<<

Novice Packet Files 38

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Kritik Specific Link (International Law) Answers Marxist theory is neutral on international law Bill Bowring, June 2, 2014, Bill Bowring Lecture: ‘A Marxist approach to state responsibility’, Amsterdam, 19 June 2014, Bill Bowring is Professor of Law in the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London. Barrister at Field Court Chambers, Gray's Inn, criticallegalthinking.com/2014/06/02/bill-bowring-lecture-marxist-approach-state-responsibility/

Marx and Engels had practically nothing to say about law, much less international law. They had strong principled positions on self-determination, for example, for Ireland and as oppressed nations; were in favour of the North in the American Civil ; and against British in India and French colonialism in Algeria. developed Marx’s and Engels’s position on self-determination and formulated a right of peoples to self-determination, put into practice in the Baltics, , Poland, but reversed by Stalin. But this was not explicitly or implicitly a critique of international law. Yevgeny Pashukanis, while he was a legal adviser negotiating in Berlin the Treaty of Rapallo, wrote the General Theory of Law and , introducing the “ form” theory of law. But Pashukanis’s own writings on international law and those of his rival and successor Korovin and indeed the approach to international law were thoroughly positivist, although repeatedly and paradoxically undercut by self-determination.

Novice Packet Files 39

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Specific Link (Hegemony) Answers Link Turn: The alternative to US hegemony is Chinese hegemony which is the worst parts of capitalism and more repressive Rebecca Liao, December 19, 2014, Beware of Chinese Hegemony, The National Interest, Rebecca Liao is a corporate attorney, writer and China analyst based in Silicon Valley. Her writing has appeared in Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic and Bloomberg View, among various publications, nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/beware-chinese-hegemony-11896

In its new role, China is promising it avoid the traps of Western multilateralism. Namely, it will not demand that countries meet conditions for financial aid that disregard local input and circumstances. In a key foreign policy speech given late last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping rebuked the Western order and pledged that China will “respect the independent choice of development path and social system by people of other countries." This is obviously pretense. First, China’s overseas development projects to date have often disregarded local considerations. True, its bilateral investments have filled a gap where developing countries in Latin America and Asia fail to meet the free- market, liberal requirements of organizations like the IMF and WTO. For example, the China Development Bank and China Export-Import Bank provided approximately $110 billion to developing countries in 2009 and 2010. Latin America received $79 billion from these two Chinese banks from 2003 through 2011, far outpacing the World Bank’s $57 billion. Africa, the largest beneficiary, has reportedly received approximately $170 billion in foreign investment over the last nine years. () While avoiding the political chaos and economic instability of Western-style , many Chinese investment projects have nevertheless led to vast local environmental destruction. Unemployment remains untreated or worsens since China prefers to use its own workers. Local laws and regulations may remain untouched, but Sinification persists. Second, even without explicit economic coercion, China is starting to mold its patron countries into its own image of . This is especially pronounced in Central Asian , particularly the regimes of Nazarbayev’s Kazahstan and Karimov’s Uzbekistan. And despite their democratic ambitions, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Venezuela Argentina and many other recipients of Chinese dollars are all leaning towards statist models of development.

Novice Packet Files 40

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik General Link Answers We can use the state against capitalism Christian Parenti, April 2014, “Climate Change: What Role for Reform?” MONTHLY REVIEW v. 65 n. 11, Christian Parenti is a Professor of Sustainable Development at the School for International Training, Graduate Institute http://monthlyreview.org/2014/04/01/climate-change- role-reform, accessed 4-24-14.

There was also a larger point to my essay that the MR editors did not address. By describing policies that the U.S. could undertake right now to start euthanizing the fossil-fuel industry, I was also attempting to start a conversation about the state. Once upon a time the state was the heart of the socialist project. But ’s anti-statist rhetoric has almost “disappeared” the state as an object—even on much of the left. The capitalist state is not just a tool of ’s rule. It is also an arena of class struggle. As such it is an institution that can solidify and enforce popular political victories over capital. If the struggle for climate is to get anywhere it will have to think more deeply about the contradictions of the capitalist state, and how such contradictions can be exploited in the short term. On that point, I hope you would agree.

Novice Packet Files 41

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Consequentialist Impact Scenario Answers

Impact Turn: Capitalism is self-correcting and sustainable – war and environmental destruction are not profitable and innovation solves their impacts

Anatole Kaletsky, 2011, Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, p. 19-21, Anatole Kaletsky is editor-at- large of The Times of London, where he writes weekly columns on , , and international relations and on the governing board of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Theory (INET), a nonprofit created after the 2007-2009 crisis to promote and finance academic research in economics

Democratic capitalism is a system built for survival. It has adapted successfully to shocks of every kind, to upheavals in technology and economics, to political and world . Capitalism has been able to do this because, unlike or or , it has an inner dynamic akin to a living thing. It can adapt and refine itself in response to the changing environment. And it will evolve into a new species of the same capitalist genus if that is what it takes to survive. In the panic of 2008—09, many politicians, , and pundits forgot about the astonishing adaptability of the capitalist system. Predictions of global collapse were based on static views of the world that extrapolated a few months of admittedly terrifying financial chaos into the indefinite future. The self- correcting mechanisms that market economies and democratic have evolved over several centuries were either forgotten or assumed defunct. The language of biology has been applied to politics and economics, but rarely to the way they interact. ’s equivalent of the biological survival instinct is a built-in capacity for solving social problems and meeting material needs. This capacity stems from the principle of , which drives both democratic politics and capitalist markets. Because market forces generally reward the creation of wealth rather than its destruction, they direct the independent efforts and ambitions of millions of individuals toward satisfying material demands, even if these demands sometimes create unwelcome by-products. Because voters generally reward politicians for making their lives better and safer, rather than worse and more dangerous, democratic competition directs political institutions toward solving rather than aggravating ’s problems, even if these solutions sometimes create new problems of their own. Political competition is slower and less decisive than market competition, so its self-stabilizing qualities play out over decades or even generations, not months or years. But regardless of the in timescale, capitalism and have one crucial feature in common: Both are mechanisms that encourage individuals to channel their creativity, efforts, and competitive spirit into finding solutions for material and social problems. And in the long run, these mechanisms work very well. If we consider democratic capitalism as a successful problem-solving machine, the implications of this view are very relevant to the 2007-09 economic crisis, but diametrically opposed to the that prevailed in its aftermath. Governments all over the world were ridiculed for trying to resolve a crisis caused by too much borrowing by borrowing even more. Alan Greenspan was accused of trying to delay an inevitable "day of reckoning” by creating ever-bigger financial bubbles. Regulators were attacked for letting half-dead, “zombie” banks stagger on instead of putting them to death. But these charges missed the point of what the democratic capitalist system is designed to achieve. In a capitalist democracy whose raison d’etre is to devise new solutions to long-standing social and material demands, a problem postponed is effectively a problem solved. To be more exact, a problem whose solution can be deferred long enough is a problem that is likely to be solved in ways that are hardly imaginable today. Once the self-healing nature of the capitalist system is recognized, the charge of “passing on our problems to our grand-children”—whether made about budget deficits by conservatives or about global warming by liberals—becomes morally unconvincing. Our grand-children will almost certainly be much richer than we are and will have more powerful technologies at their disposal. It is far from obvious, therefore, why we should make economic sacrifices on their behalf. Sounder , as well as economics, than the Victorians ever imagined is in the wistful refrain of the proverbially optimistic Mr. Micawber: "Something will turn up."

Novice Packet Files 42

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Consequentialist Impact Scenario Framing Answers Framing Turn: is bad – leads to horrendous decision making Danny Scoccia, 2007, Moral theories: , Kantianism, and Religious . Reading: pp. 6-17 & 20-26, Danny Scoccia is Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. University of California at San Diego) at New State University, Dr. Scoccia’s interests include ethical theory, and social and , web.nmsu.edu/~dscoccia/321web/321ethicstheory.pdf

The other three views—, natural theories, and “religious ethics”—all agree that there are many circumstances when maximizing utility would be wrong. Perhaps the strongest objection to Act Utilitarianism comes from the natural rights theory: Act Utilitarianism is false, because it tells us to violate people’s rights when that’s necessary to maximize utility. The example of Joseph illustrates it, but here’s another example. A surgeon has 1 healthy and 5 sick and dying patients. Each of the sick and dying patients needs a new organ— one a new kidney, another a new liver, the third a new heart, etc.—and would fully recover if he received it. It so happens that the 1 healthy patient would be a suitable organ donor for all of them. If the surgeon kills the 1 and redistributes his organs, he saves 5. If he does nothing, then 1 is alive and 5 are dead. On the assumption that all six are equally happy, loved by others, and productive of utility for others in society, then the way to maximize utility is to kill the 1. But if he won’t to killed and having his organs transplanted (he doesn’t believe in utilitarianism), then killing him would violate his right to life. The objection is simply that it would be wrong to violate his right even if it’s the way to maximize utility.

Novice Packet Files 43

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Deontological Impact Scenario Answers Impact Turn: Capitalism is a morally sound system – it preserves freedom to act which is the core of the human condition Peter Saunders, 2007, Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul, Peter Saunders is a Fellow at the Center for Independent Studies, http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer%2007-08/saunders_summer07.html

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

Novice Packet Files 44

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Deontological Impact Scenario Framing Answers Framing Turn: Deontology is a failed moral system – ticking time bomb proves Mark J. Buha, 2010, Rule Utilitarian and Deontologist Perspectives on Comparisons of Torture and Killing, Washington University Review Volume 2, Issue 2, Mark Buha is an Associate at Maune Raichle Hartley French & Mudd law firm, Mark earned his Juris Doctor from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011. He served as a Senior Editor of the Jurisprudence Review,openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=law_jurisprudence

Deontologists, like rule utilitarians, devise rules that must be followed universally. Deontologists and rule utilitarians differ only in what criteria they use to formulate these rules. Rule utilitarians use only pleasure and . They hold that any act that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain when applied universally is good. Deontologists evaluate actions under an entirely different rubric than rule utilitarians,72 often focusing on the mental state of the actor or whether the act violates another's rights.73 If it violates another's rights, it is strictly forbidden, regardless of the consequences. 74 Deontologists tend to treat each individual separately as an end in itself.75Applying this analysis, many deontologists forbid torture under all circumstances.? see torture as a particularly repugnant violation of individual rights. It requires specific intent, deprives the victim of dignity, and invades the victim's physical and psychological integrity. Provided grave enough consequences, this uncompromising position represents a fanaticism77and "moral "' that is difficult to defend. Hardly anyone finds it acceptable to rigidly adhere to an abstract moral principle—no matter how sound the principle appears in isolation—when doing so results in the death of hundreds or thousands of people.79 Deontologists allow catastrophe and mass death to occur to protect a single individual simply because torture violates his or her rights. The infamous "ticking time bomb" hypothetical illuminates these objections. In this scenario, a bomb is located in a crowded city. If detonated, it will destroy the entire city and millions will die. The bomb's location is unknown, and there is not enough time for a general search. Law enforcement apprehends one of the bomb's planters who knows the bomb's location and how to deactivate it. If the terrorist divulges the , law enforcement has enough time to disable the bomb. Given these facts, few would adhere to principle; most would torture the individual in order to extract information that would save millions. This hypothetical presses deontology to its ideological limits. Once the prohibitionist admits he would allow torture in this situation, he concedes that his opposition to torture is not based on principle alone, but on something else.8° Deontologists respond with both logical and empirical objections to the ticking time bomb hypothetical's seductive simplicity. First, as Richard Matthews points out, the argument may be valid, but it is unsound, and therefore it cannot seriously undermine any position on torture.81The ticking bomb argument sets forth an "if-then" conditional: if these facts exist, then a reasonable person would torture.82If the antecedent holds, the consequence follows. But the hypothetical assumes the antecedent's without providing any proof. Valid but not sound, the hypothetical proves nothing. If we accepted mere validity, anything could be proven.83 Second, deontologists point out how unlikely it is that the antecedent facts would ever simultaneously exist in the real world. Although each premise has an empirical likelihood of being false, the hypothetical assumes that (1) an actual terrorist threat exists, (2) the threat is imminent, (3) the threat is sufficiently dangerous to justify torture, (4) the apprehended suspect possesses any information relevant to the threat, (5) only a single individual possesses all of the information necessary to extinguish the threat, (6) the individual participated in the attack or is a wrongdoer, (7) torture will be effective in forcing the subject to disclose information, (8) the information disclosed is truthful, and (9) the torturer can distinguish truthful and false information simply by observing the subject. The distinct unlikelihood that all nine elements will simultaneously exist in the real world renders the example almost irrelevant, useful only as a thought exercise.84 While these criticisms expose the assumptions in the ticking time bomb hypothetical, they ultimately avoid the issue. While it might be extremely unlikely that such factual circumstances will ever exist, it is not conceptually impossible. The fact remains that rigid deontology allows the bombs to go off in that scenario, however unlikely. Deontologists allow the world to explode to avoid violating the rights of a single individual.

Novice Packet Files 45

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Discourse Impact Answers Impact Turn: Talking broadly about theories don’t help build education spaces, it creates withdrawal and pessimism – only learning about and working through actual systems and scenarios is educationally liberating Richard Rorty 1998, “ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”, 1998, Pg. 7-9, Richard Rorty is a professor emeritus of comparative literature and philosophy at Stanford University and a leading academic in the field of philosophy

Such people find pride in American citizenship impossible, and vigorous participation in electoral politics pointless. They associate American patriotism with an endorsement of atrocities: the importation of African slaves, the slaughter of Native Americans, the rape of ancient forests, and the Vietnam War. Many of them think of national pride as appropriate only for chauvinists: for the sort of American who rejoices that America can still orchestrate something like the Gulf War, can still bring deadly force to bear whenever and wherever it chooses. When young watch John Wayne war movies after reading Heidegger, Foucault, Stephenson, or Silko, they often become convinced that they live in a violent, inhuman, corrupt country. They begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see through nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The contrast between national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and . The latter were written in the that the tone of the Gettysburg Address was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transformation would be needed because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of these novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one in which America is destined to become the first commonwealth, the first . This America would be one in which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the ensures equality of opportunity as well as individual . This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal. It set the tone for the during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Walt Whitman and , as we shall see, did a great deal to shape this rhetoric. The difference between early twentieth- century leftist intellectuals and the majority of their contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early decades of this century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through skeptical eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of course, the great exception-the great abstainer from ·politics. But William James thought that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction against the sort of detached spectatorship which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless unless accompanied by an effort to give America to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of proto- Heideggerian cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy," James wrote, "is a kind of , and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2

Novice Packet Files 46

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Discourse Impact Framing Answers

Framing Turn: Focus on discourse trades off with actually implementing policy, risks cooption by special interests, and doesn’t solve as effectively – need to focus on real solutions not rhetoric Renee Irvin & John Stansbury, 2004, Citizen Participation in Decision-Making: Is it Worth the Effort?, Public Administration Review, Renee Irvin is Associate Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon & John Stansbury is Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Nebraska, c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/imported/Journal_Issue1_Irving.pdf

This article, while describing the very important benefits of citizen participation, also provides a litmus test for agencies to consider when they allocate resources toward citizen participation processes. Do citizens care enough to participate actively in policy-making, or would resources devoted toward participatory processes be better directed toward implementation? Does local citizen participation imply more opportunity for economically motivated special interests to dominate the decision process? Criticism lobbed at participatory efforts in environmental management may soon be heard in other sectors, as decreasing government budgets require intense scrutiny of government performance outcomes. Delegating environmental decision-making authority to citizens is a policy strategy lauded for its holistic consideration of local economic interests, yet criticised by the environmental left for its potential to roll back decades of environmental regulatory success. Evidence for the effectiveness of community participation in environmental management is in short supply, due in part to the inherent problems in measuring the success of environmental policies that may take decades to positively affect the environment. Even more difficult, perhaps, is the prospect of measuring incremental changes in the well-being of the general public as they become more engaged in the policy process. Concern exists among environmentalists that locally-based citizen participation processes will lead to a relaxation of previously successful environmental regulation. Another concern, rarely voiced, is the potential wastefulness of the process if employed in a non- community. Even if the citizen participation process does not lead to relaxed environmental regulation, it may entail a significant expenditure of resources that could be used elsewhere to achieve better on the-ground results. With widespread public benefit as the goal of any public policy process, it behooves the administrator to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the decision-making process when determining the most effective implementation strategy, bearing in mind that talk is not cheap – and may not even be effective.

Novice Packet Files 47

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Alternative Answers No Solvency: The will not succeed in overthrowing the capitalist system Mike Cole 2009, “Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response”, chapter 7, pg 121, Mike Cole is a Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Education for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK The Working Class Won’t Create the Because They Are . It is a fundamental tenet of Marxism that the working class are the agents of , and that the working class, as noted above, needs to become a ‘class for itself’ in addition to being a ‘class in itself’ (Marx, 1847 [1995]). It is unfortunately the case that major parts of the world are a long way off such a scenario at the present conjuncture. It is also the case that successful interpellation and related hampers the development of and the move towards the overthrow of capitalism. Britain is one example where the Ruling Class has been particularly successful in interpellating the working class (see Cole, 2008g, 2008h for discussion). Elsewhere, however, there are examples of burgeoning class consciousness, witnessed for example by the growth of Left parties (see below) in Europe and by developments across South America, notably the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (see below) and in Bolivia. It is to be hoped that, as neoliberal global imperial capitalism continues to reveal and expose its essential ruthlessness and contempt for those who make its profits, class consciousness will increase and that the working class will one day be in a position to overthrow (world) capitalism and to replace it with (world) . Perhaps it should be pointed out here that Marxists do not idolize or deify the working class; it is rather that the structural location in capitalist societies of the working class, so that, once it has become 'a class in itself' makes it the agent for change. Moreover the very act of social revolution and the creation of socialism mean the end of the very of the working class as a . As Marx and Engels (1845) [1975] put it: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the , it is not at all ... because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary ... [The proletariat] cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of society today which are summed up in its own situation.

Novice Packet Files 48

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Alternative Answers No Solvency: Alternatives to capitalism fail – lack of individual choice results in tyranny or failure Allan Meltzer March 12, 2009, “Why Capitalism?” 2008-2009 Bradley Lecture Series, Allan Meltzer is Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of , Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, First Recipient of the AEI Irving Kristol Award, and Chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.29525,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Alternatives to Capitalism Critics of capitalism emphasize their dislike of greed and self-interest. They talk a great deal about social justice and fairness, but they do not propose an acceptable alternative to achieve their ends. The alternatives that have been tried are or Communism or other types of authoritarian rule. Anti-capitalist proposals suffer from two crippling drawbacks. First, they ignore the Kantian principle about human imperfection. Second, they ignore individual differences. In place of individual choice under capitalism, they substitute rigid direction done to achieve some proclaimed end such as equality, fairness, or justice. These ends are not precise and, most important, individuals differ about what is fair and just. In practice, the rulers' choices are enforced, often using fear, terror, prison, or other punishment. The history of the twentieth century illustrates how enforcement of promised ends became the justification for deplorable means. And the ends were not realized. Transferring resource allocation decisions to government bureaus does not eliminate crime, greed, self-dealing, conflict of interest, and corruption. tells us these problems remain. The form may change, but as Kant recognized, the problems continue. recognized in the 1920s that fixing prices and planning resource use omitted an essential part of the allocation problem. Capitalism allocates by letting relative prices adjust to equal the tradeoffs expressed by buyers' demands. Fixing prices eliminates the possibility of efficient allocation and replaces consumer choice with official decisions. Some gain, but others lose; the losers want to make choices other than those that are dictated to them. Not all Socialist societies have been brutal. In the nineteenth century, followers of , the Amana people, and many others chose a Socialist system. Israeli pioneers chose a collectivist system, the kibbutz. None of these arrangements produced sustainable growth. None survived. All faced the problem of imposing allocative decisions that satisfied the decision-making group, sometimes a majority, often not. Capitalism recognizes that where individual wants differ, the market responds to the mass; minorities are free to develop their favored outcome. Walk down the aisles of a modern supermarket. There are products that satisfy many different tastes or beliefs. Theodor Adorno was a leading critic of postwar capitalism as it developed in his native Germany, in Europe, and in the United States. He found the popular culture vulgar, and he distrusted the workers' choices. He wanted a Socialism that he hoped would uphold the values he shared with other intellectuals. Capitalism, he said, valued work too highly and true leisure too little. He disliked jazz, so he was not opposed to Hitler's ban in the 1930s. But Adorno offered no way of achieving the culture he desired other than to impose his tastes on others and ban all choices he disliked. This appealed to people who shared his view. Many preferred American pop culture whenever they had the right to choose. Capitalism permits choices and the freedom to make them. Some stations play jazz, some offer opera and symphonies, and many play . Under capitalism, advertisers choose what they sponsor, and they sponsor programs that people choose to hear or watch. Under Socialism, the public watches and hears what someone chooses for them. The public had little choice. In Western Europe change did not come until boats outside territorial limits offered choice. The Templeton Foundation recently ran an advertisement reporting the answers several prominent intellectuals gave to the question: "Does the corrode moral character?" Several respondents recognized that free markets operate within a political system, a legal framework, and the rule of law. The slave trade and became illegal in the nineteenth century. Before this a majority enslaved a minority. This is a major blot on the morality of democratic choice that public opinion and the law eventually removed. In the United States those who benefitted did not abandon slave owning until forced by a war. Most respondents to the Templeton question took a mixed stand. The John Gray recognized that greed and envy are driving forces under capitalism, but they often produce growth and raise living standards so that many benefit. But greed leads to outcomes like Enron and WorldCom that critics take as a characteristic of the system rather than as a characteristic of some individuals that remains under Socialism. recognized that political activity also corrodes moral character, but he claimed it was regulated more effectively. One of the respondents discussed whether capitalism was more or less likely to foster or sustain moral abuses than other social arrangements. Bernard-Henri Levy maintained that alternatives to the market such as and Communism were far worse. None of the respondents mentioned Kant's view that mankind

Novice Packet Files 49

includes a range of individuals who differ in their moral character. Institutional and social arrangements like democracy and capitalism influence the moral choices individuals make or reject. No democratic capitalist country produced any crimes comparable to the murders committed by Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, or Lenin and Stalin's . As Lord Acton warned, concentrated power corrupts officials. Some use concentrated power to impose their will. Some allow their comrades to act as tyrants. Others proclaim that ends such as equality justify force to control opposition. Communism proclaimed a vision of equality that it never approached. It was unattainable because individuals differ about what is good. And what is good to them and for them is not the same as what is socially desirable to critics of capitalism. Kant's principle warns that utopian visions are unattainable. Capitalism does not offer a vision of perfection and harmony. Democratic capitalism combines freedom, opportunity, growth, and with restrictions on less desirable behavior. It creates societies that treat men and women as they are, not as in some utopian vision. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, showed why utopian visions become totalitarian. All deviations from the utopian ideal must be prevented. The Enrons, WorldComs, and others of that kind show that dishonest individuals rise along with honest individuals. Those who use these examples to criticize capitalism do not use the same standard to criticize all governments as failed arrangements when a Watergate or bribery is uncovered. Nor do they criticize government when politicians promise but do not produce or achieve. We live after twenty-five to forty years of talk about energy, education, healthcare, and drugs. Governments promise and propose, but little if any progress is visible on these issues.

