NEOLIBERALISM SECTION

Marijuana

Link Marijuana
Legalization is not a benign action but one that continues the
ontic assumptions of neoliberalism the market for marijuana
will be McDonalized
(Crawford 13) Seth S. Crawford, Professor of Sociology at Oregon State
University, THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA March 2013.
legalization of
marijuana will wrest control from small artisan producers and turn it over to
large firms (Heffernan 2000; Baran and Sweezy 1966; Foster, McChesney, and Jonna 2011). The
legalization of marijuanain this lensis both an economic and social loss for many
communities, but especially those with long traditions of illegal growing; even if traditional hot
spots of production (Northern California and Southern Oregon, for example) become legal cannabis
production centers, the economic benefits will disproportionately accrue
in the hands of corporate owners and politically disenfranchise small
marijuana farmers (Lewontin 2000). ToP theory, in addition to highlighting the inevitable capture of
surplus generated from marijuana production by large firms, suggests that legalization will follow a
path of profit maximization to the detriment of nature; the loss of genomic
diversity is of particular concern with marijuana, as a capitalist approach
to its production will focus on yield, maturation time, and ease of harvest
The nature and history of capitalism, as developed through ToP theory, suggests that the

(and Glenna 2006). Many scholars of marijuana botany suggest that specific policy decisions during prohibition
were already responsible for several radical changes in this domesticated plant (Clarke 1993; Hillig and Mahlberg
2004; Hillig 2005). In particular, the tall, long-flowering, narrow leaf cannabis indica varieties (known colloquially as
sativas) were crossed with short, fast-flowering, broad leaf cannabis indica (indicas) to facilitate indoor growing
after US and Mexican authorities adulterated outdoor crops in Mexico with Paraquat in the late 1970s (Clarke 1993;
Landrigan et al. 1983). In addition to altering the physical stature and maturation time, this selective breeding
regime led to significant changes in the chemical profile of commercially available marijuana; as predicted by the
iron law of drug prohibition, THC concentrations and overall potency increased (Thornton 1991). Similarly, the
infusion of broad leaf genes into narrow leaf varieties produced plants with much higher cannabidiol (CBD) ratios
than previously seen in domestic marijuana (Clarke 1993). Other chemical changeswhich, to this point, have been
unelaboratedundoubtedly occurred, as users accounts of shifting phenomenological experiences induced by
marijuana was altered; older varieties of the drug tended to influence perception, whereas newer varieties have a
strong impact on motor coordination (Clarke 1993; King 2001). At this point, it is unknown whether or not
legalization will have a more profound effect than prohibition did, but the prohibition years helped to demonstrate
how versatile marijuana can be when subjected to the whims of human ingenuity (Pollan 2001)ToP theory

a legalized production regime will influence marijuana breeding

efforts towards strictly profit-oriented goals (Gould et al. 2004). Steps must be
made to preserve the remaining genetic diversity of this species before
capitalism casts nonprofitable traits and expressions on the funeral pyre
of progress. Consumers also stand to lose in some troubling ways. The
modernization of marijuana production by industrial capitalism willif it
follows the rationalized developmental path (Weber 2002) of other products be conducted according
to the principles of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control or
suggests that

what Ritzer (1996) terms McDonaldization. McDonaldized marijuana and its production would adhere to the
following principles: (1) production will occur at very large scales and with the use of advanced technology (farming
combines, automated trimming machines, industrial vacuum-packing, genetically engineered seed, etc.) to achieve
high efficiency in pursuit of maximum profitability (Ritzer 1996: 35); (2) production and sales will be dictated by the
quantitative aspects (calculability) of profits, costs, and total volume sold, as opposed to qualitative considerations
or for public benefit (Ritzer 1996: 59); (3) finished products will be predictable, both in physical consistency and, as
much as possible, in phenomenological experience (Ritzer 1996: 80; Merleau-Ponty 2002); and (4) control over the
individuals participating in the production process will be exercised to the point where their actions are vapidly

Marijuana users will have little choice in the matter,

since oligopolic markets sell their goods through advertising rather than
following actual consumer preference (Gould et al. 2004).
machinelike (Ritzer 1996: 101).

Link Marijuana
Legalization is done while holding onto the hand of the market
this allows neoliberal ontology to take control of the weed
market
(Calhoun 14) Ryan Calhoun, Philosophy, University at Buffalo Weed
Legalization As Privatization, Disempowerment Center for a Stateless Society,
January 12th, 2014.
The beginning of this year saw the first fully-fledged legal weed markets open in America in nearly a century. Lines formed, similar
those for a midnight movie premiere. Giddy stoners stood in shops in amazement at the ease, variety and quality of the shopping

this is not the introduction of a free market in marijuana. Rather,

it is the state-controlled dream of political progressives who have been
pushing for a government overhaul of the weed market for quite some time. At the
root of this movement is an ethos of paternalism and extortion. Weed
must only be legal under the condition that the government can act as
partner and that it be put in the hands of responsible retailers. And thus,
Big Marijuana is born. Marijuanas legalization seems much more like
neoliberal privatization of markets than true liberation of them. While I do not question the decency of
these first major marijuana retailers, there are legitimate concerns. Those most victimized by the states
rabid oppression of marijuana markets will find themselves very often out of
luck, as extensive background checks are required by law, and any drug
felony charge is enough to exclude individuals from operating as
experience. Of course,

vendors. TakePart magazine notes in an article that even as weed is legalized, those in
prison for the crime of possessing or selling marijuana will remain there. While new businesses boom
with customers, those who formerly tried to compete in this market remain locked up in cages. The drug war has affected
millions during its hellish tear through Americans lives and culture, but it has always been particularly
racialized and classist. This leaves many black, Hispanic and poor individuals with a
permanent hex affixed to them that these laws do not address. Like with the
beltway libertarian conception of privatization, legalization picks the winners of the weed
market from those who were lucky enough to not find themselves on the
wrong side of the law and who already have access to the capital to invest
into this expensive business. Legalization, at its best, functions as an opposition to continued state violence against drug users and

It is therefore troubling that we find even after this so-called legalization,

many remain shackled both by the pre-existing landscape of the market
and by new regulations which prohibit them from participating in it. It is never
possessors.

by the political means we realize our freedom, but only a hold-back of even worse oppression. We fight an uphill battle against the
incredible damage the state does. And now facing the age of Big Marijuana, we might be shocked to find the sorts of restrictions

In order to delegitimize street dealers, we have to

treat them as inherently dangerous and volatile.
many established pot shops favor.

Link Biotechnology Patents

Their want to create patents for living organisms stresses the
underlying ability of neoliberalism to continue to create
fictitious markets this ontology allows any outside to become
incorporated into capitalist profits
(Pellizzoni 11) Luigi Pellizzoni, Associate Professor of Environmental and
Political Sociology at the University of Trieste, Italy, Governing through disorder:
Neoliberal environmental governance and social theory Global Environmental
Change Volume 21, Issue 3, August 2011, Pages 795803.

What is important to stress, then, is that the logic underlying so different fields as biotechnology patenting and climate-weather

Complexities and uncertainties are rendered tractable, first

by redefining the ontology of biophysical matter. The latter is not simply
decomposed and recomposed via abstraction, but conceived as intrinsically unstable or
ambivalent. Genes, carbon and rain oscillate between difference and equivalence,
materiality and virtuality, substance and information. In this, we are not
financial markets is the same.
of all

confronted with a simple reproduction of the venerable capitalist strategy

of creating fictitious commodities. This latter strategy works at an epistemic level. The
neoliberalization of nature works, instead, at an ontological level. There is more than
an as if at stake here: there is the actual crafting of entities that did not exist
beforehand, like the patented gene with its organic-informational
ambivalence or the variably embodied GWP. There is nothing fictitious in these commodities: they are commodities, their
reality is nothing else than this. This point requires attention. Carolan (2008) suggests that the ontological
instability of patents seeks to protect and reproduce what Latour (1993) and many
scholars in science and technology studies regard as a fictitious divide between nature
and culture, object and observation; it seeks to hide and deny the presence of hybrid
entities, by keeping the threshold between the two realms open to ad hoc
redefinitions. However, at a closer look, biotechnology patents, CERs and weather derivatives do not
seem to hide at all, but rather to assert the ontological indefiniteness of their biophysical
referents nor do experts working in these fields look unaware of, or unwilling to admit, this (Calvert, 2007 and MacKenzie,
2009). Neoliberal governance, thus, seems to entail a subtle and novel
conceptual move. One pillar of modernity is abandoned: the core
distinction between inner and outer worlds disappears in favour of what, to all
intents and purposes, is an anti-essentialist ontology. At the same time, another pillar of
modernity, traditionally linked to the idea of objective knowledge, is reaffirmed
and expanded in scope: human agency as having capacity of control. Such agency finds no
limits since it includes the manufacturing of its own task environments. For
this hypertrophic agency any outside (nature) is just functional to distinguishing within
the inside (manufacture); it becomes an element of endless and ever changeable
internal differentiations, as the controversies over the object of patents or
the intricacies of carbon markets and weather derivatives testify. Neoliberal governance is not
afraid of but feeds itself with contingency .

AT: Prison Industrial Complex

Prisons are the means the bourgeois uses to divert focus from
class consciousness
(Dhondt 12) Geert Leo Dhondt, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MASS INCARCERATION AND CRIME IN THE
NEOLIBERAL PERIOD IN THE UNITED STATES September 2012
*SSA = Social Structures of Accumulation

mass incarceration should be seen as a central

institution in the genesis and perpetuation of the neoliberal SSA in the
U nited S tates. This implies that those interested in understanding the neoliberal SSA in the U.S. need to understand the central
I wish to argue three things in this chapter. First,

role of mass incarceration in this SSA. Second, I want to suggest that the SSA framework is a deeply useful way to understand the
rise and persistence of mass incarceration in the United States. Those who want to understand mass incarceration should seek to
examine it from an SSA perspective or risk missing the logic of mass incarceration and the role it plays in contemporary U.S.
capitalist society. Finally, I want to contest the claims of scholars, such as David Garland (2001), Loic Wacquant (2009) and Nils
Christie (1994), who have argued that European nations emulate patterns of crime control first developed in the USA (Garland
2001, ix). I argue that this is not the case and that mass incarceration is best understood as supportive of neoliberalism in the

In suggesting that U.S.

neoliberalism is buttressed by mass incarceration, I am not subscribing to
a crude functionalism, a claim that mass incarceration exists simply
because it is 'necessary' for the current patterns of capitalist
accumulation in the United States. Rather, I am arguing that mass incarceration and U.S.
neoliberalism are mutually reinforcing in at least six ways. First, the rise in mass
incarceration may be seen as an attempt to re-establish the racial order in
the neoliberal SSA in response to the breakdown of a well-established
racial hierarchy at the end of the preceding SSA a destabilization that was explicitly framed by the actors in class
particular context of the United States and not neoliberalism in general.

terms. The previous regulated SSA led to the demise of legal segregation, as by the latter part of that SSA oppressed groups were
strengthened and were able to fight for their rights. This fight part of the rising of the exploited and oppressed undermined the

African Americans were at

the leading edge of class struggle, and the long-standing racial division of
the working class broke down with the end of Jim Crow segregation in the
middle of the 1960s. By the early 1980s, a new SSA had formed in
response to the demise of the previous SSA, and a new racial hierarchy
was established to maintain racial divisions within the working class . Mass
incarceration has created and strengthened this new racial division, a new
cross-class alliance between poor whites and elites in the neoliberal
SSA. This helps explain why working-class whites have tolerated the stagnating wages,
poor working conditions and rising inequality associated with the neoliberal SSA in the U.S.
Second, mass incarceration is intimately linked with the rise in residential
segregation in urban areas since the 1970s, and both serve to manage the
social and economic inequalities generated by the neoliberal era . Toward the end
postwar SSA and led to its demise, which posed a dangerous situation for capital:

of the postwar SSA, African Americans had migrated to large industrial cities, and they had started working and organizing in urban
industries. In response to the profit squeeze, capital closed those urban factories22 and moved out, first to lower cost locales within
the U.S. and then abroad. This process of actual or perceived capital strike, which characterizes neoliberalism, led to the decimation
of the main occupational sectors in which African Americans attained good jobs, namely the industrial sector and the state. As a

Mass incarceration can be seen as

the new way for the neoliberal SSA to keep unemployed and marginally
attached African Americans under control. Thus, residential segregation, marginal labor attachment
result, African Americans faced massive levels of unemployment.

and mass incarceration form a complex in which populations that do not fit into the labor force are effectively managed. Third, mass

The votaries of
neoliberalism demanded the end of the welfare state, partly to reduce the
incarceration serves to replace the welfare state in the management of economic stability.

social wage and hence increase labor discipline, all the while claiming it
was primarily to induce efficiency. This has left the poor and the
marginally attached with no way to survive and has created an entire
generation of underserved U.S. workers with no opportunities. Such a
situation can be extremely disruptive to capital accumulation; mass
incarceration serves to manage this situation. Where alternative social institutions may have
sought to ameliorate the economic insecurity inherent in capitalism, mass incarceration has taken up
this regulatory function by separating out, then locking up those most
marginalized and vulnerable to the vicissitudes of capitalist growth. Fourth,
accumulation in the post-Jim Crow world requires a new basis for racial hierarchy that is compatible with the individualism central to
neoliberal ideology. Mass incarceration serves to create a new ascriptive category, one that is formally based on individual acts

by magnifying the threat of crime in the minds of

the working class, mass incarceration helps legitimate the defense of
property as the overriding responsibility of the state. 23 Finally, mass
incarceration is used to disrupt the working-class movement . The capital-labor
while still managing populations. Fifth,

relationship is at the center of any SSA, and a militant working-class movement contributed to the end of the postwar SSA.

Neoliberalism involved crushing labor activism on many fronts. The African

American workers were the most militant, class-conscious and radical
segment of the working class, thus de-legitimizing these African American
workersespecially those involved in groups such as Revolutionary Action Movement, League of Revolutionary Black Workers,
and the Black Panther Partywas an important component of the process of defeating
the working-class movement. If we wish to understand the recent phenomenon of mass incarceration, the
SSA framework provides a way to situate the logic of incarceration within the logic of capitalist accumulation. There is growing
evidence that mass incarceration does not reduce crime (Clear 1996, Western 2006, Clear 2008, Dhondt 2011a and 2011b).
Wacquant (2009), Parenti (1999) and Gilmore (2007) argue that social scientists need to break away from focusing on the crimepunishment paradigm in order to examine the rise and continuation of mass incarceration, especially the vast over-representation of
Blacks in the prison population. This chapter argues that analyzing mass incarceration through the SSA lens helps illuminate the
dynamics of mass incarceration in capitalist society. Given the immense costs associated with the incarceration of millions of people,
understanding how the prison system functions within contemporary class and racial structures is an imperative task.

Race relations stabilize capitalist accumulation

(Dhondt 12) Geert Leo Dhondt, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MASS INCARCERATION AND CRIME IN THE
NEOLIBERAL PERIOD IN THE UNITED STATES September 2012
*SSA = Social Structures of Accumulation

Social structures of accumulation (SSA) refers to an approach which focuses on the broad social, cultural, legalpolitical and economic institutions which structure and facilitate capitalist accumulation during a given period.25

SSA approach examines the complex of institutions which support the

process of capital accumulation (Kotz et al 1994, 1). Thus, one of the key tasks of the SSA
approach is to examine how institutions create social stability , and in particular,
how they manage class conflict to allow for long periods of relatively stable capital
accumulation. The complex structure of institutions that comprise an SSA passes through a life-cycle. SSAs
The

are built, remain more or less stable for some period, then decay.26 Once a new SSA is consolidated, there is a long
period of economic growth. Through its own contradictions, this boom comes to an end and is followed by a decay
period in which another complex of new institutions is formed, which will lead to a new SSA (Gordon et al. 1982,
Bowles et al. 1990, Kotz et al. 1994, McDonough et al. 2010). There has been some disagreement over how to
understand the current period of neoliberalism. Is it a period of decay of the postwar SSA, or is it a new SSA?
Wolfson and Kotz (2010) and Kotz and McDonough (2010) persuasively argue that neoliberalism is not a
continuation of the old postwar SSA but that it has constituted a new, coherent, institutional structure that has
been in existence since at least the early 1980s(Wolfson and Kotz 2010, 73). While rapid growth27 has not
materialized under neoliberalism, it should still be considered a new SSA since it has promoted a rising share of
profits in total income and, eventually, a rising rate of profit (Wolfson and Kotz 2010, 79), and has provided a
temporary stabilization of the contradictions of capitalism (Wolfson and Kotz 2010, 80).28 To situate
neoliberalism within the SSA theory, Wolfson and Kotz (2010) argue that SSAs come in two types: regulated and
liberal. These differ in five respects: (1) the manner in which the capital-labor contradiction is temporarily stabilized;
(2) the state role in the economy; (3) the contradictions within capital; (4) the contradictions within labor and (5)

the character of the dominant ideology (Wolfson and Kotz 2010, 81). Compared with the regulated SSA, where labor
is relatively strong, in a liberal SSA capital is less compromising and takes on a much more hostile role with respect
to labor. At the same time, in the liberal SSA the state takes a lesser role in regulating capitalist activity,
intercapitalist competition is more cut-throat (which leads to more potent attacks on labor) and finance capital is
more independent from productive capital. Workers are also more competitive, which strengthens the power of

