountable for the system. Yet, ill-
fated attempts by individual states to overcome this contradiction are just as much a part of its fundamental
logic. In present world circumstances, when one capitalist state has a virtual monopoly of the means of
destruction, the temptation for that state to attempt to seize full-spectrum dominance and to transform
itself into the de facto global state governing the world economy is irresistible. As the noted Marxian
philosopher István Mészáros observed in Socialism or Barbarism? (2001)—written, significantly, before
George W. Bush became president: “What is at stake today is not the control of a particular part of the
planet—no matter how large—putting at a disadvantage but still tolerating the independent actions of some
rivals, but the control of its totality by one hegemonic economic and military superpower, with all
means—even the most extreme authoritarian and, if needed, violent military ones—at its disposal.”The
unprecedented dangers of this new global disorder are revealed in the twin cataclysms to which the
world is heading at present: nuclear proliferation and hence increased chances of the outbreak of nuclear
war, and planetary ecological destruction. These are symbolized by the Bush administration’s refusal to
sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to limit nuclear weapons development and by its failure to sign the
Kyoto Protocol as a first step in controlling global warming. As former U.S. Secretary of Defense (in the
Kennedy and Johnson administrations) Robert McNamara stated in an article entitled “Apocalypse Soon” in
the May–June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy: “The United States has never endorsed the policy of ‘no first
use,’ not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been and remain prepared to initiate the use
of nuclear weapons—by the decision of one person, the president—against either a nuclear or nonnuclear
enemy whenever we believe it is in our interest to do so.” The nation with the greatest conventional
military force and the willingness to use it unilaterally to enlarge its global power is also the nation
with the greatest nuclear force and the readiness to use it whenever it sees fit—setting the whole world
on edge. The nation that contributes more to carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming than
any other (representing approximately a quarter of the world’s total) has become the greatest obstacle to
addressing global warming and the world’s growing environmental problems—raising the possibility
of the collapse of civilization itself if present trends continue. The United States is seeking to exercise
sovereign authority over the planet during a time of widening global crisis: economic stagnation,
increasing polarization between the global rich and the global poor, weakening U.S. economic
hegemony, growing nuclear threats, and deepening ecological decline. The result is a heightening of
international instability. Other potential forces are emerging in the world, such as the European Community
and China, that could eventually challenge U.S. power, regionally and even globally. Third world
revolutions, far from ceasing, are beginning to gain momentum again, symbolized by Venezuela’s Bolivarian
Revolution under Hugo Chávez. U.S. attempts to tighten its imperial grip on the Middle East and its oil
have had to cope with a fierce, seemingly unstoppable, Iraqi resistance, generating conditions of
imperial overstretch. With the United States brandishing its nuclear arsenal and refusing to support
international agreements on the control of such weapons, nuclear proliferation is continuing. New nations,
such as North Korea, are entering or can be expected soon to enter the “nuclear club.” Terrorist
blowback from imperialist wars in the third world is now a well-recognized reality, generating rising
fear of further terrorist attacks in New York, London, and elsewhere. Such vast and overlapping historical
contradictions, rooted in the combined and uneven development of the global capitalist economy along
with the U.S. drive for planetary domination, foreshadow what is potentially the most dangerous
period in the history of imperialism.
ADI 10 6
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Capitalism 1nc
Our alternative-vote neg- Capitalism is immoral you have to reject it universally-this is the
only strategy for breaking free
Herod in 04, author of several books on capitalism and social activist since 1968
James Herod author of several books on capitalism and social activist since 1968 Getting Free 2004
http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/06.htm
It is time to try to describe, at first abstractly and later concretely, a strategy for destroying capitalism. This
strategy, at its most basic, calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and
putting them into building a new civilization. The image then is one of emptying out capitalist
structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning out of them until there is
nothing left but shells. This is definitely an aggressive strategy. It requires great militancy, and
constitutes an attack on the existing order. The strategy clearly recognizes that capitalism is the enemy
and must be destroyed, but it is not a frontal attack aimed at overthrowing the system, but an inside
attack aimed at gutting it, while simultaneously replacing it with something better, something we want.
Thus capitalist structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools, etc.) are not seized so much as
simply abandoned. Capitalist relations are not fought so much as they are simply rejected. We stop
participating in activities that support (finance, condone) the capitalist world and start participating in
activities that build a new world while simultaneously undermining the old. We create a new pattern of
social relations alongside capitalist relations and then we continually build and strengthen our new
pattern while doing every thing we can to weaken capitalist relations. In this way our new democratic,
non-hierarchical, non-commodified relations can eventually overwhelm the capitalist relations and
force them out of existence. This is how it has to be done. This is a plausible, realistic strategy. To think
that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis,
during a so-called revolution, or during the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new social world must
grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist
relations. Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinably, because of the
inexorable, materialist laws of history. It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and
because we know what we’re doing and know how we want to live, and know what obstacles have to be
overcome before we can live that way, and know how to distinguish between our social patterns and
theirs. But we must not think that the capitalist world can simply be ignored, in a live and let live attitude, while we try to build new lives elsewhere.
(There is no elsewhere.) There is at least one thing, wage-slavery, that we can’t imply stop participating in (but even here there are ways we can chip away
Capitalism must be explicitly refused and replaced by something else. This constitutes War, but it
at it).
is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and tanks, but a war fought on a daily basis, on the level
of everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless because the accumulators of capital will
use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block any rejection
of the system. They have always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so.
Nevertheless, there are many concrete ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods can gut
capitalism, which I will enumerate shortly. We must always keep in mind how we became slaves; then we
can see more clearly how we can cease being slaves. We were forced into wage-slavery because the ruling
class slowly, systematically, and brutally destroyed our ability to live autonomously. By driving us off the
land, changing the property laws, destroying community rights, destroying our tools, imposing taxes,
destroying our local markets, and so forth, we were forced onto the labor market in order to survive,
our only remaining option being to sell, for a wage, our ability to work. It’s quite clear then how we can
overthrow slavery. We must reverse this process. We must begin to reacquire the ability to live without
working for a wage or buying the products made by wage-slaves (that is, we must get free from the labor
market and the way of living based on it), and embed ourselves instead in cooperative labor and
cooperatively produced goods. Another clarification is needed. This strategy does not call for reforming
capitalism, for changing capitalism into something else. It calls for replacing capitalism, totally, with a
new civilization. This is an important distinction, because capitalism has proved impervious to reforms, as
a system. We can sometimes in some places win certain concessions from it (usually only temporary ones)
and win some (usually short-lived) improvements in our lives as its victims, but we cannot reform it
piecemeal, as a system. Thus our strategy of gutting and eventually destroying capitalism requires at a
minimum a totalizing image, an awareness that we are attacking an entire way of life and replacing it
with another, and not merely reforming one way of life into something else.
(CONTINUED NO TEXT DELETED)
(Herod continued no text deleted)
ADI 10 7
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Many people may not be accustomed to thinking about entire systems and social orders, but everyone knows
what a lifestyle is, or a way of life, and that is the way we should approach it. The thing is this: in order for
capitalism to be destroyed millions and millions of people must be dissatisfied with their way of life.
They must want something else and see certain existing things as obstacles to getting what they want. It
is not useful to think of this as a new ideology. It is not merely a belief-system that is needed, like a religion,
or like Marxism, or Anarchism. Rather it is a new prevailing vision, a dominant desire, an overriding need.
What must exist is a pressing desire to live a certain way, and not to live another way. If this pressing
desire were a desire to live free, to be autonomous, to live in democratically controlled communities, to
participate in the self-regulating activities of a mature people, then capitalism could be destroyed. Otherwise
we are doomed to perpetual slavery and possibly even to extinction. The content of this vision is actually
not new at all, but quite old. The long term goal of communists, anarchists, and socialists has always been
to restore community. Even the great peasant revolts of early capitalism sought to get free from external
authorities and restore autonomy to villages. Marx defined communism once as a free association of
producers, and at another time as a situation in which the free development of each is a condition for the
free development of all. Anarchists have always called for worker and peasant self-managed cooperatives.
The long term goals have always been clear: to abolish wage-slavery, to eradicate a social order
organized solely around the accumulation of capital for its own sake, and to establish in its place a
society of free people who democratically and cooperatively self-determine the shape of their social
world.
ADI 10 8
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Beneficiary Eligibility
Expanding beneficiary eligibility still assigns who is and who is not a citizen and therefore
dependent on wage labor
Payal Banerjee, assistant professor in sociology at Smith College, 10
Transnational Subcontracting, Indian IT Workers, and the U.S. Visa System, WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly,
Volume 38, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2010, Project Muse
An integrated network of companies located in the United States and India, which share a transnational
subcontracting relationship, operate as the executors of IT service needs for U.S. clients and also as the
employers of immigrant workers (Banerjee 2006). The state-legislated visa categories, on the other hand,
serve as the key institutional portal for sustaining the immensely convenient and profitable system of
flexible hiring critical for maintaining the viability of late capital. Through the organization of seemingly
benign visa categories, and the stipulations encoded in them for employing skilled immigrant workers, the
United States has participated in constructing a labor force that is flexible and exploitable. One of the
significant theoretical insights in this regard, and surely one that is critically pertinent to what
concerns us about how immigration and citizenship laws have historically been manipulated to
racialize and feminize Asian immigration in the United States, appears in the work of Chan (1991),
Espiritu (1997), Glenn (1986), and Takaki (1989), among others. The critical review of U.S. laws for
immigration, citizenship, and land ownership rights applied to immigrants presented in this literature
illustrates how the state has been involved in shaping the terms of Asian immigration in response to the
exigencies of capital and labor (see Calavita 1994; Chan 1991; Espiritu 1997; Hing 1993; Jensen 1988; Lowe
1996, 1998; Takaki 1989). These laws have had a tremendous impact on the socioeconomic and labor market
experiences of Asian immigrant communities. The Naturalization [End Page 93] Act of 1870; the Page Law
of 1875; the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the Scott’s Act of 1888; the Gentlemen’s Agreement of between
1907 and 1908; and the Alien Land Laws, passed in 1913, 1920, and 1923 are some examples of legislation
that denied the entitlement to citizenship, restricted employment rights and economic opportunities, and
reconfigured the occupational profiles of Asian immigrants (Chan 1991; Espiritu 1997; Lowe 1996). Like
previous immigration laws, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was partial to the labor needs
of the United States, given its emphasis on an occupational preference system for people in science and
engineering (Hing 1993). Through these laws, founded on race- and gender-based inequalities and
existing colonial relations, the state collaborated with the needs of capital by positioning Asians as
noncitizens, as without property, and as dependent on wage labor. This condition profoundly
influenced the terms and relations between Asian American labor and U.S. capital (Chan 1991; Hing
1993; Lowe 1996). Espiritu, for example, has shown how policies that restricted the entry of Asian women
into the United States and prevented family formation for Asian immigrants helped to ensure “greater
profitability from immigrants’ labor and to decrease the costs of reproduction—the expenses of housing,
feeding, clothing, and educating the workers’ dependents” and that “employers often excluded
‘nonproductive’ family members such as women and children” (1997, 17). The creation of communities of
single Asian men without families suited the demands of capital. Employers could justify paying
Asians low wages on the grounds that these workers did not have families to support in the United
States (Jensen 1988). Moreover, Asian men could be expected to relocate quickly or be fired during lean
production periods. These socially produced advantages constructed this group as an ideal workforce for
short-term and flexible employment (Glenn 1986; Takaki 1989). The denial of land and property rights also
prohibited class mobility for Asians, which further ensured their subordination and their position as wage
laborers dependent on employment. Further, the state ensured that one group of Asian immigrants could be
replaced by another, which virtually guaranteed an uninterrupted flow of disenfranchised, cheap labor
(Espiritu 1997; Lowe 1996).
ADI 10 9
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Beneficiary Eligibility
Visas are used to maintain capital logic
Payal Banerjee, assistant professor in sociology at Smith College, 10
Transnational Subcontracting, Indian IT Workers, and the U.S. Visa System, WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly,
Volume 38, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2010, Project Muse
The erstwhile Asian exclusion laws unequivocally demarcated immigrants’ entitlements in regard to
citizenship, property ownership, and family life and, as a consequence, had significant social and
economic impact on the [End Page 104] terms in which these immigrants could be employed for the
benefit of capital. Arguably, the subset of the U.S. immigration apparatus of the 1990s encoded within
the H-1B, B-1, and L-1 visas was not instituted with the explicit purpose of limiting immigrants’
entitlements or meant to apply specifically to any particular population. On the contrary, these visas, at
least ostensibly, seem to confer legitimacy on these individuals, as foreign workers or representatives of
foreign firms operating in the United States, and as noted in the case of the H-1B, for example, seem
intended to ensure access to fair wages based on market standards. Nevertheless, the effect of the visas
on the lived experiences of documented immigrant workers in the field of IT (typically immigrants of color
from the global South) compels one to not only question their supposedly abstract terms but also expose the
logic of exploitation and power imbalance inscribed, in racial and gendered terms, within the provisions of
the visas. The economic integration of immigrants of color in the United States has continued to depend on
immigrants’ vulnerability as undocumented workers. Hondagneu-Soleto has remarked: Three critical factors
distinguish undocumented immigrants and refugees from citizens and immigrants with legal status: an
outlawed presence, the criminalization of employment, and exclusion from social entitlements.
Undocumented immigrants are, first of all, denied the right to enter the nation-state legally. They enter
surreptitiously, crossing on foot at night or hidden in trucks, or on commercial jets using falsified
documents; or they may enter as authorized temporary legal status, on a tourist or student visa, and
then overstay visa extensions. Their existence within the national-political territory is outlawed, they live in
fear of detection, and in all public and bureaucratic settings, they must attempt to “pass” as legally authorized
persons. (1996, 105) This highlights the general pattern of how immigration status, mediated by the state’s
policies, is a primary source of vulnerability and exploitation. Increasingly, immigrants of color are being
incorporated into the economy, through the help of the state’s racializing and feminizing immigration laws,
as inexpensive, casualized, and flexible labor. Clearly, Indian IT workers are not undocumented workers and
are by no means subjected to the extreme threats and criminalization that working-class undocumented
workers routinely encounter. These differences notwith-standing, we must rethink how, despite
documented status, the demands of neoliberal capitalism and contemporary visa regimes produce
certain [End Page 105] deeply marginalized and vulnerable groups of immigrant workers and question
to what extent a “valid” visa status confers adequate protection and legitimacy.
