Capitalism

DDI 2008 BQ
Jonathan Ma

Capitalism updates
Capitalism updates
$JONATHANS LINK BABY$
Environmental domination link
Environmental regulations link
Military spreads capitalism
Hegemony spreads capitalism
Patents are capitalism
Fossil fuels more capitalist
Solar power kills cap
Failure of Cap and trade because of cap
Cap expansion card
Economic collapse rhetoric link
Biofuels are capitalist
Biofuels are capitalist
Biofuels link and impact
Biofuels are capitalist
Cap is root of environmental problems

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Jonathan Ma

$JONATHANS LINK BABY$

Dont listen to the Affs solutions to the ecological problems we face. The underlying cause of
ecological disaster is capitalism. Either reject the plan, or face the consequences.
John Bellamy Foster, American journalist, sociologist, essayist and eco-socialist, as well as editor of the Monthly Review,
10/2001, http://www.monthlyreview.org/1001jbf.htm
The Gods of Profit vs. the Environment The modern world, Rachel Carson observed in 1963, worships the gods of speed and
quantity, and of the quick and easy profit, and out of this idolatry monstrous evils have arisen. The reduction of nature to factory
like forms of organization in the interest of rapid economic returns, she argued, lies behind our worst ecological problems (Lost
Woods, pp. 19495). Such realities are, however, denied by the vested interests who continue to argue that it is possible to continue
as before only on a larger scale, with economics (narrowly conceived) rather than ecology having the last word on the environment
in which we live. The depth of the ecological and social crisis of contemporary civilization, the need for a radical reorganization of
production in order to create a more sustainable and just world, is invariably downplayed by the ruling elements of society, who
regularly portray those convinced of the necessity of meaningful ecological and social change as so many Cassandras who are
blind to the real improvements in the quality of life that everywhere surround us. Industry too fosters such an attitude of
complacency, while at the same time assiduously advertising itself as socially responsible and environmentally benign. Science,
which all too often is prey to corporate influence, is frequently turned against its own precepts and used to defend the indefensible
for example, through risk management analysis. It was in defiance of such distortions within the reigning ideology, reaching
down into science itself, that Rachel Carson felt compelled to ask, in her 1962 Womens National Press Club speech: Is industry
becoming a screen through which facts must be filtered, so that the hard, uncomfortable truths are kept back and only the harmless
morsels allowed to filter through? I know that many thoughtful scientists are deeply disturbed that their organizations are
becoming fronts for industry. More than one scientist has raised a disturbing questionwhether a spirit of lysenkoism may be
developing in America todaythe philosophy that perverted and destroyed the science of genetics in Russia and even infiltrated
all of that nations agricultural sciences. But here the tailoring, the screening of basic truth, is done, not to suit a party line, but to
accommodate to the shortterm gain, to serve the gods of profit and production (Lost Woods, p. 210). We are constantly
invited by those dutifully serving the gods of profit and production to turn our attention elsewhere, to downgrade our
concerns, and to view the very economic system that has caused the present global degradation of the environment as the
solution to the problems it has generated. Hence, to write realistically about the conflict between ecology and capitalism
requires, at the present time, a form of intellectual resistancea ruthless critique of the existing mode of production and the
ideology used to support its environmental depredations. We are faced with a stark choice: either reject the gods of profit as
holding out the solution to our ecological problems, and look instead to a more harmonious coevolution of nature and human
society, as an essential element in building a more just and egalitarian social orderor face the natural consequences, an
ecological and social crisis that will rapidly spin out of control, with irreversible and devastating consequences for human beings
and for those numerous other species with which we are linked.

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Environmental domination link

Human domination of the environment is primarily profit motivated. Although the plan tries to solve
global warming, it is inherently a capitalistic problem.
John Bellamy Foster, American journalist, sociologist, essayist and eco-socialist, as well as editor of the Monthly Review,
10/2001, http://www.monthlyreview.org/1001jbf.htm
There are numerous reasons for this common failure to acknowledge the ecological basis of the human condition. Many have seen this
as a deep cultural flaw of Western civilization, flowing out of the concept of the domination of nature, the idea that nature exists to
serve humans and to be a servant to humans. But a large part of the answer as to why contemporary society refuses to recognize the
full human dependence on nature undoubtedly has to do with the expansionist logic of a capitalist system that makes the accumulation
of wealth in the form of capital the supreme end of society. Orthodox economics, as is well known, defines itself as a science for the
efficient utilization of scarce goods. But the goods concerned are conceived narrowly as market commodities. The effects of the
economy in generating ecological scarcities and irreversible (within human time frames) ecological degradation are beyond the
purview of received economics, which, in line with the system it is designed to defend, seldom takes account of what it calls
external or social costs. Capitalism and its economists have generally treated ecological problems as something to be avoided
rather than seriously addressed. Economic growth theorist Robert Solow wrote in the American Economic Review in May 1974, in the
midst of the famous limits to growth debate, that, if it is very easy to substitute other factors for natural resources, then there is in
principle no problem. The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.
Solow, who later received the Nobel Prize in economics, was speaking hypothetically and did not actually go so far as to say that
nearperfect substitutability was a reality or that natural resources were fully dispensable. But he followed up his hypothetical point by
arguing that the degree of substitutability at present is so great that all worries of Doomsday ecological prophets could be put aside.
Whatever minor flaws existed in the price system, leading to the failure to account for environmental costs, could be cured through the
use of market incentives, with government playing a very limited role in the creation of such incentives. What had outraged orthodox
economists such as Solow, when a group of MIT whiz kids first raised the issue of the limits to growth in the early 1970s, was that the
argument was premised on the same kinds of mathematical computer forecasting models, pointing to exponential growth trends, that
economists frequently used themselves. But in this case, the focus was on exponential increases in the demands placed on a finite
environment, rather than the magic of economic expansion. If the forecasting of the limits to growth theorists was full of problems, it
nonetheless highlighted the truismconveniently ignored by capitalism and its economiststhat infinite expansion within a finite
environment was a contradiction in terms. It thus posed a potential catastrophic conflict between global capitalism and the global
environment. Capitalist economies are geared first and foremost to the growth of profits, and hence to economic growth at virtually
any costincluding the exploitation and misery of the vast majority of the worlds population. This rush to grow generally means
rapid absorption of energy and materials and the dumping of more and more wastes into the environmenthence widening
environmental degradation.

