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Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Competitiveness K
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***LINKS ...... 5 Epistemology Link...... 6 Competitiveness Link/Internal...... 7 Free Trade...... 9 Hegemony...... 10 Foreign Aid...... 11 Nation Building...... 12
***IMPACTS ...... 12 Impact – Colonialism...... 13 Impact- Imperialism...... 14 Impact – Endless War...... 15 Impact – War on Terror...... 17 Impact - Retaliation...... 18 Impact – Root Cause...... 19 Impact – Universal Rights...... 20 Impact – Econ Collapse...... 21 Impact – War...... 22 Impact –VTL...... 25 China Hardliner Scenario...... 26 Hardliner Impact Ext...... 29 Hardliner Scenario - Protests...... 30 Hardliner Scenario – Government Crackdown...... 31 Turns Case – Innovation...... 32 Turns Case – Economy...... 34 Turns Case – Destroys Politics...... 35
***ALTERNATIVE ...... 36 Alternative – Conservatism...... 37 Alternative - Rejection...... 38 Alternative Solves – Hegemony...... 39 Alternative Solves – Creates Stable Economy...... 41 Alternative Solves - Cooperation...... 42 Alternative solves – Grassroots...... 43 Alternative Solves – Opens Space...... 44 Alternative Solves - restructures socio-economic policies...... 45 Alternative Solves – Shapes Economic Policies...... 46 Alternative- Solves War...... 47 Framework – Rejection key...... 48 Framework – Economics first...... 49 Framework – Economics k2 politics...... 50 AT: Hegemony Good/Solves...... 51 AT: Market Solves Poverty...... 52 Competitiveness Fail - Empirics...... 53 Econ Leadership Unsustainable...... 54 AT: We don’t challenge Cap...... 56
***AFF ANSWERS ...... 56 No Alt Solvency...... 57 Dependence leads to war...... 58 Competition solves War...... 59 Capitalism/Competition Inevitable...... 60 Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Competition Solves Economy...... 61 Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ 1NC
The logic of economic competitiveness is deployed to maintain the myth of American exceptionalism and hegemony – this is inevitably wielded to justify genocide and imperial violence Whyte 7 – PHD and reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool School of Sociology and Social policy (Dave Whyte, “Market Patriotism and the "War on Terror"”, in Social Justice, vol 34 iss 3/4, Proquest, IWren)
It is doubtful whether neoconservatism represents a break from neoliberalism that is significant enough to distinguish the two perspectives within the power bloc. An intrinsic incompatibility is not expressed if, for example, the ideal of the (laissez-faire) state is conceptualized differently in Chicago School economic theory (in which the state's proper role is reduced to maintaining a rudimentary system of rules that can guarantee access to "free" markets) and Straussian political philosophy (which stresses the requirement of a nationally cohesive authoritarian state-led by a beneficial tyranny-that must establish a solid moral order and ensure the defense of Western civilization). The relationship between the two positions is revealing in that the chief intellectuals identified with the neocons (e.g., Francis Fukuyama, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert Kagan, and William Kristol), though they frequently disagree in public on matters of philosophy and policy, are united by their enthusiasm for neoliberal economics. Giving continuity to the U.S. ruling class is a belief in a neoliberal market standard of civilization and in the leading role of the U.S. in securing this standard of civilization , by force if necessary. The more brutal and coercive form of capitalist rule that is currently being reconfigured, then, is less concerned with liberal tropes of prosperity, representation, and freedom than with asserting a universal (neoliberal) market standard of civilization. Since the birth of the U.S. state, the central legitimating myth has been the assumption that the U.S. had adopted the mantle of the guardian of Western civilization. The genocides of indigenous populations that enabled European colonization of the Americas, particularly in North America, were committed with reference to a "chosen people" mythology derived from the Christian Bible. Central to this mythology is the idea that the U.S. inherited from the Europeans the guardianship of Western civilization. As Amin (2004: 63) notes, "thereafter, the United States extended to the whole planet its project of realizing the work that 'God' had commanded it to carry out." The chosen-people myth formed the basis of the Manifest Destiny doctrine; it was particularly influential in the post-World War II period, especially in George Kennan's writings. Recent neocon texts express this view, by contrasting the willingness with which the U.S. defends Western civilization with the spinelessness of "old" Europe (see Kagan, 2003). The core legitimating narrative for U.S. imperialism, then, is the claim that the U.S. is uniquely placed to guarantee peace and stability, and to provide leadership for the weak, backward, wayward rest of the world; this "chosen people" myth allows the U.S. to stake claims to global economic leadership and American exceptionalism (Said, 1993: 343-349). The program first set out by the neocon pressure group-the Project for the New American Century-has now been fully realized in Afghanistan and Iraq and has taken American exceptionalism to new heights. seeking to use a full complement of diplomatic, political, and military efforts to preserve and extend "an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles,"2 the program represents a profoundly nationalist stance that expresses U.S. preemptive strategy in terms derived from a "chosen people" myth. Legitimacy for U.S. global hegemony at this juncture is based upon a patriotism that reasserts the U.S. as the guardian of Western civilization. Two features of hegemonic rule, the economy and nationhood, characterize the political moment at the heart of the Imperium that is often "blamed" upon a neocon cabal. It is the neoliberal economic doctrine, wedded to a strengthening of patriotic allegiances to the United States. This moment of political leadership in the U.S. invokes loyalty to the nation-state as an explicit means of strengthening a particular form of market capitalism and uses the market to strengthen allegiance to particularly violent and authoritarian forms of state power. It seeks a commitment to supporting the coercive responses of national states and the uninterrupted progress of the global market as twin bulwarks against terrorism. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ
The affirmative’s language is not neutral – their framing of the global economy as zero sum makes violence invisible under the guise of market rationalism Bristow 3 -- Senior Lecturer in Economic Geography at the School of City and Regional Planning at Cardiff University (Gillian, “Everyone's a ‘winner’: problematising the discourse of regional competitiveness.” Journal of Economic Geography, June 2005 5(3): 285-304)
This begs the question as to why a discourse with ostensibly confused, narrow and ill-defined content has become so salient in regional economic development policy and practice as to constitute ‘the only valid currency of argument’ (Schoenberger, 1998, 12). Whilst alternative discourses based around co-operation can be conceived (e.g. see Hines, 2000; Bunzl, 2001), they have as yet failed to make a significant impact on the dominant view that a particular, quantifiable form of output-related regional competitiveness is inevitable, inexorable and ultimately beneficial. The answer appears to lie within the policy process, which refers to all aspects involved in the provision of policy direction for the work of the public sector. This therefore includes ‘the ideas which inform policy conception, the talk and work which goes into providing the formulation of policy directions, and all the talk, work and collaboration which goes into translating these into practice’ (Yeatman, 1998; p. 9). A major debate exists in the policy studies literature about the scope and limitations of reason, analysis and intelligence in policy-making—a debate which has been re-ignited with the recent emphasis upon evidence-based policy-making (see Davies et al., 2000). Keynes is often cited as the main proponent of the importance of ideas in policy making, since he argued that policy-making should be informed by knowledge, truth, reason and facts (Keynes, 1971, vol. xxi, 289). However, Majone (1989) has significantly challenged the assumption that policy makers engage in a purely objective, rational, technical assessment of policy alternatives. He has argued that in practice, policy makers use theory, knowledge and evidence selectively to justify policy choices which are heavily based on value judgements. It is thus persuasion (through rhetoric, argument, advocacy and their institutionalisation) that is the key to the policy process, not the logical correctness or accuracy of theory or data. In other words, it is interests rather than ideas that shape policy making in practice. Ultimately, the language of competitiveness is the language of the business community. Thus, critical to understanding the power of the discourse is firstly, understanding the appeal and significance of the discourse to business interests and, secondly, exploring their role in influencing the ideas of regional and national policy elites. Part of the allure of the discourse of competitiveness for the business community is its seeming comprehensibility. Business leaders feel that they already understand the basics of what competitiveness means and thus it offers them the gain of apparent sophistication without the pain of grasping something complex and new. Furthermore, competitive images are exciting and their accoutrements of ‘battles’, ‘wars’ and ‘races’ have an intuitive appeal to businesses familiar with the cycle of growth, survival and sometimes collapse (Krugman, 1996b). The climate of globalisation and the turn towards neo-liberal, capitalist forms of regulation has empowered business interests and created a demand for new concepts and models of development which offer guidance on how economies can innovate and prosper in the face of increasing competition for investment and resources. Global policy elites of governmental and corporate institutions, who share the same neo-liberal consensus, have played a critical role in promoting both the discourse of national and regional competitiveness, and of competitiveness policies which they think are good for them (such as supportive institutions and funding for research and development agendas). In the EU, for example, the European Round Table of Industrialists played a prominent role in ensuring that the Commission's 1993 White Paper placed the pursuit of international competitiveness (and thus the support of business), on an equal footing with job creation and social cohesion objectives (Lovering, 1998; Balanya et al., 2000). This discourse rapidly spread and competitiveness policies were transferred through global policy networks as large quasi-governmental organisations such as the OECD and World Bank pushed the national and, subsequently, the regional competitiveness agenda upon national governments (Peet, 2003). Part of the appeal of the regional competitiveness discourse for policy-makers is that like the discourse of globalisation, it presents a relatively structured set of ideas, often in the form of implicit and sedimented assumptions, upon which they can draw in formulating strategy and, indeed, in legitimating strategy pursued for quite distinct ends (Hay and Rosamond, 2002). Thus, the discourse clearly dovetails with discussions about the appropriate level at which economic governance should be exercised and fits in well with a growing trend towards the decentralised, ‘bottom-up’ approaches to economic development policy and a focus on the indigenous potential of regions. For example, in the UK:‘the Government believes that a successful regional and sub-regional economic policy must be based on building the indigenous strengths in each locality, region and county. The best mechanisms for achieving this are likely to be based in the regions themselves’ (HM Treasury, 2001a, vi). The devolution of powers and responsibilities to regional institutions, whether democratic or more narrowly administrative, is given added tour de force when accompanied by the arguments contained within the regional competitiveness discourse. There is clear political capital to be gained from highlighting endogenous capacities to shape economic processes, not least because it helps generate the sense of regional identity that motivates economic actors and institutions towards a common regional purpose (Rosamond, 2002). Furthermore, the regional competitiveness discourse points to a clear set of agendas for policy action over which regional institutions have some potential for leverage—agendas such as the development of university-business relationships and strong innovation networks. This provides policy-makers with the ability to point to the existence of seemingly secure paths to prosperity, as reinforced by the successes of exemplar regions. In this way, the discourse of regional competitiveness helps to provide a way of constituting regions as legitimate agents of economic governance. The language of regional competitiveness also fits in very neatly with the ideological shift to the ‘Third Way’ popularised most notably by the New Labour government in the UK. This promotes the reconstruction of the state rather than its shrinkage (as under neo-liberal market imperatives) or expansion (as under traditional socialist systems of mass state intervention). Significantly, this philosophy sees state economic competencies as being restricted to the ability to intervene in line with perceived microeconomic or supply-side imperatives rather than active macroeconomic, demand-side intervention—an agenda that is thus clearly in tune with the discourse around competitiveness. The attractiveness of the competitiveness discourse may also be partly a product of the power of pseudo-scientific, mathematised nature of the economics discipline and the business strategy literature from which it emanates. This creates an innate impartiality and technicality for the market outcomes (such as competitiveness) it describes (Schoenberger, 1998). Public policy in developed countries experiencing the marketisation of the state, is increasingly driven by managerialism which emphasises the improved performance and efficiency of the state. This managerialism is founded upon economistic and rationalistic assumptions which include an emphasis upon measuring performance in the context of a planning system driven by objectives and targets (Sanderson, 2001). The result is an increasing requirement for people, places and organisations to be accountable and for their performance and success to be measured and assessed. In this emerging evaluative state, performance tends to be scrutinised through a variety of means, with particular emphasis placed upon output indicators. This provides not only a means Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ of lending legitimacy to the institutional environment, but also some sense of exactitude and certainty, particularly for central governments who are thus able to retain some ‘top-down’, mechanical sense that things are somehow under their control (Boyle, 2001). The evolutionary, ‘survival of the fittest’ basis of the regional competitiveness discourse clearly resonates with this evaluative culture. The discourse of competitiveness strongly appeals to the stratum of policy makers and analysts who can use it to justify what they are doing and/or to find out how well they are doing it relative to their ‘rivals’. This helps explain the interest in trying to measure regional competitiveness and the development of composite indices and league tables. It also helps explain why particular elements of the discourse have assumed particular significance—output indicators of firm performance are much easier to compare and rank on a single axis than are indicators relating to institutional behaviour, for example. This in turn points to a central paradox in measures of regional competitiveness. The key ingredients of firm competitiveness and regional prosperity are increasingly perceived as lying with assets such as knowledge and information which are, by definition, intangible or at least difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy. The obsession with performance measurement and the tendency to reduce complex variables to one, easily digestible number brings a ‘kind of blindness’ with it as to what is really important (Boyle, 2001, 60)—in this case, how to improve regional prosperity. Thus while a composite index number of regional competitiveness will attract widespread attention in the media and amongst policy-makers and development agencies, the difficulty presented by such a measure is in knowing what exactly needs to be targeted for appropriate remedial action. All of this suggests that regional competitiveness is more than simply the linguistic expression of powerful exogenous interests. It has also become rhetoric. In other words, regional competitiveness is deployed in a strategic and persuasive way, often in conjunction with other discourses (notably globalisation) to legitimate specific policy initiatives and courses of action. The rhetoric of regional competitiveness serves a useful political purpose in that it is easier to justify change or the adoption of a particular course of policy action by reference to some external threat that makes change seem inevitable. It is much easier for example, for politicians to argue for the removal of supply-side rigidities and flexible hire-and-fire workplace rules by suggesting that there is no alternative and that jobs would be lost anyway if productivity improvement was not achieved. Thus, ‘the language of external competitiveness… provides a rosy glow of shared endeavour and shared enemies which can unite captains of industry and representatives of the shop floor in the same big tent’ (Turner, 2001, 40). In this sense it is a discourse which provides some shared sense of meaning and a means of legitimising neo-liberalism rather than a material focus on the actual improvement of economic welfare.
Militaristic interventions conducted on behalf of US economic imperialism culminate in extinction Mészáros 3 (István, Hungarian Marxist philosopher, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex. He held the Chair of Philosophy at Sussex for fifteen years and was earlier Professor of Philosophy and Social Science for four years at York University. The Monthly Review, “Militarism and the Coming Wars” June 2003. http://monthlyreview.org/0603meszaros.htm 7/9/09)
The dangers and immense suffering caused by all attempts at solving deep-seated social problems by militaristic interventions, on any scale, are obvious enough. If, however, we look more closely at the historical trend of militaristic adventures, it becomes frighteningly clear that they show an ever greater intensification and an ever- increasing scale, from local confrontations to two horrendous world wars in the twentieth century, and to the potential annihilation of humankind when we reach our own time. It is most relevant to mention in this context the distinguished Prussian military officer and practical as well as theoretical strategist, Karl Marie von Clausewitz (1780-1831), who died in the same year as Hegel; both of them killed by cholera. It was von Clausewitz, director of the Military School of Berlin in the last thirteen years of his life, who in his posthumously published book—Vom Kriege (On War, 1833)—offered a classic definition of the relationship between politics and war that is still frequently quoted: “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” This famous definition was tenable until quite recently, but has become totally untenable in our time. It assumed the rationality of the actions which connect the two domains of politics and war as the continuation of one another. In this sense, the war in question had to be winnable, at least in principle, even if miscalculations leading to defeat could be contemplated at the instrumental level. Defeat by itself could not destroy the rationality of war as such, since after the—however unfavorable—new consolidation of politics the defeated party could plan another round of war as the rational continuation of its politics by other means. Thus the absolute condition of von Clausewitz’s equation to be satisfied was the winnability of war in principle, so as to recreate the “eternal cycle” of politics leading to war, and back to politics leading to another war, and so on ad infinitum. The actors involved in such confrontations were the national states. No matter how monstrous the damage inflicted by them on their adversaries, and even on their own people (just remember Hitler!), the rationality of the military pursuit was guaranteed if the war could be considered winnable in principle. Today the situation is qualitatively different for two principal reasons. First, the objective of the feasible war at the present phase of historical development, in accordance with the objective requirements of imperialism—world domination by capital’s most powerful state, in tune with its own political design of ruthless authoritarian “globalization” (dressed up as “free exchange” in a U.S. ruled global market)— is ultimately unwinnable, foreshadowing, instead, the destruction of humankind. This objective by no stretch of imagination could be considered a rational objective in accord with the stipulated rational requirement of the “continuation of politics by other means” conducted by one nation, or by one group of nations against another. Aggressively imposing the will of one powerful national state over all of the others, even if for cynical tactical reasons the advocated war is absurdly camouflaged as a “purely limited war” leading to other “open ended limited wars,” can therefore be qualified only as total irrationality. The second reason greatly reinforces the first. For the weapons already available for waging the war or wars of the twenty first century are capable of exterminating not only the adversary but the whole of humanity, for the first time ever in history. Nor should we have the illusion that the existing weaponry marks the very end of the road. Others, even more instantly lethal ones, might appear tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Moreover, threatening the use of such weapons is by now considered an acceptable state strategic device. Thus, put reasons one and two together, and the conclusion is inescapable: envisaging war as the mechanism of global government in today’s ***LINKS
Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ world underlines that we find ourselves at the precipice of absolute irrationality from which there can be no return if we accept the ongoing course of development. What was missing from von Clausewitz’s classic definition of war as the “continuation of politics by other means” was the investigation of the deeper underlying causes of war and the possibility of their avoidance. The challenge to face up to such causes is more urgent today than ever before. For the war of the twenty first century looming ahead of us is not only “not winnable in principle.” Worse than that, it is in principle unwinnable. Consequently, envisaging the pursuit of war, as the Bush administration’s September 17, 2002 strategic document does, make Hitler’s irrationality look like the model of rationality.