Novice Packet Files 50

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Alternative Answers No Solvency: Capitalism is inevitable—reforms, not revolution, are the only option. John K Wilson, 2000, “How the Left can Win Arguments and Influence People” p. 15- 16, John K. Wilson is Editor and Publisher of Illinois Academe, Capitalism is far too ingrained in American life to eliminate. If you go into the most impoverished areas of America, you will find that the people who live there are not seeking government control over factories or even more social welfare programs; they're hoping, usually in vain, for a fair chance to share in the capitalist wealth. The poor do not pray for socialism-they strive to be a part of the capitalist system. They want jobs, they want to start businesses, and they want to make and be successful. What's wrong with America is not capitalism as a system but capitalism as a religion. We worship the accumulation of wealth and treat the horrible inequality between rich and poor as if it were an act of God. Worst of all, we allow the government to exacerbate the financial divide by favoring the wealthy: go anywhere in America, and compare a rich suburb with a poor town-the city services, schools, parks, and practically everything else will be better financed in the place populated by rich people. The aim is not to overthrow capitalism but to overhaul it. Give it a social-justice tune-up, make it more efficient, get the economic engine to hit on all cylinders for everybody, and stop putting out so many environmentally hazardous substances. To some people, this goal means selling out leftist ideals for the sake of capitalism. But the right thrives on having an ineffective opposition. The helps stabilize the "free market" capitalist system by making it seem as if the only alternative to free-market capitalism is a return to . Prospective activists for change are instead channeled into pointless discussions about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. Instead of working to persuade people to accept progressive ideas, the far left talks to itself (which may be a blessing, given the way it communicates) and tries to sell copies of the Socialist Worker to an uninterested public.

Novice Packet Files 51

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Permutation Permutation: Do both – Reforms from with-in the system solve best Chris Dixon 2001, “Reflections on Privilege, , and Activism”, Activist and founding member of Direct Action Network Summer, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chris-dixon-reflections-on-privilege-reformism-and-activism-a-response-to-sasha-k-s-activism-an.lt.pdf

To bolster his critique of 'reformism,' for instance, he critically cites one of the examples in my essay: demanding authentic we need revolutionary strategy that links diverse, everyday struggles and demands to long-term radical objectives, without sacrificing either. Of course, this isn't to say that every so-called 'progressive' ballot initiative or organizing campaign is necessarily radical or strategic. Reforms are not all created equal. But some can fundamentally shake systems of power, leading to enlarged gains and greater space for further advances. Andre Gorz, in his seminal book Strategy for Labor, refers to these as "non-reformist" or "structural" reforms. He contends, "a struggle for non-reformist reforms--for anti- capitalist reforms--is one which does not base its validity and its right to exist on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationales. A non-reformist reform is determined not in terms of what can be, but what should be." Look to history for examples: the end of slavery, the eight-hour workday, desegregation. All were born from long, hard struggles, and none were endpoints. Yet they all struck at the foundations of power (in these cases, the state, white supremacy, and capitalism), and in the process, they created new prospects for revolutionary change. Now consider contemporary struggles: amnesty for undocumented immigrants, socialized health care, expansive environmental protections, indigenous sovereignty. These and many more are arguably non-reformist reforms as well. None will single-handedly dismantle capitalism or other systems of power, but each has the potential to escalate struggles and sharpen social contradictions. And we shouldn't misinterpret these efforts as simply meliorative incrementalism, making 'adjustments' to a fundamentally flawed system.

Novice Packet Files 52

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Transition Wars Disadvantage Link Link: Capitalist elites will resist the alternative, causing global transition wars Lee Harris, December 1, 2002, The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing, Hoover Institution Policy Review December 2002 & 2003, Lee Harris is an American author and essayist who writes for Policy Review and Tech Central Station who lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, www.hoover.org/research/intellectual-origins-america-bashing

This is the immiserization thesis of Marx. And it is central to revolutionary Marxism, since if capitalism produces no widespread misery, then it also produces no fatal internal contradiction: If everyone is getting better off through capitalism, who will dream of struggling to overthrow it? Only genuine misery on the part of the workers would be sufficient to overturn the whole apparatus of the capitalist state, simply because, as Marx insisted, the capitalist class could not be realistically expected to relinquish control of the state apparatus and, with it, the monopoly of force. In this, Marx was absolutely correct. No capitalist society has ever willingly liquidated itself, and it is utopian to think that any ever will. Therefore, in order to achieve the goal of socialism, nothing short of a complete revolution would do; and this means, in point of fact, a full-fledged civil war not just within one society, but across the globe.

Novice Packet Files 53

Capitalism Kritik Answers - SCS Capitalism Kritik Transition Wars Disadvantage Impact Impact: Revolution is necessarily violent – alternative would lead to levels of unprecedented violence Michael Cummings & Eric Cummings, 2011 (On Violence, "Revolutions are Violent", Michael Cummings is veteran and a writer, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a platoon leader, and Iraq in 2010 with 5th Special Forces Group as an intelligence officer. Eric Cummings is a writer who lives in Los Angeles. Their outside writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Stars and Stripes, The New York Times’ “At War” blog, FP.com/Thomas Ricks’ “The Best Defense” blog and Infantry magazine, http://onviolence.com/?e=531)

Michael was arguing a point that we haven’t argued enough on this website: revolutions are violent. ¶ Which may seem obvious. Except that extremists from both sides of the casually endorse revolutions, like my liberal activist friend endorsing a revolution--a revolution, it is safe to say, the vast majority of the population didn’t endorse--to solve the environmental crisis. Like Occupy Protesters who just love revolutions, idealized, romanticized and fantasized through T-shirts, Youtube videos of street , and Guy Fawkes masks. Like Tea partiers make a point of bringing guns to political rallies, in case they need to overthrow the government. Both sides casually endorse violence, from Tea Party candidates to Occupy speakers. ¶ (We should make it clear that by “revolutions”, we mean revolutions that overthrow the existing power structure, not social or technological revolutions like the , the digital boom or the green revolution.)¶ The Arab Spring, as our most thought provoking of 2011, should remind would-be-American- what a revolution really is: the break down of society and order, a revolution in power, which (mostly) results in violence. In this pan-Arab/north African revolution we have seen a few civil wars (Yemen, Syria and Libya), a military invasion (Saudi Arabia into Qatar), authoritarian crackdowns with unlawful arrests (Qatar, Eqypt, Syria and Yemen) and protesters generally arrested or attacked throughout. It is safe to say, to those who advocated revolution, violence followed.¶ This completely fits into the larger narratives of the history of revolutions. The American Revolution (Historians debate over whether this qualifies, I believe it does; it threw out the entire power structure.) cost one in every hundred males his life. The American Revolution is the second deadliest conflict in American history, percentage wise, with only the Civil War beating it, itself its own kind of revolution. ¶ Meanwhile, France’s revolution is symbolized by the guillotine, an industrial means of execution. The lead to the deaths of literally millions of people. The revolutions that wracked Europe throughout the nineteenth century always included violence and death. When I studied Latin

America history in high school, my notes read, “Colonialism. Revolution. Dictator. Revolution.” It applied to every country.¶ Violence always coincides with the outbreak of revolutions, for a few :¶ First, instability. Inherently, revolutions are unstable, by definition an overthrow of the existing power structures. When this happens, chaos ensues. Food shortages, lack of security, a breakdown of the social order. The best explanation for this is our blog’s namesake, On Violence, by , that argued that violence and power are opposites. Thus, when the power structure disappears--as in France or Russia or Libya--violence fills the gaps.¶ Second, vengeance. Most revolutions have a very legitimate basis: people feel discriminated against, or suffer from severe economic inequality, or chafe under colonial rule. When the masses revolt, they take their vengeance against their previous oppressors. Look at what happened in the . Or what happened to Moammar Ghaddafi. Or Saddam Hussein.¶ Third, civil wars. They happen when revolutionaries disagree, or the over-thrown don’t want to leave so easily. Take the above groups advocating revolution, the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers. They don’t agree on anything. So if one side starts a revolution, they’ll basically have to go to war with the other side. Boom, you’ve got a civil war. This is what is happening in Syria.

Novice Packet Files 101

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Specific Link (Colonization Advantage) Answers Link Turn: Space colonization creates the opportunity for radically communist communities Jacob Haqq-Misra, Apr 8, 2014, The Transformative Value of Liberating Mars, New Space, Jacob Haqq-Misra holds a Ph.D. in meteorology and astrobiology from Penn State University, and he completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Rock Ethics Institute. He has written dozens of scientific journal articles on topics that include planetary habitability, extraterrestrial life, and environmental ethics. He works as a research scientist with the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science and also serves as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1404/1404.2315.pdf

How can the settlement of Mars transform our preferences and allow us to solve our global problems? If Mars is approached as an extension of Earth civilization, to be divided by the nations and plundered by industry, then no such transformation will occur. I therefore suggest that the goal of colonization should be not to extend our present civilization into new terrain but instead to create an independently functioning human civilization on Mars. If we wish to solve the political and economic problems that still plague us, and if we wish to discover new options for our development, then Mars provides an opportunity to create a second experiment in civilization. My suggestion is to allow humans to permanently settle on Mars for the purpose of developing a self-sufficient Martian civilization. Although the Outer Space Treaty already prohibits any claims to national sovereignty, I suggest the following provisions also apply to the settlement of Mars: 1. Humans who leave Earth to permanently settle on Mars relinquish their planetary citizenship as Earthlings and claim a planetary citizenship as Martians. This includes giving up any national or local citizenships and affiliations. Humans living as Martians cannot represent the interests of any group on Earth and cannot acquire wealth on Earth. 2. Governments, , and individuals of Earth cannot engage in commerce with Mars and cannot interfere with the political, cultural, economic, or social development of Martian civilization. 3. Scientific exploration may continue as long as it does not interfere with the development of civilization on Mars. Sharing of research and information between Mars and Earth is permitted only to pursue mutual scientific or educational goals. 4. The use of land on Mars will be determined exclusively by the citizens of Mars. No Earthlings may own or otherwise lay claim to land on Mars. 5. Any technology, resources, or other objects brought from Earth to Mars become permanent fixtures of the Martian civilization. Earthlings may not make any demands for resources on Mars. These provisions would make the settlement of Mars contrast starkly with historical patterns of colonization on Earth. By liberating Mars according to this set of provisions, the red planet becomes accessible to humanity for the development of a new civilization but barred from ever being controlled by existing groups on Earth. This independent parallel development of civilization on Mars will provide a test bed for new ideas that could lead to unforeseen epistemic transformations of our values and preferences8-10

Novice Packet Files 102

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Specific Link (Economy Advantage) Answers Link Turn: Technology is the solution to, not the cause of, our problems David Brin, Aug 15, 2013, Reasons for Optimism and Concern: Can Technology Save the World? David Brin, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, David Brin, a scientist and best-selling author whose future-oriented novels include Earth, The Postman, and Hugo Award winners Startide Rising and The Uplift War, is a 2010 Fellow of the IEET. Brin is known as a leading commentator on modern technological, social, and political trends, ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/brin20130815

"The prophets of ecological believe technology is the solution and not the problem. They say that harnessing innovation and -- coupled with a strong overall goal of efficiency, sustainability and moving toward a smaller human footprint -- can save the planet and that if environmentalists won't buy into that, then their Arcadian sentiments are a problem, not a solution," writes Fred Pearce. This, by the way, is exactly the choice offered by my two "Gaian mother" types in my novel, Earth - one of them driven by nostalgia and primitivist and the other by a science-driven wish to save the world by a different route… by humanity growing up. Pearce continues, "The modernists (e.g. Stewart Brand) wear their environmentalism with pride, but are pro-nuclear, pro-genetically modified crops, pro-megadams, pro-urbanisation and pro-geoengineering of the planet to stave off climate change. They say they embrace these technologies not to conquer nature, like old-style modernists, but to give nature room. If we can do our business in a smaller part of the planet — through smarter, greener and more efficient technologies — then nature can have the rest." The article is thorough, thoughtful, and well worth your time. Another important piece - by Amory Lovins - suggests that progress is possible. His three major energy trends to watch include accelerating improvements in efficiency, and in renewables, and in distributed power. The last of these three is of particular importance, if we want a robust civilization that can roll with many coming shocks. (So I tell folks in Washington, once a year, every year, for 25 years.) Excerpt from Armory Lovins: "The business of installing solar modules is booming. Germany took it to scale -- 8 GW a year -- and installed more photovoltaics in a single month in 2011 and 2012 than the U.S. added all year. That volume also cut the German installed system cost to half our costs, even though we all buy the same equipment. If the U.S. did that too, it'd have really cheap solar power, because Germany gets about as much sun as Alaska and far less than the mainland U.S. But even so, U.S. solar prices are now low enough that photovoltaics on your roof, financed with no down payment, can beat your utility bill in over a dozen states. In fact, solar accounted for 49 percent of new electric capacity installed during the first quarter of 2013 and all new utility electricity generation capacity added to the U.S. grid during March, according to SEIA and FERC." All of these signs of tech-propelled improvement have been fought tooth and nail by the mad right… and quite often by a smaller, but genuinely unhelpful political cult, the mad-far-left. Somehow, amid political lunacy, science has pushed ahead, spurred by both government and market forces along with simple common sense on the part of real people. In other words, humans and their civilization may save the world, almost despite ourselves. == And more cause for science optimism == Then there is… N-Fix is a naturally occurring nitrogen fixing bacteria which takes up and uses nitrogen from the air. Applied to the cells of plants (intra-cellular) via the seed, it provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix nitrogen. Plant seeds are coated with these bacteria in order to create a symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship and naturally produce nitrogen. Wow, do you have any idea how much would be saved -- in energy, fossil fuel pollution and digging and waste -- if most of our crops could be self- fertilizing in nitrogen? Now add efficient algae-culture and tasty vat-grown meat, please? ==Technological solutions == Sweden’s waste management and recycling programs are so good only four percent of the nation’s waste ends up in landfills. (In contrast, over half the waste generated by U.S. households ends up in landfills). Yet, Sweden needs trash to fuel the waste-to-energy factories that generate electricity for a quarter of a million homes and provide 20 % of the entire country’s heating. As a result, Sweden must now import trash from the landfills of other European countries -- and those countries are now paying Sweden to do so. Alan Pierce writes, "You read that correctly, countries are paying to get rid of a source of fuel they themselves produced so that Sweden can continue to have the energy output they need. You don’t have to be an economist to know that’s one highly enviable energy model." And an example of efficiency that is an inspiration for a more sustainable future. In parts of the developing world, anemia is a serious problem -- affecting 44% of Cambodians, and two-thirds of the children. Chris Charles, a Ph.D. student developed an Iron Fish (the Cambodian symbol of good luck), which can be added to cooking pots, to offer relief from anemia. Technology has made a difference to quality of life in the developing world: Examples include introduction of widespread bicycles, inexpensive off-grid lighting, low-cost water purification systems, wireless access, solar ovens for cooking, refrigeration for vaccines, community radio, and so on...but access to reliable electricity remains a major problem. Over at Debate.org, the question, Can Technology save the world, is under consideration, and the responses are running 50-50. In Abundance, The Future is Better Than You Think, X Prize Foundation CEO Peter Diamandis and journalist Steven Kotler, write, "Humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation in which technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standards of living for every man, women and child on

Novice Packet Files 103 the planet. Within a generation, we will be able to provide , once reserved for the wealthy few, to any and all who need them....Abundance for all is within our grasp."

Novice Packet Files 104

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space General Link Answers We can use the state against capitalism Christian Parenti, April 2014, “Climate Change: What Role for Reform?” MONTHLY REVIEW v. 65 n. 11, Christian Parenti is a Professor of Sustainable Development at the School for International Training, Graduate Institute http://monthlyreview.org/2014/04/01/climate-change- role-reform, accessed 4-24-14.

There was also a larger point to my essay that the MR editors did not address. By describing policies that the U.S. capitalist state could undertake right now to start euthanizing the fossil-fuel industry, I was also attempting to start a conversation about the state. Once upon a time the state was the heart of the socialist project. But neoliberalism’s anti-statist rhetoric has almost “disappeared” the state as an intellectual object—even on much of the left. The capitalist state is not just a tool of capital’s rule. It is also an arena of class struggle. As such it is an institution that can solidify and enforce popular political victories over capital. If the struggle for climate justice is to get anywhere it will have to think more deeply about the contradictions of the capitalist state, and how such contradictions can be exploited in the short term. On that point, I hope you would agree.

Novice Packet Files 105

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Consequentialist Impact Scenario Answers

Turn: Capitalism is self-correcting and sustainable – war and environmental destruction are not profitable and innovation solves their impacts

Anatole Kaletsky, 2011, Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, p. 19-21, Anatole Kaletsky is editor-at- large of The Times of London, where he writes weekly columns on economics, politics, and international relations and on the governing board of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Theory (INET), a nonprofit created after the 2007-2009 crisis to promote and finance academic research in economics

Democratic capitalism is a system built for survival. It has adapted successfully to shocks of every kind, to upheavals in technology and economics, to political revolutions and world wars. Capitalism has been able to do this because, unlike communism or socialism or feudalism, it has an inner dynamic akin to a living thing. It can adapt and refine itself in response to the changing environment. And it will evolve into a new species of the same capitalist genus if that is what it takes to survive. In the panic of 2008—09, many politicians, businesses, and pundits forgot about the astonishing adaptability of the capitalist system. Predictions of global collapse were based on static views of the world that extrapolated a few months of admittedly terrifying financial chaos into the indefinite future. The self- correcting mechanisms that market economies and democratic societies have evolved over several centuries were either forgotten or assumed defunct. The language of biology has been applied to politics and economics, but rarely to the way they interact. Democratic capitalism’s equivalent of the biological survival instinct is a built-in capacity for solving social problems and meeting material needs. This capacity stems from the principle of competition, which drives both democratic politics and capitalist markets. Because market forces generally reward the creation of wealth rather than its destruction, they direct the independent efforts and ambitions of millions of individuals toward satisfying material demands, even if these demands sometimes create unwelcome by-products. Because voters generally reward politicians for making their lives better and safer, rather than worse and more dangerous, democratic competition directs political institutions toward solving rather than aggravating society’s problems, even if these solutions sometimes create new problems of their own. Political competition is slower and less decisive than market competition, so its self-stabilizing qualities play out over decades or even generations, not months or years. But regardless of the difference in timescale, capitalism and democracy have one crucial feature in common: Both are mechanisms that encourage individuals to channel their creativity, efforts, and competitive spirit into finding solutions for material and social problems. And in the long run, these mechanisms work very well. If we consider democratic capitalism as a successful problem-solving machine, the implications of this view are very relevant to the 2007-09 economic crisis, but diametrically opposed to the conventional wisdom that prevailed in its aftermath. Governments all over the world were ridiculed for trying to resolve a crisis caused by too much borrowing by borrowing even more. Alan Greenspan was accused of trying to delay an inevitable "day of reckoning” by creating ever-bigger financial bubbles. Regulators were attacked for letting half-dead, “zombie” banks stagger on instead of putting them to death. But these charges missed the point of what the democratic capitalist system is designed to achieve. In a capitalist democracy whose raison d’etre is to devise new solutions to long-standing social and material demands, a problem postponed is effectively a problem solved. To be more exact, a problem whose solution can be deferred long enough is a problem that is likely to be solved in ways that are hardly imaginable today. Once the self-healing nature of the capitalist system is recognized, the charge of “passing on our problems to our grand-children”—whether made about budget deficits by conservatives or about global warming by liberals—becomes morally unconvincing. Our grand-children will almost certainly be much richer than we are and will have more powerful technologies at their disposal. It is far from obvious, therefore, why we should make economic sacrifices on their behalf. Sounder morality, as well as economics, than the Victorians ever imagined is in the wistful refrain of the proverbially optimistic Mr. Micawber: "Something will turn up."

Novice Packet Files 106

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Consequentialist Impact Scenario Answers Framing turn: Consequentialism is bad – leads to horrendous decision making Danny Scoccia, 2007, Moral theories: Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Religious Ethics. Reading: pp. 6-17 & 20-26, Danny Scoccia is Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. University of California at San Diego) at New Mexico State University, Dr. Scoccia’s interests include ethical theory, philosophy of law and social and political philosophy, web.nmsu.edu/~dscoccia/321web/321ethicstheory.pdf

The other three views—Kantian ethics, natural rights theories, and “religious ethics”—all agree that there are many circumstances when maximizing utility would be wrong. Perhaps the strongest objection to Act Utilitarianism comes from the natural rights theory: Act Utilitarianism is false, because it tells us to violate people’s rights when that’s necessary to maximize utility. The example of Joseph illustrates it, but here’s another example. A surgeon has 1 healthy and 5 sick and dying patients. Each of the sick and dying patients needs a new organ— one a new kidney, another a new liver, the third a new heart, etc.—and would fully recover if he received it. It so happens that the 1 healthy patient would be a suitable organ donor for all of them. If the surgeon kills the 1 and redistributes his organs, he saves 5. If he does nothing, then 1 is alive and 5 are dead. On the assumption that all six are equally happy, loved by others, and productive of utility for others in society, then the way to maximize utility is to kill the 1. But if he won’t consent to being killed and having his organs transplanted (he doesn’t believe in utilitarianism), then killing him would violate his right to life. The objection is simply that it would be wrong to violate his right even if it’s the way to maximize utility.