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Environmental regulations link

Environmental regulations are geared toward hurting the poor and helping the wealthy.
Andriana Vlachou Department of Economics, Athens University of Economics and Business, 11/10/2003,
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?Ver=1&Exp=08-01-2013&FMT=7&DID=904876471&RQT=309
Environmental regulation is the outcome of class, environmental and other social struggles fought by various affected agents within
and outside the state in order to resolve or contain the negative impacts of environmental degradation. Moreover, since particular
environmental policies have different effects on the various involved parties, certain individual firms or sectors, the environmental
and/or labour movements, and whole countries may either resist or support them during the process of establishing and enforcing
them. The greening of capitalism is thus a contradictory process and as such it is unstable and uncertain in its ecological outcomes.
The evaluation of specific environmental policies from a class standpoint developed in this study, reveals for the worker-citizens
movements instances and possibilities for revolutionary interventions in order to protect and to improve (one hopes) their natural
conditions of life under capitalism. However, a concise survey of environmental policy as it occurs in practice indicates the great
influence of capitalist concerns in current policy. Capitalist firms have attained free initial allocation of permits, extensive exemptions
from environmental taxes or revenue recycling, and subsidies. In contrast, the poor and the underprivileged not only suffer greater
harm from environmental degradation than do the wealthy and the privileged, but also incur the regressive impacts of environmental
regulation. Both these aspects tend to imply that the current environmental regulation and change takes place at the expense of
working people. This class-bias captures in turn the present vulnerable position of labour and other social movementswhich stand
fragmented and disorganised, and thus politically ineffectual.

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Military spreads capitalism

THE MILITARY SUPPORTS THE EXPANSION OF FREE MARKET CAPITALISM
Richard Moore, Political Scientist, 1996, http://cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/ND/sep96FatefulDance.shtml)
The actual purpose of the U.S. military has been to act as the police force to expand and protect the extent of the free-investment
world, and to insure that all the little "free" nations remain hospitable to corporate investments. That most of these nations are not
democratic is of no consequence to the elite, except that it makes the world easier to manage.

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Hegemony spreads capitalism

US Hegemony Is Used To Subordinate the Rest of the World Capitalism
Michael Hardt, PhD In Comparitive Literature from U Washington and Antonio Negri, Professor @ U of Paris, 2000, Empire,
pg 264-265
As the global confluence of struggles undermined the capitalist and imperialist capacities of discipline, the economic order that had
dominated the globe for almost thirty years, the Golden Age of U.S. hegemony and capitalist growth, began to unravel. The form and
substance of the capitalist management of international development for the postwar period were dictated at the conference at Bretton
Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944.[8] The Bretton Woods system was based on three fundamental elements. Its first characteristic was
the comprehensive economic hegemony of the United States over all the nonsocialist countries. This hegemony was secured through
the strategic choice of a liberal development based on relatively free trade and moreover by maintaining gold (of which the United
States possessed about one third of the world total) as the guarantee of the power of the dollar. The dollar was "as good as gold."
Second, the system demanded the agreement for monetary stabilization between the United States and the other dominant capitalist
countries (first Europe then Japan) over the traditional territories of European imperialisms, which had been dominated previously by
the British pound and the French franc. Reform in the dominant capitalist countries could thus be financed by a surplus of exports to
the United States and guaranteed by the monetary system of the dollar. Finally, Bretton Woods dictated the establishment of a quasi-
imperialist relationship of the United States over all the subordinate nonsocialist countries. Economic development within the United
States and stabilization and reform in Europe and Japan were all guaranteed by the United States insofar as it accumulated imperialist
superprofits through its relationship to the subordinate countries. The system of U.S. monetary hegemony was a fundamentally new
arrangement because, whereas the control of previous international monetary systems (notably the British) had been firmly in the
hands of private bankers and financiers, Bretton Woods gave control to a series of governmental and regulatory organizations,
including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and ultimately the U.S. Federal Reserve.[9] Bretton Woods might thus be
understood as the monetary and financial face of the hegemony of the New Deal model over the global capitalist economy. The
Keynesian and pseudo-imperialist mechanisms of Bretton Woods eventually went into crisis when the continuity of the workers'
struggles in the United States, Europe, and Japan raised the costs of stabilization and reformism, and when anti-imperialist and
anticapitalist struggles in subordinate countries began to undermine the extraction of superprofits.[10]