In the
particular context of the U nited S tates, race relations historically and
socially constructed categories also stabilize class conflict and channel
conflict in directions that are not unduly disruptive of accumulation. Race
relations in the United States have gone through a variety of stages and variations (e.g.,
slavery and Jim Crow segregation), each of which has served to ensure the relatively smooth
accumulation of capital. W.E.B. Du Bois (1984) argues that race is a cross-class alliance where the
capital. And a new free-market ideology reinforces the core institutions of the liberal SSA.29.

white working class aligns themselves with the capitalist class instead of the Black working class. Du Bois argues

Du
Bois argues that white workers received wages of whiteness, a set of
public and psychological privileges. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy
because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white
people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police
were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent upon their votes,
treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote
selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic
situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the
deference shown them (Du Bois 1998, 700- 701). White workers repress the Black
that this cross-class alliance between capitalists and the white proletariat is the key to understanding race.

worker because it benefits them in the short-term . But in exchange for these
public and psychological wages, the white worker helps to maintain the capitalist
system that exploits them. Thus, race functions to channel class conflict .30 This is not
the only function of race. Reich (1981) argues that race reduces the bargaining power of the
working class, which enables capitalists to more intensely exploit all
workers. Thus, racial oppression not only channels class conflict in ways that reduce
disruptions to accumulation but also increases class exploitation and the rate of profit, hence
facilitating accumulation. James Baldwin wrote that No one was white before he/she came to America (Roediger
1999, 178). How, then, did immigrants from Europe become white and get the benefit of those public and
psychological wages?31 ...[B]y deciding they were white...white menfrom Norway, for example, where they
were Norwegiansbecame white by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the wells, torching the houses, massacring
Native Americans, raping Black women (James Baldwin in Roediger 1999, 178). Alex Haley told a story about a
time that Malcolm X made a similar comment about how immigrants defined and redefined themselves toward
Blacks. Waiting for my baggage, we witnessed a touching family reunion scene as part of which several cherubic
little children romped and played, exclaiming in another language. By tomorrow night, they'll know how to say
their first English wordnigger (Haley 1965, 459). Both Malcolm X and James Baldwin are describing how race

racial slavery was

the solution to two different problems in 17th-century Virginia . First, there
was a labor shortage. Second, there was a problem of insurrections, such as Bacon's
Rebellion. Slavery was the solution to the first problem, and racial slavery
was the solution to the second. Racial slavery was maintained until the Civil War, when it was
was produced and reproduced in different eras. Similarly, Ted Allen (1994) argues that

abolished; after a period of crisis and conflict, race was reconstituted in a system of legal segregation.32 During this
latter period, Du Bois argues, the Black man is a person who must ride Jim Crow in Georgia (Du Bois 1984,
153). This helps us understand what it means to be Black under segregation or slavery. While slavery and legal
segregation do not exist anymore, this does not mean that race no longer exists. But if Black and white identities
were defined by the legal structures of Jim Crow, as Du Bois suggests, how do they function in the absence of those
structures? That is, in the absence of explicit, legally-enforced racial hierarchies, how, if at all, is race reproduced in

mass
incarceration plays an important role in the reproduction of racial
categories, in a way that fits with the characteristic ideology of
neoliberalism.
the contemporary period? And how is this related to the neoliberal SSA? I will argue that

Mass incarceration is proof that the working class has

swallowed the bitter pill of capitalisms exploitation it creates
racial hierarchies by creating a cross-class alliance with whites
(Dhondt 12) Geert Leo Dhondt, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MASS INCARCERATION AND CRIME IN THE
NEOLIBERAL PERIOD IN THE UNITED STATES September 2012
*SSA = Social Structures of Accumulation

In addition to its direct role in maintaining labor discipline and substituting for welfare as a tool for marginalized populations, mass
incarceration also plays a critical ideological role in the neoliberal SSA. This role is shaped by the history of race in the United States,
which distinguishes the operation of neoliberalism here from otherwise similar systems elsewhere in the world. More particularly,

the role of whiteness as an overarching ideological category winning

compliance from the working class means that the end of legally-enforced
racial hierarchies in the 1960s posed a major challenge for the
legitimation of capitalism in the U nited S tates. Mass incarceration has played
an essential role as the replacement for the formal discrimination of the
Jim Crow era, both as a means of formalizing and enforcing racial
boundaries, and as a way of maintaining capitalist hegemony by
convincing white workers that they share an interest in the defense of
property with the ruling class. In this final section, I explore this ideological role, starting with the historical
literature on the development and maintenance of whiteness. Ted Allen, Noel Ignatiev, David Roediger and Alexander Saxton built
upon the classic work by C.L.R. James and W.E.B. Du Bois50 to develop a new field of studies referred to as whiteness studies.
They study the composition of the American worker in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries to explain why a section of the working
class (the white worker) often sided with the ruling class against another section of the working class (the Black worker). For them,

race functions as a cross-class alliance between the white working class

and the capitalist class. Racial oppression exists when the state denies certain rights and privileges to one section
of the working class and gives those rights and privileges to another section of the working class in exchange for their alliance to the

Marx argues that this cross-class alliance created the

stability needed for growth. To hold together the nation-state,
preserving stability needed for growth, whites were unified across class
by race ... Economic interests were subordinated to white racial unity, with
this class compromise made explicit and enforced by state policy varying
in response to ongoing class tensions (Marx 1998, 14-15). Stanley Greenberg argues that despite
capitalist class. Anthony

conflicts over the details of racial domination under segregation, Each [class sector] calls on the state to take control of the
subordinate worker, to draw racial lines somewhere in society and economy (Greenberg 1980, 26- 27). During slavery and Jim
Crow, this cross-class alliance was enforced through an explicit juridical system. Racial subordination and privilege were official state
policy. Du Bois wrote that during segregation one does not have to ride Jim Crow because one is Black, but instead the Black
man is a person who must ride Jim Crow in Georgia (Du Bois 1984, 153). Similarly, one belongs to the white race if one does not

It is important to point to the fact that not all people of

African Americans were slaves or had to ride Jim Crow. There were always free
Blacks, and it is an often repeated story that the best way to not have to ride Jim Crow was to put on a turban. But the
fact that the president of the United States is Black does not mean that race does
not exist anymore, but that Jim Crow is dead. Under the racial regime of segregation, who had to
ride Jim Crow and who did not defined who was Black and who belonged to the white race. While capitalist
accumulation in the U nited S tates has always relied on maintaining a crossclass alliance between elites and poor whites, by the mid-1960s Black struggle had broken down
have to ride Jim Crow.

the arrangements that had historically reproduced this cross-class alliance. But while Jim Crow ceased to be official state policy,

While race is central to the operation of mass

incarceration under the liberal SSA, it plays a broader ideological function
as well. The following quote from Karl Marx on transitions in what we now call hegemony gives some insight into this process.
racial inequalities have not disappeared.51

No class of civil society can play this [dominant] role without arousing a moment of enthusiasm in itself and in the masses, a
moment in which it fraternizes and merges with society in general, becomes confused with it and is perceived and acknowledged as

its general representative, a moment in which its claims and rights are truly the claims and rights of society itself, a moment in
which it is truly the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of society can a particular class vindicate
for itself general domination. For the storming of this emancipatory position, and hence for the political exploitation of all sections of
society in the interests of its own section, revolutionary energy and spiritual self-feeling alone are not sufficient. For the revolution of
a nation, and the emancipation of a particular class of civil society to coincide, for one estate to be acknowledged as the estate of
the whole society, all the defects of society must conversely be concentrated in another class, a particular estate must be the estate
of the general stumbling-block, the incorporation of the general limitation, a particular social sphere must be recognized as the
notorious crime of the whole of society, so that liberation from that sphere appears as general self-liberation. For one estate to be
par excellence the estate of liberation, another estate must conversely be the obvious estate of oppression. The negative general
significance of the French nobility and the French clergy determined the positive general significance of the nearest neighboring and
opposed class of the bourgeoisie.52 This quote by Marx anticipates very clearly later arguments by Gramsci on hegemony. But

the importance of a negative class or common social enemy is notable,

since it is not often emphasized in discussions of hegemony. During
slavery and Jim Crow segregation the social enemy was clearly defined by
laws ostensibly meant to defend the white race. But in the postsegregation era, how is the negative class defined? The recomposition of
this negative class does not happen in a vacuum, but under the
constraints imposed by a changed capitalism neoliberalism. As applied to neoliberalism, this suggests
the importance of establishing criminals as the "estate of oppression" for the bourgeoisie to re-establish hegemony over the working

The bourgeoisie needs to make private property the general condition

of freedom and social existence, since private property is the condition of
its own existence. The working class must be made to feel that its own
property is under threat, so that it will support the protection of private
property as the central function of the state. The criminal then becomes the threat to private
class.

property, and increasing fear of loss or violation of property by "criminals" builds support for the protection of property in general. At

liberation from formal, legal racial hierarchy does not mean

liberation from racial oppression in general. Karl Marx argued that there
exists a difference between political emancipation and human
emancipation in his 1843 essay On the Jewish Question (Tucker 1978). Marx argues that when property is abolished in
the public sphere it still thrives in the private sphere where, under capitalism, real power rests. Olson (2004) argues
that the civil rights movement achieved something akin to political
emancipation. Once 'emancipated' from the state, race is cast into the
private realm (Olson 2004, 72). Olson argues that this emancipation of race
moved the crossclass alliance from the public sphere into the private
sphere. Rather than eliminating race, the color-blind state makes it
prepolitical: it understands race as formed prior to the public sphere
through essentially private or natural means such as biology, ancestry,
culture or even personal choice. ... Nevertheless, transforming race into a
prepolitical category does not abolish its political influence (Olson 2004, 72). Olson
the same time,

argues that in the post-segregation era whiteness is normalized. Rather than a form of public standing, whiteness in the color-blind
state functions as a norm in which racial privilege is sedimented into the background of social life as the natural outcome of
ordinary practices and individual choices, making it difficult to discern any systematic explanation for the advantages whites

Instead of whiteness being

reproduced as a form of standing, it is reproduced through processes of
normalization in the post-segregation era. This transformation of race into a prepolitical category
continue to enjoy after the civil rights movement (Olson 2004, 74).

fits in perfectly with neoliberal ideology since social outcomes now appear to be based on individual choices or, in the particular
case of crime, individual wrongdoing. But it is critical to understand that this is merely the ideological appearance of the operation of
the criminal justice system; in reality, its role in the neoliberal SSA depends precisely on the fact that it both targets and creates
populations. In effect, the object of the system is not the crime but the criminal as an ascriptive category. In the seminal book The
New Jim Crow, lawyer Michelle Alexander (2010) argues that mass incarceration is the way racial categories are reproduced in the

mass incarceration locks a stigmatized racial

group into an inferior position by law and custom(Alexander 2010, 12). Mass
incarceration is a system that locks people not only behind actual bars in
actual prisons, but also behind virtual bars and virtual wallswalls that
are invisible to the naked eye but function nearly as effective as Jim Crow
laws once did at locking people of color into a permanent second-class
citizenship. The term mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal
justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and
contemporary period. Like slavery and Jim Crow,

customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison. Once
released, former prisoners enter a hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social exclusion (Alexander 2010,
12-13). The social exclusion and legalized discrimination of these exfelons is the key to Alexanders argument. We can see the
extent of this social exclusion on the African American community if one considers that 12% of Black men between the ages of 25
and 29 are currently locked up; that one in three Black men and over half of all those who do not have a high school diploma will go
to prison in their lifetimes; that 95% of all those who go to prison will be released back into society. Black

men are
more likely to go to prison than to attend college, serve in the military, or,
in the case of high school dropouts, be in the labor market (Pager 2007, 3). These
social outcomes do not seem to be the result of public policy but instead
of individual choices. Thus, mass incarceration diverts attention away from
a critical evaluation of the institutions and performance of the economic
system. By understanding mass incarceration as a central institution
which reproduces racial categories in the neoliberal SSA, we can better
understand why the working class has swallowed the bitter pill of
neoliberal restructuring.

Online Gambling

Link Gambling
Duh
(Young 10) Martin Young, PhD, human geographer based at Charles Darwin
University, Gambling, capitalism and the state: towards a new dialectic of the risk
society? Journal of Consumer Culture, 2010.
agn = the systemof production; alea = the realm of consumption
the state is attracted to the revenues available through aleatory
expansion. Although it is regressive, gambling revenue is easy money in that its
legitimation, and in many cases nationalization (i.e. through lotteries), has
transformed it into a form of voluntary taxation (Abt, 1996; Eadington, 1996; Neary and
Taylor, 2006; Smith, 2006). Indeed, alea has become increasingly important to the
finances of the state (Doughney, 2004; Livingstone, 2001; Livingstone and Woolley, 2007; Ronalds,
2002). From a political economy perspective, gambling is a regressive form of revenue
generation, an efficient commercial form of exploitation of the desire to
engage with chance (Doughney, 2004; Livingstone, 2001; Volberg and Wray, 2007). In this sense, the
production of alea legitimates socio - economic inequality and supports
the agnistic status quo (Nibert, 2006). Within this system the state adopts a
dualistic and contradictory role, as agency for the simultaneous protection
and economic exploitation of its citizens (Doughney, 2002, 2004; Livingstone, 2001).
It is clear that

However, the enormously lucrative nature of aleatory production could not have been predicted. It is a historicallyspecific phenomenon, one that obscures the deeper question of why such a revenue stream is so important to
governance itself, an importance that overrides the charter of the state to protect the welfare of its citizens. In
short, the states dramatic appropriation of alea demands further explanation.

Longer Duh
(Young 10) Martin Young, PhD, human geographer based at Charles Darwin

University, Gambling, capitalism and the state: towards a new dialectic of the risk
society? Journal of Consumer Culture, 2010.
agn = the systemof production; alea = the realm of consumption
the state/industry complex produces alea in response to its own
position as aleatory subject. This means the state is committed to the
production of alea; that is, to marketing and selling (both materially and ideologically) a
range of consumer products based on chance (e.g. lotteries, electronic gambling machines,
sports betting and race betting). As a consequence, an increasing range of gambling
products is produced through the process of product differentiation . For
It is clear that

example, there is currently not one but eight weekly lottery draws at the national level in Australia (including
Monday Lotto, Oz Lotto, Wednesday Lotto, Powerball, 6 from 38 Pools, Saturday Lotto, and $2 and $5 Jackpot

differentiation enables the sale of chance to an increasingly

diverse range of consumers through the continual development of
heterogeneous products aimed at particular market segments. As Cosgrave and
Lotteries). This

Klassen point out: Governments, and the marketing firms they hire to promote gambling products, must constantly

The creation
of new gambling products and the marketing of those products to the
public demonstrate the increasing commodification of gambling activity
whereby this activity becomes a form of commodity fetishism. (2001: 10) The
mass production of alea has become possible in large part due to
technological changes that the state and industry have been able to
revolutionize these products and advertise aggressively to create and sustain interest in them.

successfully harness.

New technologies have resulted in the reconfiguration of the social relations of

the game itself. A pivotal change has been the replacement of labour with technology at the point of exchange. In
the case of gambling machines, human labour has been removed from the immediate production of gambling and
replaced with linked random number generators, individually presented by electronic devices, in an increasingly
private relationship between subject and machine (Livingstone, 2005). The technology of the networked random
number generator is driving a merging of gambling media, a desegregation process that makes possible one-stop
gambling venues where different gambling media are combined in a single site (Austrin and Curtis, 2004: 41).

the sites of gambling consumption are undergoing a trend

towards similarity or convergence the blurring of traditional social
distinctions between types of gambling venues in localized versions of
Ritzer and Stillmans cathedrals of consumption. This convergence enables venues to stimulate
Consequently,

demand through the combination of gambling forms (Miers, 1996). As a case in point, sporting and services clubs in
Australia transformed from nongambling public venues with a community benefit charter during the 1980s and
1990s to become contemporary suppliers of integrated gambling products. A typical club now offers electronic
gaming machines (EGMs) or poker machines (these are similar to the US style slot machines), keno (a form of
continuous electronic lottery), sports betting, and race betting (e.g. horses and greyhounds). In this way, a
homogenized yet differentiated aleatory product is created (Young and Tyler, 2008). In addition, the distribution of
alea has been facilitated by the introduction of remote communications (e.g. internet, mobile phones and digital
TV). As a result, the consumption of alea is increasingly effortless or barrierfree. For example, a survey conducted in
September 2009 by the UK Gambling Commission found that 10.6% of 8,000 adults surveyed had participated in at
least one form of remote gambling through a computer, mobile phone or interactive/digital TV (Gambling
Commission, 2009). This proportion had increased from 7.2% in 2006, a finding explained largely by the growth in
online lottery participation. In Australia, the Productivity Commission (2009) has recently proposed changes to the
Interactive Gambling Act 2001 that will allow for Australian web sites to provide interactive gambling services to
Australian customers, an activity that is currently prohibited yet worth an estimated $700 million AUD annually. To

the consumption of alea has risen to a central place

within contemporary capitalistic societies. The commodification and
legitimation of alea within the agnistic framework has meant that the
state is involved in commercial gambling, both as a regulator and financial
beneficiary, to an unprecedented degree. The desire to produce alea,
necessitated by the emergence of the global risks of the risk society that
create the states own position as aleatory subject, is then differentiated,
legitimated, and promoted to consumers in a partnership between state
and industry. Aided by technological developments, alea has been
successfully sold and discursively reproduced as a consumptive practice .
The production of alea has not only increased but also widened to include,
for the first time, the middle class, ironically the group traditionally most
hostile towards gambling, in a shift that has normalized the activity (Reith,
summarize my argument so far,

2007: 35). Herein lies a key contradiction. On one hand, the risk society thesis argues that social practice is
increasingly organized around the management and reduction of risk. On the other hand, we are presented with the
en masse production and consumption of risk through the commodification of gambling. How then do we reconcile
these apparently contradictory relations?

