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The ideology of capitalism maintains relevancy through a promise of making life whole, by removing that
which stole our enjoyment. It shields us from the trauma of the Real with a promise of completeness, but
maintains desire through a continual denial of exactly what it promises. The 1AC only perpetuates
capitalist ideology by removing the Cuban embargo for a greater fulfillment in lifethe fact that more
people will be alive gives closure to them. Perpetuating this ideology allows for outside movements to be
subsumed by the capitalist machine and used as justifications for its perpetuation.
as a full ontological totality, and in this way tries to repress the traumatic fact that the latter is ultimately a delusion; it tries to eliminate all traces of (Real) impossibility (Zizek, 1989: 49). The exemplary figure here is that of the cynic.
The typical cynic is someone who is "pragmatic", who distances themselves from sincerely held beliefs, dismisses alternative visions of social existence as so much juvenile nonsense...and who, for all that, relies even more deeply on
some absolutist conception of an independent fully-formed reality.The cynic is the very model of an ideological subjectivity insofar as s/he is radically dependent on the idea of an externally ratified reality ("human nature", "the
way it is" etc.). What the cynic fears most is that they might lose the support of this independent (Other) reality and consequently their sense of "place" in the world. The cynic gets involved in a certain short-circuiting procedure that
is, in fact, generic to all ideological functioning: s/he is cynical towards every kind of ideological belief except his/her own fundamentalist belief in objectivist reality.The cynical attitude is more widely reflected in today's
predominant inclination towards "postmodern ironizing". The key philosopher is arguably R. Rorty. Rorty wants a world where individuals are free "to pursue private perfection in idiosyncratic ways" (Rorty, 1991: 19) and where the
public realm is restricted to minimal functions and is essentially aesthetic in orientation (Rorty, 1989: 125). For Rorty the central obligation is to be sceptical towards any projects of substantial social engagement for fear that it might
curtail individual pursuits of happiness and lead towards despotic forms of cruelty in the name of a higher (collective) Truth (see Daly, 1994). The basic inconsistency in Rorty's position is that "we" should exercise an ironic
distancing towards every socio-political project except the liberal one: the one true reality whose (private/public) structuring of social relations represents "the last conceptual revolution" (Rorty, 1989: 63) and effectively suspends
history.This is why so much of what passes for contemporary postmodern thought should be understood as strictly ideological in character. With all its ironic distancing, disavowals of the authentic gesture and so on, it relies even
symbolic mortification. In other words, it tends to involve the very form of ideological identification which is formulated along the lines
By synonymizing the impossible-Real with a particular Other (Jews, Palestinians, Gypsies, immimgrants...), the fantasy of holistic fulfilment through the (imagined or otherwise) elimination/suppression of the Other is thereby
sustained.Zizek has recently given this perspective a further more radical twist. Thus ideology not only presents a certain ideal of holistic fulfilment (Plato's Republic of Reason, Habermas' transparent modernity, Rorty's liberal
utopia, multiculturalist harmony and so on), it also serves crucially to regulate a certain distance from it. The paradox of
Ideology
regulates this fantasmatic distance as a way of avoiding the Real in the impossible - the trauma
involved in any real change.
satisfaction of both having and eating the cake. The idea of overcoming impossibility is subsists as a deferred moment of realisation but without having to go through the pain of overcoming as such.