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Patents are capitalism

Patents are the comodification of knowledge and technology
Slavoj Zizek, Philosophy, 2003, http://www.lacan.com/ziztrap.htm
Netocracy moves here simultaneously too fast and not fast enough - as such, it shares the mistake of all those other attempts which
all too fast elevated a new entity into the successor of capitalism, at the same level as capitalism: postindustrial society,
informational society... Against such temptations, one should insist that "informational society" is simply NOT a concept at the
same level as "feudalism" or "capitalism." The picture of the accomplished rule of the netocracy is therefore, in spite of the
authors' stress on the new class antagonisms, a utopia: an inconsistent composite which cannot survive and reproduce itself on its
own terms - all too many of the features of the new netocratic class are only sustainable within a capitalist regime. Therein resides
the weakness of Netocracy: following the elementary logic of ideological mystification, it dismisses as "remainders of the
(capitalist and statist) past" what are effectively positive conditions of the functioning of informational society. The key problem is
that of capitalism, the way "netocracy" relates to capitalism. On the one side, we have patents, copyright, etc. - all the different
modalities in which information itself is offered and sold on the market as "intellectual property", as another commodity. (And
when the authors claim that the true elite of netiocracy is beyond patents etc., because its privilege is no longer based on
possessing the information, but on being able to discern, in the confusing quantity of informations, the relevant ones, they
strangely miss the point: why should this ability to discern what really matters, the ability to discard the irrelevant balast, not be
another - perhaps crucial - information to be sold? In other words, they seem to forget here the basic lesson of today's cognitive
sciences: already at the most elementary level of consciousness, information IS the ability to "abstract", to discern the relevant
aspects in the confusing multitude with which we are constantly bombarded.)

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I dont know.
Elmar Altvater, Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of the Free University of Berlin, 20 06,
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Altvater%20energy%20imperialism.pdf
At the first glance it seems as if services and finance do not exert negative effects on the environment. However, the
assumption of a virtual economy of bits and bytes is bullshit (in the sense of Frankfurt 2005) and nothing but a grand
illusion. Financial markets exert financial repression on the real economy, enforce the debt-service of financial claims of
creditors (banks and funds), which are only affordable in the case of high real growth rates. Therefore, finance exerts indirectly
a high pressure on the consumption of energy as well as of material resources. Due to the financial instabilities and crises, so
visible during the last decades, the financial sphere is apt of jeopardizing social stability, of pushing large strata of the
population into informality and poverty, and even the World Bank admits that these nuisances are highly responsible for
ecological degradation in large parts of the world. The environment in synchronic terms includes the energy system, climate,
biodiversity, soils, water, woods, deserts, ice sheets, etc. and diachronically the evolution of nature. Therefore, it is necessary to
analyse the impact of human (above all: economic) activities on all these dimensions of the comprehensive environment. The
complexity of nature and the positive and negative feed-back mechanisms between the dimensions of the environment only
partly are known. Therefore, environmental policy has to be performed in the shadow of a high degree of insecurity. Human
activities, particularly the economic ones and their effects on the natural processes are the central elements of the so called
mannature relationship (societal relation of man to nature), which also includes feed back mechanisms on the totality of the
social, political and economic system. Only a holistic endeavour of integrating environmental aspects into discourses of
political economy, political science, sociology, cultural studies etc. enables a coherent understanding of the environmental
problems and can give advice for the elaboration of adequate political responses to the challenges of the ongoing ecological
crisis. Moreover, the exploitation of natural resources and their degradation due to a growing quantity of pollutants results in a
man-made artificial scarcity (or shortage) so that conflicts on the access to natural resources are coming up. The environment
more and more is transformed into a contested object of human greed. The societal relation of man to nature therefore also
includes environmental conflicts and even wars on resources. The reason is the contradiction between the necessity of certain
resources for human survival and for the working of the modern economy and the scarcity which is becoming the main
characteristics of many resources: of land, of fresh water and above all of oil. 2

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Fossil fuels more capitalist

