2017-2018 Education Topic: Negative Neoliberalism Kritik for MS Varsity & HS Open Divisions(with affirmative answers)

Table of ContentsWhat is the purpose of this kritik?.............................................................................................................4

Key Terms...........................................................................................................................................................5

Introduction........................................................................................................................................................6

Aff Responses....................................................................................................................................................7

Coaches Note....................................................................................................................................................8

***Negative–Neoliberalism K 1NC***........................................................................................................9

1NC Neoliberalism K 1/3..............................................................................................................................10

1NC Neoliberalism K 2/3..............................................................................................................................11

1NC Neoliberalism K 3/3..............................................................................................................................12

***Negative–Neoliberalism 2NC/1NR***................................................................................................13

2NC Overview..................................................................................................................................................14

2NC Answer to Framework.........................................................................................................................15

2NC Answer to Permutation.......................................................................................................................16

2NC Answer to No Link (School Lunches)..............................................................................................17

2NC Answer to Capitalism Good...............................................................................................................18

2NC Answer to Alt Doesn’t Solve the Aff...............................................................................................19

***Affirmative–Neoliberalism 2AC**........................................................................................................20

2AC Framework..............................................................................................................................................21

2AC Permutation............................................................................................................................................22

2AC No Link (School Lunches)...................................................................................................................23

2AC Capitalism Good....................................................................................................................................24

2AC Alt Doesn’t Solve the Aff....................................................................................................................25

What is the purpose of this kritik?The purpose of a kritik is to test the assumptions of the 1AC… the choices that go into creating the 1AC, the assumptions the unsaid values that are promoted by the worldview of the 1AC is questioned. A disad is plan-focused.

What does this mean? A normal plan versus disad/counterplan debate doesn’t ask ethical questions about who or what the 1AC represents or supports. Those debates operate within what is called a utilitarian calculus or what is good for the greatness number of people. In this case it would be who prevents the most lives from dying. The affirmative assumes that the plan AND ONLY THE PLAN can solve the problem of the 1AC. The affirmative operates in a problem solution mindset. Meaning, if A then B way of thinking, we’ve identified a problem (A) then here is the solution (B). The 1AC generally isn’t trying to challenge that problem solution structures.

A kritik says that there is a prior question that must be asked. An ethical question such as, “should we endorse the affirmative if the affirmative supports a system that is morally wrong?” There are multiple reasons why something is morally wrong, the system that the affirmative supports exploits people, oppresses people, or even commits acts of violence against different groups of people because they are different.

A kritik brings historical considerations into debate. Kritiks analysis the systems, representations (how the 1AC describes the world), or the education it teaches. Kritiks change how we evaluate impacts in the debate. A kritik says that a there is more than one way to evaluate impacts.

It does it this is a couple of ways. The negative can says that the impacts of the affirmative are inevitable as long as we support this current system/way of thinking. The second way is to read impact defense against the affirmative impacts (If the aff says nuclear war will happen the neg says nuclear war will not happen).

Key TermsNeoliberalism – A philosophy in which the free market is valued purely for its own sake, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services. Also, the operation of this market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs.

Bourgeoisie- the capitalist class who owns most of society’s wealth and the means of production (like factories and infrastructure) at the expense of the rest.

Ethics- moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior.

Framework- A basic structure underlying a system, concept, or text.

Imperialism- the practice of a larger country or government growing stronger by taking over poorer or weaker countries that have important resources.

Militarism- the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests.

Ontology- It’s the study of being. For many it is the answer to the question “what is reality.” Ontology examines how things are represented, for example “why does the federal government need surveillance” (This will be apart of the video lecture)

Reductionism- the practice of analyzing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of phenomena that are held to represent a simpler or more fundamental level, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation.

Root cause- is an initiating cause of either a condition or a causal chain that leads to an outcome or effect of interest.