Novice Packet Files 107

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Deontological Impact Scenario Answers Turn: Capitalism is a prerequisite ethical system – it preserves freedom to act which is the core of the human condition Peter Saunders, 2007, Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul, Peter Saunders is a Fellow at the Center for Independent Studies, http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer%2007-08/saunders_summer07.html

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

Novice Packet Files 108

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Deontological Impact Scenario Answers Framing turn: Deontology is a failed moral system – ticking time bomb proves Mark J. Buha, 2010, Rule Utilitarian and Deontologist Perspectives on Comparisons of Torture and Killing, Washington University Jurisprudence Review Volume 2, Issue 2, Mark Buha is an Associate at Maune Raichle Hartley French & Mudd law firm, Mark earned his Juris Doctor from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011. He served as a Senior Editor of the Jurisprudence Review,openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=law_jurisprudence

Deontologists, like rule utilitarians, devise rules that must be followed universally. Deontologists and rule utilitarians differ only in what criteria they use to formulate these rules. Rule utilitarians use only pleasure and pain. They hold that any act that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain when applied universally is good. Deontologists evaluate actions under an entirely different rubric than rule utilitarians,72 often focusing on the mental state of the actor or whether the act violates another's rights.73 If it violates another's rights, it is strictly forbidden, regardless of the consequences. 74 Deontologists tend to treat each individual separately as an end in itself.75Applying this analysis, many deontologists forbid torture under all circumstances.? see torture as a particularly repugnant violation of individual rights. It requires specific intent, deprives the victim of dignity, and invades the victim's physical and psychological integrity. Provided grave enough consequences, this uncompromising position represents a fanaticism77and "moral fundamentalism"' that is difficult to defend. Hardly anyone finds it acceptable to rigidly adhere to an abstract moral principle—no matter how sound the principle appears in isolation—when doing so results in the death of hundreds or thousands of people.79 Deontologists allow catastrophe and mass death to occur to protect a single individual simply because torture violates his or her rights. The infamous "ticking time bomb" hypothetical illuminates these objections. In this scenario, a bomb is located in a crowded city. If detonated, it will destroy the entire city and millions will die. The bomb's location is unknown, and there is not enough time for a general search. Law enforcement apprehends one of the bomb's planters who knows the bomb's location and how to deactivate it. If the terrorist divulges the information, law enforcement has enough time to disable the bomb. Given these facts, few would adhere to principle; most would torture the individual in order to extract information that would save millions. This hypothetical presses deontology to its ideological limits. Once the prohibitionist admits he would allow torture in this situation, he concedes that his opposition to torture is not based on principle alone, but on something else.8° Deontologists respond with both logical and empirical objections to the ticking time bomb hypothetical's seductive simplicity. First, as Richard Matthews points out, the argument may be valid, but it is unsound, and therefore it cannot seriously undermine any position on torture.81The ticking bomb argument sets forth an "if-then" conditional: if these facts exist, then a reasonable person would torture.82If the antecedent holds, the consequence follows. But the hypothetical assumes the antecedent's truth without providing any proof. Valid but not sound, the hypothetical proves nothing. If we accepted mere validity, anything could be proven.83 Second, deontologists point out how unlikely it is that the antecedent facts would ever simultaneously exist in the real world. Although each premise has an empirical likelihood of being false, the hypothetical assumes that (1) an actual terrorist threat exists, (2) the threat is imminent, (3) the threat is sufficiently dangerous to justify torture, (4) the apprehended suspect possesses any information relevant to the threat, (5) only a single individual possesses all of the information necessary to extinguish the threat, (6) the individual participated in the attack or is a wrongdoer, (7) torture will be effective in forcing the subject to disclose information, (8) the information disclosed is truthful, and (9) the torturer can distinguish truthful and false information simply by observing the subject. The distinct unlikelihood that all nine elements will simultaneously exist in the real world renders the example almost irrelevant, useful only as a thought exercise.84 While these criticisms expose the assumptions in the ticking time bomb hypothetical, they ultimately avoid the issue. While it might be extremely unlikely that such factual circumstances will ever exist, it is not conceptually impossible. The fact remains that rigid deontology allows the bombs to go off in that scenario, however unlikely. Deontologists allow the world to explode to avoid violating the rights of a single individual.

Novice Packet Files 109

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Discourse Impact Answers Turn: Talking broadly about theories don’t help build education spaces, it creates withdrawal and pessimism – only learning about and working through actual systems and scenarios is educationally liberating Richard Rorty 1998, “ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”, 1998, Pg. 7-9, Richard Rorty is a professor emeritus of comparative literature and philosophy at Stanford University and a leading academic in the field of philosophy

Such people find pride in American citizenship impossible, and vigorous participation in electoral politics pointless. They associate American patriotism with an endorsement of atrocities: the importation of African slaves, the slaughter of Native Americans, the rape of ancient forests, and the Vietnam War. Many of them think of national pride as appropriate only for chauvinists: for the sort of American who rejoices that America can still orchestrate something like the Gulf War, can still bring deadly force to bear whenever and wherever it chooses. When young intellectuals watch John Wayne war movies after reading Heidegger, Foucault, Stephenson, or Silko, they often become convinced that they live in a violent, inhuman, corrupt country. They begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see through nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The contrast between national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter were written in the belief that the tone of the Gettysburg Address was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transformation would be needed because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of these novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one in which America is destined to become the first cooperative commonwealth, the first classless society. This America would be one in which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the government ensures equality of opportunity as well as individual liberty. This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal. It set the tone for the American Left during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Walt Whitman and John Dewey, as we shall see, did a great deal to shape this rhetoric. The difference between early twentieth- century leftist intellectuals and the majority of their contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early decades of this century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through skeptical eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of course, the great exception-the great abstainer from ·politics. But William James thought that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction against the sort of detached spectatorship which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless unless accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of proto- Heideggerian cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy," James wrote, "is a kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2

Novice Packet Files 110

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Discourse Impact Answers Framing turn: Focus on discourse trades off with actually implementing policy, risks cooption by special interests, and doesn’t solve as effectively – need to focus on real solutions not rhetoric Renee Irvin & John Stansbury, 2004, Citizen Participation in Decision-Making: Is it Worth the Effort?, Public Administration Review, Renee Irvin is Associate Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon & John Stansbury is Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Nebraska, c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/imported/Journal_Issue1_Irving.pdf

This article, while describing the very important benefits of citizen participation, also provides a litmus test for agencies to consider when they allocate resources toward citizen participation processes. Do citizens care enough to participate actively in policy-making, or would resources devoted toward participatory processes be better directed toward implementation? Does local citizen participation imply more opportunity for economically motivated special interests to dominate the decision process? Criticism lobbed at participatory efforts in environmental management may soon be heard in other sectors, as decreasing government budgets require intense scrutiny of government performance outcomes. Delegating environmental decision-making authority to citizens is a policy strategy lauded for its holistic consideration of local economic interests, yet criticised by the environmental left for its potential to roll back decades of environmental regulatory success. Evidence for the effectiveness of community participation in environmental management is in short supply, due in part to the inherent problems in measuring the success of environmental policies that may take decades to positively affect the environment. Even more difficult, perhaps, is the prospect of measuring incremental changes in the well-being of the general public as they become more engaged in the policy process. Concern exists among environmentalists that locally-based citizen participation processes will lead to a relaxation of previously successful environmental regulation. Another concern, rarely voiced, is the potential wastefulness of the process if employed in a non-ideal community. Even if the citizen participation process does not lead to relaxed environmental regulation, it may entail a significant expenditure of resources that could be used elsewhere to achieve better on the-ground results. With widespread public benefit as the goal of any public policy process, it behooves the administrator to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the decision-making process when determining the most effective implementation strategy, bearing in mind that talk is not cheap – and may not even be effective.

Novice Packet Files 111

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Alternative Answers No solvency: The working class will not succeed in overthrowing the capitalist system Mike Cole 2009, “Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response”, chapter 7, pg 121, Mike Cole is a Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Education for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK The Working Class Won’t Create the Revolution Because They Are Reactionary. It is a fundamental tenet of Marxism that the working class are the agents of social revolution, and that the working class, as noted above, needs to become a ‘class for itself’ in addition to being a ‘class in itself’ (Marx, 1847 [1995]). It is unfortunately the case that major parts of the world are a long way off such a scenario at the present conjuncture. It is also the case that successful interpellation and related false consciousness hampers the development of class consciousness and the move towards the overthrow of capitalism. Britain is one example where the Ruling Class has been particularly successful in interpellating the working class (see Cole, 2008g, 2008h for discussion). Elsewhere, however, there are examples of burgeoning class consciousness, witnessed for example by the growth of Left parties (see below) in Europe and by developments across South America, notably the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (see below) and in Bolivia. It is to be hoped that, as neoliberal global imperial capitalism continues to reveal and expose its essential ruthlessness and contempt for those who make its profits, class consciousness will increase and that the working class will one day be in a position to overthrow (world) capitalism and to replace it with (world) democratic socialism. Perhaps it should be pointed out here that Marxists do not idolize or deify the working class; it is rather that the structural location in capitalist societies of the working class, so that, once it has become 'a class in itself' makes it the agent for change. Moreover the very act of social revolution and the creation of socialism mean the end of the very existence of the working class as a social class. As Marx and Engels (1845) [1975] put it: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all ... because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary ... [The proletariat] cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of society today which are summed up in its own situation.

Novice Packet Files 112

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Alternative Answers No Solvency: Alternatives to capitalism fail – lack of individual choice results in tyranny or failure Allan Meltzer March 12, 2009, “Why Capitalism?” 2008-2009 Bradley Lecture Series, Allan Meltzer is Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Business, Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, First Recipient of the AEI Irving Kristol Award, and Chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.29525,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Alternatives to Capitalism Critics of capitalism emphasize their dislike of greed and self-interest. They talk a great deal about social justice and fairness, but they do not propose an acceptable alternative to achieve their ends. The alternatives that have been tried are types of Socialism or Communism or other types of authoritarian rule. Anti-capitalist proposals suffer from two crippling drawbacks. First, they ignore the Kantian principle about human imperfection. Second, they ignore individual differences. In place of individual choice under capitalism, they substitute rigid direction done to achieve some proclaimed end such as equality, fairness, or justice. These ends are not precise and, most important, individuals differ about what is fair and just. In practice, the rulers' choices are enforced, often using fear, terror, prison, or other punishment. The history of the twentieth century illustrates how enforcement of promised ends became the justification for deplorable means. And the ends were not realized. Transferring resource allocation decisions to government bureaus does not eliminate crime, greed, self-dealing, conflict of interest, and corruption. Experience tells us these problems remain. The form may change, but as Kant recognized, the problems continue. Ludwig von Mises recognized in the 1920s that fixing prices and planning resource use omitted an essential part of the allocation problem. Capitalism allocates by letting relative prices adjust to equal the tradeoffs expressed by buyers' demands. Fixing prices eliminates the possibility of efficient allocation and replaces consumer choice with official decisions. Some gain, but others lose; the losers want to make choices other than those that are dictated to them. Not all Socialist societies have been brutal. In the nineteenth century, followers of Robert Owen, the Amana people, and many others chose a Socialist system. Israeli pioneers chose a collectivist system, the kibbutz. None of these arrangements produced sustainable growth. None survived. All faced the problem of imposing allocative decisions that satisfied the decision-making group, sometimes a majority, often not. Capitalism recognizes that where individual wants differ, the market responds to the mass; minorities are free to develop their favored outcome. Walk down the aisles of a modern supermarket. There are products that satisfy many different tastes or beliefs. Theodor Adorno was a leading critic of postwar capitalism as it developed in his native Germany, in Europe, and in the United States. He found the popular culture vulgar, and he distrusted the workers' choices. He wanted a Socialism that he hoped would uphold the values he shared with other intellectuals. Capitalism, he said, valued work too highly and true leisure too little. He disliked jazz, so he was not opposed to Hitler's ban in the 1930s. But Adorno offered no way of achieving the culture he desired other than to impose his tastes on others and ban all choices he disliked. This appealed to people who shared his view. Many preferred American pop culture whenever they had the right to choose. Capitalism permits choices and the freedom to make them. Some radio stations play jazz, some offer opera and symphonies, and many play pop music. Under capitalism, advertisers choose what they sponsor, and they sponsor programs that people choose to hear or watch. Under Socialism, the public watches and hears what someone chooses for them. The public had little choice. In Western Europe change did not come until boats outside territorial limits offered choice. The Templeton Foundation recently ran an advertisement reporting the answers several prominent intellectuals gave to the question: "Does the free market corrode moral character?" Several respondents recognized that free markets operate within a political system, a legal framework, and the rule of law. The slave trade and slavery became illegal in the nineteenth century. Before this a majority enslaved a minority. This is a major blot on the morality of democratic choice that public opinion and the law eventually removed. In the United States those who benefitted did not abandon slave owning until forced by a war. Most respondents to the Templeton question took a mixed stand. The philosopher John Gray recognized that greed and envy are driving forces under capitalism, but they often produce growth and raise living standards so that many benefit. But greed leads to outcomes like Enron and WorldCom that critics take as a characteristic of the system rather than as a characteristic of some individuals that remains under Socialism. Michael Walzer recognized that political activity also corrodes moral character, but he claimed it was regulated more effectively. One of the respondents discussed whether capitalism was more or less likely to foster or sustain moral abuses than other social arrangements. Bernard-Henri Levy maintained that alternatives to the market such as fascism and Communism were far worse. None of the respondents mentioned Kant's view that mankind

Novice Packet Files 113

includes a range of individuals who differ in their moral character. Institutional and social arrangements like democracy and capitalism influence the moral choices individuals make or reject. No democratic capitalist country produced any crimes comparable to the murders committed by Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, or Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union. As Lord Acton warned, concentrated power corrupts officials. Some use concentrated power to impose their will. Some allow their comrades to act as tyrants. Others proclaim that ends such as equality justify force to control opposition. Communism proclaimed a vision of equality that it never approached. It was unattainable because individuals differ about what is good. And what is good to them and for them is not the same as what is socially desirable to critics of capitalism. Kant's principle warns that utopian visions are unattainable. Capitalism does not offer a vision of perfection and harmony. Democratic capitalism combines freedom, opportunity, growth, and progress with restrictions on less desirable behavior. It creates societies that treat men and women as they are, not as in some utopian vision. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper showed why utopian visions become totalitarian. All deviations from the utopian ideal must be prevented. The Enrons, WorldComs, and others of that kind show that dishonest individuals rise along with honest individuals. Those who use these examples to criticize capitalism do not use the same standard to criticize all governments as failed arrangements when a Watergate or bribery is uncovered. Nor do they criticize government when politicians promise but do not produce or achieve. We live after twenty-five to forty years of talk about energy, education, healthcare, and drugs. Governments promise and propose, but little if any progress is visible on these issues.

Novice Packet Files 114

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Alternative Answers No solvency: Capitalism is inevitable—reforms, not revolution, are the only option. John K Wilson, 2000, “How the Left can Win Arguments and Influence People” p. 15- 16, John K. Wilson is Editor and Publisher of Illinois Academe, Capitalism is far too ingrained in American life to eliminate. If you go into the most impoverished areas of America, you will find that the people who live there are not seeking government control over factories or even more social welfare programs; they're hoping, usually in vain, for a fair chance to share in the capitalist wealth. The poor do not pray for socialism-they strive to be a part of the capitalist system. They want jobs, they want to start businesses, and they want to make money and be successful. What's wrong with America is not capitalism as a system but capitalism as a religion. We worship the accumulation of wealth and treat the horrible inequality between rich and poor as if it were an act of God. Worst of all, we allow the government to exacerbate the financial divide by favoring the wealthy: go anywhere in America, and compare a rich suburb with a poor town-the city services, schools, parks, and practically everything else will be better financed in the place populated by rich people. The aim is not to overthrow capitalism but to overhaul it. Give it a social-justice tune-up, make it more efficient, get the economic engine to hit on all cylinders for everybody, and stop putting out so many environmentally hazardous substances. To some people, this goal means selling out leftist ideals for the sake of capitalism. But the right thrives on having an ineffective opposition. The Revolutionary Communist Party helps stabilize the "free market" capitalist system by making it seem as if the only alternative to free-market capitalism is a return to Stalinism. Prospective activists for change are instead channeled into pointless discussions about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. Instead of working to persuade people to accept progressive ideas, the far left talks to itself (which may be a blessing, given the way it communicates) and tries to sell copies of the Socialist Worker to an uninterested public.

Novice Packet Files 115

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Permutation Permutation: Do both - Reforms from with-in the system solve best Chris Dixon 2001, “Reflections on Privilege, Reformism, and Activism”, Activist and founding member of Direct Action Network Summer, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chris-dixon-reflections-on-privilege-reformism-and-activism-a-response-to-sasha-k-s-activism-an.lt.pdf

To bolster his critique of 'reformism,' for instance, he critically cites one of the examples in my essay: demanding authentic we need revolutionary strategy that links diverse, everyday struggles and demands to long-term radical objectives, without sacrificing either. Of course, this isn't to say that every so-called 'progressive' ballot initiative or organizing campaign is necessarily radical or strategic. Reforms are not all created equal. But some can fundamentally shake systems of power, leading to enlarged gains and greater space for further advances. Andre Gorz, in his seminal book Strategy for Labor, refers to these as "non-reformist" or "structural" reforms. He contends, "a struggle for non-reformist reforms--for anti- capitalist reforms--is one which does not base its validity and its right to exist on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationales. A non-reformist reform is determined not in terms of what can be, but what should be." Look to history for examples: the end of slavery, the eight-hour workday, desegregation. All were born from long, hard struggles, and none were endpoints. Yet they all struck at the foundations of power (in these cases, the state, white supremacy, and capitalism), and in the process, they created new prospects for revolutionary change. Now consider contemporary struggles: amnesty for undocumented immigrants, socialized health care, expansive environmental protections, indigenous sovereignty. These and many more are arguably non-reformist reforms as well. None will single-handedly dismantle capitalism or other systems of power, but each has the potential to escalate struggles and sharpen social contradictions. And we shouldn't misinterpret these efforts as simply meliorative incrementalism, making 'adjustments' to a fundamentally flawed system.

Novice Packet Files 116

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Transition Wars Disadvantage Link Capitalist elites will resist the alternative, causing global transition wars Lee Harris, December 1, 2002, The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing, Hoover Institution Policy Review December 2002 & 2003, Lee Harris is an American author and essayist who writes for Policy Review and Tech Central Station who lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, www.hoover.org/research/intellectual-origins-america-bashing

This is the immiserization thesis of Marx. And it is central to revolutionary Marxism, since if capitalism produces no widespread misery, then it also produces no fatal internal contradiction: If everyone is getting better off through capitalism, who will dream of struggling to overthrow it? Only genuine misery on the part of the workers would be sufficient to overturn the whole apparatus of the capitalist state, simply because, as Marx insisted, the capitalist class could not be realistically expected to relinquish control of the state apparatus and, with it, the monopoly of force. In this, Marx was absolutely correct. No capitalist society has ever willingly liquidated itself, and it is utopian to think that any ever will. Therefore, in order to achieve the goal of socialism, nothing short of a complete revolution would do; and this means, in point of fact, a full-fledged civil war not just within one society, but across the globe.

Novice Packet Files 117

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Space Transition Wars Disadvantage Impact Revolution is necessarily violent – alternative would lead to levels of unprecedented violence Michael Cummings & Eric Cummings, 2011 (On Violence, "Revolutions are Violent", Michael Cummings is veteran and a writer, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a platoon leader, and Iraq in 2010 with 5th Special Forces Group as an intelligence officer. Eric Cummings is a writer who lives in Los Angeles. Their outside writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Stars and Stripes, The New York Times’ “At War” blog, FP.com/Thomas Ricks’ “The Best Defense” blog and Infantry magazine, http://onviolence.com/?e=531)

Michael was arguing a point that we haven’t argued enough on this website: revolutions are violent. ¶ Which may seem obvious. Except that extremists from both sides of the political spectrum casually endorse revolutions, like my liberal activist friend endorsing a revolution--a revolution, it is safe to say, the vast majority of the population didn’t endorse--to solve the environmental crisis. Like Occupy Protesters who just love revolutions, idealized, romanticized and fantasized through Che Guevara T-shirts, Youtube videos of street protests, and Guy Fawkes masks. Like Tea partiers make a point of bringing guns to political rallies, in case they need to overthrow the government. Both sides casually endorse violence, from Tea Party candidates to Occupy speakers. ¶ (We should make it clear that by “revolutions”, we mean revolutions that overthrow the existing power structure, not social or technological revolutions like the industrial revolution, the digital boom or the green revolution.)¶ The Arab Spring, as our most thought provoking event of 2011, should remind would-be-American-revolutionaries what a revolution really is: the break down of society and order, a revolution in power, which (mostly) results in violence. In this pan-Arab/north African revolution we have seen a few civil wars (Yemen, Syria and Libya), a military invasion (Saudi Arabia into Qatar), authoritarian crackdowns with unlawful arrests (Qatar, Eqypt, Syria and Yemen) and protesters generally arrested or attacked throughout. It is safe to say, to those who advocated revolution, violence followed.¶ This completely fits into the larger narratives of the history of revolutions. The American Revolution (Historians debate over whether this qualifies, I believe it does; it threw out the entire power structure.) cost one in every hundred males his life. The American Revolution is the second deadliest conflict in American history, percentage wise, with only the Civil War beating it, itself its own kind of revolution. ¶ Meanwhile, France’s revolution is symbolized by the guillotine, an industrial means of execution. The Russian Revolution lead to the deaths of literally millions of people. The revolutions that wracked Europe throughout the nineteenth century always included violence and death. When I studied Latin

America history in high school, my notes read, “Colonialism. Revolution. Dictator. Revolution.” It applied to every country.¶ Violence always coincides with the outbreak of revolutions, for a few reasons:¶ First, instability. Inherently, revolutions are unstable, by definition an overthrow of the existing power structures. When this happens, chaos ensues. Food shortages, lack of security, a breakdown of the social order. The best explanation for this is our blog’s namesake, On Violence, by Hannah Arendt, that argued that violence and power are opposites. Thus, when the power structure disappears--as in France or Russia or Libya--violence fills the gaps.¶ Second, vengeance. Most revolutions have a very legitimate basis: people feel discriminated against, or suffer from severe economic inequality, or chafe under colonial rule. When the masses revolt, they take their vengeance against their previous oppressors. Look at what happened in the French revolution. Or what happened to Moammar Ghaddafi. Or Saddam Hussein.¶ Third, civil wars. They happen when revolutionaries disagree, or the over-thrown don’t want to leave so easily. Take the above groups advocating revolution, the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers. They don’t agree on anything. So if one side starts a revolution, they’ll basically have to go to war with the other side. Boom, you’ve got a civil war. This is what is happening in Syria.

Novice Packet Files 160

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Specific Link (Economy Advantage) Answers Link Turn: Intellectual property actually hurts free market capitalism Mike Masnick, Dec 4th 2012, Fixing Copyright: Is Copyright A Part Of Free Market Capitalism?, Techdirt, Mike is the founder and CEO of Floor64 and editor of the Techdirt blog., https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121204/02422821219/fixing-copyright-is-copyright-part-free- market-capitalism.shtml

Of course, there are other important ways in which copyrights are actually against the free market -- and, again, it's here where recognizing the key differences between copyright and scarce property come into play. As Rick Falkvinge recently reminded us, copyright is something that actually limits property rights rather than creates new ones: Which brings us to the third notable item: “the exclusive right”. This is what we would refer to colloquially as a “monopoly”. The copyright industry has been tenacious in trying to portray the copyright monopoly as “property”, when in reality, the exclusive rights created are limitations of property rights (it prohibits me from storing the bit patterns of my choosing on my own hardware). This is a key point that often gets lost in all of this. The only thing that copyright does is limit others' actual property rights. Now, again, this doesn't mean you can't make an argument that this limitation is valuable and important. But it's a simple fact that all the "exclusive right" copyright provides to someone is a way to try to stop people from actually exercising their own property rights over products they own. In the end, it's fine to argue that copyright has important benefits and value -- but that's not the same thing as arguing that it's a part of free market capitalism. Because it's not.