AT: Its the Gamblers Fault

Creating an irresponsible consumer only serves to mask the
structures that allow them
(Reith 13) Gerda Reith, school of Social and Political Sciences, University of

Glasgow, Techno economic systems and excessive consumption: a political

economy of pathological gambling The British Journal of Sociology, October 2013.
As governments liberalize regulations and markets expand on a global scale, discourses of pathology and irresponsibly are invoked

The ideology of the responsible

sovereign consumer is the corollary of the deregulation of markets and
the expansion of commercial industry. It applies to other forms of consumption beyond gambling, of
course, notably alcohol and food, where the adverse effects of immoderate consumption , in
terms of, for example, binge drinking and obesity are regarded as matters of individual liability
to articulate the negative impacts of excess consumption.

(Nicholls 2006; Sobal and Maurer 1999).5 Similarly, credit is encouraged and normalized as part of the fabric of modern consumer
society (Ritzer 1995), while the harms generated by its expansion are regarded as issues of deficient self control and lack of
prudence. As with the responsiblitization of other forms of consumer behaviour (O'Malley 1996), gambling subjects are required to

Rather than
restrictive legislation, we have the shibboleths of individual and corporate responsibility which, in effect,
come down to self regulation by individual consumers themselves. In the same way that
consume, desire and spend in order to demonstrate responsible citizenship but not too much.

Guthman and Du Pois claim that neoliberalism encourages (over) eating at the same time that neoliberal notions of discipline vilify
it (2006: 437), so the cultural and political systems of neoliberalism encourage (excess) gambling at the same time they criticize it.

Those who fail to control their gambling are regarded as flawed

consumers; or, in bio-medical discourses, as addicts or pathological subjects (Reith 2007). Such a
perspective encourages interventions that work at the level of the
individual, persuading players themselves to assume responsibility for
their behaviour, and in so doing, downplaying the structural features the

spread of gambling environments within techno-economic systems which in fact create the conditions for discourses of pathology
in the first place. This is the point made by Rose (1999) and other critics of the psy sciences when they point to the
correspondence between the normative governance of individuals' behaviour and emotions, through, for example, therapy and

This focus on pathological and /

or irresponsible gambling is typical of certain types of knowledge that have
salience in neo-liberal societies: the types that Jameson argued have
produced the very concept of addiction itself (2004: 52), and that work to
conceal wider political and economic relationships by shifting attention to
the (flawed) body of the individual, away from the body politic . However, the
education, and the wider ideological inducements and constraints of neoliberalism itself.

material existence of a geo-political distribution of harms makes claims that gambling problems reside largely within a minority of
deficient individuals difficult to sustain. Just as the fallout from obesogenic environments tends to be found among the poorest
groups in society and concentrated in correspondingly deprived geographic areas (e.g MacIntyre, MacIver and Sooman 1993), so the
negative impacts of gambling environments are concentrated in similar ways, with the side effects of excess consumption
disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable in society. The geography of temptation and excess of gambling consumption is
one that has distinctive regional features, based on the same dynamic of socio-economic stratification that marks the uneven nature
of global capitalist expansion (Harvey 2006). Ironically, in an unequal society, it is those who may feel they have most to gain from
the possibility of a gambling win who in reality lose the most. To end, we should reiterate the focus of our critique, which is not at
the level of the so-called problematic individual, but rather at the entire system of intensified, globalised consumption that invents
them and, just as importantly, ideas and discussions about them. In this, it is helpful to invoke Schor's defence of what she regarded
as a misconstrued focus on epiphenomena. As she put it: overconsumption is a word I rarely use, as it puts the onus in the wrong
place. It gives the impression that the problem is with these out-of-control individuals, who eat too much or drive too much (2008:

our focus is not on individuals who are seen to gamble too much.
It is rather on the increasingly fast, and upstream flows of money from
gamblers to industry, and the concomitant downstream flows of harms:
the erosion of time and money, the colonization of space, and the
deterioration of social cohesion, that ensues. In a climate in which sophisticated gambling technologies are
593). Similarly,

promoted and accelerated by an alliance of commercial interests and deregulatory policies, and where neo-liberal states are

it is the existence of entire gambling

environments, rather than the individual players within them, that need to
be the urgent focus of social science research and policy debate.
themselves involved in the business of gambling,

Prostitution

Link Prostitution
The plans attempt to commodify the body of women for a
profit is characteristic of neoliberal strategies that deny
agency of the global south and exacerbate living conditions
(Heron 08) Taitu Heron, The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica,
Gender and Development Studies, Faculty Member, Globalization, Neoliberalism
and the Exercise of Human Agency International Journal of Politics, Culture, and
Society, Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2008
In the context of the pervasive trading and financial arrangements brought on by human agency can be diminished at various levels.

agency is diminished internally, through the relationship with

patriarchal nature of political systems, notably the overall economic
subordination and inadequate participation of women in decision-making
processes at the national level. Second, human agency also diminishes
through the interplay between internal and external relations of
domination. Internally sapping human agency of women and other
marginalised groups enables to a large extent the perpetuation of the
inequitable trading and financial arrangements, and subsequently the
domination of powerful countries' interests and the perpetuation of
aggressive-materialist agency (Randriamaro 2002, p. 10). Similarly, human beings are
increasingly being commodified and traded as sex slaves, prostitutes or
trafficking victims' as globalization has seen an unprecedented growth in
the underground sex industry (Poulin 2004, p. 3). More women and children are made
vulnerable to the already structurally discriminating environment and the
hierarchical relationships that exist between the developed countries and
dependent countries and between men and women. In recent years under the
impact of structural adjustment and neoliberal policies in numerous developing countries
as well as in the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe, poor women and children have become new
raw resources within the framework of national and international
business development. According to Poulin (2004, p. 2) globalization has created a
market of sexual exchanges in which millions of women and children have
been converted into sexual commodities. This sex market has been
generated through the massive deployment of prostitution (one of the effects of the
presence of military forces engaged in wars and/or territorial occupation in particular in the emerging economies), the
unprecedented expansion of the tourist industry, and the growth and
normalization of pornography (see Box 2). This industry is based on the
First,

systematic violation of human rights , for it requires a market in

commodified human beings and the complicity of pimps and clients who
are prepared to buy and sell women and children. It is only one among
many varied instances of the commodification of all of life which is a
defining characterization of current neoliberalism, a pattern which hits at
the core of human agency and robs one of the dignity inherent in each
human being on one hand, and diminishes positive use of agency on the
other.

Link Prostitution
Legalization of prostitution contains an ontic justification for
neoliberal ideology feminists and anti-neoliberals alike
should continue to wag their figure in using market logic to
describe social phenomenons
(Oksala 13) Johanna Oksala , Senior Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland
research project is Philosophy and Politics in Feminist Theory at the University of
Helsinki, Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality Foucault Studies, No. 16, pp.
32-53, September 2013.

the greatest political challenge neoliberalism presents to feminist politics

concerns the extension of the economic realm itself. We have to study
critically the political processes and the criteria that determine the allocation of social
issues in the spheres of the cultural and the economic rather than just
accepting this distinction as a politically neutral tool. Feminist resistance to
neoliberalism would ultimately have to mean deliberately pushing back
Perhaps

therefore

the encroachment of the social by the economic with a broader vision of

politics and of the good life. The feminist response to neoliberalism cannot therefore be limited to issues of economic
redistribution: how wealth can be distributed more evenly among the sexes, for ex-ample. We must also raise more
fundamental questions about the limits of the markets and of economic
rationality itself. Feminist theory and politics should form a strong and vocal
strand in the public, political and moral debate on the acceptable limits of
the marketsa debate our societies acutely need today. One area in which such feminist debate
must be central is sexuality. While second-wave feminism was initially almost unanimously opposed to all
forms of sex work condemning it as a form of patriarchal domination or even male violence, during 1970s and 1980s a
feminist position gradually developed that was strongly pro-prostitution. Today feminists
are starkly divided between so called abolitionist and sex-workers rights perspectives. Abolitionists generally identify prostitution
with the selling of the body and consequently of the self. It is a self-estranging activity destructive of womans humanity.66 This
position is countered by sex workers rights advocates, who insist that what is sold in prostitution is not the body, but a service, and
that what a client pays for is sex workers time and not indiscriminate access to her body. They criticise the abolitionist position as
moralizing and utopian: the best way to protect vulnerable women is not to eradicate the market for sex by legislative means, but to
use political power to organize that market in a way that makes it safer and less exploitative for sex-workers. Sex work must be
understood essentially as a service sector job determined by the operative conditions of the labour market as well as other factors
regulating the supply and demand of sexual services. As Wendy Chapkis67, for example argues, viewing erotic labour as a form of
service work is less grand and poetic than imagining the prostitutes soul in mortal danger through the commodification of its most
intimate aspects, but such formulation has the advantage of pointing critics in the direction of practical interventions such as workplace organizing and broader political campaigns to increase the status and respect accorded to those performing the labour.68

While the economic approach has undoubtedly made it easier to recognize and
analyse the specific forms of exploitation that sex-workers face , we should
nevertheless be wary of how such feminist position converges with

neoliberal governmentality the expansion of market rationality to all

areas of life. While in Frasers schema pornography and prostitution are still understood, not only as
economic issues, but importantly also as cultural harms that require remedies of recognition, in neoliberal
governmentality they must be treated solely as economic issues concerned
with adequate working conditions, toughening markets and forms of entrepreneurial conduct. As one of
the call girls interviewed in Chapkis book states, the most serious impediments to a sex workers success are dysfunctional

The sex workers rights position thus operates

according to the same economic logic as neoliberalism aiming to only
ameliorate the destructive effects of free markets through the
implementation of labour regulations. It is therefore important to consider how
behaviour and limited investments skills.69

such a purely economic approach to sex work may contribute to the

increasing difficulty of raising critical questions about the moral limits of
markets the fundamental question of what we as society believe should be for sale. If part of the appeal of the
free markets lies in the fact that markets do not wag fingers, I believe that
there are new reasons to insist that feminist poli-tics must , in many instances,
continue to do so.70

AT: Starting From Human Rights Best For

Prostitutes/Feminists
Beginning with human rights discourse removes the tools
necessary to contest the political neutralization of the social
contesting neoliberal governmentality is key
(Oksala 13) Johanna Oksala , Senior Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland
research project is Philosophy and Politics in Feminist Theory at the University of
Helsinki, Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality Foucault Studies, No. 16, pp.
32-53, September 2013.

feminists must continue to critically question sex work,

but they should not do so from a universalist moral perspective concerned
with static female subjects and their natural and fundamental human rights, however. As feminist
research has demonstrated, sex workers subjectivities are complex and do not
easily fit into the binaries between forced/voluntary, victim/free agent,
active/passive. From a Foucauldian perspective, their subjectivities too have to be
examined in relation to the governmental rationalities, power relations,
discursive regimes and juridical norms that constitute them. It is also important to
I am thus suggesting that

note how human rights discourse can cut both ways: abolitionists are opposed to prostitution be-cause they view it
as a violation of womens human rights, but the sex workers rights advocates utilize human rights discourse too
when arguing that states attempts to criminalise sex work or penalize sex workers is a denial of the human right to

A critical feminist
perspective to sex work does thus not have to fall back on universalist
human rights discourse, but, in the context of neoliberal governmentality,
sex work should be approached as an issue concerned with the politically
self-determination to those who make an individual choice to enter prostitution.71

constituted and contestable limits of the markets . While I acknowledge that particular
forms of rights discourse might well have strategic utility in the political contestation of the power of the markets,

ultimately we need more radical political tools than human rights in order
to fundamentally contest our current neoliberal governmentality .72

Organs

Link Organ Sales

The sale of human organs exemplifies neoliberal expansion
allowing those who can afford to escape death by buying
organs denies the agency of those who have no choice
(Heron 08) Taitu Heron, The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica,
Gender and Development Studies, Faculty Member, Globalization, Neoliberalism
and the Exercise of Human Agency International Journal of Politics, Culture, and
Society, Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2008
patterns demonstrate two extremes highlight excessive consumption
and deprivation by identifying who has access to resources to goods and
services and who does not have access to even the most basic of goods
and services. Furthermore, Box 1 above, points to excessive materialist
accumulation in the developed world that leads to self-destructive lifestyles such chronic addictions, over-eating and alcohol consumption . It is
a form of social pathologies that defy developed country status. Is this what the
developing world should be emulating? Human agency is individualist and dysfunctional
here insofar as enough never seems to be enough and so there is a
continuous search for some other material product that would provide
happiness. While accumulation of material things is no guarantee of
happiness, the endless search and consumption of material things
continues. There is danger in an idea or group of ideas amounting to an ideology that seeks to reduce the value of human
life to the facilitation and/or provision of materialist accumulation and not much else. This is aggressivematerialist tendency in the agency we see in globalization and some of the
agents that have most of the decision-making and financial power over the
leading and directing the process of globalization. Another way of looking
at this aggressive-materialist expression of agency is to pay attention to
the way it affects the agency of the poor. For instance, technological
advancements in science and medicine have commodified nature and life
Such

forms and thus creating the possibility of cheating disability and

postponing death for those who can afford it . It has created a demand
for vital body parts that can be bought and sold. There is a rising demand
for kidneys in the global market; this demand is met from those among the
poor in India, Turkey, Romania and the Philippines, who have run out of
things to sell: fish are gone, coconuts are priced too low and the demand
for unskilled labour is not as high as that for kidneys. Poor persons who
have surrendered their agency in order to improve a situation end up
being worse off because regular medical attention is required after kidney
transplants which they can ill afford and end up neglecting in order to feed their families (Coronel and Dixit 2006, p. 15).
This example of conflicting exercise of agencies demonstrates the extent
to which the tentacles of the global economy with its belief in the virtue of
markets, and the invasion of international corporate interests into every
aspect of life; distorts the sheer sanctity of human life . Policies are directed by thought
and followed through by action/agency. No action or idea is fixed unless one wants it that way and makes a decision about it. As
an inevitable force, globalization is promoted as something out there that

has no agency when indeed there is. Actors, whether government officials, chief executive officers
(CEOs) of multinational corporations, or International Financial Institution (IFI) officials are mostly responsible for the process of
globalization but this agency is exceptionally individualistic, that does not acknowledge that there is more to life than material
wealth and individual pursuit. Grumberg and Khan point out that the main engine of globalization, technology and the expansion
and integration of markets, it is not a force of nature but the result of processes driven by human beings (Cited in UN 2005).

Link Organ Sales

The creation of a global organ market lies hand in hand with
commodification at the core of neoliberalism this creates a
populace that sacrifices themselves for a distant mirage of
upward mobility
(Scheper-Hughes 03) Nancy Schper-Hughes, professor of Anthropology at UCBerkeley, Rotten trade: millennial capitalism, human values and global justice in
organs trafficking JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS , VOL . 2, NO . 2 ( JUNE 2003), 197
226.
Amidst the neo-liberal readjustments of societies, North and South, we are experiencing today a rapid depletion, an emptying out
even, of traditional modernist, humanist and pastoral ideologies, values and practices. New relations between capital and labor,
bodies and the state, belonging and extra-territoriality, and between medical and biotechnological inclusions and exclusions are
taking shape. But rather than a conventional story of the lamentable decline of humanistic social values and social relations, our
discussion is tethered to a frank recognition that the material grounds on which those modernist values and practices were based

millennial or second coming

capitalism has facilitated a rapid dissemination to virtually all corners of
the world of advanced medical procedures and biotechnologies alongside strange markets
and occult economies. Together, these have incited new tastes and desires for the
skin, bone, blood, organs, tissue and reproductive and genetic material of others. Nowhere are
these processes more transparent than in the field of organ transplant, which
now takes place in a transnational space with both donors and recipients
following new paths of capital and medical technology in the global economy. The spread of
transplant capabilities created a global scarcity of transplantable organs at the same
time that economic globalization released an exodus of displaced persons
and a voracious appetite for foreign bodies to do the shadow work of
production and to provide fresh organs for medical consumption. The ideal
have shifted today almost beyond recognition. What the Comaroffs (2001) refer to as

conditions of an open market economy have thereby put into circulation mortally sick bodies traveling in one direction and
healthy organs (encased in their human packages) in another direction, creating a bizarre kula ring of international body trade.
The emergence of strange markets, excess capital, renegade surgeons, 1 local kidney hunters with links to an international Mafia
(Lobo and Maierovitch 2002) (and thereby to a parallel traffic in slave workers, babies, drugs and small arms) has produced a small
but spectacularly lucrative practice of transplant tourism, much of it illegal and clandestine. This confluence in the flows of
immigrant workers and itinerant kidney sellers who fall into the hands of ruthless brokers and unscrupulous, notorious, but
simultaneously rewarded, protected and envied outlaw transplant surgeons is a troubling sub-text in the story of late twentieth and
early twenty-first century globalization, one that combines and juxtaposes elements of pre- and postmodernity. These new

transplant transactions are a strange blend of altruism and commerce;

consent and coercion; gifts and theft; science and sorcery; care and human sacrifice. On the one hand,
the phenomenal spread of transplant technologies, even in the murky context of black markets in medicine, has given the possibility
of new, extended or improved quality of life to a select population of mobile kidney patients from the deserts of Oman to the rain

new developments in transplant tourism

have exacerbated older divisions between North and South, core and
periphery, haves and have-nots, spawning a new form of commodity
fetishism in demands by medical consumers for a quality product: fresh
and healthy kidneys purchased from living bodies . In these radical exchanges of body parts
forests of the Amazon Basin. 2 On the other hand,

and somatic information, life-saving measures for the one demands a bodily sacrifice of self-mutilation by the other. And one mans
biosociality (Rabinow 1996) is another womans biopiracy, depending on whether one is speaking from a Silicon Valley biotech

Commercialized transplant, a practice that

trades comfortably in the domain of postmodern biopolitics with its values
of disposability, individuality, free and transparent circulation, exemplifies
better than any other biomedical technology the reach and the limits of
economic liberalism. In transplant gifts of life and death (Parsons et al . 1969) promise to surpass all previous
natural limits and restrictions. And the uninhibited circulation of purchased kidneys
exemplifies the neo-liberal episteme, a political discourse based on
laboratory or from a sewage-infested banguay in Manila.

juridical concepts of the autonomous individual subject, equality (at least equality
of opportunity), radical freedom, accumulation and universality (the expansion of medical rights
and medical citizenship 3 ). The commodified kidney is, to date, the primary currency in transplant tourism; it represents the gold
standard of organ sales worldwide. In the past year, however, markets in part-livers and single corneas from living vendors are
beginning to emerge in Southeast Asia.

