Capitalism Kritik - Gonzaga 2013

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Gonzaga Debate Institute 2013 Capitalism KPointer/LeDuc/Gaither

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Economic engagement with Latin America fuels capitalist exploitation – the plan isused to make imperialist violence more efficient and invisible

Tumino Assistant Professor of English @ City University of New York, 02,(Stephen, author of Cultural Theory After the Contemporary, May/June 02, The Red Critique,“C ntesting the Empire -al Imaginary: The Truth f Dem cracy as Class,”http://redcritique.org/MayJune02/contestingtheempirealimaginary.htm, [Accessed 7/8/13], JB).

But freedom and democracy under capitalism is only for the few who can afford it because they live offthe labor of the many . As capitalism develops on a global scale, the many cannot even meet theirbasic needs and are compelled to enter into struggle against the bosses —as Argentina, after only 10 years of neoliberal deregulation, andVenezuela, whose workers must arm themselves simply to defend the minor redistributions of wealth of the Chavez government, once again

show. The emergent revolutionary struggles in Latin America once again prove the basic truth ofMarxism: that the global development of capitalism leads to its own downfall by producing arevolutionary working class with nothing left to lose and a world to win by taking power from theowners and running the economy for the social good . This truth is , however, covered up by a thick layer ofmystification by the corporate media through a variety of relays and mediations. This mystification serves to naturalizethe social inequality at the basis of capitalism and maintain the status quo . Take the lie that the North, led by theUS, has a moral destiny to bring freedom and democracy to the South crushed by poverty and corruption. The poverty and corruption of courseare the result of freedom and democracy —the freedom of the capitalist to exploit human labor power for profit which is what in actuality"chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe" and "comp els all nati ns, n pain f extincti n, t *…+ intr duce what it callscivilization into their midst", as The Communist Manifesto says (Marx 477). The "moral" story about protecting human rights is told to cover up

the material truth about democracy being the freedom to exploit others fo r profit. The story is needed to alibi the regime ofwage-labor and capital as a fact of nature . In other words, it portrays the normal daily exploitation of laborunder capitalism as the free expression of human nature in comparison with which its everydaybrutality is made to appear "extreme" and "irrational" rather than a socially necessary consequence ofprivate property . The representation of capitalism as natural is of course not natural at all but historical: it is

needed now to manufacture consensus that capitalism cannot be changed at a time when it is obvious that thematerial conditions already exist to abolish class inequality. As Venezuela shows, it is obvious that what stands in the way of a regime directedtoward meeting people's needs, which is what Chavez represents, is not a lack of respect for human rights by immoral and corrupt people ofthe South, but the need of big business for a bigger share of the world market. It was the US oil giants represented by the Bush regime,supported by the trade union bureaucracy in this country, that aided the counter-revolutionary coup in Venezuela (e.g., by fomenting the oilworkers strike as the core of a "civil society" movement that tried to abolish the popular social reforms of the Chavez government). It is forprofit not democracy that the US supported the reactionary coup to overthrow Chavez (not jus t in words but with financial aid, militaryweapons and advisors as the British Guardian has reported); it is for profit and not for democracy that the US supports Israel and is currentlycolonizing Afghanistan as preparation for taking Iraq. It is obvious that the Bush regime is guided by profit and not democracy, which is whyglobal public opinion is everywhere outside the US opposed to US "unilateralism" and "empire" building. This growing "obviousness" ofdemocracy as hegemony of the rich threatens the ideology of capitalism by exposing democracy as the bourgeois freedom to exploit the laborand resources of the world. It is also behind the formation of a transnational populist left, however, that goes along with the system of wagelabor and capital by marking the obvious hoax of democracy but nevertheless channeling the opposition into a reformist politics to maintaincapitalism. By merely contesting its obviously barbaric effects rather than engage in a radical critique of capitalism for a social revolutionagainst wage-slavery that is the cause of the effects, the left supports the ideology of democracy as class rule. It thus goes along with thereactionary backlash to make social contradictions into problems of "governance" and "policy" of "unruly" subjects —the powerless are made tobear responsibility for the contradictions of class society. What is emerging in the wake of the revolutionary explosionsin Latin America is the growing awareness that it is becoming impossible to simply deny the basic truthof Marxism on democracy as class inequality . As a result, newer mystifications of capitalism and why it changes are alsoemerging to stabilize the status quo. The dominant mode of naturalizing capitalism is to represent the new socialstruggles as spontaneous movements of the oppressed, by denying that they are a product of historyas class struggle over the conditions of production. Rather than produce awareness of the classinterests behind the emerging struggles the populist left portrays them as the outcome of spontaneous rebellionsof the people against power . It is thus on the left most of all that one finds the alibi of capitalism as

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democracy that proposes capitalism may be reformed while the exploitation at its root remains intact .A reformed capitalism is simply a code for a more efficient regime of exploitation and imperialistbrutality —it is appeasement of the violent democracy of the owners.

The impact is extinctionBrown, 05 (Charles, Professor of Economics and Research Scientist at the University of Michigan, 05/13/2005,http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2005w15/msg00062.htm) The capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation-the means of production and distribution. Workers sell their ability to

work in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists buy the workers' labor, but only pay them back a portion of thewealth they create. Because the capitalists own the means of production, they are able to keep the surplus wealth created byworkers above and beyond the cost of paying worker's wages and other costs of production . This surplus iscalled "profit" and consists of unpaid labor that the capitalists appropriate and use to achieve ever-greater profits. These profits are turned intocapital which capitalists use to further exploit the producers of all wealth-the working class. Capitalists are compelled by competition to seek tomaximize profits. The capitalist class as a whole can do that only by extracting a greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers by increasing

exploitation. Under capitalism, economic development happens only if it is profitable to the individualcapitalists, not for any social need or good. The profit drive is inherent in capitalism, and underlies orexacerbates all major social ills of our times . With the rapid advance of technology and productivity, new forms of capitalistownership have developed to maximize profit. The working people of our country confront serious, chronic problems because of capitalism.

These chronic problems become part of the objective conditions that confront each new generation of working people.The threat ofnuclear war, which can destroy all humanity, grows with the spread of nuclear weapons, space-based weaponry, and a

military doctrine that justifies their use in preemptive wars and wars without end. Ever since the end of World War II, the U.S. has beenconstantly involved in aggressive military actions big and small. These wars have cost millions of lives and casualties, huge material losses, as

well as trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Threats to the environment continue to spiral , threatening all life on our planet.Millions of workers are unemployed or insecure in their jobs, even during economic upswings and periods of "recovery" from recessions. Most

workers experience long years of stagnant real wages, while health and education costs soar . Many workersare forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet. Most workers now average four different occupations during their lifetime, beinginvoluntarily moved from job to job and career to career. Often, retirement-age workers are forced to continue working just to provide healthcare for themselves. With capitalist globalization, jobs move as capitalists export factories and even entire industries to o ther countries.

Millions of people continuously live below the poverty level ; many suffer homelessness and hunger . Public andprivate programs to alleviate poverty and hunger do not reach everyone, and are inadequate even for those they do reach. Racismremains the most potent weapon to divide working people. Institutionalized racism provides billions in extra profits

for the capitalists every year due to the unequal pay racially oppressed workers receive for work ofcomparable value . All workers receive lower wages when racism succeeds in dividing and disorganizing them. In every aspect ofeconomic and social life, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian a nd Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Middle Eastern peoples, and

other nationally and racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites. Racist violence and the poison ofracist ideas victimize all people of color no matter which economic class they belong to. The attempts to suppressand undercount the vote of the African American and other racially oppressed people are part of racism in the electoral process. Racismpermeates the police, judicial and prison systems, perpetuating unequal sentencing, racial profiling, discriminatory enforcement, and policebrutality. The democratic, civil and human rights of all working people are continually under attack. These attacks range from increasinglydifficult procedures for union recognition and attempts to prevent full union participation in elections, to the absence of the right to strike formany public workers. They range from undercounting minority communities in the census to making it difficult for working people to run foroffice because of the domination of corporate campaign funding and the high cost of advertising. These attacks also include growing censorshipand domination of the media by the ultra-right; growing restrictions and surveillance of activist social movements and the Left; open denial ofbasic rights to immigrants; and, violations of the Geneva Conventions up to and including torture for prisoners. These abuses all serve tomaintain the grip of the capitalists on government power. They use this power to ensure the economic and political dominance of their class.