Novice Packet Files 161

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Specific Link (Hacking Advantage) Answers Link Turn: Hacking culture is coopted into capitalism Johan Soderberg & Alessandro Delfanti, 2015, Hacking Hacked! The Life Cycles of Digital Innovation, Science, Technology, & Human Values, Johan Soderberg is associate professor of Theory of Science at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, Goteborgs Universitet, Alessandro Delfanti is assistant professor of Culture and New Media at the University of Toronto, and is the author of Biohackers. The Politics of Open Science, https://www.academia.edu/21698595/Hacking_Hacked_The_Life_Cycles_of_Digital_Innovation

Arguably, hackers can be situated in between a social movement, with a common history, a identity and shared goals, and a multiplicity of users, who lack such defining traits. The more closely hackers are made to resemble the latter, the more reliable source of innovation for firms they become. This observation provides us with the other side of the story of how innovations are harnessed from hackers (and users) by firms. By definition, this method for procuring innovation is systematic in the open-innovation regime. In order to grasp the systematic character of this, we need to rethink in terms broader than the life cycle of the individual hacker project/community. Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) reflect on the emergence of a new spirit of capitalism and reiterate that capitalism’s sources of legitimacy are to be found outside capitalism itself. The new spirit they describe is based on an inquiry into the incorporation of the 1968 critiques that helped to restructure and renew the ideological and organizational upon which capitalism works. In their view, capitalism feeds on critical cultures: only the incorporation and adaptation of critiques give capitalism means to overcome its own impasses. For instance, the inverse side of the critique against proprietary software and other forms of ‘‘closed innovation’’ systems expressed in free software communities is an investment in ‘‘open’’ forms of . Thus, the oppositional stance can be turned into an ‘‘ethical foundation for contemporary capitalism’’ as they are integrated in the new spirit (Barron 2013, 19; Tkacz 2012). Likewise, other writers have noted how -outsider position claimed by hackers has become an asset in an authenticity-stricken and consumer-driven market society (Liu 2004; Fleming 2009).Whereas Boltanski and Chiapello’s argument dwells on the evolution of organizational forms, they have little to say about the role of technology in the processes they describe. Yet technical innovations spawned by hackers (modular software code, mesh computer networks, distributed retrieval systems, private cryptography, etc.) constitute the material infrastructure of today’s capitalism. In this collection of articles, we argue for including hacking as one of the sources of the processes that constitute such infrastructure.

Novice Packet Files 162

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber General Link Answers We can use the state against capitalism Christian Parenti, April 2014, “Climate Change: What Role for Reform?” MONTHLY REVIEW v. 65 n. 11, Christian Parenti is a Professor of Sustainable Development at the School for International Training, Graduate Institute http://monthlyreview.org/2014/04/01/climate-change- role-reform, accessed 4-24-14.

There was also a larger point to my essay that the MR editors did not address. By describing policies that the U.S. capitalist state could undertake right now to start euthanizing the fossil-fuel industry, I was also attempting to start a conversation about the state. Once upon a time the state was the heart of the socialist project. But neoliberalism’s anti-statist rhetoric has almost “disappeared” the state as an intellectual object—even on much of the left. The capitalist state is not just a tool of capital’s rule. It is also an arena of class struggle. As such it is an institution that can solidify and enforce popular political victories over capital. If the struggle for climate justice is to get anywhere it will have to think more deeply about the contradictions of the capitalist state, and how such contradictions can be exploited in the short term. On that point, I hope you would agree.

Novice Packet Files 163

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Consequentialist Impact Scenario Answers

Impact Turn: Capitalism is self-correcting and sustainable – war and environmental destruction are not profitable and innovation solves their impacts

Anatole Kaletsky, 2011, Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, p. 19-21, Anatole Kaletsky is editor-at- large of The Times of London, where he writes weekly columns on economics, politics, and international relations and on the governing board of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Theory (INET), a nonprofit created after the 2007-2009 crisis to promote and finance academic research in economics

Democratic capitalism is a system built for survival. It has adapted successfully to shocks of every kind, to upheavals in technology and economics, to political revolutions and world wars. Capitalism has been able to do this because, unlike communism or socialism or feudalism, it has an inner dynamic akin to a living thing. It can adapt and refine itself in response to the changing environment. And it will evolve into a new species of the same capitalist genus if that is what it takes to survive. In the panic of 2008—09, many politicians, businesses, and pundits forgot about the astonishing adaptability of the capitalist system. Predictions of global collapse were based on static views of the world that extrapolated a few months of admittedly terrifying financial chaos into the indefinite future. The self- correcting mechanisms that market economies and democratic societies have evolved over several centuries were either forgotten or assumed defunct. The language of biology has been applied to politics and economics, but rarely to the way they interact. Democratic capitalism’s equivalent of the biological survival instinct is a built-in capacity for solving social problems and meeting material needs. This capacity stems from the principle of competition, which drives both democratic politics and capitalist markets. Because market forces generally reward the creation of wealth rather than its destruction, they direct the independent efforts and ambitions of millions of individuals toward satisfying material demands, even if these demands sometimes create unwelcome by-products. Because voters generally reward politicians for making their lives better and safer, rather than worse and more dangerous, democratic competition directs political institutions toward solving rather than aggravating society’s problems, even if these solutions sometimes create new problems of their own. Political competition is slower and less decisive than market competition, so its self-stabilizing qualities play out over decades or even generations, not months or years. But regardless of the difference in timescale, capitalism and democracy have one crucial feature in common: Both are mechanisms that encourage individuals to channel their creativity, efforts, and competitive spirit into finding solutions for material and social problems. And in the long run, these mechanisms work very well. If we consider democratic capitalism as a successful problem-solving machine, the implications of this view are very relevant to the 2007-09 economic crisis, but diametrically opposed to the conventional wisdom that prevailed in its aftermath. Governments all over the world were ridiculed for trying to resolve a crisis caused by too much borrowing by borrowing even more. Alan Greenspan was accused of trying to delay an inevitable "day of reckoning” by creating ever-bigger financial bubbles. Regulators were attacked for letting half-dead, “zombie” banks stagger on instead of putting them to death. But these charges missed the point of what the democratic capitalist system is designed to achieve. In a capitalist democracy whose raison d’etre is to devise new solutions to long-standing social and material demands, a problem postponed is effectively a problem solved. To be more exact, a problem whose solution can be deferred long enough is a problem that is likely to be solved in ways that are hardly imaginable today. Once the self-healing nature of the capitalist system is recognized, the charge of “passing on our problems to our grand-children”—whether made about budget deficits by conservatives or about global warming by liberals—becomes morally unconvincing. Our grand-children will almost certainly be much richer than we are and will have more powerful technologies at their disposal. It is far from obvious, therefore, why we should make economic sacrifices on their behalf. Sounder morality, as well as economics, than the Victorians ever imagined is in the wistful refrain of the proverbially optimistic Mr. Micawber: "Something will turn up."

Novice Packet Files 164

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Consequentialist Impact Scenario Answers Framing Turn: Consequentialism is bad – leads to horrendous decision making Danny Scoccia, 2007, Moral theories: Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Religious Ethics. Reading: pp. 6-17 & 20-26, Danny Scoccia is Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. University of California at San Diego) at New Mexico State University, Dr. Scoccia’s interests include ethical theory, philosophy of law and social and political philosophy, web.nmsu.edu/~dscoccia/321web/321ethicstheory.pdf

The other three views—Kantian ethics, natural rights theories, and “religious ethics”—all agree that there are many circumstances when maximizing utility would be wrong. Perhaps the strongest objection to Act Utilitarianism comes from the natural rights theory: Act Utilitarianism is false, because it tells us to violate people’s rights when that’s necessary to maximize utility. The example of Joseph illustrates it, but here’s another example. A surgeon has 1 healthy and 5 sick and dying patients. Each of the sick and dying patients needs a new organ— one a new kidney, another a new liver, the third a new heart, etc.—and would fully recover if he received it. It so happens that the 1 healthy patient would be a suitable organ donor for all of them. If the surgeon kills the 1 and redistributes his organs, he saves 5. If he does nothing, then 1 is alive and 5 are dead. On the assumption that all six are equally happy, loved by others, and productive of utility for others in society, then the way to maximize utility is to kill the 1. But if he won’t consent to being killed and having his organs transplanted (he doesn’t believe in utilitarianism), then killing him would violate his right to life. The objection is simply that it would be wrong to violate his right even if it’s the way to maximize utility.

Novice Packet Files 165

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Deontology Impact Answers Impact Turn: Capitalism is a prerequisite ethical system – it preserves freedom to act which is the core of the human condition Peter Saunders, 2007, Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul, Peter Saunders is a Fellow at the Center for Independent Studies, http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer%2007-08/saunders_summer07.html

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

Novice Packet Files 166

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Deontology Impact Answers Framing Turn: Deontology is a failed moral system – ticking time bomb proves Mark J. Buha, 2010, Rule Utilitarian and Deontologist Perspectives on Comparisons of Torture and Killing, Washington University Jurisprudence Review Volume 2, Issue 2, Mark Buha is an Associate at Maune Raichle Hartley French & Mudd law firm, Mark earned his Juris Doctor from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011. He served as a Senior Editor of the Jurisprudence Review,openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=law_jurisprudence

Deontologists, like rule utilitarians, devise rules that must be followed universally. Deontologists and rule utilitarians differ only in what criteria they use to formulate these rules. Rule utilitarians use only pleasure and pain. They hold that any act that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain when applied universally is good. Deontologists evaluate actions under an entirely different rubric than rule utilitarians,72 often focusing on the mental state of the actor or whether the act violates another's rights.73 If it violates another's rights, it is strictly forbidden, regardless of the consequences. 74 Deontologists tend to treat each individual separately as an end in itself.75Applying this analysis, many deontologists forbid torture under all circumstances.? see torture as a particularly repugnant violation of individual rights. It requires specific intent, deprives the victim of dignity, and invades the victim's physical and psychological integrity. Provided grave enough consequences, this uncompromising position represents a fanaticism77and "moral fundamentalism"' that is difficult to defend. Hardly anyone finds it acceptable to rigidly adhere to an abstract moral principle—no matter how sound the principle appears in isolation—when doing so results in the death of hundreds or thousands of people.79 Deontologists allow catastrophe and mass death to occur to protect a single individual simply because torture violates his or her rights. The infamous "ticking time bomb" hypothetical illuminates these objections. In this scenario, a bomb is located in a crowded city. If detonated, it will destroy the entire city and millions will die. The bomb's location is unknown, and there is not enough time for a general search. Law enforcement apprehends one of the bomb's planters who knows the bomb's location and how to deactivate it. If the terrorist divulges the information, law enforcement has enough time to disable the bomb. Given these facts, few would adhere to principle; most would torture the individual in order to extract information that would save millions. This hypothetical presses deontology to its ideological limits. Once the prohibitionist admits he would allow torture in this situation, he concedes that his opposition to torture is not based on principle alone, but on something else.8° Deontologists respond with both logical and empirical objections to the ticking time bomb hypothetical's seductive simplicity. First, as Richard Matthews points out, the argument may be valid, but it is unsound, and therefore it cannot seriously undermine any position on torture.81The ticking bomb argument sets forth an "if-then" conditional: if these facts exist, then a reasonable person would torture.82If the antecedent holds, the consequence follows. But the hypothetical assumes the antecedent's truth without providing any proof. Valid but not sound, the hypothetical proves nothing. If we accepted mere validity, anything could be proven.83 Second, deontologists point out how unlikely it is that the antecedent facts would ever simultaneously exist in the real world. Although each premise has an empirical likelihood of being false, the hypothetical assumes that (1) an actual terrorist threat exists, (2) the threat is imminent, (3) the threat is sufficiently dangerous to justify torture, (4) the apprehended suspect possesses any information relevant to the threat, (5) only a single individual possesses all of the information necessary to extinguish the threat, (6) the individual participated in the attack or is a wrongdoer, (7) torture will be effective in forcing the subject to disclose information, (8) the information disclosed is truthful, and (9) the torturer can distinguish truthful and false information simply by observing the subject. The distinct unlikelihood that all nine elements will simultaneously exist in the real world renders the example almost irrelevant, useful only as a thought exercise.84 While these criticisms expose the assumptions in the ticking time bomb hypothetical, they ultimately avoid the issue. While it might be extremely unlikely that such factual circumstances will ever exist, it is not conceptually impossible. The fact remains that rigid deontology allows the bombs to go off in that scenario, however unlikely. Deontologists allow the world to explode to avoid violating the rights of a single individual.

Novice Packet Files 167

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Discourse Impact Answers Impact Turn: Talking broadly about theories don’t help build education spaces, it creates withdrawal and pessimism – only learning about and working through actual systems and scenarios is educationally liberating Richard Rorty 1998, “ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”, 1998, Pg. 7-9, Richard Rorty is a professor emeritus of comparative literature and philosophy at Stanford University and a leading academic in the field of philosophy

Such people find pride in American citizenship impossible, and vigorous participation in electoral politics pointless. They associate American patriotism with an endorsement of atrocities: the importation of African slaves, the slaughter of Native Americans, the rape of ancient forests, and the Vietnam War. Many of them think of national pride as appropriate only for chauvinists: for the sort of American who rejoices that America can still orchestrate something like the Gulf War, can still bring deadly force to bear whenever and wherever it chooses. When young intellectuals watch John Wayne war movies after reading Heidegger, Foucault, Stephenson, or Silko, they often become convinced that they live in a violent, inhuman, corrupt country. They begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see through nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The contrast between national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter were written in the belief that the tone of the Gettysburg Address was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transformation would be needed because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of these novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one in which America is destined to become the first cooperative commonwealth, the first classless society. This America would be one in which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the government ensures equality of opportunity as well as individual liberty. This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal. It set the tone for the American Left during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Walt Whitman and John Dewey, as we shall see, did a great deal to shape this rhetoric. The difference between early twentieth- century leftist intellectuals and the majority of their contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early decades of this century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through skeptical eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of course, the great exception-the great abstainer from ·politics. But William James thought that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction against the sort of detached spectatorship which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless unless accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of proto- Heideggerian cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy," James wrote, "is a kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2

Novice Packet Files 168

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Discourse Impact Answers Framing Turn: Focus on discourse trades off with actually implementing policy, risks cooption by special interests, and doesn’t solve as effectively – need to focus on real solutions not rhetoric Renee Irvin & John Stansbury, 2004, Citizen Participation in Decision-Making: Is it Worth the Effort?, Public Administration Review, Renee Irvin is Associate Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon & John Stansbury is Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Nebraska, c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/imported/Journal_Issue1_Irving.pdf

This article, while describing the very important benefits of citizen participation, also provides a litmus test for agencies to consider when they allocate resources toward citizen participation processes. Do citizens care enough to participate actively in policy-making, or would resources devoted toward participatory processes be better directed toward implementation? Does local citizen participation imply more opportunity for economically motivated special interests to dominate the decision process? Criticism lobbed at participatory efforts in environmental management may soon be heard in other sectors, as decreasing government budgets require intense scrutiny of government performance outcomes. Delegating environmental decision-making authority to citizens is a policy strategy lauded for its holistic consideration of local economic interests, yet criticised by the environmental left for its potential to roll back decades of environmental regulatory success. Evidence for the effectiveness of community participation in environmental management is in short supply, due in part to the inherent problems in measuring the success of environmental policies that may take decades to positively affect the environment. Even more difficult, perhaps, is the prospect of measuring incremental changes in the well-being of the general public as they become more engaged in the policy process. Concern exists among environmentalists that locally-based citizen participation processes will lead to a relaxation of previously successful environmental regulation. Another concern, rarely voiced, is the potential wastefulness of the process if employed in a non-ideal community. Even if the citizen participation process does not lead to relaxed environmental regulation, it may entail a significant expenditure of resources that could be used elsewhere to achieve better on the-ground results. With widespread public benefit as the goal of any public policy process, it behooves the administrator to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the decision-making process when determining the most effective implementation strategy, bearing in mind that talk is not cheap – and may not even be effective.

Novice Packet Files 169

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Alternative Answers No solvency: The working class will not succeed in overthrowing the capitalist system Mike Cole 2009, “Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response”, chapter 7, pg 121, Mike Cole is a Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Education for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK The Working Class Won’t Create the Revolution Because They Are Reactionary. It is a fundamental tenet of Marxism that the working class are the agents of social revolution, and that the working class, as noted above, needs to become a ‘class for itself’ in addition to being a ‘class in itself’ (Marx, 1847 [1995]). It is unfortunately the case that major parts of the world are a long way off such a scenario at the present conjuncture. It is also the case that successful interpellation and related false consciousness hampers the development of class consciousness and the move towards the overthrow of capitalism. Britain is one example where the Ruling Class has been particularly successful in interpellating the working class (see Cole, 2008g, 2008h for discussion). Elsewhere, however, there are examples of burgeoning class consciousness, witnessed for example by the growth of Left parties (see below) in Europe and by developments across South America, notably the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (see below) and in Bolivia. It is to be hoped that, as neoliberal global imperial capitalism continues to reveal and expose its essential ruthlessness and contempt for those who make its profits, class consciousness will increase and that the working class will one day be in a position to overthrow (world) capitalism and to replace it with (world) democratic socialism. Perhaps it should be pointed out here that Marxists do not idolize or deify the working class; it is rather that the structural location in capitalist societies of the working class, so that, once it has become 'a class in itself' makes it the agent for change. Moreover the very act of social revolution and the creation of socialism mean the end of the very existence of the working class as a social class. As Marx and Engels (1845) [1975] put it: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all ... because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary ... [The proletariat] cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of society today which are summed up in its own situation.

Novice Packet Files 170

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Alternative Answers No solvency: Alternatives to capitalism fail – lack of individual choice results in tyranny or failure Allan Meltzer March 12, 2009, “Why Capitalism?” 2008-2009 Bradley Lecture Series, Allan Meltzer is Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Business, Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, First Recipient of the AEI Irving Kristol Award, and Chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.29525,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Alternatives to Capitalism Critics of capitalism emphasize their dislike of greed and self-interest. They talk a great deal about social justice and fairness, but they do not propose an acceptable alternative to achieve their ends. The alternatives that have been tried are types of Socialism or Communism or other types of authoritarian rule. Anti-capitalist proposals suffer from two crippling drawbacks. First, they ignore the Kantian principle about human imperfection. Second, they ignore individual differences. In place of individual choice under capitalism, they substitute rigid direction done to achieve some proclaimed end such as equality, fairness, or justice. These ends are not precise and, most important, individuals differ about what is fair and just. In practice, the rulers' choices are enforced, often using fear, terror, prison, or other punishment. The history of the twentieth century illustrates how enforcement of promised ends became the justification for deplorable means. And the ends were not realized. Transferring resource allocation decisions to government bureaus does not eliminate crime, greed, self-dealing, conflict of interest, and corruption. Experience tells us these problems remain. The form may change, but as Kant recognized, the problems continue. Ludwig von Mises recognized in the 1920s that fixing prices and planning resource use omitted an essential part of the allocation problem. Capitalism allocates by letting relative prices adjust to equal the tradeoffs expressed by buyers' demands. Fixing prices eliminates the possibility of efficient allocation and replaces consumer choice with official decisions. Some gain, but others lose; the losers want to make choices other than those that are dictated to them. Not all Socialist societies have been brutal. In the nineteenth century, followers of Robert Owen, the Amana people, and many others chose a Socialist system. Israeli pioneers chose a collectivist system, the kibbutz. None of these arrangements produced sustainable growth. None survived. All faced the problem of imposing allocative decisions that satisfied the decision-making group, sometimes a majority, often not. Capitalism recognizes that where individual wants differ, the market responds to the mass; minorities are free to develop their favored outcome. Walk down the aisles of a modern supermarket. There are products that satisfy many different tastes or beliefs. Theodor Adorno was a leading critic of postwar capitalism as it developed in his native Germany, in Europe, and in the United States. He found the popular culture vulgar, and he distrusted the workers' choices. He wanted a Socialism that he hoped would uphold the values he shared with other intellectuals. Capitalism, he said, valued work too highly and true leisure too little. He disliked jazz, so he was not opposed to Hitler's ban in the 1930s. But Adorno offered no way of achieving the culture he desired other than to impose his tastes on others and ban all choices he disliked. This appealed to people who shared his view. Many preferred American pop culture whenever they had the right to choose. Capitalism permits choices and the freedom to make them. Some radio stations play jazz, some offer opera and symphonies, and many play pop music. Under capitalism, advertisers choose what they sponsor, and they sponsor programs that people choose to hear or watch. Under Socialism, the public watches and hears what someone chooses for them. The public had little choice. In Western Europe change did not come until boats outside territorial limits offered choice. The Templeton Foundation recently ran an advertisement reporting the answers several prominent intellectuals gave to the question: "Does the free market corrode moral character?" Several respondents recognized that free markets operate within a political system, a legal framework, and the rule of law. The slave trade and slavery became illegal in the nineteenth century. Before this a majority enslaved a minority. This is a major blot on the morality of democratic choice that public opinion and the law eventually removed. In the United States those who benefitted did not abandon slave owning until forced by a war. Most respondents to the Templeton question took a mixed stand. The philosopher John Gray recognized that greed and envy are driving forces under capitalism, but they often produce growth and raise living standards so that many benefit. But greed leads to outcomes like Enron and WorldCom that critics take as a characteristic of the system rather than as a characteristic of some individuals that remains under Socialism. Michael Walzer recognized that political activity also corrodes moral character, but he claimed it was regulated more effectively. One of the respondents discussed whether capitalism was more or less likely to foster or sustain moral abuses than other social arrangements. Bernard-Henri Levy maintained that alternatives to the market such as fascism and Communism were far worse. None of the respondents mentioned Kant's view that mankind

Novice Packet Files 171

includes a range of individuals who differ in their moral character. Institutional and social arrangements like democracy and capitalism influence the moral choices individuals make or reject. No democratic capitalist country produced any crimes comparable to the murders committed by Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, or Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union. As Lord Acton warned, concentrated power corrupts officials. Some use concentrated power to impose their will. Some allow their comrades to act as tyrants. Others proclaim that ends such as equality justify force to control opposition. Communism proclaimed a vision of equality that it never approached. It was unattainable because individuals differ about what is good. And what is good to them and for them is not the same as what is socially desirable to critics of capitalism. Kant's principle warns that utopian visions are unattainable. Capitalism does not offer a vision of perfection and harmony. Democratic capitalism combines freedom, opportunity, growth, and progress with restrictions on less desirable behavior. It creates societies that treat men and women as they are, not as in some utopian vision. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper showed why utopian visions become totalitarian. All deviations from the utopian ideal must be prevented. The Enrons, WorldComs, and others of that kind show that dishonest individuals rise along with honest individuals. Those who use these examples to criticize capitalism do not use the same standard to criticize all governments as failed arrangements when a Watergate or bribery is uncovered. Nor do they criticize government when politicians promise but do not produce or achieve. We live after twenty-five to forty years of talk about energy, education, healthcare, and drugs. Governments promise and propose, but little if any progress is visible on these issues.