AND
The shallow green capitalism of the aff in organic farming used to help profits, not the environment
Smith, Rutgers University professor, 11 Richard Smith has taught history at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, and has written on the
social and environmental impact of the transition to capitalism in China for the New Left Review, the Ecologist, and other
publications. (Green capitalism: the god that failed 2011 http://paecon.net/PAEReview/issue56/Smith56.pdf)
green capitalism
In rejecting the antigrowth approach of the first wave of environmentalists in the 1970s, pro-growth
theorists of the 1980s-90s like Paul Hawken, Lester
Brown, and Francis Cairncross argued that green technology, green taxes, eco-conscious shopping and the like could align profit-seeking with environmental goals, even invert many
subordinated to ecological concerns: For example, the science says that to save the
profitmaximization is an iron rule of capitalism, a rule that trumps all else, and this sets the limits to
ecological reform -- and not the other way around as green capitalism theorists supposed. Secondly, I claim that contrary to green capitalism proponents, across the spectrum
down industries like coal. But no corporate board can sacrifice earnings to save the humans because to do so would be to risk shareholder flight or worse. I claim that
from resource extraction to manufacturing, the practical possibilities for greening and dematerializing production are severely limited. This means, I contend, that the only way to
prevent overshoot and collapse is to enforce a massive economic contraction in the industrialized economies, retrenching production across a broad range of unnecessary, resource-hogging,
wasteful and polluting industries, even virtually shutting down the worst. Yet this option is foreclosed under capitalism because this is not socialism: no one is promising new jobs to
unemployed coal miners, oil-drillers, automakers, airline pilots, chemists, plastic junk makers, and others whose jobs would be lost because their industries would have to be retrenched -and unemployed workers dont pay taxes. So CEOs, workers, and governments find that they all need to maximize growth, overconsumption, even pollution, to destroy their childrens
tomorrows to hang onto their jobs today because, if they dont, the system falls into crisis, or worse. So were all onboard the TGV of ravenous and ever-growing plunder and pollution. And
as our locomotive races toward the cliff of ecological collapse, the only thoughts on the minds of our CEOS, capitalist economists, politicians and labor leaders is how to stoke the locomotive
to get us there faster. Corporations arent necessarily evil. They just cant help themselves. Theyre doing what theyre supposed to do for the benefit of their owners. But this means that
production
no amount of tinkering with the market can brake the drive to global
for market
, were
our way to sustainability because the problems we face cannot be solved by individual choices in the marketplace. They require collective democratic control over the economy to prioritize
the needs of society and the environment. And they require national and international economic planning to re-organize the economy and redeploy labor and resources to these ends. I
conclude, therefore, that if humanity is to save itself, we have no choice but to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a democratically-planned socialist economy.
AND
Their appeal to Human rights subordinate everyone to the only people who count as human, a
determination made by global capital.
Moufawad-Paul, PhD in Philosophy,13,
(Josh, 4/10/13, M-L-M Mayhem!: Marxist-Leninist-Maoist reflections, Bourgeois Moralism, http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2013/04/bourgeoismoralism.html, [Accessed 7/4/13], JB).
Of course, it is worth recognizing that Marx did tend to philosophically ground the necessity of socialism/communism upon the concept of a specific notion of human commonality. In the introduction to the Grundrisse, for
example, he distinguishes his approach from bourgeois political economy by declaring solidarity with the concept of the social rather than individual animal. Elsewhere, both Marx and Engels were wont to speak of socialism as
and we are enraged, we must be equally enraged when "the sanctity of life" of reactionaries are mocked by the victims of said reactionaries. We do not think of the necessities that can sling-shot us past this bourgeois humanism of
Zizek 08
- senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology University of Ljubljana (Slavoj, Violence, 2008, p. 44-46, CH)
there is hypocrisy in tolerating the abstractanonymous killing of thousands, while condemning individual cases of the violation of human[s]
Harris violates his own rules when he focuses on September 11, and in his critique of Chomsky. Chomsky's point is precisely that
] rights.
Why should Kissinger, when he ordered the carpet bombing of Cambodia that led to the deaths of tens of thousands, be less of a criminal than those responsible for the Twin Towers collapse? Is it not because
"ethical illusion
the proximity (of the tortured subject)
we are victims of an
"? The horror of September 11 was presented in detail in the media, but al-Jazeera TV was condemned for showing shots of the results of U.S. bombing in Fallujah and condemned for complicity with the terrorist s. There is, however, a much
which causes sympathy and makes torture unacceptable is not the victim's mere physical proximity but, at its most fundamental, the
proximity of the Neighbour, with all the Judeo-Christian-Freudian weight of this term, the proximity of the thing which, no matter how far away it is physically, is always by definition "too close." What Harris is aiming at with his imagined "truth pill" is nothing less than the abolition of the
[makes the] tortured subject no longer a Neighbour, but an object whose pain is
neutralised, reduced to a property
dealt with in a rational utilitarian calculus
dimension of the Neighbour. The
is
that has to be
greater amount of pain). What disappears here is the abyss of the infinity that pertains to a subject. It is thus significant that the book which argues for torture is also a book entitled The End of Faith-not in the obvious sense of, "You see, it is only our belief in God, the divine injunction to love
[if]the subject
is
, an
object of belief-how can I ever be sure that what I see in front of me is another subject, not a flat
biological machine lacking depth?