Women still face a considerable differential in wages for work of equal or comparable value. They alsoconfront barriers to promotion, physical and sexual abuse, continuing unequal workload in home andfamily life, and male supremacist ideology perpetuating unequal and often unsafe conditions. The constantattacks on social welfare programs severely impact single women, single mothers, nationally and racially oppressed women, and all workingclass women. The reproductive rights of all women are continually under attack ideologically and politically. Violence against women in thehome and in society at large remains a shameful fact of life in the U.S.

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The alternative is to reject the aff

Rejection of the aff is key to a historical materialist criticism – voting negativeendorses an anti-capitalist methodology that denaturalizes the functions of capitalSan Juan 6 (Epifanio, Jr. , Fulbright Lecturer in American Studies at the Cath lic University f Leuven, Belgium, “Crisis and C ntradicti n inGl balizati n Disc urse” http://www.redcritique. rg/WinterSpring2006/crisisandc ntradicti ningl balizati ndisc urse.htm) APB

In order to probe and analyze the multilayered contradictions of any phenomenon, we need to apply theprinciple of historical totalizing : connecting spheres of culture, ideology, and politics to theoverarching structure of production and reproduction . This is axiomatic for any historical-materialistcritique . Consequently , t he question of cultural identity cannot be mechanically divorced from thehistorically determinate mode of production and attendant social relations of any givensocioeconomic formation . What is the point of eulogizing hybrid, cyborg-esque, nomadic global citizens —evenfluid, ambivalent "subject positions" if you like —when the majority of these postmodernized creatures are dying ofhunger, curable epidemics, diseases and psychosomatic illnesses brought about precisely by the predatoryencroachment of globalizing transnational corporations, mostly based in the U.S. and Western Europe? But it is not just academicpostmodernists suffering from the virus of pragmatist metaphysics who apologize for profit-making globalization. Even a latterly repentantWorld Bank expert, Joseph Stiglitz, could submit in his well-known Globalization and Its Discontents, the following ideological plea: "Foreign aid,

another aspect of the globalized world, for all its faults still has brought benefits to millions, often in ways that have almost gone unnoticed:guerillas in the Philippines were provided jobs by a World Bank financed-project as they laid down their arms" (Stiglitz 420). Any one slightly

familiar with the Cold War policies of Washington vis-à-vis a neocolony like the Philippines knows that World Bank funds werethen used by the U.S. Pentagon to suppress the Communist Party-led peasant rebellion in the 1950s againstthe iniquitous semi-feudal system and corrupt comprador regime (Doty; Constantino). It is globalization utilized to maintain directcoercive U.S. domination of the Philippines at a crucial conjuncture when the Korean War was mutating into the Vietnam War, all designed tocontain "World Communism" (China, Soviet Union). Up to now, despite nationalist gains in the last decade, the Philippine government playshost every year to thousands of U.S. "Special Forces" purportedly training Filipino troops in the war against "terrorism" —that is, against anti-imperialist forces like the Communist Party-led New People's Army and progressive elements of the Moro Islamic National Liberation Front andthe Moro National Liberation Front (International Peace Mission). One needs to repeat again that the present world system, as Hugo Radiceargues, remains "both global and national", a contingent and contradictory process (4). Globalization dialectically negates and affirms national

entities —pseudo-nations as well as those peoples struggling for various forms of national sovereignty. While a universal "freemarket" promoted by TNC triumphalism is deemed to be homogenizing and centralizing in effect , abolishingindependent states / nationalities , and creating a global public sphere through juxtaposition, syncretic amalgamation, and so on,one perceives a counter-current of fragmentation, increasing asymmetry, unbridgeable inequalities, and particularisticchallenges to neoliberal integration —including fundamentalist political Islam, eco-terrorism, drugs, migration, and other movements of"barbarians at the gates" (Schaeffer). Is it a question of mere human rights in representation and life-style, or actual dignity and justice in the

everyday lives of whole populations with singular life-forms? Articulating these historical contradictions withouttheorizing the concept of crisis in capital accumulation will only lead to the short-circuitingtransculturalism of Ashcroft and other ideologies waging battle for supremacy/hegemony over "popularcommon sense" imposing meaning / order/significance on the whole globalization process (Rupert). Indeed,academic inquirers of globalization are protagonists in this unfolding drama of universalization under duress. One may pose the following

questions as a heuristic pedagogical maneuver: Can globalized capital truly universalize the world and bringfreedom and prosperity to everyone, as its celebrants claim? Globalization as the transnationalizeddomination of capital exposes its historical limit in the deepening class inequality in a polarized,segregated and policed world. While surplus-value extraction in the international labor market remains basic tothe logic of accumulation, the ideology of neoliberal transnationalism has evolved into the discourseof war on terrorism ("extremism ") rationalized as "the clash of civilizations". Contradictions and itstemporary resolutions constitute the imperialist project of eliding the crisis of unilateral globalism. Ahistorical-materialist critique should seek to highlight the political economy of this recolonizingstrategy operating in the fierce competition of the ruling classes of the U.S., Japan, and Europe to impose hegemonic control inan increasingly boundary-destroying space and continue the neocolonial oppression of the rest of theworld. What is needed is a radical critique of the ideology of technological determinism and itsassociated apologetics of the "civilizing mission", the evangelism of "pre-emptive" intervention in the


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name of Realpolitik "democracy" against resistance by workers, peasants, women, indigenouscommunities (in Latin America, Africa, the Philippines and elsewhere [see Houghton and Bell; San Juan, "U.S. Imperial Terror"]), and allthe excluded and marginalized peoples of the planet.


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Link — AnthroThe aff’s attempt to reconnect human and animal ignores the materialist thoughtsthat created the binaryCotter, Assistant Professor of English at William Jewell College, 12(Jennifer, Winter/Spring 2012, The Red Critique, “Bi -politics, Transspecies Love and/as Class Commons-Sense”,http://redcritique.org/WinterSpring2012/biopoliticstransspeciesismandclasscommonssense.htm, accessed 7/3/13, JZ)This essentially spiritualist understanding of life, moreover, is codified on a new level within a specific variant of biopolitical theories —transspeciesist posthumanism —which posits a common spiritual life beyond historical differencesbetween "humans" and "animals" as the basis of new global social relations. As a form of biopolitical ideology,transspecies posthumanism displaces class relations with an ahistorical and spiritualist understandingof common life. Transspecies posthumanism does so more specifically by declaring the historical

differences between species —specifically between humans and other animals —as a metaphysical abstraction of thecommon fact of living that exists within all species. One of the main goals of transspeciesposthumanism is to divert attention away from class relations and exploitation of surplus-labor, byenacting a "fissure" in the concept of the human —that is, by ideologically dissolving the historicaldifference between human and animal —and, in so doing, invoking a "crisis" in the concept of humanlabor-power. Transspecies posthumanism, therefore, situates "life" —which it understands as"transspecies" life or life common to all species —outside of the historical relations that producedifferences between the species . In doing so it dispense with projects for material transformation of historical relations ofproduction on the grounds that they are "violently anthropocentric" and function on the basis of what Donna Haraway calls "the goad ofhuman exceptionalism" (When Species Meet 46). One of the central concepts through which biopolitical and transspecies posthumanisttheories advance a new spiritualism is in their theorizations of "love." "Love" is re-articulated in these discourses as an autonomous life-forcethat will bring into being new social forms and particularly a new "true," alternative globalization —what Hardt and Negri call an "ontologicalevent" which brings into being the "commons," and Donna Haraway calls an "other"-world but is, in actuality, a spiritualist theory of the "other-