ADI 10 10
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Queer Identity
Capitalism shapes the way in which queer identity operates – means the alt is prereq
Peter A. Jackson, PhD, is Senior Fellow in Thai History at the Australian National
University in Canberra, 9
“Capitalism and Global Queering National Markets, Parallels Among Sexual Cultures, and Multiple Queer
Modernities”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Volume 15, Number 3, 2009, Project Muse
While research on Asian queer cultures has critiqued “out of America” explanations of global queering, it
has nonetheless confirmed Altman’s contention that capitalism has played a central role in the
phenomenon. Indeed, market processes have been even more important in the proliferation of queer
cultures and identities than proposed by early researchers. Early global queering studies, including my
own, often presented a binary opposition between MTF transgenderism, imagined as a site of
persistent, premodern, precapitalist “tradition,” and gay forms of male homosexuality, represented as
a domain of transgressive, Western-influenced, commodified modernity.17 This is a view I have since
revised.18 Recent research reveals Asia’s contemporary gay, lesbian, and MTF transgender cultures all to be
[End Page 359] modern forms that differ from both Western queer cultures and the premodern gender and
sex cultures of their own societies. Boellstorff criticizes the emphasis on “tradition” in accounts of
transgenderism in Asia, observing that in the case of Indonesia, “although warias live in a postcolonial
nation-state, analyses often frame them in terms of locality, tradition, and ritual.” 19 The contrast between
modern “global gays” and putatively “traditional transgenders” overlooks the market’s role in the origins of
modern MTF transgender identities. My more recent research on Thai queer genders and sexualities reveals
that contemporary patterns of kathoey (male-to-female) transgenderism are just as different from premodern
forms as Thai gay sexualities, with Thailand’s kathoey cultures taking their current forms as a result of a
twentieth-century revolution in Thai gender norms.20
ADI 10 11
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – General Visas
Visas are used for profit maximization
Payal Banerjee, assistant professor in sociology at Smith College, 10
(Transnational Subcontracting, Indian IT Workers, and the U.S. Visa System, WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly,
Volume 38, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2010, Project Muse)
Given the visa-related life circumstances described in this essay, it becomes imperative to question the set
of relationships that the visas forge for these immigrants with regard to their employers, capital, and
the state. The intersection between the labor demands of a restructured global economy in neoliberal terms
and the various visa systems has created an immigrant labor-dependent subcontracting complex in the IT
industry, a system from which this sector in the United States benefits enormously. The visas appear to be
rather advantageous for the deployment of these foreign workers to clients for the purpose of
sustaining a flexible and fragmented employment regime on a transnational scale. The visas’ function
and applicability are most clearly articulated, however, when it comes to defining the workers’ relation
to their employers. The very same visas fail miserably when it comes to ensuring immigrants’ access to
vital necessities, among them health care and state-issued forms of ID such as driver’s licenses or Social
Security numbers, or for extending some measure of protection from the threat of losing visa status, abuse,
and virtual dependence on companies. It is quite clear that the visa status granted to these immigrant workers
seems to have most currency and credence within a narrowly defined sphere of employability and labor in
favor of capital’s exigencies. Outside this realm, these immigrants’ documented status as visa-holding
foreign nationals has inadequate social meaning and disjointed validity. The visas are able to define
and determine immigrants only as value-producing units and bearers of the many advantages of
flexible accumulation, but not as workers endowed with a wide range of entitlements. What is made
evident from the narratives is that the experiences of these immigrants represent a complex interplay
of their visas and the economic mandates of contemporary transnational capitalism. Hence, it becomes
vacuous to speak of the stipulations of these visas in their abstraction or of the binary between documented
and undocumented immigration status without taking into consideration the institutional context within
which these visas are deployed and endowed with meaning. The institutional context of flexible
accumulation for profit maximization has come to rely on these visas to obtain labor on its own terms,
precisely because the visas can engender and sustain the circumstances that are necessary to make
members of this labor force, like their earlier [End Page 107] cohorts, available as a group of
dependent, tractable, mobile, and self-motivated employees willing to work with, and within, the
demands of flexible employment. The fact that the visas have come to discipline immigrants exposes
how capital’s reliance on these state-legislated documents is predicated on the possibilities of racial and
gendered exploitation and manipulation encoded within the visas.
ADI 10 12
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Reform
The only way to solve their aff is through the rejection of capitalism
Hayduk, NYC University Borough of Manhattan Community College political science
instructor, & Jones, Long Island University at Brooklyn undergraduate social work
program Coordinator and Assistant Professor, 08
(Ron and Susana, Socialism and Democracy, “Immigrants and Race in the US: Are Class-Based Alliances
Possible?”, November 2008, accessed 7/11/09, Proquest,)
Immigrant progress cannot be made on the backs of blacks (or workers). Otherwise, we will end up
reinforcing the subjugation of people of color by the white ruling class. Fighting for immigrant rights
means also fighting against the corporate capitalist class. Business and Bush have been "pro-
immigrant" for good reasons they want a particular brand of immigrant policy that provides a pool of
cheap, abundant, and pliable labor. Of course, they also seek high-tech workers, teachers, physicians, and
nurses, among others, who fit in the racial and class division of labor above blacks and other native workers.
Clearly, workers of all stripes have an interest in fighting against such policies. Thus, we argue, immigrant
rights without worker rights is a formula for disaster.15
Similarly, blacks have a stake in the emancipation of immigrants, particularly the undocumented. As David
Bacon (2007: 66) observes, "inequality is the most important product of US immigration policy, and a
conscious one." Essentially, US immigration policy is based on capital's need for a reserve army of
cheap labor. Predictably, it reproduces inequalities and spreads the pain. Immigrants - especially the
undocumented - do not have equal rights. As with practices rooted in slavery and the Black Codes, making
someone "illegal" justifies exclusion and subordination. Weekly government raids on the undocumented,
resulting in mass incarceration and deportations, assure that the state of terror remains unbroken
(Chacon and Davis 2006). Equity as a goal in itself can foster common ground, as can the goal of secure
jobs at a living wage, and rights in workplaces and communities. Successful struggles for these goals
require political unity among diverse constituencies.
ADI 10 13
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Reform
Immigration reform masks root of capitalist inequalities that produce racial discrimination
as form of labor class divide
Hayduk, NYC University Borough of Manhattan Community College political science
instructor, & Jones, Long Island University at Brooklyn undergraduate social work
program Coordinator and Assistant Professor, 08
(Ron and Susana, Socialism and Democracy, “Immigrants and Race in the US: Are Class-Based Alliances
Possible?”, November 2008, accessed 7/11/09, Proquest, )
How can the American Left help resolve the social and economic conflict between immigrants and blacks
and advance a progressive agenda? Many proposals have been put forth, ranging from open borders, to
increasing worker rights, to engaging in direct action. While each of them makes a contribution in its
own right, they are incomplete. Each is a necessary but insufficient response to the economic, political,
and racial inequities experienced by immigrants and blacks. If we heed the call by some to focus
attention on providing jobs at a living wage for African Americans, reducing discrimination in
housing, and the like but fail to challenge policies that deny immigrants access to basic rights, we would
get only part of the way toward achieving a progressive outcome. Similarly, if we work to organize
immigrants into unions, expand worker centers, and increase immigrant wages and labor rights - but
leave structural racism intact - we would only complete part of the necessary work. There are
shortcomings to both approaches. The former presupposes scarcity of jobs and resources, a "zero sum
game." The latter keeps systems intact and does not challenge racial inequities.
Taken together, however, these approaches constitute a more comprehensive response to resolve the
discrimination and oppression faced by both groups. Immigration, racism, and labor issues must be tackled
together. First, we call for redistributive justice. Reparations, a progressive tax structure, and a reallocation of
war funding - where nearly two trillion has gone to Iraq alone - (along with a reorientation of US foreign
policy), would go a long way to build a more equitable society. Second, we need government accountability
to build a truly democratic society. Government that is responsive to working-class interests would produce
jobs at living wages, rebuild infrastructure and build sorely needed public goods, such as quality and
affordable housing, healthcare clinics and hospitals, schools, etc. Radical democratic governance able to meet
human needs would thereby mitigate tensions between immigrants and the native born working class. Third,
in conjunction with a jobs program, a comprehensive guaranteed income program is needed. Such a program
presupposes an unconditional entitlement grounded in a rights-based philosophy; it "belongs in the same
league as the abolition of slavery or the introduction of universal suffrage" (Van Parijs 1992: 7). In
conjunction with a full employment livingwage jobs program, it would create upward pressure on wages and
help dampen competition among people of color. Immigration reform is not a merely liberal project.
Current US policy is rife with contradictions. US neoliberal trade policies (GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA,
CAA, etc.) support the free movement of capital across borders, which contributes to the
commercialization of land and has spurred the largest wave of migration from rural areas to cities and
from country to country in human history. At the same time, US immigration policy restricts the
number of foreign workers admitted contingent upon capital's need for low-wage labor ("guest
workers," a reserve army of the super-exploited). Draconian measures restrict rights and benefits or at
times deny them outright and criminalize those who arrive illegally or overstay their visa. Exposing these
contradictions - and capital's hand in shaping these policies - can provide the grounding for a working-
class strategy that would transcend internal divisions.
ADI 10 14
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – H1B Visa
The H-1 B Visa is a neoliberal creation caught up in the ethic of privatization
Lasker, freelance journalist from Columbus Ohio freelance journalist from Ohio. He has
written for Wired, Christian Science Monitor, Agence France-Press and the Buffalo News,
9
John Lasker, freelance journalist from Ohio. He has written for Wired, Christian Science Monitor, Agence France-
Press and the Buffalo News, “How Tech Giants Outsource Labor on American Soil”,
http://www.towardfreedom.com/labor/1803-how-tech-giants-outsource-labor-on-american-soil
In this case, corporate power, channeled through high-paid lobbyists and fat campaign contributions,
strong-armed elected officials into passing laws that surreptitiously squash the labor rights of both US
citizens and foreign workers alike. How these IT companies got away with this begins with a US visa
named the H-1b. The visa was created in the early 1990s so US companies could hire foreign nationals
with college degrees for up to six years of service. Foreigners began to apply en masse, and now, nearly
two decades later, 600,000 are working in the country via the H-1b. According to Gene A. Nelson, who
wrote An American Scam: How Special Interests Undermine National Security with Endless 'Techie' Gluts, it was
Microsoft founder Bill Gates who pushed and paid Washington the greatest to pass the H-1b visa law.
Gates accomplished this by perpetuating a myth that America was facing a looming shortage of IT
pros, scientists and engineers. Gates' myth, states Nelson, earned Microsoft an extra $73 billion in
profits between 1991 to 2005. Nearly all Microsoft H-1bs are paid a salary that's far below the
prevailing wage for their position and skill. Some critics estimate that out of the 600,000 H-1bs in the
US, a third are being used by IT companies for cheap labor. "The H-1b benefits many of the economic
elite at the expense of the middle class," wrote Nelson. "The resultant labor gluts (caused by the H-1b)
depresses wages and benefits, enhancing employer profitability." Essentially, the H-1b visa is another
corporate-government neoliberal creation to undermine the wages and rights of the working class,
both citizen and non-citizen alike. In the end, it's not an issue of foreign workers taking Americans'
jobs, but of corporations being allowed to undercut the workforce by pressuring the government into
applying policies that hurt workers for the benefit of the corporate elite. According to the National Science
Foundation, over 600,000 science and engineering degrees are granted annually by American universities. Yet the US
produces only 120,000 science and engineering jobs per year, and much less of late. Now add those numbers to the
annual influx of 85,000 H-1bs (the annual allowed cap) and the NSF believes half a million Americans are losing their
jobs to cheap foreign technical labor, while another half million Americans waste their science and engineering degrees.
ADI 10 15
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – K of Borders
Criticism of globalization/borders/discourse tradeoff with how immigration visas are
powerfully controlled under the system of capital
Maira, Associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis, 8
Sunaina Maira, , “Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire: South Asian Muslim Youth in Post-9/11 America”
American Quarterly, Volume 60, Number 3, September 2008, Project Muse
While not all the youth in this study were engaged in institutionalized transnational practices involving
business or organizational ties, they felt [End Page 713] the power of the state to limit their mobility
across national borders and to interrogate their national allegiances, and also experienced the anxiety
felt by their families and community as their businesses and immigration histories come under state
scrutiny. Flexibility, then, is always in tension with control, and it is a strategy that is in practice constrained
by the state and by ideologies of who can and cannot move or waver. Doreen Massey describes this as “the
power-geometry of time-space compression” in globalization, which shapes not just “differentiated
mobility,” but also which groups initiate, or are altered or imprisoned by, flows of capital and labor. 46
Much has been said in the academic literature, and also in popular discourse on globalization, about
the movement of bodies, commodities, capital, and images that is part of a “transnational” world. 47 But
these discourses sometimes underemphasize how this movement and crossing of national spaces is also
powerfully controlled, and coercive, especially as flexible labor is used to discipline and exploit
immigrant workers. Ong’s recent work on immigrant labor in the Silicon Valley suggests that there is
a “splintering of cosmopolitan privilege” for low-wage or undocumented workers, as well as Indian
“technomigrants” on H1-B visas who are “semi-indentured” through insecure contracts. Some
migrants clearly enjoy the rights and privileges of sovereign subjects more than others.48
ADI 10 16
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Race
Race oppression is used by capital to ideologically justify economic exploitation.