your neighbour, that ultimately prevents us from torturing people!," but in a much more radical sense. Another subject (and ultimately
as such)
for Lacan not something directly given, but a "presupposition," something presumed
AND
Capitalism is the root cause of the ontological damnation of the black body; the affs refusal to accept
it supports capitalism
Young, professor of English at the University of Alabama, 6Dr. Robert M was a professor of English in the College of Arts and
Sciences at the University of Alabama. He passed away in 2010. (Putting Materialism back into Race Theory:
Toward a Transformative Theory of Race http://www.redcritique.org/WinterSpring2006/puttingmaterialismbackintoracetheory.htm)
Indeed, the
discourse of the subject operates as an ideological strategy for fetishizing the black
experience and, consequently, it positions black subjectivity beyond the reach of Marxism. For example, in The
Afrocentric Idea, Asante dismisses Marxism because it is Eurocentric; but are the core concepts of Marxism, such as class and mode of production, relevant only for
European social formations? Are African and African American social histories/relations unshaped by class structures? Asante assumes that class hierarchies do not
structure African or the African American social experiences, and this reveals the class politics of Afrocentricity: It makes class invisible. Asantes
assumption, which erases materialism, enables Asante to offer the idealist formulation that the word
creates reality (Afrocentric Idea 70). The political translation of such idealism is, not surprisingly, very conservative. Asante directs us away
from critiquing capitalist institutions, in a manner similar to the ideological protocol of the Million Man March, and calls for
vigilance against symbolic oppression. As Asante tellingly puts it, symbol imperialism, rather than institutional racism, is the major social
problem facing multicultural societies (Afrocentric Idea 56). In the realm of African American philosophy, Howard McGary Jr. also
deploys the discourse of the (black) subject to mark the limits of Marxism. For instance, in a recent interview, McGary
offers this humanist rejection of Marxism: I dont think that the levels of alienation experienced by Black people are rooted primarily in economic relations
(Interview 90). For McGary, black alienation exceeds the logic of Marxist theory and thus McGarys idealist assertion that
the sense of alienation experienced by Black people in the U.S. is also rooted in the whole idea of what it means to be a human being and how that has to be
understood (Interview 90). McGary
Social alienation is a historical effect, and its explanation and such and explanation emerges from the transpersonal space of concepts.
In theorizing the specificity of black alienation, McGary reveals his contradictory ideological coordinates. First, he argues that black alienation results from cultural
beliefs. Then, he suggests that these cultural norms and practices develop from slavery and Jim Crow, which are fundamentally economic relations for the
historically specific exploitation of black people. If these cultural norms endogenously emerge from the economic systems of slavery and Jim Crow, as McGary
correctly suggests, then and contrary to McGarys expressed position,
McGarys desire to place black subjectivity beyond Marxism creates contradictions in his text. McGary
asserts that the economic structures of slavery and Jim Crow shape cultural norms. Thus, in a postslavery, post-Jim Crow era, there
would still be an economic structure maintaining contemporary oppressive normsfrom McGarys logic this must
be the case. McGary remains silent, however, on the contemporary economic system structuring black alienation:
capitalism. Apparently, it is legitimate to foreground and critique the historical connection between economics and alienation but any inquiry into the
present-day connection between economics and alienation is off limits. This other economic structure
McGarys
McGary
capitalismremains
the
unsaid in
produces and maintains alienation for blacks as well as for all working people.
The alternative is to vote negative to symbolize a withdrawl from the logic of capital completely.