worldly" which provides an ideological space for the privileged to accommodate capitalism and the exploitation of labor of the majority, in thename of a "resistant" and alternative globalization. In particular, post-nuclear and transspecies love, family and/or sexual relations are putforward in biopolitical and posthumanist theories as "constitutive" of a new world order. This paper addresses the class politics of the new bio-political and transspecies posthumanist spiritualism and especially what they offer as "resistant" theories of questions of life, love, family, andsexuality now. In particular, this essay critiq ues the class p litics f Hardt and Negri’s argument that "l ve" is a "bi p litical event" thatconstitutes the commons, including their seemingly radical argument in Commonwealth for a "mass exodus" from the family and capitalism,which they argue is an institution which corrupts the creative forces of biopolitical labor and prevents the multitude from bringing aboutc mm nwealth in s ciety. As well, this essay critiques the class p litics f D nna Haraway’s transspecies p sthumanist the ry of love in whichintimacy and "love" with companion species are represented as a radical "other-world-making" evolution and thus, representing capitalismitself as evolved and the regime of the "evolved." The argument that biopolitics is a form of spiritualism, to be clear, is at odds with the claimsand self-representations of bio-political cultural theorists, who contend that their theories are a "new" and "true" form of materialism. Bio-politics maintains that capitalist relations of production has been fundamentally materially transformed by the development of bio-technologies, cybertechnologies, knowledge work, the growth of service industries, the erosion of industrial manufacturing in the North... sothat earlier distinctions between "productive" and "reproductive" labor have collapsed. Antonella Corsani, for example, claims that "what isemerging from the metamorphoses of capitalism is a new relationship between capital and life" (107). "The sphere of reproductive activities,"Corsani contends, "is integrated into t hat f pr ducti n, s that ‘life itself’ is pr ductive f surplus -value" whether we are eating, drinking,"even," she claims, "when we are sleeping or making love" (117). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri confirm this assumption when they suggestthat we should no longer speak of capitalism in terms of "productive labor" but of "biopolitical labor" (which they use as a trope forreproductive labor) which produces social life itself or "subjectivities." In their recently published book, Commonwealth, Hardt and Negridisplace "exploitation" with "alienation" as the key s ite of struggle and social transformation when they declare: "we find ourselves being pulledback fr m expl itati n t alienati n, reversing the traject ry f Marx’s th ught" (139 -140). According to Hardt and Negri, "alienation" has nomaterial relation to exploitation (the theft of surplus-labor by owners of the means of production during the working day) and this, they claim,is owing "to the fact that some characteristics closely tied to exploi tati n particularly th se designating capital’s pr ductive r le, have faded"(140). On this basis bio-political theories posit reproduction —what Hardt and Negri refer to as "biopolitical production" —as having materiallydisplaced production in capitalism. What has actually been occurring in transnational capitalism, however, is nota disappearance of productive labor or exploitation (the theft f w rker’s surplus lab r by wners f the means f

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production), but the transfer of productive labor and the export of capital from the global North to theglobal South in search of securing sources of cheaper labor to exploit . As Paula Cerni has argued "somethingvery material has accompanied the creation of a ‘post -material’ economy where 83% of non-farm employeeswork in services." Far from actually bringing about a "post-material" economy "the real shift towards [unproductive] service sectors in Western

economies" has resulted in a situation in which Western economies "no longer produce enough goods to fund[their] own massive physical requirements, and, as a result, [they are] running an unprecedentedtrade deficit" (Cerni n. pag.). What is at the root of this is the fact that it is labor not the "immaterial" of culture or ideology that is thesource of social wealth. It is precisely because the basis of profit has been and continues to be the exploitation ofproductive labor that the wealth of North Atlantic capital —and its share of the profits of the world market —is indecline as it has concentrated investment in reproductive labor within its own respective nationalborders, has relied more heavily on productive labor around the world . To conflate the shifts in the way in whichNorth Atlantic capital aims to acquire a larger share of the social wealth in transnational capitalism, with a fundamental change in basis of howthis wealth is actually produced in transnational capitalism, is a parochial analysis of the global economy that erases the con tinued exploitationof surplus labor of workers around the world in China, in India, in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan... These shifts in production are not a break fromthe class relations of capitalism and the exploitation of workers around the world; they are an intensification of its irreconcilable classcontradictions. And the consequences of these class contradictions and their "solutions" have been devastating for workers both in the globalNorth and the global South, from the spiking of unemployment, to the loss of homes and pensions, to the gutting of public infrastructure forworkers and transferring this social wealth to corporations, to increases in suicide rates, depression, anxiety, and pharmaceutical dependency,

to "jobless and wageless recovery" which, in actuality, means an increase in the rate of exploitation of workers. I argue that biopolitics and

transspecies posthumanism, in displacing "class" with "life," "production" with "reproduction,""labor" with "love," are affective and ultimately spiritualist understandings of material contradictionsthat articulate what Marx calls an "inverted world-consciousness." In "A C ntributi n t a Critique f Hegel’sPhilosophy of Right: Introduction," Marx critiques religion for the way in which it articulates an inverted world consciousness because, on theone hand, it is "an expression of and p rotest against real suffering" and, on the other hand, it provides an "illusory happiness" for "real

suffering." By "illusory happiness" Marx means that religion provides an illusory resolution of the materialcontradictions of exploitation in capitalism that cause the "real suffering" to which religion is both an effect anda response. In this way, rather than providing a material solution to problems of social alienation whose origin are in material relations of

production, religion ends up providing a "spiritual aroma" for capitalism that helps to ideologically blurmaterial relations of class and culturally adjust exploited workers to ruling class interests . It is on this basisthat Marx argues that " The call [to workers] to abandon illusions about their condition is the call to abandona condition which requires illusions " (131). Biopolitics and transspecies posthumanism articulate the

"spiritual aroma" —the cultural imaginary —of transnational capital now. They do so by puttingforward a "common share" in the "immaterial" of a new "global" culture under capitalism in place oftransformation of the material relations of production in capitalism and freedom from exploitation. Indoing so they serve to naturalize the material relations of exploitation and culturally adjust thecontemporary workforces to the needs of capitalism now. In this respect, bio-political and transspecies posthumanisttheories of love are a continuation —in a new historical form —of updating the working class into a new morality. George Sampson, in his 1921book on British national education, English for the English, provides a telling historical example of this practice in his comments on the role ofteaching "English" literature and culture to the working-class: "Deny to working-class children any common share in the immaterial, andpresently they will grow into the men who demand with menaces a communism of the material" (as qtd in Eagleton 21). To put this anotherway, the "common share" in the "immaterial" of "culture" for all, was proposed by representatives of ruling class interests, such as Sampson, inorder to ideologically smooth over severe material contradictions which were leading British workers to increasingly call into question the basis

of ruling class wealth in their own exploitation. More generally, moreover , these comments are symptomatic of the factthat it is in the material interests of capital to provide "immaterial" and "spiritual" resolutions to

deflect attention away from the economic and at the same time maintain the cultural cohesion ofsocial bonds that are necessitated by social relations of production founded on exploitation. Bio-political and transspecies posthumanist theories f "l ve" are ide l gical and illus ry articulati ns f w rkers’ actual needto do away with the conditions that "require illusions." They are a form of "inverted world-consciousness" because theyobscure the material need of workers to abolish the material relations under which they areexploited —material relations, that is, which lead to sharpening alienation for workers . This is to say thatbiopolitical and transspecies posthumanist theories of love are ideological and illusory not becauseexploited workers do not actually have affective needs; workers do, indeed, have affective needs such as needs for love.


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Rather, they are ideological and illusory —a form of "inverted world-consciousness" —because they present love as a spiritualforce that will heal social alienation without the transformation of material relations founded onprivate property and exploitation that produce alienation in the first place .

The aff’s focus on ethically reconsolidating the human -animal relationship ignores thehuman-human relationship of class strugglesDeFazio, English Professor at University of Wisconsin Lacrosse, 12(Kimberly, Winter/Spring 2012, The Red Critique, “Machine-Thinking and the Romance ofP sthumanism”,http://redcritique.org/WinterSpring2012/machinethinkingandtheromanceofposthumanism.htm, accessed 7/6/13, JZ)