Young, worked in the website development and optimization industry since 2002, Rob is an
expert internet guru. His experience has ranged from account management, to content
writing, to design, to marketing, to coaching management, and website ownership, 06
(Robert, Red Critique, “Putting Materialism Back into Race Theory,” Winter/Spring,
http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm)
This essay advances a materialist theory of race. In my view, race oppression dialectically intersects with
the exploitative logic of advanced capitalism, a regime which deploys race in the interest of surplus
accumulation. Thus, race operates at the (economic) base and therefore produces cultural and
ideological effects at the superstructure; in turn, these effects—in very historically specific way—
interact with and ideologically justify the operations at the economic base [1]. In a sense then, race
encodes the totality of contemporary capitalist social relations, which is why race cuts across a range of
seemingly disparate social sites in contemporary US society. For instance, one can mark race difference
and its discriminatory effects in such diverse sites as health care, housing/real estate, education, law,
job market, and many other social sites. However, unlike many commentators who engage race matters,
I do not isolate these social sites and view race as a local problem, which would lead to reformist
measures along the lines of either legal reform or a cultural-ideological battle to win the hearts and
minds of people and thus keep the existing socio-economic arrangements intact; instead, I foreground
the relationality of these sites within the exchange mechanism of multinational capitalism.
Consequently, I believe, the eradication of race oppression also requires a totalizing political project:
the transformation of existing capitalism—a system which produces difference (the racial/gender
division of labor) and accompanying ideological narratives that justify the resulting social inequality.
Hence, my project articulates a transformative theory of race—a theory that reclaims revolutionary
class politics in the interests of contributing toward a post-racist society. In other words, the
transformation from actually existing capitalism into socialism constitutes the condition of possibility
for a post-racist society—a society free from racial and all other forms of oppression. By freedom, I do not
simply mean a legal or cultural articulation of individual rights as proposed by bourgeois race theorists.
Instead, I theorize freedom as a material effect of emancipated economic forms.
I foreground my (materialist) understanding of race as a way to contest contemporary accounts of race,
which erase any determinate connection to economics. For instance, humanism and poststructuralism
represent two dominant views on race in the contemporary academy. Even though they articulate very
different theoretical positions, they produce similar ideological effects: the suppression of economics. They
collude in redirecting attention away from the logic of capitalist exploitation and point us to the
cultural questions of sameness (humanism) or difference (poststructuralism). In developing my project, I
critique the ideological assumptions of some exemplary instances of humanist and poststructuralist accounts
of race, especially those accounts that also attempt to displace Marxism, and, in doing so, I foreground the
historically determinate link between race and exploitation. It is this link that forms the core of what I am
calling a transformative theory of race. The transformation of race from a sign of exploitation to one of
democratic multiculturalism, ultimately, requires the transformation of capitalism.
ADI 10 17
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Whiteness/Cultural Race
A focus on whiteness or cultural identity discourses trades off with the material oppression
that capitalism has caused to produce racism.
Koshy, assistant professor in the Asian American Studies Department at the University of
California, 1
Susan Koshy, “Morphing Race into Ethnicity: Asian Americans and Critical Transformations of Whiteness”, Duke
University Press, Project Muse
Whiteness studies has focused primarily on the historical emergence of liminal European groups (the Irish
and southern and eastern Europeans) [End Page 153] as whites over the last century and a half and on the
mutually constitutive nature of whiteness and blackness in the construction of American national identity.
Central to the project of whiteness studies in both areas has been the effort to reveal the status of
whiteness as an unmarked marker and to expose its historical contingency as a racial category.1 Other
minority groups have figured only tangentially in the historiography and sociology of whiteness, thereby
entrenching the black-white binary as the defining paradigm of racial formation in the United States. This
essay focuses on how Asian Americans produced, and were in turn produced by, whiteness
frameworks of the U.S. legal system. In doing so, it opens up a new area of investigation in whiteness
studies and critiques the reliance on a black-white model of race relations, which has obscured the
complex reconfigurations of racial politics over the last century. Furthermore, the theoretical
simplifications of the black-white binary have impeded the articulation of strategies adequate to confronting
the significant racial and class-based realignments of the post–civil rights era. These recent shifts have
enabled the reconstitution of white privilege as color-blind meritocracy through the consent of new
immigrant groups and model minorities, and have legitimized the retrenchment of civil rights gains in the
name of the new global economy. The rearticulation of whiteness in the era of global capitalism
highlights another important paradigmatic constraint within whiteness studies, namely, the reliance on
the analytic framework of the nation-state for understanding the shifting meanings of whiteness. But
the erosion of civil rights gains cannot be fully understood apart from the emergence of a global
economy under U.S. geopolitical supremacy in the 1970s, a connection that seems to have been largely
overlooked so far. Studies of whiteness that are limited to a nation-state model are unable to address the
ways in which global capital has used, modified, and infiltrated racial meanings in the contemporary context.
No materialist analysis of racial formation can afford to ignore the implications of the transatlantic
and transpacific integration of capital circuits [End Page 154] during what Marxist critics have
identified as the fourth epochal stage of capitalism, in the progression from mercantile to industrial to
monopoly to global capitalism. Asian Americans (of whom approximately 65 percent are foreign-born)
have been a crucial conduit for and a site of the reconfiguration of racial identities. By offering a Foucauldian
analysis of the productivity of whiteness in shaping the meanings of Asian American identities and in
creating stratifications within the Asian American grouping and across minority groups, I hope to foreground
the need for developing conceptions of agency that account for complicity and resistance within this
intermediary racial group.
ADI 10 18
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Family Based Visas
“Family values” are used to sustain demands of the market and increase wage labor.
Maira, Associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis, 8
Sunaina Maira, , “Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire: South Asian Muslim Youth in Post-9/11 America”
American Quarterly, Volume 60, Number 3, September 2008, Project Muse
It is ironic that South Asian immigrants, and Asian Americans more generally, are held up in the
United States as “model minority” citizens who embody traditional “family values,” presumably
promoting stable family units with two parents. Yet one could also view these immigrants as the model
citizens of global capitalism who are willing to scatter family members across the globe and separate
parents from their children. These are the actual “family values” [End Page 706] that the globalized free
market engenders, even as “broken families” are paradoxically denounced by conservatives, for
immigrants rely on transnational family networks created through chain migration and the pursuit of
flexible citizenship. There are other, complex shifts in “cultural values” that the often reductionist debate
about immigration and immigrant cultures in the United States fails to note. For example, Ismail spoke of
how the pressure of trying to juggle school and work gave him little time to socialize with other South Asian
friends, let alone participate in cultural events such as “traditional” folk dances. An Indian girl, Zeenat, spoke
of the difficulties of learning what it meant to work outside the home, which she did not have to do in India;
she noted a shift in gender roles in an immigrant community in which middleclass women may not
have traditionally worked for wage labor outside the home—although this is changing in India—and
where it is now common for immigrant girls and women to work because of economic pressures in the
United States. This is an example of how “tradition” in South Asian Muslim immigrant communities,
which are perceived as conservative or unchanging, is actually flexible in arenas linked to work and
citizenship, challenging Orientalist discourses about “immigrant traditions” or “Muslim cultures” as
somehow outside of the influence of global capital and media. Cultural practices and ideals are
enmeshed with the demands of neoliberal globalization, for transnational labor networks and ethnic
ties draw these immigrant youth and families into what Aihwa Ong calls “lateral spaces or latitudes,”
spanning national borders that promote ethnicization, but also a persistent self-disciplining and
flexibility in response to the demands of the market.
ADI 10 19
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Education/‘Aliens’
Education is used to increase competitiveness under an extensive labor market and the
rhetoric of illegality marks those unable to be productive in a consumer economy
Maira, Associate professor of Asian American studies at UC Davis, 8
Sunaina Maira, , “Flexible Citizenship/Flexible Empire: South Asian Muslim Youth in Post-9/11 America”
American Quarterly, Volume 60, Number 3, September 2008, Project Muse
Second, flexible citizenship is necessarily intertwined with labor and education, issues that are
interrelated for working-class, immigrant youth. Work on Muslim immigrant youth, however, has
generally privileged religious and cultural identities but underemphasized the role of labor.
Understanding the particular position of different groups of South Asian Muslim immigrant youth in
the labor market and neoliberal economy is important for analyzing the processes that have
constructed South Asian, Muslim, or Arab Americans, especially undocumented and working-class
immigrants, as targets of detention and deportation after 9/11. The assumption that certain groups are
“aliens” [End Page 709] who can be expelled from the nation emerges from processes that are cultural
and political as well as economic, and that extend well before the events of 2001. Mae Ngai and others,
for example, have shown how the historical need for cheap Mexican labor in the Southwest made
“illegality” constitutive of a “racialized Mexican identity” that was considered outside of the national
polity, based on cultural and national factors central to modern racism and definitions of national
identity
ADI 10 20
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Heg
US hegemony is a tool to sustain capitalist growth through endless genocidal wars
Meszaros, Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sussex, 7
(Professor Emeritus(Istvan Meszaros, Hungarian Marxist philosopher and Professor Emeritus at U. Sussex. “The
Only Viable Economy,” Monthly Review, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0407meszaros.htm)
The quixotic advocacy of freezing production at the level attained in the early 1970s was trying to
camouflage, with vacuous pseudo-scientific model-mongering pioneered at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, the ruthlessly enforced actual power relations of U.S. dominated postwar imperialism. That
variety of imperialism was, of course, very different from its earlier form known to Lenin. For in Lenin's
lifetime at least half a dozen significant imperialist powers were competing for the rewards of their real
and/or hoped for conquests. And even in the 1930s Hitler was still willing to share the fruits of violently
redefined imperialism with Japan and Mussolini's Italy. 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 on
a long-term basis.
ADI 10 21
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Heg
The only solution to capitalist hegemony is socialist hegemony- where our relationship to
production is qualitatively different. Only way for sustainable growth
Meszaros, Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sussex, 7
(Professor Emeritus(Istvan Meszaros, Hungarian Marxist philosopher and Professor Emeritus at U. Sussex. “The
Only Viable Economy,” Monthly Review, http://www.monthlyreview.org/0407meszaros.htm)
The nightmare of the "stationary state" remains a nightmare even if one tries to alleviate it, as John Stuart
Mill proposed, through the illusory remedy of "better distribution" taken in isolation. There can be no
such thing as "better distribution" without a radical restructuring of the production process itself.
The socialist hegemonic alternative to the rule of capital requires fundamentally overcoming the
truncated dialectic in the vital interrelationship of production, distribution, and consumption. For
without that, the socialist aim of turning work into "life's prime want" is inconceivable. To quote
Marx: In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the
division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after
labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces
have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative
wealth flow more abundantly -- only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed
in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to
his needs!15 These are the overall targets of socialist transformation, providing the compass of the journey
and simultaneously also the measure of the achievements accomplished (or failed to be accomplished) on the
way. Within such a vision of the hegemonic alternative to capital's social reproductive order there can
be no room at all for anything like "the stationary state," nor for any of the false alternatives
associated with or derived from it." The all-round development of the individuals," consciously
exercising the full resources of their disposable time, within the framework of the new social metabolic
control oriented toward the production of "co-operative wealth," is meant to provide the basis of a
qualitatively different accountancy: the necessary socialist accountancy, defined by human need and
diametrically opposed to fetishistic quantification and to the concomitant unavoidable waste. This is
why the vital importance of growth of a sustainable kind can be recognized and successfully managed
in the alternative social metabolic framework. Such an alternative order of social metabolic control
would be one where the antithesis between mental and physical labor -- always vital for maintaining
the absolute domination over labor by capital as the usurper of the role of the controlling historical
subject -- must vanish for good. Consequently, consciously pursued productivity itself can be elevated
to a qualitatively higher level, without any danger of uncontrollable waste, bringing forth genuine -- and
not narrowly profit-oriented material -- wealth of which the "rich social individuals" (Marx), as autonomous
historical subjects (and rich precisely in that sense) are fully in control.
ADI 10 22
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Link – Multiculturalism
Their calls of equality under the democratic system are false democracy reinforces the
binaries that capitalism created by only including those who are of the social class to
participate the exclude have not vote in the democracy and are extorted
Zizek, University of Ljubljana, 04
Slavoj, Žižek, Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, 2004 Appendix I: canis a non canendo,
iraq the borrowed kettle pg.86-87
However, are things really that simple? First, direct democracy is not only still alive in
many places, such as the favelas , it is even being 'reinvented' and given a new boost by the
rise the 'postindustrial' digital culture (do not the descriptions of the new `tribal'
communities of computer-hackers often evoke the logic of conciliarly democracy?).
Secondly, the awareness that politics is a complex game in which a certain level of
institutional alienation is irreducible should not lead us to ignore the fact that there is still a
line of separation which divides those who are 'in' from those who are 'out', excluded from
the space of the polis — there are citizens, and then there is the spectre of the excluded
homo sacer haunting them all. In other words, even 'complex' contemporary societies still
rely on the basic divide between included and excluded. The fashionable notion of the
'multitude' is insufficient precisely in so far as it cuts across this divide: there is a multitude
within the system and a multitude of those excluded, and simply to encompass them both within
the scope of the same notion amounts to the same obscenity as equating starvation with dieting. The
excluded do not simply dwell in a psychotic non-structured Outside: they have (and are
forced into) their own self-organization (or, rather, they are forced into organizing
themselves) — and one of the names (and practices) of this self-or organization was
precisely 'conciliary democracy).
Capitalism needs multiculturalism – allowing different lifestyles to develop is key to
globalized capital
Zizek, University of Ljubljana, 08
slovajo Zizek, Slovene sociologist, philosopher, and cultural critic, 2008 IJŽS Vol 2.0 (2008),"If God doesn’t exist,
everything is prohibited”, page 3, 2008
What is the conclusion then? There’s no conflict between multiculturalism and global capitalism? Or – to say
it in Stalin’s language, which you like so much – multiculturalism is an objective ally of
capitalism. That’s absolutely clear. Today’s capitalism develops thanks to differences, not due
to the homogenization of society based on some cultural and patriarchal model. In order to
constantly be reborn, to meet expectations of consumer society and keep up with the
dynamics of market, capitalism can’t do without multiculturalism. The latter is not only an
objective ally, but also the main ideology of a globalized capitalism. My friends, leftists, have
completely missed that fact. It’s all about creating a world in which every, even the most
specific, lifestyle can fully develop.