Fossil fuels are more capitalistic than renewables
Elmar Altvater, Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of the Free University of Berlin, 20 06,
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Altvater%20energy%20imperialism.pdf
In history the transition to industrial systems and to the predominant use of fossil energies is much more dramatic than that
which transformed societies of hunters and gatherers into a social order of sedentary agricultural systems. It is a revolutionary
break in the history of the societal relation of human beings to nature because it is no longer the flow of solar radiation which
serves as the main energy supply for the system of production and the satisfaction of human needs, but the use of the
mineralised stocks of energy in the crust of the earth. The greatest expansion of human demand for natural resources
followed the Industrial Revolution during the latter half of the 18th and the first half of the 19th centuries. One of the main
advantages of fossil (and to a minor extent nuclear) energies for capitalist accumulation in comparison with other energies is
the congruence of their physical properties with the socioeconomic and political logics of capitalist development: Firstly, the
patterns of space and place change. The location of energy resources is no longer the main reason for the location of
manufactures or industries. For, it is simple to transport energy resources to any place in the world. The fossil energy system
spreads itself far and wide by creating logistical networks which today cover the globe. It is so to say autopoetic, for it
allows the transport of energy to remote places of the Earth and thus draws them into the fossil system. Energy supply therefore
is only one factor amongst many others in decisions about where production is to take place. The availability of local sources
of energy has only a minor impact on the competition for locations of manufactures and industries in the global space.
Secondly, and in contrast to solar radiation, which changes its intensity between day and night and with the rhythms of the
seasons, fossil energies can be used 24 hours a day and 365 days a year with constant intensity. They allow the organisation of
production processes independently of social time schedules, biological and other natural rhythms. The time regime of
modernity follows the logics of profitability and that of the optimisation of shareholder value. The reason is that fossil energies
can be stored and consumed without reference to natural time patterns, and only in accordance with the timetable which will
optimise profits. Time is money (Benjamin Franklin) therefore appears not as a crazy statement but as an adequate norm for
human behaviour in modern times. Moreover, fossil energies allow the extreme acceleration of processes, i.e. the
compression of time and space (Harvey 1999; Altvater and Mahnkopf 1996/ 2004). In other words: they allow an
increase in productivity, i.e. the production of more commodities within a given time span or the reduction of the time span for
the production of the same amount of products. Since time and space are the coordinates of nature in which we live, their
compression is a serious neglect of the natural conditions of work and life. Thirdly, fossil energies can be used very flexibly
with regard to the quantities of energy consumed or the temporal distribution and spatial location of consumption. The
development of electricity networks and of the electro-motor, the illumination of whole cities at night, the inventions of the
gasoline and diesel-motor are decisive steps for an increasingly flexible use of energy-inputs, for the mobilisation and
acceleration of economic processes and for an individualisation of social life which never before in human history existed.
Now, managerial decisions can follow the logics of profitability for capitalist firms without needing to take into account energy
restrictions or spatial and temporal constraints. Therefore, accumulation and growth must be understood as increasingly
independent from natural conditions and their limitations. These advantages of fossil energy for the capitalist system make
them indispensable. The congruence of capitalism, fossilism, rationalism and industrialism is perfect. Fossil energy would not
have played the decisive role which it has done since the industrial revolution without the social formation of capitalism and its
allencompassing dynamics. Four forces since then drove the highly dynamic development: (1) the European rationality of
world domination (as Max Weber called it), (2) the great transformation to a disembedded marketeconomy the theme of
Karl Polanyi, (3) the dynamics of money in the social form of capital (as Marx analysed it) and (4) the use of fossil energies
which became the fulfilment of a (by Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen) so called promethean revolution, comparable to the
Neolithic revolution several thousand years ago, when mankind discovered how systematically to transform solar energy into
crops etc. by establishing sedentary agricultural systems. This ensemble of aspects of the fossil energy regime gives us not
only an impression of the ingredients of its dynamics, but also of the width of approaches of social sciences which must be
applied in order to understand the functional mechanisms of the fossil energy regime, of the formation of social relations based
on the massive use of fossil energy and of a fossil culture, most visible in the dominance of automobiles in modern societies.
Without a continuous supply and massive use of fossil energies modern capitalism would be locked into the boundaries of
biotic energies (wind, water, bio-masses, the power of muscles etc.). Although capitalist social forms had already put down
some weak roots in ancient societies (in Europe as well as in Latin America and Asia), these could not flourish because of an

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insufficient technological basis and because of the lack of fossil energy. The entropy of energy sources was too high as to allow
considerable surplus production.

Solar power kills cap

Solar power deconstructs the capitalist system
Elmar Altvater, Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of the Free University of Berlin, 20 06,
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Altvater%20energy%20imperialism.pdf
In the analyses of Fourasti or Colin Clark and Jan Tinbergen the transition from primary (agricultural) to secondary
(industrial) and tertiary (services) has been interprted not as a revolution but as a sequence of modernisation steps. But the
transition from an agricultural to an industrial societal relation to nature is a radical change, a revolution. Capitalist systems are
based on the consumption of the limited fossil stocks of energy. Firstly, they will run out and secondly their combustion is
producing such an amount of harmful emissions that the living conditions on earth are deteriorating. In the terms of
thermodynamic economics the transition to capitalist industrial systems based on fossil fuels creates the globalised planet Earth
and moreover the planet is treated as a closed and isolated system. For, solar radiation from outside (and likewise the
irradiation of heat into the outer space) are substituted by fossil energy sources from inside the crust of the Earth. However, life
on Earth remains dependent on the radiation of the sun. Between life conditions (open system) and economic conditions
(isolated system) on Earth a firewall has been constructed. Today, and possibly forever, it is impossible to power the machine
of capitalist accumulation and growth with thin solar radiation-energy. It simply has not the advantages mentioned above, i.e.
the potential of time and space compression, which thick fossil energy offers. Conversely, the fossil energy regime of the
capitalist economy has an extremely destructive effect on life on Earth which is powered nearly completely by solar
radiation. The degradation of nature, e.g. the greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion, loss of biodiversity, desertification,
disappearance of tropical rain forests etc. is unquestionable. The advantages of the fossil energy regime have a price: the
disadvantages of ecological destruction and of the necessity to find a solution to the limits of their availability.