The alternative is to reject the affirmative – politicizing the way we think of the global economy creates space for sustainable micro-political economic strategies Gibson-Graham 3 (J.K. “Enabling Ethical Economies: Cooperativism and Class” 2003, http://crs.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/29/2/123.full.pdf+html)
As part of an ongoing project committed to exploring the potentialities and possibilities of building sustainable community economies I have been concerned to challenge the way ‘economy’ is thought and to identify what we are up against when attempting to think differently (especially ethically) about the economic realm. One problem is that, in contrast to previous periods, the economy is no longer seen as a sphere of decision (Lemke Sustainability is referred to here in terms of the inter-generational durability of local cultures, practices of sociality and emplaced livelihood strategies that support community economies. I have coined the term community economies to refer to those economic practices that are inflected with ethical principles to do with family, community, culture and environment (often loosely defined but strongly adhered to) that acknowledge the relational interdependence of all activities that constitute a society (Gibson 2002; Community Economies Collective 2001). With the resurgence of neo-liberalism in the second half of the 20th century we have seen renewed faith in the hidden (almost mystical) hand of the free market, and the active aspect of management associated with the term ‘economy’ has been subordinated to a notion of systemic self-regulation . Naturalization of the view that we have no (longer a) role in making and managing the economy by which we live has had limiting effects on economic imaginaries . A reluctance to engage in economic experimentation because of its perceived futility, or for fear of repression by the all powerful economy, has become a form of unfreedom, a discursive enslavement, a refusal to explore economic power as unstable and fluid, as potentially reversible “strategic games between liberties” that are always available (Foucault 1988:19; Hindess 1997:97-8). It is this depoliticization of the economic terrain that must be challenged if any space for enabling ethical economic practices is to be opened up. Another problem is the representation of the economy as ‘capitalist.’ Deconstructing the hegemony of capitalocentrism involves representing the diversity of the ‘complex unity’ we know as ‘economy,’ that is, highlighting the multiple registers of value and modes of transaction that make up our heterogeneous economic world, sustaining livelihoods in communities around the world. The diverse modes of remunerating labor, appropriating and distributing surplus and establishing commensurability in exchange, for example, all allow for specific enactments of economic freedom, some more circumscribed than others (Community Economies Collective 2001). As is increasingly apparent competitive individualism is not the only ethical principle involved. In a growing number of intentional and unintentional economies variously enacted ethics of social, cultural and environmental sustainability are actively shaping transactions and performances. I have been particularly interested in community economies in which the material well-being of people and the sustainability of the community are priority objectives. Indeed it is through articulating these ethical and political stances that ‘community’ is called into being. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Epistemology Link
Their faith in economic theory to prove market logic is flawed – empirics demonstrate the market inevitably marginalizes the global South Bienefeld 94 – PHD in Economics at the London School of Economics (Manfred, “The New World Order: Echoes of a New Imperialism”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, The South in the New World (Dis)Order http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993022)
The views of the hard optimists thus provide a fertile soil for the more explicit and open imperialism that has begun to surface in the NWO and that has replaced the furtive and covert forms that were more typical of the Cold War era. Overt imperialism requires self-righteousness, supreme confidence and an utter convic- tion that one's actions are 'for the best'. It also requires security from the threat of serious retaliation. The NWO has brought us both. The zeal and the su- perficially plausible rationalisations come from the ranks of those whose faith in markets has overwhelmed their critical faculties, while the security from possible retaliation comes from the demise of the 'evil empire'. True faith in markets is immune to empirical evidence. Increased suffering is merely 'short-term pain'; delayed benefits indicate that policies have not been implemented forcefully or long enough, that implementing agencies were corrupt or incompetent, or that the problems created by earlier policies were underesti- mated. Ultimately, no matter how bad things get, it is always possible to claim that things would have been even worse otherwise. This moves the question firmly into the realm of theory since it is impossible to measure a hypothetical alternative empirically. In this way, the empirical evidence is disempowered and theory rules. This leaves the matter unresolved. It also leaves those who have supreme faith in markets free to cling to their security blanket. An early IMF study exploring the link between its structural adjustment policies and human welfare illustrates the point. After surveying the evidence and the methodological issues, it was obliged to conclude that even its estimates of short term welfare effects were 'primarily based on deductive reasoning and not on the evidence itself'. Estimates of long-term effects were so much more difficult that it chose to proceed on 'the axiomatic assumption that the impact of structural adjustment on welfare is subject to a J-curve effect' 2 Since axiomatic assumptions are made a priori, the empirical evidence was thereby declared irrelevant. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Competitiveness Link/Internal
Economic nationalism legitimizes global imperial violence Whyte 7 – PHD and reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool School of Sociology and Social policy (Dave Whyte, “Market Patriotism and the "War on Terror"”, in Social Justice, vol 34 iss 3/4, Proquest, IWren
A combination of economic and cultural-racial supremacy underpins all forms of imperialism. Rarely is it represented as explicitly as it is in Rhodes' cherished idea. Imperial powers have tended to sugar the pill of colonial domination with the promise of social advancement or humanitarian assistance. Although the British historically laid claim to a "civilizing mission," U.S. imperialism during the Cold War more crudely promised "liberation" through the opening up of "free markets" (legitimized by a generalized defense of human rights, of liberal democracy, etc.). The racist and economically egotistical motives of Empire (the economic subordination of populations, the capture of resources, and the development of markets) are typically masked by the promise of the cultural/social/political advantages for subordinate populations. Thus, techniques of neocolonialism that emerged in the 20th century sought to discipline and control populations with the promise of economic incorporation or the threat of economic exclusion. More recently, the legitimating narrative for U.S. imperialist military interventions has been constructed around a doctrine of preemption/prevention in which "axis of evil" states represent a legitimate target for reasons of the "liberation" of their people and for a much more nakedly egotistical defense of U.S. national interests. This article will explore how the current U.S. imperial project combines an increasingly naked economic rationale with a more overt nationalist one . It will point to the ideological mobilization of "market patriotism," which is welding notions of "national security" and the "national interest" to the (neoliberal) market. "Market patriotism" is emerging to play an increasingly important role in engineering political legitimacy for the mobilization of the coercive apparatuses of the state domestically and internationally under conditions of a so-called war on terror. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Competitiveness Link/Internal
Framing economic problems unilaterally necessitates interventionist, imperial violence and creates an economy wholly dependent on the military-industrial complex Whyte 7 – PHD and reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool School of Sociology and Social policy (Dave Whyte, “Market Patriotism and the "War on Terror"”, in Social Justice, vol 34 iss 3/4, Proquest, IWren)
Current U.S. imperialist strategy illustrates an explicit shift away from a universalist position. Wallerstein (2004) identifies a break in strategy between the Nixon-Clinton years (soft-multilateralism) and the George W. Bush administration (unilateralism). Very crudely, this can be characterized as a shift away from a universalist position in the sense that it involves a narrowing of U.S. national interest. This may be partly due to the rise to prominence of a group in the Bush administration known as the neocons. The complexities of the shifts in U.S. foreign policy, however, are not simply reducible to the peccadilloes of the ruling elite. The politics of the "Imperium" are defined by the contradictory position of the U.S. economy in relation to the global economy (Panitch and Gindin, 2005; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005; Fouskas andGokay, 2005). The U.S. maintains adominant position militarily and economically and is indeed the world's only superpower. Because of the level of interpenetration across economies, U.S. capital (and capital in the other major economic blocs) has become increasingly interdependent with, as well as compelled to collaborate with, the major blocs. Although its military strength is unrivalled, U.S. global economic predominance is beginning to be challenged. Those unstable features of the global political economy account for a coercive turn in U.S.-led neoliberalism, in which U.S. reliance upon military aggression to achieve foreign policy goals is intensifying (Harvey, 2003).1 U.S. economic stability at home therefore depends largely upon its military and economic success abroad. Foreign policy, conducted under the guise of a war on terror, has a distinctly Rhodesian aspect insofar as it also aims to ameliorate economic instability and the prospects of social conflict at home. The sources of potential social unrest in the U.S. economy are clear. Neoliberal industrial restructuring at home has created new social tensions that stem largely from the new insecurities in labor markets (the ratcheting down of working conditions, erosion of rights and benefits, and embedding of long-term unemployment) (Peck, 1996). The dollar's strength in the global economy is currently keeping at bay an economic crisis that would likely create conditions that threaten hegemony. Meanwhile, the U.S. military-industrial complex can potentially undermine political stability. As Hossein-Zadeh (2006) notes, the huge levels of public resources now being colonized by arms manufacturing and other military corporations are being drawn directly from social security budgets. Thus, although it may be necessary to stave off an impending economic crisis, U.S. militarism also creates the conditions of social unrest at home. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Free Trade Free trade promotes private interests of the state Fallows 93- national correspondent for the Atlantic, BA in history and literature from Harvard and was a Rhodes Scholar @ Oxford for economics (James, “How the World Works”, The Atlantic online 1993,, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1993/12/how-the-world-works/5854/)
The cosmopolitan theorists [List's term for Smith and his ilk] do not question the importance of industrial expansion. They assume, however, that this can be achieved by adopting the policy of free trade and by leaving individuals to pursue their own private interests. They believe that in such circumstances a country will automatically secure the development of those branches of manufacture which are best suited to its own particular situation. They consider that government action to stimulate the establishment of industries does more harm than good .... The lessons of history justify our opposition to the assertion that states reach economic maturity most rapidly if left to their own devices. A study of the origin of various branches of manufacture reveals that industrial growth may often have been due to chance. It may be chance that leads certain individuals to a particular place to foster the expansion of an industry that was once small and insignificant —just as seeds blown by chance by the wind may sometimes grow into big trees. But the growth of industries is a process that may take hundreds of years to complete and one should not ascribe to sheer chance what a nation has achieved through its laws and institutions. In England Edward III created the manufacture of woolen cloth and Elizabeth founded the mercantile marine and foreign trade. In France Colbert was responsible for all that a great power needs to develop its economy . Following these examples every responsible government should strive to remove those obstacles that hinder the progress of civilisation and should stimulate the growth of those economic forces that a nation carries in its bosom . Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Hegemony The concept of hegemony is a utilization of expanding state control of the global economy Ciccantell 1 - Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison [Paul, Canadian Journal of Sociology, NAFTA and the Reconstruction of U.S. Hegemony: The Raw Materials Foundations of Economic Competitiveness. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-79030076.html January 1, 2001; WBTR]
The nature of hegemony has been the subject of significant debate in the social science literature (see, e.g., Krasner, 1978; Vernon, 1983; Keohane, 1984; Wallerstein, 1984; Kennedy, 1987; Modelski and Thompson, 1988; ChaseDunn, 1989; Arrighi, 1994). This analysis follows the definition of hegemony developed by Arrighi (1994: 27): "the power of a state to exercise functions of leadership and governance over a system of sovereign states." This definition emphasizes the multidimensional character of hegemony, encompassing economic, political, military and cultural power. Some analyses of hegemony examined the role of raw materials in hegemonic rivalry in earlier eras (Krasner, 1978; Vernon, 1983; Keohane, 1984; and Arrighi, 1994). However, none systematically incorporated raw materials and, more broadly, the critical relationship between capitalist economic growth and natural production systems, and discussions of hegemony in the current era of globalization focus on political and cultural dimensions of hegemon y and largely ignore material processes. Globalization increasingly links economies, polities and societies (Boxill, 1994; Harvey, 1995; Holm and Sorenson, 1995; Sunkel, 1995; Amin, 1996; Arrighi, 1998; Woods, 1998). Although some analysts argued that this integration reduces the role of the state (Harvey, 1995; Holm and Sorenson, 1995; Strange, 1995; Hobsbawm, 1998; Yaghmaian, 1998), a more accurate conceptualization of the role of the state in the current era focuses on the transformation of the role of the state (Shaw, 1997; Garrett, 1998; Robertson and Khondker, 1998; Swank, 1998; Ciccantell, 2000). States still strategize and act in support of national economic and political interests, especially as sites of production, consumption and capital accumulation (see Ciccantell, 2000). In particular, states retain their role as battlegrounds between competing interests of a variety of social classes and groups, even though these interests have been reshaped by globalization (Biersteker, 1998; Hobsbawm, 1998; Sklair, 1998). New historical materialism (Bunker and Ciccantell, 1995a and 1995b; Ciccantell and Bunker, 1998 and 1999; Ciccantell, 1999 and 2000) focuses on the natural and social material processes that underlie economic ascent and hegemonic maintenance and how these material processes shape social processes of establishing and maintaining models of state-firm relations in core nations, institutional and technological innovations to promote economic growth in rising economies, and core- periphery relations to support economic ascent. Analysing the role of raw materials in efforts to reconstitute U.S. hegemony in the current era extends the new historical materialist model. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Foreign Aid
Aid to developing nations causes reinforcement of the new world order and makes us ‘become prisoners of globalization” Bienefeld 94 – PHD in Economics at the London School of Economics (Manfred, “The New World Order: Echoes of a New Imperialism”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, The South in the New World (Dis)Order http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993022)
The paper's final conclusion was that the 1980s had been a period when 'economic theory as well as economic policy were heavily oriented toward the pursuit of efficiency ... What is now needed is a policy well balanced between efficiency and fairness, in order to improve the welfare of the entire society'.33 With this one can only agree, though it is a wish not yet fulfilled. That a 'major partner' has broken ranks in this way is both an important and a welcome development. It weakens the united front behind the NWO project and it reinforces the demand for a return to a more realistic and pragmatic approach to the developing world's problems. One suspects that Japan took such a firm stand on this issue partly because it had become rightly concerned that some of the ASEAN economies with which it has forged such close links might be destabilised by the application of inappropriate and premature economic liberal- sation policies. Its own experience with the explosive rise of the 'bubble economy' in the wake of its financial liberalisation of the early 1980s, has undoubtedly made it more sensitive to these dangers. One can only welcome a revival of the idea that development is a complex, slow and ultimately self-motivated process that can be assisted only if one respects the vital importance of social and political stability and coherence as a precondition to economic growth and efficiency. The sooner this approach displaces the shallow, ahistorical and crassly economist approach of the 1980s, the better. However, this cannot happen unless there is a significant change in the NWO that reflects similar changes within the dominant countries. After all, that excessively narrow focus on efficiency, of which the OECF complained, is also a feature of their domestic situations. Moreover, as this essay has argued repeatedly, even there it is a matter that cannot be changed merely by wishing it away, since it is substantially enforced by the constraints imposed by the NWo. This merely reflects the degree to which we have become the prisoners of globalisation. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Nation Building
Nation state building cause monopolizers of violence Lipschutz 98 – Prof of politics at UC Santa Cruz [Ronnie, On Security, ed. Ronnie Lipschutz, http://www.ciaonet.org/book/lipschutz/index.html]
In a cruel irony, the result is that the zero-sum geopolitics of realism and the Cold War come to be reproduced at the micro-level of household and society, with the complete and deliberate elimination of family and social group as official policy of whatever monopolizers of violence remain in existence. Often, there is no monopoly, as when control of violence has devolved to the level of household and social group as well. In Somalia, consequently, the security of one clan could be purchased only at the cost of another--with the United States and the UN playing the role of one clan among many--even if this meant wiping out entire extended families so as to deny the right of a clan to exist as a collective entity. What, under these conditions, could it mean to be Somali in the national sense, a concept that was, in any event, largely imagined into being by the British and Italian colonial authorities? If there were no Somalis in the nation-state sense, then there was no Somalia, and the national security of the Somali state would become, ipso facto , an empty set. Although Somalia is of marginal interest to most, an empty set where Somalia was once to be found does constitute something of a threat to the international system. The same sort of analysis could be applied to any of dozens of other so-called nation-states around the world that have collapsed, or are threatening to collapse, into a similar condition. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact – Colonialism This allows American colonialism Harvey 6 – Professor @ CUNY (David, “A Conversation with David Harvey”,2006, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/harvey.htm)
So is this what is new about the “New Imperialism”? The old Imperialism, as you said, was about the relationship of power and dominion. Is this what is new? A: There are two things—in a funny kind of way, some of this is a reversion of certain events that happened at the end of the 19th century when there was a lot of accumulation by dispossession by the British Empire: taking away resources, destroying Indians’ indigenous industries and supplanting them, that sort of thing. So we look at our current situation, and it is sort of a repetition of what happened in the 19th century. The big distinction is that, apart from Iraq, it has generally not involved colonial occupation. It uses the power of the economy, the power of international institutions, such as the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund. It uses the power of economic leverage, and in some instances will use covert power to put in power someone who is very convivial for the Unites States to live with: a dictator like Pinochet in Chile, or,before that, the Shah of Iran. The United States has worked that way through the colonial kind of problem, rather than going through direct occupation as the British, the French and the other imperial regimes did during the end of the 19th century.
***IMPACTS Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact- Imperialism
Ten years in the Middle East has proven that in times of decline the system uses imperialism to heal debt problems. Harvey 4 – Professor @ CUNY (David,David Harvey Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkele, 2004, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con4.html)
When we're talking about empire or imperialism today, we're talking about the United States. How should we understand the particular evolution of capitalism in the United States and the processes at work as our global role has taken a new form? You spoke yesterday in our lecture of the financialization of American capital. The switch into financial domination of the world which occurred in the 1970s was a specific move taken within the United States to enhance finance capitalism against manufacturing and productive capitalism. Manufacturing and productive capitalism has largely been pushed out of the United States; not entirely, obviously, but much of it has moved to East and Southeast Asia, and, of course, quite a bit is in Europe as well. The United States is no longer a dominant player in the world of production. But the U.S. took the view that that didn't matter, provided it always had the financial power. It used the financial [power] to its advantage during the 1980s and 1990s, in particular, and assembled a great deal of wealth out of this particular financialization strategy. What we now see is that's coming to an end. The internal budget deficit of the United States, the current account deficit of the United States, is making the U.S. into a chronic debtor country, and if you're a debtor country you're vulnerable to those who hold your debt. This is a real threat to America hegemony, American domination. How, then, in this situation of vulnerability do we account for the new emphasis on territoriality? The neoconservatives are leading the show right now, or appearing to lead the show, driven by what you would call the territorial logic. As leaders of the state, they are in a different situation than the mayor of Baltimore. What are those differences and why their new-found importance? Is it a weakness that you just talked about? This is the big mystery, the question, and I think we can only make informed guesses about it. My informed guess is that, first off, this switch in the way in which the U.S. is approaching the world into a much more territorial vision by the occupation of Iraq is a great departure in U.S. political history. It's a new kind of imperialist practice which the U.S. has not followed for a hundred years or so. It takes us back to the McKinley period and what happened at the end of the nineteenth century. So the big question is why that switch into a territorial mode, and also, why this switch into militarization? [It is] not exactly an entirely new thing, because U.S. military power has always been a significant aspect of U.S. imperialist practices, but to make it explicit in this way [is new]. This is rather different from what could be seen as a defensive war in Vietnam to an offensive, preemptive war to try to establish a territorial configuration, which is new in global politics. This is something which is distinctively new. My feeling about it is that the neoconservative vision which is driving this is very, very much concerned about maintaining authority and maintaining order, and it hasn't got the leverage it once had through financial mechanisms or through productive capacity, or even through cultural persuasion that it once had. The only leverage it's got left is indeed the military one, and the military one, of course, is not very good at fighting diffuse forces. The military one has always been about territorial logic. So a return to militarization brings you back into territorial aggrandizement. I don't think this is consistent with U.S. imperialist practices, and I'm not sure it's going to last. It may, in fact, be something that they try, and then it's going to be found wanting. In some ways the Iraq venture is already a failure, and if that is the case, then we're going to have to find a reconfiguration of U.S. imperialist practices, probably back to the sorts of things that were going on in the 1980s and 1990s, if they could possible do it. But again, the problem right now is the weakness of the United States in terms of its financial situation, and also in terms of its productive capacity. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact – Endless War Economic adventurism allows for the militarization of geopolitics. Harvey 6 – Professor @ CUNY (David, “A Conversation with David Harvey”,2006, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/harvey.htm)
In what way can accumulation by dispossession be explanatory in American foreign policy? Is this the logic that is driving foreign policy decisions? A: I don’t think it’s the explanatory variable, it is a key one which you have to look at again and again and again. For instance, the U.S. does have security concerns of some kind. The U.S. is concerned for a good reason, and in some instances it is about political movements which are occurring in various parts of the world, and therefore it will try to engage in pre-emptive politics, which it did in the invasion of Afghanistan. It seems to me that the invasion of Afghanistan was a very different story from the Iraq invasion. It was not simply that there were no good targets in Afghanistan; there was nothing really there in Afghanistan that we really wanted, except that the U.S. now has a very considerable geo-political presence in the whole region, not only in Afghanistan, but also Uzbekistan. It is trying to sort of spread its military power throughout this entire region because this is the key to ythe political region. Therefore, the US a has a legitimate interest in the stability of the region, but at the same time it is illegitimate because it is also about the taking away of oil assets from the people of the region.
The competitive economic system uses our military as its global policeman – forcing us to be a permanent state of war. Mooers 6 – Chair of the Department of Politics and School of Public Administration at Ryerson University (Colin, “The New Imperialists”,2006, pg 5-6)
The current round of imperialism, therefore, has as its goal the export and entrenchment of capitalist social- property relations throughout the world; it is about the universalization of capitalism. And just as in earlier phases of capitalism, state military power has been central to the imposition of this new stage of primitive accumulation and enclosure. However, if state military power is still essential for the imposition of capitalism in some parts of the world, and if its spectacular display remains vital to U.S. global hegemony, there is an important sense in which the dynamics of imperialism have changed markedly. Unlike its earlier forms, imperialism today no longer relies on direct colonization. Nor does military rivalry between states over resources and territory exist on the scale that it did in the time of Lenin and Bukharin. But if imperialism is no longer defined by formal empire and military competition, how have militarism and capitalist imperatives become so closely linked in the new imperialism? The simple answer is that in a world comprised of limited territorial states and the global reach of capital, the use of overwhelming military might becomes the only way of policing capitalist interests. When terrorist violence beyond the state is thrown into the mix, the problem becomes even more intractable. For these reasons, a more or less permanent state of warfare – war without end – has become definitive of twenty-first-century capitalism: “Boundless domination of a global economy, and of the multiple states that administer it, requires military action without end, in purpose or time.” 12 If a state of permanent war has become the “new normal” of our time, it is clear why the discourse of empire has become so vital to those who defend this new order of things: the domestication of war and imperial conquest has become an urgent ideological imperative.