Novice Packet Files 172

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Alternative Answers No solvency: Capitalism is inevitable—reforms, not revolution, are the only option. John K Wilson, 2000, “How the Left can Win Arguments and Influence People” p. 15- 16, John K. Wilson is Editor and Publisher of Illinois Academe, Capitalism is far too ingrained in American life to eliminate. If you go into the most impoverished areas of America, you will find that the people who live there are not seeking government control over factories or even more social welfare programs; they're hoping, usually in vain, for a fair chance to share in the capitalist wealth. The poor do not pray for socialism-they strive to be a part of the capitalist system. They want jobs, they want to start businesses, and they want to make money and be successful. What's wrong with America is not capitalism as a system but capitalism as a religion. We worship the accumulation of wealth and treat the horrible inequality between rich and poor as if it were an act of God. Worst of all, we allow the government to exacerbate the financial divide by favoring the wealthy: go anywhere in America, and compare a rich suburb with a poor town-the city services, schools, parks, and practically everything else will be better financed in the place populated by rich people. The aim is not to overthrow capitalism but to overhaul it. Give it a social-justice tune-up, make it more efficient, get the economic engine to hit on all cylinders for everybody, and stop putting out so many environmentally hazardous substances. To some people, this goal means selling out leftist ideals for the sake of capitalism. But the right thrives on having an ineffective opposition. The Revolutionary Communist Party helps stabilize the "free market" capitalist system by making it seem as if the only alternative to free-market capitalism is a return to Stalinism. Prospective activists for change are instead channeled into pointless discussions about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. Instead of working to persuade people to accept progressive ideas, the far left talks to itself (which may be a blessing, given the way it communicates) and tries to sell copies of the Socialist Worker to an uninterested public.

Novice Packet Files 173

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Permutation Permutation: Do both – Reforms from with-in the system solve best Chris Dixon 2001, “Reflections on Privilege, Reformism, and Activism”, Activist and founding member of Direct Action Network Summer, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chris-dixon-reflections-on-privilege-reformism-and-activism-a-response-to-sasha-k-s-activism-an.lt.pdf

To bolster his critique of 'reformism,' for instance, he critically cites one of the examples in my essay: demanding authentic we need revolutionary strategy that links diverse, everyday struggles and demands to long-term radical objectives, without sacrificing either. Of course, this isn't to say that every so-called 'progressive' ballot initiative or organizing campaign is necessarily radical or strategic. Reforms are not all created equal. But some can fundamentally shake systems of power, leading to enlarged gains and greater space for further advances. Andre Gorz, in his seminal book Strategy for Labor, refers to these as "non-reformist" or "structural" reforms. He contends, "a struggle for non-reformist reforms--for anti- capitalist reforms--is one which does not base its validity and its right to exist on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationales. A non-reformist reform is determined not in terms of what can be, but what should be." Look to history for examples: the end of slavery, the eight-hour workday, desegregation. All were born from long, hard struggles, and none were endpoints. Yet they all struck at the foundations of power (in these cases, the state, white supremacy, and capitalism), and in the process, they created new prospects for revolutionary change. Now consider contemporary struggles: amnesty for undocumented immigrants, socialized health care, expansive environmental protections, indigenous sovereignty. These and many more are arguably non-reformist reforms as well. None will single-handedly dismantle capitalism or other systems of power, but each has the potential to escalate struggles and sharpen social contradictions. And we shouldn't misinterpret these efforts as simply meliorative incrementalism, making 'adjustments' to a fundamentally flawed system.

Novice Packet Files 174

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Transition Wars Disadvantage Link Capitalist elites will resist the alternative, causing global transition wars Lee Harris, December 1, 2002, The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing, Hoover Institution Policy Review December 2002 & 2003, Lee Harris is an American author and essayist who writes for Policy Review and Tech Central Station who lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, www.hoover.org/research/intellectual-origins-america-bashing

This is the immiserization thesis of Marx. And it is central to revolutionary Marxism, since if capitalism produces no widespread misery, then it also produces no fatal internal contradiction: If everyone is getting better off through capitalism, who will dream of struggling to overthrow it? Only genuine misery on the part of the workers would be sufficient to overturn the whole apparatus of the capitalist state, simply because, as Marx insisted, the capitalist class could not be realistically expected to relinquish control of the state apparatus and, with it, the monopoly of force. In this, Marx was absolutely correct. No capitalist society has ever willingly liquidated itself, and it is utopian to think that any ever will. Therefore, in order to achieve the goal of socialism, nothing short of a complete revolution would do; and this means, in point of fact, a full-fledged civil war not just within one society, but across the globe.

Novice Packet Files 175

Capitalism Kritik Answers - Cyber Transition Wars Disadvantage Impact Revolution is necessarily violent – alternative would lead to levels of unprecedented violence Michael Cummings & Eric Cummings, 2011 (On Violence, "Revolutions are Violent", Michael Cummings is veteran and a writer, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a platoon leader, and Iraq in 2010 with 5th Special Forces Group as an intelligence officer. Eric Cummings is a writer who lives in Los Angeles. Their outside writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Stars and Stripes, The New York Times’ “At War” blog, FP.com/Thomas Ricks’ “The Best Defense” blog and Infantry magazine, http://onviolence.com/?e=531)

Michael was arguing a point that we haven’t argued enough on this website: revolutions are violent. ¶ Which may seem obvious. Except that extremists from both sides of the political spectrum casually endorse revolutions, like my liberal activist friend endorsing a revolution--a revolution, it is safe to say, the vast majority of the population didn’t endorse--to solve the environmental crisis. Like Occupy Protesters who just love revolutions, idealized, romanticized and fantasized through Che Guevara T-shirts, Youtube videos of street protests, and Guy Fawkes masks. Like Tea partiers make a point of bringing guns to political rallies, in case they need to overthrow the government. Both sides casually endorse violence, from Tea Party candidates to Occupy speakers. ¶ (We should make it clear that by “revolutions”, we mean revolutions that overthrow the existing power structure, not social or technological revolutions like the industrial revolution, the digital boom or the green revolution.)¶ The Arab Spring, as our most thought provoking event of 2011, should remind would-be-American-revolutionaries what a revolution really is: the break down of society and order, a revolution in power, which (mostly) results in violence. In this pan-Arab/north African revolution we have seen a few civil wars (Yemen, Syria and Libya), a military invasion (Saudi Arabia into Qatar), authoritarian crackdowns with unlawful arrests (Qatar, Eqypt, Syria and Yemen) and protesters generally arrested or attacked throughout. It is safe to say, to those who advocated revolution, violence followed.¶ This completely fits into the larger narratives of the history of revolutions. The American Revolution (Historians debate over whether this qualifies, I believe it does; it threw out the entire power structure.) cost one in every hundred males his life. The American Revolution is the second deadliest conflict in American history, percentage wise, with only the Civil War beating it, itself its own kind of revolution. ¶ Meanwhile, France’s revolution is symbolized by the guillotine, an industrial means of execution. The Russian Revolution lead to the deaths of literally millions of people. The revolutions that wracked Europe throughout the nineteenth century always included violence and death. When I studied Latin

America history in high school, my notes read, “Colonialism. Revolution. Dictator. Revolution.” It applied to every country.¶ Violence always coincides with the outbreak of revolutions, for a few reasons:¶ First, instability. Inherently, revolutions are unstable, by definition an overthrow of the existing power structures. When this happens, chaos ensues. Food shortages, lack of security, a breakdown of the social order. The best explanation for this is our blog’s namesake, On Violence, by Hannah Arendt, that argued that violence and power are opposites. Thus, when the power structure disappears--as in France or Russia or Libya--violence fills the gaps.¶ Second, vengeance. Most revolutions have a very legitimate basis: people feel discriminated against, or suffer from severe economic inequality, or chafe under colonial rule. When the masses revolt, they take their vengeance against their previous oppressors. Look at what happened in the French revolution. Or what happened to Moammar Ghaddafi. Or Saddam Hussein.¶ Third, civil wars. They happen when revolutionaries disagree, or the over-thrown don’t want to leave so easily. Take the above groups advocating revolution, the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers. They don’t agree on anything. So if one side starts a revolution, they’ll basically have to go to war with the other side. Boom, you’ve got a civil war. This is what is happening in Syria.

Novice Packet Files 216

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Specific Link (Human Rights Promotion) Answers – Turn: International human rights law will reform capitalism to negate its harms – MORE international law compliance is the solution Kate Nash, May 2013, GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS, Journal of Globalization Studies. Volume 4, Number 1, Kate Nash is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University. She has written and published widely on political sociology, including the second edition of Contemporary Political Sociology (Wiley-Blackwell 2010); and human rights, including The Cultural Politics of Human Rights: Comparing the US and UK (Cambridge University Press 2009), www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/156009/

To put it another way, markets, if only to function as such, have to be embedded in social relations that always have moral meanings. The cultural politics of human rights is oriented towards framing and institutionalising markets in terms of justice. Activists engage in the cultural politics of human rights using international human rights law to address economic issues in moral and legal terms. In attempting to reform the IFIs, the aim is to make existing institutions – international and national – that are already designated as having responsibility for economic development more accountable and more responsive to people's needs. These strategies involve re- framing ‘interests’ in human rights terms. To some this will seem far too weak: how can fine ideals affect the interests of global elites? Human rights strategies are premised on the understanding that markets are part of social life; they do not exist outside the meaningful codes through which we understand them, and they can be constructed in more humane ways. While neo- posits a human being who is, or who should be, motivated only by self-interest, we actually live in social structures in which we are also expected to be motivated by other concerns. Precisely where lines are drawn between ‘economic necessity’ and other social values is a matter of cultural politics. Changes in priorities are not, then impossible. Beliefs, standards and values, as well as embarrassment, pride and shame, do affect decisions about ‘how to go on’ in everyday life. This is no less the case where and procedures that regulate ‘how to go on’ are embedded in professional, bureaucratic contexts, as they are in the institutions of the IFIs, in national and international economic policy, and in the production of theories of development. Incremental change in ‘how to go on’ is always possible in principle, then, even when it is transformation of something as complex and multi-facted as ‘the global economy’ that we aspire to. In practice, however, as we have seen here in the case study of campaigns to influence IFIs, it is extremely difficult to humanise global capitalism, to make organisations and institutions that regulate economic development and make it more accountable and responsive to the needs of all. In relation to human rights, these difficulties are due at least as much to economic competition between states as they are to strategies of transnational corporations to evade unfavourable regulation. In other words, they are due to the inadequacy of global institutions to manage capitalist competition for the benefit of all; they are not simply a product of capitalism as such. It goes without saying that international co-operation is necessary to make equitable economic policy where all countries are affected by globalization. But it is also widely agreed that a world state that could impose regulation on competing states and border-hopping transnational corporations is not desirable (see Weiss 2009). Human rights are, however, state-centric: it is states that make international human rights law (albeit through IGOs, and increasingly in dialogue with NGOs), and it is states that are the addressees (as well as the violators) of human rights in international law. We have noted here the multiple paradoxes of states of human rights: they are both the violators and the guarantors of human rights; they are accountable to international public opinion and at the same time sovereign; they are supposed to represent and be democratically accountable to their citizens and to ensure the human rights of non-resident, non-citizens too. In general, these paradoxes are creatively and fruitfully engaged by activists.

Novice Packet Files 217

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Specific Link (Ageism) Answers – Turn: Asserting age identity creates space to challenge capitalism Michael A Peters & Viktor Johansson, Friday, 25 May 2012, The Rights of the Child, "Adultism" and the Philosophy of Childhood, Michael A. Peters is professor of education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Viktor Johansson is a PhD student completing his degree in at the University of , Sweden, www.truth-out.org/news/item/9154-the-rights-of-the-child-adultism-and-the-philosophy-of-childhood

In the world today, the vast proportion of children are in poverty, or are hungry or abused. As "The State of the World's Children 2012" shows with clarity, "hundreds of millions of children today live in urban slums, many without access to basic services." Under neoliberalism, the status, health and education of children, even in the first world, has been downgraded as inequalities have rapidly grown and outstripped the gains made during the and 1970s (Hill, 2009; Ross & Gibson, 2007). As children are taken seriously as subjects of political and moral theory - a very recent historical change - and as the discourse of rights for children matures, it is important to understand that it is no longer possible to accept a simple equation between the interests of children and those who traditionally are seen as bearing responsibility for them. They must be encouraged to speak for themselves, and we must become more adept at both providing the vehicles to access their voices and to actively listen to them.

Novice Packet Files 218

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC General Link Answers – We can use the state against capitalism Christian Parenti, April 2014, “Climate Change: What Role for Reform?” MONTHLY REVIEW v. 65 n. 11, Christian Parenti is a Professor of Sustainable Development at the School for International Training, Graduate Institute http://monthlyreview.org/2014/04/01/climate-change- role-reform, accessed 4-24-14.

There was also a larger point to my essay that the MR editors did not address. By describing policies that the U.S. capitalist state could undertake right now to start euthanizing the fossil-fuel industry, I was also attempting to start a conversation about the state. Once upon a time the state was the heart of the socialist project. But neoliberalism’s anti-statist rhetoric has almost “disappeared” the state as an intellectual object—even on much of the left. The capitalist state is not just a tool of capital’s rule. It is also an arena of class struggle. As such it is an institution that can solidify and enforce popular political victories over capital. If the struggle for climate justice is to get anywhere it will have to think more deeply about the contradictions of the capitalist state, and how such contradictions can be exploited in the short term. On that point, I hope you would agree.

Novice Packet Files 219

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Consequentialist Impact Scenario Impact Answers

Turn: Capitalism is self-correcting and sustainable – war and environmental destruction are not profitable and innovation solves their impacts

Anatole Kaletsky, 2011, Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis, p. 19-21, Anatole Kaletsky is editor-at- large of The Times of London, where he writes weekly columns on economics, politics, and international relations and on the governing board of the New York-based Institute for New Economic Theory (INET), a nonprofit created after the 2007-2009 crisis to promote and finance academic research in economics

Democratic capitalism is a system built for survival. It has adapted successfully to shocks of every kind, to upheavals in technology and economics, to political revolutions and world wars. Capitalism has been able to do this because, unlike communism or socialism or feudalism, it has an inner dynamic akin to a living thing. It can adapt and refine itself in response to the changing environment. And it will evolve into a new species of the same capitalist genus if that is what it takes to survive. In the panic of 2008—09, many politicians, businesses, and pundits forgot about the astonishing adaptability of the capitalist system. Predictions of global collapse were based on static views of the world that extrapolated a few months of admittedly terrifying financial chaos into the indefinite future. The self- correcting mechanisms that market economies and democratic societies have evolved over several centuries were either forgotten or assumed defunct. The language of biology has been applied to politics and economics, but rarely to the way they interact. Democratic capitalism’s equivalent of the biological survival instinct is a built-in capacity for solving social problems and meeting material needs. This capacity stems from the principle of competition, which drives both democratic politics and capitalist markets. Because market forces generally reward the creation of wealth rather than its destruction, they direct the independent efforts and ambitions of millions of individuals toward satisfying material demands, even if these demands sometimes create unwelcome by-products. Because voters generally reward politicians for making their lives better and safer, rather than worse and more dangerous, democratic competition directs political institutions toward solving rather than aggravating society’s problems, even if these solutions sometimes create new problems of their own. Political competition is slower and less decisive than market competition, so its self-stabilizing qualities play out over decades or even generations, not months or years. But regardless of the difference in timescale, capitalism and democracy have one crucial feature in common: Both are mechanisms that encourage individuals to channel their creativity, efforts, and competitive spirit into finding solutions for material and social problems. And in the long run, these mechanisms work very well. If we consider democratic capitalism as a successful problem-solving machine, the implications of this view are very relevant to the 2007-09 economic crisis, but diametrically opposed to the conventional wisdom that prevailed in its aftermath. Governments all over the world were ridiculed for trying to resolve a crisis caused by too much borrowing by borrowing even more. Alan Greenspan was accused of trying to delay an inevitable "day of reckoning” by creating ever-bigger financial bubbles. Regulators were attacked for letting half-dead, “zombie” banks stagger on instead of putting them to death. But these charges missed the point of what the democratic capitalist system is designed to achieve. In a capitalist democracy whose raison d’etre is to devise new solutions to long-standing social and material demands, a problem postponed is effectively a problem solved. To be more exact, a problem whose solution can be deferred long enough is a problem that is likely to be solved in ways that are hardly imaginable today. Once the self-healing nature of the capitalist system is recognized, the charge of “passing on our problems to our grand-children”—whether made about budget deficits by conservatives or about global warming by liberals—becomes morally unconvincing. Our grand-children will almost certainly be much richer than we are and will have more powerful technologies at their disposal. It is far from obvious, therefore, why we should make economic sacrifices on their behalf. Sounder morality, as well as economics, than the Victorians ever imagined is in the wistful refrain of the proverbially optimistic Mr. Micawber: "Something will turn up."

Novice Packet Files 220

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Consequentialist Impact Scenario Framing Answers Framing Turn: Consequentialism is bad – leads to horrendous decision making Danny Scoccia, 2007, Moral theories: Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and Religious Ethics. Reading: pp. 6-17 & 20-26, Danny Scoccia is Professor Emeritus (Ph.D. University of California at San Diego) at New Mexico State University, Dr. Scoccia’s interests include ethical theory, philosophy of law and social and political philosophy, web.nmsu.edu/~dscoccia/321web/321ethicstheory.pdf

The other three views—Kantian ethics, natural rights theories, and “religious ethics”—all agree that there are many circumstances when maximizing utility would be wrong. Perhaps the strongest objection to Act Utilitarianism comes from the natural rights theory: Act Utilitarianism is false, because it tells us to violate people’s rights when that’s necessary to maximize utility. The example of Joseph illustrates it, but here’s another example. A surgeon has 1 healthy and 5 sick and dying patients. Each of the sick and dying patients needs a new organ— one a new kidney, another a new liver, the third a new heart, etc.—and would fully recover if he received it. It so happens that the 1 healthy patient would be a suitable organ donor for all of them. If the surgeon kills the 1 and redistributes his organs, he saves 5. If he does nothing, then 1 is alive and 5 are dead. On the assumption that all six are equally happy, loved by others, and productive of utility for others in society, then the way to maximize utility is to kill the 1. But if he won’t consent to being killed and having his organs transplanted (he doesn’t believe in utilitarianism), then killing him would violate his right to life. The objection is simply that it would be wrong to violate his right even if it’s the way to maximize utility.

Novice Packet Files 221

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Deontology Impact Scenario Answers Turn: Capitalism is a prerequisite ethical system – it preserves freedom to act which is the core of the human condition Peter Saunders, 2007, Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul, Peter Saunders is a Fellow at the Center for Independent Studies, http://www.cis.org.au/POLICY/summer%2007-08/saunders_summer07.html

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

Novice Packet Files 222

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Deontology Impact Scenario Framing Answers Framing Turn: Deontology is a failed moral system – ticking time bomb proves Mark J. Buha, 2010, Rule Utilitarian and Deontologist Perspectives on Comparisons of Torture and Killing, Washington University Jurisprudence Review Volume 2, Issue 2, Mark Buha is an Associate at Maune Raichle Hartley French & Mudd law firm, Mark earned his Juris Doctor from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011. He served as a Senior Editor of the Jurisprudence Review,openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1014&context=law_jurisprudence

Deontologists, like rule utilitarians, devise rules that must be followed universally. Deontologists and rule utilitarians differ only in what criteria they use to formulate these rules. Rule utilitarians use only pleasure and pain. They hold that any act that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain when applied universally is good. Deontologists evaluate actions under an entirely different rubric than rule utilitarians,72 often focusing on the mental state of the actor or whether the act violates another's rights.73 If it violates another's rights, it is strictly forbidden, regardless of the consequences. 74 Deontologists tend to treat each individual separately as an end in itself.75Applying this analysis, many deontologists forbid torture under all circumstances.? see torture as a particularly repugnant violation of individual rights. It requires specific intent, deprives the victim of dignity, and invades the victim's physical and psychological integrity. Provided grave enough consequences, this uncompromising position represents a fanaticism77and "moral fundamentalism"' that is difficult to defend. Hardly anyone finds it acceptable to rigidly adhere to an abstract moral principle—no matter how sound the principle appears in isolation—when doing so results in the death of hundreds or thousands of people.79 Deontologists allow catastrophe and mass death to occur to protect a single individual simply because torture violates his or her rights. The infamous "ticking time bomb" hypothetical illuminates these objections. In this scenario, a bomb is located in a crowded city. If detonated, it will destroy the entire city and millions will die. The bomb's location is unknown, and there is not enough time for a general search. Law enforcement apprehends one of the bomb's planters who knows the bomb's location and how to deactivate it. If the terrorist divulges the information, law enforcement has enough time to disable the bomb. Given these facts, few would adhere to principle; most would torture the individual in order to extract information that would save millions. This hypothetical presses deontology to its ideological limits. Once the prohibitionist admits he would allow torture in this situation, he concedes that his opposition to torture is not based on principle alone, but on something else.8° Deontologists respond with both logical and empirical objections to the ticking time bomb hypothetical's seductive simplicity. First, as Richard Matthews points out, the argument may be valid, but it is unsound, and therefore it cannot seriously undermine any position on torture.81The ticking bomb argument sets forth an "if-then" conditional: if these facts exist, then a reasonable person would torture.82If the antecedent holds, the consequence follows. But the hypothetical assumes the antecedent's truth without providing any proof. Valid but not sound, the hypothetical proves nothing. If we accepted mere validity, anything could be proven.83 Second, deontologists point out how unlikely it is that the antecedent facts would ever simultaneously exist in the real world. Although each premise has an empirical likelihood of being false, the hypothetical assumes that (1) an actual terrorist threat exists, (2) the threat is imminent, (3) the threat is sufficiently dangerous to justify torture, (4) the apprehended suspect possesses any information relevant to the threat, (5) only a single individual possesses all of the information necessary to extinguish the threat, (6) the individual participated in the attack or is a wrongdoer, (7) torture will be effective in forcing the subject to disclose information, (8) the information disclosed is truthful, and (9) the torturer can distinguish truthful and false information simply by observing the subject. The distinct unlikelihood that all nine elements will simultaneously exist in the real world renders the example almost irrelevant, useful only as a thought exercise.84 While these criticisms expose the assumptions in the ticking time bomb hypothetical, they ultimately avoid the issue. While it might be extremely unlikely that such factual circumstances will ever exist, it is not conceptually impossible. The fact remains that rigid deontology allows the bombs to go off in that scenario, however unlikely. Deontologists allow the world to explode to avoid violating the rights of a single individual.