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Failure of Cap and trade because of cap

Cap and trade fail because of the capitalist mindset
Elmar Altvater, Professor of Political Science at the Otto-Suhr-Institute of the Free University of Berlin, 20 06,
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/files/Altvater%20energy%20imperialism.pdf
In capitalist calculation ecological limits of production and accumulation are recognised only when they increase the costs of
economic processes and exert pressures on the rate of profit. Calculations of the German Institute for Economic Research have
shown that the annual costs of climate change will be the equivalent of about $2000bn from the middle of the century on
(Kemfert 2004). The hurricanes of autumn 2005 already caused damages of about 200 bn US$. External effects of
production and consumption on society and nature are irrelevant for capitalist rational choices so long as they remain
external to the calculations of single firms. But this is the case only so long as the carrying capacity and the capacities of
recreation of nature and social systems are sufficient as to bear the polluting emissions of the economic process. Otherwise
they become part of the general conditions of production, increase the costs of production, affect negatively profitability and
accumulation up to a crisis of the capitalist system. (This is the theme of James OConnor, David Harvey and others.) The
attempts to internalize these costs, e.g. by emission trading, do not offer a real solution. As it is possible to substitute artificial
paper money for natural gold2 it is not possible to substitute certificates and bonds to be traded on a special stock exchange for
an increase of temperature of the atmosphere.

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Cap expansion card

Capitalism becomes more destructive as it spreads; Your turns are correct, capitalism is good in the
long run, but our cap bad impacts occur before your turns.
Walter Russel Mead, President's Fellow at the World Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research, 1/19 97,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/auth/checkbrowser.do?
ipcounter=1&cookieState=0&rand=0.8523252417108667&bhcp=1
The more creative capitalism becomes -- the faster productivity rises, the more new technology transforms the way we work --
the more destructive it becomes. The firms and factories that do not adapt will die; the skills of workers and existing plant and
equipment rapidly become obsolete; whole nations and regions based on the industries and technologies of past decades lose
their competitive edge and sink into decline. Observers more conventional than Greider acknowledge this, claiming only that
the winners will outnumber the losers in the end. Greider agrees in principle, but he says that the happy ending may be more
delayed, and the road to resolution of the dilemma may require more destructive detours, than the conventionally optimistic
view can foresee. Again, he draws a comparison with the earlier history of the twentieth century. The productivity increases
and technological advances of the 1920s did eventually lead to the great economic expansion and unprecedented mass
affluence of the quarter-century from 1950 to 1975, but the road from the 1920s led through the Great Depression of the 1930s
and the war of the 1940s before the crowds of winners were able to cash in their chips. It is, of course, impossible to tell if
Greider is right. Perhaps the world is in a new financial bubble and today's upward redistribution of income is the harbinger of
a vast financial and ultimately political meltdown. If so, many of the oracles of contemporary economic and political wisdom
will be metaphorically if not literally hung from the lampposts as popular opinion turns ruthlessly against the ideas, institutions,
and leaders of the preceding period. Herbert Hoover was not a popular man during the depression, and Richard Whitney,
president of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929, ended up in jail for embezzlement. The best-selling books of the 1930s
were, at least figuratively, bound in the skins of the optimists of the 1920s "new era." If anything remotely like this happens,
some of the solutions that Greider proposes will be tried. New forms of regulation will attempt to control international capital
movements and reduce the risks inherent in today's relatively open trade and investment regimes. Vast public investment
projects will attempt to replace the tapped-out power of individual consumers to buy, reviving markets and growth and
reducing unemployment by the creation of new demand through public spending. If the new era rolls on, however, and the
global economy serenely advances into another period of vigorous expansion and rapid change, Greider's forecasts will be
forgotten and fall by the wayside -- much as the Club of Rome's dismal warnings in the 1970s of global food and energy
shortages looked increasingly foolish when the anticipated famines and oil shortages failed to occur. RETELLING THE WHIG
STORY Whatever the verdict on his predictive powers, Greider's contrarian view of the contemporary world has something
important to say. There is a recurring tendency in Western and, especially, American thought to equate the spread of market
economics with the stabilization of social and political conditions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Capitalism is the
world's most powerful form of social organization because it is the most revolutionary. Capitalism did not defeat communism
because capitalism was more stable; rather, the frozen stability of planned communist society was unable to match the social
and economic dynamism of capitalist activity. At a distance, one can reconcile the roller-coaster-like ride of capitalist history
with the more comforting, Panglossian version of the Whig narrative of progress. Over time, capitalism does lead to democracy
and democracy does lead to peace. But, as in the United States after the 1920s, the expanses of time are longer than today's
cramped conventional wisdom can perceive, and the ride is bumpier, even if Greider's precise scenario does not come to pass.
Look at France. The rise of capitalism did unleash a process that ultimately consolidated democracy and made the French
peaceful. But how long did that take, and what happened in the meantime? Five republics, two empires, two royal dynasties,
and a series of expansionary wars that ranged from Moscow to Indochina by way of the upper Nile. And France's progress
from precapitalist monarchy to capitalist democracy was relatively smooth and benign. Contrast Germany's journey down that
road, or Japan's. Some countries, like Russia, that made promising starts a century ago have taken terrible detours, inflicting on
themselves and others untold suffering. That capitalism has been unleashed across Asia and Latin America is in one sense
cause for rejoicing. Capitalism will open new doors to richer and fuller lives for hundreds of millions of people. The
dismantling of regulations and controls in Western society does create opportunities for faster economic growth and individual
creativity. But, alas, that is not all it does. That China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam are now sprinting up the track previously
traveled by Germany, France, and Japan does not mean that a universal era of freedom, prosperity, and peace has dawned.