Conflicts will only get worse—the new world order will become stronger—soon these created threats turn into self-fulfilling prophecy Bienefeld 94 – PHD in Economics at the London School of Economics (Manfred, “The New World Order: Echoes of a New Imperialism”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, The South in the New World (Dis)Order http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993022)
The result has been an increasingly unstable and unmanageable world in which economic imbalances have grown to a point where they are inhibiting investment and generating increased social and political conflict. And those conflicts will intensify as people's expressed political wishes are continually disappointed by almost powerless governments; as people feel more economically, socially and politically threatened in a volatile and patently unfair world in which loyalty, hard work and effort count for much less than luck, ruthless- ness and power; and as people become more cynical about the political process. In such a world the good intentions of the soft optimists will be even more grievously disappointed than in the 1970s or 1980s. Chronic economic and financial problems will continue to relegate such idealistic concerns to the half empty pews of our places of worship. Those who persist in demanding a different ordering of priorities will be dismissed as dinosaurs or dreamers, either unmindful or unaware of the 'facts of economic life'; and social democratic parties will continue to be decimated at the polls Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ as people see their limited ability to deliver on their promises, so long as the NWO has to be taken as 'given'. Received wisdom remains that these things do have to be taken as given. Globalisation is inevitable! Globalisation is technologically determined! Global- isation is part of the inexorable rise of the global village! In another age they would have pronounced it an act of God. These false and fatalistic slogans provide the cover under which the NWO is being constructed. As it nears completion, we increasingly become its prisoners. In time, the promise of powerlessness may yet become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact – War on Terror Neoliberalism constructs the image of the terrorist in opposition to the national economy to legitimize extreme forms of contemporary market patriotism Whyte 7 – PHD and reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool School of Sociology and Social policy (Dave Whyte, “Market Patriotism and the "War on Terror"”, in Social Justice, vol 34 iss 3/4, Proquest, IWren)
Following the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, ideologies of market supremacy became prominent in relation to the defense of "our" markets and "our" market system against the terrorists. Elsewhere, this has been documented with reference to a range of appeals to "consumer patriotism," including Bill Clinton's public shopping spree for ties to remind citizens of their "patriotic duty to spend money" (Whyte, 2002). When the New York Stock Exchange reopened on September 17,2001, it organized a ceremony that included a recital of God Bless America, led by a U.S. Marine. The traders themselves were lauded as "heroes" after they managed to buy and sell a record value in shares that day (The Financial Times, September 22-23,2001). Post-September 11 tales about terrorist exploitation of U.S. corporate brand names also circulated, as if to keep consumers on the righteous path. The Washington Post, for example, highlighted how terrorists and "rogue states" benefit from counterfeited goods that corrupt brand names such as Nikes and Levis (Klein, 2001). Messages of condolence and "united against terrorism" sloganeering became ubiquitous in corporate advertising in the aftermath of the attacks (Ashby, 2006). The purity of the U.S. brand itself briefly symbolized the war on terror. For political leaders, encouraging market patriotism serves a range of purposes. At one level, it is a pragmatic means of encouraging economic activity during crises hi which profit accumulation is at threat of interruption. At another level, its effect is much more profound. Market patriotism, in the forms noted above, is aimed at locating collective opposition to terrorism in the economy, reifying neoliberal markets as a bulwark against terrorism, and achieving ontological security in the everyday lives of people. The corollary is that opponents of neoliberalism can be easily labeled as a cause of the widespread fear and ontological insecurity sought by the "terrorists." Shortly before the U.S. presidential election in November 2004, Osama bin Laden released a tape of a speech addressed to the U.S. public. He cited a British estimate that the cost of conducting the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was roughly half a million dollars, a figure dwarfed by the cost to the U.S. economy (perhaps hi excess of a trillion dollars):3 Every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars, by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs.... As for the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars.... And it all shows that the real loser is you...it is the American people and their economy.4 In December 2001, bin Laden had claimed that the attacks had "shaken the throne of America and hit hard the American economy at its heart and its core." The U.S. government took the opportunity to make a stalwart defense of U.S. economic integrity. The FBI's rejoinder to a similar message in 2002 is typical of the dialogue of the U.S. state with bin Laden: The focus on economic targets is consistent with al-Qaeda's stated ideological goals and longstanding strategy. The September 11 attacks and commentary on these attacks by bin Laden and others indicate how central economic targets are to this strategy: The group's leaders have said that they aim to undermine what they see as the backbone of U.S. power, the economy. Our adversary is trying to portray American influence as based on economic might and therefore seeks to strike an economic target prominent enough for economic and symbolic reasons that it would have immediate resonance around the world (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002). As bin Laden talks up the economic vulnerability of the U.S., the U.S. government talks up the U.S.'s central role in defending and promoting a "free" global market. The positioning of "terrorists" in opposition to the free-market system enables profit- making activity to be valorized as a bulwark against terrorism. If terrorists seek to harm us economically and prevent us from realizing the freedoms we can enact through participation in the marketplace, then they are out to destroy not only democracy and freedom, but also market democracy and market freedom. This construction of neoliberal market civilization fits well with George W. Bush's constituency in the Southern and Midwestern heartlands of the U.S., where Presbyterian fundamentalism has virtually adopted the capitalist market as part of its religious iconography (Schwartz, 2004; Gallaher, 1997).5 In this vision, terrorism threatens American lives and American livelihoods (as realized by the economic predominance of the U.S.). Market patriotism thus allows the war on terror to be reconstructed as a war in which the security of the people depends upon the security of the neoliberal economy. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact - Retaliation
Trade increases competitiveness and neoliberalism—destroying the econ and causing retaliation Bienefeld 94 – PHD in Economics at the London School of Economics (Manfred, “The New World Order: Echoes of a New Imperialism”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, The South in the New World (Dis)Order http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993022)
In trade policy the theoretical case for intervention derives from many of the same considerations discussed in relation to industry and technology. Any country seeking to develop a comparative advantage in a new sector will face difficulties that will be magnified if competitive pressures are intense, if markets are volatile and if gestation periods are long. As the new trade theory has clearly shown, under such conditions a clear case for managed trade can be made even within the narrow confines of neoclassical theory.25 Of course, that same literature has also shown that this case may evaporate in practice, if countries cannot manage such trade restrictions rationally or if they are exposed to a threat of heavy retaliation. And, since the Nwo increases the likelihood of such retaliation, most observers conclude that, though potentially valuable, the use of these policy instruments is also precluded by the NWO. Once again, it is important to point out that this is so because the powerful have conspired to prevent the weak from using policies that could have strengthened them and that might even be essential for successful industrialisation. Such intervention is of course the hallmark of imperialism. The theoretical case for intervention in agriculture derives from the need to build strong links between agriculture and the rest of the economy, especially where agriculture accounts for a large share of employment.26 There are both economic and political reasons for this. Economically such linkages reduce sensitivity to external shocks and allow urban and rural labour markets to be more effectively integrated. Politically they build national cohesion since each sector's prosperity becomes more clearly dependent on the efficiency and prosperity of the rest of the domestic economy. To build a more integrated economy the state may have to intervene in the distribution of land titles through a land reform that assists smallholder farming, allowing it to raise productivity using non-import intensive production technologies. In both South Korea and Taiwan such a pattern of growth dispersed rural (and national) incomes widely, raised the minimum wage by steadily raising the supply price of labour, created a strong rural market for some fledgling industries and allowed labour to be retained in agriculture until other sectors were able to absorb it. The fact that the state also intervened to ensure a significant share of the country's food require- ments were domestically produced further increased the density of internal linkages. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact – Root Cause The aggressive economic system is the root cause of war. Harvey 4 – Professor @ CUNY (David,David Harvey Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkele, 2004, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con4.html)
There are several ways in which you can configure the opposition, and these aren't necessarily the ones that I would favor . There's a lot of nationalist opposition around the world to U.S. global domination, and some of that is beginning to provoke certain alliances amongst forces which are very resistant to what the U.S. is up to around the world. You can see this increasingly with alliances like the one that is emerging between Brazil and India and China and Russia, which is becoming quite nationalistic as well. So what we're seeing is a zone of resistance to what the U.S. is trying to do globally, which I don't think is progressive at all. I think in many ways it's regressive and I think it's dangerous. But nevertheless, it is a very strong force of opposition. An alliance between, say, Russian, China, India, and Brazil against the United States, or against Europe, seems to me to be quite a fierce global battle which I would not like to see unfold, but I think it's there . Then there are many other forms of opposition at a much more local level. There's one wing of anti-globalization, alternative globalization, which I already mentioned, which says all the solutions lie at the local level, and is trying to construct local solutions. In some cases these can be very helpful, in the sense that the local solution can spill out and become general if people find a way to make something work in a particular place, in a particular way. There's a lot of experimentation at that level. What worries me right now is that there's not a very coherent general opposition with a very good plan against what's happening both globally and locally. For example, I'm absolutely amazed that there is a great deal of discontent in this country over things like education, health care, public services, failing infrastructure, and yet there is no political movement which is articulating those ideas and saying that these have to be part of a new progressive politics in this country, and that anybody who comes to power must address those issues. I see the Democrats beginning to address those issues, not because they want to but because the base is forcing them. But I don't think they're speaking to the anger that exists amongst large groups in the population over what is happening to them in terms of their life -- having health care problems and insurance problems, and the lack of resources in the midst of tremendous wealth that is being accumulated by this plutocracy, the upper classes. The aggressive nature of our economic system forces military expansion – root cause of your impacts Mooers 6 – Chair of the Department of Politics and School of Public Administration at Ryerson University (Colin, “The New Imperialists”,2006, pg 3-4)
To answer these questions we must begin with what is “new” about the “new imperialism.” First, it would be a mistake to view the recent U.S. turn to “preemptive” military action solely in terms of a reaction to the events of September 11th, or, more sinisterly, as the pre-planned goal of bellicose neoconservatives. That the Bush administration is more willing to resort to large-scale military intervention than previous administrations is undoubtedly true. However, to see this as a fundamental change in the nature of U.S. imperialism would be an exaggeration. The U.S.A. has a long and unbroken history of imperial conquest stretching back more than two centuries. It would be equally MOOERS: Introduction 3one-sided to see the invasion of Iraq as only about oil. Control of Middle Eastern oil reserves would give the U.S.A. an indisputable advantage over potential rivals, notably the fast rising powers of Asia. But if oil is a crucial part of the equation, the Iraq war is also part of a much wider “radical, punitive, ‘extra-economic’ restructuring of the conditions necessary for expanded profitability – paving the way, in short, for new rounds of American-led dispossession and capital accumulation … a new form of military neoliberalism.” 7 But, while America is still the preeminent military power on the planet, its superiority in firepower vastly exceeds its economic supremacy. 8 It is this imbalance between its economic and its military might that helps account for the shift to a more aggressive military posture. Thus, the drive of neoconservatives toward a more coercive orientation in international relations is intended to send a message not only to so-called “rogue” regimes and “failed” states, but also to its major economic competitors. In other words, while proximate causes are important in accounting for the emergence of the new imperialism, we need to situate these changes within the deep structural shifts in global capitalism that have occurred over the past two decades Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact – Universal Rights Competitive expansion has privatized everything – killing universal rights. Harvey 4 – Professor @ CUNY (David,David Harvey Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkele, 2004, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con4.html)
Accumulation by dispossession is about dispossessing somebody of their assets or their rights. Traditionally there have been rights which have common property, and one of the ways in which you take these away is by privatizing them. We've seen moves in recent years to privatize water. Traditionally, everybody had had access to water, and [when] it gets privatized, you have to pay for it. We've seen the privatization of a lot of education by the defunding of the public sector, and so more and more people have to turn to the private sector. We've seen the same thing in health care. What we're talking about here is the taking away of universal rights, and the privatization of them, so it [becomes] your particular responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the state. One of the proposals which we now have is the privatization of Social Security. Social Security may not be that generous, but it's universal and everybody has part of it. What we are now saying is, "That shouldn't be; it should be privatized," which, of course, means that people will then have to invest in their own pension funds, which means more money goes to Wall Street. So this is what I call privatization by dispossession in our particular circumstance. A lot of other things are going on. For instance, look at the way in which lands have been taken away; peasant movements have been destroyed by state action. There are a lot of things of that sort happening around the world, where people are accumulating at other people's expense. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact – Econ Collapse Failure to embrace deglobalization causes an inevitable economic collapse Bello 9 – Prof of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of the Philippines [the Huffpost World, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/walden-bello/the-virtues-of-deglobaliz_b_277531.html; September 5, 2009 WBTR]
From the Cult of Efficiency to Effective Economics The aim of the deglobalization paradigm is to move beyond the economics of narrow efficiency, in which the key criterion is the reduction of unit cost, never mind the social and ecological destabilization this process brings about. It is to move beyond a system of economic calculation that, in the words of John Maynard Keynes, made "the whole conduct of life…into a paradox of an accountant's nightmare." An effective economics, rather, strengthens social solidarity by subordinating the operations of the market to the values of equity, justice, and community by enlarging the sphere of democratic decision making. To use the language of the great Hungarian thinker Karl Polanyi in his book The Great Transformation, deglobalization is about "re- embedding" the economy in society, instead of having society driven by the economy. The deglobalization paradigm also asserts that a "one size fits all" model like neoliberalism or centralized bureaucratic socialism is dysfunctional and destabilizing. Instead, diversity should be expected and encouraged, as it is in nature. Shared principles of alternative economics do exist, and they have already substantially emerged in the struggle against and critical reflection over the failure of centralized socialism and capitalism. However, how these principles — the most important of which have been sketched out above — are concretely articulated will depend on the values, rhythms, and strategic choices of each society. Deglobalization's Pedigree Though it may sound radical, deglobalization isn't really new. Its pedigree includes the writings of the towering British economist Keynes who, at the height of the Depression, bluntly stated: "We do not wish…to be at the mercy of world forces working out, or trying to work out, some uniform equilibrium, according to the principles of laissez faire capitalism." Indeed, he continued, over "an increasingly wide range of industrial products, and perhaps agricultural products also, I become doubtful whether the economic cost of self-sufficiency is great enough to outweigh the other advantages of gradually bringing the producer and the consumer within the ambit of the same national, economic and financial organization. Experience accumulates to prove that most modern mass- production processes can be performed in most countries and climates with almost equal efficiency." And with words that have a very contemporary ring, Keynes concluded, "I sympathize…with those who would minimize rather than with those who would maximize economic entanglement between nations. Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel — these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible; and, above all, let finance be primarily national." Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact – War Competitiveness discourse mobilizes populations for economic warfare Bristow 4 - Senior Lecturer in Econ. Geography @ Cardiff U [Gillian, “Everyone’s a ‘winner,’”Journal of Economic Geography 5.3: 285-304]
Ultimately, the language of competitiveness is the language of the business community. Thus, critical to under standing the power of the discourse is firstly, understanding the appeal and significance of the discourse to business interests and, secondly, exploring their role in influencing the ideas of regional and national polic y elites. Part of the allure of the discourse of competitiveness for the business community is its seeming com prehensibility. Business leaders feel that they already understand the basics of what competitiveness mean s and thus it offers them the gain of apparent sophistication without the pain of grasping something compl ex and new. Furthermore, competitive images are exciting and their accoutrements of ‘battles’, ‘wars’ and ‘races’ have an intuitive appeal to businesses familiar with the cycle of growth, survival and sometimes collapse (Krugman, 1996b). Th e climate of globalisation and the turn towards neo-liberal, capitalist forms of regulation has empowered b usiness interests and created a demand for new concepts and models of development which offer guidance on how economies can innovate and prosper in the face of increasing competition for investment and reso urces. Global policy elites of governmental and corporate institutions, who share the same neo-liberal cons ensus, have played a critical role in promoting both the discourse of national and regional competitiveness, and of competitiveness policies which they think are good for them (such as supportive institutions and fu nding for research and development agendas). In the EU, for example, the European Round Table of Industrialists played a prom inent role in ensuring that the Commission's 1993 White Paper placed the pursuit of international competitiveness (and thus the support of busine ss), on an equal footing with job creation and social cohesion objectives (Lovering, 1998; Balanya et al., 2000). This discourse rapidly spread and c ompetitiveness policies were transferred through global policy networks as large quasi-governmental organisations such as the OECD and World Bank pushed the national and, subsequently, the regional competitiveness agenda upon national go vernments (Peet, 2003). Part of the appeal of the regional competitiveness discourse for policy-makers is that like the discourse of globalisatio n, it presents a relatively structured set of ideas, often in the form of implicit and sedimented assumptions, upon which they can draw in formulati ng strategy and, indeed, in legitimating strategy pursued for quite distinct ends (Hay and Rosamond, 2002). Thus, the discourse clearly dovetails w ith discussions about the appropriate level at which economic governance should be exercised and fits in well with a growing trend towards the dec entralised, ‘bottom-up’ approaches to economic development policy and a focus on the indigenous potential of regions. For example, in the UK:‘the Government believes that a successful regional and sub-regional economic policy must be based on building the indigenous strengths in each locali ty, region and county. The best mechanisms for achieving this are likely to be based in the regions themselves’ (HM Treasury, 2001a, vi). The de volution of powers and responsibilities to regional institutions, whether democratic or more narrowly adm inistrative, is given added tour de force when accompanied by the arguments contained within the regional competitiveness discourse. There is clear political capital to be gained from highlighting endogenous capac ities to shape economic processes, not least because it helps generate the sense of regional identity that mo tivates economic actors and institutions towards a common regional purpose (Rosamond, 2002). Furthermore, the r egional competitiveness discourse points to a clear set of agendas for policy action over which regional inst itutions have some potential for leverage—agendas such as the development of university-business relation ships and strong innovation networks. This provides policy-makers with the ability to point to the existence of seemingly secure path s to prosperity, as reinforced by the successes of exemplar regions. In this way, the discourse of regional competitiveness helps t o provide a way of constituting regions as legitimate agents of economic governance. The language of regional com petitiveness also fits in very neatly with the ideological shift to the ‘Third Way’ popularised most notably by the New Labour government in the UK. This promotes the reconstruction of the state rather than its shrinkage (as under neo-liberal market imperatives) or expansion (as under traditiona l socialist systems of mass state intervention). Significantly, this philosophy sees state economic competencies as being restricted to the ability to in tervene in line with perceived microeconomic or supply-side imperatives rather than active macroeconomic, demand-side intervention—an agenda that is thus clearly in tune with the discourse around competitiveness. The attractiveness of the competitiveness discourse ma y also be partly a product of the power of pseudo-scientific, mathematised nature of the economics discipli ne and the business strategy literature from which it emanates. This creates an innate impartiality and tech nicality for the market outcomes (such as competitiveness) it describes (Schoenberger, 1998). Public policy in de veloped countries experiencing the marketisation of the state, is increasingly driven by managerialism whi ch emphasises the improved performance and efficiency of the state. This managerialism is founded upon economistic and rationalistic assumptions which include an emphasis upon measuring performance in the context of a planning system driven by objectives and targets (Sanderson, 2001). The result is an increasing requ irement for people, places and organisations to be accountable and for their performance and success to be measu red and assessed. In this emerging evaluative state, performance tends to be scrutinised through a variety of means, with particular emphasis placed upon output indicators. This provides not only a means of lending legitim acy to the institutional environment, but also some sense of exactitude and certainty, particularly for central governments who are th us able to retain some ‘top-down’, mechanical sense that things are somehow under their control (Boyle, 2001). The evolutionary, ‘surviv al of the fittest’ basis of the regional competitiveness discourse clearly resonates with this evaluative cultur Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ e. The discourse of competitiveness strongly appeals to the stratum of policy makers and analysts who can use it to justify what they are doing and/or to find out how well they are doing it relative to their ‘rivals’. Thi s helps explain the interest in trying to measure regional competitiveness and the development of composite indices and league tables. It also helps explain why particular elements of the discourse have assumed particular significance—output indicators of firm performance are much easier to c ompare and rank on a single axis than are indicators relating to institutional behaviour, for example. This in turn points to a central pa radox in measures of regional competitiveness. The key ingredients of firm competitiveness and regional p rosperity are increasingly perceived as lying with assets such as knowledge and information which are, by definition, intangible or at least difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy. The obsession with perfor mance measurement and the tendency to reduce complex variables to one, easily digestible number brings a ‘kind of blindness’ with it as to what is really important (Boyle, 2001, 60)—in this case, how to improve regional p rosperity. Thus while a composite index number of regional competitiveness will attract widespread attention in the media and amongst policy- makers and development agencies, the difficulty presented by such a measure is in knowing what exactly needs to be targeted for appropriate reme dial action. All of this suggests that regional competitiveness is more than simply the linguistic expression of p owerful exogenous interests. It has also become rhetoric. In other words, regional competitiveness is deplo yed in a strategic and persuasive way, often in conjunction with other discourses (notably globalisation) to legitimate specific policy initiatives and courses of action. The rhetoric of regional competitiveness serves a useful political purpose in that it is easier to justify change or the adoption of a particular course of policy a ction by reference to some external threat that makes change seem inevitable. It is much easier for example, for politi cians to argue for the removal of supply-side rigidities and flexible hire-and-fire workplace rules by suggesting that there is no alternative and that j obs would be lost anyway if productivity improvement was not achieved. Thus, ‘the language of external competitiveness...prov ides a rosy glow of shared endeavour and shared enemies which can unite captains of industry and represe ntatives of the shop floor in the same big tent’ (Turner, 2001, 40). In this sense it is a discourse which provides some shared sense of meaning and a means of legitimising neo-liberalism rather than a material focus on the act ual improvement of economic welfare.