Johnston 4, Ph.D. @State University of New York; assistant professor in psychology; fellow of psychoanalysis @ Emory (Arian, The Cynics Fetish: Slavoj
Zizek And The Dynamics Of Belief Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society Vol. 9 Issue 3 2004 Proquest pg. 275
proquest.umi.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&fmt=6&startpage=1&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=750350871&scaling=FULL&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&cfc=1&TS=1340383759&clientId=17822)//JES//jc
In later texts, Zizek faults his earlier work for having fallen into the trap of treating the Real as a kind of Kantian noumenality, namely, as an
inaccessible dimension that invisibly-yet-inexorably disrupts the other registers of human reality. Speaking of The Sublime Object of Ideology (his first book in
English), he claims that its philosophical weakness is that, it basically endorses a quasi-transcendental reading of Lacan, focused
on the notion
of the Real as the impossible Thing-in-itself; in so doing, it opens the way to the celebration of failure:
to the idea that every act ultimately misfires, and that the proper ethical stance is heroically to accept
this failure (Zizek, 2002b, p xii). The word act is crucial here, since it designates that which Zizek relies upon so as to avoid the resigned pessimism
coloring much of Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis one doesnt have to accept the Real as a negative limit cordoning off
an impossible beyond that must simply be observed and respected as such; one doesnt have to
concede that the subject is always and ultimately a dysfunctional slave to the past, the id, the
symbolic order, the drives, the libidinal economy, and so on, given that radical breaks with all these
overdetermining factors are possible. Through a perhaps excessive emphasis on an underdeveloped Lacanian concept, Zizek allows himself
to sustain a sort of cynical distance from the present state of the capitalist situation. According to Zizek, an Act is an intervention that
makes the impossible happen by virtue of rewriting the very rules concerning what is and isnt
possible in a given reality. With this caveat in place, he can, at one and the same time, stress the impoverishment of the ideological imagination
and the bankruptcy of traditional Marxist political programs he can acknowledge that extant scenarios for displacing capitalism are impossibilities while
nonetheless continuing to refuse/disavow this awareness of a stifling contemporary closure (because, as he declares, the impossible happens). This
would go a long way towards explaining what Sarah Kay, in her introductory overview of Zizeks
corpus, highlights as a striking combination of optimism and pessimism in Zizekian political thought,
namely, pessimism about the situation as it is, optimism that it could be transformed (Kay, 2003, p 154)
what Kay fails to note is that this striking combination of optimism and pessimism might very well indicate, in a symptomatic fashion, the effective presence
of something along the lines of an unacknowledged fetishistic split. As long
Status quo modes of thought only serve to legitimize the system. Policy making taints our ideology so
the perm cant solve.
Zizek and Daly 041
our ethico-political responsibility is to confront the constitutive
capitalism and its obscene naturalization / anonymization of the millions who are subjugated by it
throughout the world. *+ *Full text available+ In this way, neo-liberal ideology attempts to naturalize[s] capitalism by presenting its
outcomes of winning and losing as if they were simply a matter of chance and sound judgment in a neutral market
place. Capitalism does indeed create a space for a certain diversity, at least for the central capitalist regions, but it is neither neutral nor ideal and its price in terms of social exclusion is exorbitant. That is to say, the
human cost in terms of inherent global poverty and degraded life-chances cannot be calculated
within the existing economic rationale and, in consequence, social exclusion remains mystified and
nameless (viz. the patronizing reference to the developing world). And Zizeks point is that this mystification is magnified through capitalisms profound capacity to ingest its own excesses and negativity: to redirect (or
For Zizek it is imperative that we cut through this Gordian knot of postmodern protocol and recognize that
violence of todays global
misdirect) social antagonisms and to absorb them within a culture of differential affirmation.
Slavoj Zizek and Glyn Daly, Conversations with Zizek, 2004 page 14-16
And, policy options that actively negate the capitalist mindset only arise after
we orient ourselves towards an ethic that emphasizes avoiding otherization. Reorientation comes before effective policy making so the K is a prior question.
Herod 4 (James, renowned philosopher, author, and social activist, Getting Free, http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/06.htm)
a strategy for destroying capitalism. At its most basic, this strategy calls
for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and putting them into building a
new civilization. The image, then, is one of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by
draining wealth, power, and meaning from them until there is nothing left but shells. This is definitely an
aggressive strategy. It requires great militancy and constitutes an attack on the existing order. The strategy clearly recognizes that
capitalism is the enemy and must be destroyed, but it is not a frontal attack aimed at overthrowing
the system; it is an inside attack aimed at gutting it, while simultaneously replacing it with something better, something we want.
Thus, capitalist structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools, etc.) are not seized so much as simply abandoned.