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Historical change is accelerating. As rural masses pour into swelling cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as new
technologies and enterprises rip up the fabric of traditional society, as new political forces duel for control of rapidly evolving
societies, tensions are certain to rise. The more capitalism spreads, the more change must be endured, the more risks must be
run, the more destruction will go hand in hand with creation. The triumph of the West in the Cold War, the rapid spread of
capitalism through the developing world, and the triumph of neoliberal capitalism over the more regulated and stable mixed
economy that prevailed in the last generation do not constitute the end of history but lay the groundwork for an immense
acceleration of the historical process. The 21st century will be even more volatile than the bloody century now drawing to a
close. This, not the future of the stock market, is the real message of Greider's book, and those who fail to heed it run risks at
least as great as those serene French aristocrats who scoffed at Rousseau.

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Economic collapse rhetoric link

Rhetoric of economic collapse snowballs into a politics of crisis in which capitalism is the only hope for
survival
Slavoj Zizek, Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism, New Left Review # 224 p. 34-35)
The Logic of Capital So, back to the recent Labour victory, one can see how it not only involved a hegemonic reappropriation of a
series of motifs which were usually inscribed into the Conservative fieldfamily values, law and order, individual responsibility; the
Labour ideological offensive also separated these motifs from the obscene phantasmatic subtext which sustained them in the
Conservative fieldin which toughness on crime and individual responsibility subtly referred to brutal egotism, to the disdain for
victims, and other basic instincts. The problem, however, is that the New Labour strategy involved its own message between the
lines: we fully accept the logic of Capital, we will not mess about with it Today, financial crisis is a permanent state of things the
reference to which legitimizes the demands to cut social spending, health care, support of culture and scientific research, in short, the
dismantling of the welfare state. Is, however, this permanent crisis really an objective feature of our socio-economic life? Is it not
rather one of the effects of the shift of balance in the class struggle towards Capital, resulting from the growing role of new
technologies as well as from the direct internationalization of Capital and the co-dependent diminished role of the Nation-State which
was further able to impose certain minimal requirements and limitations to exploitation? In other words, the crisis is an objective fact
if and only if one accepts in advance as an unquestionable premise the inherent logic of Capitalas more and more left-wing or
liberal parties have done. We are thus witnessing the uncanny spectacle of social-democratic parties which came to power with the
between-the-lines message to Capital we will do the necessary job for you in an even more efficient and painless way than the
conservatives. The problem, of course, is that, in todays global socio-political circumstances, it is practically impossible effectively
to call into question the logic of Capital: even a modest social-democratic attempt to redistribute wealth beyond the limit acceptable to
the Capital effectively leads to economic crisis, inflation, a fall in revenues and so on. Nevertheless, one should always bear in mind
how the connection between cause (rising social expenditure) and effect (economic crisis) is not a direct objective causal one: it is
always-already embedded in a situation of social antagonism and struggle. The fact that, if one does not obey the limits set by Capital,
a crisis really follows, in no way proves that the necessity of these limits is an objective necessity of economic life. It should rather
be conceived as a proof of the privileged position Capital holds in the economic and political struggle, as in the situation where a
stronger partner threatens that if you do X, you will be punished by Y, and then, upon your doing X, Y effectively ensues.