Competitive economics directly increase the risk of large scale conflict—profit seeking, alliance breaking, and empirics prove Spector 10 - Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University Calumet (Alan J Spector, “Neoliberal Globalization and Capitalist Crises in the Age of Imperialism” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 48-51, IWren)
How might this impact international relations? One might assume that the biggest, wealthiest nations will see a need to cooperate to solve their common problems, and indeed, in the short term, we can see meetings and conferences designed to encourage cooperation. But underlying this whole process are serious potential problems as the advanced capitalist countries compete with each other for profits and control over the less developed countries (what Lenin called “interimperialist rivalry”), and that can set the stage for sharper conflicts among the imperialist countries themselves (Lenin 1969). This intense economic crisis puts even greater strains on these capitalist economies and pressures them into finding more international sources of profits, and this, in turn, increases the possibilities for various types of conflicts, not just with smaller countries but with larger ones as well. World War I appeared to have been started by a conflict between two different factions from small countries in the Balkans, but these countries were proxies for the powerful nations that were battling for much bigger prizes, including Arabian oil. More recently, the U.S. war in Iraq, begun in 2003, has been characterized by some as a war for democracy. This has been critiqued by those who point out U.S. military inaction in the many other areas of the world where the lack of democracy has hurt many more people. Others see it as a war for oil. This has been critiqued by those who point out that the United States has vast quantities of oil, and, in fact, imports very little oil from Iraq. A more subtle but still economically based analysis sees the war as largely motivated by the need to control the flow of oil to Europe, China, and other rivals of U.S. imperialism. Stabilizing a regime in Iraq that would be friendly to U.S. corporate interests is seen as providing a military base to protect U.S. oil company interests in the whole region. It is seen as a way to neutralize Iran, perhaps turning it into a U.S. ally, as it had been for a part of the twentieth century. It would protect the profits that U.S. corporations reap as middlemen, resellers of the region’s oil to others (e.g., Europe). It is not so much the actual oil that the U.S. needs, but rather the huge profits that are made acquiring and then reselling that oil to others who need it. Finally, controlling that oil has other important politicaleconomic benefits. Neither France, nor Germany, Japan, Italy, or Spain own significant sources of oil. Russia has huge amounts of natural gas, but also eyes the clean, inexpensive Arabian and Iranian oil. China has growing needs and is fervently seeking new sources of oil from the Sudan, Eastern Ethiopia, and Nigeria to Venezuela and Mexico. India, too, will have growing needs. If the U.S. corporations can maintain tight control on the oil resources of Iraq, and by extension parts of that region, they can maintain an advantage over those competing oil importers and thus assure U.S. control and domination over the oil resources of the Middle East. It might seem counterintuitive to see allies such as the United States, France, Germany, India, and Japan as rivals to be outmaneuvered by each other, but in a capitalist world, all alliances are ultimately temporary while competition is fundamental. Wallerstein, among others, has argued that there was a sizeable faction within the erstwhile Bush administration that was motivated not just by the so-called Clash of Civilizations between the United States and the radical Islamic movement, but by the economic and political power of Western Europe, Russia, and China as well. More recently, President Obama has sent a force of over 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. While Afghanistan may seem to be a poor country with few resources, the reality is that it is strategically located for gas and oil pipelines and for military positioning near Russia, China, and the oil-rich areas in that region. When the USSR collapsed and much of Eastern Europe Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ pushed aside the various Soviet-style regimes, many mainstream politicians and political theorists postulated that the United States would be the sole superpower for many years to come, the premier world power in a world that was embracing free market capitalism. Even China was opening up its economy to U.S. investments. Within a few years, however, various regional nationalists, especially in the Islamic world, were working to expand their political and economic influence. It was not only the United States that would gain from the collapse of Soviet influence in much of the world. Meanwhile, much of Western Europe moved toward closer economic and political integration, with a unified currency, political alliances, and more coordinated international cooperation on environmental and other policies. This unity might appear to help stabilize the global political situation, but it also creates pressure on some political and economic interests within the United States. The Euro is being used in place of the U.S. dollar in parts of the world, the opposition to U.S. foreign policy, military action, and human rights and environmental policy seems to be growing, and European investments in areas formerly secure for U.S. investments, such as Latin America, are competing with U.S. interests. The European Union, much of which President Bush derided as “Old Europe” in decline, has helped bolster the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela and continues to trade with Cuba, as well as lending support to other political movements that are at odds with U.S. imperialism. Currently, the European Union is investing heavily in Mexico. China, too, is rapidly increasing its investments in Latin America. The recent war of words between Russia and the United States, because Russia sees U.S. missiles near its border as a threat, is another example of increased tensions among the great powers. This has been further intensified by the recent conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where the United States has been propping up a regime to stir up trouble along the Russian border. No one is predicting a massive inter-imperialist World War in the near future. The big powers have much to gain from cooperation and much to lose from a major war. However, the increased rivalry among the major capitalist powers in a shrinking world, combined with the rise in economic, technological, and political power of China and India, will create more pressure on all the major capitalist powers. World War I was unthinkable in the early 1890s, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the big influence that the Soviet government had over hundreds of millions of people over the next seventy years was not imagined by anyone twenty years earlier, the rise of defeated Germany to world power status just twenty years after its crushing defeat in World War I was not predicted by many, and the rather sudden collapse of the Soviet Bloc around 1990 and the very different world that has developed since then were also unexpected just twenty years earlier. How the increased economic pressures of today will be resolved cannot easily be predicted, but history should caution us against predicting one hundred years of world peace, especially as today’s pressures and crises have become globalized in this shrinking world. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Impact –VTL The current system justifies militarized imperialism to gain economic security – this culminates in the destruction of value to life – people are seen as capital benefits.
Wood 5 – Fmr Professor of Political Science at York University (Ellen, The New Imperialists, speech given – April 2005,pg 9-12_
In the wake of 9/11, at the time of the war in Afghanistan, sixty U.S. academics issued a statement called “What We’re Fighting For: A Letter from America.” The signatories included some of the usual suspects, like Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama, but also others whom we do not automatically think of as right-wing ideologues – such as the social democrat Michael Walzer. It is probably fair to say that their statement represented the views of a reasonably wide intellectual and political spectrum – at least by U.S. standards – from mildly left liberal to more- or-less respectable conservatism; and it is probably as civilized a defense of U.S. military intervention as we are likely to find. The letter opens with a statement of the fundamental values that, according to the signatories, represent the best of the United States, the values for which they went to war: We affirm five fundamental truths that pertain to all people without distinction: 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. 2. The basic subject of society is the human person, and the legitimate role of government is to protect and help to foster the conditions for human flourishing. 3. Human beings naturally desire to seek the truth about life’s purposes and ultimate ends. 4. Freedom of conscience and religious freedom are inviolable rights of the human person. 5. Killing in the name of God is contrary to faith in God and is the greatest betrayal of the universality of religious faith. We fight to defend ourselves and to defend these universal principles. Most of us would find nothing objectionable in this list. We might even find it thoroughly admirable. The question is how we can square it with U.S. military adventures. We may subscribe to the values in that list and for that very reason regard the war in Afghanistan, to say nothing of the war in Iraq, as clearly imperialist. We might find it hard to understand how these values could be grounds for an essentially imperialist war, especially the first principle about the freedom and equality of human beings. It is especially puzzling when considered against the background of actual U.S. foreign policy, which has generally shown little inclination to support democratic regimes in its dependencies, to say nothing of the Bush regime’s assaults on democracy in its own backyard and at home. It becomes even more confusing when the letter goes on to argue that this war – and what its signatories say applies to the whole so-called war against terrorism – meets the conditions of “just war.” It is, they say, a just war first and foremost because it meets the condition that “wars of aggression and aggrandizement are never acceptable.” 10 The New ImperialistsThis may seem more than a little tasteless, under the circumstances, with the Bush regime hardly disguising its intentions of maintaining U.S. hegemony in the region by acquiring strategic positions in Afghanistan and Iraq. But however incongruous it may be, it is worth asking why such incongruities seem plausible to decent and intelligent people. How is it that freedom, equality, and universal human dignity can seem a convincing justification for imperialism and war? The answer begins with capitalism. This is a system of appropriation that does not depend on legal inequalities or the inequality of political rights. Appropriating and producing classes can be free and equal under the law; the relation between them is supposed to be a contractual agreement between free and equal individuals; and even universal suffrage is possible without fundamentally affecting the economic powers of capital. In fact, capital benefits from the disappearance of the old formal differences among human beings, because it thrives on reducing all types of people to interchangeable units of labour. (I should add here that this has had some paradoxical consequences, one of which is the emergence in the nineteenth century of a uniquely rabid form of racism, which made it possible to exclude some people from the natural universe of human freedom and equality by marking them out as something less than fully human.) Capital’s ability to dispense with non-economic powers means that its exploitative powers can coexist with liberal democracy, which would have been impossible in any system where exploitation depended on a monopoly of political rights. And the reason this is possible is that capitalism has created new, purely economic compulsions: the propertylessness of workers, which compels them to sell their labour power in exchange for a wage, and the compulsions of the market, which regulate the economy. Both capital and labour can have democratic rights in the political sphere without completely transforming the relation between them in a separate economic sphere; and much of human life is determined in that economic sphere, outside the reach of democratic accountability. Capitalism can, therefore, coexist with the ideology of freedom and equality in a way that no other system of domination can. In fact, the idea that capitalists and workers alike are free and equal has become the most important ideological support of capitalism. Formal democracy, with its ideology of freedom, equality, and classlessness, has become one of the most effective mechanisms in sustaining and reproducing capitalist class relations. On the face of it, the separation of economic and political spheres should make class inequality more starkly visible by highlighting the tensions between formal equality in one sphere and substantive inequality in the other. But the disappearance of legally and politically defined class inequalities has actually made class relations in capitalism less rather than more transparent. In feudalism, for example, there was little chance of mistaking the exploitative relation between lords and their legally dependent serfs – not just because the serf was transparently giving his labour, its products, or rent directly to the lord, but because the inequality between them was explicit in law. In capitalism, not only does payment go from employer to worker, rather than the other way round, there is also no legal or political recognition of their inequality. In fact, there is a constant emphasis on their equality. This is a real ideological advantage for capital, but it also creates its own distinctive problems. When capital finds itself having to justify exploitation and domination, it cannot really do it by invoking any principles of inequality, so it has to adopt some fairly complicated strategies. This is true of relations between capital and labour on the domestic front, but we are particularly interested here in what it means for imperialist ideology. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ China Hardliner Scenario Neoliberalization leads to widespread instability in China—single greatest factor So 10- Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Alvin Y. So, “Globalization and China: From Neoliberal Capitalism to State Developmentalism in East Asia” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 140-141, IWren)
In response to the above neoliberal policies, the Chinese working class has become restless. China Labour Bulletin (2002, 1) reported at the time that “almost every week in Hong Kong and mainland China, newspapers bring reports of some kind of labor action: a demonstration demanding pensions; a railway line being blocked by angry, unpaid workers; or collective legal action against illegal employer behavior such as body searches or forced overtime.” According to the official statistics, in 1998 there were 6,767 collective actions (usually strikes or go-slows with a minimum of three people taking part) involving 251,268 people. This represented an increase in collective actions of 900 percent from the early 1990s. In 2000, this figure further jumped to 8,247 collective actions involving 259,445 workers (China Labour Bulletin, 2002, 2). Given such widespread labor protests, it is no wonder that the Chinese government identified the labor problem as the biggest threat to social and political stability (So 2007). The peasants in the countryside too became restless because of increasing amount of tax and levy imposed by corrupt cadres in the local government. Thornton (2004, 87) cites a Chinese government report confirming that over 1.5 million cases of protest had occurred in 1993, over 6,000 of which were officially classified as “disturbances” (naoshi) by Chinese authorities. Of these cases, 830 involved more than one township and more than 500 participants; 78 involved more than one county and over 1,000 participants; and 21 w ere c onsidered t o b e “ extremely l arge- scale” e vents i nvolving more than 5,000 participants. A surprising number of these casualties resulted among township and county officials, 560 countylevel offices were ransacked, and 385 public security personnel were fatally injured (So 2008). Aside from the workers and peasants, there was also resistance from middle-class intellectuals. The late 1990s saw the emergence of many kinds of social movements (namely, the environmental movement, the consumer movement, the homeowners’ resistance movement, the women’s movement) in China (Economy 2005; Cai 2005; Chen 2003). Misra (2003) points to the rise of a group of critical intellectuals, the so- called “new left” (xin zuopai), who are highly dissatisfied with the growing socioeconomic class inequalities and the alarming decline of public morality. They show a greater appreciation for the Chinese revolution and wanted a reassessment of Western models of development (including modernization theories and neoliberalism). Thus, when neoliberal reforms were deepened during the late 1990s, workers, peasants, and the middle class were getting restless, their criticisms of the problems of neoliberalism were more upfront and blunt, and their protests and demonstrations were becoming more widespread and violent. These societal responses were reflected in the party-state. In June 1998, thirty-five members of the elite Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) presented an emergency resolution to the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), accusing the government and Party of violating workers’ “right of existence” and “trampling the worker-peasant alliance,” and alluding to widespread protests and opposition to China’s program of economic liberalization (Liew 2001; Nonini 2008). Crisis management gets Chinese hardliners in power Moses 11 – Beijing based analyst and professor who writes on Chinese Politics (Wall Street Journal. 06/10/11. http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2011/06/20/beijings-strange-composure-in-the-face-of-crises/? mod=google_news_blog. “Beijing’s Strange Composure in the Face of Crisis.” .)
There are many reasons why Chinese officials might be starting to sweat about the summer here. Cracks emerging in the country’s economic edifice, price inflation combined with growing signs of a punctured property market, wealth being moved overseas at an increasing pace — taken together, these could be indicators of a government whose present policies are starting to unravel. Above all, one assumes that unrest in the southern regions of the country would send more than a few cadres into panic. But here’s the thing: There is very little evidence that the Chinese leadership is all that distressed. So why isn’t Beijing stirred or shaken yet? For a start, there’s the impending 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. The state-controlled media and cadres are going all out to sound the trumpet of triumph where the history of the Party is concerned. Whether it is singing red songs to bolster the public spirit or painting venues with slogans of the same hue, bad news is taking a back seat to political celebrations. There’s also self-assurance—the swagger of Beijing’s success. All riots are local, these officials contend, and hardliners here hew to the line that a little listening and a lot of force produces the proper results [zh]. They might be right. For as disruptive as unrest can be, some cadres at the upper-level cannot help but be comforted when demonstrations explode. Some like showdowns in the Chinese street. Riots remind provincial officials and their local populations that the Communist Party is by far the stronger party when segments of society are unhappy in China. At the end of the day, many officials think that there is ample reason for firebrands to feel defeated and for Party comrades to be pleased that local authority remains standing. So, many officials here think that when mishaps occur, they’re just lessons learned for a Party that depends on adapting to circumstances anyway and functions far better in confronting crises than in charting a course forward. Why not postpone planning for political reform when the present powers always win? But some cadres remain unconvinced. They wonder if the legitimacy of the Communist Party now rests less on delivering the goods than simply stopping threats to political authority. Skeptics here worry that crisis management is simply an excuse for hardliners to hold on until Hu Jintao steps down next year. They see roots to unrest, and worry about repeat performances . And more than a few remain uneasy about what they see as the separation of the Communist Party from far too much of the society and think there are better ways to govern [zh] than simply running in place. Right now, the best that those interested in something other than this new normal of Chinese governance is to fight a rearguard action, trying to protect the odd foray forward. Reformists have weighed in on the issue of independent candidates, talking about “the fundamental rights” [zh] of voters to choose aspirants for political office. And they have managed to find space in the flagship newspaper People’s Daily to talk about the Cultural Revolution, in the very midst of the happy triumphalism about the Communist Party. So, no one should undervalue the courage of some crusaders to fight their political corner. But that also means that there’s not a whole lot of consensus out there for what’s next. And that’s going to complicate the challenge for the Communist Party in Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ the coming months, especially as it must make two complicated transitions. One transition involves agreeing on a new leadership. It is far too early to call that outcome guaranteed, for front-runners can fade and new challengers emerge. Policies and promises are going to start to matter much more than personalities. The other transition is just as critical: Giving those in society a reason to believe that the new leaders will be able to confront problems creatively and offer solutions that are not simply more of the same. No one can yet know how that might work. Fortunately for China, not everyone thinks that defeating dissent is the same thing as driving the country forward. But it will require more than riots and economic retrenchment to cause the Chinese leadership to shift course—and more than a measure of perspiration and inspiration to take up political reform again.
Hardliner takeover causes brinkmanship—results in war in the South China Sea Medcalf 11 – Directs the International Security Program at Lowry Instituite (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/all-at-sea-over-beijing-brinksmanship/story-e6frg6ux-1226082315305. June 27, 2011. Rory. “All at Sea Over China Brinkmanship.”)