ADI 10 23
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Impact -- Racism
Racism towards immigrants is a necessary product of the capitalist nation state.
Castles and Kosack, Institute of Race Relations, 72
(Stephen Castles and Godula Kosack, Professor of Migration and Refugee Studies and Institute of Race Relations,
1972, New Left Review, The Function of Labour Immigration in Western European Capitalism, Stephen Castles and
Godula Kosack, http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=800)
Discrimination against immigrants is a reflection of widespread hostility towards them. In Britain, this is
regarded as ‘colour prejudice’ or ‘racialism’, and indeed there can be no doubt that the hostility of large
sections of the population is at present directed against black people. Race relations theorists attribute the
problems connected with immigration partly to the immigrants’ difficulties in adapting to the prevailing
norms of the ‘host society’, and partly to the indigenous population’s inbred distrust of the newcomers who
can be distinguished by their skin colour. The problems are abstracted from the socio-economic structure and
reduced to the level of attitudes. Solutions are to be sought not through political action, but through
psychological and educational strategies. 45 But a comparison of surveys carried out in different countries
shows that hostility towards immigrants is everywhere as great as in Britain, even where the immigrants are
white. 46 The Italian who moves to the neighbouring country of Switzerland is as unpopular as the Asian in
Britain. This indicates that hostility is based on the position of immigrants in society and not on the colour of
their skin. Racialism and xenophobia are products of the capitalist national state and of its imperialist
expansion. 47 Their principal historical function was to split the working class on the international level, and
to motivate one section to help exploit another in the interests of the ruling class. Today such ideologies help
to deepen the split within the working class in West Europe. Many indigenous workers do not perceive that
they share a common class position and class interests with immigrant workers. The basic fact of having the
same relationship to the means of production is obscured by the local workers’ marginal advantages with
regard to material conditions and status. The immigrants are regarded not as class comrades, but as alien
intruders who pose an economic and social threat. It is feared that they will take away the jobs of local
labour, that they will be used by the employers to force down wages and to break strikes. 48 Whatever the
behaviour of the immigrant workers—and in fact they almost invariably show solidarity with their
indigenous colleagues—such fears are not without a basis. It is indeed the strategy of the employers to use
immigration to put pressure on wages and to weaken the labour movement. 49 The very social and legal
weakness of the immigrants is a weapon in the hands of the employers. Other points of competition are to be
found outside work, particularly on the housing market. The presence of immigrants is often regarded as the
cause of rising rents and increased overcrowding in the cities. By making immigrants the scapegoats for the
insecurity and inadequate conditions which the capitalist system inevitably provides for workers, attention is
diverted from the real causes. Workers often adopt racialism as a defence mechanism against a real or
apparent threat to their conditions. It is an incorrect response to a real problem. By preventing working-class
unity, racialism assists the capitalists in their strategy of ‘divide and rule’. The function of racialism in the
capitalist system is often obscured by the fact that racialist campaigns usually have petty-bourgeois
leadership and direct their slogans against the big industrialists. The Schwarzenbach Initiative in
Switzerland—which called for the deportation of a large proportion of the immigrant population—is an
example, 50 as are Enoch Powell’s campaigns for repatriation. Such demands are opposed by the dominant
sections of the ruling class. The reason is clear: a complete acceptance of racialism would prevent the use of
immigrants as an industrial reserve army. But despite this, racialist campaigns serve the interests of the ruling
class: they increase tension between indigenous and immigrant workers and weaken the labour movement.
The large working-class following gained by Powell in his racialist campaigns demonstrates how dangerous
they are. Paradoxically, their value for capitalism lies in their very failure to achieve their declared aims. The
presence of immigrant workers is one of the principal factors contributing to the lack of class consciousness
among large sections of the working class. The existence of a new lower stratum of immigrants changes the
worker’s perception of his own position in society. Instead of a dichotomic view of society, in which the
working masses confront a small capitalist ruling class, many workers now see themselves as belonging to an
intermediate stratum, superior to the unskilled immigrant workers. Such a consciousness is typified by an
hierarchical view of society and by orientation towards advancement through individual achievement and
competition, rather than through solidarity and collective action. This is the mentality of the labour
aristocracy and leads to opportunism and the temporary decay of the working-class movement.
ADI 10 24
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Impact – Extinction
The contradictions of capitalist production culminate in perpetual and increasingly
destructive imperialist wars and extinction.
Harvey, Professor of Anthropology City University of New York, 2006
(David, The Limits to Capital, p. 438)
At times of savage devaluation, interregional rivalries typically degenerate into struggles over
who is to bear the burden of devaluation. The export of unemployment, of inflation, of idle productive
capacity becomes the stakes in the game. Trade wars, dumping interest rate wars, restrictions on capital flow
and foreign exchange, immigration policies, colonial conquest, the subjugation and domination of
tributary economies, the forced reorganization of the division of labor within economic
empires, and, finally, the physical destruction and forced devaluation of a rival’s capital
through war are some methods at hand. Each entails the aggressive manipulation of some aspect of
economic, financial or state power. The politics of imperialism, the sense that the contradictions of
capitalism can be cured through world domination by some omnipotent power, surges to the
forefront. The ills of capitalism cannot so easily be contained. Yet the degeneration of economic into
political struggles plays its part in the long-run stabilization of capitalism, provided enough
capital is destroyed en route. Patriotism and nationalism have many functions in the
contemporary world and may arise for diverse reasons; but they frequently provide a most
convenient cover for the devaluation of both capital and labor. We will shortly return to this aspect
of matters since it is, I believe, by far the most serious threat, not only to the survival of capitalism
(which matters not a jot), but to the survival of the human race.
ADI 10 25
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Impact – Nuclear War
Capitalist logic justifies imperial global intervention culminating in nuclear war and global
destruction
Webb, National Communist Party Chairman, 04
(Sam, People’s Weekly World Newspaper, http://www.pww.org/article/view/4967/1/207/0)
Capitalism was never a warm, cuddly, stable social system. It came into the world dripping with blood from
every pore, as Marx described it, laying waste to old forms of production and ways of life in favor of new, more
efficient manufacturing. Since then it has combined nearly uninterrupted transformation of the
instruments of production with immense wealth for a few and unrelieved exploitation, insecurity,
misery, and racial and gender inequality for the many, along with periodic wars, and a vast zone of
countries imprisoned in a seemingly inescapable web of abject poverty. Yet as bad as that record is, its
most destructive effects on our world could still be ahead. Why do I say that? Because capitalism, with
its imperatives of capital accumulation, profit maximization and competition, is the cause of new global
problems that threaten the prospects and lives of billions of people worldwide, and, more importantly,
it is also a formidable barrier to humankind’s ability to solve these problems. Foremost among these,
in addition to ecological degradation, economic crises, population pressures, and endemic diseases, is the threat of nuclear
mass annihilation. With the end of the Cold War, most of us thought that the threat of nuclear war would fade and with it the
stockpiles of nuclear weapons. But those hopes were dashed. Rather than easing, the nuclear threat is more
palpable in some ways and caches of nuclear weapons are growing. And our own government possesses
the biggest stockpiles by far. Much like previous administrations, the Bush administration has continued to develop more
powerful nuclear weapons, but with a twist: it insists on its singular right to employ nuclear weapons preemptively in a range of military
situations. This is a major departure from earlier U.S. policy – the stated policy of all previous administrations was that nuclear weapons
are weapons of last resort to be used only in circumstances in which our nation is under severe attack. Meanwhile, today’s White House
bullies demonize, impose sanctions, and make or threaten war on states that are considering developing a nuclear weapons capability.
Bush tells us that this policy of arming ourselves while disarming others should cause no anxiety because, he says, his administration
desires only peace and has no imperial ambitions. Not surprisingly, people greet his rhetorical assurances skeptically, especially as it
becomes more and more obvious that his administration’s political objective is not world peace, but world domination, cunningly
couched in the language of “fighting terrorism.” It is well that millions of peace-minded people distrust Bush’s rhetoric. The hyper-
aggressive gang in the Oval Office and Pentagon and the absolutely lethal nature of modern weapons
of mass destruction make for a highly unstable and explosive situation that could cascade out of
control. War has a logic of its own. But skepticism alone is not enough. It has to be combined with a sustained mobilization
of the world community – the other superpower in this unipolar world – if the hand of the warmakers in the White House and Pentagon
is to be stayed. A heavy responsibility rests on the American people. For we have the opportunity to defeat Bush and his counterparts in
Congress in the November elections. Such a defeat will be a body blow to the policies of preemption, regime change, and saber rattling,
and a people’s mandate for peace, disarmament, cooperation, and mutual security. The world will become a safer place. In the longer
run, however, it is necessary to replace the system of capitalism. With its expansionary logic to accumulate
capital globally and its competitive rivalries, capitalism has an undeniable structural tendency to
militarism and war. This doesn’t mean that nuclear war is inevitable. But it does suggest that nuclear war is a latent,
ever-present possibility in a world in which global capital is king. Whether that occurs depends in
large measure on the outcome of political struggle within and between classes and social movements at
the national and international level.
ADI 10 26
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Impact – War
Capital’s thirst for geographical expansion culminates in horrifyingly destructive inter-
imperialist global wars and the violent eradication and domination of ‘primitive’
populations.
Harvey, Professor of Anthropology City University of New York, 2006
(David, The Limits to Capital, p. 442-443)
Twice in the twentieth century, the world has been plunged into global war through inter-imperialist
rivalries. Twice in the space of a generation, the world experienced the massive devaluation of capital
through physical destruction, the ultimate consumption of labour power as cannon fodder. Class
warfare, of course, has taken its toll in life and limb, mainly through the violence of primitive
accumulation (including imperialist wars fought against other social formations in the name of capitalist
‘freedoms’). But the vast losses incurred in two world wars were provoked by inter-imperialist rivalries.
How can this be explained on the basis of a theory that appeals to the class relation between capital
and labour as fundamental to the interpretation of history? This was, of course, the problem with which
Lenin wrestled in his essay on imperialism. But his argument, as we saw in chapter 10, is plagued by
ambiguity. Is finance capital national or international? What is the relation, then, between the military and
political deployment of state power and the undoubted trend within capitalism to create multinational forms
and to forge global spatial integration? And if monopolies and finance capital were so powerful and prone in
any case to collusion, then why could they not contain capitalism’s contradictions short of destroying each
other? What is it, then, that makes inter-imperialist wars necessary to the survival of capitalism?
The ‘third cut’ at crisis theory suggests an interpretation of inter-imperialist wars as constructive
moments in the dynamics of accumulation, rather than as aberrations, accidents or the simple product
of excessive greed. Let us see how this is so. When the ‘inner dialectic’ at work within a region drives it
to seek external resolutions to its problems, then it must search out new markets, new opportunities for
capital export, cheap raw materials, low-cost labour power, etc. All such measures, if they are to be
anything other than a temporary palliative, either put a claim on future labour or else directly entail an
expansion of the proletariat. This expansion can be accomplished through population growth, the
mobilization of latent sectors of the reserve army, or primitive accumulation. The insatiable thirst of
capitalism for fresh supplies of labour accounts for the vigour with which it has pursued primitive
accumulation, destroying, transforming and absorbing pre-capitalist populations wherever it finds
them. When surpluses of labour are there for the taking, and capitalists have not, through competition,
erroneously pinned their fates to a technological mix which cannot absorb that labour, then crises are
typically of short duration, mere hiccups on a general trajectory of sustained global accumulation, and
usually manifest as mild switching crises within an evolving structure of uneven geographical development.
This was standard fare for nineteenth-century capitalism. The real troubles begin when capitalists, facing
shortages of labour supply and as ever urged on by competition, induce unemployment through
technological innovations which disturb the equilibrium between production and realization, between
the productive forces and their accompanying social relations. The closing of the frontiers to primitive
accumulation, through sheer exhaustion of possibilities, increasing resistance on the part of pre-capitalist
populations, or monopolization by some dominant power, has, therefore, a tremendous significance for the
long-run stability of capitalism. This was the sea-change that began to be felt increasingly as capitalism
moved into the twentieth century. It was the sea-change that, far more than the rise of monopoly or finance
forms of capitalism, played the crucial role in pushing capitalism deeper into the mire of global crises
and led, inexorably, to the kinds of primitive accumulation and devaluation jointly wrought through
inter-capitalist wars.
ADI 10 27
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Alt Solves Immigration
Immigration policy shifts to meet the needs of capital- only the alt solves the case.
DeFazio, Prof @ Clarkson University Department of Humanities & Social Sciences 02
(Kimberly, Red Critique, May/June, “Whither Borders?”
http://www.redcritique.org/MayJune02/whitherborders.htm)
The very notion of who is considered "other" and who is not, who can legitimately cross the border
and who cannot, has never been static but shifts to meet the needs of capital. Its "ambiguity" in other
words is an effect of the shifting borders of capital accumulation.
This became quite clear when, shortly after Bush and Ashcroft had declared the necessity of a virtual
lockdown of US borders, Bush announced his plans to extend the visas of tens of thousands of Mexican
workers, despite the ongoing official rhetoric demanding the swift deportation and possible incarceration of
all immigrants who overstay their visas. Bush spokespersons explained that his proposal was part of a "good
will" effort prior to a March meeting with Vicente Fox on US-Mexican economic relations.
Bush's extension of Mexican workers' visas is hardly a contradiction, however. Rather, as Irwin M.
Stelzer makes clear in a recent essay in Policy, what underlies Bush's policies is the idea that "somewhere
between the extremes of an open-door and a slammed-door policy is one based on the economic self-
interest of the receiving country. Such a policy would be designed to admit only, or primarily, those
immigrants likely to maximize the wealth of the native population". By this he means that the door
should be "open" only for those for whom there are low-paying jobs available—and he even goes so far
as to suggest that any public resources should be available only so long as these immigrants find work. But
the irony of Stelzer's pragmatic solution is that what he presents as a "new" policy, deftly navigated between
two opposing sides, has always been the over-riding principle of all bourgeois immigration policy: to
increase profits while attempting to rally workers behind their "national" capitalists (or in Stelzer's terms, the
"national population", as if capitalists and workers in any given national population do not have
irreconcilable class interests). The White House will allow extensions of Mexican workers' visas because
US corporations use Mexican workers, many of whom leave desperate conditions in search of better
wages, for extremely low-wage and unskilled labor. In a recessionary period like the current one,
corporations attempt to cut back on labor costs even further, and will therefore hire the cheapest labor
possible, whether immigrant or not, at the same time deploying the rhetoric of the foreign immigrant who
will take jobs from Americans. They use immigrant labor to drive a wedge between workers as they
compete for fewer jobs and lower wages.