It is quite telling, then, that, as Wolfe makes clear, for posthumanists, human exploitation of humans stems fromhuman exploitation of animals: "if we allow the human/animal distinction to remain intact... then themachinery of speciesism and animalization will be available to use against various subjugated groups,animal or human, as history well shows" ("Speciesism, Identity Politics, and Ecocriticism" 102). Such arguments are especiallyeffective (and hence popular in the publishing industry) because, however much he may criticize commodification, he ultimately takes criticalpressure off of the role of capital in impoverishing the world's majority and destroying the environment, and places it (back) onto a "humanity"beyond classes. The implication of Wolfe's argument is that struggles which prioritize social equality are not only unethical but futile, since

there can be no social change between humans until humans change their (more "fundamental") relations to animals. But human-animal relations, once again, are shaped by the social relations between people . And because it is the socialrelations that shape material life, not only for humans but also for other species, different forms of social organizationconsequently have different relations to animals. Social organizations based on collective ownershipof property (as in early Native American tribes) have very different (in contemporary discourses, "ecological") relations to thenatural environment, compared to societies based on the commodification of labor, in which all aspects ofsocial and natural life are exchanged for private profit, regardless of the human or ecological consequences. In claiming that humanexploitation is caused by the exploitation of animals by humans, not only does Wolfe therefore invertthe real relations conditioning human's lives and cover over historical difference but he rendersinsignificant the great historical struggles to transform class relations . It is not therefore surprising that theargument for the "most different difference" of the animal is closely tied to Wolfe's and otherposthumanists' pragmatic, "ethical" argument against the possibilities of an equal society —argumentswhich recall the more politically reactionary aspects of romanticism. In discussing a text by Paul Patton on the relations between horses andhumans, for instance, Wolfe writes that what makes Patton's analysis so important is that "it helps to make clear the requirements andobligations of those hierarchical relations of power we do enter into (with animals, with children, with each other) and draws our attention tohow those requirements are always specific to the beings involved, in the light of which, he argues, the presumption of a one-size-fits-all notionof 'equality in all contexts' is 'not only misleading but dangerous'" (Zoontologies xix). While the argument here seems to be a "progressive" callto be aware of the power dynamics that exist in all relations so as to treat others "ethically," its more emphatic claim is the deeply conservative

argument against establishing "equal" conditions of equality for all, which casts principles for universal equality as "dangerous." Wolfe'spragmatism tellingly echoes the right-wing argument that efforts to provide "universal" health care,to establish federal laws requiring corporations to set caps on emissions or provide workerscompensation are violent "impositions" on the local and the specific . It is in this context that Edmund Burkeadvocated as "natural" the "hereditary succession [of power] by law" and denounced the struggles for democracy around the FrenchRevolution as a "perversion" of individuality: "We procure reverence to our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teaches us torevere individual men," whereas "those who attempt to level, never equalise. In all societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, somedescription must be uppermost. The levelers therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things" (Reflections on the Revolution in

France 30, 43) —a sentiment that has grown increasingly popular in the American political context. This is, by the way, why pragmatism isso effectively aligned with ethics: both highlight the specificity of context and the absence of anyfoundation of judgment and reject any notion of objective basis that might be used to explain theunderlying relations of specificities. Ethics, to put it bluntly, is the ruse through which the "natural"

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existence of class relations is justified today. Ethics (individual acts of kindness, or what Foucault calls the "care of the self")is what follows once one has already decided that no serious social change is possible.


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Link — Critical Terrorism StudiesThe aff excludes class and material analysis – that crowds out interest in capitalism inthe field – that means its bound to fail and makes it just another tool in classdominationHerring, Reader in International Politics, 2008(Eric Herring, Reader in Internati nal P litics, 2008, “Criti cal terrorism studies: an activist scholarperspective”, Critical studies n terr rism, V l. 1, N . 2, p. 198 – 200, Fontana)

In the development of critical security studies thus far, never mind mainstream security studies, ¶historical materialist (Marxist, neo-Marxist, and fusions of these with post-Marxist as opposed ¶ toexclusively post-Marxist) elements have been present to a minimal degree . For example, ¶ Karin Fierke ’s CriticalApproaches to International Security (2007) makes only passing ¶ mention to Marx and none to class, capitalism, orneoliberalism (despite it being the currently ¶ dominant ideology, form and project of capitalism ). InMutimer’s (2007) verview f critical ¶ security studies in the textbook edited by Alan Collins (one of the standard textbooks on security ¶ studies), Marxism is mentioned only once in terms f B th’s end rsement f it as part f critical security studies, and with criticaltheory framed as post-Marxist (pp. 62, 63). While critical ¶ theory has its origins in Marxism, as Mutimer hints, it hasbecome somewhat distanced from ¶ Marxist and neo-Marxist scholarship, even though thatscholarship continues to flourish . Wyn ¶ J nes’s (1999) attempt t gr und critical security studies in Frankfurt sch l criticaltheory ¶ involved relying mainly n Ulrich Beck’s p st -Marxism. One chapter in B th’s edited v lume ¶ Critical Security Studies and WorldPolitics (2005b) has a few brief discussions of Marxism and ¶ capitalism and a slightly more sustained discussion of neoliberalism, but nothing on

class. The ¶ lack of interest in historical materialism is a major weakness and imbalance within criticalsecurity studies as it has developed thus far . There has been an overwhelming emphasis on theideational dimension, discourse analysis, constructivism, and post-structuralism, and this is a crucial ¶limitation on its ability to theorise world politics in a systematic and politically relevant way. ¶ Meanwhile,scholars working with historical materialist perspectives are generating far-reaching ¶ and influentialanalyses which locate the discursive within the context of hierarchically structured relations atmultiple levels globally (e.g. Harvey 2000, 2005, Jessop 2002, 2003, 2007). ¶ Such analyses have been central to theenormously successful development of critical geography, critical sociology, and critical education studies, all politicallyengaged fields intertwined ¶ with actually existing current social movements (e.g. International Critical GeographyGroup ¶ (ICCG) n.d., Antipode n.d.). As Booth (2005a), in defining it as being within the scope of critical ¶ security studies, states: ‘ TheMarxian tradition offers a deep mine of ideas that are especially ¶ useful for thinking about ideology,class, and structura l power’ (p. 261). And he adds: ‘class …¶ is a much-ignored referent, despite massive life-threatening and life-determining insecurity ¶ being the direct result of poverty’ (Booth 2007, p. 197).Historical materialism, including its ¶ Gramscian and historical sociology variants, is flourishing withininternational relations (for a ¶ survey, see Hobden and Wyn Jones 2005) and is a major resource for critical terrorismstudies. ¶ Those who ‘do’ historical materialist analysis generally do not ‘do’ security studie s. This is¶ mainly

for political reasons, in that they see it overwhelmingly as a field which serves primarily ¶ as an instrument ofclass domination, and for intellectual reasons, in that the concept of security ¶ is seen as a relativelyunsatisfying one for theorising about world politics . The problem with this ¶ approach is that students new tosecurity studies will effectively, even if unintentionally and ¶ despite B th’s asserti n t the c ntrary, be guided tothe conclusion that they have little to ¶ learn from historical materialism and do not need to thinkabout class and capitalism . Path ¶ dependency – roads more and less travelled – will operate in a powerful way. For example, the ¶ ‘Appr aches t Security’ secti n f the first editi n f the C llins C n temporary Security ¶ Studies (2007) textbook effectively sets out securitystudies as involving choices between a ¶ traditional state-centric realist-liberal framing, a discursive-constructivist critical framing, or ¶ one


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focused thematically on peace studies, gender, securitisation, or human security. Marxism is ¶ discussed briefly in the traditional approacheschapter which is structured around realism and ¶ liberalism.

CTS fails to explain class relations in terrorism – historical materialism is needed as anew tradition in terror studiesOgunrotifa, Research Assistant at Edinburgh University, 12(Bayo Ogunrotifa, Research Assistant at Edinburgh University, April 2012 , “PUTTING HISTORICALMATERIALISM INTO TERRORISM STUDIES” , Internati nal J urnal f Current Research, V l. 4,P.228-229,JF)However, CTS can be credited for espousing history, ¶ ideology, context and intentions behind terrorismbeyond the ¶ narrow lens of orthodox approach. It is not clear following the ¶ review of literature atwhat point in its history did state and ¶ non-state actors engage or continue to engage in terrorism, ¶what class2 ¶ in society did non-state actors belong to, which ¶ class in society did non-state actorsrecruit to carry out ¶ individual terrorism ? How social contradictions in the society ¶ usher terrorism

within different classes? In other words, CTS ¶ failed to explain class analysis of terrorism : how social ¶relations of production among different social class produce ¶ terrorism within and across states . Theinability of CTS to ¶ address this brings us back to Historical Materialism as a ¶ theory that is needed toengage in class analysis of terrorism ¶ more than critical theory. Although, Herring (2008), Herring ¶ and Stokes (2011)and Jonathan (2011) have suggested that ¶ CTS should incorporate class analysis into its theoretical ¶ vocabulary, these appeals seemsto raise fundamental concern ¶ that may pitch it against certain interests who have somewhat severedtheir link with Marxist and neo-Marxist scholarship , ¶ particularly in Frankfurt Critical School or Welsh school of ¶ Critical SecurityStudies. It is my contention here that ¶ Historical Materialism (HM) should stand alone as new ¶ theoreticaltradition in terrorism studies or in the alternative be ¶ a new variant that is taking paradigmatic shift inCTS. This ¶ stems from the fact that if the focus of orthodox approach is to ¶ provide problem-solving tools (as Robert Cox 1981:128-130 ¶ argued) to combat military threats us ing counter-terrorism ¶ strategies against perceived enemies under the pretext of Waron Terror , CTS asfar as its current literature stands is less ¶ likely to shape policy direction . That explains why Duvall and ¶ Varadarajan (2003:81) opines that critical theories is grossly ¶ overdrawn for imposing dubious categorisation and ¶ simplifying all research into

either being policy relevant or ¶ having no bearing on policymaking. Therefore, HM must rise ¶ to the task of unpracticalgap left by CTS in order to advance ¶ scholarship that bears implications for Policy and Practical ¶ socio-political action that will help to stem the tide of state ¶ terrorism and individual terrorism of non-stateactors that are ¶ more likely to occur in the Third world countries than ¶ anywhere else in the future.