Novice Packet Files 223

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Discourse Impact Scenario Answers Turn: Talking broadly about theories don’t help build education spaces, it creates withdrawal and pessimism – only learning about and working through actual systems and scenarios is educationally liberating Richard Rorty 1998, “ACHIEVING OUR COUNTRY: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America”, 1998, Pg. 7-9, Richard Rorty is a professor emeritus of comparative literature and philosophy at Stanford University and a leading academic in the field of philosophy

Such people find pride in American citizenship impossible, and vigorous participation in electoral politics pointless. They associate American patriotism with an endorsement of atrocities: the importation of African slaves, the slaughter of Native Americans, the rape of ancient forests, and the Vietnam War. Many of them think of national pride as appropriate only for chauvinists: for the sort of American who rejoices that America can still orchestrate something like the Gulf War, can still bring deadly force to bear whenever and wherever it chooses. When young intellectuals watch John Wayne war movies after reading Heidegger, Foucault, Stephenson, or Silko, they often become convinced that they live in a violent, inhuman, corrupt country. They begin to think of themselves as a saving remnant-as the happy few who have the insight to see through nationalist rhetoric to the ghastly reality of contemporary America. But this insight does not move them to formulate a legislative program, to join a political movement, or to share in a national hope. The contrast between national hope and national self-mockery and self-disgust becomes vivid when one compares novels like Snow Crash and Almanac of the Dead with socialist novels of the first half of the century-books like The Jungle, An American Tragedy, and The Grapes of Wrath. The latter were written in the belief that the tone of the Gettysburg Address was absolutely right, but that our country would have to transform itself in order to fulfill Lincoln's hopes. Transformation would be needed because the rise of industrial capitalism had made the individualist rhetoric of America's first century obsolete. The authors of these novels thought that this rhetoric should be replaced by one in which America is destined to become the first cooperative commonwealth, the first classless society. This America would be one in which income and wealth are equitably distributed, and in which the government ensures equality of opportunity as well as individual liberty. This new, quasi-communitarian rhetoric was at the heart of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal. It set the tone for the American Left during the first six decades of the twentieth century. Walt Whitman and John Dewey, as we shall see, did a great deal to shape this rhetoric. The difference between early twentieth- century leftist intellectuals and the majority of their contemporary counterparts is the difference between agents and spectators. In the early decades of this century, when an intellectual stepped back from his or her country's history and looked at it through skeptical eyes, the chances were that he or she was about to propose a new political initiative. Henry Adams was, of course, the great exception-the great abstainer from ·politics. But William James thought that Adams' diagnosis of the First Gilded Age as a symptom of irreversible moral and political decline was merely perverse. James's pragmatist theory of truth was in part a reaction against the sort of detached spectatorship which Adams affected. For James, disgust with American hypocrisy and self-deception was pointless unless accompanied by an effort to give America reason to be proud of itself in the future. The kind of proto- Heideggerian cultural pessimism which Adams cultivated seemed, to James, decadent and cowardly. "Democracy," James wrote, "is a kind of religion, and we are bound not to admit its failure. Faiths and utopias are the noblest exercise of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture. "2

Novice Packet Files 224

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Discourse Impact Scenario Framing Answers Framing turn: Focus on discourse trades off with actually implementing policy, risks cooption by special interests, and doesn’t solve as effectively – need to focus on real solutions not rhetoric Renee Irvin & John Stansbury, 2004, Citizen Participation in Decision-Making: Is it Worth the Effort?, Public Administration Review, Renee Irvin is Associate Professor in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management at the University of Oregon & John Stansbury is Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Nebraska, c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.iap2.org/resource/resmgr/imported/Journal_Issue1_Irving.pdf

This article, while describing the very important benefits of citizen participation, also provides a litmus test for agencies to consider when they allocate resources toward citizen participation processes. Do citizens care enough to participate actively in policy-making, or would resources devoted toward participatory processes be better directed toward implementation? Does local citizen participation imply more opportunity for economically motivated special interests to dominate the decision process? Criticism lobbed at participatory efforts in environmental management may soon be heard in other sectors, as decreasing government budgets require intense scrutiny of government performance outcomes. Delegating environmental decision-making authority to citizens is a policy strategy lauded for its holistic consideration of local economic interests, yet criticised by the environmental left for its potential to roll back decades of environmental regulatory success. Evidence for the effectiveness of community participation in environmental management is in short supply, due in part to the inherent problems in measuring the success of environmental policies that may take decades to positively affect the environment. Even more difficult, perhaps, is the prospect of measuring incremental changes in the well-being of the general public as they become more engaged in the policy process. Concern exists among environmentalists that locally-based citizen participation processes will lead to a relaxation of previously successful environmental regulation. Another concern, rarely voiced, is the potential wastefulness of the process if employed in a non-ideal community. Even if the citizen participation process does not lead to relaxed environmental regulation, it may entail a significant expenditure of resources that could be used elsewhere to achieve better on the-ground results. With widespread public benefit as the goal of any public policy process, it behooves the administrator to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the decision-making process when determining the most effective implementation strategy, bearing in mind that talk is not cheap – and may not even be effective.

Novice Packet Files 225

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Answers to Alternative No Solvency: The working class will not succeed in overthrowing the capitalist system Mike Cole 2009, “Critical Race Theory and Education A Marxist Response”, chapter 7, pg 121, Mike Cole is a Research Professor in Education and Equality, Head of Research and Director of the Centre for Education for Social Justice at Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK The Working Class Won’t Create the Revolution Because They Are Reactionary. It is a fundamental tenet of Marxism that the working class are the agents of social revolution, and that the working class, as noted above, needs to become a ‘class for itself’ in addition to being a ‘class in itself’ (Marx, 1847 [1995]). It is unfortunately the case that major parts of the world are a long way off such a scenario at the present conjuncture. It is also the case that successful interpellation and related false consciousness hampers the development of class consciousness and the move towards the overthrow of capitalism. Britain is one example where the Ruling Class has been particularly successful in interpellating the working class (see Cole, 2008g, 2008h for discussion). Elsewhere, however, there are examples of burgeoning class consciousness, witnessed for example by the growth of Left parties (see below) in Europe and by developments across South America, notably the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (see below) and in Bolivia. It is to be hoped that, as neoliberal global imperial capitalism continues to reveal and expose its essential ruthlessness and contempt for those who make its profits, class consciousness will increase and that the working class will one day be in a position to overthrow (world) capitalism and to replace it with (world) democratic socialism. Perhaps it should be pointed out here that Marxists do not idolize or deify the working class; it is rather that the structural location in capitalist societies of the working class, so that, once it has become 'a class in itself' makes it the agent for change. Moreover the very act of social revolution and the creation of socialism mean the end of the very existence of the working class as a social class. As Marx and Engels (1845) [1975] put it: When socialist writers ascribe this world-historic role to the proletariat, it is not at all ... because they regard the proletarians as gods. Rather the contrary ... [The proletariat] cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of society today which are summed up in its own situation.

Novice Packet Files 226

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Answers to Alternative No Turn: Alternatives to capitalism fail – lack of individual choice results in tyranny or failure Allan Meltzer March 12, 2009, “Why Capitalism?” 2008-2009 Bradley Lecture Series, Allan Meltzer is Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Business, Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, First Recipient of the AEI Irving Kristol Award, and Chairman of the International Financial Institution Advisory Commission, http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.29525,filter.all/pub_detail.asp

Alternatives to Capitalism Critics of capitalism emphasize their dislike of greed and self-interest. They talk a great deal about social justice and fairness, but they do not propose an acceptable alternative to achieve their ends. The alternatives that have been tried are types of Socialism or Communism or other types of authoritarian rule. Anti-capitalist proposals suffer from two crippling drawbacks. First, they ignore the Kantian principle about human imperfection. Second, they ignore individual differences. In place of individual choice under capitalism, they substitute rigid direction done to achieve some proclaimed end such as equality, fairness, or justice. These ends are not precise and, most important, individuals differ about what is fair and just. In practice, the rulers' choices are enforced, often using fear, terror, prison, or other punishment. The history of the twentieth century illustrates how enforcement of promised ends became the justification for deplorable means. And the ends were not realized. Transferring resource allocation decisions to government bureaus does not eliminate crime, greed, self-dealing, conflict of interest, and corruption. Experience tells us these problems remain. The form may change, but as Kant recognized, the problems continue. Ludwig von Mises recognized in the 1920s that fixing prices and planning resource use omitted an essential part of the allocation problem. Capitalism allocates by letting relative prices adjust to equal the tradeoffs expressed by buyers' demands. Fixing prices eliminates the possibility of efficient allocation and replaces consumer choice with official decisions. Some gain, but others lose; the losers want to make choices other than those that are dictated to them. Not all Socialist societies have been brutal. In the nineteenth century, followers of Robert Owen, the Amana people, and many others chose a Socialist system. Israeli pioneers chose a collectivist system, the kibbutz. None of these arrangements produced sustainable growth. None survived. All faced the problem of imposing allocative decisions that satisfied the decision-making group, sometimes a majority, often not. Capitalism recognizes that where individual wants differ, the market responds to the mass; minorities are free to develop their favored outcome. Walk down the aisles of a modern supermarket. There are products that satisfy many different tastes or beliefs. Theodor Adorno was a leading critic of postwar capitalism as it developed in his native Germany, in Europe, and in the United States. He found the popular culture vulgar, and he distrusted the workers' choices. He wanted a Socialism that he hoped would uphold the values he shared with other intellectuals. Capitalism, he said, valued work too highly and true leisure too little. He disliked jazz, so he was not opposed to Hitler's ban in the 1930s. But Adorno offered no way of achieving the culture he desired other than to impose his tastes on others and ban all choices he disliked. This appealed to people who shared his view. Many preferred American pop culture whenever they had the right to choose. Capitalism permits choices and the freedom to make them. Some radio stations play jazz, some offer opera and symphonies, and many play pop music. Under capitalism, advertisers choose what they sponsor, and they sponsor programs that people choose to hear or watch. Under Socialism, the public watches and hears what someone chooses for them. The public had little choice. In Western Europe change did not come until boats outside territorial limits offered choice. The Templeton Foundation recently ran an advertisement reporting the answers several prominent intellectuals gave to the question: "Does the free market corrode moral character?" Several respondents recognized that free markets operate within a political system, a legal framework, and the rule of law. The slave trade and slavery became illegal in the nineteenth century. Before this a majority enslaved a minority. This is a major blot on the morality of democratic choice that public opinion and the law eventually removed. In the United States those who benefitted did not abandon slave owning until forced by a war. Most respondents to the Templeton question took a mixed stand. The philosopher John Gray recognized that greed and envy are driving forces under capitalism, but they often produce growth and raise living standards so that many benefit. But greed leads to outcomes like Enron and WorldCom that critics take as a characteristic of the system rather than as a characteristic of some individuals that remains under Socialism. Michael Walzer recognized that political activity also corrodes moral character, but he claimed it was regulated more effectively. One of the respondents discussed whether capitalism was more or less likely to foster or sustain moral abuses than other social arrangements. Bernard-Henri Levy maintained that alternatives to the market such as fascism and Communism were far worse. None of the respondents mentioned Kant's view that mankind

Novice Packet Files 227

includes a range of individuals who differ in their moral character. Institutional and social arrangements like democracy and capitalism influence the moral choices individuals make or reject. No democratic capitalist country produced any crimes comparable to the murders committed by Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, or Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union. As Lord Acton warned, concentrated power corrupts officials. Some use concentrated power to impose their will. Some allow their comrades to act as tyrants. Others proclaim that ends such as equality justify force to control opposition. Communism proclaimed a vision of equality that it never approached. It was unattainable because individuals differ about what is good. And what is good to them and for them is not the same as what is socially desirable to critics of capitalism. Kant's principle warns that utopian visions are unattainable. Capitalism does not offer a vision of perfection and harmony. Democratic capitalism combines freedom, opportunity, growth, and progress with restrictions on less desirable behavior. It creates societies that treat men and women as they are, not as in some utopian vision. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper showed why utopian visions become totalitarian. All deviations from the utopian ideal must be prevented. The Enrons, WorldComs, and others of that kind show that dishonest individuals rise along with honest individuals. Those who use these examples to criticize capitalism do not use the same standard to criticize all governments as failed arrangements when a Watergate or bribery is uncovered. Nor do they criticize government when politicians promise but do not produce or achieve. We live after twenty-five to forty years of talk about energy, education, healthcare, and drugs. Governments promise and propose, but little if any progress is visible on these issues.

Novice Packet Files 228

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Answers to Alternative No Solvency: Capitalism is inevitable—reforms, not revolution, are the only option. John K Wilson, 2000, “How the Left can Win Arguments and Influence People” p. 15- 16, John K. Wilson is Editor and Publisher of Illinois Academe, Capitalism is far too ingrained in American life to eliminate. If you go into the most impoverished areas of America, you will find that the people who live there are not seeking government control over factories or even more social welfare programs; they're hoping, usually in vain, for a fair chance to share in the capitalist wealth. The poor do not pray for socialism-they strive to be a part of the capitalist system. They want jobs, they want to start businesses, and they want to make money and be successful. What's wrong with America is not capitalism as a system but capitalism as a religion. We worship the accumulation of wealth and treat the horrible inequality between rich and poor as if it were an act of God. Worst of all, we allow the government to exacerbate the financial divide by favoring the wealthy: go anywhere in America, and compare a rich suburb with a poor town-the city services, schools, parks, and practically everything else will be better financed in the place populated by rich people. The aim is not to overthrow capitalism but to overhaul it. Give it a social-justice tune-up, make it more efficient, get the economic engine to hit on all cylinders for everybody, and stop putting out so many environmentally hazardous substances. To some people, this goal means selling out leftist ideals for the sake of capitalism. But the right thrives on having an ineffective opposition. The Revolutionary Communist Party helps stabilize the "free market" capitalist system by making it seem as if the only alternative to free-market capitalism is a return to Stalinism. Prospective activists for change are instead channeled into pointless discussions about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. Instead of working to persuade people to accept progressive ideas, the far left talks to itself (which may be a blessing, given the way it communicates) and tries to sell copies of the Socialist Worker to an uninterested public.

Novice Packet Files 229

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Permutation Permutation – do both – Reforms from with-in the system solve best Chris Dixon 2001, “Reflections on Privilege, Reformism, and Activism”, Activist and founding member of Direct Action Network Summer, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chris-dixon-reflections-on-privilege-reformism-and-activism-a-response-to-sasha-k-s-activism-an.lt.pdf

To bolster his critique of 'reformism,' for instance, he critically cites one of the examples in my essay: demanding authentic we need revolutionary strategy that links diverse, everyday struggles and demands to long-term radical objectives, without sacrificing either. Of course, this isn't to say that every so-called 'progressive' ballot initiative or organizing campaign is necessarily radical or strategic. Reforms are not all created equal. But some can fundamentally shake systems of power, leading to enlarged gains and greater space for further advances. Andre Gorz, in his seminal book Strategy for Labor, refers to these as "non-reformist" or "structural" reforms. He contends, "a struggle for non-reformist reforms--for anti- capitalist reforms--is one which does not base its validity and its right to exist on capitalist needs, criteria, and rationales. A non-reformist reform is determined not in terms of what can be, but what should be." Look to history for examples: the end of slavery, the eight-hour workday, desegregation. All were born from long, hard struggles, and none were endpoints. Yet they all struck at the foundations of power (in these cases, the state, white supremacy, and capitalism), and in the process, they created new prospects for revolutionary change. Now consider contemporary struggles: amnesty for undocumented immigrants, socialized health care, expansive environmental protections, indigenous sovereignty. These and many more are arguably non-reformist reforms as well. None will single-handedly dismantle capitalism or other systems of power, but each has the potential to escalate struggles and sharpen social contradictions. And we shouldn't misinterpret these efforts as simply meliorative incrementalism, making 'adjustments' to a fundamentally flawed system.

Novice Packet Files 230

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Transition Wars Disadvantage Link Capitalist elites will resist the alternative, causing global transition wars Lee Harris, December 1, 2002, The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing, Hoover Institution Policy Review December 2002 & 2003, Lee Harris is an American author and essayist who writes for Policy Review and Tech Central Station who lives in Stone Mountain, Georgia, www.hoover.org/research/intellectual-origins-america-bashing

This is the immiserization thesis of Marx. And it is central to revolutionary Marxism, since if capitalism produces no widespread misery, then it also produces no fatal internal contradiction: If everyone is getting better off through capitalism, who will dream of struggling to overthrow it? Only genuine misery on the part of the workers would be sufficient to overturn the whole apparatus of the capitalist state, simply because, as Marx insisted, the capitalist class could not be realistically expected to relinquish control of the state apparatus and, with it, the monopoly of force. In this, Marx was absolutely correct. No capitalist society has ever willingly liquidated itself, and it is utopian to think that any ever will. Therefore, in order to achieve the goal of socialism, nothing short of a complete revolution would do; and this means, in point of fact, a full-fledged civil war not just within one society, but across the globe.

Novice Packet Files 231

Capitalism Kritik Answers - CRC Transition Wars Disadvantage Impact Revolution is necessarily violent – alternative would lead to levels of unprecedented violence Michael Cummings & Eric Cummings, 2011 (On Violence, "Revolutions are Violent", Michael Cummings is veteran and a writer, who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008 with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as a platoon leader, and Iraq in 2010 with 5th Special Forces Group as an intelligence officer. Eric Cummings is a writer who lives in Los Angeles. Their outside writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Stars and Stripes, The New York Times’ “At War” blog, FP.com/Thomas Ricks’ “The Best Defense” blog and Infantry magazine, http://onviolence.com/?e=531)

Michael was arguing a point that we haven’t argued enough on this website: revolutions are violent. ¶ Which may seem obvious. Except that extremists from both sides of the political spectrum casually endorse revolutions, like my liberal activist friend endorsing a revolution--a revolution, it is safe to say, the vast majority of the population didn’t endorse--to solve the environmental crisis. Like Occupy Protesters who just love revolutions, idealized, romanticized and fantasized through Che Guevara T-shirts, Youtube videos of street protests, and Guy Fawkes masks. Like Tea partiers make a point of bringing guns to political rallies, in case they need to overthrow the government. Both sides casually endorse violence, from Tea Party candidates to Occupy speakers. ¶ (We should make it clear that by “revolutions”, we mean revolutions that overthrow the existing power structure, not social or technological revolutions like the industrial revolution, the digital boom or the green revolution.)¶ The Arab Spring, as our most thought provoking event of 2011, should remind would-be-American-revolutionaries what a revolution really is: the break down of society and order, a revolution in power, which (mostly) results in violence. In this pan-Arab/north African revolution we have seen a few civil wars (Yemen, Syria and Libya), a military invasion (Saudi Arabia into Qatar), authoritarian crackdowns with unlawful arrests (Qatar, Eqypt, Syria and Yemen) and protesters generally arrested or attacked throughout. It is safe to say, to those who advocated revolution, violence followed.¶ This completely fits into the larger narratives of the history of revolutions. The American Revolution (Historians debate over whether this qualifies, I believe it does; it threw out the entire power structure.) cost one in every hundred males his life. The American Revolution is the second deadliest conflict in American history, percentage wise, with only the Civil War beating it, itself its own kind of revolution. ¶ Meanwhile, France’s revolution is symbolized by the guillotine, an industrial means of execution. The Russian Revolution lead to the deaths of literally millions of people. The revolutions that wracked Europe throughout the nineteenth century always included violence and death. When I studied Latin

America history in high school, my notes read, “Colonialism. Revolution. Dictator. Revolution.” It applied to every country.¶ Violence always coincides with the outbreak of revolutions, for a few reasons:¶ First, instability. Inherently, revolutions are unstable, by definition an overthrow of the existing power structures. When this happens, chaos ensues. Food shortages, lack of security, a breakdown of the social order. The best explanation for this is our blog’s namesake, On Violence, by Hannah Arendt, that argued that violence and power are opposites. Thus, when the power structure disappears--as in France or Russia or Libya--violence fills the gaps.¶ Second, vengeance. Most revolutions have a very legitimate basis: people feel discriminated against, or suffer from severe economic inequality, or chafe under colonial rule. When the masses revolt, they take their vengeance against their previous oppressors. Look at what happened in the French revolution. Or what happened to Moammar Ghaddafi. Or Saddam Hussein.¶ Third, civil wars. They happen when revolutionaries disagree, or the over-thrown don’t want to leave so easily. Take the above groups advocating revolution, the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers. They don’t agree on anything. So if one side starts a revolution, they’ll basically have to go to war with the other side. Boom, you’ve got a civil war. This is what is happening in Syria.

Novice Packet Files 376

Capitalism Kritik

Novice Packet Files 377

Capitalism Kritik General Links USFG will always coopt plans despite the intentions of the planners – only class revolution avoids cooption Progressive Labor Party , June 6, 2014, Will End Imperialist Wars, The Progressive Labor Party is an international movement opposed to capitalism headed by scholars and workers from many countries and backgrounds, www.plp.org/challenge/2014/6/6/communist-revolution-will-end-imperialist-wars.html

The enactment of fascist labor, education, tax, and energy reforms demonstrate the nature of a capitalist system, designed to benefit the bosses and attack the working class. There are no legal ways to enact changes for workers’ benefit. The bosses’ tells us that the majority is in charge and the laws are just, but in reality the electoral process is completely controlled by the business, financial and political oligarchy. Therefore only those in this oligarchy can get access to power through the vote. Similarly, the rule of law is an illusion, when the same minority of millionaire parasites determines what’s legal, and can change laws to benefit their businesses, as with structural reforms here in Mexico. When the electoral farce and bourgeois legality are not enough to control working-class rebellions, the bosses resort to the police and military to repress, jail, and murder dissenters. Capitalists use fascist terror against the working class to violently impose their interests on the majority. The bosses believe that the illusion of bourgeois democracy and fascist terror can prevent the unity of the working class, but they are mistaken. Eventually, millions of workers will unite to build an international communist movement to abolish capitalist oppression and exploitation.

Novice Packet Files 378

Capitalism Kritik General Links Economic and Diplomatic engagement are US’ tools of Capitalism JOHN Stanton, July 22, 2105, Neoliberal American Capitalism Rocks On … But Does Anyone Hear Pope Francis?, John J. Stanton is an independent journalist and author in the Washington, DC Metro region who focuses largely on national security topics, www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/22/neoliberal-american-capitalism-rocks-on-but-does-anyone-hear-pope-francis/

Though not explicitly stated, America’s most powerful instrument of national power is Capitalism. The pistons that power Neoliberal American Capitalism are: Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic, Financial, Law Enforcement, Intelligence and Human Capital/People. The clearest exposition of the instruments of national power on record can be found in the US Army’s 2008 Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare Manual. No assessment of American political, economic, international, cultural or military strategy/action can be stamped “legitimate” without reference to and understanding of these Olympian tools of power that America’s leaders have at their disposal. Combined they are the elements that form the spear and its tip that is Neoliberal American Capitalism.