But regardless of the differences in skill and nationality, the labor of all workers is exploited and
without the exploitation of their labor there would be no corporate profit, no private accumulation.
National borders, in other words, are borders of and for private property. While workers are forced
politically to recognize them, capital trespasses regularly with impunity in order to increase the rate of
return.
ADI 10 28
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Alt Solves Immigration
Without changing current global neoliberal economic polcies, internal immigration reform
will never solve for illegal immigration
Hayduk, NYC University Borough of Manhattan Community College political science
instructor, & Jones, Long Island University at Brooklyn undergraduate social work
program Coordinator and Assistant Professor, 9
(Ron Hayduk, Dialectical Anthropology Volume 33, Number 2 / June, 2009 p157-173)
Along with war, environmental degradation, and famine, neoliberalism has resulted in the
displacement of millions of workers and small farmers. As long as there is no change in the present
global economic policies—policies that seek only to bolster corporate profits at the expense of the social
and economic stability of the world’s workers—no amount of internal immigration reform will reduce
mass migrations of poor and displaced workers to the wealthiest countries. As many have noted,
advanced capitalist countries not only admit migrants from less developed countries, they actively promote it,
even if it is in the context of nativism and against the backdrop of restrictionist immigration policies. For
example, Zolberg (1983) has argued that this is the case because ‘‘an increase in the supply of any factor of
production will reduce the average cost of that factor, and thus, the overall costs of production. An increase
in labor will increase the return to capital. Immigration tends to reduce the wages of some sectors of native
born workers, although total domestic income may actually rise (GDP).’’ Similarly, he noted, Marx also
described migration as both the formation of a ‘‘surplus population’’ under pressure to relocate in order to
survive and the use of this population by capital to maximize its profit. Using the Irish as the archetype of
immigrant labor under industrial capitalism, Marx claimed that Irish emigration during the potato famine was
a forced migration caused by landed property and large scale enterprise.
ADI 10 29
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Alt Solves – Moral Obligation
We have a moral obligation to break down capitalism. Utopian thinking is essential.
Marsh 95, Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University
(JAMES L, CRITIQUE, ACTION, AND LIBERATION P. 334-335)
The basic question concerning the possibility of socialism, then, is the rationality of utopian
thinking. If scientism and positivism or some of their offshoots such as the postmodern pragmatism of Rorty exhaust the definition of reason, then utopian thinking is irrational and the
human mind must confine itself to the straight jacket of empirical fact. If, on the other hand, my dialectical phenomenological definition of reason is correct , then the thinking
of utopia is not only legitimate but necessary. Reflection and freedom and praxis are essentially utopian in
their full, unfolding life. Denial of utopia mutilates freedom and reason.6 We can appreciate this point more deeply by focusing
phenomenologically on my experience of myself as an incarnate subject in the world. First of all, questioning is essential to the life of reason, and any questioning points beyond the data to a
future answer arrived at in a future insight and judgment. A scientist hit on the head by an apple asks questions that point toward a future answer. Any question negates the given set of facts and
anticipates a new future.7> Next, on the level of insight and conceptualization we arrive at a universal that is not exhausted by any particular manifestation or instance. ''Triangle'' is not
exhausted by this particular triangular thing, "justice" by this particular example of justice, "beauty" by this particular painting. Moreover, no particular, sensible incarnation matches the
on a reflective,
perfection of the ideal. These instances of "triangle," "justice," "beauty," respectively, are not perfect; they have cracks, blemishes, and impurities.8 Further,
ethical level I constitute through reflection and choice myself as an end in a community of ends.
This ethical norm has the same inexhaustibility and perfection as any universal, but in addition is
the ethical obligation to realize the ideal. If, therefore, I am essentially and eidetically an experiencing, understanding, judging, and choosing subject and
the current social situation is irrational and unjust in not respecting that reality, I have three choices. I can capitulate to the situation and in so doing reduce or renounce my humanity, or I can live
a double life in thinking utopian thoughts and pursuing a nonutopian life, or I can pursue the utopia of a full economic, social, and political democracy that is worthy of such a rational, free
we may affirm
subject and incarnates in its institutions full respect for such a subject. Only the last option is fully consistent with the life of incarnate reason and freedom. Finally,
a threefold exteriority to the irrational, exploitative capitalist system: exteriority as past, present,
and future. Exteriority as past is the laborer initially confronting capital as deprived of means of
production, land, and means of consumption; as present exteriority is labor confronting capital as
nothing, poor, more and more deprived of skill, surplus value, and even of employment; and as
future exteriority is the utopia of liberation that is suggested by, demanded by, and called for by
the alienated present. Such utopia as norm and goal calls into question our alienated bourgeois
present. "Exteriority" or "the other" in this book has at least five moments or stages of articulation: as phenomenologically described, as
ethically evaluated, as hermeneutically interpreted, as critically judged, and as anticipated in an utopian manner. Our affirmation of "utopia" as
essential and implied by ''rationality" in the full sense just completes and fills out our affirmation of exteriority as linked to rationality. A
rationality and freedom and ethics and hermeneutics and critique and praxis not open to exteriority are
incomplete, truncated, mutilated. Exteriority is the positive ground enabling us to go fully
beyond a merely negative dialectic. 9 We affirm, then, the ethical necessity of pursuing ethical
community and democratic socialism as the rational embodiment of that vision. Here it is important
to be clear about the difference between acquisitive, empirical reason and constitutive, ethical reason. Ethical
community as utopia is not primarily something I stand back and predict objectively and
scientifically; it is something to which I commit myself ethically and politically.An example from
the sphere of personal morality should make the difference clear . When a friend, relative, teacher, or minister
counsels an alcoholic to confront her habit, she is not making a prediction. Indeed, it may seem
unlikely, given this particular person's past history, that she will lick her habit. Nonetheless, the
moral obligation to get over her habit remains. Similarly, an obligation exists to get over our
capitalism as a social equivalent of drunkenness. If the argument of this chapter is correct, we cannot
renounce such an attempt at transcendence without giving up on the ethical project or curtailing
that project by confining it to the sphere of intimate, interpersonal relations. I am a good father or
husband or lover in my private life, but I remain exploitative, cruel, and inhumane in my public, capitalistic life.
Such ethical renunciation or curtailment is the death or mutilation of the human; denial of utopia
is a living death. Ideologies of scientific elitism, therefore, as they function in capitalist society are correct if there is no such thing as ethical, const itutive reason operating in
community. If such constitutive reason is possible and actual in human beings as human in community, then scientific elitism is false. Men and women acting democratically and participatively
do have a capacity to understand themselves and their lives in a way that is cogent and in touch with reality. Indeed, many o f the popular movements in Europe, England, and the United States in
the last twenty years such as feminism, environmentalism, civil rights, and antiwar movements, often acting against the advice or opinions of experts, have shown themselves to be right and
effective. In the Vietnam War, for example, millions of people in the United States taking to the streets in protest proved the "best and the brightest" in the White House, Pentagon, and State
Department wrong. The "best and the brightest" according to the standards of scientific elitism proved to be deluded. The presence of an ethical, political rationality in all of us as human
invalidates scientific elitism at its core. As I am arguing it here, a fundamental link exists among dialectical phenomenology, ethical, constitutive rationality, and democracy. Philosophy and
ethics, properly understood, are antielitist. 10 To think in a utopian manner, then, about community and socialism is to
ADI 10 30
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
free ourselves from the excessive hold that science and technology exert over our minds and
imaginations. We begin to see that science and technology and expertise, even though they are legitimate within their own proper domains, do not exhaust or monopolize the
definition of reason and other forms of reason and knowledge that are more informative, profound, and fundamental. Indeed, compared to certain expressions of art or ethics or philosophy or
religion, science and technology are relatively superficial. What revelatory power does a scientific equation have compared to Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech? What does an empirical study
of human populations show me about human life compared to the insight of Marx's Capital? What can a factual study of war show about its horrors compared to Picasso's Guernica ?11 To the
extent, therefore, that science and technology dominate in the twentieth century as not only the highest forms of reason but the only forms of reason, they shove other, more profound, more
reflective, more fundamental forms of reason to the side and twentieth-century industrial society emerges as an inverted, topsy-turvy, absurd world. What seems normal, factual, rational, and
We begin to suspect and see that science and technology
sane in such a world is in fact abnormal, apparent, irrational, and absurd .
appear as the highest and only forms of reason because capitalism has appropriated science and
technology for its own ends as productive force and ideology. In science and technology
capitalism has found the forms of rationality most appropriate for itself, perfectly manifesting it,
mirroring it, and justifying it. In such an absurd, inverted, topsy-turvy world, fidelity to the life
of reason demands critique, resistance, and revolutionary transcendence. One has to pierce the
veil of such a world, see through it as absurd rather than accepting it as normal and sane. The
prevailing rationality is profoundly irrational.12
ADI 10 31
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
AT Cap Inevitable
There is no historical justification for that argument
Murphy, Professor of Sociology at the University of Miami, Caro Associate Professor of
Sociology at Barry University, and Choi, Professor of Sociology at San Diego State
Universt, 04
(John, Manuel, and Jung Min, “Globalization With A Human Face,” p2-3)
What is diabolical is that the market is touted to hold everyone’s future. Because persons no longer direct
history, but are simply products of this process, there appears to be no alternative to the spread of markets
and their worldwide integration. And anyone who chooses another approach to conceptualizing order—an
alternative social or economic logic—is simply obstinate and denying reality. The logic of the market is
deemed irrefutable. Furthermore, the image that is emanating from most political leaders in Europe and
North America is that utopian thought is passé. The days of what Marcuse called the “Great Refusal” are
long past.4 For many observers, history has delivered the best of possible worlds—an economic windfall to
select groups that will eventually enhance everyone. What persons need now are patience and perseverance,
and the magic of the market will do the rest. But many groups are becoming restless. In their opinion, the
ideology of the market has become stale and an impediment to achieving a better life. Stated simply,
they have not abandoned their utopian ideals of fairness and justice, and are looking for ways to realize these
aims. In some cases, revolutionary fervor persists. But in general, they have decided to challenge the inherent
ability of history to deliver a more propitious future. They are saying “enough,” and are searching for
alternative models of economic regulation and social order. As a result, large numbers of persons have
been protesting in most major cities over the spread and costs of neoliberalism. Although most mainstream
politicians have been deaf to these calls for a more responsible order, the chants for a new direction continue.
And contrary to the claims made by many pundits, these protesters have not abandoned their utopian
impulse and have decided to make a different history. In other words, they have recognized that only
ideology can bring history to an end, and that the recent picture created by this political device is an
illusion. They have understood, accordingly, that history ends only when no more persons are left to
decide their own fate. The invitation extended to join the globalized world is thus considered by many
to be a ruse to get persons to jettison their own perspectives on the future. To prosper, all they have to do
is assimilate to specific political mandates that have been cloaked in historical necessity. But critics of
globalization have decided to change the rules of history and defy this view of progress. Their refusal,
however, will not necessarily destroy civilization, as some conservative critics claim, but merely expose how
the newly globalized world has been rigged in favor of the rich and ignores the needs and desires of
most persons. The powerful and their supporters scream that these challenges are irrational and
doomed to fail. Without a doubt, if these powerful forces continue to meddle in the social experiments
of others, defeats will likely occur. But these failures have nothing to do with flaunting the laws of
history or human nature. They occur most often because the rich and powerful want to discredit
alternatives to their worldview and thus undermine any threats to their social or economic privileges.
ADI 10 32
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Alternative – Solvency
Must Rethink the State. Capitalism cannot be constrained using existing legislative processes-
reforms will fail, making extinction inevitable. The only mode of political representation
consistent with our alternative is one which endorses the withering away of the state as an
ongoing historical enterprise.
Meszaros, Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sussex, 08
(Istvan, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time, p323-328)
The unreality of postulation the sustainable solution of the grave problems of our social order within
the formal and legal framework and corresponding constraints of parliamentary politics arises from the
fundamental misconception of the structural determinations of capital’s rule, as represented in all
varieties that assert the dualism of civil society and the political state. The difficulty, insurmountable
within the parliamentary framework is this that since capital is actually in control of all vital aspects of
the social metabolism, it can afford to define the separately constituted sphere of political legitimation
as a strictly formal and legal matter, thereby necessarily excluding the possibility of being legitimately
challenged in its substantive sphere of socioeconomic reproductive operation. Directly or indirectly,
capital controls everything, including the parliamentary legislative process, even in the latter is
supposed to be fully independent from capital in many theories that fictitiously hypostatize the
“democratic equality” of all political forces participating in the legislative process. TO envisage a very
different relationship to the powers of decision making in our societies, now completely dominated by
the forces of capital in every domain, it is necessary to radically challenge capital itself as the overall
controller of social metabolic reproduction.
What makes this problem worse for all those who are looking for significant change on the margins of the
established political system is that the later can claim for itself genuine constitutional legitimacy in its
present mode of functioning, based on the historically constituted inversion of the actual state of the material reproductive affairs. For
inasmuch as the capital is not only the “personification of capital” but simultaneously functions also “as the personification of the social character of labor,
the system can claim to represent the vitally necessary productive power of
of the total workshop as such,”
society vis-à-vis the individuals as the basis of their continued existence, incorporating the interest of
all. In this way capital asserts itself not only as the de facto but also the de jure power of society, in its
capacity as the objectively given necessary condition of societal reproduction, and thereby as the
constitutional foundation to its own political order. The fact that the constitutional legitimacy of capital is
historically founded on the ruthless expropriation of the conditions of social metabolic reproduction-
the means and material of labor-from the producers, and therefore capital’s claimed
“constitutionality” (like the origin of all constitutions) is unconstitutional, is an unpalatable truth which
fades away in the mist of a remote past. The “social productive powers of labor, or productive power or
social labor, first develop historically with the specifically capitalist mode of production, hence appear as
something immanent in the capital-relation and inseparable from it.