Ideological examinations of terrorism crowds out material ones –that ensures CTS willfail to fully developJackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, 2009Richard Jackson, Deputy Director at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, 12-14-2009,Paper prepared f r the BISA Annual C nference @ the University f Leicester, UK, “Critical Terr rismStudies: An Explanation, a De fence and a Way F rward”, p 17 -18, accessed 7/2/13, Fontana

A second necessity if CTS is to make a lasting impact on the future development of Terrorism Studies,is to go beyond critique and deconstruction and articulate an alternative, credible research agenda . Asdetailed elsewhere (Jackson, Breen Smyth and Gunning, 2009), CTS is a call for : (1) broadening the study ofterrorism to include subjects neglected by the leading scholars of the field and in its main journals,including, among other things, the wider social context of political violence, state violence, non-violent practices , and gender aspects f terr rism; (2) deepening terr rism research by unc vering the field s underlying ide l gical,


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institutional, and material interests and make the subjectivities and normative commitments of both researchers and researched more explicit;

and (3) making a commitment to emancipatory praxis central to the research enterprise . More specifically, I would suggest that aninitial CTS research agenda should include some of the following subjects. I recognise that there is a growingliterature on some of these subjects already; however, much of this research occurs largely outside of Terrorism Studies and does not always

engage directly with the issues and concerns of the broader terrorism field. Indeed, one of the tasks of a CTS field is to gatherin all these fragmented voices and serve as a tent under whose canvas research from cognate

disciplines can coalesce and cross-pollinate (Gunning 2007a). ¶ First, I would argue that there is a need to examine morethoroughly and systematically the discourses and representational practices of terrorism, and the ontological-discursive foundations – theideological, conceptual, and institutional underpinnings – which make both Terrorism Studies, and the practices of terrorism and counter-terrorism, possible in the first place. ¶ Sec nd, in additi n t exp sing and dec nstructing the field s „c nditi ns f p ssibility , I w uld suggestthat there is also a need to explore in much more detail the political-economic contexts of both theTerrorism Studies field as a politically-embedded domain of knowledge, and the theory and practice ofcounter-terrorism . In other words, applying historical materialist approaches ¶ 18¶ and takingmateriality seriously, there is a need for further exploration of how counter-terrorism functions as aform of ideology – how it works to promote certain kinds of material and class interests, maintainpolitical hegemony, and sustain dominant economic relationships. This means rooting critical analysesof the theory and practice of counter-terrorism within theories of class, capitalism , hegemony, and imperialism(see Herring, 2008).


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Link — DemocracyTheir drive to spread democracy to the ‘rest’ legitimates the expansion of capitalismby mystifying class relations as an antagonism between culture.Wilkie, Assistant Professor of Cultural and Digital Studies @ University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, 08,(Rob, Fall/Winter 2008, The Red Critique, “Supply-Chain Democr acy and the Circuits f Imperialism,”http://www.redcritique.org/FallWinter2008/supplychaindemocracyandcircuitsofimperialism.htm, [Accessed 7/8/13], JB).

On the right, one also finds economic differences rewritten as cultural differences , and in many of thesame terms, but the sides are reversed. Instead of the image of encroaching corporate homogenizationled by the United States imposing its cultural will on the local communities in the South, it is preciselyU.S. and European capital that is the guarantee of heterogeneity and difference. As David Pryce-Joneswrites in "Why They Hate Us", "Democracy means Us and Them. Yet nothing in the history or the cultureof Arabs and Muslims allows them to put this into any form of political practice. From long ago theyhave inherited a cast-iron absolute system, in which the ruler does as he pleases, and the rest have noredress, indeed going to the wall" (Pryce-Jones 8). According to this logic , which has perhaps been mostpopularly advanced in Samuel Huntington's The Class of Civilizations, global conflict is driven today by acultural divide between the values of "democracy" and "free enterprise" in the West andauthoritarian, closed, anti-capitalist regimes in the East . Huntington writes, "[i]n the post-Cold Warworld, the most important distinctions among peoples are not ideological, political, or economic. Theyare cultural" (21). It is in these terms that Huntington rewrites economic divisions as cultural differences.He argues, "[i]n this new world the most pervasive, important, and dangerous conflicts will not bebetween social classes, rich and poor, or other economically defined groups, but between peoples

belonging to different cultural entities" (28). Again, sharpening global class divisions are constructedas those between homogeneity and heterogeneity in which the "West" represents a civilization of"democracy , free markets, limited government, human rights, individualism, the rule of law" with the"Rest" who are said to oppose such values (184 ). These divisions are then naturalized as the source ofcapitalist development and expansion —an updated version of Weber's "protestant ethic" in which"values" and "attitudes" produce reality, rather than being an effect of it. Although Huntington himselfbelieves it to be "immoral" to impose Western cultural values on the East (for the "paternalistic" reasonthat that the East is not prepared or interested in any form of "democracy" or "human rights") others onthe right, such as "anglobalization" historian Niall Ferguson , take this thesis and argue thatglobalization is the means by which to spread through a new colonial project the culture ofdemocracy, free markets, and individual liberty to what he describes as the "failed states" of the

South that lack the "cultural values" of the North (Ferguson 25). In the substitution of the discourse of"culture" and "values" for class relations what is placed outside the boundaries of "real" discourse byboth the left and the right is any theory of globalization as imperialism , in which the primary goal ofcapital expansion is explained as a necessary effect of the material conditions for the furtheraccumulation of capital. This is what has made "globalization" such an effective concept for globalcapital —it substitutes for economic imperialism a world of spiritual conflicts and cultural bargains. Inthis context, while a number on the right are calling for reconsideration of "imperialism" as a way ofspreading "democracy, " many on the left have simply abandoned the theory of imperialism and argue

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that "the term imperialism may n l nger be adequate t address the present situati n *…which…+ isless coherent and less purposeful than imperialism" (Pieterse 77). Or, as Hardt and Negri put it moresuccinctly, "imperialism is over" (Empire xiv). To draw connections between the global expansion ofcapitalism and rising inequality is to be too reductive and trapped in the metanarrative of the past(Waters 186). Instead, the world is described as "multidimensional" (Steger 14), "without borders andspatial boundaries" (Waters 5), and "a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order, which cannot beunderstood in terms of existing center-periphery models" (Appadurai 221). What is at stake for boththe right and the left in deploying the rhetoric of cultural difference as a substitute for class divisionsis obscuring the economic realities of imperialism in order to maintain the illusion of the possibility ofcapitalism without exploitation that works at the level of ideology to divide the global working classagainst one another and bind them to the capitalist system. In contrast to these narratives, which aresuperficial readings of the contemporary in the sense of describing rather than analyzing recenteconomic developments and therefore remaining on the surfaces of society rather than addressing itsfundamental logic, I argue that in actuality capitalism has become more itself , not less, by going global and that the most effective means for understanding the interests of capital today remains thehistorical materialist theorization of imperialism . While the dominant approach to the developmentsof globalization obscures any discussion of the material conditions in which global society is currently

being produced by inverting the relationship between culture and the economic , what is representedas the emergence of a fundamentally new moment in capitalism based in communication technologies,cultural and economic networks, and immaterial labor is best understood as the global mode ofaccumulation corresponding to the stage of monopoly capitalism as explained by Lenin in Imperialism,The Highest Stage of Capitalism: namely the increasing concentration and centralizing of production inmonopolies, the subsequent development of "finance capital" and the export of capital to"underdeveloped" regions required by the rising level of organic capital in "developed" nations, and thedivision of the world's markets and resources between the economic monopolies. What makes such aview so controversial today, particularly for the Northern Left, is that while theories of globalizationhave increasingly had to attend to the growing contradictions of global capitalism it still remains almostuniversally accepted, even among more "radical" social theorists who argue that capitalism is a global

system of "exploitation," that the labor theory of value, which Lenin argues is essential to understandingwhy capital must expand globally and why it can be transformed into socialism, no longer has anyexplanatory value (Brenner 11; Wallerstein 20; Hardt and Negri, Multitude 150).