Capitalist relations are not fought so much as they are simply rejected. We stop participating in
activities that support (finance, condone) the capitalist world and start participating in activities that build a
new world while simultaneously undermining the old. We create a new pattern of social relations alongside capitalist ones, and
It is time to try to describe, at first abstractly and later concretely,
then continually build and strengthen our new pattern while doing everything we can to weaken capitalist relations. In this way our new democratic,
nonhierarchical, noncommodified relations can eventually overwhelm the capitalist re- lations and force them out of existence. This is how it has to be done. This
is a plausible, realistic strategy. To think that we could create a whole new world of decent social
arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution or the collapse of
capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it
is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations. Such a revolution will never happen
automatically, blindly, determinably, because of the inexorable materialist laws of history. It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we
know what were doing and how we want to live, what obstacles have to be over- come before we can live that way, and how to distinguish between our social
patterns and theirs. But
we must not think that the capitalist world can simply be ignored, in a live-and-let-live attitude,
while we try to build new lives elsewhere. (As mentioned earlier, there is no elsewhere.) There is at least one thing, wage
slavery, that we cant simply stop participating in (but even here there are ways we can chip away at it). Capitalism must be explicitly refused and replaced by
something else. This constitutes war, but it
is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and tanks; it is a war fought
on a daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless because the accumulators of
capital will use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block
any rejection of the system. They have always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to
continue to do so. Still, there are many concrete ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods can gut capitalism, which I will enumerate shortly. We
must always keep in mind how we became slaves; then we can see more clearly how we can cease being slaves. We were forced into wage slavery because the
ruling class slowly, systematically, and brutally destroyed our ability to live autonomously. By driving us off the land, changing the property laws, dismantling
community rights, destroying our tools, imposing taxes, gutting our local markets, and so forth, we were forced onto the labor market in order to survive, our only
remaining option being to sell our ability to work for a wage. Its quite clear, then, how we can overthrow slavery: we must re- verse this process. We must begin to
reacquire the ability to live with- out working for a wage or buying the products made by wage slaves (that is, we must free ourselves from the labor market and the
way of living based on it), and embed ourselves instead in cooperative labor and cooperatively produced goods. Another clarification is needed. This
strategy does not call for re- forming capitalism, for changing capitalism into something else. It calls
for totally replacing capitalism with a new civilization. This is an important distinction because capitalism has proved impervious to
re- forms as a system. We can sometimes, in some places, win certain concessions from it (usually only temporary ones) and some
(usually short-lived) improvements in our lives as its victims, but we cannot reform it piecemeal. Hence, our strategy of
gutting and eventually destroying capital- ism requires at a minimum a totalizing image, an awareness that we are
attacking an entire way of life and replacing it with another, and not merely reforming one way of life
into something else. Many people may not be accustomed to thinking about entire systems and social orders, but everyone knows what a lifestyle is, or
a way of life, and that is the way we should approach it.
AND
Ignore all their offense its just corporate propaganda in order to crush sustainability Ikerd, Professor
Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri Columbia, 2006
(John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics University of Missouri Columbia, 2006, University of Missouri, The
Economics of Hunger: Challenges and Opportunities for Future Food Systems , http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Eastern%20Oregon%20Econ%20Hunger.htm, accessed 7-9-13, JF)
Unfortunately, the importance of social and ethical values in sustainability has become lost in the media hype about organic and locally produced foods. The
sustainable food culture is often portrayed as an elitist movement, inaccessible to the poor and a
threat to the hungry. Corporate propaganda suggests that a transition to sustainable or organic
agriculture would result in starvation for half of the worlds population, would increase soil erosion, deplete soil productivity, and require
clearing and cultivation of vast forests and rangelands, which are now home for many of the worlds poor and hungry. Genetically engineered, high-input, highyielding crops and livestock are touted as the new industrial solution to world hunger. However, nothing
C) Value to life precedes every other ethical consideration. In order for humans to value anything as
good they must first value themselves. Hill writes,2
only
because
they serve our interests and desires. Even pleasure, which we value for its own sake,
value
dependent on the
contingent
independent of
Now if valuers confer derivative value on things by their preferences and choices, those
is,
valuers
The guiding analogy is how we treat ends. We value certain means because they serve intermediate ends, which in turn we value because they contribute to our ultimate ends, that is, what we value for its own sake. The value of the means and the
intermediate means is derivative from the value of the ultimate ends; unless we value the ultimate end, the means and intermediate ends would be worthless to us. So, it seems, the source of derivative value must be
of the value of our contingent ends, such as health, wealth, and even pleasure, is their being valued by human beings, human beings, as valuers, must be valued for their own sakes.
2Thomas
Hill, Jr. Self-regarding suicide: A modified Kantian view, in Autonomy and Self-Respect, Cambridge
University Press, 1991, 101-102.