This is how capital’s mod of social metabolic reproduction becomes eternalized and legitimated as a
lawfully unchallengeable system. Legitimate contest is admissible only in relation to some minor aspects of the unalterable overall
structure. The real state of affairs on thee plane of socioeconomic reproduction-i.e., the actually exercised productive power of labor and its absolute
necessity for securing capital’s own reproduction- disappears from sight. Partly because of the ignorance of the very far from legitimate historical origin of
capital’s “primitive accumulation” and the concomitant, frequently violent, expropriation of property as the precondition of the system’s present mode of
functioning; and partly because of the mystifying nature of the established productive and distributive relations. As Marx notes:
The objective conditions of labor do not appear as subsumed under the worker; rather, he appears as subsumed under them. Capital employs Labor.
Even this relation is in its simplicity is a personification of things and a reification of persons.
None of this can be challenged and remedied within the framework of parliamentary political reform.
It would be quite absurd to expect the abolition of the “personification of things and the reification of
persons” by political decree, and just as absurd to expect the proclamation of such an intended reform
within the framework of capital’s political institutions. For the capital system cannot function without
the perverse overturning of the relationship between persons and things: capital’s alienated and reified
powers dominate the masses of the people. Similarly it would be a miracle if the workers who confront
capital in the labor process as “isolated workers” could reacquire mastery over the social productive
powers of their labor by some political decree, or even by a whole series of parliamentary reforms enacted
under capital’s order of social metabolic control. For in these matters there can be no way of avoiding the
<CONTINUED>
ADI 10 33
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Alternative – Solvency
<CONTINUED>
irreconcilable conflict over the material stakes of “either/or”
Capital can neither abdicate its-usurped-social productive powers in favor of labor, nor can I
share them with labor, thanks to some wishful but utterly fictitious “political compromise.” For they
constitute the overall controlling power of societal reproduction in the form of “the rule of wealth over
society.” Thus it is impossible to escape, in the domain of the fundamental social metabolism, the
severe logic of either/or. For either wealth, in the shape of capital, continues to rule over human society,
taking it to the brink of self-destruction, or the society of associated producers learns to rule over alienated
and reified wealth, with productive powers arising from the self-determinated social labor of its individual-
but not longer isolated-members. Capital is the extra-parliamentary force par excellence. It cannot
possibly be politically constrained by parliament in its power of social metabolic control. This is why
the only mode of political representation compatible with capital’s mode of functioning is one that
effectively denies the possibility of contesting its material power. And precisely because capital is the
extra-parliamentary force par excellence, it has nothing to fear from the reforms that can be enacted
within its parliamentary political framework.
Since the vital issue on which everything else hinges is that “the objective conditions of labor do not
appear as subsumed under the worker” buy, on the contrary, “he appears as subsumed under them,” no
meaningful change is feasible without addressing the issue both in a form of politics capable of matching
capital’s extra-parliamentary powers and modes of action, and in the domain of material reproduction. Thus
the only challenge that could affect the power of capital, in a sustainable manner, is one which would
simultaneously aim at assuming the system’s key productive functions, and at acquiring control over the
corresponding political decision making processes in all spheres, instead of being hopelessly constrained by
the circular confinement of institutionally legitimated political action to parliamentary legislation.
There is a great deal of critique of formerly leftwing political figures and of their now fully
accommodating parties in the political debates of the last decades. However, what is problematic about such
debates is that by overemphasizing the role of personal ambition and failure, they often continue to envisage
remedying the situation with in the same political institutional framework that, in fact, greatly favors the
criticized “personal betrayals” and the painful “party derailments.” Unfortunately, though the advocated
and hoped for personal and government changes tend to reproduce the same deplorable results.
All this could not be very surprising. The reason why the now established political institutions
successfully resist significant change for the better is because they are themselves part of the problem
and not of the solution. For in their immanent nature they are the embodiment of the underlying
structural determinations and contradictions through which the modern capitalist state- with its
ubiquitous network of bureaucratic constituents- has been articulated and stabilized in the course of
the last four hundred years. Naturally, the state was formed not as a one-sided mechanical result but
through its necessary reciprocal interrelationship to the material ground of capital’s historical unfolding, as
not only being shaped by the latter but also actively shaping it as much as historically feasible under the
prevailing- and precisely through the interrelationship also changing- circumstances.
Given the insuperably centrifugal determination of capital’s productive microcosms, even at the level of
the giant quasi-monopolistic transnational corporations, only the modern state could assume and fulfill the
required function of being the overall command structure of the capital system. Inevitably, that meant
the complete alienation of the power of overall decision making from the producers. Even the
“particular personifications of capital” were strictly mandated to act in accord with the structural
imperatives of their system. Indeed the modern state, as constituted on the material ground of the
capital system, is the paradigm of alienation as regards the power of comprehensive decision making.
It would be therefore extremely naïve to imagine that the capitalist state could willingly hand over the
alienated power of systemic decision making to any rival actor who operates within the legislative
framework of parliament.
Thus, in order to envisage a meaningful and historically sustainable societal change, it is necessary
to submit to a radical critique both the material reproductive and the political inter-determinations of
the entire system, and not simply some of the contingent and limited political practices. The combined
totality of the material reproductive determinations and the all-embracing political command
structure of the state together constitutes the overpowering reality of the capital system. In this sense,
in view of the unavoidable question arising from the challenge of systemic determinations, with regard
ADI 10 34
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Alternative – Solvency
to both socioeconomic reproduction and the state, the need for a comprehensive political
transformation-in close conjunction to the meaningful exercise of society’s vital productive functions
without which far-reaching and lasting political change is inconceivable-becomes inseparable from the
problem characterized as the wither away of the state. Accordingly, in the historic task of
accomplishing “the withering away of the state,” self-management through full participation, and the
permanently sustainable overcoming of parliamentarism by a positive form of substantive decision-
making are inseparable.
This is a vital concern and not “romantic faithfulness to Marx’s unrealizable dream,” as some people try
to discredit and dismiss it. In truth, the “withering away of the state” refers to nothing mysterious or
remote but to a perfectly tangible process that must be initiated right in our own historical time. It
means, in plain language, the progressive reacquisition of the alienated power of political decision
making by the individuals in their enterprise of moving toward a genuine socialist society. Without the
reacquisition of this power- to which not only the capitalist state but also the paralyzing inertia of the
structurally well-entrenched material reproductive practices are fundamentally opposed- neither the
new mode of political control of society as a whole by its individuals is conceivable, nor indeed the
nonadversarial and thereby cohesive and plannable everyday operation of the particular productive
and distributive units by the self-managing freely associated producers. Radically superseding
adversariality, and thereby securing the material and political ground of globally viable planning- an
absolute must for the very survival of humanity, not to mention the potentially enriched self
realization- of its individual members- its synonymous with the withering away of the state as an
ongoing historical enterprise.
ADI 10 35
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
AT: Framework 1/2
Their framework is heavily soaked with conservative ideology—the procedural
“bracketing out” of our alternative of radical structural change is only meant to safeguard
the status quo.
Meszaros, Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sussex, 89
(Istvan, Chair of philosophy @ U. of Sussex, The Power of Ideology, p. 232-234 GAL)
Nowhere is the myth of ideological neutrality – the self-proclaimed Wertfeihert or value neutrality of so-
called ‘rigorous social science’ – stronger than in the field of methodology. Indeed, we are often presented
with the claim that the adoption of the advocated methodological framework would automatically
exempt one from all controversy about values, since they are systematically excluded (or suitably
‘bracketed out’) by the scientifically adequate method itself, thereby saving one from unnecessary
complication and securing the desired objectivity and uncontestable outcome.
Claims and procedures of this kind are, of course, extremely problematical. For they circularly assume
that their enthusiasm for the virtues of ‘methodological neutrality’ is bound to yield ‘value neutral’ solutions
with regard to highly contested issues, without first examining the all-important question as to the conditions
of possibility – or otherwise – of the postulated systematic neutrality at the plane of methodology itself. The
unchallengeable validity of the recommended procedure is supposed to be self-evident on account of its
purely methodological character.
In reality, of course, this approach to methodology is heavily loaded with a conservative ideological
substance. Since, however, the plane of methodology (and ‘meta-theory’) is said to be in principle separated
from that of the substantive issues, the methodological circle can be conveniently closed. Whereupon the
mere insistence on the purely methodological character of the criteria laid down is supposed to establish the
claim according to which the approach in question is neutral because everybody can adopt it as the common
frame of reference of ‘rational discourse’.
Yet, curiously enough, the proposed methodological tenets are so defined that vast areas of vital
social concern are a priori excluded from this rational discourse as ‘metaphysical’, ‘ideological’, etc. The
effect of circumscribing in this way the scope of the one and only admissible approach is that it
automatically disqualifies, in the name of methodology itself, all those who do not fit into the stipulated
framework of discourse. As a result, the propounders of the ‘right method’ are spared the difficulties that go
with acknowledging the real divisions and incompatibilities as they necessarily arise from the contending
social interests at the roots of alternative approaches and the rival sets of values associated with them.
This is where we can see more clearly the social orientation implicit in the whole procedure. For –
far from offering an adequate scope for critical enquiry – the advocated general adoption of the allegedly
neutral methodological framework is equivalent, in fact, to consenting not even to raise the issues that
really matter. Instead, the stipulated ‘common’ methodological procedure succeeds in transforming the
enterprise of ‘rational discourse’ into the dubious practice of producing methodology for the sake of
methodology: a tendency more pronounced in the twentieth century than ever before. This practice consists in
sharpening the recommended methodological knife until nothing but the bare handle is left, at which point a
new knife is adopted for the same purpose. For the ideal methodological knife is not meant for cutting, only
for sharpening, thereby interposing itself between the critical intent and the real objects of criticism which it
can obliterate for as long as the pseudo-critical activity of knife-sharpening for its own sake continues to be
pursued. And that happens to be precisely its inherent ideological purpose.
6.1.2
Naturally, to speak of a ‘common’ methodological framework in which one can resolve the problems of a
society torn by irreconcilable social interest and ensuing antagonistic confrontations is delusory, at best,
notwithstanding all talk about ‘ideal communication communities’. But to define the methodological tenets
of all rational discourse by way of transubstantiating into ‘ideal types’ (or by putting into methodological
‘brackets’) the discussion of contending social values reveals <CONTINUED>
ADI 10 36
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
AT: Framework 2/2
<CONTINUED>
the ideological colour as well as the extreme fallaciousness of the claimed rationality. For such
treatment of the major areas of conflict, under a great variety of forms – from the Viennes version of
‘logical positivism’ to Wittgenstein’s famous
ladder that must be ‘thrown away’ at the point of confronting the question of values, and from the advocacy
of the Popperian principle of ‘little by little’ to the ‘emotivist’ theory of value – inevitably always favours
the established order. And it does so by declaring the fundamental structural parameters of the given
society ‘out of bounds’ to the potential contestants, on the authority of the ideally ‘common’ methodology.
However, even on a cursory inspection of the issues at stake it ought to be fairly obvious that to
consent not to question the fundamental structural framework of the established order is radically
different according to whether one does so as the beneficiary of that order or from the standpoint of
those who find themselves at the receiving end, exploited and oppressed by the overall determinations
(and not just by some limited and more or less easily corrigible detail) of that order. Consequently, to
establish the ‘common’ identity of the two, opposed sides of a structurally safeguarded hierarchical order –
by means of the reduction of the people who belong to the contending social forces into fictitious ‘rational
interlocutors’, extracted from their divided real world and transplanted into a beneficially shared universe of
ideal discourse – would be nothing short of a methodological miracle.
Contrary to the wishful thinking hypostatized as a timeless and socially unspecified rational
communality, the elementary condition of a truly rational discourse would be to acknowledge the
legitimacy of contesting the given order of society in substantive terms. This would imply the
articulation of the relevant problems not on the plan of self-referential theory and methodology, but as
inherently practical issues whose conditions of solution point towards the necessity of radical structural
changes. In other words, it would require the explicit rejection of all fiction of methodological and meta-
theoretical neutrality. But, of course, this would be far too much to expect precisely because the society in
which we live is a deeply divided society. This is why through the dichotomies of ‘fact and value’, ‘theory
and practice’, ‘formal and substantive rationality’, etc., the conflict-transcending methodological miracle is
constantly stipulated as the necessary regulative framework of ‘rational discourse’ in the humanities and
social sciences, in the interest of the ruling ideology.
What makes this approach particularly difficult to challenge is that its value-commitments are
mediated by methodological precepts to such a degree that it is virtually impossible to bring them into
the focus of the discussion without openly contesting the framework as a whole. For the conservative sets
of values at the roots of such orientation remain several steps removed from the ostensible subject of dispute
as defined in logico/methodological, formal/structural, and semantic/analytical terms. And who would
suspect of ideological bias the impeccable – methodologically sanctioned – credentials of ‘procedural
rules’, ‘models’ and ‘paradigms’?
Once, though, such rules and paradigms are adopted as the common frame of reference of what
may or may not be allowed to be considered the legitimate subject of debate, everything that enters
into the accepted parameters is necessarily constrained not only by the scope of the overall framework,
but simultaneously also by the inexplicit ideological assumptions on the basis of which the
methodological principles themselves were in the first place constituted. This is why the allegedly ‘non-
ideological’ ideologies which so successfully conceal and exercise their apologetic function in the guise of
neutral methodology are doubly mystifying.
Twentieth-century currents of thought are dominated by approaches that tend to articulate the social
interests and values of the ruling order through complicated – at time completely bewildering – mediations,
on the methodological plane. Thus, more than ever before, the task of ideological demystification is
inseparable from the investigation of the complex dialectical interrelationship between methods and values
which no social theory or philosophy can escape.