Suicide

Link Suicide Money Concerns

The affs use of Human capital inherent in physician assisted
suicide debates masks
(Mihic 08) Sophia Jane Mihic, professor of political science and philosophy,
Northeaster Illinois University, Neoliberalism and the jurisprudence of privacy
Feminist Theory, vol. 9(2): 165184, 2008.

And ones position in the queue matters, because women do not enjoy the same investment opportunities when
investing in themselves as human capital. If we conceive of a persons resources socially rather than individually,
postponement could even be construed as poor time management in terms of the emerging neoliberal order. For
impoverished young mothers, postponement could reduce their chances of becoming pregnant and getting help

Neoliberal human capital discourse

obscures class and gender differences, and hence obscures inequality, insofar
as it generalizes the self management principle . As we have already seen, the Ninth
Circuit Court echoed this construction of the self as human capital in its
Compassion in Dying (1996) decision in favour of physician-assisted suicide.
Once again, human capital discourse obscures the material inequalities the extraordinarily heavy
burdens faced by poor families in the context of Americas for-profit
health care industry when confronted by a terminally ill loved one ; the
from their kin in raising their children (Luker, 1996: 173).

gendering of care work that becomes indispensable insofar as subsidized social services remain grossly inequate;

and so on in the right to die context. A narrowly construed right to choose an

abortion or right to perform p hysician- a ssisted s uicide may enhance the sort
of costeffective self-management that is championed by neoliberalism .
However, these rights remain, in the end, merely the opportunity to participate in
a market-dominated system of self-constraint. The latitude that is afforded
to the individual under this principle is so insubstantial that it hardly
deserves to be called freedom in the liberal democratic sense. Conclusion This
article has examined selected clusters of complication and even contradiction in the extension of privacy to the
right to die for the terminally ill. There are many additional tensions that influence this issue. The Bush
Administration, and others on the religious right, would have us treat all matters of end-of-life care as a right-to-life
issue. The tragedy and silliness of this politics can sometimes be astounding. As President, for example, Bush tried
to intervene in a familys decision to discontinue life support for Terry Schiavo, a woman in a vegetative state. I am
much less troubled, however, by the spectacle of the religious right than I am by the pervasive assumptions of the

In Compassion in Dying (1996), the

court would have us calculate our love for the dying patient along with all
the other goods in a way that joins and may even rival textbook
economistic thinking about the law, such as that of Posner (1977, 1995). This agreement is
new economy that shape our actions but do not fix our gaze.

especially noteworthy since Judge Posner and Judge Reinhardt, the author of the Compassion in Dying (1996)

we need to
think of neoliberalism not as a left or right doctrine or as a way of thinking
that we can deliberately choose to adopt or to reject, but as a set of
decision, occupy opposite poles on the political spectrum in the United States. As I have argued,

practices and assumptions that to an extent has us and has differential

effects on us.10 Posner argues: A parent who loves his child in the sense that the parent derives as much
utility from the utility experienced by the child (over its lifetime) as does the child, will seek to maximize the childs
lifetime utility by investing optimally in his upbringing (Posner, 1977: 104). In Reinhardts version, remember that
even the supposedly autonomous dying patient is supposed to take into consideration the welfare of her or his

On the neoliberal human capital model, parents who love their

children will try to close the self like a firm; they will try to die as
efficiently as possible. The outcome of the current transformations in the
political economy of liberalism what, one might say alternatively, the future of liberalism will be
loved ones.

is an open question. I believe that the contours of constraint produced by these new foundations must be
modified by collective action rather than embraced through unthinking behaviour. Hence as we continue
to debate the relationships between fact and value at play in the
arguments over physician-assisted suicide and in our politics generally, we need to
assess human capital discourse and its implications . In a regime of flexible
human capital functions as an abstract conception of equality
that obscures concrete inequalities. Human capital discourse abstracts
from, and at the same time conceals, the material consequences that flow
from division and hierarchy in contemporary civil society and the family.
Human capital discourse compels us to work on the self in order to
alleviate conflict rather than to change the conditions of social and
political order that create the conflict in the first place.
specialization,

Link Suicide Burdon Concerns

The construction of Burdon is intrinsically linked to
neoliberal ontology this creates a subject, rather than a
human, that can choose to die the best way
(Ryan 11) Anne Ryan, Fear of a Living Death: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
of Chronicity, Terminal Illness and Euthanasia The Global Conference Making Sense
of: Health, Illness and Disease. Oxford, United Kingdom. 2011.
This analysis has identified firstly a construction of death and dying that clearly
separates the person into a category of other whereby they are objectified
and take on the identity of a terminally ill subject. This construction draws on a
discourse of fear surrounding an extended period of suffering where the
very essence of what we take to be human is somehow lost. The second
construction of burden works in close co-articulation with that of other so
that accounts of death and dying are framed in such a way that burden is
the inevitable consequence of being transformed into a terminally ill
subject. This construction of burden draws on discourses of quality of life
that are intrinsically linked to neo-liberal notions of independence and
personal autonomy. Talk around burden focuses not only on the terminally ill
subject but on the wider connotations that the dying presents for the family
care-giving role. The problem that this poses for Mori participants is of particular concern. The implications of
the terminally ill subject being positioned in these constructions of other and
burden can be related to Foucaults most important mode of objectification, the way in which
humans actively turn themselves into subjects.10 11 These constructions form the backdrop for
the self-formation of a subject who can choose to die.12 Thus, a socially constructed category of body
creates a particular sort of subject who can freely accept the need for
euthanasia as a therapeutic solution to this problematic anomaly. In Foucauldian terms bio-power ensures that not only will
the expert gaze of medical technologies seek normalisation but the individuals who have become constituted by that essence of
bodily construction will willingly subject themselves to euthanasia as a disciplinary technique. In doing so they are able to construct
a version of self that fulfils societal ideals of a good death This will undoubtedly function to normalise euthanasia and it will become
a reasonable expectation of those who as Larry puts it have past their use by date.

Link Suicide Only Rich Will Be Treated

The United States runs on money plan ensures only the rich
will be treated Studies in Oregon prove
(Watts 07) Thomas D. Watts, Professor of Social Work at the University of Texas

at Arlington, THE FOR-PROFIT SOCIAL WELFARE POLICY SECTOR AND END-OF-LIFE

ISSUES: A TROUBLESOME ETHICAL MIXTURE The Catholic Social Science Review 12
(2007): 351-369.
profit motive trumps end of life concerns because of the driving force of profit
acquisition. Business enterprises have an obligation to consider the good of persons and not only the increase of profits
The

(United States Catholic Conference 1994, 584). This combines with an ignoring of the natural law. John Paul II (1993, 31) quotes St.
Thomas Aquinas that the participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law, and goes on to say that
the Church has often made reference to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law, including it in her own teaching on morality (1993,
31). Unfortunately, the prevailing tides of Kantianism, postmodernism and secularism has blinded many Catholics to these great

we have a perfect storm besieging medical ethics and health

policies, the profit motive of the for-profit social welfare sector (and that of
society), a postmodernist philosophical climate, growing aged populations and
rapidly increasing health care costs, and other factors all contributing to a
troublesome ethical mixture. This troublesome ethical mixture could become even
more troublesome in the future, with inevitable Medicare and Medicaid cuts by
government, which in turn reduces the bottom line for for-profit hospitals, which
means cuts by these hospitals for perceived extraneous items [this is already happening.]. The U.S. may see
euthanasia come in through the back door. If assisted suicide were
truths. Thus,

legalized, managed-care providers would inevitably embrace it as a

money-saving technique, notes Pavlat (2006, 18). He goes on to state that a study reported
that doctors who are cost-conscious and practice resource-conserving medicine were six
times more likely to write illegal, lethal prescriptions for their terminally ill
patients (2006, 18). He goes on to discuss the experiences of the Oregon physician-assisted suicide program (with its predictable

Pavlat further asks whether there is any doubt how profit-minded

managed-care providers would react if assisted suicide were legalized
throughout the United States? We would see a new stratification of society, where the
underinsured would be advised to settle for assisted suicide, while those with
better insurance could get the medical assistance they needed (2006, 18). Such a
results).

result is surely unethical and unjust. It would go directly against Church teaching in manifest ways.

General Neolib Cards

Random

Link Market Analysis

Neoliberalism goal is not a free market economy but rather a
free market society the affs attempt to use the human body
as a means to generate a profit is in line with neoliberal
ontology
(Oksala 13) Johanna Oksala , Senior Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland
research project is Philosophy and Politics in Feminist Theory at the University of
Helsinki, Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality Foucault Studies, No. 16, pp.
32-53, September 2013.

the most worrying political effect of the

autonomy of the economic sphere has been the exclusion of many
economic and political decisions from the realm of democratic governance.
The identification of policy issues as economic rather than as social , cultural
or political means that they are understood as morally and politically
In terms of contemporary politics, perhaps

neutral and can therefore be removed from democratic decision making

processes to the ex-clusive territory of economic experts and financial institutions.
As neoliberal governmentality spreads , this depoliticization of the social
realm becomes more pronounced,

because

a key feature of neoliberal

governmentality is the potentially unlimited expansion of the economic: it

attempts to bring all aspects of life under economic rationality.

Its key aim is

not the creation of free market economy, but free market society.

Neoliberalism forces all aspects of human life to use a cost

benefit analysis
(Oksala 13) Johanna Oksala , Senior Research Fellow in the Academy of Finland
research project is Philosophy and Politics in Feminist Theory at the University of
Helsinki, Feminism and Neoliberal Governmentality Foucault Studies, No. 16, pp.
32-53, September 2013.

economists took this idea to the ex-treme. They

found that the generalization of the economic form of the market to the
whole of society functioned effectively as a grid of intelligibility and as a
principle of decipherment for social relationships and individual behavior. It was possible to
reveal in traditionally non-economic processes, relations, and behavior a
number of formal and intelligible relations .60 Economy was no longer one
domain among others with its own particular rationality, it was increasingly understood as the
rationality of the entirety of human action .61 An essential feature of
neoliberal governmentality is not just the eradication of market regulation, for example, but, more
fundamentally, the eradication of the border between the social and the
economic: market rationalitycost-benefit calculationmust be extended and
disseminated to all institutions and social practices. Every social practice and policynot only
Foucault shows in his lectures how the Chicago school

economic policymust be submitted to economic profitability analyses and organized according to the principles of
competition.

Human Capital Cards

Link Magnifier Human Capital Uses Neoliberal

Ontology
Human capital is a means to make the human a commodity
something that is within the market itself this making of the
social economic is the epitome of neoliberal ontology
(Kiersey 11) Nicholas J. Kiersey, Assistant Professor in Political Science at Ohio
University's Chillicothe campus, Everyday Neoliberalism and the Subjectivity of
Crisis: Post-Political Control in an Era of Financial Turmoil Journal of Critical
Globalisation Studies, Issue 4 (2011). *Gender modified UMKC does not endorse
gendered language

For the Ordo-liberals then, the fragility of the market is mitigated to some extent by this interventionist social policy. However,
Foucault's analysis of the economic pastoral of modern Western governmentality also encompasses another, more contemporary
framework which, like Ordo-liberalism, rejects the idea of a naturally existing homo oeconomicus but which nevertheless appears to
eschew the idea of a government-led economic pedagogy in favor of a far more universal solution. This is the more American brand
of neoliberalism, or Anarcho-liberalism, associated with Milton Freedman and the Chicago School. According to this strand of
neoliberalism, the inculcation of the confessional ideal should happen exclusively through the instrument of the market. The market

for the latter neoliberals at least, every facet of

social life can be read as an ostensibly market-based interaction. Key to
this market-based pedagogy is the rejection of the Ordo-liberal separation
between the realms of social and economic activity. How are non-economic activities to be
read as economic? The key move here is the theory of human capital, or the idea that all labour, including wage labour,
is a perfect instrument of governmentality insofar as,

can be understood as a voluntary investment or entrepreneurial activity carried out in the individual pursuit of some sort of surplus

economic analysis can be applied to almost

any form of social activity: marriage, parenting, discrimination, education, fertility, population growth, crime and
punishment, addiction, and even insanity. That is, any activity which involves "substitutable choices" or the
application of a "limited means to one end among others" (ibid., p. 222, 268). Human
value, future return, or wage (ibid., p. 224). As a result,

capital is distinguished from other types of capital by the fact that it requires the human to be present if it is to be converted to
surplus wealth. In this sense, the worker is fundamentally enjoined with his capacities as a kind of assemblage with a dynamic
productive potential. He is thus a "machine-stream ensemble" or even a "capitalability" (ibid., p. 225). This kind of labour is not

in neoliberalism, the
worker is in a very real sense "an active economic subject" not just at work but in
everything [s]he does (ibid., p. 223). What this means is that neoliberalism has effectively
swapped out the traditional sovereign homo oeconomicus for a fully
economic and adaptable entity. [S]He is not a partner in a process of exchange as
traditionally conceived but a dynamic entrepreneur of [herself]himself, constantly balancing
costs and benefits, and constantly careful of the future impact of choices even in seemingly noneconomic spheres. The universality of this subject consists in the fact that [s]he will then, out of the hope of some
merely a 'factor of production'. Rather, it has a qualitative and dynamic aspect, too. That is,

return, pursue [her]his own transformation through enhancement of [her]his basic physical capacities, mental skills, and [her]his
attitude through the market (ibid., p. 226, 229). Importantly, neoliberalism knows full well that such a pursuit might go too far and,
to this extent, it is characterised by a "consciousness of crisis" (ibid., p. 68). However, Foucault is clear on this: neoliberalism
recognises that the risk-seeking life of the ever more developed entrepreneur may generate costs. Such costs are something to be
managed, to be sure, for governmentality understands all too well how, left unmanaged, the obsessions of entrepreneurial life, or
the need to live dangerously, will create instability (ibid., p. 66). But to the extent that they are acknowledged, such problems
have little to do with a passive subject. To the contrary, they are simply externalities which must, when necessary, be managed on
the margins, through the market, as costs of manufacturing freedom (ibid., p. 65). Unlike in previous modes of government then,
here we see no need for much of a formal institutional framework for preparing the subject. The choice-focused nature of this
subject makes him "eminently governable" through the 'technology of the self' that is the incentive structure of the market (ibid., p.

Government works through this market milieu to create incentives

and disincentives, shaping how entrepreneurs think and act towards
others and themselves. In this sense, neoliberal governmentality seems to deploy the
market as a kind of technology of the self. When government is seeking to instill the rules of the game it
270).

is not simply working in what previously was recognised as the field of economic activity but, rather, within a field populated by
entrepreneurial capital-subject assemblages (ibid., p. 260). The ideal of the capital-subject assemblage of homo oeconomicus is
obviously quite far removed from the Christian confessional ideal, discussed above.

Under neoliberalism the

ideal content of the subject is that, simply, of the subject and [her] his
preferences in the marketplace. To the extent that this subject is expected to follow rules then, he is asked
simply to be an investor guided by his own, governable tastes. In this sense, while the neoliberal subject may appear to be a very
fluid or postmodern subject, with no particular allegiances to the ethical ideals of more traditional subject modes, he nevertheless
recognises his self-making project as one ultimately carried out in the pursuit of a form of capital. Now, importantly, Foucault does
not seem to develop the broader social implications of this universal yet ontologically empty or contingent 'subject-as-capital.
However, by pointing to it as a salient feature of neoliberal ideology he appears to intuit, in a manner similar to Italian Autonomist

neoliberalism makes a substantive difference within the history of

governmentality precisely because it takes the subject not simply as
something which must be produced but something which is in fact
Marxism, that

productive

in a very broad sense.