A MAN-MADE tempest is gathering in the South China Sea. Time and again in recent months, Chinese naval and paramilitary vessels have confronted ships from Vietnam and The Philippines in contested waters rich in energy deposits and fish. Now the US has entered the ring, signalling it will back Manila if the crisis turns to conflict. Chinese and US officials met at the weekend to try to break the spiral of mistrust between the two powers. But temperatures remain high, especially between China and Vietnam, with a Chinese state newspaper warning Hanoi that Beijing was ready for war. All players are making shows of force. The US and The Philippines plan to hold military exercises in the days ahead. China and Vietnam have staged their own rival firing drills and manoeuvres. The present parade of posturing will probably subside. But a disturbing pattern of brinksmanship is emerging in maritime Asia. If unchecked, it could throw the region into repeated crises, any of which could end in war at sea. This would have ruinous consequences for trade and stability in Australia's wider Indo-Pacific region. Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. Related Coverage Chinese free rights activist Hu Jia The Australian, 1 day ago Let's end muddled thinking on China The Australian, 6 days ago Chinese naval display may backfire The Australian, 8 days ago China patrol ship sparks sea tensions The Australian, 16 Jun 2011 China 'won't' use force in disputed sea The Australian, 14 Jun 2011 End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. The vital question is: why Beijing's assertiveness? Recent years have brought a spate of dangerous incidents, such as a tangle with a US surveillance ship and cases of close-range harassment of Japanese warships by Chinese helicopters. China has also refused to condemn its ally North Korea's sea attacks on South Korea. Six months ago, the trouble seemed to ease. The hawks in China's internal strategic debates had spooked their compatriots as well as the region. Beijing's international rhetoric softened, and long-suspended military talks with Washington resumed. But the respite turned out to be brief. If the situation is to be brought back under control, the world needs to understand the reasons for Beijing's risky deeds at sea. These are more complex than some simple notion of strategic aggression. To be sure, Beijing is modernising its military, including with offensive capabilities such as anti-ship ballistic missiles. Its navy is ranging further and with increased firepower. An aircraft carrier may begin sea trials soon. The logic of all of this is partly defensive. China has legitimate reason to protect its trade interests and energy imports. But Beijing also wants the option of taking Taiwan and keeping US forces at bay. The big security picture in Asia involves changing deterrence and war-fighting strategies by China, the US and Japan. These involve expanded maritime patrols and intelligence- gathering, making more chances for close-range encounters. Meanwhile, nationalism and growing resource needs are reinforcing the value of territorial claims in the East China Sea, disputed by Japan and China, as well as the South China Sea. Short- sighted internal rivalries compound the risks of conflict. In China, the generals are becoming a force in foreign policy. Some zealous officers may be provoking incidents at sea to advance their careers and prove their patriotism. And sometimes the hardliners are not military: China's fisheries and maritime law-enforcement agencies seem to be running their own expansive agendas. For now, the risk of a major-power war escalating from maritime incidents centres on China's frictions with the US, Japan and other nations in East Asia. But the tensions could reach across the wider Indo-Pacific region as the power and interests of China and India expand. The region is ill-prepared to cope with this threat. Asia's infrastructure of what the experts call confidence-building measures such as military dialogues, real-time communication channels and formalised "rules of the road" is flimsy and little-used. Some politicians, scholars and officials wishfully claim that co-operative activities such as ship visits, combined disaster-relief exercises or partnership against piracy will translate into wider strategic trust. But there is little sign this is happening. Meanwhile, China is showing little appetite in Asia for the diplomatic safety net that helped keep the Cold War cold: continuous hotlines between rival militaries and agreements on managing incidents at sea. This stems from a difference of views about the point of military diplomacy. And this relates to fundamental clashes of interests, notably over military strategies and sovereignty, hence China's confrontational opposition to US surveillance in its exclusive economic zone. The prevailing view in Beijing is that trust should precede major advances in dialogue. In Washington and elsewhere, the standard view is that confidence-building measures are needed when trust is absent. One glimmer of hope is that the Chinese view is not monolithic or static. New research is revealing a submerged debate in Beijing about the self-defeating dangers of belligerence at sea. The tragedy is that it is too late for moderates to gain a hearing once the shooting starts. Extinction
Cheong 2k – Senior Writer at the Strait Times (Ching, “No one gains in a war over Taiwan,” June 25th, Lexis)
THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near and -horror of horrors -raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China, 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilization. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Hardliner Impact Ext Risk is high and the transition would be fast—South Korea proves
So 10- Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Alvin Y. So, , “Globalization and China: From Neoliberal Capitalism to State Developmentalism in East Asia” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 149, IWren)
Second, another scenario is the return to neoliberalism. Harvey (2005) points out that neoliberalism is the project of the capitalist class through which it could exert its hegemony in advanced capitalist countries. Following this line of argument, the capitalist class will not be content to remain a junior partner of the developmental state forever. As soon as the capitalist class has matured and consolidated its power, it will push forward with its neoliberal project. In South Korea, for example, there was a dismantling of the Korean developmental state when the chaebols (big business corporations) were strengthened by their interlinkages with transnational corporations in the 1990s. This global reach has made the chaebols so powerful that they were able to dismantle the Economic Planning Board, set up private non-state financial institutions, and push for financial liberalization (Chiu and So 2006). Although at present the Chinese capitalist class is still small and weak, it could grow very fast and become a force to challenge the party-state in a few decades. If this happens, the Chinese capitalist class will probably follow the path of its Korean counterpart: it will no longer be content to be a junior partner of the developmental state. Instead, it will expand its economic interests and push forward its neoliberal project. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Hardliner Scenario - Protests Neoliberal policies foster wide-scale unrest in China So 10- Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Alvin Y. So, , “Globalization and China: From Neoliberal Capitalism to State Developmentalism in East Asia” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 149, IWren)
By the late 1990s, however, China began to feel the pains of a neoliberal economy. First, there was super-exploitation of labor power, particularly of young women migrants from rural areas. Wage levels in China were extremely low, and conditions of labor, which was not sufficiently regulated, were despotic and exploitative. Moreover, China became one of the world’s most unequal societies. Neoliberal market reforms had quickly transformed conditions in China into disparities in income among different classes, social strata, and regions, leading rapidly to social polarization. Formal measures of social inequalities, such as the Gini Coefficient, had confirmed that China had traveled the path from one of the most equalitarian societies to one with chronic inequality, all in the span of twenty years (Harvey 2005, 143). Furthermore, as usually happens in a country going through rapid capitalist industrialization, the failure to pay any attention to the environment was disastrous. In China, “rivers are highly polluted, water supplies are full of dangerous cancer-inducing chemicals, and public health provision is weak (as illustrated by the problems of SARS and the avian flu)” (Harvey 2005, 174). Edward Friedman (2007, 2) also points out that “China has a ruthless free market, no regulation, no safety standards, no FDA, no CDC, no NIH. It is also the world leader for people dying in industrial accidents, and about 400,000 each year die from drinking the water which is polluted.” In the late 1990s, the above contradictions had led to discontent and social conflict in society, as shown by the increasing call to regulate the market and by the growing numbers of labor protests, peasant demonstrations, social movements, and other large-scale social disturbances. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Hardliner Scenario – Government Crackdown Government will crackdown—Ching Chong concludes neg So 10- Professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Alvin Y. So, , “Globalization and China: From Neoliberal Capitalism to State Developmentalism in East Asia” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 149, IWren
In March 2009, Ching Chong reports that the party-state set up a special “6521 Group” (the numbers refer to the 60th anniversary of the founding of communist China, the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, and 10th anniversary of the crackdown on the Falungong movement) and has issued a notice detailing thirty-three measures that governments at every level must take to protect public order when they are dealing with such economic threat as the “highly dangerous mob events” triggered by land grabs, massive urban and rural unemployment, labor disputes, and public discontent over the sale of fake or unsafe goods. The thirty- three measures p rovide for a system o f societal control to be implemented when the need arises. These measures allow authorities to conduct “orderly and effective control” over the Internet and online communities. Noteworthy too is how the official Xinhua news agency last month surrendered its power of deciding which foreign agency news could be transmitted in China. That authority went to the State Council Information Office. The activities of all nongovernment organizations, whether domestic or foreign, as well as new social and economic organizations, are to be closely monitored (Ching 2009). Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Turns Case – Innovation
Organizing the economy around innovation creates economics of speed- leads to rapid investment shifting and product development- that’s unsustainable and makes financial collapse inevitable Goldman et al. 6 - Professor of Sociology at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon (Robert Goldman, Stephen Papson, Noah Kersey, Landscapes of the Social Relations of Production in a Networked Society, Fast Capitalism 2.1, http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/2_1/SocialRelations.html)
These representations resemble what Thomas Friedman (1999) dubs the “Electronic Herd” in The Lexus and the Olive Tree. His metaphor embraces the volatility of markets in conjunction with the diffusion of capital across the electronic circuits of finance. According to Friedman, no corporation or nation-state can risk losing the favor of the Herd. In the global economy this can be catastrophic to market values. Those who comprise the Herd compete to maximize the rate of return on investments, which translates into manically scouring the planet for opportunities or cutting losses as quickly as possible when it is time to sell. The manic need to invest is matched by panic selling. Combined with the ability to transfer funds and monies electronically, a stock can be cut in half in hours, or a country’s currency thrown into crisis with a rapidity hitherto unknown. Friedman’s metaphor of the electronic herd pictures an economic elite dashing about in a global free market economy fueled by technological innovation and the liquidity of capital forms (currency, stocks, commodities). The figures who compose this grouping are constructed as dynamic, mobile, and technologically sophisticated. They fluidly traverse the world of nonplaces and occupy office suites in corporate towers surrounded by personal communication technologies. And yet, even in these idealized abstractions, uncertainties and anxieties seep through. Narratives of success are sprinkled with hints of impending crisis, or stories of those who made the wrong choices - the wrong office equipment, the wrong software, the wrong package delivery service. The exhilaration associated with accelerated social, economic, and technological change mixes with an undercurrent of apprehension. Speed may mean winning, but it can also lead to crashing. There are more losers than winners in casino capitalism. The landscape of risk is omnipresent.
Economics of Speed leads to flawed innovation and ensures products are rushed to the market, that Turns the Case Wise et al 10 [Raul Delgado Wise et al 2010 “reframing the debate on migration, development and human rights: fundamental elements October 2010, http://rimd.reduaz.mx/documentos_miembros/ReframingtheDebate.pdf; WBTR] The view promoted by key migrant-receiving countries and aligned with that of some international organizations posits a positive link between international migration and development in countries of origin. 8 • red internacional de migración y desarrollo Migration Development in countries of origin Migrants Remittances The analytical framework that supports this restrictive model compounds a mixture of neoclassical and neoliberal elements (Glick Schiller, 2009; De Haas, 2010; Kapur, 2004) that portray the free market as the culmination of capitalist modernity, an inevitable process with no alternatives. Development concerns are overlooked, since it is assumed a free market economy will operate as an endless source of economic growth and social welfare. Importantly, most of these theoretical approaches have been crafted in developed, northern countries and have been assimilated without critical examination by many southern researchers who have failed to acknowledge the rich and creative legacy of development studies from Latin America and other hemispheres. The dominant discourse on the link between migration and development is based on the following precepts: • Remittances as an instrument for development. In the absence of effective development policies in peripheral countries, which provide the largest source of migrants, migrants themselves are portrayed as agents and catalysts of development in their places of origin; remittances are their tools. • Financial democratization. The vast flow of remittances across the globe (316 billion dollars in 2009—Ratha, Mohapatra and Silwal, 2010) constitutes an attractive market for financial enterprises offering banking services to marginalized population groups. Remittance-based savings and credit are seen as an adequate backdrop for fostering development under microfinance schemes. • The economic power of the poor. Remittances provide migrants and their dependents with access to resources that can bring them out of poverty, transforming them into agents of development. • The formation of human capital. Remittances contribute to investments in health, food and education, all of which benefit migrants and their families. In addition, it is suggested that governments should reform their education systems so that migrants can acquire the kind of technical abilities that will facilitate their employment abroad. • Temporary and return migration. Migration policies in receiving nations privilege temporary worker programs as a tool for regulating labor markets; allegedly, this benefits all stakeholders. At the same time, return policies assume places of origin will benefit from the abilities, skills and values acquired by migrants in receiving societies. • Migration management. From a geostrategic standpoint, developed receiving countries seek to control undocumented migration on the basis of national security and the articulation of regional economic blocs, but fail to address or even consider the root causes of the phenomenon. international network on migration and development • 9 Paradoxically, this positive approach to the link between migration and development generates divergent views of migrants in origin and destination countries. For the former, migrants have become the new face of development; once a forgotten population, they are now portrayed as national heroes. This view has a Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ political, exploitative raison d’être: cordial relations with the diaspora ensure the flow of remittances. Conversely, receiving governments discursively paint migrants as a burden and, at times, a negative and polluting cultural and racial influence on the receiving society (Huntington, 1997). Despite the claims made by certain international bodies and governments, there is no empirical evidence of the alleged positive effects of migration and remittances as catalysts of development in countries of origin. The worst stigmas attached to foreigners are those of illegality and criminality. In extreme cases, migrants are linked to terrorism and drug trafficking. Furthermore, in periods of economic depression, migrants are often made responsible for the economic decline. One the one hand, a type of extractivism identifies migrants as heroes; on the other, a punitive approach paints them as criminals. These, however, are two sides of the same coin: migrants are cheap labor merchandise, disposable population that contributes to the dynamics of accumulation. Extractivism is therefore also present in the stance taken by receiving nations: the more vulnerable migrants are, the more their employers benefit; their social exclusion leads to increased profits and fiscal gains for both employers and host governments. Both of these portrayals demean migrants with a specific political intent. They also nullify them as social, rights-bearing subjects. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Turns Case – Economy Turns the aff—even if the plan brings short term gains, it’s economic framework makes the economy unstable and inevitably gives rise to competitors Spector 10 – Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University Calumet (Alan J Spector, “Neoliberal Globalization and Capitalist Crises in the Age of Imperialism” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 47, IWren)
This phase of globalization sets in motion unintended consequences and contradictory outcomes even for the large corporations that initially benefit from this globalization. As a national economy relies more and more on banking and less on domestic industrial production, the potential for wealth increases, but the vulnerability to economic instability also increases. The higher rates of profit are accompanied by the more unstable variables associated with becoming so dependent on overseas investments. Utilizing cheap labor in other countries allows corporations to reap huge profits, but it also lays the basis for rising capitalist groups in other countries to eventually run their own industries and compete with that of the advanced capitalist countries. Furthermore, if, for example, the U.S. corporations deindustrialize at home because they find it more profitable to operate in other countries, or even to just buy from other countries and serve as highly profitable middlemen who do not need to have their capital tied up in material infrastructure assets, the country becomes extremely vulnerable to political developments in other countries and could find itself without the means for needed industrial production in the future. The strong currency that comes from being an imperialist power results in other countries’ choosing to invest in that country—in effect, loaning money to the United States and other countries in similar situations. This brings quick profits to some banks and corporations, and temporary cash flow and prosperity to some segments of the society, but it is prosperity based on debt. If that debt is pulled back, it can lead to higher interest rates, a slowdown of the economy, or even a serious economic depression. The very low rate of savings in the United States, widening gap between the wealthy and especially the middle and lower income working class, the pending crisis in health care costs, the increase in educational costs, and rising debt are all pressures building toward serious problems in the future, as evidenced by the stock market collapse of 2000, which has taken seven years to get back to its previous level, as well as the real estate crisis and the increase in home foreclosures in 2008 and 2009. While it might seem difficult to predict precisely how and when these problems will intensify, it is clear that the so-called boom economy of late capitalism and neoliberal globalization/imperialism bring lots of quick cash to some sectors of the economy, while laying the basis for serious problems for the rest in the future (Brenner 2003). Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Turns Case – Destroys Politics The idea of economic dominance leads to the destruction of social norms destroying the political sphere Tannock 9 - Ph.D in Social Sciences and Humanities from Stanford [Stuart Tannock, , Globalisation, Societies and Education Vol. 7, No. 3, September -2009, 257-274, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767720903166061; WBTR]
The ‘knowledge economy’ is the new global buzzword of development policy in the early twenty-first century, promoted heavily by the World Bank, OECD and allied development and aid organisations (Kenway et al. 2006; Robertson 2008). Knowledge economies, according to the OECD (1996, 7), are ‘economies which are directly based on the production, distribution and use of knowledge and information’, as ‘reflected in the trend… towards growth in high-technology investments, high- technology industries, more highly-skilled labour and associated productivity gains’. Today, nations and regions around the globe are all being told that they must transform themselves into knowledge economies to survive and prosper in the contemporary era. This includes not just the powerful and wealthy nations of the OECD, but poorer and more peripheral nations as well. Recent World Bank reports (1999, 2003a, b) address knowledge reform efforts in the usual suspects (Iceland, Finland, Singapore, etc), but also in less expected ones (e.g., Jordan, Namibia and Sri Lanka). The knowledge economy, in rhetoric, has gone global. One can find virtually identical studies, speeches, texts and policies aimed at ushering in the knowledge economy in almost every nation on earth. In addition to the knowledge economy itself, we find a retinue of allied and parallel terms: new economy, postindustrial economy, information economy (or society), learning economy (or society), creative industry, creative class, learning organisation, learning region, and so on. The knowledge economy, along with its associated concepts, has become one of the dominant ‘discourses’, ‘scripts’, ‘narratives’ or ‘imaginaries’ in the world today, not so much because of its relative descriptive accuracies or predictive merits about the significance and potential of knowledge and education in society and the economy, as its instrumental value to business and political elites around the globe in mobilising resources and energies and securing broad popular consent in support of their own interests and agendas (Jessop 2004; Lovering 1999b, 2004; Peck 2006). Knowledge economy discourse makes three essential claims on the preferred nature of knowledge, social organisation and employment in contemporary society that are particularly useful in promoting business-driven education and economic development policies. First and foremost, knowledge is to be seen primarily as a factor of production and creator of value and profit, alongside land, labour and capital (Bell 1973). This means in practice, as critics have pointed out, that knowledge is not to be treated as a public good, but instead must be privatised, commodified and commercialised through the vigorous extension and enforcement of copyright, patent and intellectual property regimes in order that its value can be captured and bought and sold for profit in the market (Drahos and Braithwraite 2007; Jessop 2000; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). It also means that knowledge created and taught in schools and universities is to be closely tied to the needs of business and the marketplace: for ‘relevant’ education and research is that which has value for (profit-driven) production (Aronowitz 2001; Lipman 2003). When the OECD (1996, 12) talks of different ‘types’ of knowledge in The knowledge-based economy, for example, the issue of conflicting or alternative moral values, political goals, social purposes and class-based interests in shaping education, research and analysis is missing entirely. Instead, the OECD is concerned with making distinctions between different types of technocratic knowledge, all of which constitute ‘resources to be fitted into economic production functions’. In promoting ‘knowledge-based’ or ‘knowledge-driven’ economies, what business and political elites are in effect doing is pushing the state and public education system to concentrate their resources on fostering ‘economy-based’ and ‘marketdriven’ knowledge. In the name of the knowledge economy, all other forms and purposes of knowledge, learning and inquiry can be marginalised or excluded. A second set of claims made by knowledge economy discourse concern the social organisation and relationships existing in and needed for a knowledge economy. It is not just knowledge itself that matters for a knowledge economy. As the OECD (1996, 8) explains, ‘in addition to knowledge investments, knowledge distribution through formal and informal networks is essential to economic performance’. The knowledge economy is promoted as a ‘network’ or ‘associational’ economy (Castells 1996; Cooke and Morgan 1998). It requires flexibility, openness, trust and the construction of national and regional ‘innovation systems, which consist of the flows and relationships among industry, government and academia in the development of science and technology’ (OECD 1996, 8). The divisions, differences and conflicts that exist in an industrial economy between business and the state, business and the university, and business, workers and their unions are no longer relevant or productive in a knowledge economy, where social and economic activity is centered on creating knowledge and innovation. In order to realise the ‘win-win’ potential that the growth of the knowledge economy offers to us all, we need instead to foster open partnerships: public– private partnerships, university–industry partnerships, and union–management partnerships (see Etzkowitz 2008; Kerchner, Koppich, and Weeres 1997; Parker and Slaughter 1994; Slaughter and Rhoades 2004). In each case, of course, it is the interest of ‘knowledge-based’ profit, production and growth that holds sway. Third, knowledge economy discourse offers a story about employment and inequality. In a knowledge economy, a growing proportion of the workforce is employed in high-skill, high-tech, professional, semi-professional and managerial jobs. Inequality is claimed to be based upon ability and education (as Bell 1973, 409, writes, ‘a postindustrial [or knowledge] society is, in its initial Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ logic, a meritocracy’), and education becomes the most important route to social and economic success. Young people, in order to get ahead, must invest themselves in technocratic forms of schooling tied to the needs of the (business-driven) knowledge economy. In this respect, it is important to take note of a subtle shift in knowledge economy rhetoric over time. A number of critics have noted the role that knowledge economy discourse, like the discourse of globalisation, has played in manufacturing support for (or acquiescence to) a neoliberal agenda of rolling back material, political and ideological gains made by the working and middle classes during the post-World War Two period, and ‘restoring power and income to the wealthiest fractions of the ruling class’ (Duménil and Levy 2005, 9; Harvey 2005; Saad-Filho and Johnston 2005). In its earlier version, knowledge economy jobs were said to be the exclusive preserve of developed nations, while routine production and service work flowed inexorably to the developing world, where newly globalising employers sought lower wages and higher profit margins. This was the vision articulated in Robert Reich’s (1991, 247) The work of nations: manufacturing employment, and the powerful labour movements that had helped to create these, the developed world’s middle and working classes were to cast their fortunes with the pursuit of education, knowledge and skill – for it was knowledge, they were told, that created value, raised wages and stimulated economic growth (Brown and Lauder 1996; Lafer 2004; Tannock forthcoming). More recently, however, developing nations too have been encouraged to embrace the knowledge economy (World Bank 1999, 2003a, b). This shift is due, in part, to the increasing interest and ability of global capital to source high-skill work in low-wage labour markets in the developing world (Brown et al. 2006). But it has also been one way of accommodating the growing dissatisfaction in the developing world with the neoliberal model of structural adjustment, and export-led agricultural and manufacturing production. No need to challenge or change development models, just turn to the promise of high skills and higher education (Sukarieh and Tannock 2008)! As for the developed world, youth are now told that they will have to study harder and run faster in order to invent, create and secure not the world’s knowledge sector jobs – for many of these will inevitably go overseas – but the world’s high end knowledge sector jobs instead (Brown and Lauder 2006; OECD 2007). Belief in the power of knowledge, learning and education functions in contemporary society as a secular religion, faith or gospel (Grubb and Lazerson 2007; Wolf 2002). It thus remains remarkably impervious to empirical contradiction: if education is not helping you prosper as promised, it must be because you need to go back and get more of it. One reason why knowledge economy discourse is so persistent is the conviction, as Robertson (2008, 2) notes above, that knowledge must be ‘good for us’. We may wonder whether creating a ‘high skills society’ is truly possible, but we generally do not question that it would be a good and desirable thing (Lloyd and Payne 2003). For how can one possibly be ‘against’ learning, knowledge or education (Contu, Grey, and Ortenblad 2003)? The question of ‘knowledge for what?’ or ‘what kind of knowledge?’ is widely acknowledged by critics of knowledge economy discourse, who point out that the education, learning and knowledge promoted in this discourse tends to be of a particular (neo-liberal, competitive, individualist, technocratic, business-driven) kind (Contu, Grey, and Ortenblad 2003; Peters 2001; Robertson 2005; Sukarieh and Tannock 2008). But rarely is the issue of ‘knowledge for what’ the central focus of critique of knowledge economy discourse. Here I argue that the issue is pivotal to the ideological effects produced by this discourse, and thus needs to be brought front and center, to become the very first question addressed in any conversation about creating a knowledge economy. To break the spell of knowledge economy discourse, we need to dislodge the default assumption that knowledge, learning and education are inherently and unquestionably goods in and of themselves (at least they can’t hurt, as many might say), with the alternative assumption that these things can be good or bad, desirable or undesirable, and we have no way of knowing if they are bad or good until we have examined closely what kinds of knowledge, learning and education are involved, harnessed toward what larger ends and in whose primary interests. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative – Conservatism We need to step away from the new world order—we need to struggle for the old world order this allows for economic social freedom and removes capital from its root Bienefeld 94 – PHD in Economics at the London School of Economics (Manfred, “The New World Order: Echoes of a New Imperialism”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, The South in the New World (Dis)Order http://www.jstor.org/stable/3993022) We need to struggle for the creation of an Old World Order that will have many of the characteristics of the one that we so recently destroyed. One that has a greater regard for the sovereignty of its constituent members; that allows for greater diversity in their choice of domestic economic or social policies; that deals with economic imbalances earlier and more effectively; and that accepts the importance of ensuring that capital once again becomes socially rooted. Only when those who allocate a society's investible resources are full and responsible members of that society is it possible to strike a reasonable balance between politics and economics; to use taxes to finance the development of long-term, social priorities with the consent of the citizenry; to ensure full employment, so that competition will be based on the search for lower costs through technical change rather than through wage reductions or the intensification of labour; and, finally, to ensure that economic processes enable people to fulfil their universal wish to live a peaceful, secure and prosperous life in diverse communities that are rich in human relationships. Those who have drunk too deeply of the received wisdom and its declarations of inevitability will dismiss such ideas as hopelessly 'out of date'-as living in the past. This may be so, but if it is, it will not be because it is decreed in heaven, or because it is technologically determined, but because people have been persuaded by others that it is so. Moreover, they will reassess this judgement as the real consequences of this process become more and more apparent. Let us remember that in the late 1920s protestations about the end of the nation state were just as ubiquitous. And let us hope that this time we do not allow the awakening to be delayed until the backlash entailed fascism, the holocaust and a global war.