ADI 10 37
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Visa Restrictions Key to Capitalist Development
Restrictive visas are key to international spread of capitalism
Lewis, former business columnist with the Denver Post 6
Al Lewis, 12/03/2006, “Capitalism thrives with immigration”, Denver Post,
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_4759465
Of U.S. publicly traded companies that got their start with venture capital financing over the past 15 years, one out of every four boasted
an immigrant founder, according to a recent study by the National Venture Capital Association, based in Arlington, Va. Today, these
companies are valued at more than $500 billion. Many are among the world's most technologically sophisticated,
and some are household names. Imagine life without Intel, founded by Hungarian Andy Grove; or
Google, founded by Russian Sergey Brin; or Yahoo, founded by Jerry Yang of Taiwan; or eBay,
founded by Pierre Omidyar of France; or Sun Microsystems, founded by Andreas Bechtolsheim of
Germany and Vinod Khosla of India. "The United States has harnessed the intellectual power of the
best and brightest minds from abroad for 300 years," said Mark Heesen, NVCA president. Heesen's
group also surveyed 340 privately held, venture-backed companies and found 47 percent had at least
one immigrant founder. Immigration itself, he says, is an entrepreneurial undertaking. "People who
immigrate, by their very nature, are risk takers," he said. "They've given up what they've known to go somewhere totally unknown. It's
not a big leap for them to put it all on the line and say, 'I'm going to create a company on my own and this is how I'm going to do it."'
Martha Rubi-Byers came as an exchange student from Mexico. She graduated from Denver's Metropolitan State College with a degree
in marketing in 1994 and became a naturalized citizen in 2002. Her father had his own engineering firm. Her mother had a dentistry
practice. Starting a business was something she was brought up to do. America was the place to do it. After graduation, she received a
new visa for an extended stay, went to work for a bilingual newspaper and started her own business by 1996. With a partner, Peruvian-
born Monica Vega-Christie, she founded "Paginas Amarillas de Colorado" or "The Colorado Yellow Pages" in Spanish. "It was just our
savings and our husbands supporting us, financially and emotionally," Rubi-Byers said. "It's an emotional roller coaster to start a
business with people telling you - you're going to fail; it's not going to happen; it's been tried before and it didn't work; you need this and
this and this, and you don't have that - just a lot of negatives." But with phone books in Denver and Colorado Springs, the business soon
grew to the point where Rubi-Byers sought venture capital. In April 2004, she sold the business to Hispanic Yellow Pages of America
Inc., owned by a Chicago-based private equity firm, Hispania Capital Partners. Hispania is acquiring Spanish directories and rolling
them into a national network. It has directories in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada and Wisconsin. Rubi-Byers is now a partner in the
company, sits on its board, and continues as publisher of the Colorado directories. "It was better to become a small part of a larger
network than to be the big part of a small company," she said. Leading up to the last election, Americans engaged in a misguided debate
about immigration, said Heesen. It was too focused on illegal immigration, ignoring American enterprises' need for more legal
immigrants. "When you talk about immigration, you shouldn't just talk about putting up a fence," he
said. He's now stumping for bills that would allow more immigrants to come here on H-1B visas,
which are for skilled workers. After 9/11, the government reduced the number of H-1B visas from 195,000 to 65,000 per year.
New legislation would expand the number of H-lB visas to 125,000 - a drop in the sea of an estimated 12 million immigrants who are
said to be here illegally. "From a political angle, you can only do so much," Heesen said. Meanwhile, too
many other parts of the world are becoming fertile ground for innovation. What's not invented here
will be invented somewhere else. "Venture capitalists are followers, not leaders," said Heesen. "If the
ideas are not here, they will follow them to wherever they are. We'd rather keep venture capital here
in the United States."
ADI 10 38
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Aff Perm – Rethink capitalism in conjunction with pursuing visa
reform 1/2
Capitalism is not monolithic, but their K makes it so.
Hui, Assistant Professor Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, 04
(Po-Keung, “Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, p217-223)
Gibson-Graham and colleagues have engaged in such a project by bringing in the experience of ordinary
people in order to gain “a new positioning in the grammar of economy.” They have worked as a group since
1997 consisting of “members who hoped to become desiring economic subjects of a ‘socialist’ sort” (CEC
2001: 94). They do not see the economy and capitalism as a monotonous entity; for them to call the
economy capitalist is to engage in “categorical violence.” As a result, it is desirable to develop new
languages “to represent noncapitalist forms of economy (including ones we might value and desire) as
existing and emerging, and as possible to create” (ibid.: 95). Their cultivation of alternative economic
subjectivities is realized essentially through creating a new economic language and by rearticulating it with
existing economic processes. For them, many of the diverse everyday activities of ordinary people, such
as community and ecological services, household management, voluntary and religious works, can be
seen as diverse “economic practices” but they are disqualified as “non-economic” by mainstream
economic language and are thus marginalized as secondary or insignificant. In order to reclaim their
centrality in the economy, Gibson-Graham develops a typology that regards these practices as economic
(but not capitalist) activities.3 In other words, what Gibson-Graham advocates is to broaden and to open up the meaning of the
economy, instead of reducing everything into a narrowly defined economistic domain. To cultivate a “desiring economic subject” of a
“socialist sort” requires integrating two apparently contradictory ethical principles. The first is conventionally associated with the
economic domain: being an autonomous self that is independent, free and assertive. The second is considered to fall into the communal
domain: being a communal subject who is caring, willing to share and is concerned with collective welfare. To reconcile these
seemingly contradictory principles, the meanings of “economic” and “community” have to be
reconsidered. On the one hand, the homogenizing and exclusive tendencies that limit or even suppress community members’
freedom and autonomy have to be avoided, and the meaning of “community” could just as well be understood in terms of difference. On
the other hand, to balance the selfish, indifferent, and atomizing tendencies of individualism, the economic subject can be re-
conceptualized as mutually respecting and supportive subjects who are able to maintain feelings of common interest and sympathy but at
the same time to keep a critical distance from communal cohesion and domination. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere, unlike other keywords
with contested meanings (perhaps the most notable one is “globalization”), the term community” is rarely used unfavorably. Rebuilding
community is an acceptable political agenda for almost all social forces differentially located along political spectrums, from
conservatives to liberals to the radicals. This is particularly true in this current recession period in which the
community is increasingly accepted as an alternative to the malfunctioning market economy and the
retreating state. Yet in light of the not-always-positive experiences of various kinds of community projects in the past, it is still
worthwhile to swim against the current in order to rethink the meaning of community before endorsing its liberation potential. What is a
“community”? The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines a community as: I. A body of individuals: 1. The commons as
opposed to peers etc.; the common people. 2. An organized political, municipal, or social body; a body of people living in the same
locality; a body of people having religion, profession, etc., in common; a body of nations unified by common interests. 3. A monastic,
socialistic, etc. body of people living together and holding goods in common. II. A quality or state: 4. The state of being shared or held
in common; joint ownership or liability. 5. A common character, an agreement, an identity. 6. Social intercourse; communion;
fellowship, sense of common identity. 7. Commonness, ordinary occurrence. 8. Life in association with others; society; the social state.
In other words, in addition to its connotation of its detachment from the state and its difference from “peers” or those of rank,
“community” often connotes “commonness,~~ “sameness~~ or even “oneness.” From the nineteenth century onwards, “community” has
become a term that implies “experiments in an alternative kind of group-living,” whose constituency is always disadvantaged
populations. The term has increasingly detached from national politics and official social welfare provision, and come closer to denote
“working directly with people” (Williams 1976: 75—76). To many social activists, the ideal “communal subject” is
one who actively shapes his/her own future by engaging in various communal relationships, promoting
shared interests and constructing common identities. Yet in light of past negative experiences of various
kinds of community projects, such as the exclusive tendencies of the community and its restriction of
individual autonomy and freedom, the term “community” has increasingly been rethought in recent socio-
cultural studies. When community is understood as a geographically bounded locality with the
following characteristics: intimacy, immediacy, reciprocity, transparency, assimilation, shared
interests, shared identities and local autonomy, it is often used as a (utopian) political model that could
serve as an alternative to both the atomizing individualism and a panoptical surveillant state. Yet in a
cosmopolitan setting such as contemporary Hong Kong, communities are inevitably border-crossing. Shared or common interests with a
<CONTINUED>
ADI 10 39
Fellows--T-boi Capitalism Kritik
Aff Perm 2/2
<CONTINUED>
particular group/community are always partial.
Even in a given geographical locality, it is not easy to put different groups of persons together by assigning them a common identity, as
the interests of different ethnic, gender, income and age-groups are very diverse. Elaborating Iris Young’s critical notion of community,
Jeannie Martin (Martin and O’Loughlin 2002) nicely argues that the model of a small neighborhood that celebrates face-to-face relations
is inadequate to mediate among strangers and their unassimilated differences. Moreover, this model of community that privileges
commonness and sameness is blind to adverse political consequences such as exclusiveness and intolerance of difference. Hence, as
Martin argues, broader networks such as administrative, political, economic, cultural ones are crucial to communal projects in complex
societies, for without these networks the democratic and inclusive encountering of strangers will be impossible. That is why Martin
believes that community development should be understood largely as cultural work or cultural mediation that aims at constructively
handling “constellations of meanings, practices, identifications.” What Young and Martin proposed could be framed as the “community
of difference.” As Cameron and Gibson (2001: 17) suggest, “communities of difference” are nothing but “fluid
process [es] of moving between moments of sameness and difference, between being fixed and ‘in
place’ and becoming something new and ‘out of place.”’ This opens up a possibility, though not easy to
realize, of reconciling the apparent contradiction between communal relationships and
independence/freedom of the individual.
ADI 2010 40
Lab Name File Title
Cap Inevitable
Capitalism is inevitable. Even the groups that resist it are part and parcel of the system.
Wilson, coordinator of the Independent Press Association’s Campus Journalism Project,
2000
(John K., coordinator of the Independent Press Association’s Campus Journalism Project, How the Left can Win
Arguments and Influence People, pg 12- 14)
Progressive capitalism is not a contradiction in terms, for progressives support capitalism in many
ways. Even nonprofit organizations and cooperatives are not antithetical to capitalism and the market;
these groups simply use capitalism for aims different from the single-minded pursuit of profits. But the
rules of supply and demand, the expenses and revenues, the idea of entrepreneurship and innovation, and the
need to adapt to the market are essential. Any progressive magazine or institution that tries to defy the rules
of capitalism won't be around for very long and certainly won’t have the resources to mount a serious
advocacy of progressive ideas. One of the most effective tactics of the environmental movement was
encouraging consumers to consider environmental values when making capitalist choices about what
products to buy. Today, a manufacturer who ignores environmental issues puts its profits at risk
because so many people are looking for environmentally friendly products and packaging. Crusades against
Coca-Cola for its massive output of non-recycled plastic bottles in America or against companies supporting
foreign dictatorships are part of the continuing battle to force companies to pay attention to consumer
demands. Of course, consumer protests and boycotts are only one part of making "capitalism for everyone."
Many progressive groups are now buying stock in companies precisely to raise these issues at stockholder
meetings and pressure the companies to adopt environmentally and socially responsible policies.
Unfortunately, the legal system is structured against progressive ideas. In 2000, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream
was forced to sell out to a big corporation that might ignore its commitment to many progressive causes. The
company didn't want to sell, but the law demanded that the company's duty to stockholders was to consider
only the money involved. Imagine what would happen if our capitalist laws were designed to promote
progressive ideas instead of impeding them. Instead of allowing a shareholder lawsuit against any
company acting in a morally, socially, and environmentally conscious way, American laws should
encourage these goals. The claim by some leftists that capitalism is inherently irresponsible or evil
doesn't make sense. Capitalism is simply a system of markets. What makes capitalism so destructive
isn't the basic foundation but the institutions that have been created in the worship of the "free
market." Unfortunately, progressives spend most of their time attacking capitalism rather than taking
credit for all the reforms that led to America's economic growth .
ADI 2010 41
Lab Name File Title
Reform Good
Without reforming capitalism, their alternative fails
Burrow, Author and Publisher of the SMAC Lecture Series, 01
(Paul, New Colonist, April, http://www.newcolonist.com/altcap.html)
I think that if we want to build a popular movement, and create an alternative to capitalism, we need
to start by asking such questions, and by articulating them in a language that’s real. (Not many people are
interested in the subtleties of the “dialectical relationship between base and superstructure.” Get real!) From an organizing perspective
alone, we need to recognize that the language we use, the mannerisms, style, and tone we adopt, is at least as important as the substance
of our message. We need to have a little humility —we need to be a little less attached to our conclusions, a little
more questioning of our assumptions, a little less quick with our judgements and dismissals. Instead of
saying everyone else isn’t revolutionary enough (while we sit on our ass waiting for the Revolution;
“pure” but alone), we need to look in the bloody mirror. We need to ask ourselves “What are we really
doing to create a welcoming movement, a culture of resistance; what are we really doing to foster
solidarity; when was the last time I reached out to someone who didn’t already share my politics; when
was the last time I actually had an impact on someone?” Instead of saying “those young anarchists don’t know how to
build institutions” (and then calling them “reformist” or “parochial” or “bourgeois” when they do), the Old Left needs to recognize that
all the same criticisms apply equally to themselves. In addition to saying “talk minus action equals zero,” younger activists need to
simultaneously pay more attention to history, theory, and the experiences of veteran activists. Talk minus action is zero, but it’s also true
that action minus well-thought-out ideas and principles can be less than zero. It can be damaging to individual people, and it can hinder
the growth of a radical movement. Ultimately, we need to be less concerned about the alleged failings and ignorance of others, and more
concerned about our own political relevance. The entire Left, progressive, activist community (young and old, socialist or not) needs to
build or expand upon its own institutions, and more importantly, the alternatives we create must embody the values we profess to hold.