No risk of a turn- true democracy isn’t possible within their framework becausemoney corrupts the system so that it always serves the interests of the elite.Wilkie, Assistant Prof of Cultural and Digital Studies @ University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse ,01(Rob, Spring 2001, The Red Critique, “Class, Lab r and the "Cyber": A Red Critique f the "P st -Work"Ide l gy,” http://redcritique.org/spring2001/printversions/classlaborandthecyberprint.htm, [Accessed

7/8/13], JB).

If "full employment" has become, according to Beck, a "zombie concept" (online) it is not becauseworkers refuse to accept that "work" has become an ideological fetter in the "New Economy," butbecause "employment" is an objective index of the contradictions of class society. To put it simply,under capitalism the only means that workers have to meet their needs is to sell their labor-power. Theworking class interests of "full employment" —which would mean, in practice, a society of labor built onthe principle from each according to her ability to each according to her need —is in direct contrast to

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the ruling classes use of the unemployment of the industrial reserve army to drive down the cost oflabor-power in an attempt to increase profits. That is to say, it is not "ideas" that hold capitalism back —in this case, as Beck argues, an outdated puritan work ethic —but rather capitalism that creates ideasthat cannot be met . For example, as Lenin argues, monopoly capitalism transforms democracy into an"illusion" ("Reply" 24). While capitalism engenders democratic aspirations and creates democraticinstitutions, the division of labor between those who own the means of production and those whoown nothing but their labor power, a division which imperialism sharpens to its most brutalcontradictions, means that for the majority of the worlds' population democracy is an impossibility .Thus, while capitalism "cannot be overthrown by democratic transformations, no matter how ideal "socialism can be implemented only "with [the] full development of democracy , i.e. the genuinely equaland genuinely universal participation of the entire mass of the population in all state affairs and in allthe complex problems of abolishing capitalism" ("Reply" 25). In other words, contrary to Beck, it is notthat the ideal form of "work" has not been thought, but rather that the social system necessary for therealization of the end of wage-labor must be produced.


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contingent of mining companies extracting natural resources in Latin America, is also p laying a role in shaping the military and law enforcementstructures in Mexico and Latin America. ¶ According to the Canadian Internet site The Dominion: ¶ "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police[RCMP],along with trainers from the United States and other international partners, are providing basic training to Mexican Federal Police recruits,"said [Prime Minister] Stephen Harper during a stop in Guadalajara in 2009. In addition to training 1,500 low-level Federales, the RCMP trained300 mid-level Mexican officers and 32 Mexican police commanders received training at the Canadian Police College.... ¶ By late 2011, US fundinghad been used to " train over 55,000 law enforcement and justice sector officials, including 7,200 Federal police officers," according to the USState Department. ¶ The New York Times reported that this training involved "conducting wiretaps, running informants and interrogatingsuspects." ¶ Indeed, an essay in Al Jazeera provided background on the growing surveillance aid that the US is providing to pro-US LatinAmerican governments. In an article entitled, "How the US fuels Latin America's surveillance technology: The US war on drugs often bolstersanti-democratic forces abroad," the commentary stated that "in executing its wars on terror and drugs, the United States has been aiding theadoption of surveillance technologies in Latin America for decades." ¶ Increased surveillance capabilities in Mexico and Latin America make forthe ability of central governments to better control their nations, thus offering a more secure political environment for transnational

corporations. ¶ Global Corporations Prosper in Mexico in the Midst of Drug War Bloodshed ¶ Paley argued that in spite of the bloodyupheaval the last six years of the war on drugs has caused, it actually has coincided with a more

stable environment for global corporations in Mexico . She described how transnational corporationsand their workers are given special security forces to protect them amid the macabre violence, butshe made a more significant point concerning the "shock doctrine value" of the war on drugs inadvancing large corporate interests: ¶ Even more important is another kind of security transnationalcorporations need . As the director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean underscored, "What is importantfor an investor in regards to security has to do with legal security and country risk." ¶ This notion of "security" calls up theColombia model: paramilitarization in the service of capital. This model includes the formation of paramilitary deathsquads, the displacement of civilian populations and an increase in violence . In the commercial sector, it is workers, smallbusinesses and a sector of the local elite who are hit hardest by drug war policies. ¶ Though these non-official aspects of the war on drugs are sometimes presented as damaging or threatening foreigndirect investment, in fact it is violence that controls workers and displaces land-based communitiesfrom territories of interest to transnational corporate expansion. ¶ Paley contended that just as paramilitaryforces have aided US interests in serving as an adjunct to US-affiliated Central American military forces - most notably during theReagan and George Herbert Walker Bush administrations, but also before and after this period - they are now a permanent partof protecting the interests of corporations setting up shop in Latin America as a result of NAFTA, CAFTA, andother free-trade agreements. ¶ This includes the contracted killing of union organizers and the clearing ofindigenous populations on land coveted by companies or natural resource extraction businesses. Paleylisted Chiquita Brands, Drummond (mining) Company and British Petroleum among those likely involved in such activities in Colombia, forexample (Chiquita pled guilty to such a charge in 2007 in a DC court) - not to mention Coca-Cola. ¶ Indeed, according to Strafor GlobalIntelligence, incoming Mexican President Peña Nieto, has "expressed a desire to create a new national gendarmerie, or paramilitary policeforce, to use in place of the Mexican army and Marine troops currently deployed to combat the heavily armed criminal cartels in Mexico's most

violent hot spots. According to Peña Nieto, the new gendarmerie force would comprise some 40,000 agents." ¶ Government lawenforcement and the military, as well as paramilitary organizations play a role, according to DavidBacon, in protecting the interests of the ruling elite, who benefit and promote foreign investment atthe cost of violating labor and environmental rights, as well as exploiting indigenous populations: ¶ Forover two decades in many parts of Mexico, large corporations - mostly foreign owned but usually with wealthy Mexican partners - havedeveloped huge projects in rural areas. Called mega-projects, the mines and resource extraction efforts take advantage of economic reformsand trade treaties like the North American Free Trade Agreement. ¶ Emphasizing foreign investment, even at the cost of environmentaldestruction and the displacement of people, has been the development policy of Mexican administrations since the 1970s.... ¶ But while theseprojects enjoy official patronage at the top, they almost invariably incite local opposition over threatened or actual environmental disaster.

Environmental destruction, along with accompanying economic changes, causes the displacement ofpeople. Families in communities affected by the impacts are uprooted and often begin to migrate. ¶Upheaval caused by the war on drugs facilitates the seizing of lands owned by indigenouspopulations. ¶ The South American Trading Block Mercosur and Leftist Alliance ALBA Cause Increased US Military and Intelligence AgencyConcern Over the Southern Hemisphere ¶ On July 31, 2012, according to The New York Times, the South American trading alliance Mercosuradmitted Venezuela after a long contentious delay. Meanwhile, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) continues to build

a coalition of leftist governments in South America and the Caribbean. In response to this climate, the US is building more bases

in South America, using the drug war as an excuse according to an article reposted in Truthout. ¶ Representative of whatgives deep capitalist anxiety to Washington, DC, and Ottawa is the Bolivian government's decision to nationalize mines owned by the


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transnational corporation Glencore: "On June 22, the Bolivian government seized the company's Colquiri tin and zinc mine, south of the capitalcity of La Paz. Colquiri was the third Glencore operation to be nationalized by Bolivia in the last five years." ¶ That is an example of why the USwas quick to accept the "soft coup" impeachment (accomplished within 24 hours) of the populist President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo.According to journalist Ben Dangl, the new pro-US government is open for business to transnational corporations including the allegedlyenvironmentally unfriendly and exploitative Montreal-based mining company, Rio Tinto Alcan, and Monsanto, in a nation heavily dependent onsoy and cotton crops that Monsanto will now likely be able to monopolize. This is music to the ears of the free-trade proponents in the US andCanada, the war on drugs be damned.