***ALTERNATIVE Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative - Rejection
And conceptions of the state as a competitive entity licked in a global war for talent have become hegemonic--refusing the aff is key Fougner 6 – Writer for the British International Studies Association (Tore, “The State, international competitiveness and neoliberal globalization: is there a future beyond ‘the competitive state’?”, 2006)
The basic idea informing this article has been that the transgression of something that is currently conceived as a given ‘fact of life’ can be facilitated by showing both that what is, has not always been and, in consequence, need not always be in the future; and that what is, is internal not to an unchanging nature, but rather to politics or relations of power. In accordance with this, the article has showed that the problem of international competitiveness has a quite specific history of emergence and transformation internal to state and global forms of governance, and that the discourse of international competitiveness is currently at the centre not only of how state authorities conduct their business, but also how their conduct is shaped and manipulated by other actors in the world political economy. The broader significance of this (re)problematisation of the problem of international competitiveness lies in its potential contribution to the opening up of a space of possibility for the state to become something other than a competitive entity. In this connection, the issue at stake today is not so much the absence of state conceptions that somehow run counter to the neoliberal one of the state as a competitive entity, as the hegemonic position of the neoliberal problem and discourse of competitiveness as such. If the latter is left unchallenged, as is the case in much of the competition state literature, then alternative state conceptions will unavoidably be assessed in terms of international competitiveness and, in consequence, stand little chance of prevailing in any but distorted and marginal ways. 83 Against this background, the historisation and politicisation of the problem of international competitiveness provided in this article can contribute both to make the concept of international competitiveness fall from its current grace, and increase people’s receptivity to both existing and prospective alternatives to the neoliberal conception of the state. With regard to the prospect of the state becoming something other than a competitve entity, an opening might also follow from how the state has been shown to be constituted as a three-headed troll that is competitive, disciplined and sovereign within the context of contemporary efforts at neoliberal global governance. As sovereign entities, states retain the option to put an end to capital mobility, and thereby both reverse the power relationship that currently characterises their relations with transnational capital, and deny non-state actors the opportunity to act upon and manipulate their conduct at a distance. The key point to note, however, is that the hegemony of neoliberalism as a rationality of government has led states to practice sovereignty in a way that e ff ectively subjects them to such
external discipline and governance – this, by engaging in e ff orts to constitute a global marketplace. Moreover,
neoliberal global governance is considered such a precious undertaking today that state authorities have voluntarily, if not proactively, adapted to it by both exercising a high degree of self-discipline, and acting on themselves and their populations as competitors in a global market for investment. While an understanding of the state as an externally disciplined entity has the potential to stimulate popular opposition and resistance to contemporary forms of neoliberal global governance – in part, because many people simply do not appreciate being forced to do things that they otherwise would not want to do – this understanding seems at present to be much less prevalent in the popular imagination than the one of the state as a competitive entity. Given both the seemingly ahistorical and apolitical nature of the problem of international competitiveness, and how the quest for improved competitiveness can rather easily be represented as part of a positive national project, this situation can be claimed to inhibit the emergence of more broadly-based popular resistance. 84 Against this background, the (re)problematisation of the problem of international competitiveness provided in this article can contribute to delegitimise attempts to rally people behind national competitiveness projects, and provide additional stimulus to popular opposition and resistance to contemporary efforts to constitute a global marketplace. 85 Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative Solves – Hegemony The Aff’s intervention in the realm of economic dominance causes the image of a domineering Hegemonic power that can only be reversed by rebuilding the system Edkins 6 - Professor of International Politics at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, [Jenny December 2006, “The Local, the Global and the Troubling,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Vol. 9 No. 4, pg. 499- 511]
Of course, 'this regime is not merely ideological or superstructural; it was a condition of the formation and development of capitalism' (Foucault 1980a: 133), which means that interventions that challenge the regime of truth constitute a challenge to the hegemony of the social and economic system with which it is bound up. It is in this context of a particular, scientific regime of truth and the role of the intellectual that I want to discuss the ways in which the academic search for 'causes' and 'solutions' to the Northern Ireland conflict operates, and how this mode of working can prohibit change. The role of the intellectual, as both Gramsci and Foucault have argued, can be central to change and contestation, but it can also be part of the structures that prohibit change and keep existing structures and problematisations in place. I suggest that the particular form of intellectual work that identifies 'problems' and then proposes 'solutions' is problematic. It ultimately reinforces or reproduces certain ways of thinking and conceals the way that identifying something as a problem in the first place is already to take a particular stance in relation to it. I argue that the alternative in the case of violence in particular is to engage in intellectual activity that brings to light struggles hidden in detailed historical records or localised knowledges - an activity that Foucault calls genealogy - and emphasises the necessity for a gradual remaking of the world, not through narrative accounts that regularise and normalise history in terms of cause and effect, but through a slow re-building, brick by brick. Cause and Solution The question the present volume addresses specifically is whether a search for causes and solutions is in some way constitutive of the very problems that analysis purports to attempt to resolve. There are two ways of interpreting this question. First, it can be read as asking whether what academics propose as 'causes' of the conflict originate from the analysis of the conflict (in other words, were the causes there already, waiting to be identified and analysed), or whether they come from the imagination of academics and only later are found in the 'real world' of the conflict. In other words, did the theorising of academics predispose them to find certain things 'out there' in the 'real world' and thus prompt behaviour of a type that then made the real world appear to be as the academics had proposed? To put it simply, is academic theorising a self-fulfilling prophecy? Does the way we see the world, influenced at least in part by academic analyses, affect how we act in the world and thus produce a world that resembles academic theorisations? These questions, although interesting, are still framed within a very particular way of thinking, one that operates with an assumed separation between 'thinking' and 'the world'. They raise the question of whether intellectual analysis in the social world can be seen as independent or whether it should rather be regarded as constitutive of the world. There is a strong argument for the latter position. Adopting this view brings into question a scientific regime of truth, to the extent to which such a regime depends on notions of objectivity. However, alongside this concern there is another. To what extent does the way in which 'problems' like conflict are approached have a specific impact too? Is it just the question of objectivity that is problematic here? Or is the search for causes and solutions itself a very particular form of academic analysis of conflict, and one that has particular implications? The idea that conflicts have causes, and that if we could understand what those causes were we could remove them and put an end to conflict, reflects a specifically modernist, Western, academic approach, where answers are sought in technical terms. The point is that even if it is accepted that theories in some sense constitute the world, it is still often tacitly assumed that that 'problems' exist 'out there': solutions may be problematic in terms of objectivity or the impossibility of separating theory from practice, but often the existence of problems themselves (conflict, famine) to which 'solutions' are sought is not questioned. It might be useful to examine this further. The literature on famines is interesting in this regard. Much of it is centred on the idea that famines have causes, and that we can 'end' famines through scientific, social scientific or economic research. The assumption is that if we can find out what the causes of famines are then hopefully we can remove them. Early accounts that constitute 'famine' as an object of study in relation to 'population' - Malthusian accounts - regard famine as an almost inevitable consequence of population growth. If human populations expand (it is taken for granted in these accounts that they will), then the size of the population will at some stage outstrip the growth in food production, which takes place, according to these accounts, at a slower pace (Malthus 1992). Famines will then occur that will bring population and food supply in line again. Arguments like this in terms of population growth and resources have been made in relation to conflict and genocide as well as famine (Uvin 2001). They are similar to views that see famines as the consequence of environmental degradation or climatic factors. There are two problems with these accounts. First, they set to one side the way in which 'famine' as we think of it now is produced as an object of study at a particular historical point: this is no longer questioned (Edkins 2000). In the accounts discussed above, there is an assumption that famines are a 'natural' phenomenon. This way of looking at famines has been disputed for some time, and the view that famines are 'man-made' strongly argued (George 1976). However, even among those who want to emphasise political, structural or economic causes rather than climatic or environmental ones, there remains a sense that 'famine' is an appropriate object of analysis, and that the 'causes' of famine can be understood in terms of scientific, social scientific or economic 'laws'. Secondly, there is an assumption that famines take place because of a technical failure: they happen because of a breakdown of agricultural systems, or a failure of social support systems, or a problem with economic resources (Edkins 1996). If we can find out what the cause of this failure is then we can act to put it right. However, famine is not something that just happens: in many cases it is not a failure, but rather a process of exploitation (Ramgasami 1985) or even, in some cases, a deliberate act akin to a genocide (De Waal 1997; Edkins 2002). It is also a process with beneficiaries as well as victims: while some starve, others make profits because of increased prices of foodstuffs, or by taking the land of those who emigrate, for example (Keen 1994). By treating it as a phenomenon that has 'causes' we are taking out the politics involved. Famines are not just things that happen because the rain fails or because the potato becomes diseased. They are more complex, and more political, than that. They happen because particular people take particular forms of action - when they could do otherwise. What the way of thinking I have described does is constitute famines as events that have causes, and that most usually can be seen as the failure or breakdown of an otherwise benign system. They close off the possibility of seeing famines as events, like genocide for example, that involve the particular actions or inactions of certain people, people who could in some instances at least be held responsible for what happens. It does not recognise that there will be those who will resist any attempt to put in place 'solutions' that propose such things as welfare systems to cushion the poor in bad times or aid provided in such a way that it cannot be exploited by the parties to a conflict. It is assumed that everyone is behind the effort to make sure that famines do not take place, and that all that is missing is the know-how to do this. It forgets that very many people benefit in a wide variety of ways from the system as it stands, which is one that could be seen as effectively producing famines: famines are arguably the product of the system rather than of its failure. Thinking in terms of 'causes' and 'solutions', then, is an approach that in the case of famines makes it impossible to see certain Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ aspects of the situation: it makes the politics of what is going on invisible. This then means that the search for 'causes' or 'solutions' is more than just constitutive of the reality it aims to reflect: this approach is complicit in perpetuating the very thing it seeks to 'end'. Seeing famine as a failure or a breakdown limits the questions we ask. We need to look at the politics of it, not just treat[ing] it as a problem, a technical malfunction of an otherwise benign system. Treating it in this way enables the economy of oppressions and benefits that surrounds it to continue. We need to consider the possibility that famines happen because the social and political system in which they are embedded is working too well rather than because it has failed. The same sort of argument applies, I would want to suggest, to the case of conflict. An abstract study of conflict in terms of cause and solution can be similarly problematic. The Local and the Global If the search for causes and solutions can be counterproductive, what do we do? One possibility, as has been mentioned in the case of famines, is to pay attention not to causes but to functions: we should look not at what causes conflict, but what does a particular conflict do? Who does it benefit and how? How does constituting the 'conflict' as an object of study produce certain effects? This demands a focus not on 'conflict' in general but on the local: the specific detail of particular instances. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative Solves – Creates Stable Economy The Alt solves- only the alternative can create a stable economy. Bello 9 – Prof of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of the Philippines [September 5, 2009 the Huffpost World, Waledn Bello, Member of the Philippine House of Representatives, Professor of Sociology and Public Administration at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Executive Director of Foucs on the Global South http://www.huffingtonpost.com/walden- bello/the-virtues-of-deglobaliz_b_277531.html; WBTR]
The current global downturn, the worst since the Great Depression 70 years ago, pounded the last nail into the coffin of globalization. Already beleaguered by evidence that showed global poverty and inequality increasing, even as most poor countries experienced little or no economic growth, globalization has been terminally discredited in the last two years. As the much-heralded process of financial and trade interdependence went into reverse, it became the transmission belt not of prosperity but of economic crisis and collapse. End of an Era In their responses to the current economic crisis, governments paid lip service to global coordination but propelled separate stimulus programs meant to rev up national markets. In so doing, governments quietly shelved export-oriented growth, long the driver of many economies, though paid the usual nostrums to advancing trade liberalization as a means of countering the global downturn by completing the Doha Round of trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization. There is increasing acknowledgment that there will be no returning to a world centrally dependent on free- spending American consumers, since many are bankrupt and nobody has taken their place. Moreover, whether agreed on internationally or unilaterally set up by national governments, a whole raft of restrictions will almost certainly be imposed on finance capital, the untrammeled mobility of which has been the cutting edge of the current crisis. Intellectual discourse, however, hasn't yet shown many signs of this break with orthodoxy. Neoliberalism, with its emphasis on free trade, the primacy of private enterprise, and a minimalist role for the state, continues to be the default language among policymakers. Establishment critics of market fundamentalism, including Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, have become entangled in endless debates over how large stimulus programs should be, and whether or not the state should retain an interventionist presence or, once stabilized, return the companies and banks to the private sector. Moreover some, such as Stiglitz, continue to believe in what they perceive to be the economic benefits of globalization while bemoaning its social costs. But trends are fast outpacing both ideologues and critics of neoliberal globalization, and developments thought impossible a few years ago are gaining steam. "The integration of the world economy is in retreat on almost every front," writes the Economist. While the magazine says that corporations continue to believe in the efficiency of global supply chains, "like any chain, these are only as strong as their weakest link. A danger point will come if firms decide that this way of organizing production has had its day." "Deglobalization," a term that the Economist attributes to me, is a development that the magazine, the world's prime avatar of free market ideology, views as negative. I believe, however, that deglobalization is an opportunity. Indeed, my colleagues and I at Focus on the Global South first forwarded deglobalization as a comprehensive paradigm to replace neoliberal globalization almost a decade ago, when the stresses, strains, and contradictions brought about by the latter had become painfully evident. Elaborated as an alternative mainly for developing countries, the deglobalization paradigm is not without relevance to the central capitalist economies. 11 Pillars of the Alternative There are 11 key prongs of the deglobalization paradigm: Production for the domestic market must again become the center of gravity of the economy rather than production for export markets. The principle of subsidiarity should be enshrined in economic life by encouraging production of goods at the level of the community and at the national level if this can be done at reasonable cost in order to preserve community. Trade policy — that is, quotas and tariffs — should be used to protect the local economy from destruction by corporate- subsidized commodities with artificially low prices. Industrial policy — including subsidies, tariffs, and trade — should be used to revitalize and strengthen the manufacturing sector. Long-postponed measures of equitable income redistribution and land redistribution (including urban land reform) can create a vibrant internal market that would serve as the anchor of the economy and produce local financial resources for investment. Deemphasizing growth, emphasizing upgrading the quality of life, and maximizing equity will reduce environmental disequilibrium. The development and diffusion of environmentally congenial technology in both agriculture and industry should be encouraged. Strategic economic decisions cannot be left to the market or to technocrats. Instead, the scope of democratic decision-making in the economy should be expanded so that all vital questions — such as which industries to develop or phase out, what proportion of the government budget to devote to agriculture, etc. — become subject to democratic discussion and choice. Civil society must constantly monitor and supervise the private sector and the state, a process that should be institutionalized. The property complex should be transformed into a "mixed economy" that includes community cooperatives, private enterprises, and state enterprises, and excludes transnational corporations. Centralized global institutions like the IMF and the World Bank should be replaced with regional institutions built not on free trade and capital Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ mobility but on principles of cooperation that, to use the words of Hugo Chavez in describing the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), "transcend the logic of capitalism." Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative Solves - Cooperation Only the alternative solves- Cooperation limits economic weakness and is the best way to engage in economic activity Hicks and Kenworthy 1998- *Emory University, ** East Carolina University Alexander, Lane “Cooperation and Political Economic Performance in Affluent Democratic Capitalism” 1998, http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/2782762
What political economic institutions are most conducive to effective distribution/redistribution and collective gain in capitalist democracies? Markets are certainly critical , but there is good reason to suspect that a number of extramarket institutions that promote cooperation among economic actors (firms, unions, investors, government policy makers , and so on) may effectively complement, and thereby accentuate, the benefits of market competition while also limiting its weaknesses. For distributive/ redistributive policies, this link is fairly evident, but it is no less compelling for aggregate economic gain. Economies progress most successfully when their institutional frameworks encourage individuals and organizations to consistently engage in productive economic activity (North 1990). Market incentives are not always effective at generating such behavior, and in some cases they discourage it. Some extramarket institutions, such as long- term relationships and various forms of formal organization, may help to promote productive economic cooperation that otherwise will not be forthcoming. The alt is the only way to overcome competition, and government policies Hicks and Kenworthy 1998- *Emory University, ** East Carolina University Alexander, Lane “Cooperation and Political Economic Performance in Affluent Democratic Capitalism” 1998, http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/2782762
Government and interest groups.—Forging consensus among parties and reaching agreements that benefit everyone involved is easier when the number of parties engaged in negotiation is relatively small. Fragmen- tation among state agencies and among business and labor can render government policy making combative, conflictual, and inconsistent. Each or industry association or union tends to press its own particular interests upon government officials, and government agencies compete with one another for status and control over resources . Coordination within interest groups and within the state facilitates cooperation, height- ening the potential for productive, coherent government policies. The con- trast is illustrated by the stable policy path followed by nations such as Sweden and Japan over the post–World War II period compared to the largely reactive ad hoc approach pursued by countries such as the United States and Canada (Heclo and Madsen 1987; Johnson 1982; Wilensky and Turner 1987; Shonfield 1965; Lodge 1990). Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative solves – Grassroots A grassroot movement is strong enough to challenge the system Harvey 6 – Professor @ CUNY (David, “A Conversation with David Harvey”,2006, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/harvey.htm)
In terms of what is to be done, the classic question, you have intellectuals, you have activists, you have unions, all different sectors of society that could be mobilized in a critical way against neo-liberal discourse, neo-liberal institutions. How do they all fit together as far as critical opposition movement against neo-liberalism? A: Here you come back to the geography of it. It depends a lot on where you are, and of course what we are seeing in Latin America is a lot of movement towards the left. It is different in Chile than in Brazil, which is different from Venezuela and different from Argentina or Bolivia, but never the less, there is sort of a movement of some kind or other that is anti neo-liberal. And the interesting question now is can they make their anti-neo-liberalization stick and how are they going to make it stick? I think you are going to get a very different answer in Chile than you are going to get in Bolivia. It seems to me we are moving to a situation of considerable experimentation with how to do this. Locally, inside the U.S. we will find this. I was part of, or very close to, one of the first living wage movements in Baltimore back in the early 90's. They now have become quite wide spread through many jurisdictions of the United States and I think there is a push going on at the grassroots level that says you cannot have people employed at something that is below a living wage. Therefore we have to pay very close attention to that locally, and I think that local movements are likely to push more and more into the national consciousness. I think what we have to look at are these movements and these possibilities that exist in different places for political action. In something like the living wage movement, you have one set of possibilities, and in Bolivia, you have something else going on. To me, it is a fragmented opposition right now, moving in very different diverse ways. But it is a very exciting movement, because I we do not know, clearly, what the alternative might look like. I do not think we have a blueprint for it, which is probably a good idea, but we are moving towards something through this oppositional kind of structure. Grassroots are critical—neoliberalism is susceptible to mass rebellion, individuals are key to organize and theorize successfully against it Spector 10 - Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University Calumet (Alan J Spector, “Neoliberal Globalization and Capitalist Crises in the Age of Imperialism” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 54-55, IWren)