Instead of saying “Anything short of complete ‘Revolution’ is reformist” (and then going home to
watch TV), we need to recognize that no revolution begins with the overthrow of the State. The
dismantling or seizure of the State is usually a reflection of a deep revolution already occurring at the grassroots, community and
workplace level. The Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 didn’t just happen because the Spanish were more “radical” or “committed” than
we are. It was the culmination of almost 70 years of organizing, making mistakes, building a popular base. Pre-existing structures and
worker organizations made possible a workers’ takeover of much of the Spanish economy (especially in Catalonia). Participation in
radical unions, factory committees, and collectives for decades, enabled Spanish workers to develop knowledge of their enterprises, a
sense of their own competence, and gave them direct experience with collective organizational principles. The struggle of the Spanish
anarchists and communists offers many lessons—not the least of which is that revolution is a long-term agenda. Younger activists
especially need to take this seriously, because they tend to think that militancy alone (regardless of popular support) will bring about a
fast demise of capitalism. Unrealistic expectations are a fast road to burnout and despair. At the same time,
however, observing that the state-capitalist system is powerful, and believing that revolution is a long-
term agenda, is not an excuse to stuff our nests, or avoid direct action. As Gramsci pointed out we need to maintain
an optimism of will, even if we have a pessimism of mind. In other words, we need to strike a balance between hope and reality—
something that is absolutely necessary, if our efforts are to be sustained beyond youthful idealism into the rest of our lives. We need to
think hard about the meaning of solidarity. Solidarity is NOT about supporting those who share your precise politics. It’s about
supporting those who struggle against injustice—even if their assumptions, methods, politics, and goals differ from our own. Any
anarchist who says they won’t support Cuban solidarity efforts, or could care less about the U.S. embargo, because the Cuban revolution
is “Statist” and “authoritarian,” is in my opinion, full of shit. (But this doesn’t imply that we should turn a blind eye to human rights
violations in Cuba, just because they’re relatively non-existent compared to the rest of Latin America (or Canada for that matter). It
doesn’t imply that we should refrain from criticism of Cuba’s economic system from a socialist and working-class perspective, simply
because we’re worried about the declining number of post-capitalist experiments to support.)
ADI 2010 42
Lab Name File Title
Reform Good
Reform is not only possible, it’s key to avoiding inequality.
Blyth, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science Johns Hopkins
University, and Hopkin, Lecturer in British and Comparative Politics, 04
(Mark and Johnathan, “How Many Varieties of Capitalism? Structural Reform and Inequality in Western
Europe,” September 2, http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p59770index.html,)
This paper has attempted to show two things…and tentatively suggest one more. First, and empirically, it
has confirmed the finders of other scholars that that globalization does not necessarily create more
problems for generous welfare states than for more limited welfare states. Instead, we have argued that
significant market-conforming reforms can be undertaken in advanced political economies without
necessarily giving up on equality. Unformatted Document Text: 17 order to demonstrate this we examined
the degree of structural reform, financial liberalization, labor market flexibility, the regulation of entry, and
the degree of legalistic intervention relative to existing levels of inequality in the set of European advanced
industrial states. We found that, in contrast to much of the conventional wisdom, significant ‘business
friendly’ structural (and other) reforms can be undertaken without surrendering equality. In fact, those
states that were most unequal to begin with were precisely those that became comparatively more unequal
under conditions of globalization. This applied for both LMEs, and what might be termed the Southern
European or Mediterranean ‘variety of capitalism’. In contrast, the ‘most likely victim of globalization’, the
Scandinavian welfare state, has shown itself to be quite adaptive and able to undertake a variety of
reforms, that while changing the form of the model, do not (thus far) significantly alter its content. In
sum, while there is a tendency in the literature to conflate liberalization and welfare state
retrenchment, the two are distinct concepts, and distinct outcomes, which need to be measured
separately. Inequality in not an inevitable price to be paid for growth in the global economy. Second,
and analytically, to the extent that typologies remain useful, we argue that the over picture of welfare state
demography is still better captured by Esping-Andersen’s ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’, in which
LMEs (liberal welfare states) are contrasted with two kinds of CME: the Scandinavian social democratic
welfare state, and a varient of the continental European Christian democratic welfare state. This outcome
pertains since economic reform, often portrayed as a one-way street towards free market capitalism, is
actually far more compatible with the institutions of the social democratic welfare state than is
generally acknowledged. The Northern European social democracies have managed to combine market-
friendly regulation of key areas of the economy with high levels of state spending, which permit
generous welfare provision and public services 21 . As we have seen, despite significant reforms being
undertaken in such states, the relatively good economic performance of this group of economies through the
difficult period of the 1990s has not been achieved at the expense of social solidarity. Economic reform does
seem to improve economic performance, but nations can choose whether or not to accompany a liberal
market regime with a decommodificatory welfare state. One choice does not negate the other.
ADI 2010 43
Lab Name File Title
Alternative Doesn’t Solve – General
The alternative fails – it can’t deal with state repression, it can’t develop social activities
outside of capitalism, and there is no way to organize self-determination.
Holloway, PhD Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and Callinicos, PhD
Philosophy at University of Oxford, 05
(John and Alex, “Can We Change the World Without Taking Power?” Z Magazine, August 16,
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5616)
For me, it is this second conception of revolution that we have to concentrate on. The fact that we reject the
state-centred conception doesn't obviously mean that the non-state-centred conception does not have
its problems. I see three principal problems, none of which is an argument for reverting to the idea of
taking state power:
The first issue is how to deal with state repression. I do not think the answer is to arm ourselves so that
we can defeat the state in open confrontation: we would be unlikely to win, and anyway it would
involve reproducing precisely the authoritarian social relations we are fighting against. Nor do I think
that the answer is to take control of the state so that we can control the army and the police forces: the
use of the army and police on behalf of the people obviously comes into conflict with the struggles of
those who do not want anyone to act on their behalf. This leaves us with trying to find other ways of
dissuading the state from exercising violence against us: this may have to involve some degree of armed
resistance (as in the case of the Zapatistas), but must surely rely above all on the strength of the integration of
the rebellion into the community. The second issue is whether we can develop alternative doings
(alternative productive activity) within capitalism, and to what extent we can create an alternative social
nexus between activities, other than value. There are many experiments that point in the direction of some
sort of solution (the fábricas recuperadas, factories reopened by the workers, in Argentina, for example) and
the possibilities will obviously depend on the scale of the movement itself, but this remains a major
problem. How do we think of a social determination of production and distribution that moves from
the bottom up (from the interstitial revolts) rather than from a central planning body?
The third issue is the organisation of social self-determination. How do we organise a system of direct
democracy on a scale that goes beyond the local level in a complex society? The classic answer is the idea
of councils linked by a council of councils to which the councils send instantly recallable delegates. This
seems basically correct, but it is clear that even in small groups the operation of democracy is always
problematic, so that the only way in which direct democracy can be conceived is as a constant process of
experimentation and self-education.
ADI 2010 44
Lab Name File Title
Cap Good – Genocide
The alternative is genocide
Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, 04
(RJ, World Net Daily, “The Killing Machine that is Marxism,,
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41944, December 15)
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.
As a governing elite has the power to do whatever it wants, whether to satisfy its most personal wishes, or as
today's Marxists desire, to pursue what it believes is right and true, it may do so whatever the cost in lives.
Here, power is the necessary condition for mass murder. Once an elite has full authority, other causes and
<CONTINUED>
ADI 2010 45
Lab Name File Title
<CONTINUED>
conditions can operate to bring about the immediate genocide, terrorism, massacres or whatever killing the
members of an elite feel is warranted. But it is power – unchecked, unconstrained, uncontrolled – that is the
killer.
Our academic and intellectual Marxists today are getting a free ride. They get a certain respect
because of their words about improving the lot of the worker and the poor, their utopian pretensions.
But when empowered, Marxism has failed utterly, as has fascism. Instead of being treated with respect
and tolerance, Marxists should be treated as though they wished a deadly plague on all of us.
ADI 2010 46
Lab Name File Title
Cap Good – Terrorism
Free trade solves poverty and the root cause of terrorism
Balko 03
(Radely, Terrorism Fueled by Third World Poverty, 9/11, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96990,00.html
Terrorism (search) today finds its most fertile ground in those areas of the world most inward-looking,
most isolated and most hostile to outside influences. A 2002 United Nations study of the Arab world
found that over the last 20 years, Arab countries (plus Iran) produced the second-lowest per-capita
growth rate of any region on Earth. Total productivity in the Arab world (search) actually
declined between 1960 and 2000, a period that saw unprecedented growth nearly everywhere else. The
same report points out that the entire Arab world has translated about 100,000 non-Arabic books since the
ninth century, equivalent to the number of books the country of Spain translates every year. Perhaps the only
area of the world more isolated and more desolate than the Arab world is Sub-Saharan Africa
(search). There too, we find hostility to trade, to Western influence and to commerce -- at least at the
state level. Consequently, there too we find abject poverty. A study published by Surjit S. Ballah
(search) of the Institute for International Studies found that 20 countries in Africa are poorer today than they
were in 1990. Amazingly, another 23 are poorer than they were in 1975. This, while the rest of humanity
embraced international trade, and leapt to a prosperity unparalleled in human history. Be it because of
theocratic regimes, thuggish dictators or sanctions and protectionist policies from the West, the last 25 years
have seen the rest of the world leave both of these regions behind. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, when the
overwhelming majority of those who would do us harm come from Africa and Arabia. When a country is
too poor to produce anything of value to trade, antipathy, envy and anger become its biggest export;
terrorism its proudest commodity. But there’s room for optimism, and much of it can begin this week in
Cancun. A recent study by the Pew Research Foundation found that attitudes in the developing world
toward globalization, trade, capitalism and Western corporations were overwhelmingly positive,
particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. In countries like Uganda, where there’s already a significant Western
presence and burgeoning exchange economy, attitudes were even more positive. Pro-Western sentiment in
Iran is nearing the boiling point, and it’s thanks in large part to the infiltration of Western ideas via
the Internet. There is a foundation, then, for capitalism to carve out new niches in corners of the globe
it’s never reached before. There is an opportunity for vast new swaths of humanity to part with hellish
poverty, to reach subsistence, then comfort, and then, eventually, prosperity. Through this, the
developed world benefits, too. We get new markets in which to sell our wares; new sources of labor,
creativity and talent; and, not least important, a much smaller pool to fester the kind of destitution,
dismay and hopelessness that gives rise to terrorism. But we had better get our act together. Currently, the
United States, Europe and Japan have neglected their duty as world citizens. They’ve decided it’s
more important to protect politically important interest groups at home than to let people trade freely
across international borders. Worse, those industries most protected by the West are the very kinds of
products most likely to come from the Third World -- products like textiles, sugar and produce.
Without access to Western markets, developing countries can’t begin to take those baby steps to
modernity.
ADI 2010 47
Lab Name File Title
Cap Good – War
Alternatives to capitalism make war inevitable
Nyquist, 06
(JR. Financial Sense, “Anatomy of a Delusion,” September 8,
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2006/0908.html)
The free market teaches men to love peace, while the miserable circumstances of socialist decline teach
men the necessity of predatory warfare. According to Mises, the market’s love of peace “does not spring
from philanthropic considerations” but depends on a proper appreciation of economic self-interest. Those
who believe in profit and the free market reject war because war signifies the destruction of property.
Wars are not initiated by corporate greed. Wars are initiated by backward cults who seek a return to medieval
conditions. World revolution is the cry of the militant socialists, the Marxist-Leninists of the People’s
Republic of China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and the KGB clique that presently governs the “former”
Soviet Union. To understand world events properly we must understand the distinction between socialist and
free market economies. Dictatorship and war belong to the sphere of socialism and economic controls
(or restrictions). Freedom means the freedom to buy and sell, to build and create. Once you allow a mob of
political activists to legislate against the free market – in accordance with moral or environmental pleas –
your economic decline is foreordained. Instead of a society guided by environmental angels, you will have
a society guided by distorted madmen who (in the words of Mises) “do not approach the study of economic
matters with scientific disinterestedness. Most of them are driven by an envious resentment against those
whose incomes are larger than their own. This bias makes it impossible for them to see things as they really
are. For them the main thing is not to improve the conditions of the masses, but to harm the entrepreneurs
and capitalists even if this policy victimizes the immense majority of the people.”
ADI 2010 48
Lab Name File Title
Cap Good – AT: Cap Imperialism/War
Profit Motives and Capitalism don’t inherently result in imperialism or war- it’s the
twisted power dynamic of the U.S.
Bresinger, Assistant Managing Editor of Traders Magazine, 06
(Gregory, Von Mises Institute, “Is Capitalism Why We Fight?,” April 6, http://mises.org/story/2104)
Charles Lewis, an official of a leftist think tank who believes the problem is not enough democracy and
too much capitalism, is given lots of time to make a quasi-Leninist case that imperialism is the highest stage
of capitalism. This doctrine among Marxists is seen as incontrovertible, with the Monthly Review having
asserted it yet again in its most recent issue ("In a world where everything has been turned over to the
market, that is, to capital accumulation, the fundamental problems dividing and endangering human society
and the planet are bound to worsen"). This is an idea that was destroyed many years ago by the great
economist Joseph Schumpeter in his brilliant essays "Imperialism" and "Social Classes." Capitalism wants
peace, Schumpeter argued. Wherever capitalism was the purest, wherever laissez-faire reigned, there
were considerable peace parties. But we have come a long way from laissez-faire. The producers of this
documentary don't seem to understand that. This capitalism-is-imperialism idea is also supported through
"Why We Fight" by historian Chalmers Johnson. His book "Blowback" has documented American
interventions around the world. But these interventions are anything but the fault of unsubsidized
elements of the American business community. Did the average American businessperson—often
struggling to pay the huge costs of empire—actually want the United States to embark on this path of
empire? The producers have no answer to that question. Although "Why We Fight" sometimes attacks
capitalism, we rarely hear from American capitalists, who historically have opposed much of the
inflation and disasters that have been the result of the imperial policies of at least the last half-century.
Their opposition was well founded. War, and its concomitant inflation, is bad for those capitalists who
are not on the government dole, bad for those who are not court intellectuals, bad for anyone who isn't
an enthusiastic part of Leviathan. Indeed, if one goes by the stock market, probably the worst extended
recent period was in the mid 1960s to mid 1970s during the height of the Vietnam War. That's when stocks
went through a very difficult time.