Novice Packet Files 379

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – SCS aff Hegemony Advantage Power struggles – like SCS – increase and extend capitalist exploitation Progressive Labor Party, June 4, 2015, China Military Growth Sets Stage for War, The Progressive Labor Party is an international movement opposed to capitalism headed by scholars and workers from many countries and backgrounds, www.plp.org/challenge/2015/6/4/china-military-growth-sets-stage-for-war.html Recent tensions between the U.S. and China reflect a sharpening battle among imperialists for the world’s wealth. The U.S., top dog since World War II, is struggling to maintain control over resources, markets and exploitable labor. With critical shipping routes and huge oil reserves in the South China Sea at stake, a clash between the U.S. and China looms as a potential prelude to all-out war, the inevitable outgrowth of imperialist competition. As always under capitalism, the international working class will bear the brunt of this conflict. Imperialist war will end only when the working class, led by the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, seizes state power. Only communism can serve workers’ needs. Only a led by PLP can truly make us free.

Novice Packet Files 380

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – SCS aff International Law Advantage International law is deeply entrenched in, and supports, capitalism Linarelli, Salomon, & Sornarajah, 2015, Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, The Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy, John Linarelli is Chair in Commercial Law at Durham University, co-directs the Institute of Commercial and Corporate Law at Durham and is a member of the Centre for Law and at Durham. Margot Salomon is Associate Professor in the Law Department and the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics where she directs the Laboratory for Advanced Research on the Global Economy. Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah is CJ Koh Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore., www.lse.ac.uk/humanRights/research/projects/theLab/internationalLaw.aspx

Contemporary international law supports a particular approach to the market and the promotion of economic interests. Since the early 1990s, it has been constructed around a neoliberal supporting a global capitalism of markets for goods, services and technology, open foreign investment regimes, and the free flow of capital across state borders. This ideology reflects a general commitment to private title and , to and accumulation, but was built around the promises by the economically powerful of widespread social and economic benefit. In significant ways these promises did not materialize, often because international law promotes the wrong values and benefits the powerful at the expense of the weak, either by design or because of its structural inadequacies. What has become apparent are the ways in which domination, exploitation and coercion, accompanied by gross inequalities, serve as a set of unexamined facts about the global economy and its normative order, international law. The post-1945 international legal order was supposed to be a break from the coercion of international law of the past in the interests of justice, but what seems to have happened is that the coercion has simply taken on a particular form, which, when combined with fragmentation in international law, have resulted in serious normative deficiencies.

Novice Packet Files 381

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – Space aff Colonization Advantage The of growth will follow us to space – we will destroy our ecosystems Julien Tort, 2005, UNESCO, Working paper for the Ethical Working Group on Astrobiology and Planetary Protection of ESA (EWG) July 28, 2005, “Exploration and Exploitation: Lessons Learnt from the Renaissance for Space Conquest”, Julien Tort is a philosopher, economist and engineer by training and a Programme Specialist in the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology at UNESCO Paris, http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/files/8462/11223823441ExplorationExploitation.pdf/ExplorationExploitation.pdf The scenario in which extraterrestrial room is used as a response to the degradation of the terrestrial environment also leads us to the second question that may be asked when considering the parallel between the conquest of the West and the exploration of space. While the possibility of colonizing celestial bodies may seem distant, it diverts attention from terrestrial issues in a very real way. The of the accumulation of Capital is profoundly bound to the pollution and the overexploitation of natural resources. Likening space exploration to the discovery of America may then be misleading and dangerous. There is –most probably— no new earth to be discovered through space conquest and it is, so far, unlikely that any relief can come from outer space for environmental pain. Furthermore, even if the possibility of human settlements on other celestial bodies was likely, would it still be right to neglect the terrestrial environment, with the idea that we can go and live elsewhere when we are done with this specific planet (again a scenario that science fiction likes: see for example the end of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation)? In a way, the presentation of space as a new area for conquest and expansion tends to deny that the model of the limitless exploitation of natural resources is facing a crisis.

Novice Packet Files 382

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – Space aff Economy Advantage State funded technological innovation only furthers income inequality and exploits poorer countries Tony Smith, SPRING 2015, Red Innovation, Magazine, Tony Smith is a professor of philosophy at Iowa State University and the author of Technology and Capital in the Age of Lean Production, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/socialism-innovation-capitalism-smith/

Capitalism also hampers the ability of much of the world to contribute to technological advancement. Whole regions of the global economy lack the wealth to support meaningful innovation. Today, only four countries spend over 3 percent of their GDP on research and development; a mere six others devote 2 percent or more. Capital in these advantaged regions has the opportunity to establish a virtuous circle, free-riding on the extensive public investment discussed above. Privileged access to advanced R&D enables capitalists to appropriate high returns on successful innovations; these returns allow those to make effective use of technological advances in the next cycle, setting the stage for future profits. At the same time, enterprises in poorer regions, lacking access to high-level R&D, find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle. Their present inability to make significant innovations that would enable them to compete successfully in world markets undercuts their future prospects. Only a handful of countries — such as South Korea and Taiwan — have ever been able to move from this starting disadvantage. Global disparities in technological change alone do not explain why 1 percent of people in the world now own 48 percent of global wealth. But they are a major part of the story; technological change is a weapon that enables the privileged to maintain and extend their global advantages over time.

Novice Packet Files 383

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – Cyber aff Economy Advantage Intellectual property is one of the most wide ranging and destructive tools of capitalism Peter Frase, September 2013, Property and Theft, Jacobin Magazine, Peter Frase is on the editorial board of Jacobin and the author of the forthcoming book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/09/property-and-theft/

Faced with these outrages, it’s tempting to demand the immediate destruction of the entire edifice of and copyright protection. All the more since intellectual property compounds the general socialist discomfort with , because the right it encodes is such an expansive one. No longer just the right to control a particular physical space or object, it abstracts the property form into the control of patterns and processes, wherever and whenever they appear. Instead of owning a book or a factory, the intellectually propertied class controls all copies of the book, and all implementations of the production process within the factory. This issue of Jacobin includes a pair of essays that explain the origins and implications of this new property form. Sean Andrews traces IP to the laws of seventeenth- and eighteenth- century England and the ideas of , showing how intellectual property protections go back to the beginnings of capitalism itself. It is the scope of these laws, and their relative economic importance, that has changed in recent years. Anne Elizabeth Moore gives a more contemporary reading, as she describes the patent and copyright regimes in detail and explores their spread around the world. She makes the point that intellectual property, no less than the material kind, supports a system of class power that is both bourgeois and patriarchal. Gendered conceptions of credit and reward are written into the structures of the property laws themselves, from the range of things that can be covered by it (novels, but not recipes) to who can claim control over it. Both of these essays demonstrate the absurdities and injustices of a strengthening IP regime. Yet each, in a different way, shows that simply denouncing all intellectual property is inadequate, as are the political battle lines that are often drawn today. On one side, we find pirates and free-culture advocates, insisting that “information wants to be free” and that any attempt to enclose the copying of patterns within legal restrictions is an affront and an inanity. This view unites a sort of Left- Right coalition that can encompass the libertarian economist David K. Levine and the amorphous rebellion of Europe’s Pirate parties. Arrayed against them are those who may acknowledge the corporate corruption of the patent and copyright systems, but who nevertheless hold up a reformed IP system as a bulwark against the depredations of a “sharing economy” that all too often amounts to a handful of Internet monopolists profiting from the uncompensated labor of creative workers. Jaron Lanier, author of the recent Who Owns the Future?, is one of the more strident proponents of this view.

Novice Packet Files 384

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – Cyber aff Deterrence Advantage Hacking is key to Marxist revolution Johan Soderberg, 2008, Hacking Capitalism: The Free and Open Source Software Movement page 4, Johan Soderberg is associate professor of Theory of Science at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science, Goteborgs Universitet, downloads.gvsig.org/download/people/vagazzi/Hacking%20Capitalism.pdf The promise of hacking is that, by making computer technology accessible to non-professionals, it undermines the social as the regulating principle for technological development. In plain language; corporate and government institutions have lost their monopoly over research and development. Concrete political results follow when decisions over technology are spread to the crowd. The mass defection from the intellectual property regime in file sharing networks, the challenge posed by the free operating system GNU/Linux to Microsoft's dominance over the computer desktop, and the circumvention of state censorship and surveillance on the Internet, all hinges on that the tools and skills for writing software code are made public by hackers. This emancipatory promise contradicts the association regularly made between cyber-politics and high-tech . Occasionally, the potential of hacking for progressive and radical change has been acknowledged by public commentators. Readers of New Your Times were in 2000 confronted with the proclamation that the communist republic now existed on the Internet. The journalist Andrew Sullivan made the point that dot-communism had sprung up in the heartland of the most advanced capitalist country of our time, America, just as had predicted. Similar ideas have been voiced by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek. In a paraphrase of Vladimir Lenin's famous endorsement of electricity, Zizek exclaimed in a tongue-in- cheek way that: "socialism = free access to the Internet + power to the soviets". Sporadic allusions to the Communist Manifest are frequent within the computer underground. The most renowned insider drawing parallels between Marx and the hacker movement is Eben Moglen. As the pro bono general counsellor for the Free Software Foundation, an influential organization of hackers, Eben Moglen is well accustomed with the practice of hacking. He is convinced that capitalism will be brought to an end by a tide out of which hacking is just the first wave.

Novice Packet Files 385

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – CRC aff Human Rights Advantage Human rights promotion justifies military interventions and restructures societies to be exploited by capitalism Karen Wells, 24 July 2015, What do children need most: saving, rights or solidarity?, Open Democracy, Karen Wells is Assistant Dean for the Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also Reader in International Development and Childhood Studies. She is the author of Childhood in a Global Perspective and has published widely on the visual representation and the impacts of global structures and flows on children and childhood, https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/karen-wells/what-do-children-need-most-saving-rights-or-solidarity

There can be no doubt that child well-being is used as a Trojan horse for external intervention. I could cite any number of instances of this but perhaps one will suffice: when the US government sought to legitimate its attack on Afghanistan, Laura Bush said “Fighting brutality against women and children is not the expression of a specific culture; it is an acceptance of our common humanity” (cited in Cynthia Weber’s book Imagining America at War). This is straightforward enough to counter: bombs for regime change in the name of child welfare is clearly a cynical ploy for masking real politick. However, other types of development-related interventions, for example getting children to go to school rather than work or mass vaccinations to eradicate infectious diseases, are more complicated in their effects. On the one hand, they do save the lives of individual children and they may well improve the life chances of individuals. On the other, they are also mechanisms through which new (liberal) ideas about the person and their relationship to society are embedded in non/pre-capitalist societies, ideas that are compatible with capitalist economics. The governance that is made possible through the actions of development agents is one that tries to obscure the inequalities inevitably inscribed in global capitalism by mitigating its impacts on the most vulnerable: children. At the same time it engages children, through education and participation, in ways of being in the world that are congruent with liberal capitalism: freedom, and .

Novice Packet Files 386

Capitalism Kritik Specific Links – CRC aff Identity Politics Advantage Identity politics has reached its limits – fragments resistance to capitalism Jodi Dean, January 23, 2016, The JFRP: For a New Communist Party, Jodi Dean is a political philosopher and professor in the Political Science department at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She has also held the position of Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, https://antidotezine.com/2016/01/23/for-a-new-communist-party/

JD: First I want to say that I disagree with the claim that there is no left. In fact, I think that “the left” is that group that keeps denying its own existence. We’re always saying that we’re the ones who don’t exist. But the right thinks that we exist. That’s what is so fantastic, actually. Did you see the New York Post screaming that is really a communist? Great! They’re really still afraid of communists! And it’s people on the left who say, “Oh, no, we’re not here at all!” The left denies its own existence and it denies its own collectivity. Now, is identity politics to blame? Maybe it’s better to say that identity politics has been a symptom of the pressure of capitalism. Capitalism has operated in the US by exacerbating racial differences. That has to be addressed on the left, and the left has been addressing that. But we haven’t been addressing it in a way that recognizes how racism operates to support capitalism. Instead, we’ve made it too much about identity rather than as an element in building collective solidarity. I’m trying to find a way around this to express that identity politics has been important but it’s reached its limits. Identity politics can’t go any further insofar as it denies the impact of capitalism. An identity politics that just rests on itself is nothing but liberalism. Like all of the sudden everything will be better if black people and white people are equally exploited? What if black people and white people say, “No, we don’t want to live in a society based on exploitation?”

Novice Packet Files 387

Capitalism Kritik Consequentialist Impact Scenario - Impact Capitalism is unsustainable - the drive for will cause extinction, but the alt solves Adrian Parr, 2013, THE WRATH OF CAPITAL: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, pp. 145-147, Adian Parr is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at the University of Cincinnati, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/parr15828)

A quick snapshot of the twenty-first century so far: an economic meltdown; a frantic sell-off of public land to the energy business as President George W Bush exited the White House; a prolonged, costly, and unjustified war in Iraq; the Greek economy in ruins; an escalation of global food prices; bee colonies in global extinction; 925 million hungry reported in 2010; as of 2005, the world's five hundred richest individuals with a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million people, the richest 10 percent accounting for 54 percent of global income; a planet on the verge of boiling point; melting ice caps; increases in extreme weather conditions; and the list goes on and on and on.2 Sounds like a ticking time bomb, doesn't it? Well it is. It is shameful to think that massive die-outs of future generations will put to pale comparison the 6 million murdered during the Holocaust; the millions killed in two world wars; the genocides in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Darfur; the 1 million left homeless and the 316,000 killed by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The time has come to wake up to the warning signs.3 The real issue climate change poses is that we do not enjoy the luxury of incremental change anymore. We are in the last decade where we can do something about the situation. Paul Gilding, the former head of Greenpeace International and a core faculty member of Cambridge University's Programme for Sustainability, explains that "two degrees of warming is an inadequate goal and a plan for failure;' adding that "returning to below one degree of warming . . . is the solution to the problem:'4 Once we move higher than 2°C of warming, which is what is projected to occur by 2050, positive feedback mechanisms will begin to kick in, and then we will be at the point of no return. We therefore need to start thinking very differently right now. We do not see the crisis for what it is; we only see it as an isolated symptom that we need to make a few minor changes to deal with. This was the message that Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez delivered at the COP15 United Nations Climate Summit in on December 16, 2009, when he declared: "Let's talk about the cause. We should not avoid responsibilities, we should not avoid the depth of this problem. And I'll bring it up again, the cause of this disastrous panorama is the metabolic, destructive system of the capital and its model: capitalism.”5 The structural conditions in which we operate are advanced capitalism. Given this fact, a few adjustments here and there to that system are not enough to solve the problems that climate change and environmental degradation pose.6 Adaptability, modifications, and displacement, as I have consistently shown throughout this book, constitute the very of capitalism. Capitalism adapts without doing away with the threat. Under capitalism, one deals with threat not by challenging it, but by buying favors from it, as in voluntary carbon-offset schemes. In the process, one gives up on one's autonomy and reverts to being a child. Voluntarily offsetting a bit of carbon here and there, eating vegan, or recycling our waste, although well intended, are not solutions to the problem, but a symptom of the free market's ineffectiveness. By casting a scathing look at the neoliberal options on display, I have tried to show how all these options are ineffective. We are not buying indulgences because we have a choice; choices abound, and yet they all lead us down one path and through the golden gates of capitalist heaven. For these reasons, I have underscored everyone's implication in this structure – myself included. If anything, the book has been an act of outrage – outrage at the deceit and the double bind that the "choices" under capitalism present, for there is no choice when everything is expendable. There is nothing substantial about the future when all you can do is survive by facing the absence of your own future and by sharing strength, stamina, and courage with the people around you. All the rest is false hope. In many respects, writing this book has been an anxious exercise because I am fully aware that reducing the issues of environmental degradation and climate change to the domain of analysis can stave off the institution of useful solutions. But in my defense I would also like to propose that each and every one of us has certain skills that can contribute to making the solutions that we introduce in response to climate change and environmental degradation more effective and more realistic. In light of that view, I close with the

Novice Packet Files 388

following proposition, which I mean in the most optimistic sense possible: our politics must start from the point that after 2050 it may all be over.

Novice Packet Files 389

Capitalism Kritik Consequentialist Impact Scenario - Framing The uncertainty regarding every possible outcome makes consequentialism the only option for most rational decision-making Robert E Goodin, 1995, Cambridge University Press, “Utilitarianism As a ”, Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Public Policy, pg 63, Robert E Goodin, Robert 'Bob' E. Goodin (born 30 November 1950),[1] is professor of government at the University of Essex, and professor of philosophy and social and political theory at Australian National University.[2] He is the editor of The Journal of Political Philosophy[3] and the co-editor of the British Journal of Political Science.[4] pg 63)

My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more plausible for them (or, more precisely, makes them adopt a form of utilitarianism that we would find more acceptable) than private individuals. Before proceeding with that larger argument, I must therefore say what it is that is so special about public officials and their situations that makes it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. Consider, first the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices-public and private alike- are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, at relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices. But that is all. That is enough to allow public policy makers to use the utilitarian calculus – if they want to use it at all – to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the utility payoffs from adopting each alternative possible general rule. But they cannot be sure what the payoff will be to any given individual or on any particular occasion. Their knowledge of generalities, aggregates and averages is just not sufficiently fine-grained for that.

Novice Packet Files 390

Capitalism Kritik Deontological Impact Scenario - Impact Capitalism underlies all forms of oppression – the erosion of justice and values creates inequality that results in crime, disposability, incarceration, , excessive surveillance, exclusion, marginalization, and social death Henry A. Giroux, 2014, Tikkun, Volume 29, Number 3, Summer 2014, Duke University Press “Neoliberalism’s War Against the Radical Imagination” project muse; accessed 7/20/15, Henry A Giroux holds the Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University

Democracy is on life support in the United States. Throughout the social order, the forces of predatory capitalism are on the march. Their ideological and material traces are visible everywhere—in the dismantling of the , the increasing role of corporate money in politics, the assault on unions, the expansion of the corporate surveillance- military state, widening inequalities in wealth and income, the defunding of higher education, the privatization of public education, and the war on women’s reproductive rights. As Marxist geographer David Harvey, political theorist Wendy Brown, and others have observed, neoliberalism’s permeation is achieved through various guises that collectively function to undercut public faith in the defining institutions of democracy. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, public institutions and public spheres are first downsized, then eradicated. When these important sites of democratic expression— from public universities to community health care centers—vanish, what follows is a serious erosion of the discourses of justice, equality, public values, and the common good. Moreover, as literary critic Stefan Collini has argued, under the regime of neoliberalism, the “social self” has been transformed into the “disembedded individual,” just as the notion of the university as a public good is now repudiated by the privatizing and atomistic values at the heart of a hyper-market-driven society. We live in a society that appears to embrace the vocabulary of “choice,” which is ultimately rooted in a denial of reality. In fact, most people experience daily an increasing limitation of choices, as they bear the heavy burden of massive inequality, social disparities, the irresponsible concentration of power in relatively few hands, a racist justice and penal system, the conversion of schools into detention centers, and a pervasive culture of violence and cruelty—all of which portends a growing machinery of social death, especially for those disadvantaged by a ruthless capitalist economy. Renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz is one of many public intellectuals who have repeatedly alerted Americans to the impending costs of gross social inequality. Inequality is not simply about disproportionate amounts of wealth and income in fewer hands, it is also about the monopolization of power by the financial and corporate elite. As power becomes global and is removed from local and nation-based politics, what is even more alarming is the sheer number of individuals and groups who are being defined by the free-floating class of ultra-rich and corporate powerbrokers as disposable, redundant, or a threat to the forces of concentrated power. Power, particularly the power of the largest corporations, has become less accountable, and the elusiveness of illegitimate power makes it difficult to recognize. Disposability has become the new measure of a neoliberal society in which the only value that matters is . Compassion, social responsibility, and justice are relegated to the dustbin of an older modernity that now is viewed as either quaint or a grim reminder of a socialist past. The Institutionalization of Injustice A regime of repression, corruption, and dispossession has become the organizing principle of society in which an ironic doubling takes place. Corporate bankers and powerbrokers trade with terrorists, bankrupt the economy, and commit all manner of crimes that affect millions, yet they go free. Meanwhile, across the United States, citizens are being criminalized for all sorts of behaviors ranging from dress code infractions in public schools to peaceful demonstrations in public parks. As Michelle Alexander has thoroughly documented in her book The New Jim Crow, young men and women of color are being jailed in record numbers for nonviolent offenses, underscoring how justice is on the side of the rich, wealthy, and powerful. And when the wealthy are actually convicted of crimes, they are rarely sent to prison, even though millions languish under a correctional system aimed at

Novice Packet Files 391

punishing immigrants, low-income whites, and poor minorities. An egregious example of how the justice system works in favor of the rich was recently on full display in Texas. Instead of being sent to prison, Ethan Couch, a wealthy teen who killed four people while driving inebriated, was given ten years of probation and ordered by the judge to attend a rehabilitation facility paid for by his parents. (His parents had previously offered to pay for an expensive rehabilitation facility that costs $450,000 a year.) The defense argued that he had “,” a “disease” that afflicts children of privilege who are allegedly never given the opportunity to learn how to be responsible. In other words, irresponsibility is now an acceptable hallmark of having wealth, enabling the rich actually to kill people and escape the reach of justice. Under such circumstances, “justice” becomes synonymous with privilege, as wealth and power dictate who benefits and who doesn’t by a system of law that enshrines lawlessness. In addition, moral and political outrage is no longer animated by the fearful consequences of an unjust society. Rather than fearing injustice at the hands of an authoritarian government, nearly all of us define our fears in reference to overcoming personal insecurities and anxieties. In this scenario, survival becomes more important than the quest for the good life. The is no longer built on the possibility of social mobility or getting ahead. Instead, it has become for many a nightmare rooted in the desire to simply stay afloat and survive.

Novice Packet Files 392

Capitalism Kritik Deontological Impact Scenario - Framing We have a moral obligation to treat individuals with full dignity and respect – anything less is the road to tyranny and sacrifice Henry Shue, 1989, Nuclear Deterrence and Moral Restraint: Critical Choices for American Strategy, pp. 141-2, Henry Shue is a Professor of Ethics and Public Life at Princeton University, https://books.google.com/books?id=YTVgQAXt_J4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Given the philosophical obstacles to resolving moral disputes, there are at least two approaches one can take in dealing with the issue of the morality of nuclear strategy. One approach is to stick doggedly with one of the established moral theories constructed by to “rationalize” or “make sense of” everyday moral intuitions, and to accept the verdict of the theory, whatever it might be, on the morality of nuclear weapons use. A more pragmatic alternative approach assumes that trade-offs in moral values and principles are inevitable in response to constantly changing threats, and that the emergence of novel, unforeseen challenges may impel citizens of Western societies to adjust the way they rank their values and principles to ensure that the moral order survives. Nuclear weapons are putting just such a strain on our moral beliefs. Before the emergence of a nuclear-armed capable of threatening the existence of Western civilization, the slaughter of millions of innocent human to preserve Western values may have appeared wholly unjustifiable under any possible circumstances. Today, however, it may be that Western , if they are to survive as guardians of individual freedom, can no longer afford to provide innocent life the full protection demanded by Just War morality. It might be objected that the freedoms of Western society have value only on the assumption that human beings are treated with the full dignity and respect assumed by . Innocent human life is not just another value to be balanced side by side with others in moral calculations. It is the raison d’etre of Western political, economic, and social institutions. A free society based on individual rights that sanctioned mass slaughter of innocent human beings to save itself from extinction would be “morally corrupt,” no better than soviet society, and not worth defending. The only morally right and respectable policy for such a society would be to accept destruction at the hands of tyranny, if need be. This objection is partly right in that a society based on individual rights that casually sacrifices innocent human lives for the sake of common social goods is a contradiction in terms. On the other hand, even Just War doctrine allows for the unintentional sacrifice of some innocent human life under certain hard-pressing circumstances. It is essentially a consequentialist moral doctrine that ascribes extremely high – but not absolute – value to innocent human life. The problem for any nonabsolute moral theory, of course, is where to draw the line.