The grassroots people, the working class and others who are experiencing the worst effects of a global capitalist economy implementing neoliberal policies wherever it can, are the wild cards in this current situation. While the leadership of the various anti-U.S. and anti- West European capitalist movements might not challenge the core of capitalism, there are limits on what severely impoverished people will tolerate. If the coming period sees increased impoverishment, environmental degradation, inadequate responses to natural disasters, and war, we can expect to see major parts of the grassroots people’s movements that are currently sustaining these leaders eventually split away and independently organize (Goldman 2005). There are already indications of this, from the land seizures in Latin America to the strikes by oil workers in Iran, workers who are neither tied to the religious politicians nor to the pro-U.S. business reformers. Even in the advanced capitalist countries there is a renewed interest in social change, including internationalism, antisweatshop activism, and antiwar organizing. Over one thousand soldiers have signed antiwar petitions in the U.S. military, and many young people are learning how to be organizers all over the world. Imperialism has always provoked rebellion. Neoliberal globalization manifests an intense, accelerated dynamic of exploitation and oppression. Add to this the possibilities of war, or the realities of war, accompanied by a serious economic crisis, and the prospects for mass rebellion can develop quickly. Out of these rebellions can come organizers with a radical perspective, who will look to the roots of social problems to understand these problems and find ways to overcome them . Globalization in the present, specifically neoliberal globalization, might appear to mark the triumph of Western capitalism over its opponents, but the internal contradictions of that system, the limits of that system, the likelihood of rebellion, and the probability that participants in those rebellions will seek to develop theories that explore the roots of problems and actions to uproot the political-economic systems that sustain those problems, all make predictions that “capitalist globalization is the end of history” seem naïve today. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative Solves – Opens Space The meaning of economy has been washed away. Only The alternative opens up the ability for non capitalist practices to shape economic policies Gibson-Graham 3 (J.K. “Enabling Ethical Economies: Cooperativism and Class” 2003, http://crs.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/29/2/123.full.pdf+html
I would like to argue that this project of deconstructing the hegemony of capitalism and elaborating multiple axes of economic diversity is an emancipatory project of repoliticizing the economy. It refuses to pose economic power as already distributed to capitalist interests and opens up the possibility for non-capitalist practices to be the focus for an invigorated economic politics. It reinstates the importance of making and managing It also involves exposing the limited view of what constitutes ‘the economy’ that currently prevails in popular and academic discourse, that is, the narrow focus upon commodity markets, wage labor, capitalist enterprise and the singular ethic of competitive individualism. economy – aspects of the meaning of the word that have been increasingly washed away – by placing the politico-ethical decisions that make our economies at the center of analysis . Ernesto Laclau notes that The role of deconstruction is . . . to reactivate the moment of decision that underlies any sedimented set of social relations. The political and ethical significance of this first moment is that by enlarging the area of structural indeterminacy [eg of the economy] it enlarges also the area of responsibility – that is, of the decision. (Laclau 1995:93, bracketed comment added) A vision of the economy as diverse, multiply identified and complexly overdetermined and economic power as diffuse, segmented, and in motion opens up the possibility for local non-capitalist practices to be the focus for an invigorated economic politics. The project of mapping diverse economies as a way of imagining and enacting non-capitalist futures has taken encouragement from Father Jose Maria Arizmendiarrieta’s vision of a pluralistic society and economy: In the mind of the co-operators is the idea that future society probably must be pluralistic in all its organisations including the economic. There will be action and interaction of publicly owned firms and private firms, the market and planning, entities of paternalistic style, capitalist or social. Every juncture, the nature of every activity, the level of evolution and the development of every community, will require a special treatment but not limited to one form of organisation, if we believe in and love man, his liberty, and justice, and democracy . (Arizmendiarrieta, cited in Mathews, 1999:186 quoting from Whyte and Whyte 1991:255) Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative Solves - restructures socio-economic policies
The kritik is the only way to restructure the socio-economic policies Arruda 1996 (Marcos “GLOBALIZATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY: RETHINKING COOPERATIVISM IN THE CONTEXT OF ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP” 1996) it is in this process that the practice of an autonomous cooperativism, self-managed and in solidarity, gains enormous importance as it innovates in the space of the human enterprise/community, and also in the relationship of exchange between the diverse agents (the market, seen as a human relation); our argument is that civil society needs to overcome the relative inertia to which it has been subjected, overcoming the unilateral culture of contentiousness, demand and delegation, with its alienating paternalistic practices, for a culture of self-development, of self-help and complementary solidarity; associative and self-managed cooperativism, transformed into a strategic project, can be the means of more adequate restructuring of the socio-economy in the new era that is being announced. Cooperation is the best for of socio economic policies Arruda 1996 (Marcos “GLOBALIZATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY: RETHINKING COOPERATIVISM IN THE CONTEXT OF ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP” 1996)
In the political and cultural sphere, the organizations of the Civil Society have operated in increasingly articulated and efficient form to pressure the centers of power, whether corporate, or State, in the direction of democratic changes. The pressures on national governments and on the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Regional Development Banks for an increased transparency, for internal reforms, for the effective participation of society, particularly the main intended beneficiaries, the poor, and for profound modifications in the concept and practice of development on the part of these entities, has produced evident results. Representative social entities as well as those of consultation and advocacy, acting in networks and coalitions that are national, regional and global, and utilizing the means of telecommunications, are fulfilling a relevant role in the search for theoretical and practical alternatives to competitive globalization and the passive and submissive citizenry these tend to encourage. In this context, the cooperative route presents substantial advantages over all other forms of socio-economic organization that have been tried before. However, the cooperative way has already been tried, without great success. The second part of this work focuses on the principal reasons for the successes and failures of cooperativism, and will propose the way of self-managed cooperativism in solidarity as that which will permit the construction of cooperative eco-societies and, in the longer term, a cooperative globalization. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative Solves – Shapes Economic Policies
The alternative is The only way to actually make and shape economic policies Gibson-Graham 2003 (J.K. “Enabling Ethical Economies: Cooperativism and Class” 2003, http://crs.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/29/2/123.full.pdf+html
The title of Roy Morrison’s book We Build the Road as We Travel (1991) reminds us that when building sustainable, socially equitable and culturally distinctive community economies there are no pre-given pathways to follow, no economic models that can be pulled down from the shelf and set in place to ensure success. The process of enabling such economies to develop involves continual debate over economic and ethical considerations at every step of the way, and the making of difficult decisions that will direct future pathways and crystallize community values. It is through this process that economic imaginaries are made into concrete, actually existing practices and institutions. The alternative is the only way to open up the economy and increase our profit-thus solving the economy Gibson-Graham 2003 (J.K. “Enabling Ethical Economies: Cooperativism and Class” 2003, http://crs.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/29/2/123.full.pdf+html
In principle the cooperativists have the strategic power to determine how 90 per cent of the profit is allocated and it is in this arena of decision making that the strong commitment to people over capital and community over individual has increasingly come to the fore. Early on the cooperatives distributed 20 per cent of their disposable surplus to a permanent reserve fund of retained earnings to be used for machinery replacement and upgrade. The remaining 70 per cent of the profit was distributed on a yearly basis directly as dividends to the cooperators “who could spend or save it as they chose” (Morrison 1991:159). It soon became evident that this arrangement would not allow for long-term expansion of the individual enterprise or the wider cooperative system. The decision was thus made to establish internal capital accounts whereby 70 per cent (or less) “is distributed to the owner-workers’ personal internal capital accounts, apportioned according to number of hours worked and salary grade” (Morrison 1991:50). The individual worker’s capital account earns interest at an agreed upon rate and “(m)embers may draw on the interest accumulated in their accounts, or use the accounts as collateral for personal loans, but the principal cannot normally be touched until they resign or retire” (Mathews 1997:11). This means that effectively 90 per cent of the profit or disposable surplus generated is saved to be reinvested in enterprise development. In effect, this allocation of funds to ‘forced savings’ has been a crucial enactment of strategic power on the part of the cooperators that has subordinated personal economic gain to the goal of strengthening and diversifying the cooperative system. The individual producers cede their right to directly determine many of the distributions out of appropriated surplus by depositing their individual capital accounts with the Caja Laboral Popular (the Working People’s Bank). This institution is a second degree cooperative (a cooperative of cooperatives) that is controlled by its ownerworkers and its members (other cooperative enterprises). The foundation of the Caja Laboral was a key intervention that enabled the economic power of cooperatively produced surplus to be marshalled within the cooperative system as a whole and dispersed in a manner that proliferated the intentional economy of Mondragon. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Alternative- Solves War The Alternative solves war- competitiveness is the reason for World war 1 GILPIN 1970- Cambridge university (Robert, “The Politics of Transnational Economic Relations” 1970, http://journals.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=4307356&jid=INO&volumeId=25&issueId=03&aid=43073480)
The foundations underlying the Pax Britannica and the transnational processes it fostered began to erode in the latter part of the nineteenth century. On the Continent the industrialization and unification of Germany profound- ly altered the European balance of power. France, too, industrialized and began to challenge Great Britain's global supremacy. Overseas developments of equal or potentially greater magnitude were taking place. The rapid industrialization of Japan and the United States and their subsequent creation of powerful navies ended British control of the seas. No longer could Great Britain use its naval power to deny rivals access to the globe. With the decline of British supremacy the imperial struggle for the division of Africa and Asia began, leading eventually to the outbreak of the First World War. The war completed the destruction of the pre-1914 system. As a consequence of the duration and intensity of the conflict one sector after another of economic life was nationalized and brought into the service of the state. The role of the state in economic affairs became pervasive, and economic national- ism largely replaced the laissez faire traditions upon which so much of prewar transnationalism had rested. Not until the Second World War would political relations favor the reemergence of extensive transnational activity. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Framework – Rejection key The institutions that propagate the ideological hegemony underlying globalization are still founded at the national level—challenging these are key to disrupting broader structures of power Whyte 7 – PHD and reader in Sociology at the University of Liverpool School of Sociology and Social policy (Dave Whyte, “Market Patriotism and the "War on Terror"”, in Social Justice, vol 34 iss 3/4, Proquest, IWren)
The securing of political legitimacy is a complex process in which the battle for ideas, in a Gramscian, sense, is related to underlying struggles between social classes or competing power blocs. The process of building ideological hegemony involves the dominant social group making a bid to have a view of the world, set of beliefs and morals, or "system of ideas" gain widespread acceptance throughout civil society (social institutions such as the political parties, churches, NGOs, trade unions, and so on) (Gramsci, 1996). This does not necessarily mean that the construction of one "worldview" inevitably predominates over all others. There is room for difference, or for a plurality of ideas. The effect of ideological hegemony is to ensure that a "plurality of ideas" can be defined within certain parameters. Thus, although this process may have the appearance of an open and "democratic" one that encourages debate, ultimately such debates are conducted within boundaries of what may be deemed "acceptable" or "legitimate." In this sense, ideology can be understood as the cement of a society-a force that binds and reinforces social organization under capitalism (Poulantzas, 1978). For Gramsci, the development of ideological hegemony is always grounded hi the material realities of human social relations. In other words, ideas do not develop independently from inter- and intra-class struggles for power. As the dominant ideas of a society are promoted, disseminated, and reproduced, they reach popular consciousness through a variety of means (not least through the institutions of civil society such as trade associations, educational institutions, churches, etc.). When these ideas are broadly accepted by the populous, they become "common sense." That is, the aim of ruling groups in any given society is to establish their ideas, no matter how flawed, as an accurate view of the world such that they acquire the status of accepted "truths" or "realities." Ruling groups then use those ideas as a resource to seek consensual support for political rule. Political rule in capitalist social orders uses a mix of ideological hegemony (consent) and force (coercion). There is not a zero sum relationship between the two forms of power, but a more complex dialectical interplay. It is misleading to project a rise or fall of consensual forms of rule that correlates directly to an intensification or weakening of coercive techniques to which governments resort. Instead, ideological mechanisms adapt to the conditions required by a particular form of political rule. If political rule becomes more coercive, the result is not that consent automatically diminishes, but that the ideas disseminated by the ruling bloc must adapt to support and stabilize those coercive forms of power. An often overlooked point about the Gramscian notion of hegemony by those who describe the current period as an "era of globalization" is that despite the emergence of new locations of inter- and tram- national decision-making, and despite the extension of political rule through transnational institutions such as the various United Nations organizations, international financial institutions (IFIs), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), in liberal democracies ideological hegemony remains a process that requires an understanding of the extent to which the nation-state is the starting point and the point of departure for understanding how hegemony operates internationally (Showstack Sasoon, 2001). The mechanisms through which state power operates (elected parliaments, administrative centers of power, legal apparatuses, police forces, military units, mass media, etc.) and the loci for the constitution of capital (trade associations, stock markets, regulatory mechanisms) remain organized at the level of national states and remain significant for organizing a national, collective project. This is the case in spite of the intense pressures from above and below experienced in the current period of late capitalism, not least formations at an international level that are capable of organizing ruling fractions. Thus, no matter how much the exigencies of the global market discipline states, this does not obliterate the fact that the struggle for hegemony is a process of political rule located at the level of the national state . In this context, although securing popular consent generally involves some form of hegemonic compromise, the borders of a particular nation-state do not always strictly limit the process. Thus, universalist forms of reasoning, rooted in liberal political theory and philosophy, have provided key ideological supports for capitalism, proposing that it will yield political and economic benefits for all, regardless of "nation" or "race." Both "particularist" and "universalist" claims are always present in capitalist social orders. Thus, contemporary Western governments characteristically make the (particularist) claim that neoliberal policies will improve the competitiveness of the national economy-and therefore benefit the population within a particular nation-state-while making the (universalist) claim that neoliberalism can, on a global level, create the conditions for other, weaker economies to become stronger. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Framework – Economics first Economic come before political action, only way to allow large scale growth GILPIN 1970- Cambridge university (Robert, “The Politics of Transnational Economic Relations” 1970, http://journals.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=4307356&jid=INO&volumeId=25&issueId=03&aid=4307348)
Engel, on the other hand, using the example of the unification of Ger- many in his attack on Diihring, argued that economic factors were primary. Engels argued that when contradictions arise between economic and political structures, political power adapts itself to changes in the balance of eco- nomic forces and yields to the dictates of economic development. Thus, in the case of nineteenth-century Germany, the requirements of industrial pro- duction had become incompatible with feudal, politically fragmented Ger- many. Though political reaction was victorious in 1815 and again in 1848, it was unable to prevent the growth of large-scale industry in Germany and the growing participation of German commerce in the world market.8 In sum- mary, Engels argued that "Geman unity had become an economic necessity. The question of the debate should comedown to the pursuit of knowledge production in the economic sphere. Tannock 9 – PHD in Social Sciences and Humanities from Stanford [Stuart Tannock, Globalisation, Societies and Education Vol. 7, No. 3, September -2009, 257-274, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14767720903166061; WBTR] Is the knowledge, education and learning being embraced by Wales with the St Athan Defence Training Academy ‘like light… enlightening the lives of people every- where’? Is is ‘good for us’? At a minimum, we can argue that, in the case of Wales and St Athan, there are clearly different kinds of knowledge (hegemonic, alternative, oppositional) based on different sets of values and principles, and having different consequences for the future development of Wales and its relationship with the wider world. Pursuing a knowledge economy is never simply about choosing ‘knowledge’ over ‘lack of knowledge’: it is about choosing one particular political vision over another, whether or not that vision is stated explicitly. More strongly, we can argue that the kind of knowledge economy being constructed in Wales works not to open up fields of knowledge and inquiry but to shut these down, particularly if they fail to conform to a narrow, pre- set political and economic vision. The knowledge economy in Wales, at least in the case of the St Athan Academy, is as much about a programme of discipline and control as it is about opening up possibilities for learning, reflection and debate. Finally, we might argue that the kinds of knowledge being embraced by Wales with St Athan involve the acceptance of a social and moral politics (neoliberalism, militarism, imperialism, etc) that, far from being enlightening, can have what are potentially devastating consequences for individuals, communities and environments in Wales and elsewhere around the world. Inevitably, though, whether we agree with this particular assessment or not, we are each forced to take a moral and political stand whenever we make judgements about knowledge, learning and education. Some forms of knowledge we deem to be good and desirable; other forms, much less so. The idea that there are different kinds, purposes and politics of knowledge and education is hardly novel or controversial. Indeed, consideration of the multiple purposes of education is a core part of any introductory course or textbook on the sociology or philosophy of education: education for individual development, education for citizenship, education for pleasure or for its own sake, education for economic production, vocational preparation and social mobility and so on. Many educators decry the current tendency for all education to be vocationalised, incurring the loss of other educational purposes (Grubb and Lazerson 2007). However, when it comes to considering education, learning, knowledge and skill within the economic or vocational context itself, we tend to fall into the constraints of a debilitating, depoliticising, reductionist and unilinear human capital model. We talk of high skills (good) and low skills (bad), and we talk of knowledge and knowledge economies as goods in and of themselves, inherently and unquestionably. We need to remember that even in the vocational and economic context alone, all knowledge is ideologically charged, and what we learn can point us in what are often diametrically opposing directions. What we need to be concerned about is not just how many ‘high skill’ jobs we bring to a region, nor how much knowledge, education, learning and innovation we produce. What matters is the type of skills, knowledge, education and learning at hand, and most essentially, the social and moral politics to which these are being directed. Before anything else gets started in setting economic and education development policy , we need to ask always: knowledge for whom and for what? Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Framework – Economics k2 politics Economics determine political relations (GILPIN 1970- Cambridge university Robert, “The Politics of Transnational Economic Relations” 1970, http://journals.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=4307356&jid=INO&volumeId=25&issueId=03&aid=4307348)
Marxism, the rebellious ideological child of classical liberalism, erected the concept of the contradiction between economic and political relations into a historical law. Whereas classical liberalism held that the requirements of eco- nomic rationality ought to determine political relations, the Marxist position was that the mode of production does determine the superstructure of political relations. History can be understood as the product of the dialectical process— the contradiction between evolving economic forces and the sociopolitical system. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ AT: Hegemony Good/Solves The discourse of American hegemony to produce good is a fallacy – it masks our imperialism that justifies genocide Moers 6 - Chair of the Department of Politics and School of Public Administration at Ryerson University (Colin, “The New Imperialists”,2006, pg 2-3)
Times have changed, but not nearly enough. The old colonial imperialism, of which Algeria was a remnant, had its roots in the nineteenth century. Its apologists could still employ a language redolent of the racial and cultural superiority of the time; the “civilizing mission” of the Christianized West was still thought by many to constitute the “white man’s burden” in the non-European world. Although a similar “civilizational” rhetoric exists today, it is no longer as easy to justify imperial conquest by resort to the overtly racist pieties of the past. If American generals still study French counter-insurgency methods in Algeria for pointers on how to combat the Iraqi insurgency, 3 they have had to find new methods to vie for the hearts and minds of those they wish to subdue. This is largely an achievement of the anti-colonial struggles of the second half of the last century. One of the many advantages of living in a “postcolonial” world is that the collective memory of the anticolonial struggle is deeply ingrained in the consciousness of millions throughout the world. Because of this fact, contemporary imperialism has had to drape itself in new ideological clothes; its defenders must now speak the language of democracy and human rights; of freedom and dignity; of inclusiveness and respect for difference; of gender equality and the alleviation of poverty; of good governance and sustainable development. Alongside these decidedly modernist tropes, others have appealed to the timeless verities of human nature or culture to justify the inevitability of war and empire. Still others have touted the supposedly beneficent legacy of older imperialisms. Such juxtapositions are in keeping with “a deep and perplexing doubleness” of the new imperialism: a primal military atavism reminiscent of older forms of empire combined with the “spectacular” deployment of up-to- the-minute technologies of mass deception and distraction. 4 Taken as a whole, the new ideologies of empire express the same contradictory combination of the retrogressive and the modern: of civilizational clashes and democratic ideals; of virulent racism and postmodern multiculturalism; of gender equality and religious oppression; of old-fashioned propaganda and newfangled forms of “soft power”; of torture and human rights. Against this backdrop, it would be easy to lose sight of the difference between ideologies and lies. However, ideologies are different from lies even if they are sometimes (as in the case of Iraq) bolstered by lies. For ideologies to work, they must speak to some genuine longing on the part 2 The New Imperialistsof those who believe in them, however distorted these desires have become by the realities of exploitation and domination. Hence the talk of democracy and freedom. But, like lies, ideologies often involve a good deal of self-delusion on the part of those who traffic in them – how else to explain the debacle of post-invasion Iraq? The systematic character of imperial self-delusion is perhaps best captured in U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s tortured explication of military ignorance: As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also the unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know. 5 As Slavoj Zizek observes, the one category that Rumsfeld failed to mention were the “unknown knowns”: beliefs or practices – like the horrors of Abu Ghraib – which must be quickly repressed since their knowledge is too much for consciousness to bear. Zizek contends that the real danger for the American empire lies not in the threats which lie undiscovered, but “in the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about.” 6 Be that as it may, a good deal of conscious effort has been expended to justify and normalize the “new imperialism.” It is a mark of the times in which we live that the discourse of empire and imperialism – not so long ago considered an antique preoccupation of the Left – has been embraced by mainstream intellectuals from across the political spectrum. But, before examining these apologias in detail in the essays that follow, we need to ask: what has prompted this sudden desire to reclaim the language of empire? What changes in the global balance of forces account for this momentous ideological shift? Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ AT: Market Solves Poverty A. your authors interpret social data incorrectly