Impact Human Capital Bad Violence

The plans dismissive ideology that favors profits over agency
denies untold life chances this culminates in social explosions
of violence
(Heron 08) Taitu Heron, The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica,
Gender and Development Studies, Faculty Member, Globalization, Neoliberalism
and the Exercise of Human Agency International Journal of Politics, Culture, and
Society, Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2008
While hunger and malnutrition haunts the poor, over nutrition imperils the
affluent demonstrating the commonality of human misery of different types.
The scale of human suffering in an increasingly technologically advanced, well-networked, informed world is made more disturbing

Globalization
and neoliberalism, being twin processes at both ideological and empirical levels, often overlap in terms
of policy prescriptions that dominate the development agenda in this twenty-first
century. With its emphasis on economic growth, it becomes evident that social
development is not being enhanced; rather human dysfunctionality is
increasingly more prevalent. The current international policy environment does not appear to recognise the
weaknesses in deviating away from a socially oriented development model. As long as this environment is
dominated by issues such as free trade, intellectual property rights,
financial and capital liberalisation as well as investment protection, and
the role of the state is continually relegated to the guardian of law and
order in the midst of a socially hostile policy environment, there is great risk . A range of possibilities for resisting
these changes exist and not all positive. This may take the form of social implosion or social
explosion with increasing use of force as a method of solving problems. The
by surmounting contempt for the poor and structural biases against women (Coronel and Dixit 2006, p. 17).

implosion or explosion may be acted out against the state, whether directly or indirectly through sabotage.

Alternatively,

possibilities exist for the opening up of spaces for dialogue and

transformative change. It will remain a risk as long as the neoliberal
response to resistance to globalization is dismissive of inequalities and
clamps down on law, order and civil liberties as an expression of power
and control of the status quo. This dismissive approach toward humanity
harbours resentment and promotes the resort to desperate measures and
may not be sustainable or positive for any one. Human agency therefore,
is expressed through the interactions which are fundamentally
constructed through social and cultural structures and power relations;
each comes with their own position, and is implicated by patterns of
power predicated on structures of global injustice. Heilbroner (1985, p. 46)
argues, that the nature of capitalism will always rest on considerations of power especially where the possibility of wealth
maximization resides, there will always be a drive to accumulate more. He argues that the additional stimulus given to the drive for
wealth by its generalization as capital does not supplant its unconscious meanings of personal pre-eminence and social domination
but sharpens and intensifies its energies that must be devoted to its protection and to its accumulation (Heilbroner 1985, p. 58). In

is it pointless to question the use of this kind of agency which at its

base is greed, especially if it entails a structural inequality of life
conditions? Is it sustainable? There is a need for the actors, who lead the process of globalization, to
this regard,

recognise and accept responsibility for their dysfunctional acts of agency. The blind transposition of economic, political and cultural
structures harms people and affects their own agential capacity to chart their life course. When global actors exercise this kind of
dysfunctional agency, be they the analysts at the World Bank and the IMF, officials of the WTO, CEOs of transnational corporations,

trade and finance ministers at summits, make decisions to compel a nation to adopt Western economic systems and practices they
should bear the responsibility of the outcome of those decisions. More so, high-ranking officials and advisers of the developing world
need to question their own agency in agreeing to policies that exacerbating their countries' impoverishment; and their role in

The rhetoric of inevitability and the promise of

profit if we leave the market to work its magical wonders, allows
proponents to push aside the ethical responsibility for the consequences.
The agency is misplaced and driven by greed; indeed the agency is not very
humane. What it also indicates is the extent to which the West dominates and leads the process of globalization, the
limiting the agency of their own populations.

individualism which stands at their cultural core, which marks their manifestation of human agency, works to the detriment of the
developing world. It also points to the possibility of excessive dependency on the part of the developing world, and their acts of
agency, in certain quarters, where political elites may have the power to do otherwise. While it may be dependency, insofar as,
political elites of developing countries cannot foresee any other way of relating to the developed world, we also have to consider
greed and the financial benefits that may accrue to politicoeconomic elites if they sustain the status quo. This agency is distorted
and ambivalent, for at the same time, we may also hear cries from some political elites of the developing world of unequal trade
relations, and the wretchedness of globalization, and where many of their elites are not really interested in affecting, for the better,
the relations of inequality and exploitation internally. The complexity of exercising human agency also reflects the extent which,

The controlling elites of this

process of global capitalist development become more and more
exploitative, constantly trying to find people (read: markets and untapped or undertapped
regions of the world). There is a lack of compassion in the model. Instead of using this as an
opportunity to improve the social aspects of capitalism, the agency is
regardless the problems of capitalism, many have bought into it as a model.

being directed to deepen inequalities and relations of domination and

exploitation.

The dysfunctional forms of how human agency is manifested demonstrate a problem of dealing with the real

The willingness of those who adhere to the model to

more aggressively seek ways in which to discard life when it is not related
to the business of accumulating capital demonstrates the urgency of
addressing this absence of spiritual base for living and an absence of
universal love for the diversity and value of human life in the capitalist
model of development.
reality, rather than the ideological one.

Environment Related Stuff

Link Conservation
Conservation is only a call for the expansion of markets
neoliberalism will only use it as a justification for capitalist
alternatives
(Bscher et al 12) Bram Bscher , Sian Sullivan, Katja Neves, Jim Igoe and Dan
Brockington, Towards a synthesized critique of neoliberal biodiversity conservation
Capitalism Nature Socialism, Volume 23, Number 2, June 2012.
Biodiversity conservation is incredibly diverse, and we can distinguish many different strategies such as protected
areas, education programs, ecotourism, mitigation offset schemes, payments for ecosystem services, trade
interventions, rewilding programs, and so forth (Salafsky, Margoluis, Redford and Robinson 2002). There is an
equally great variety of conservation institutions, such as nongovernmental institutions (NGOs), international
organizations (entities like the World Conservation Union, IUCN); academic unions (such as the Society for
Conservation Biology); government departments; local community-based resource management institutions;
and*increasingly*commercial ventures. Given this diversity, to speak of neoliberal conservation risks unfair
generalizations. We argue, however, that it is precisely because the strategies and institutions of conservation can
be so varied, while the similarities neoliberal conservation produces are so pervasive, that a systematic
understanding and critique of neoliberal conservation is so important (Igoe, Neves and Brockington 2010; K.

Among critics of the neoliberal project, however, there is a

absence of this kind of analysis with regards to conservation. David Harvey
(2003, 166- 168), for example, tends to view environmental conservation as providing
alternatives that actively counter neoliberal capitalism. In The New Imperialism, his list of
struggles against accumulation by dispossession is also a litany of environmental protest. Yet he only
glancingly acknowledges that peasants might be dispossessed from their
land as effectively for a national park as by a new sheep run. In A Brief History of
Neoliberalism, he describes a sprawling environmental movement hard at work
promoting alternative visions of how to better connect political and ecological projects without tracing
the complex politics that tie some elements of this movement firmly into
mainstream political economy (Harvey 2005, 186; Dowie 2006). He does clearly recognize the role
MacDonald 2010a).
notable

of NGOs in promoting neoliberalism but does not mention conservation NGOs among their number (Harvey 2005,

The casting of almost

any form of conservation as progressively opposed to the forces creating
environmental crisis is especially problematic when an alarmist language
of crisis is used to justify policies and practices that may be injurious to
local livelihoods (often in the name of capturing landscapes for environmental conservation) (Fairhead and
Leach 1996; Leach and Mearns 1996; Stott and Sullivan 2000).4 Crisis-driven critiques also often
miss the larger point that environmental (and other) crises increasingly are
themselves opportunities for capitalist expansion. Martin OConnor thus writes in 1994:
environmental crisis has given liberal capitalist society a new lease on
life. Now, through purporting to take in hand the saving of the environment,
capitalism invents a new legitimation for itself: the sustainable and
rational use of nature (OConnor 1994, 125126, emphasis in original). So, while conservation
177). Indeed, conservation does not appear in these books as a focus of interest.

conventionally is conveyed as something different, as saving the world from the broader excesses of human

functions to entrain nature to capitalism, while

simultaneously creating broader economic possibilities for capitalist
expansion. Markets expand as the very resolution of environmental crises
that other market forces have produced. Capitalism may well be The
impacts under capitalism, in actuality it

Enemy of Nature,

as Kovel so aptly put it.

Conserving nature, paradoxically, seems also

to have become the friend of capitalism.

Thus we see that 1)

conservation is

vitally important to capitalism ; and 2) that this importance is often not recognized. These are
compelling reasons for a synthesized critique of neoliberal conservation.

Link Market Methods w/ Environment

Sustainability is impossible under neoliberal ideology
circulation of capital forces exploitation of nature
(Bscher et al 12) Bram Bscher , Sian Sullivan, Katja Neves, Jim Igoe and Dan

Brockington, Towards a synthesized critique of neoliberal biodiversity conservation

Capitalism Nature Socialism, Volume 23, Number 2, June 2012.
The second point has to do with the nature of capital, which, as Marx (1976, 256) pointed out, is value in process, money in
process: it comes out of circulation, enters into it again, preserves and multiplies itself within circulation, emerges from it with an

Capital is always on the move; if it

ceases to move and circulate, the whole system is threatened. The recent (and ongoing) financial
crisis has made this abundantly clear. From Washington via London to Tokyo, all leaders of rich countries
were primarily concerned with making sure that banks would start lending
again in order to get money back into circulation. As such, capitalism is inherently
expansionist, striving continuously to bring more and more facets of life into
its orbit, including natural worlds at multiple scales.6 Making clear the (monetary) exchange
value of nature so as to calculate what price has to be paid in order to
conserve its services, then, is not just about trying to preserve ecosystems, as
the currently popular adagio payments for environmental services would have it. It is about finding new
arenas for markets to operate in and thus to expand the remit, and
ultimately the circulation of capital (Buscher 2012). Payments go to those able
increased size, and starts the same cycle again and again.

to capture them , rather than directly to nature , and this explains why
conservation responses to ecological crises, although popularly understood as in contestation to
the environmental effects of capitalism, now are providing such fruitful avenues for further
capitalist expansion (Sullivan in press). One of the key ways in which this has
occurred has been through infusing conservation policy and practice with
the analytical tools of neoliberal economics, without recognizing that
these are themselves infused with, and reinforce, particular ideological
positions regarding human relationships with each other as well as with
non-human natures.

Link This Tech Solves The Environment

The belief that the environment is but merely a barrier to
growth advances the ontology of neoliberalism their
technology is merely another means gain a profit
(Pellizzoni 11) Luigi Pellizzoni, Associate Professor of Environmental and
Political Sociology at the University of Trieste, Italy, Governing through disorder:
Neoliberal environmental governance and social theory Global Environmental
Change Volume 21, Issue 3, August 2011, Pages 795803.
neoliberalization of
nature (McCarthy and Prudham, 2004 and Castree, 2008) as the increasing management of natural
resources and environmental issues through market-oriented arrangements , by
off-loading rights and responsibilities to private firms, civil society groups and individual citizens, with state
power, in its national and transnational incarnations, providing the rules under which markets
operate (Bumpus and Liverman, 2008 and Castree, 2008). Sustaining growth in a market economy entails
a ceaseless search for new products, techniques, markets and raw materials. In this sense
neoliberalism and classic liberalism share a basic commitment to
restructuring social relations with nature. The privatisation and
commodification of land, forests and many other resources was justified by liberal thinkers by
arguing that, since nature gains value through the application of human labour, conferring
exclusive control of natural resources on those individuals who work them is both morally right and collectively beneficial. This
is basically the same rationale used to advocate current market-based
environmental policies. Yet, while in classical liberalism there was a sustained debate over the material limits to
economic growth, the neoliberal discourse is dominated by Promethean accounts
In this context, a growing (mostly, but not uniquely, neo-Marxist) scholarship has identified the

of technology and economic expansion , where the case for the limits to
growth is reverted into a case for the growth of limits

(Lemke, 2003 and McCarthy and

Prudham, 2004). There is, thus, no total equivalence between the liberal and the neoliberal outlook on the biophysical world.

It

would be tempting to ascribe the difference to the amazing record of

technoscientific achievements accumulated over recent decades. Such explanation, however,
sounds unconvincing , not only because these achievements have been
complemented with an equally astonishing record of disasters , but above
all because the transformative capacity of human labour is central to
classic liberalism and neoliberalism (and Marxism) alike. It is more likely that there exists a difference in
the way nature is conceived. In contrast to liberalism, neoliberalism regards nature no longer as
an ultimate irreversible barrier [but as] a constraint that can be
strategically manipulated (Fuller, 2008, p. 2). This idea of a constraint that can be strategically manipulated is
worth elaborating.

Impact

AT: Neoliberalism Solves Poverty

Absolute rather than relative is a bad standard studies prove
neoliberalism increases inequality causes violence
(Springer 08) Simon Springer, Department of Geography, University of British
Columbia, The nonillusory effects of neoliberalisation: Linking geographies of
poverty, inequality, and violence, Geoforum, Volume 39, Issue 4, July 2008, Pages
15201525.

Neoliberals are quick to point out how absolute poverty has declined under the global
neoliberal regime, a claim that may or may not actually be tenable (Wade, 2004). Regardless
of this assertion, following Rapley (2004) we can view the global neoliberal regime as
inherently unstable because it assumes that absolute rather than relative
prosperity is the key to contentment, and while absolute poverty may have declined under
neoliberalism, relative inequality has risen (Uvin, 2003). Building on this notion, Rapley (2004)
suggests the events of 11 September 2001 were a symbolic moment of crisis,
where those on the losing end of the neoliberal regimes unequal distribution made their
discontent with systemic poverty and glaring inequality emphatically clear (see also Tetreault, 2003 and Uvin, 1999, who
suggest similar expressions of resentment ultimately led to the Rwandan genocide). The response in the wake of this
tragedy has been escalated violence under the auspice of what Harvey (2003) calls the New
Imperialism led by the current Bush administration. Contra Larners (2003) claim that this new military might is anything
but neoliberal in character, the rhetorical war on terror currently being waged by the Bush regime uses
militarism to enforce the neoliberal order most overtly in those spaces
where the geostrategic imperative for oil converge with the failure of Wall
Street-Treasury-IMF complex (Wade, 1998) economic prescriptions, namely in Afghanistan
and Iraq (Gregory, 2004 and Harvey, 2003). U nited S tates military power thus serves as a
bulwark for enforcement of an American concept of new world order (i.e.
neoliberalism-cum-Pax Americana) which as a renewed strategy of accumulation by dispossession is shared to varying degrees by
other governments, particularly members of the G8 (Cox, 2002).

Alt

Alt Helper? Probs not.complicates a lot of other

things
A new model for global human agency is needed the judge
should use decision making capabilities and vote negative as a
means to strengthen the periphery to a point where it can
change the system of domination when neoliberalism
inevitably crashes
(Heron 08) Taitu Heron, The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica,
Gender and Development Studies, Faculty Member, Globalization, Neoliberalism
and the Exercise of Human Agency International Journal of Politics, Culture, and
Society, Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2008

The raison d'etre of capitalism is purported to be profit generation and

maximization. It is the continuous generation of profits that promotes this
euphoric atmosphere often found in neoliberal dogma. From this perspective, there is no
other way and is evidence that the regime is fulfilling its missionnamely to organize the world according to the principles and ends

Heilbroner (1985, p. 76) succinctly gives the reminder that profits

are for capitalism the functional equivalent of the acquisition of territory or
plunder for military regimes, or an increase in the number of believers for religious ones.... Thus while
capitalism still functions as an economic system; albeit it's exploitative
tendencies, it would be difficult to envision a radical overturning as
possible or even practical. The model has been accepted by the exploiters
and well as the exploited. But disgruntling will be there because of the
absences of social justice, equity and compassion in the model, which , at
the level of human development, are basic requirements; one has to have
for which it exists.

a love for humanity in order to develop it. This is the dilemma that needs
to be addressed in capitalism at socioeconomic , epistemological and
political levels . We will have to reconsider the way in which human agency
is exercised, while recognising the complexity of it. We have to not only
look at the outcomes of exercising human agency but also what produced
the outcomes both internally and externally and the relationship between
the two. Acting out agency is an independent act driven by decisionmaking capacities. Therefore, while the current international trade and financial system as
adopted in most countries is severely limited in terms of opening up new
policy spaces, policies are not fixed in stone. Girvan (2000, p. 84) suggests that universalistic
neoliberal policies need to be replaced with policies that respect economic
and cultural diversity as well as creating policies that seek to reduce social
exclusion, marginalization and poverty. We therefore, have to question the ideological framework that
gives power to globalisation as a model of development, and weakens and distorts the positive potentiality of human agency. In
other words, one has to deconstruct the epistemological conditions that made neoliberalism possible and offer alternatives outside
of mainstream thinking. Efforts offered by the World Social Forum and the What Next Project by the Dag Hammarskjld Foundation
are cases in point, where alternative proposals to the hegemonic model of globalization are put forward; and these emphasize
equity, social justice structural transformation, self-reliant economic participation and ecological sustainability.3 Invariably an
alternative policy environment has to not only question neoliberalism and its rules and terms of engagement, but it also has to
deemphasize economic growth and embrace social policies that improve the agential capacity of human beings. Further more, such
alternatives has to envision possibilities; ones that seek to make structural transformation of political and economic arrangements
within and among states that are more equitable in nature; and most importantly has the political will to move from alternative
ideas on development to implementation and social practice. Four core principles to guide policies and programmes for an
alternative development are suggested here: 1. Agential capacityenhancing basic agential capacity as measured by education,

health and nutrition. These capabilities are fundamental to human well-being and are the means through which individuals access
other forms of well-being. 2. Access to resources and opportunitiesenhancing equality and equity in the opportunity to use or
apply basic capabilities through economic assets (e.g. land and/or housing) and resources (e.g. income and employment) as well as
political opportunity (representation in parliament etc.). Without these opportunities, both political and economic, neither women
nor men will be able to employ their capabilities for their well-being and that of their families. 3. Human securitythat is, freedom
from violence and the threat of violence and conflict. Violence and conflict result in physical and psychological harm and lessen the
ability of individuals, households and communities to fulfill their potential. 4. Rights facilitationenhancing a basic legislative/judicial
and programmatic framework that facilitates the granting of human rights as outlined by the United Nations Declaration of Human
Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Beijing Plan of Action, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women; and guided by other rights-based approaches, among others. A policy or group of policies can be
changed, if a country or group of countries want to alter the way in which their society addresses this technological era of capitalist

It is clear that a new paradigm for development is necessary, one

that aims to satisfy or facilitate basic human needs on the basis of independence, intergenerational
development.

equity, environmental sustainability, rights facilitation and adequate access to health, education and living conditionsthe very

It is not so clear how the transition will

occur whether from people participating in social movements or from people
within governments, or even a variety of combinations. The very nature of how new
paradigms emerge for development transformation is structural, complex
and tense as it speaks to the heart of interactions between people and
nations and the social relations of power within and the way in which
human agency is exercised. However, what is clear is that the
things that facilitate the positive expression of human agency.

neoliberalism and globalization as a model of development is

unsustainable. So when the centre may no longer hold, the question is
what will the periphery do?