Novice Packet Files 393

Capitalism Kritik Discursive Impact Scenario - Impact Their capitalist discourse and framing reduces the debate to a mere extension of economic managerialism – this crushes the real, transformative potential of education Marie Lall, 2012, Policy, Discourse and Rhetoric How New Labour Challenged Social Justice and Democracy, EDUCATIONAL FUTURES RETHINKING THEORY AND PRACTICE Volume 52, Professor Marie Lall is a South Asia expert (India, Pakistan and Burma/Myanmar) specialising in political issues (with regard to the economy, geopolitics of energy, foreign policy formulation, citizenship and Diaspora politics) and education (with specific regard to policy, gender, ethnicity and conflict, the formation of national identity and its close links with citizenship), She received her MPhil from Cambridge in 1993 and her PhD from the London School of Economics in 1999, https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/767-policy-discourse-and-rhetoric.pdf

Neoliberalism can be identified as the predominant ideology of the last decades (Giroux, 2002); in effect the new ‘common sense’ that has replaced the of the post-war era. It has penetrated education (Harris, 2007) changing the purpose of education itself (Bartlett et al., 2002; Wolf, 2002). Education currently is seen as a main condition for economic success, central to any modern economy. (Gamanikov 2009) Often forgotten is that education is relevant for the development of citizenship values (see chapter 2 in this volume), and for the sake of learning (McGregor, 2009; Wolf, 2002). Although it brings economic benefits it also brings an essential contribution to the public good (Margison 1993 in McGregor, 2009). Neoliberal ideology not only changed the purpose of education, but it also changed the structure of education systems (Bartlett et al., 2002; Wolf, 2002). Through the implementation of neoliberal policies, education was opened to the market assuming the features just described. This has meant that there are private providers entering into the education system in a context of deregulation, which constitutes the commercialisation and marketisation of education (Ball, 2007; Verger, 2008). The debate over the role of the state led to reforms across all UK public services. Over the last 20 years the way the public sector has been managed has changed markedly - there has been a shift away from old-style bureaucratic administration. The elevation of effectiveness and efficiency as the sole criteria of legitimacy reflects the increasing dominance of an ethic of managerialism and a concomitant emphasis upon measuring and improving performance (see chapter 1 in this volume). This new way of perceiving public services also gave rise to an ‘accounting logic,’ promoting a general that what is visible and quantifiable is what is important. However professional ‘outputs’ are not easily standardised and measurable: ‘In various guises, the key elements of the education reform ‘package’ – and it is applied with equal vigour to schools, colleges and universities - are embedded in three interrelated policy technologies: the market, managerialism and performativity.’ (Ball 2003) As the role for the state has changed from provider to regulator, there has been the loss of a distinctive public sector. It is important not to suggest a ‘golden age’ of public sector administration. There are lots of criticisms that can be (and were) made, for example, issues of professional discretion and judgement, the lack of client consultation, the slow and weighty bureaucracy, the hierarchy and the lack of accountability. But the reforms leading to a change from public sector bureaucracy to managerialism have also affected the character, ethos, values and behaviour of individuals and organisations. Today the discussion of education focuses not so much on the transformations in peoples’ lives brought about by education, or the quality of their educational , but the number of qualified students, the savings made in the delivery of services and the proportion of students going on into higher education. The effects of neoliberalism on social justice and education ‘It is clear therefore that with increased market logic there is also an increase in democratic deficit and with it a reduction of the social justice agenda, especially in the public sector arena as new inequalities are created.’ (Lall and Nambissan 2011 p.7) The effects of the reforms across the UK education sector have led to substantial change. The new policy discourse is restricting both for head teachers managing the schools and teachers in the classroom (Harris: 2007). With regard to schooling the focus has shifted to an instrumentalist thinking with measurable outputs. Schools aim to raise achievement in order to compete with each other through league tables. The influx of new educational providers such as academies has led to increased opportunities for students from poorer backgrounds to attend different types of schools. Nevertheless, as Roberts (2001 in Reay, 2006) argues, this transformation has created the illusion of a fairer society while it creates a stratification along the system which relegates the working classes to different trajectories than middle classes (Reay, 2006). The underlying assumption is that free markets allow parents to choose the school that aligns with their expectations and needs. The possibility of choosing a school would act as a natural selection process through which unpopular schools will be forced to change or to close if they do not adapt to clients expectations (Ball, 1993). However the rhetoric of choice assumes that all parents have equal cultural capital and are equally informed and capable of making such a choice for their children. The middle classes benefit whilst the lower classes have to make do with the leftovers (Leathwood, 2004; Reay, David and Ball, 2005). This has also affected those with Special Educational

Novice Packet Files 394

Needs, where a rhetoric of inclusive education has not resulted in equitable education provision for all. (See Chapter 3 in the volume) There have been similar effects in the higher education sector: Marketisation across the sector has made performativity and accountability cornerstones of higher education policies today. Increasing the number of institutions has led to a stratified system with ‘first’ and ‘second class’ universities providing a different quality learning experience and catering to different sections of society. The pressure to increase the number of students, account for how time is spent and the general concern with national and international rankings are all effects of the changing understanding of what higher education stands for. The role of the university is no longer that of a ‘public interest institution’ but being sites of ‘knowledge production’ in light of the economic imperatives of the ‘knowledge economy.’ (see Chapter 4 in this volume).

Novice Packet Files 395

Capitalism Kritik Discursive Impact Scenario - Framing Focus on discourse is first priority - it defines the possible field of policies and determines what that policy will ultimately be Les Bell & Howard Stevenson, 2006, 'What is Educational Policy?', Education Policy published by Routledge, Les Bell is Professor of Education at the Centre for Educational Leadership and Management and Director of the Doctor of Learning programme. Howard Stevenson is a lecturer in Educational Leadership and Management based at the Centre for Educational Leadership and Management, Univeristy of Leicester, eprints.lincoln.ac.uk/1851/1/Ed_Policy_book_proofs.pdf pages 8-9

All those working in schools and colleges must make sense of their policy context. Policy agendas require a response as those in the institution are faced with the task of implementing policy directives. Those in senior leadership positions face a particular challenge as they often represent the interface between the organization and the external policy environment. Key decisions must be made relating to the interpretation and implementation of external policy agendas – those decisions will in turn reflect a complex mix of factors including personal values, available resources and stakeholder power and . Understanding and anticipating policy therefore becomes a key feature of ‘leadership’ (Day et al. 2000) – understanding where policies come from, what they seek to achieve, how they impact on the learning experience and the consequences of implementation are all essential features of educational leadership. To some extent it may be argued that in recent years studies of ‘leadership’ have supplanted studies of policy. This in part reflects the emergence of a managerialist agenda in which institutional leadership and management is often reduced to a technical study of the ‘one best way’ to deliver education policy objectives determined elsewhere within the socio-political environment and legitimated by a dominant discourse which may be located outside the immediate sphere of education (Thrupp and Willmott 2003). Policy is treated uncritically and denuded of its values, neglecting to assess how policy impacts differentially on different social groups. The importance of policy, as distinct from leadership, is recognized in this volume, but a simple dichotomy between leadership or policy is avoided – the key issue is to explore the relationship between the interdependent themes of leadership, policy and power. This volume acknowledges the importance of leadership, but seeks to make the case that leadership must be located within a policy context. A failure to fully understand the complex ways in which policy shapes, and is shaped by, leadership fails adequately to explain the actions and practices of leaders at both the organizational and operational levels. Key practitioners in schools and colleges, rather than being passive implementers of policies determined and decided elsewhere, are able to shape national policy at an early stage, perhaps through their involvement in interest groups, professional associations or their favoured position in government policy forums and think-tanks. In other cases, influence may be exerted at an institutional level as the organizational principles and operational practices through which policy is implemented are formed and re-formed. Leaders in educational institutions, therefore, are both policy implementers and policy generators. For these reasons it can be more accurate to describe a process of policy development, rather than use the more traditional, but less helpful, term of policy making. Sharp distinctions between policy generation and implementation can be unhelpful as they fail to account for the way in which policy is formed and re-formed as it is being ‘implemented’. The term policy development also more accurately conveys the organic way in which policy emerges. This is not to argue that policies develop in entirely serendipitous ways. On the contrary, an important theme of this book is to argue that policy is decisively shaped by powerful structural forces of an economic, ideological and cultural nature. Nevertheless the crucial role of human in the development of policy must be recognized. Furthermore, if institutional leaders do not mechanically implement policy from the state, nor do those studying and working in educational institutions mechanically implement the policies of their institutional leaders. Policy is political: it is about the power to determine what is done. It shapes who benefits, for what purpose and who pays. It goes to the very heart of educational philosophy – what is education for? For whom? Who decides? The point is well made by Apple:

Novice Packet Files 396

Capitalism Kritik Alternative Solvency Alternative is to create and advocate class solidarity against capitalism

Class solidarity is key to solve all capitalism’s impacts Progressive Labor Party, Last Updated 2016, PLP homepage, The Progressive Labor Party is an international movement opposed to capitalism headed by scholars and workers from many countries and backgrounds, www.plp.org/challenge/2013/12/26/china-us- imperialists-heading-for-armed-clash.html Only the dictatorship of the working class — communism — can provide a lasting solution to the disaster that is today’s world for billions of people. This cannot be done through electoral politics, but requires a revolutionary movement and a mass led by PLP. Worldwide capitalism, in its relentless drive for profit, inevitably leads to war, fascism, poverty, disease, starvation and environmental destruction. The capitalist class, through its state power — governments, armies, police, schools and culture — maintains a dictatorship over the world’s workers. The capitalist dictatorship supports, and is supported by, the anti-working-class of racism, sexism, , individualism and religion. While the bosses and their mouthpieces claim “communism is dead,” capitalism is the real failure for billions worldwide. Capitalism returned to Russia and China because socialism retained many aspects of the profit system, like wages and privileges. Russia and China did not establish communism. Communism means working collectively to build a worker-run society. We will abolish work for wages, money and profits. Everyone will share in society’s benefits and burdens. Communism means abolishing racism and the concept of “race.” Capitalism uses racism to super-exploit black, Latino, Asian and indigenous workers, and to divide the entire working class. Communism means abolishing the special oppression of women — sexism — and divisive gender roles created by the class society. Communism means abolishing nations and nationalism. One international working class, one world, one Party. Communism means that the minds of millions of workers must become free from religion’s false promises, unscientific thinking and poisonous ideology. Communism will triumph when the masses of workers can use the science of dialectical to understand, analyze and change the world to meet their needs and aspirations. Communism means the Party leads every aspect of society. For this to work, millions of workers — eventually everyone — must become communist organizers. Join Us!

Novice Packet Files 397

Capitalism Kritik Alternative Solvency Class centric resistance is key – leads to an egalitarian democracy Bertell Ollman, Last updated 2016, What is Marxism? A Bird's-Eye View, Dialectical Marxism: The Writings of Bertell Ollman, Bertell Ollman is a professor of politics at New York University. He teaches both dialectical and socialist theory. He is the author of several academic works relating to Marxist theory. Ollman attended the University of Wisconsin, receiving a BA in political science in 1956 and an MA in political science in 1957. He went on to study at Oxford University, earning a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1959, an MA in political theory in 1963, and a PhD in political theory in 1967, https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php

In order to supplement the institutions of force, capitalism has given rise to an ideology, or way of thinking, which gets people to accept the status quo or, at least, confuses them as to the possibility of replacing it with something better. For the most part, the ideas and concepts which make up this ideology work by getting people to focus on the observable aspects of any event or institution, neglecting its history and potential for change as well as the broader context in which it resides. The result is a collection of partial, static, distorted, one-sided notions that reveal only what the capitalists would like everyone to think. For example, in capitalist ideology, consumers are considered sovereign, as if consumers actually determine what gets produced through the choices they make in the supermarket; and no effort is made to analyze how they develop their preferences (history) or who determines the range of available choices (larger system). Placing an event in its real historical and social context, which is to say—studying it "dialectically," often leads (as in the case of "consumer sovereignty") to conclusions that are the direct opposite of those based on the narrow observations favored by ideological thinking. As the attempted separation of what cannot be separated without distortion, capitalist ideology reflects in thought the fractured lives of alienated people, while at the same time making it increasingly difficult for them to grasp their alienation. As the contradictions of capitalism become greater, more intense, and less amenable to disguise, neither the state nor ideology can restrain the mass of the workers, white and blue collar, from recognizing their interests ( "class conscious") and acting upon them. The overthrow of capitalism, when it comes, Marx believed, would proceed as quickly and democratically as the nature of capitalist opposition allowed. Out of the revolution would emerge a socialist society which would fully utilize and develop much further the productive potential inherited from capitalism. Through democratic planning, production would now be directed to serving social needs instead of maximizing private profit. The final goal, toward which socialist society would constantly build, is the human one of abolishing alienation. Marx called the attainment of this goal "communism".

Novice Packet Files 398

Capitalism Kritik Alternative Solvency Organizing politics around unconditional resistance to capitalism solves – has to come first Peter McLaren, 2006, “Slavoj Žižek's Naked Politics: Opting for the Impossible, A Secondary Elaboration”, Peter McLaren is a professor of cultural studies at the University of California, http://www.jacweb.org/Archived_volumes/Text_articles/V21_I3_McLaren.htm

Žižek challenges the of the gender-race-class grid of reflexive positionality when he claims that class antagonism or struggle is not simply one in a series of social antagonisms—race, class, gender, and so on—but rather constitutes the part of this series that sustains the horizon of the series itself. In other words, class struggle is the specific antagonism that assigns rank to and modifies the particularities of the other antagonisms in the series. He notes that "the economy is at one and the same time the genus and one of its own species" ( 193). In what I consider to be his most important work to date, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality (coauthored with and ), Žižek militantly refuses to evacuate reference to historical structures of totality and universality and argues that class struggle itself enables the proliferation of new political subjectivities (albeit subjectivities that ironically relegate class struggle to a secondary role). As Marx argued, class struggle structures "in advance" the very terrain of political antagonisms. Thus, according to Žižek, class struggle is not "the last horizon of meaning, the last signified of all social phenomena, but the formal generative matrix of the different ideological horizons of understanding" ("Repeating" 16-17). In his terms, class struggle sets the ground for the empty place of universality, enabling it to be filled variously with contents of different sorts (ecology, feminism, anti-racism). He further argues that the split between the classes is even more radical today than during the times of industrial class divisions. He takes the position that post-Marxists have done an excellent job in uncovering the fantasy of capital (vis-à-vis the endless deferral of pleasure) but have done little to uncover its reality. Those post-Marxists who are advocates of new social movements (such as Laclau and Mouffe) want revolution without revolution; in contrast, Žižek calls for movements that relate to the larger totality of capitalist social relations and that challenge the very matter and antimatter of capital's social universe. His strategic focus on capitalist exploitation (while often confusing and inconsistent) rather than on racial, ethnic, gender, or sexual identity is a salutary one: "The problem is not how our precious particular identity should be kept safe from global capitalism. The problem is how to oppose global capitalism at an even more radical level; the problem is to oppose it universally, not on a particular level. This whole problematic is a false one" (Olson and Worsham 281). What Žižek sets himself against is the particular experience or political argument. An experience or argument that cannot be universalized is "always and by definition a conservative political gesture: ultimately everyone can evoke his unique experience in order to justify his reprehensible acts" ("Repeating" 4-5). Here he echoes Wood, who argues that capitalism is "not just another specific oppression alongside many others but an all- embracing compulsion that imposes itself on all our social relations" ("Identity" 29). He also echoes critical educators such as Paulo Freire, who argues against the position that experiences of the oppressed speak for themselves. All experiences need to be interrogated for their ideological assumptions and effects, regardless of who articulates them or from where they are lived or spoken. They are to be read with, against, and upon the scientific concepts produced by the revolutionary Marxist tradition. The critical pedagogical act of interrogating experiences is not to pander to the autonomous subject or to individualistic practices but to see those experiences in relationship to the structure of social antagonisms and class struggle. History has not discharged the educator from the mission of grasping the "truth of the present" by interrogating all the existing structures of exploitation present within the capitalist system where, at the point of production, material relations characterize relations between people and social relations characterize relations between things. The critical educator asks: How are individuals historically located in systematic structures of economic relations? How can these structures—these lawless laws of capital—be overcome and transformed through revolutionary into acts of freely associated labor where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all?

Novice Packet Files 399

Capitalism Kritik Permutation Answers Perm doesn’t solve: Using the state strengthens and legitimizes the capitalist system Jim Glassman 2004, , “Transnation hegemony and US labor foreign policy: towards a Gramscian international labor geography”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, volume 22, pages 573-593, Jim Glassman is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia

Whilst previously neglected, it is clear that advanced a conception of the state within a broader Marxist approach to political economy that he referred to as 'Critical Economy'.8 For Gramsci, a 'Critical Economy' approach was distinguished from the 'Classical Economy' of and in that it did not seek to construct abstract hypotheses based on generalised, historically indeterminate conditions of a generic 'homo oeconomicus' (Gramsci 1995, 166–167). The whole conception of 'Critical Economy' was historicist in the sense that categories were always situated within historical circumstances and assessed within the particular context from which they derived, rather than assuming a universal 'homo oeconomicus' (ibid., 171–173, 176–179). Moreover, the importance of a theory of value was acknowledged to the extent that: one must take as one's starting point the labour of all working people to arrive at definitions both of their role in economic production and of the abstract, scientific concept of value and , as well as ... the role of all capitalists considered as an ensemble (ibid., 168). This distancing from liberal ideology was then continued in Gramsci's direct reflections on the state. According to Gramsci, the conception of the state developed by dominant classes within capitalist social relations derived from a separation of politics and economics. 'The state', as represented by the intellectual class supportive of dominant social forces, 'is conceived as a thing in itself, as a rational absolute' (Gramsci 1992, 229). Additionally, in those situations when individuals view a collective entity such as the state to be extraneous to them, then the relation is a reified or fetishistic one. It is fetishistic when individuals consider the state as a thing and expect it to act and, are led to think that in actual fact there exists above them a phantom entity, the abstraction of the collective organism, a species of autonomous divinity that thinks, not with the head of a specific being, yet nevertheless thinks, that moves, not with the real legs of a person, yet still moves (Gramsci 1995, 15).

Novice Packet Files 400

Capitalism Kritik Transition Wars Disadvantage Answers No Link: The crackdown won’t happen – capital can’t afford to attack its labor István Meszaros, 95, Beyond Capital, István Mészáros is a 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, P 725-727

Another argument which is often used in favour of permanent accommodation is the threat of extreme authoritarian measures that must be faced by a socialist revolutionary movement. This argument is backed up by emphasizing both the immense destructive power at capital's disposal and the undeniable historical fact that no ruling order ever cedes willingly its position of command over society, using if need be even the most violent form of repression to retain its rule. The weakness of this argument is twofold, despite the factual circumstances which would seem to support it. First, it disregards that the antagonistic confrontation between capital and labour is not a political/military one in which one of the antagonists could be slaughtered on the battlefield or riveted to chains. In as much as there can be chains in this confrontation, labour is wearing them already, in that the only type of chains compatible with the system must be 'flexible' enough to enable the class of labour to produce and be exploited. Nor can one imagine that the authoritarian might of capital is likely to be used only against a revolutionary socialist movement. The repressive anti-labour measures of the last two decades — not to mention many instances of past historical emergency characterized by the use of violence under the capital system —give a foretaste of worse things to come in the event of extreme confrontations. But this is not a matter of either/or, with some sort of apriori guarantee of a 'fair' and benevolent treatment in the event of labour's willing accommodation and submission. The matter hinges on the gravity of the crisis and on the circumstances under which the antagonistic confrontations unfold. Uncomfortable as this truth may sound to socialists, one of the heaviest chains which labour has to wear today is that it is tied to capital for its continued survival, for as long as it does not succeed in making a strategic break in the direction of a transition to a radically different social metabolic order. But that is even more true of capital, with the qualitative difference that capital cannot make any break towards the establishment of a different social order. For capital, truly, 'there is no alternative' — and there can never be — to its exploitative structural dependency on labour. If nothing else, this fact sets well marked limits to capital's ability to permanently subdue labour by violence, compelling it to use, instead, the earlier mentioned 'flexible chains' against the class of labour. It can use violence with success selectively, against limited groups of labour, but not against the socialist movement organized as a revolutionary mass movement.

Novice Packet Files 401

Capitalism Kritik Transition Wars Disadvantage Answers - Framing Revolution is necessary for long term survival – outweighs transition wars. Short term pain, long term gain Chris Lewis, 1998, "The Paradox of Global Development and the Necessary Collapse of Modern Industrial Civilization," in The Coming Age of Scarcity: Preventing Mass Death and Genocide in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Michael N Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann, p. 59- 60, Chris Lewis is an American Studies professor at University of Colorado-Boulder

In conclusion, the only solution to the growing political and economic chaos caused by the collapse of global industrial civilization is to encourage the uncoupling of nations and regions from the global economy. Effort to integrate the underdeveloped countries with this global economy through sustainable development programs such as Agenda 21 will only further undermine the global economy and industrial civilization. Unfortunately, millions will die in the wars and economic and political conflicts created by the accelerating collapse of global civilization. But we can be assured, on the basis of the past history of the collapse of regional civilizations such as the Mayan and the Roman empires, that, barring global nuclear war, human societies and civilizations will continue to exist and develop on a smaller, regional scale. Yes, such civilizations will be violent, corrupt, and often cruel, but, in the end, less so than our current global industrial civilization, which is abusing the entire planet and threatening the mass death and suffering of all its peoples and the living, biological fabric of life on earth. The paradox of global economic development is that although it creates massive wealth and power for modern elites, it also creates massive poverty and suffering for underdeveloped peoples and societies. The failure of global development to end this suffering and destruction will bring about its collapse. This collapse will cause millions of people to suffer and die throughout the world, but it should, paradoxically, ensure the survival of future human societies. The collapse of global civilization is necessary for the future, long-term survival of human beings. Although this future seems hopeless and heartless, it is not. We can learn much from our present global crisis. What we learn will shape our future and the future of the complex, interconnected web of life on earth.