13
Capitalism
DDI 2008 BQ
Jonathan Ma

Biofuels are capitalist

Biofuels reentrench the capitalist mindset by letting the poor starve
BBC, British Broadcasting Company, Capitalism hurts the planet, 4/22/ 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7359880.stm
Two Latin American leaders have issued warnings about the effects of biofuel production on food supplies. Speaking at the UN in
New York, Bolivian President Evo Morales said the development of biofuels harmed the world's most impoverished people. And
President Alan Garcia of Peru said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor. Opening a UN forum on the
global impact of climate change on indigenous peoples, Mr Morales said that capitalism should be scrapped if the planet is to be saved
from the effects of climate change. "If we want to save our planet earth, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system," he
said. South Americans warn over biofuels Bolivia's left-wing president said unbridled industrial development was responsible for the
pillaging of natural resources. But, he said, "some South American presidents who were talking about biofuels but did not understand
what they were talking about". Just over 40% of Peruvians - some 12 million people - live below the poverty line and have been hit
hard by the soaring cost of basic foodstuffs. The global prices of wheat, rice and maize have nearly doubled in the past year, while
milk and meat have more than doubled in price in some countries. Such rises, combined with high oil prices, are causing increasing
political instability in less developed countries across the world. Food riots earlier this month in Haiti, which is highly reliant on
imports of food and fuel, led to the deaths of at least six people, including a UN peacekeeper.

Capitalists use Biofuels as a way to steal food from the poor and give to the elites
Hannah Holleman and Rebecca Clausen, University of Oregon, 1/15/08,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hc160108.html
British Petroleum, Beyond Petroleum . . . Biofuel Promoter, Biosphere Plunderer. Regardless of what the BP abbreviation actually
stands for, one thing is clear: this oil giant knows a good deal when it sees one. For a relatively small financial contribution, BP
appropriates academic expertise from a leading public research institution, founded on 200 years of social support, to maximize its
return on energy investments. These investments, in turn, are focused primarily on promoting the market for biofuel, the newest
darling of those in power who stimulate change while maintaining "business as usual." This means working-class people in the
core developed countries will subsidize the extraction of even more ecological goods from the developing world to serve elites,
who never mind taking food out of the mouths of people to put gold in their pockets. Socializing the costs for private economic
gain is not a new phenomenon in the capitalist system. However, this case represents a new twist in the combination of debunked
science, ecological imperialism, and the sophistry of "sustainable development." New Fuel, Old Barrels In February 2007, BP
announced plans with the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, in partnership with the University of Illinois and the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to lead the largest academic-industry research alliance in U.S. history. The $50 million-
a-year bone that BP will throw to Berkeley will create the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), primarily focusing its research on
biotechnology to produce biofuels. "In launching this visionary institute, BP is creating a new model for university-industry
collaboration," said Beth Burnside, UC Berkeley Vice Chancellor for Research (quoted in Sanders 2007). In light of the historic
record of capitalist accumulation, this "new model" for university-industry collaboration looks like old wine in a new bottle:
appropriate a social good (public university), privatize the property (intellectual development), and commodify the output (energy-
intensive products). And in this instance, BP has recruited a public institution to be its profit-making subsidiary.

14
Capitalism
DDI 2008 BQ
Jonathan Ma

Biofuels are capitalist

Corporations pillage countries in the name of sustainable development. Mass proletarianizing is
occurring around the world in the name of sustainable development.
Hannah Holleman and Rebecca Clausen, University of Oregon, 1/15/08,
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hc160108.html
While the U.S. military kicks in the front door of Baghdad and secures Middle Eastern and African oil fields, Western corporations
sneak in the back doors of Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America to secure land and labor for biofuels. The U.S. is not alone in
this endeavor, as much of Europe, Scandinavia, and Canada are also excited by the chance to put a green face on business as usual.
The consequences of capitalism's business as usual are well known. Farmers are proletarianized in the global south by the wealthier
and more technically savvy northerners. Genetically modified crops and the private patenting of the materials of life threaten the food
and environmental security of millions in the name of technological "progress" and efficiency in agriculture. Nevertheless, cynical
racist, sexist, and imperialist justifications for the consequences of biofuels production abound. You can hear them all from supporters
of the BP-Berkeley deal. The removal of indigenous people from rainforests cleared for palm oil (Indonesia) and sugar cane (Brazil)
plantations is justified by the new "democratization" of fuel production. The soaring costs of basic food staples worldwide is justified
by the need to provide women with energy resources since it is they who suffer most from the struggle to make ends meet without
contemporary "clean" energy products. These seemingly "humanitarian" justifications are all coupled with ridiculous claims by some
politicians that biofuels may end wars for oil -- as if the energy type, rather than the role of energy in capitalist society, causes the
global race for resources. These excuses for the recurrent pillaging of the developing world by the over-developed capitalist
countries are nothing more than an update to liberal, imperial rhetoric. Though these obfuscations are now under the banner of
"sustainable development," they are not unlike those used by supporters of the invasion of Afghanistan who wished to "liberate"
Muslim women. However, victims of the "civilizing" and more recently, "democratizing," forces of capitalist imperialism have
understood the bloody hypocrisy of the Dutch, the British, French, and now the U.S. In the case of biofuels, people worldwide have
come together to protest the outrageous claims made on the human and ecological resources of the globe by the wealthiest countries
that can't quit their addiction to liquid fuels, suburban sprawls, and capital accumulation at all costs.