AT: Neoliberalism Doesnt Exist (hippies, man)

Neoliberalism is something that DOES exist their idea that it
is merely an illusion forfeit the ability for us to end structural
violence and achieve human emancipation
(Springer 08) Simon Springer, Department of Geography, University of British
Columbia, The nonillusory effects of neoliberalisation: Linking geographies of
poverty, inequality, and violence, Geoforum, Volume 39, Issue 4, July 2008, Pages
15201525.
by relegating Marxian political economy perspectives to the
intellectual dustbin as Hudson (2006) contends Amin and Thrift (2005) have done, and in suggesting
that neoliberalism is a necessary illusion or that there is no such thing as
Castree (2006) and Barnett (2005) respectively do, albeit from two very different theoretical perspectives, is to run the
perilous risk of obviating ourselves from the contemporary reality of
structural violence (Bourgois, 2001, Farmer, 2004 and Uvin, 2003). Without theorising capital as a
class project and neoliberalism as an actually existing circumstance (Brenner and
Theodore, 2002), structural violence, and the associated, if not often resultant direct
violence (Galtung, 1990), becomes something out there and far away in either
spatial proximity or class distance, so that it is unusual, unfamiliar, and
unknown to the point of obscurity and extraordinarity. Arming ourselves with a
Marxian political economy approach, and a theoretical toolkit that includes
neoliberalism, allows us to bring global capitalisms geographies of
violence into sharp focus, alerting us to the realities of poverty and inequality as
largely outcomes of an uneven capitalist geography, and furthermore to
recognise the ways in which the out there of violence has occurred and
continues to proliferate and be (re)produced in a plentitude of spaces, including in here . It
Finally,

is only through recognition of such symbolic violence that human

emancipation may be offered, and without such acknowledgement, whats
left? Just a future of ensuing violence.

Ontology

Ontology Key
Ontology is key it is the only way to examine the relentless
expansion of capitalism into other realms
(Rossi 12) Ugo Rossi, University of Turin, Italy, On the varying ontologies of
capitalism : Embeddedness, dispossession, subsumption Progress in Human
Geography 118 2012.

Note Embeddedness, dispossession, and subsumption are all different ontologies of capitalism, embeddedness
refers to the way the capitalism is within everyday life (ie the state is capitalist, organizations care about profits
ect). Dispossession is the ontology of capitalism that relates to the subjugation of people/nature to turn a profit,
and subsumption follows Hardt and Negris idea that capitalisms drive for profit has subsumed the value of life.
This article has attempted to move beyond the current impasse in scholarship addressing the so-called varieties of capitalism,
seeking to overcome the geographical-institutionalist determinism of its conceptual framework, while offering a pluralistically
substantive interpretation of capitalism itself. In doing so, it has retained focus on capitalisms totality and at the same time it has
called attention to capitalisms different natures of being and ways of relating to its outside environment in a context of hegemonic
but persistently variegated neoliberalization and globalization. The three ontological configurations described here shed light on the
varying ways in which capitalisms relationships with its outside environment have been understood in contemporary social

The identification of different ontological

dispositifs embeddedness, dispossession, subsumption allows us to understand how
diversified and dialectical processes of capitalisms subjectification
prepare the ground for an activity of governance adapting to changing
economic conditions and productive settings, such as post-Fordist clusters
of endogenous firms, newly commodified urban and regional
environments, and knowledge-based and creative economies (see Table 1). In this
sciences, with special reference to economic geography.

sense, the perspective adopted here is not intended to avoid dealing with issues relating to the governance of capitalism, which
have been at the heart of studies on the varieties of capitalism conducted from a comparative political economy perspective.

the pluralistically substantive interpretation of capitalism itself aims

to repoliticize discussions about the variegation of capitalism (and neoliberalism),
inviting us to question capitalisms different processes of subjectification
associated with its relentless expansion and socialization , and to continue
interrogating the evolving relationships between the particular and the
universal in contemporary capitalist globalization (Butler et al., 2000). Moreover, the
Rather,

proposed substantive understanding of the varieties of capitalism is intended to provide an explanation for capitalisms enduring
power even in a context of deep economic crisis and recession such as the one that has followed the credit crunch of 2008 2009.

capitalism is to
be viewed as an essentially religious phenomenon, not in the Weberian sense as a
religiously conditioned structure, but as a purely cultic religion. This means that in the absence of dogma
(like in ordinary religions), as Benjamin notes capitalism is in constant search of a
foundational moment through its encounter with society and the wider
outside environment. The mobilization of ontological dispositifs , in the sense
outlined in Agambens theological genealogy of the original Foucauldian notion, triggers processes of
capitalisms subjectification and resubjectification through expansion and
socialization, thus laying the foundations for a renewed belief in
capitalism as a force capable of guiding human societies toward the
alleged common good even under the most adverse politico-economic
As Walter Benjamin (1996 [1925]) revealingly pointed out in his fragment on capitalism as religion,

conditions .

Link Ontology Thumper

MARX SECTION

Neacsu Gender/Sexual Orientation

Identity Politics Fails Too Distanced

Try or die for the alternative Identity politics are too reaction
and distant from the masses to ever achieve change only
beginning with Marxist goals will achieve social justice
(Neacsu 05) DANA NEACU, Head of Public Services at Columbia Law School
Library and a New York attorney, THE WRONGFUL REJECTION OF BIG THEORY
(MARXISM) BY FEMINISM AND QUEER THEORY: A BRIEF DEBATE CAPITAL
UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [34:125 2005]
To the extent that there had been a Marxist Left in the United States,

gender and sexual orientation

discrimination eventually replaced the Marxist essentialist discourse.23 Currently, identity

politics24politics focused on non-economic identity features25is dominating the Leftleaning public discourse.

Despite the opposing stance of Marxism and identity politics , identity

politics relies on essentialist points of view .26 On one hand, it tends to
reduce its members identity to some non-economic given trait as
determining its individual members point of view.27 On the other hand, postmodern
thought, despite its aspirations, is strikingly modernist.28 It assumes a grand
narrative to make sense of it all.29 For example, Catharine MacKinnonwho acknowledged that
[f]eminism has no theory of the state30also recognized that feminist literature relies on either a liberal or a

identity politics does not use

redemptive human projects,32 as Fredric Jameson noted in 1984, and does not care
about the world around it, it may be perceived as socially reactionary .
Marxist understanding of society.31 Thus, to the extent that

Identity politics endorses the existing order ,33 which epistemologically relies on
essentialist assumptions that Aldous Huxleys Brave New World34 describes so well.35 At first glance, it may seem
that identity politics and Marxism have very little in common, but that may not necessarily be true. Of course, if
you lick my nipple, [as Michael] Warner remark[ed], the world suddenly seems comparatively insignificant,36
and with it any macro socioeconomic analysis. Identity becomes central and more than a cultural trait; it becomes
the performance of desire.37 It becomes a place of ideological and material contestation over need38 in other
words, an ideology that demands legitimacy for its desire. However, Marx too talked about desire, albeit as the
result of the never-ending production of commodities.39 Moreover, this Article suggests not only that identity

Feminist and queer

symbolism need a grand social theory to attract popular support for their
demands and a re-discovery of Marxism may do just that. Ontologically,
Marxism is useful to go beyond the regressive nature of postmodern
politics that stresses micro-politics to the detriment of mass politics . While
identity politics seems to breed more identity politics, 40 Marxism can provide
the grounds to unify the disparate political movements. It can provide values and ideals that
might unite specific movements for specific goals .41 This would be a bold move for
identity politics, which has distanced itself from the masses, seemingly in a desire to be beyond Left and
Right.42 However, such distancing is hard to achieve, and is often perceived as
undemocratic. For example, gay and feminist activism in the former Soviet bloc arrived with right-wing
neoliberal ideology.43 Empirically, it might be shown that all major achievements of identity
politics took place at a time when the Marxist concepts of exploitation
and alienation were more commonly used than today.44 For instance, perhaps it
politics and Marxism have similarities, but that they need each other.

was the Left-leaning public discourse during the mid-1960s and early 1970s that caused the Supreme Court to
recognize the existence of certain womens rights among the other fundamental individual rights.45 Moreover, it is
well known that the greatest gains for affirmative action for Blacks and other oppressed people and women were
made under Republican Richard Nixons presidency in the early 1970s46 as the likely result of public pressure.47
Today, by contrast, when a Marxist-constructivist critique of capitalism is taken derisively by so-called progressive

lawyers and politicians, even more modest demandsby Marxist standardscan easily be viewed as extreme by

Absent the Marxist ethical foundation of social justice,

identity theories seem to have lost their social edge as well as their goals
of resistance and insurgency. Today, feminism is not about socialismthat is too silly.48 Today,
both courts and legislators.

feminism seems more focused on lending credibility to progressive corporate law.49 Current cultural politics
discuss two forms of postmodernism: one of reaction and one of resistance.50 The reactionary form would
seem to be [an example] of pure commodification and involves an instrumental pastiche of pop- or pseudohistorical forms.51 Conversely, the resistant form is concerned with a critical deconstruction of tradition . . . with
a critique of origins, not a return to them.52 Feminist and queer theories belong to the latter form of postmodern

By rejecting the Marxist theoretical framework, however, the theories

may end up focusing too much on the individual, thus sharing the
conservatives reactionary social policies that individuals (unlike corporations) do
not deserve government subsidies. 54 Marxism promotes the values of ensuring
a decent lifestyle for all, which underlines both its compatibility with the
social and economic rights discourse and its potential role in helping
feminist and queer theories reconnect with the others that are not part
of their culturally identified groups. Through the discourse of human rights in its broader usage,
theories.53

which goes beyond our provincial limitation to civil and political rights,55 the others may be more able to
empathize with the specific demands made on behalf of women and those in the queer community.

AT: Essentialism
Marxism does not erase identity but rather find a common
denominator accusations of essentialism skirt the ability to
mobilize masses in the favor of distanced intellectualism we
are all economically identifiable
(Neacsu 05) DANA NEACU, Head of Public Services at Columbia Law School
Library and a New York attorney, THE WRONGFUL REJECTION OF BIG THEORY
(MARXISM) BY FEMINISM AND QUEER THEORY: A BRIEF DEBATE CAPITAL
UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [34:125 2005]

Marxism56which I explain in much more depth elsewhere57is usually described as a comprehensive theory that articulates the
principal lines of historical [human] development as a whole.58 Jon Elster refused to define it per se, but asserted that Marxism
could be viewed as the theoretical developments of Marxs writings.59 Thus, at a minimum, Marxism is Marxs writings.

Marxism is an essential theoretical foundation for any progressive (mass) movement because
it includes both a specific conception of the good life, and a specific notion
of distributive justice.60 Instead of being ignored,61 Marxism can be used as the
theoretical base of any progressive identity theory as well. It usefully highlights socioeconomic distinctions among the members of all different minority groups, such as paupers, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes,
[etc.]62 who do not belong to either the genteel or middle-class.63 Socio-economic identity, as I have also discussed in another

socio-economic
identity legitimizes specific state intervention in favor of economically
disadvantaged groups across racial, gender, or age borders.65 It promotes a discourse on substantivepiece, has become a subversive concept few scholars want to discuss.64 As Frances Raday pointed out,

group status version of human rights [because it] is part and parcel of a socioeconomic welfare policy.66 For example, in Canada,
state [i]ntervention in [issues related to] contractual autonomy has . . . been [possible in] situations of systemic imbalance in the

Marxism justifies socio-economic theoretical constructs and

explains how even less controversial concepts, such as cultural
divisions, as Jon Elster demonstrated, are never class neutral. 68 Marxism offers an
identity to the millions of have-nots,69 across geographical and racial borders because, under
Marxism, classes are distributed non-randomly over cultural groups. 70
socio-economic power of the negotiating parties.67

Furthermore, Marxism is uniquely fit to explain how poverty may become a tool in the hands of politicians interested in connecting
poverty to certain minority social groups. Politicians have done this, for example, by ghettoizing those groups and forcing them to
live in geographical areas that are underdeveloped and thus have no available jobs.71 However, by offering economic ghettos

politicians have successfully segregated

the poor by their color, for example, and successfully divided that electorate.72 As a
result, it has become very difficult for these minority groups to see
themselves as belonging to one classthe underprivileged and speak with one
slightly different to different underprivileged social groups,

voice , although their demand is one: an employment-filled future. Of course, there are more complex
theoretical perspectives than Marxism that explain social phenomena. 73
For example, [c]ritical race feminism . . . goes beyond traditional feminist approaches, which are
usually based on the experiences of white middle and upper class women.74 These are theories that focus on
the intersection of race and gender, for example, and they emphasize the anti-essentialist aspect of
the group members they represent.75 However, it is my belief that, for as long as Marxism has been
ignored, a certain poverty of the liberal discourse has flourished. 76
Marxism remains a valid social theory, if only because its bold vision does
grasp [much] of historical reality.77 Sometimes, exfoliating social appearances and finding
the common denominator among social realities 78 may be a necessary
theoretical step in understanding options for social reform. Because
Marx[ism] reduce[s] societythe space of human interactionto its raw essence[,] to an

it remains a useful intellectual tool. This dichotomy,

often described as simplistic,80 in fact helps us focus on important issues
economic and a non-economic component,79

there are basic (economic) issues that relate to housing, education, health care, employment, and a host of other issues that the

it is those basic economic issues, as recent events have shown in

that can easily change the
electorate into a mob. Moreover, we are all economically identifiable.82 Both the poor
electorate cares about deeply. However,

the U.S., post-Hurricane Katrina, as well as in France and Belgium,81

and the rich are part of the socio-economic class structure.83 As Raymond Williams observed, [Marxism explains] how the
economic component of our lives sets limits and exerts pressures on our daily choices.84 Extrapolated to law, it seems as
obvious as a truism that we enjoy only the rights we can afford.85 Critics of Marxism found this essentialism to be its major
fault.86 I disagree. I suggest that

politics today.

essentialism may prove necessary to progressive

If indeed we are witnessing a return to mass politics, then

even progressive

incremental reforms need a larger intellectual goal. Those who are not
direct beneficiaries of those reforms need to be able to identify with a
larger idealhuman rights, for exampleto support them with their vote. Alternatively, the progressive reforms will need
to pressure the Supreme Court to refrain from eliminating the meaning of individual rights that have previously been gained.