B. The current system only helps the elite Harvey 6 – Professor @ CUNY (David, “A Conversation with David Harvey”,2006, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/harvey.htm)
You know, Jagdish Baghwati recently published a book, In Defense of Globalization, where he argues that free market globalization has been a success in freeing people from poverty, political and social forms of domination, and even opening up a new kind of cosmopolitanism. How does your critical view of globalization respond to such claims? A: I’ll respond in two ways, there is a lot of controversy over the kind of data you look at and how you prove that. For instance if you ask the question of how many people were in poverty in 1980 and how many people there are in poverty today, you might say, there are fewer people in poverty now than there was back then. But when you look at the economic performance, of say China and India, and you look at the aggregate data, it looks like the world is better off. If you start to look at social inequality however, you start to see in many instances, that neo-liberalization has increased social inequality, even at the same time that it has lifted some of the people at the bottom out of poverty. If you look at the concentration of wealth, at the very top bracket of society, you will see immense concentrations of wealth at the very top 0.1% of the population. At this point the question is: who is neo-liberalization really benefiting? And if you look at concentrations of political and economic power, it has largely benefited a very very small elite. And we have to start looking at that. For instance, the New York Times had this interesting data a couple of months ago. How rich, on average, are the richest 200 (or 400) families in the United States? I think the data showed that back in 1980, they had something like $680 million. In constant dollars it is something like $2.8 billion. They have quadrupled their wealth in the last twenty years and this is a familiar story not just in the U.S but also globally. In Mexico, after neo-liberalization, you see the same thing. You see the same think happening in China and in India. When Thomas Friedman talks about a flat world, he is saying you do not have to come to America to be a billionaire; you can be a billionaire in Bangalore now. You do not have to migrate to America, but the social inequality in India is increasing dramatically. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Competitiveness Fail - Empirics Rigorous empirical testing disproves competitiveness Krugman 94 – received B.A. from Yale Univeristy and PHD from MIT. Prof of Economics (Paul, “Proving My Point” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/50115/paul-krugman/proving-my-point?page=3)
And so over the course of the last ten years a massive international research program has explored the prospects for strategic trade policy.2 Two broad conclusions emerge. First, to identify which industries should receive strategic promotion or the appropriate form and level of promotion is very difficult. Second, the payoffs of even a successful strategic trade policy are likely to be very modest, certainly far less even than Thurow's "seven percent solution," which is closer to the entire share of international trade in the U.S. economy. Research results are always open to challenge, especially in an inexact field like economics. If Prestowitz wants to point out specific failings in the dozens of painstaking empirical studies of strategic trade that have been carried out over the past decade, by all means let him do so. His remarks about the subject, however, strongly suggest that while he is happy to mention strategic trade theory in support of his policy writing, Prestowitz has not read any of the economic literature. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Econ Leadership Unsustainable
American economic and imperial primacy is fading—our culture is lame, our debt is high, and our haters are hatin’—only a risk the plan props it up in the short term Pieterse 10 – Prof of globalization at University of Maastricht (Jan Pieterse,, “Dynamics of Twenty-first-Century Globalization: New Trends in Global Political Economy” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 20-21, IWren)
On the economic front, the United States is dependent on imports and “Brand America” is losing points. In business circles the G. W. Bush presidency was viewed as a massive failure of American brand management. The aura of American power is fading. Rising antiAmericanism affects the status of American products, and American pop culture is no longer the edge of cool. An advertising executive notes growing resentment of American-led globalization: We know that in Group of 8 countries, 18 percent of the population claim they are avoiding American brands, with the top brand being Marlboro in terms of avoidance. Barbie is another one. McDonald’s is another. There is a cooling towards American culture generally across the globe. (Holstein 2005) The main tipping points of American hegemony are domestic and external. Domestic tipping points are the inflated housing market and high levels of debt. Not only are U.S. levels of debt high, but manufacturing capacity is eroded, there are no reserves and the domestic savings rate turned negative for the first time in 2005, so an adjustment is inevitable. If interest rates remain low, it undermines the appeal of dollar assets for foreign investors. If interest rates rise, it increases the pressure on domestic debt and the highly leveraged financial and corporate system. The main external tipping points are fading dollar loyalty, financial markets following new money, the growing American legitimacy crisis, and the strategic debacles in Iraq and the Middle East. There are generally three different responses to American hegemony. The fist is continued support—which is adopted for a variety of reasons, such as the appeal of the American market, the role of the dollar, the shelter of the American military umbrella, and lingering hope in the possibility of American self correction. The second option is soft balancing—which ranges from tacit noncooperation (such as most European countries staying out of the Iraq war and declining genetically modified food) to establishing alternative institutions without U.S. participation (such as the Kyoto Protocol and the International Criminal Court). And the third response is hard balancing—which only few countries can afford, either because they have been branded as enemies of the United States already and so have little to lose (Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Sudan), or because their bargaining power allows them maneuvering room (as in the case of China and Russia and the SCO). An intriguing trend is that the number of countries that combines these different responses to American hegemony in different policy domains is increasing. Thus, China displays all three responses in different spheres—economic cooperation (WTO, trade), noncooperation in diplomacy (UN Security Council) and finance (valuation of renminbi), and overt resistance in Central Asia (Wolfe 2005) and support for Iran. American unilateralism and preventive war are gradually giving way to multipolarity, if only because unilateralism is becoming too costly, militarily, politically, and economically. New clusters and alignments are gradually taking shape around trade, energy, and security. Sprawling and cross-zone global realignments point to growing multipolarity rather than hegemonic rivalry.
Relative economic decline inevitable—attempting to sustain it creates great power war and imperialism that turns hegemony and the economy Berberoglu 10 – Foundation Professor of Sociology at the University of Nevada (Berch Berberoglu, Foundation Professor of Sociology and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Reno., received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, “Global Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization, Imperialism, and Class Struggle”, in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 122-124, IWren)
With the integration of the economies of Western Europe into the European Union (EU) and the emergence of Japan as a powerful economic force in the late twentieth century, the position of the United States in the global economy has declined relative to both its own postwar supremacy in the 1940s and 1950s and to other advanced capitalist economies since that time. Despite the fact that U.S. capital continues to control the biggest share of overseas markets and accounts for the largest volume of international investments, its hold on the global economy has recently begun slipping in a manner similar to Britain’s in the early twentieth century. This has, in turn, led the U.S. state to play a more aggressive role in foreign policy to protect U.S. transnational interests abroad. Its massive deployment in the Middle East in the early 1990s, which led to the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and subsequently its intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and war against Iraq in 2003, has resulted in great military expenditures that translated into an enormous burden on working people of the United States, who have come to shoulder the colossal cost of maintaining a global empire whose vast military machine encompasses the world (Berberoglu 2003, 2005). In the current phase of the crisis of the U.S. economy and the imperial state, the problems the state faces are of such magnitude that they threaten the supremacy of the United States in the global political economy and by extension the global capitalist system itself. Internal economic and budgetary problems have been compounded by evergrowing military spending propped up by armed intervention in the Third World (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.), while a declining economic base at home manifested in the housing and banking crisis, deindustrialization, and a recessionary economy further complicated by the global rivalry between the major capitalist powers that is not always restricted to the economic field, but has political (and even military) implications that are global in magnitude (Beams 1998; Harvey 2003; see also Panitch and Leys 2003). The growing Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ prospects of inter-imperialist rivalry between the major capitalist powers, backed up by their states, are effecting changes in their relations that render the global political economy an increasingly unstable character. Competition between the United States, Japan, and European imperial states, and the emergence of China, Russia, and other rival states, are leading them on a collision course for world supremacy, manifested in struggles for markets, raw materials, and spheres of influence in geopolitical—as well as economic— terms, which may in fact lead to a new balance of forces, and, consequently, alliances that will have serious political implications in global power politics. As the continuing economic ascendance of the major capitalist rivals of the United States take their prominent position in the global economy, pressures will build toward the politicization and militarization of these states from within, where the forces of the leading class bent on dominating the world economy will press forward with the necessary political and military corollary of their growing economic power in the global capitalist system (Hart 1992; Falk 1999), as has been the case with the German, French, Russian, and Chinese opposition to war against Iraq in the U.N. Security Council in 2003. These developments in global economic and geopolitical shifts in the balance of forces among the major powers will bring to the fore new and yet untested international alliances for world supremacy and domination in the post–cold war era. Such alliances will bring key powers such as Russia and China into play in a new and complicated relationship that holds the key for the success or failure of the new rising imperial centers that will emerge as the decisive forces in the global economic, political, and military equation in the early decades of the twenty-first century (Halliday 2001; Guthrie 2006; Stephens 2009). parcel of the restructuring of the international division of labor and the transfer of production to overseas territories in line with the globalization of capital on a worldwide basis—a process that has serious consequences for the economies of both the advanced capitalist and less developed capitalist countries. Economic decline in the imperial centers (manifested in plant closings, unemployment, and recession) and super-exploitation of workers in the Third World (maintained by repressive military regimes) yield the same combined result that has a singular global logic: the accumulation of transnational profits for the capitalist class of the advanced capitalist countries —above all, that of the United States, the current center of global capitalism. It is in this context of the changes that are taking place on a world scale that the imperial state is beginning to confront the current crisis of global capitalism. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ AT: We don’t challenge Cap Capitalism can’t be separated from its extreme manifestations—even if the alt challenges those they will be inevitably reproduced Berberoglu 10 – Foundation Professor of Sociolgy and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Sociolgy at the Univeristy of Nevada (Berch Berberoglu, Reno., received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon, “Global Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization, Imperialism, and Class Struggle”, in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 117, IWren) Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism operating on a world scale, and globalization is the highest stage of imperialism that has penetrated every corner of the world. Both are an outgrowth of twentiethcentury monopoly capitalism—an inevitable consequence, or manifestation, of monopoly capital that now dominates the world capitalist political economy. Thus, the current wave of neoliberal globalization is an extension of this process that operates at a more advanced and accelerated level. A central feature of this current phase of transnational capitalism, besides its speed and intensity, is the increased privatization of various spheres of the economy and society. This has especially been the case in areas such as communications, information technology, education, and the cultural sphere, where privatization is becoming increasingly prevalent. The rate at which these changes have been taking place, and the vigor with which transnational capital has been exercising more power vis-à-vis the state, has led some to declare globalization a qualitatively new stage in the development of world capitalism (Ross and Trachte 1990). However, I argue that these quantitative, surface manifestations of contemporary capitalism, no matter how pervasive they are, do not change the fundamental nature of capitalism and capitalist relations, or the nature of the capitalist/imperialist state and the class contradictions generated by these relations, which are inherent characteristics of the system itself. They cannot change the nature of capitalism in any qualitative sense to warrant globalization a distinct status that these critics have come to assign as something fundamentally different than what Marxist political economists have always argued to be the “normal” operation and evolution of global capitalism in the age of imperialism (Szymanski 1981; Warren 1980; Beams 1998; Foster 2002; Harvey 2003). Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ No Alt Solvency Can’t organize a grassroots movement – people are too exploited by the system Harvey 6 – Professor @ CUNY (David, “A Conversation with David Harvey”,2006, http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/harvey.htm)
Well you have to start somewhere. One of my favorite passages from Marx is “The realm of freedom begins where the realm of necessity is left behind,” and he gives this rather long rhetoric about freedom. Then at the end of it he says, “Therefore, limiting the length of the working day, is a crucial demand.” So you go from a kind of revolutionary rhetoric to an almost reformist, kind of practical demand right now. And I think the difference between a reformist and a revolutionary is not necessarily that you do radical things all the time, but it is that at a given moment, you may all do the same thing, i.e. demand living wage, but you do it with a different objective, and that is as a long-term transition. A transformation, which is what you may have in mind, and I think that Marx was very well aware that if people are working 18-20 hours a day, 7 days a week, they are not going to be very revolutionary in their consciousness. They are going to be so damn tired, that they are not going to have time for anything, and therefore, creating spaces and possibilities for people to think of other possibilities is a precursor to a more general transformation. That is one of things that I certainly found out in the living wage campaign in Baltimore. People working two jobs, working 80 hours a week, and they do not have time to organize, they hardly have time to have a life, let alone be active in community organizations, and active as political organizers. It is very difficult to do that when you are in that situation.
Movements fail—don’t challenge global capital and are coopted by rising powers
Spector 10 – Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University Calumet (Alan J Spector, “Neoliberal Globalization and Capitalist Crises in the Age of Imperialism” in “Globalization in the 21st Century: Labor, Capital, and the State on a World Scale”, pg 54, IWren) Some who consider themselves in the anticapitalist, Marxist tradition hail the ascendancy to political power of such reformers as Chavez and Morales, and the World Social Forum has also brought together hundreds of thousands of grassroots activists in conferences where ideas and tactics have been exchanged. It is true that there are aspects of revolutionary Marxism in the mass movements that helped sweep these leaders into power. Throughout Latin America, there is renewed interest in anti-imperialism and strong movements of millions who are developing a critique of modern capitalist imperialism. The prediction that Marxism was dead and that free market capitalism was the “end of history” seems to have been a bit premature. However, while there has been some distribution of wealth, and while some of these leaders strongly criticize the U.S. government, banks, and corporations, none of them are seriously challenging the core of global capitalism. Furthermore, other major capitalist powers, especially from the European Union, as well as China, are making alliances with many of these leaders. While it may seem “progressive” for these leaders to be taking a stance against U.S. imperialism, it is not clear that their leadership will become a major force against capitalism as a world system. Historically, many movements have opposed the dominant imperialist power of the time, only to be co-opted by another , usually rising, capitalist power. In the late 1800s, the United States opposed Spanish imperialism in the Caribbean, for example, and then replaced the Spanish as a rising imperialist power over much of that region. Allying with Western European capitalists against U.S. capitalist interests will not weaken capitalism. China is seen as an eventual competitor of U.S. capitalism, but despite the leadership of the Communist Party, it is clear that capitalist economic relations are growing rapidly in China. Some have suggested that, in the absence of a large, international Marxist movement, China could replace a declining U.S. empire and breathe new life into the world capitalist system.
***AFF ANSWERS Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Dependence leads to war Economic dependence leads to conflict, which can escalate to war Gartzke 2010 – Political Science Prof, UCSD (Erik, Interdependence Really is Complex, 2010, http://www.princeton.edu/~pcglobal/conferences/wartrade/Gartzke_paper.pdf)
Diverse critics focus on the leverage economic interdependence provides to powerful interests. Realists see the effects of interdependence as at odds with the competitive logic of politics under anarchy (Carr 1939, Krasner 1976, Waltz 1979, Mastanduno 1998). Subsequent work emphasizes the problematic role of trade in terms of relative gains (Grieco 1988, 1990; Mastanduno 1991). Marxist and realists operate with an equivalent model of inequality as the precipitant of conflict, though with contrasting rhetori c (c.f. Hamilton 1791; Hobson 1938; Kautsky 1914; Lenin 1965; Waltz 1970, 1999). Dependency theorists also highlight the effect of inequality in engendering tensions among core trading states and their dependents (c.f. Prebisch 1959, 1963; Dos Santos 1970; Wallerstein 1974, 1980, 1988). The emphasis is on conflict between core and periphery, rather than among core \great powers." Empirical research suggests as well that asymmetric dependence is associated with increased conflict (Hirschman 1945, 1977; Gasiorowski 1986; Barbieri 1996, 2003). The classical liberal view essentially mirrors deterrence theory. The prospect of bents for-gone inhibits disputes , just as expectations of additional costs are said to discourage aggression in deterrence theory. States should be loath to fight if fighting is expected to result in the damage or loss of valuable economic linkages. As Levy puts it the anticipation that war will disrupt trade and lead to a loss or reduction of the gains from trade creates incentives for political leaders to avoid taking actions that are likely to lead to war against key trading partners Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Competition solves War Competition is the only way to resolve conflict, the kritik would make states harm themselves Gartzke 2010 – Political Science Prof, UCSD Erik, Interdependence Really is Complex, 2010, http://www.princeton.edu/~pcglobal/conferences/wartrade/Gartzke_paper.pdf War combines in inflicting and incurring harm, forcing competitors to reveal capabilities or resolve even as they compete for additional bargaining leverage. To appeal to participants, contests must be expected to result in an advantageous shift in the bargaining range between competitors. Leverage in bargaining is maximized by inconflicting harm on others, though this does relatively little to reduce uncertainty and allow competitors to identify mutually acceptable bargains. Actions that are largely only costly to opponents will be appealing to initiators, but do little to inform. Much as war itself, interdependence forces the unification of the functions of coercion and information revelation by linking hardships in inflicted with hardships incurred. Symmetric economic ties (interdependence) make it harder for states to in conflict economic hardship without also experiencing harm themselves. Asymmetric dependence allows the dependent state to reveal information (through costly acts such as cutting off trade), but it provides few incentives for the dependent state to act in this way since, like burning money, the informative act fails to advantage the dependent actor. In contrast, the independent state in a dependent economic relationship has every incentive to use its leverage to material advantage, but little improvement in informational conditions is likely to result . Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Capitalism/Competition Inevitable By deconstructing the current economic policy, it will lead to capitalism Kantola 6- Comm Prof at Helsinki (Anu, “Transforming political imaginaries: the uses of competitiveness” Culture and Social Change: Disciplinary Exchanges)
For Schumpeter capitalism was “a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary ” (Schumpeter 1992/1943, 82). The opening of the new markets and the new organisational developments incessantly destroy the old economic structure from within and thus the infamous Schumpeterian process of creative destruction takes place forming the essential dynamic of capitalism . As capitalism is seen as a constantly changing evolutionary process Schumpeter sees that the function of the entrepreneur is to reform or revolutionize, “to act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons ” (Schumpeter 1992/1943, 132). Capitalism is kept alive by the ability to innovate under the process of creative destruction. Michigan Debate Institute BBRFJ Competition Solves Economy Competition => cooperation which solves for the economy Trapido 2007 – Business Prof @ Stanford Denis, Competitive Embeddedness and the Emergence of Interfirm Cooperation, Social Forces, Volume 86, Number 1, September 2007, pp. 165-191, 2007
The logic that I develop here integrates several separate theoretical fragments into a new argument. The argument inherits its central problem – understanding the influence of a history of competition on the emergence of cooperation – from the interdependence tradition. Its explanatory mechanisms and implications are, however, substantially different. The discussion will refer to this new argument and to the social process that it describes as competitive embeddedness. The competitive embeddedness argument begins with noting that economic competition heightens mutual awareness. A number of studies document this effect. For example, Davis et al. (1990) point out that economic competitors are more likely than non-competitors to get acquainted through professional associations . Sohn (2002) notes that c ompetition tends to be geographically socialized, hence the likelihood of a personal encounter between competitors is higher than between non-competitors. White (1981) goes probably further than any author in highlighting the role of mutual awareness in economy. White’s sociological theory of markets “insist[s] that what a firm does in a market is to watch the competition in terms of [other firms’ observable behavior and outcomes].” (1981:518) Rather than listing reasons why mutual awareness increases with competition, White argues that awareness and “watching” are inherent, defining features of a market.