The affirmative’s so called solution to the “war on drugs” is a ctually an excuse for theU.S. to militarize Latin America to benefit big corporations at the expensive of thegreater populationPaley, Vancouver Media Co-op cofounder, 12 — [Dawn Paley, co-founder of the VancouverMedia Co-op, has a Masters in Journalism from UBC and a degree in Women's Studies from SFU, 2012(“Drug War Capitalism: Militarization & Economic Transformation in Colombia & Mexico ,” Analysis,June/August 2012, Available Online at http://www.solidarity-us.org/pdfs/Dawn.pdf, accessed on July 4 th ,2013)][SP] Barely two months later, Calderón launched the war on drugs in Mexico . The following year, the U.S. andMexican governments announced the Mérida Initiative, described as “a package of U.S. counterdrug

and anticrime assistance for Mexico and Central America.” (27) By the time it was signed by George W. Bush in 2008,Garza’s pr dding ab ut cracking d wn n narc s in rder t b st business was f rg tten. Instead, the primary justificati n for lawmakersendorsing the bill was to stem the flow of drugs to the United States.(28) ¶ Both the U.S . government and critics agree that the Mérida Initiativein Mexic and Central America is a refined iterati n f Plan C l mbia. “We kn w fr m the w rk th at the United States has supported inC l mbia and n w in Mexic that g d leadership, pr active investments, and c mmitted partnerships can turn the tide,” Hillar y Clintonlectured delegates to the Central America Security Conference in Guatemala City last summer.(29) ¶ Total U.S. funding for the Mérida Initiativebetween 2008 and 2010 was $1.3 billion for Mexico, whose government matched the funds 13 to 1.(30) Mérida/Central America RegionalSecurity Initiative funds flowing to Central America during the same period stood at $248 million, while the Merida/Caribbean Basin Security

Initiative funds of $42 million went to Haiti and the Dominician Republic.(31) ¶ Merida’s “comprehensive strategy” includesfunds for training police and soldiers to protect critical infrastructure, militarizing police and outfittinglocal security forces with U.S. equipment, transforming the Mexican judicial system to a U.S.-style oraltrials system, modernizing the U.S.-Mexico border and promoting institutional building and economicreform. ¶ One f USAID’s pr gram g als is that the “G vernment f Mexic bec mes m re effective in curbing m n p lies and eliminatingantic mpetitive practices.”(32) They f cus n legislati n related t telec mmunicati ns, banking and energy regulati n. Anotherimportant objective is to advocate a new regulatory regime and additional privatization, deregulation,and foreign direct investment in the transportation, financial, energy and telecommunicationssectors.( 33)¶ Pemex — along with the Federal Electricity Commission — is the crown jewel of the privatization effort. Many prominentMexicans, including Enrique Peña Nieto, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate and frontrunner in the 2012 presidential elections,have advocated its privatiza ti n. S me, like the head f the Mexican St ck Exchange, have pr p sed using as their m del C l mbia’s il sect rreform.(34) ¶ In a March 2012 presentati n, a Bank f Mexic representative talked ab ut the pending ref rm agenda f r the c untry’s centra lba nk. This includes impr ving the ease with which c mpanies can d business in Mexic , rem ving “legal bstacles,” preventing l abor flexibility,“strengthening the rule f law,” and c ns lidating macr ec n mic p licies.(35) ¶ In 2008, before the financial crisis spread to Mexico, FDIreached $23.2 billion but fell the following year to $11.4 billion.(36) However FDI has rebounded and by 2011 stood at $19.43 billion, primarilyin the manufacturing sector (44.1%) followed by financial services (18%) and mining (8%).(37) Recent announcements indicate that there will be

a surge of new investment in auto and aerospace manufacturing in central Mexico. ¶ Mexico’s Finance Minister Bruno Ferrari toldBloomberg in an English interview in August 2011 that “Nowadays what we are seeing is that we are having a bigfight against crime so that, as I said, [it] guarantees the future investments and the investments we

are having right now because what we are seeing is that Mexic is fighting t prevail against crime.”(38) ¶ Ferrari ’s statement isbacked up by the experiences of the transnational business elite . According to a 2009 Business Week cover story,(39)attacks on foreign staff and factories have been rare in Juárez and other border towns along drug-trafficking routes, including Reynosa, Nuevo

Laredo, and Tijuana. ¶ Police are already deployed with special instructions to care for transnationalcorporations. Following the kidnapping of a corporate executive, the police suggested managers alter their work routines, leave Juárez bysund wn, and stick t tw key r ads. Patr ls were beefed up al ng these r ads, “creating relatively safe c rrid rs between th e border and the

industrial parks.”(40)¶ Even more important is another kind of security transnational corporations need . Asth e director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean underscored, “What isimportant for an investor in regards to security has to do with legal security and country risk. ”(41)¶ This

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crime has been simultaneously a cause and product of this weakening of the state. The crisis of the political system was intensified by morepopular rebellions and the acute electoral crisis of 2006 [when there was widespread popular anger that the governing PAN stole the electionfrom the rival PRD], leading to a new level of militarization of the government and society. ¶ Elaborate government and U.S. claims about drug

cartels and routes ¶ The current crisis and decomposition of the state has reached a point where it is verydifficult to distinguish between the attempts by the central power structure to reaffirm the authorityof the state in alliance with one or another drug cartel, and the simple conflicts between different

state institutions and levels allied with different drug gangs , or under their control, in competition for the merchandiseand trafficking routes. Under the administration of Vincente Fox [2000-2006], the federal government protected the Sinaloa and Juarez drugcartels and hit at their competition, the Tijuana and Gulf cartels. In general, the U.S. government and its so- called “anti -drug” agency, the DEA, were in agreement with this approach and played a decisive role in the operations , although theywere not always happy with the way the plans were carried out. ¶ This is how the governments of Mexico and the UnitedStates tried to impose order on the drug markets and bring down the level of violence. I n the resultingbattle, federal police fought municipal police in what was in reality a competition between the Sinaloa cartel (with the support of federaltr ps) and the Gulf cartel (which m bilized the l cal p lice under its c mmand) f r c ntr l f the “plaza”. T day there is still n “ rder”. ¶ Thecurrent g vernment f Felipe Calder n has c ntinued supp rting the Sinal a cartel headed by “El Chap ” Guzman in an attempt t “imp serder”. Very few f the 53,000 pe ple arrested during 2003 -2010 have belonged to the Sinaloa cartel. But the alliances among the drug gangshave shifted. One of the emerging cartels, La Linea, is mainly made up of local and federal police and Mexican army members. The authoritiesclaimed that “El Chap ” escaped fr m pris n in 2001, but really the federal g vernment decided t let him g , and t ally wit h him to unitevarious drug lords in what was called The Federation, as part of a plan to establish a certain order, cooperation and mutual benefit sharing. ¶

Today organized crime has become an international big business . Although its illegality gives it certain particularcharacteristics, in essence the drug trafficking organizations function like any other capitalist enterprise .They have to compete with other organizations for control of various markets and if they don’t win inthis competition they will disappear. Although drugs and other illegal activities are the foundation of their fortunes, the maindrug lords also have major legal investments in shopping centres, hospitals, farms and otherenterprises. ¶ The illegal capitalists partner with legal ones and try to legalize part of their capital. Andthe legal capitalists in turn try to partner with the drug traffickers. “Businessmen approach us becausethey want to use our money to make more money.” For example, money laundering is a big business for the Mexicanbanking system, which is controlled by foreign capital for the most part. [One big-shot drug lord] happily deposited millions of dollars in cashthr ugh his “pers nal banker” at Citbank, ne f the w rld’s m st p werful financial instituti ns and n w the w ner of Banamex [Mexico'ssecond-largest bank]. ¶ In the past, during the 1970s, large-scale drug cartels did not yet exist and [various government agencies and servicebranches took charge of the different aspects of the drug trade. It was under control.] In the 1980s the CIA opened up the U.S. drug market in

exchange f r the drug l rds financing the “C ntras” * rganized by the CIA t verthr w the Sandinista g vernment in Nicaragua ].¶ The

problem today is not just the consumption of drugs, but the enormous profitability of their productionand distribution for “illegal” and “legal” capitalists. At the same time, the structural crisis that makesit impossible for 60 percent of the working people to find a job in the formal economy and leavesmany youth with n o future and no hope makes it a “rational” choice for a broad section of the peopleto become petty drug dealers or killers for a drug gang. And although increased consumption is not the main factordriving the drug trade, p verty, the tearing f the “s cial fabric”, the atomization of society and other factors acceleratedby imperialist globalization in recent decades make conditions even more propitious for many peopleto see drugs as a way to gain an illusory and temporary relief from the madness of the “modern”capitalist world. ¶ The economic and social bases underlying the huge leap in drug trafficking, and thecrisis of the capitalist-imperialist system that began in 2008-09 that has yet to end has exacerbated all thesefactors even more. Other particularly important factors for Mexico are changes in the routes taken by the transport of drugs, whichhave made Mexic ’s l cati n next d r t the U.S. especially imp rtant. While the acti ns f the U.S. and C l mbian g vernmen ts have donenothing to reduce the production and exportation of cocaine, they have influenced a shift in the drug circuits and the relative weight of theColombian and Mexican cartels. ¶ In short, drug trafficking and its current boom are part and product of thedynamics of the capitalist-imperialist economy as well as the policies and measures applied by thegovernments that represent this system . The ultra-high-profit rate of the drug trade has made it bothan “entrance ticket” to wealth for new sectors of illegal capitalists and a “competitive advantage” andsolution for the problems of profitability being experienced by major sections of legal capitalists. Drugaddiction, the prostitution of women and children, people kidnapped and forced to work as slaves ondrug plantations, people killed or incapacitated when their organs are taken to be sold – this is the