AT: Reproductive Rights

Marx accounts for reproductive rights only the alternative is
able to unite groups across different boundaries
(Neacsu 05) DANA NEACU, Head of Public Services at Columbia Law School
Library and a New York attorney, THE WRONGFUL REJECTION OF BIG THEORY
(MARXISM) BY FEMINISM AND QUEER THEORY: A BRIEF DEBATE CAPITAL
UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [34:125 2005]

From a feminist point of view, the main deficiency of Marxism is its focus on the
economy.125 Marx has been viewed as eliminating those [activities] identified
by feminists as reproductive (childcare, nursing) as well as those concerned with kinship regulation.126 Marx is
accused of using a narrow meaning of production, and not including in his meaning of mode of production of material life, all
social interaction conducive to the creation and re-creation of a societys physical existence.127 Catharine MacKinnon disliked
Marxs writings for ignoring women.128 The best articulated criticism of Marxism is that its construction of class is essentialist and
ignore[s] the oppression of social groups not constituted economically.129 It is well known that together with postmodernism,

If issues such
as reproductive rights and unpaid household labor were marginal to
Marxist discourse, to its credit, feminism brought them to center stage.131
However , Marxism remains relevant today. In addition to what has already been mentioned,
Marxism can also help explain how the oppression of gays and lesbians 132
is expressed economically through denial of employment, housing, and
health care.133 Any comprehensive demand for human rights, which would
include social and economic rights in addition to civil and political ones, would have such
discrimination addressed. Marxism can help feminists focus on issues that are meaningful to those who do not
enjoy [what Gayatri C. Spivak defined as] the institutional privileges of power.134 Marxism is able to unite
feminists from different parts of the world whose interests otherwise may
not intersect.135 For example, Marxism offers the tools to criticize the scourge of
globalization 136 and the end of garment trade quotas, which cause women in many global regions to
face the bleak choice of either earning 30 cents an hour to work in a real sweatshop or becoming a
prostitute.137 Recently, this choice was faced by Chinese women who had been employed by American garment companies
poststructuralist feminism engendered the orthodox interpretation of reproduction of class relations.130

with factories in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, an area sometimes referred to as a quiet little American territory.138

Marxism can provide insight into a world divided into classes whose
members form further alliances according to a wide set of interests and
identities, including gender and sexuality.139 With its focus on class struggle, Marxism can provide
theoretical guidance to those who want to organize social movements along other lines of social interest.140 For example,

Marxists have contributed to struggles over reproductive rights by

showing the links between feminist concerns about gender subordination
and the rights of women and class issues about who does the work of child
care and under what conditions, or about who has access to reproductive
technology and medical services and for what reasons.141 Marxism can also help explain
the spread of HIV in economically deprived areas of the globe and in those with high rates of prostitution.142 It can help because a
Marxist explanation would connect the spread to both the poverty of resources to stop the virus and to the poverty of knowledge,
which is often caused by a lack of adequate resources to support adequate public awareness.143

AT: Queers
Queer theory alone is ill advised Only Marxism is able to
speak to queers in all economic conditions
(Neacsu 05) DANA NEACU, Head of Public Services at Columbia Law School
Library and a New York attorney, THE WRONGFUL REJECTION OF BIG THEORY
(MARXISM) BY FEMINISM AND QUEER THEORY: A BRIEF DEBATE CAPITAL
UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [34:125 2005]

However, as queer theorists have noted, there are privileged forms of sexuality such as
heterosexuality, marriage, and procreationthat are protected and awarded by the state and subsidized through

These forms need to be addressed separately if we

want to understand their specificity, and Marx did in fact ignore such issues.145 Nevertheless,
if making distinctions is intellectually necessary, it is also necessary to
recognize commonality among the differences. If mass politics are involved, a
singular focus on sexuality and gender may be particularly ill-advised. For
social and economic incentives.144

the last few decades, the Left and the Right have played good cop/bad cop when it comes to sexuality: they are
both interested in regulating it.146 Both have successfully addressed it as a site of critique.147 For example,

sexuality has been a field of power, [and] a category of identity for the Left .
148 Moreover, queer theory has been a critique of heterosexuality as a
regulatory social practice.149 And for the Right, sexuality is a place to criticize liberals, and the Left
fears that what was gained yesterday may be lost tomorrow.150 Marxism, whose materialism remains useful
for both feminist and queer theories,151 is an answer to those uncertainties. A
materialist queer critique, for example, explains how human capacities
for reproduction and pleasure are always historicized or organized under
certain specific conditions across a complex ensemble of social relations
economic, political, [or] ideological.152 Furthermore, it explains how sexuality
mediate[s] and traverse[s] other facets of social reproduction.153 More
interestingly, a materialist queer theory can provoke the Left to develop a
radical oppositional politics that speaks to lesbians and gays and queers whether
they are urban middle-class members or marginalized in prisons and
shelters.154

Callicinos AT: Hardt and Negri

AT: Hardt and Negri Empire

Hardt and Negri are just expressing good intentions their
critique of Empire is empty of all class analysis
(Callinicos 02) Alex Callinicos, Professor of Politics at the University of York,

England, The Actuality of Imperialism Millennium: Journal of International Studies,

2002. Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 319-326
And yet, despite these merits,

Empire is a deeply flawed work. Its principal weaknesses are also

threefold. Not only does the book lack anything resembling a serious economic analysis
perhaps not surprisingly, given Negris long-standing disdain for the entire tradition of Marxist political economy as

it borrows its implicit theoretical framework from Gilles

Deleuzes post-structuralist version of vitalism. Empires key category of the
multitude, exemplary in its debt to Deleuzes ontology, is less a tool of class analysis than
objectivistic5but

an expression of good intentions . Lastly, Hardt and Negri fail to develop

their major empirical claim that the interstate conflicts characteristic of
imperialism have been overcome by the transnational political structure of
Empire, which serves the interests of global capital. 6

GTown Race Article

Link Inclusion Arguments

A call for inclusion merely masks the way in which capital can
commodifiy struggles only a total denouncement of capital
can end oppression
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie ScatamburloDAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,
Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
Moreover, it presents a challenge to those theorizations that work to consolidate identitarian understandings of difference based

the answer to oppression often

amounts to creating greater cultural space for the formerly excluded to
have their voices heard (represented). In this regard, much of what is called the
politics of difference is little more than a demand for inclusion into the
exclusively on questions of cultural or racial hegemony. In such approaches,

club of representation a posture which reinscribes a neo-liberal pluralist

stance rooted in the ideology of free-market capitalism. In short, the political
sphere is modeled on the marketplace and freedom amounts to the liberty
of all vendors to display their different cultural goods . What advocates of this approach
fail to address is that the forces of diversity and difference are allowed to flourish
provided that they remain within the prevailing forms of capitalist social
arrangements. The neopluralism of difference politics (including those based on race)
cannot adequately pose a substantive challenge to the productive system of
capitalism that is able to accommodate a vast pluralism of ideas and cultural
practices, and cannot capture the ways in which various manifestations of
oppression are intimately connected to the central dynamics of capitalist
exploitation.

Link Culture/Difference/Race
The aff is a form of psudopolitics that subordinates class under
culture this forgoes any serious challenge to the forces of
capital accumulation
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie ScatamburloDAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,
Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
Eager to take a wide detour around political economy, post-Marxists tend to assume that the principal political points of departure in

post-Marxists have
gravitated towards a politics of difference which is largely premised on uncovering relations of power that
the current postmodern world must necessarily be cultural. As such, most, but not all

reside in the arrangement and deployment of subjectivity in cultural and ideological practices (cf. Jordan & Weedon, 1995).

Advocates of difference politics therefore posit their ideas as bold steps forward in advancing
the interests of those historically marginalized by dominant social and cultural
narratives. There is no doubt that post-Marxism has advanced our knowledge of the hidden trajectories of power within the
processes of representation and that it remains useful in adumbrating the formation of subjectivity and its expressive dimensions as
well as complementing our understandings of the relationships between difference, language, and cultural configurations.

post-Marxists have been woefully remiss in addressing the

constitution of class formations and the machinations of capitalist social
organization. In some instances, capitalism and class relations have been thoroughly
otherized; in others, class is summoned only as part of the triumvirate of race,
class, and gender in which class is reduced to merely another form of
difference. Enamored with the cultural and seemingly blind to the economic, the rhetorical excesses of
post-Marxists have also prevented them from considering the stark reality of
contemporary class conditions under global capitalism. As we hope to show, the
radical displacement of class analysis in contemporary theoretical narratives and
the concomitant decentering of capitalism, the anointing of difference as
a primary explanatory construct, and the culturalization of politics, have
had detrimental effects on left theory and practice. Reconceptualizing Difference The manner in which
difference has been taken up within post-al frameworks has tended to stress its cultural
dimensions while marginalizing and, in some cases, completely ignoring the economic and material
dimensions of difference. This posturing has been quite evident in many post-al theories of race and in the
realm of ludic1 cultural studies that have valorized an account of difference particularly
racial differencein almost exclusively superstructuralist terms (Sahay, 1998). But this treatment of
difference and claims about the relative autonomy of race have been enabled by a reduction and
distortion of Marxian class analysis which involves equating class analysis with
some version of economic determinism. The key move in this distorting gesture
depends on the view that the economic is the base, the
cultural/political/ideological the superstructure. It is then relatively easy to show that
the (presumably non-political) economic base does not cause the
political/cultural/ideological superstructure, that the latter is/are not epiphenomenal but
relatively autonomous or autonomous causal categories (Meyerson, 2000, p. 2). In such formulations the cultural is
However,

treated as a separate and autonomous sphere, severed from its embeddedness within sociopolitical and economic arrangements.

As a result, many of these culturalist narratives have produced autonomist and

reified conceptualizations of difference which far from enabling those
subjects most marginalized by racial difference have, in effect, reduced difference to a
question of knowledge/power relations that can presumably be dealt with (negotiated) on a discursive level
without a fundamental change in the relations of production (Sahay, 1998). At this juncture, it is necessary to point out that

arguing that culture is generally conditioned/shaped by material forces does not

reinscribe the simplistic and presumably deterministic base/superstructure
metaphor which has plagued some strands of Marxist theory. Rather, we invoke Marx's own writings from both the Grundrisse
and Capital in which he contends that there is a consolidating logic in the relations of
production that permeates society in the complex variety of its empirical
reality. This emphasizes Marx's understanding of capitalism and capital as a social
relation one which stresses the interpenetration of these categories, the
realities which they reflect, and one which therefore offers a unified and
dialectical analysis of history, ideology, culture, politics, economics and society (see also Marx, 1972, 1976,
1977).2 Foregrounding the limitations of difference and representational politics does not
suggest a disavowal of the importance of cultural and/or discursive arena(s) as
sites of contestation and struggle. We readily acknowledge the significance of contemporary theorizations that have
sought to valorize precisely those forms of difference that have historically been denigrated. This has undoubtedly been an
important development since they have enabled subordinated groups to reconstruct their own histories and give voice to their

However , they have also tended to redefine politics as a

signifying activity generally confined to the realm of representation while
displacing a politics grounded in the mobilization of forces against the
material sources of political and economic marginalization. In their rush to
avoid the capital sin of economism, many post-Marxists ( who often ignore
individual and collective identities.

their own class privilege ) have fallen prey to an ahistorical form of culturalism
which holds, among other things, that cultural struggles external to class organizing
provide the cutting edge of emancipatory politics .3 In many respects, this posturing, has
yielded an intellectual pseudopolitics that has served to empower the theorist
while explicitly disempowering real citizens (Turner, 1994, p. 410). We do not discount concerns over
representation; rather our point is that progressive educators and theorists should not be
straightjacketed by struggles that fail to move beyond the politics of
difference and representation in the cultural realm. While space limitations prevent us from elaborating this point, we
contend that culturalist arguments are deeply problematic both in terms of their penchant
for de-emphasizing the totalizing (yes totalizing!) power and function of capital and for their
attempts to employ culture as a construct that would diminish the centrality of
class. In a proper historical materialist account , culture is not the other
of class but, rather, constitutes part of a more comprehensive theorization of
class rule in different contexts.4 Post-al theorizations of difference circumvent and undermine any
systematic knowledge of the material dimensions of difference and tend to
segregate questions of difference from class formation and capitalist social relations.
We therefore believe that it is necessary to (re)conceptualize difference by drawing
upon Marx's materialist and historical formulations . Difference needs to
be understood as the product of social contradictions and in relation to
political and economic organization. We need to acknowledge that otherness and/or difference
is not something that passively happens, but, rather, is actively produced. In
other words, since systems of differences almost always involve relations of
domination and oppression, we must concern ourselves with the
economies of relations of difference that exist in specific contexts . Drawing
upon the Marxist concept of mediation enables us to unsettle our
categorical approaches to both class and difference , for it was Marx himself who warned
against creating false dichotomies in the situation of our politicsthat it was absurd to choose between
consciousness and the world, subjectivity and social organization,
personal or collective will and historical or structural determination. In a
similar vein, it is equally absurd to see difference as a historical form of

consciousness unconnected to class formation, development of capital and

class politics (Bannerji, 1995, p. 30). Bannerji points to the need to historicize
difference in relation to the history and social organization of capital and
class (inclusive of imperialist and colonialist legacies). Apprehending the meaning and function of difference in this
manner necessarily highlights the importance of exploring (1) the institutional and
structural aspects of difference; (2) the meanings that get attached to categories of
difference; and (3) how differences are produced out of, and lived within specific
historical formations.5

Marx Not The Same

The permutation is an attempt to describe class as another
form of difference only understanding the socio-political
dimensions of capitalism through historical materialist analysis
can manifestations of oppression be addressed
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie ScatamburloDAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,
Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
*Gender Modified
In stating this, we need to include an important caveat that differentiates our approach from those invoking the well-worn
race/class/gender triplet which can sound, to the uninitiated, both radical and vaguely Marxian. It is not.

Race, class and

gender, while they invariably intersect and interact, are not co-primary. This triplet approximates what the
philosophers might call a category mistake. On the surface the triplet may be convincing some people are
oppressed because of their race, others as a result of their gender, yet others because of their class but this is
grossly misleading

for it is not that some individuals manifest certain characteristics known as class which then

to be a member of a social class just is to be

oppressed and in this regard class is a wholly social category (Eagleton, 1998, p.
289). Furthermore, even though class is usually invoked as part of the
aforementioned and much vaunted triptych, it is usually gutted of its
practical, social dimension or treated solely as a cultural phenomenonas
just another form of difference. In these instances, class is transformed from an
economic and, indeed, social category to an exclusively cultural or discursive one or
results in their oppression; on the contrary,

one in which class merely signifies a subject position. Class is therefore

cut off from the political economy of capitalism and class power severed
from exploitation and a power structure in which those who control
collectively produced resources only do so because of the value generated
by those who do not (Hennessy & Ingraham, 1997, p. 2). Such theorizing has had the effect
of replacing an historical materialist class analysis with a cultural analysis
of class . As a result, many post-Marxists have also stripped the idea of class of
precisely that element which, for Marx, made it radicalnamely its status
as a universal form of exploitation whose abolition required (and was also
central to) the abolition of all manifestations of oppression (Marx, 1978, p. 60). With
regard to this issue, Kovel (2002) is particularly insightful, for he explicitly addresses an issue which continues to vex the Left
namely the priority given to different categories of what he calls dominative splittingthose categories of gender, class, race,

we need to ask the question of priority with

respect to what? He notes that if we mean priority with respect to time , then the category of gender would have
ethnic and national exclusion, etc. Kovel argues that

priority since there are traces of gender oppression in all other forms of oppression. If we were to prioritize in terms of existential
significance , Kovel suggests that we would have to depend upon the immediate historical forces that bear down on distinct groups
of peoplehe offers examples of Jews in 1930s Germany who suffered from brutal forms of anti-Semitism and Palestinians today

The question of what has political

priority , however, would depend upon which transformation of relations of oppression are practically more urgent and, while
who experience anti-Arab racism under Israeli domination.

this would certainly depend upon the preceding categories, it would also depend upon the fashion in which all the forces acting in a
concrete situation are deployed. As to the question of which split sets into motion all of the others,

the priority would

have to be given to class since class relations entail the state as an

instrument of enforcement and control, and it is the state that shapes and
organizes the splits that appear in human ecosystems. Thus class is both
logically and historically distinct from other forms of exclusion (hence we should
not talk of classism to go along with sexism and racism, and species-ism). This is, first of all, because class is an
essentially [hu]man-made category, without root in even a mystified biology. We
cannot imagine a human world without gender distinctionsalthough we can imagine a world without domination by gender. But a
world without class is eminently imaginable indeed, such was the human
world for the great majority of our species time on earth , during all of which
considerable fuss was made over gender. Historically, the difference arises because class signifies one side of
a larger figure that includes a state apparatus whose conquests and
regulations create races and shape gender relations. Thus there will be no
true resolution of racism so long as class society stands, inasmuch as a
racially oppressed society implies the activities of a class-defending state.
Nor can gender inequality be enacted away so long as class society, with its state, demands the super-exploitation of womens labor.

Marxist theory does not relegate categories of

has sought to reanimate these categories by
interrogating how they are refracted through material relations of power
and privilege and linked to relations of production. Moreover, it has emphasized and insisted
that the wider political and economic system in which they are embedded
needs to be thoroughly understood in all its complexity. Indeed, Marx made
clear how constructions of race and ethnicity are implicated in the
circulation process of variable capital. To the extent that gender, race,
and ethnicity are all understood as social constructions rather than as
essentialist categories the effect of exploring their insertion into the
circulation of variable capital (including positioning within the internal heterogeneity of collective labor and
hence, within the division of labor and the class system) must be interpreted as a powerful force
reconstructing them in distinctly capitalist ways (Harvey, 2000, p. 106). Unlike contemporary
narratives which tend to focus on one or another form of oppression, the irrefragable power of historical
materialism resides in its ability to reveal (1) how forms of oppression based on
categories of difference do not possess relative autonomy from class relations but
rather constitute the ways in which oppression is lived/experienced within
a class-based system; and (2) how all forms of social oppression function
within an overarching capitalist system.
(Kovel, 2002, pp. 123124) Contrary to what many have claimed,
difference to the conceptual mausoleum; rather, it

Link Personal Experience (This Card Fucks Up

KCKCC)
Your aff is stuck in a difference prison which seeks to
fetishize experience and not change the system
confrontation and examination of the current political economy
is key
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie ScatamburloDAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,
Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
Another caveat. In making such a claim, we are not renouncing the concept of experience. On the contrary, we
believe it is imperative to retain the category of lived experience as a reference point in light of misguided post-

We are not,
advocating the uncritical fetishization of experience that tends to
assume that experience somehow guarantees the authenticity of
Marxist critiques which imply that all forms of Marxian class analysis are dismissive of subjectivity.
however,

knowledge and which often treats experience as self-explanatory,

transparent, and solely individual . Rather, we advance a framework that
seeks to make connections between seemingly isolated situations and/or particular
experiences by exploring how they are constituted in, and circumscribed
by, broader historical and social circumstances. Experiential
understandings, in and of themselves, are suspect because, dialectically,
they constitute a unity of opposites they are at once unique, specific, and
but also thoroughly partial, social, and the products of historical
forces about which individuals may know little or nothing (Gimenez, 2001). In this
sense, a rich description of immediate experience in terms of consciousness of a particular
personal,

form of oppression (racial or otherwise) can be an appropriate and indispensable point of departure. Such an
understanding, however,

can easily become an isolated difference prison unless

it transcends the immediate perceived point of oppression , confronts the

social system in which it is rooted, and expands into a complex and
multifaceted analysis

(of forms of social mediation)

that is capable of mapping out

the general organization of social relations. That, however, requires a broad

class-based approach . Having a concept of class helps us to see the network
of social relations constituting an overall social organization which both
implicates and cuts through racialization/ethnicization and gender [a]
radical political economy [class] perspective emphasizing exploitation,
dispossession and survival takes the issues of diversity [and difference]
beyond questions of conscious identity such as culture and ideology, or of
a paradigm of homogeneity and heterogeneity or of ethical imperatives
with respect to the other. (Bannerji, 2000, pp. 7, 19).