15
Capitalism
DDI 2008 BQ
Jonathan Ma

Biofuels link and impact

Biofuels take food from the impoverished to fuel the cars of the elites. In order for Farmers to
maintain economic viability, forests must be burnt which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,
causing global warming.
George Monbiot, journalist for the Guardian, 3/27/2007, http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/1714
It used to be a matter of good intentions gone awry. Now it is plain fraud. The governments using biofuel to tackle global
warming know that it causes more harm than good. But they plough on regardless. In theory, fuels made from plants can reduce
the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by cars and trucks. Plants absorb carbon as they grow - it is released again when the fuel
is burned. By encouraging oil companies to switch from fossil plants to living ones, governments on both sides of the Atlantic
claim to be "decarbonising" our transport networks. In the budget last week, Gordon Brown announced that he would extend
the tax rebate for biofuels until 2010. From next year all suppliers in the UK will have to ensure that 2.5% of the fuel they sell
is made from plants - if not, they must pay a penalty of 15p a litre. The obligation rises to 5% in 2010. By 2050, the
government hopes that 33% of our fuel will come from crops. Last month George Bush announced that he would quintuple the
US target for biofuels: by 2017 they should be supplying 24% of the nation's transport fuel. So what's wrong with these
programmes? Only that they are a formula for environmental and humanitarian disaster. In 2004 I warned, on these pages, that
biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford
to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation. It would also lead to the destruction of rainforests and other
important habitats. I received more abuse than I've had for any other column - except for when I attacked the 9/11
conspiracists. I was told my claims were ridiculous, laughable, impossible. Well in one respect I was wrong. I thought these
effects wouldn't materialise for many years. They are happening already. Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize
has doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year
lows. Already there have been food riots in Mexico and reports that the poor are feeling the strain all over the world. The US
department of agriculture warns that "if we have a drought or a very poor harvest, we could see the sort of volatility we saw in
the 1970s, and if it does not happen this year, we are also forecasting lower stockpiles next year". According to the UN food
and agriculture organisation, the main reason is the demand for ethanol: the alcohol used for motor fuel, which can be made
from maize and wheat. Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the
booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat. Already we know that
biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest
in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn't happen until
2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main
cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild. But it
gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the
Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10
times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate
change as ordinary diesel.

16
Capitalism
DDI 2008 BQ
Jonathan Ma

Biofuels are capitalist

Biofuels are an illusion of governmental action on climate change. They just want to appease the
capitalists without making them to change anything
George Monbiot, journalist for the Guardian, 3/27/2007, http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/1714
The reason governments are so enthusiastic about biofuels is that they don't upset drivers. They appear to reduce the amount of
carbon from our cars, without requiring new taxes. It's an illusion sustained by the fact that only the emissions produced at
home count towards our national total. The forest clearance in Malaysia doesn't increase our official impact by a gram. In
February the European commission was faced with a straight choice between fuel efficiency and biofuels. It had intended to
tell car companies that the average carbon emission from new cars in 2012 would be 120 grams per kilometre. After heavy
lobbying by Angela Merkel on behalf of her car manufacturers, it caved in and raised the limit to 130 grams. It announced that
it would make up the shortfall by increasing the contribution from biofuel. The British government says it "will require
transport fuel suppliers to report on the carbon saving and sustainability of the biofuels they supply". But it will not require
them to do anything. It can't: its consultants have already shown that if it tries to impose wider environmental standards on
biofuels, it will fall foul of world trade rules. And even "sustainable" biofuels merely occupy the space that other crops now
fill, displacing them into new habitats. It promises that one day there will be a "second generation" of biofuels, made from
straw or grass or wood. But there are still major technical obstacles. By the time the new fuels are ready, the damage will have
been done.

17
Capitalism
DDI 2008 BQ
Jonathan Ma

Cap is root of environmental problems

Capitalism is responsible for all our environmental problems
John Bellamy Foster, American journalist, sociologist, essayist and eco-socialist, as well as editor of the Monthly Review,
10/2001, http://www.monthlyreview.org/1001jbf.htm
The shortterm time horizon endemic to capitalist investment decisions thus becomes a critical factor in determining its overall
environmental effects. Controlling emissions of some of the worst pollutants (usually through endofpipe methods) can have a
positive and almost immediate effect on peoples lives. However, the real protection of the environment requires a view of the
needs of generations to come. A good deal of environmental longterm policy for promoting sustainable development has to do
with the third world. This is exactly the place where capital, based in the rich countries, requires the fastest return on its
investments, often demanding that it get its initial investment back in a year or two. The time horizon that governs investment
decisions in these as in other cases is not a question of good capitalists who are willing to give up profits for the sake of society
and future generationsor bad capitalists who are notbut simply of how the system works. Even those industries that
typically look ahead must sooner or later satisfy the demands of investors, bondholders, and banks. The foregoing defects in
capitalisms relation to the environment are evident today in all areas of what we now commonly call the environmental crisis,
which encompasses problems as diverse as: global warming, destruction of the ozone layer, removal of tropical forests, elimination
of coral reefs, overfishing, extinction of species, loss of genetic diversity, the increasing toxicity of our environment and our food,
desertification, shrinking water supplies, lack of clean water, and radioactive contaminationto name just a few. The list is very
long and rapidly getting longer, and the spatial scales on which these problems manifest themselves are increasing.

18