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sordid reality of the capitalist globalization lauded as “modernity”. ¶ Drug trafficking is a product of

this system , but the ruling classes do not have it under control. The fracturing of Mexican government institutions and the increasingintervention of the U.S. government and its army and police agencies are consequences of the basic contradictions of this system and themeasures taken by the U.S. and Mexican government, which instead of solving problems aggravate them or create new ones.

Capitalism is the root cause of Mexico’s drug war Vulliamy, Guardian and Observer writer, 11 — [Ed Vulliamy, writer for the Guardian and Observer, ForeignReporter of the Year in 1993 and 1997, e ducated at the independent University C llege Sch l, w n Ryszard Kapuścioski award f r his w rk nthe Drug War, 2011 (“The Drug War Is the Inevitable Result f Capitalism G ne Mad; Ciudad Juarez Is All f Our Futures,” The Guardian, DrugTrade, 6-20-11, Available Online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartels, Accessed onJuly 2, 2013)][SP]War, as I came to report it, was something fought between people with causes, however crazy or honourable: like between the American andBritish occupiers of Iraq and the insurgents who opposed them. Then I stumbled across Mexico's drug war – which has claimed nearly 40,000lives, mostly civilians – and all the ru les changed. This is warfare for the 21st century, and another creature altogether. ¶ Mexico's war isinextricable from everyday life. In Ciudad Juarez, the most murderous city in the world, street markets andmalls remain open ; Sarah Brightman sang a concert there recently. When I was back there last month, people had reappeared at nightto eat dinner and socialise, out of devil-may-care recklessness and exhaustion with years of self-imposed curfew. Before, there had been an

eerie quiet at night, now there is an even eerier semblance of normality – punctuated by gunfire. ¶ On the surface, the combatantshave the veneer of a cause: control of smuggling routes into the US. But even if this were the fullexplanation, the cause of drugs places Mexico's war firmly in our new postideological, postmoral,postpolitical world. The only causes are profits from the chemicals that get America and Europe high. ¶Interestingly, in a highly politicised society there is no rightwing or Mussolinian "law and order" mass movement against the cartels, or anysignificant leftwing or union opposition. The grassroots movement against the postpolitical cartel warriors, the National Movement for Peace, isfamously led by the poet Javier Sicilia, who organised a week-long peace march after the murder of his son in the spring. This very male war is

opposed by women, in the workplaces and barrios, and in the home. ¶ But this is not just a war between narco-cartels.Juarez has imploded into a state of criminal anarchy – the cartels, acting like any corporation, haveoutsourced violence to gangs affiliated or unaffiliated with them, who compete for tenders withcorrupt police officers. The army plays its own mercurial role. " Cartel war" does not explain the story my friend ,and Juarez journalist, Sandra Rodriguez told me over dinner last month: about two children who killed their parents "because", they explained

to her, "they could". The culture of impunity , she said, "goes from boys like that right to the top – the whole city is a criminalenterprise ".¶ Not by coincidence, Juarez is also a model for the capitalist economy . Recruits for thedrug war come from the vast, sprawling maquiladora – bonded assembly plants where, for rock-bottom wages,workers make the goods that fill America's supermarket shelves or become America's automobiles,imported duty-free. Now, the corporations can do it cheaper in Asia, casually shedding their Mexicanworkers, and Juarez has become a teeming recruitment pool for the cartels and killers. It is a city thatfollows religiously the philosophy of a free market. ¶ "It's a city based on markets and on trash ," says JuliánCardona, a photographer who has chronicled the implosion. "Killing and drug addiction are activities in the economy,and the economy is based on what happens when you treat people like trash ." Very much, then, a war for the21st century. Cardona told me how many times he had been asked for his view on the Javier Sicilia peace march: "I replied: 'How can you march

against the market?'" ¶ Mexico's war does not only belong to the postpolitical, postmoral world. It belongs tothe world of belligerent hyper-materialism, in which the only ideology left – which the leaders of"legitimate" politics, business and banking preach by example – is greed. A very brave man called Mario Trevinolives in the city of Reynosa, which is in the grip of the Gulf cartel. He said of the killers and cartels: "They are revolting people who do what theydo because they cannot be seen to wear the same label T-shirt as they wore last year, they must wear another brand, and more expensive." Itcan't be that banal, I objected, but he pleaded with me not to underestimate these considerations. The thing that really makes Mexico's war adifferent war, and of our time, is that it is about, in the end, nothing. ¶ It certainly belongs to the cacophony of the era of digital communication.The killers post their atrocities on YouTube with relish, commanding a vast viewing public; they are busy across thickets of internet hot-sitesand the narco-blogosphere. Journalists find it hard that while even people as crazy as Osama bin Laden will talk to the media – they feel theyhave a message to get across – the narco-cartels have no interest in talking at all. They control the message, they are democratic thepostmodern way. ¶ People often ask: why the savagery of Mexico's war? It is infamous for such inventive perversions as sewing one victim'sflayed face to a soccer ball or hanging decapitated corpses from bridges by the ankles; and innovative torture, such as dipping people into vats

of acid so that their limbs evaporate while doctors keep the victim conscious. ¶ I answer tentatively that I think there is a correlationbetween the causelessness of Mexico's war and the savagery. The cruelty is in and of the nihilism, the

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartelshttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/20/war-capitalism-mexico-drug-cartels


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greed for violence reflects the greed for brands, and becomes a brand in itself. ¶ People also ask: what can bedone? There is endless debate over military tactics, US aid to Mexico, the war on drugs, and whethernarcotics should be decriminalised. I answer: these are largely of tangential importance; what can theauthorities do? Simple: Go After the Money. But they won't. ¶ Narco-cartels are not pastiches of globalcorporations, nor are they errant bastards of the global economy – they are pioneers of it . They

point, in their business logic and modus operandi, to how the legal economy will arrange itself next.The Mexican cartels epitomised the North American free trade agreement long before it was dreamedup, and they thrive upon it. ¶ Mexico's carnage is that of the age of effective global government bymultinational banks – banks that, according to Antonio Maria Costa, the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, havebeen for years kept afloat by laundering drug and criminal profits. Cartel bosses and street gangbangerscannot go around in trucks full of cash. They have to bank it – and politicians could throttle this riverof money , as they have with actions against terrorist funding. But they choose not to, for obvious reasons: the goodburgers of capitalism and their political quislings depend on this money, while bleating about the evils of drugscooked in the ghetto and snorted up the noses of the rich. ¶ So Mexico's war is how the future will look, because it belongs not in the19th century with wars of empire, or the 20th with wars of ideology, race and religion – but utterly in a present to which the globaleconomy is committed, and to a zeitgeist of frenzied materialism we adamantly refuse to temper: it is the inevitable war

of capitalism gone mad . Twelve years ago Cardona and the writer Charles Bowden curated a book called Juarez: The Laboratory ofOur Future. They could not have known how prescient their title was. In a recent book, Murder City, Bowden puts it another way: "Juarez is nota breakdown of the social order. Juarez is the new order."


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Link — Environmental PolicyEnvironmental reform within capitalism will be ineffectively shallow to maintain profitlevelsDeFusco, Past Director of Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 8 —(David isCommunications Director at Highstead, James Gustave Speth [cited in the card] is the dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Envi

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Capitalism Kritik - Gonzaga 2013