AT: Race Explains Everything/Youre Racist

Nu uh!
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie ScatamburloDAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,
Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
A radical political economy framework is crucial since various culturalist
perspectives seem to diminish the role of political economy and class forces in shaping the edifice of the
socialincluding the shifting constellations and meanings of difference. Furthermore, none of the differences
valorized in culturalist narratives alone, and certainly not race by itself
can explain the massive transformation of the structure of capitalism in recent
years. We agree with Meyerson (2000) that race is not an adequate explanatory category on
its own and that the use of race as a descriptive or analytical category
has serious consequences for the way in which social life is presumed to
be constituted and organized. The category of racethe conceptual framework that the oppressed often employ to
interpret their experiences of inequality often clouds the concrete reality of class, and blurs
the actual structure of power and privilege. In this regard, race is all too often a
barrier to understanding the central role of class in shaping personal and
collective outcomes within a capitalist society (Marable, 1995, pp. 8, 226). In many ways, the
use of race has become an analytical trap precisely when it has been
employed in antiseptic isolation from the messy terrain of historical and
material relations. This, of course, does not imply that we ignore racism and racial oppression; rather, an
analytical shift from race to a plural conceptualization of racisms and
their historical articulations is necessary (cf. McLaren & Torres, 1999). However, it is important to
note that race doesnt explain racism and forms of racial oppression. Those
relations are best understood within the context of class rule, as Bannerji, Kovel, Marable
and Meyerson implybut that compels us to forge a conceptual shift in theorizing, which entails (among other things) moving

We are
aware of some potential implications for white Marxist criticalists to
unwittingly support racist practices in their criticisms of race-first
positions articulated in the social sciences. In those instances, white criticalists
wrongly go on high alert in placing theorists of color under special
surveillance for downplaying an analysis of capitalism and class. These
activities on the part of white criticalists must be condemned, as must be efforts to stress
beyond the ideology of difference and race as the dominant prisms for understanding exploitation and oppression.

class analysis primarily as a means of creating a white vanguard position

in the struggle against capitalism. Our position is one that attempts to
link practices of racial oppression to the central, totalizing dynamics of
capitalist society in order to resist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy
more fully. 7

AT: Youre Racist/Role of ID

Class analysis does not trivialize the importance of difference
the idea that the working class is a homogenous body that
excludes ethnicities is in and of itself racist saying were
racist for examining how class is the root of oppression is
absurd
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie ScatamburloDAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,
Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
This does not render as secondary the concerns of those marginalized by race, ethnicity, etc. as is routinely charged by post-

It is often assumed that foregrounding capitalist social relations necessarily

undermines the importance of attending to difference and/or trivializes struggles
against racism, etc., in favor of an abstractly defined class-based politics
typically identified as white. Yet, such formulations rest on a bizarre but generally
unspoken logic that assumes that racial and ethnic minorities are only
conjuncturally related to the working class. This stance is patently absurd
Marxists.

since the concept of the working class is undoubtedly comprised of men and
women of different races, ethnicities, etc. (Mitter, 1997). A good deal of postMarxist critique is subtly racist (not to mention essentialist ) insofar as it
implies that people of color could not possibly be concerned with issues
beyond those related to their racial or ethnic difference. This posits people of
color as single-minded, one-dimensional caricatures and assumes that
their working lives are less crucial to their self-understanding (and survival) than
is the case with their white male counterparts. 9 It also ignores the fact that class is an
ineradicable dimension of everybodys lives (Gimenez, 2001, p. 2) and that social
oppression is much more than tangentially linked to class background and
the exploitative relations of production. On this topic, Meyerson (2000) is worth quoting at length:
Marxism properly interpreted emphasizes the primacy of class in a number of senses. One of course is the primacy of the working

This view
assumes that working class means whitethis division between a white
working class and all the others, whose identity (along with a corresponding social theory to
explain that identity) is thereby viewed as either primarily one of gender and race or
hybrid [T]he primacy of class means that building a multiracial, multi-gendered international working-class organization or
class as a revolutionary agenta primacy which does not render women and people of color secondary.

organizations should be the goal of any revolutionary movement so that the primacy of class puts the fight against racism and

The intelligibility of this position is rooted in the explanatory

primacy of class analysis for understanding the structural determinants of
race, gender, and class oppression. Oppression is multiple and
sexism at the center.

intersecting but its causes are not.

Impact/General Fuck You

Their scholarship ignores the destructive and expansive power
of capitalism which is the root of most oppression academics
should reject this dilution of class analysis
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie ScatamburloDAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,
Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
much of contemporary social theory has largely
abandoned the problems of labor, capitalist exploitation, and class analysis at a time when
capitalism is becoming more universal, more ruthless and more deadly . The
metaphor of a contemporary tower of Babel seems appropriate hereacademics
striking radical poses in the seminar rooms while remaining oblivious to the
possibility that their seemingly radical discursive maneuvers do nothing to
further the struggles against oppression and exploitation which continue
to be real , material , and not merely discursive problems of the
contemporary world (Dirlik, 1997, p. 176). Harvey (1998, pp. 2931) indicts the new academic
entrepreneurs, the masters of theory-in-and-for-itself whose discourse radicalism has deftly
side-stepped the enduring conundrums of class struggle and who have,
against a sobering background of cheapened discourse and opportunistic
politics, been stripped of their self-advertised radicalism. For years,
they contested socialism, ridiculed Marxists, and promoted their own alternative theories of
liberatory politics but now they have largely been reduced to the role of
supplicants in the most degraded form of pluralist politics imaginable . As
they pursue the politics of difference, the class war rages unabated and
It is remarkable, in our opinion, that so

they seem either unwilling or unable to focus on the unprecedented

economic carnage occurring around the globe.

Harveys searing criticism suggests that

post-Marxists have been busy fiddling while Rome burns

and his comments echo those

made by Marx (1978, p. 149) in his critique of the Young Hegelians who were, in spite of their allegedly worldshattering
statements, the staunchest conservatives. Marx lamented that the Young Hegelians were simply fighting phrases and that they
failed to acknowledge that in offering only counter-phrases, they were in no way combating the real existing world but merely

Taking a cue from Marx and substituting phrases

with discourses or resignifications we would contend that the practitioners of
difference politics who operate within exaggerated culturalist frameworks
that privilege the realm of representation as the primary arena of political
struggle question some discourses of power while legitimating others.
Moreover, because they lack a class perspective, their gestures of radicalism
are belied by their own class positions. 10 As Ahmad (1997a, p. 104) notes: One may
speak of any number of disorientations and even oppressions, but one
cultivates all kinds of politeness and indirection about the structure of
capitalist class relations in which those oppressions are embedded. To speak of
any of that directly and simply is to be vulgar. In this climate of Aesopian languages it is absolutely
essential to reiterate that most things are a matter of class. That kind of
combating the phrases of the world.

statement is surprising only in a culture like that of the North

American university But it is precisely in that kind of culture that people

need to hear such obvious truths. Ahmads provocative observations imply that substantive
analyses of the carnage wrought by globalized class exploitation have , for
the most part, been marginalized by the kind of radicalism that has been
instituted among the academic Left in North America. He further suggests that while
various post-Marxists have invited us to join their euphoric celebrations
honoring the decentering of capitalism, the abandonment of class politics, and the decline of
metanarratives (particularly those of Marxism and socialism), they have failed to see that the most
meta of all metanarratives of the past three centuries, the creeping
annexation of the globe for the dominance of capital over laboring
humanity has met, during those same decades, with stunning success
(Ahmad, 1997b, p. 364). As such, Ahmad invites us to ask anew, the proverbial question: What, then, must be done? To this question
we offer no simple theoretical, pedagogical or political prescriptions. Yet we would argue that

if social change is

the aim, progressive educators and theorists must cease displacing class
analysis with the politics of difference.

Big ass section

Capitalism is the root of inequality only an alternative that
rejects the politics of difference and puts at the center of its
analysis a pedagogy of class politics can that inequality be
confronted
(Scatamburlo-DAnnibale and McLaren 04) Valerie Scatamburlo-

DAnnibale, professor, University of Windsor, and Peter McLaren, professor, UCLA,

Class Dismissed? Historical materialism and the politics of difference Educational
Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2004.
*T.I.N.A. = There is no alternative
For well over two decades we have witnessed the jubilant liberal and conservative pronouncements of the demise of socialism.
Concomitantly, historys presumed failure to defang existing capitalist relations has been read by many self-identified radicals as
an advertisement for capitalisms inevitability. As a result, the chorus refrain There Is No Alternative, sung by liberals and
conservatives, has been buttressed by the symphony of post-Marxist voices recommending that we give socialism a decent burial
and move on. Within this context, to speak of the promise of Marx and socialism may appear anachronistic, even nave, especially

the
chants of T.I.N.A. must be combated for they offer as a fait accompli , something which progressive
since the post-al intellectual vanguard has presumably demonstrated the folly of doing so. Yet we stubbornly believe that

Leftists should refuse to acceptnamely the triumph of capitalism and its political bedfellow neo-liberalism, which have worked
together to naturalize suffering, undermine collective struggle, and obliterate hope. We concur with Amin (1998), who claims that

such chants must be defied and revealed as absurd and criminal, and who puts
the challenge we face in no uncertain terms: humanity may let itself be led
by capitalisms logic to a fate of collective suicide or it may pave the way
for an alternative humanist project of global socialism. The grosteque conditions that
inspired Marx to pen his original critique of capitalism are present and flourishing. The inequalities of wealth and the
gross imbalances of power that exist today are leading to abuses that exceed those
encountered in Marxs day (Greider, 1998, p. 39). Global capitalism has paved the way
for the obscene concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and created a world
increasingly divided between those who enjoy opulent affluence and those who
languish in dehumanizing conditions and economic misery. In every corner of the
globe , we are witnessing social disintegration as revealed by a rise in abject
poverty and inequality. At the current historical juncture, the combined assets of the 225 richest people is roughly
equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 percent of the worlds population, while the combined assets of the three richest

Approximately 2.8 billion

peoplealmost half of the worlds populationstruggle in desperation to live on less than
two dollars a day (McQuaig, 2001, p. 27). As many as 250 million children are wage slaves
and there are over a billion workers who are either un- or under-employed. These are the concrete realities of
our time realities that require a vigorous class analysis, an unrelenting
critique of capitalism and an oppositional politics capable of confronting
what Ahmad (1998, p. 2) refers to as capitalist universality. They are realities that
require something more than that which is offered by the prophets of difference
people exceed the combined GDP of the 48 poorest nations (CCPA, 2002, p. 3).

and post-Marxists who would have us relegate socialism to the scrapheap of history and mummify Marxism along with Lenins

That is not to say

that everything Marx said or anticipated has come true, for that is clearly not the case. Many
critiques of Marx focus on his strategy for moving toward socialism, and with ample justification; nonetheless Marx did
provide us with fundamental insights into class society that have held true to this day.
Marxs enduring relevance lies in his indictment of capitalism which continues
to wreak havoc in the lives of most. While capitalisms cheerleaders have attempted to hide its sordid
corpse. Never before has a Marxian analysis of capitalism and class rule been so desperately needed.

underbelly, Marxs description of capitalism as the sorcerers dark power is even more apt in light of contemporary historical and

economic conditions.

Rather than jettisoning Marx , decentering the role of capitalism, and

discrediting class analysis, radical educators must continue to engage Marxs

oeuvre and extrapolate from it that which is useful pedagogically,
theoretically, and, most importantly, politically in light of the challenges that
confront us. The urgency which animates Amins call for a collective socialist vision
necessitates, as we have argued, moving beyond the particularism and liberal pluralism that informs the
politics of difference. It also requires challenging the questionable
assumptions that have come to constitute the core of contemporary radical
theory, pedagogy and politics. In terms of effecting change, what is needed is a cogent
understanding of the systemic nature of exploitation and oppression
based on the precepts of a radical political economy approach (outlined above)
and one that incorporates Marxs notion of unity in difference in which
people share widely common material interests. Such an understanding extends far beyond the
realm of theory, for the manner in which we choose to interpret and explore the social
world, the concepts and frameworks we use to express our sociopolitical
understandings, are more than just abstract categories. They imply intentions,
organizational practices, and political agendas. Identifying class analysis as the basis for our
understandings and class struggle as the basis for political transformation
implies something quite different than constructing a sense of political
agency around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Contrary to Shakespeares assertion
that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, it should be clear that this is not the case in political matters. Rather, in

The task for

progressives today is to seize the moment and plant the seeds for a political
agenda that is grounded in historical possibilities and informed by a vision
committed to overcoming exploitative conditions. These seeds, we would argue, must be
derived from the tree of radical political economy. For the vast majority of people todaypeople of all
racial classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientations the common frame of
reference arcing across difference, the concerns and aspirations that are most
widely shared are those that are rooted in the common experience of everyday life
shaped and constrained by political economy (Reed, 2000, p. xxvii). While post-Marxist advocates of
politics the essence of the flower lies in the name by which it is called (Bannerji, 2000, p. 41).

the politics of difference suggest that such a stance is outdated, we would argue that the categories which they have employed to
analyze the social are now losing their usefulness, particularly in light of actual contemporary social movements. All over the
globe, there are large anti-capitalist movements afoot. In February 2002, chants of Another World Is Possible became the theme of

people struggling in the streets havent read

about T.I.N.A., the end of grand narratives of emancipation, or the
decentering of capitalism. It seems as though the struggle for basic survival and some
semblance of human dignity in the mean streets of the dystopian metropoles doesnt permit much time or
opportunity to read the heady proclamations emanating from seminar rooms. As E.
protests in Porto Allegre. It seems that those

P. Thompson (1978, p. 11) once remarked, sometimes experience walks in without knocking at the door, and announces deaths,
crises of subsistence, trench warfare, unemployment, inflation, genocide. This, of course, does not mean that socialism will
inevitably come about, yet a sense of its nascent promise animates current social movements. Indeed, noted historian Howard Zinn
(2000, p. 20) recently pointed out that after years of single-issue organizing (i.e. the politics of difference), the WTO and other anticorporate capitalist protests signaled a turning point in the history of movements of recent decades, for it was the issue of class
that more than anything bound everyone together. History, to paraphrase Thompson (1978, p. 25) doesnt seem to be following

Our vision is informed by Marxs historical materialism and his revolutionary

For left politics and pedagogy, a
socialist humanist vision remains crucial, whose fundamental features
include the creative potential of people to challenge collectively the
circumstances that they inherit. This variant of humanism seeks to give expression to the pain, sorrow and
Theorys script.

socialist humanism, which must not be conflated with liberal humanism.

degradation of the oppressed, those who labor under the ominous and ghastly cloak of globalized capital. It calls for the

It vests its
hope for change in the development of critical consciousness and social
agents who make history, although not always in conditions of their choosing. The political goal
transformation of those conditions that have prevented the bulk of humankind from fulfilling its potential.

of socialist humanism is, however, not a resting in difference but rather the
emancipation of difference at the level of human mutuality and
reciprocity. This would be a step forward for the discovery or creation of our real differences which can only in the end be
explored in reciprocal ways (Eagleton, 1996, p. 120). Above all else , the enduring relevance of a
radical socialist pedagogy and politics is the centrality it accords to the
interrogation of capitalism. We can no longer afford to remain indifferent
to the horror and savagery committed by capitalists barbaric
machinations . We need to recognize that capitalist democracy is unrescuably
contradictory in its own self-constitution. Capitalism and democracy cannot be translated into one
another without profound efforts at manufacturing empty idealism. Committed Leftists must unrelentingly cultivate a democratic
socialist vision that refuses to forget the wretched of the earth, the children of the damned and the victims of the culture of silence
a task which requires more than abstruse convolutions and striking ironic poses in the agnostic arena of signifying practices.
Leftists must illuminate the little shops of horror that lurk beneath globalizations shiny faade; they must challenge the true evils

Leftists must search for the

cracks in the edifice of globalized capitalism and shine light on those
fissures that give birth to alternatives. Socialism today, undoubtedly, runs against the grain of
that are manifest in the tentacles of global capitalisms reach. And, more than this,

received wisdom, but its vision of a vastly improved and freer arrangement of social relations beckons on the horizon. Its unwritten
text is nascent in the present even as it exists among the fragments of history and the shards of distant memories. Its potential
remains untapped and its promise needs to be redeemed.