Socialism- a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

IntroductionThe story of the neoliberalism kritik begins with the link. The McLaren evidence says that the current U.S. educational system has been hijacked by transnational corporations, who make their profits the end purpose of schooling. This is an issue because schools are the place where students both learn about the world and are integrated into society. Previously, America’s educational system was shaped by industrial capitalism, which encouraged students to think critically about rules and political structures so that they can improve them later. However, industrial capitalism has been overwhelmed by neoliberalism, and thus neoliberalism now writes the rules for education. The result is a school system that encourages the following of rules without any critical reflection back upon them–casting aside the benefits of reflection, which can include critical thinking skills and the development of better structures. Further, the system only encourages students to maximize their utility for the labor market, through things like pre-professionalized degree programs, which only confirms the power of the existing elite, as those that cannot improve their value to capitalism (McLaren uses the example of undocumented workers, who lack the legal and financial resources to formally gain professional value or experience) are then left stuck in an immobile underclass. The link, then, is the plan’s support of current educational structures through partial reform, perhaps by treating a small problem for education like school lunches without addressing the root cause of its issues: neoliberal capitalism.

The impact to capitalism’s continuation is explained in the Parr evidence, who says the world is rapidly nearing an environmental “boiling point” because of it. Without rapid action to overthrow the capitalist order, the world will heat beyond 2˚, causing both huge environmental issues and mass die-outs of future human generations. Although that 2˚ threshold may seem low, Parr’s argument is that such a small change and temperature would trigger positive feedback loops that will only push it up further by causing more emissions. An example of one such “positive feedback loop” is Arctic permafrost, which contains significant amounts of CO2 and methane that will be released upon melting.

The alternative, then, is the overthrowing of the current neoliberal capitalist order. Giroux calls on youth movements to create alternatives to capitalism, challenging the existing order through radically democratic approaches. The negative can make the argument that this revolution would solve the harms of the 1AC, by explaining either why capitalism is the root cause of their impact or how these reforms would solve the educational problems (for school lunches, inadequate distribution) that would cause those impacts.

Aff ResponsesFirst, the affirmative can argue for a framework for the debate round. Framework is an argument that helps the judge establish which impacts matter and why. Generally the affirmative will say the judge should be a policymaker and only consider policy options when determining what is the best course of action. The negative will counter with their own framework argument that says the judge should be an ethical evaluator, and that ethical/moral concerns outweighs the potential benefits of the 1AC.Second, the affirmative can propose a “permutation,” or a combination, of the plan and the alternative. The negative would argue that the perm either still links to the kritik because it includes the USFG and an endorsement of capitalism OR in order to do both, the affirmative must sever out, or no longer support, parts of the 1AC. Severance is a theory argument that says if the affirmative is not allowed to go back on arguments it makes in the 1AC, because it makes the 1AC a moving target that no negative team could beat, since the affirmative team can always change their proposal to avoid links to DAs and Ks.Third, the affirmative can deny a link between the kritik and the affirmative, much like they can do with a DA. In regards to the school lunch aff, this takes the form of the Allen evidence, which argues that expanded school lunch programs are a means to combat neoliberalism by increasing government involvement in schools at the expense of private interests. More generally, though, the affirmative can argue that their program does not specifically support capitalist structures, by explaining what makes their plan different from the current neoliberalized educational system described by McLaren.Fourth, the affirmative can defend capitalism and attack the premise of the kritik. If capitalism really is good, then the negative’s ethical concerns might be of less import given what sacrifices their alternative might force.Lastly, the aff should make the argument that the alternative does not solve the affirmative. Because the alternative rejects the notion of legislative action that means the plan should not be passed. If the plan is not passed then the advantages are never solved for, if that happens then those advantages become disadvantages to the alternative since the alternative would prevent the plan from happening.

Constructing a 2ACJust because there are a lot of different ways to answer the K doesn’t mean the affirmative team must read all of them. While almost all 2ACs against the K read framework, there are different strategic options the affirmative can choose from:- Framework, Permutation, No link, Alt Doesn’t Solve the Aff: Combining these arguments

allows the affirmative to best articulate how their plan doesn’t specifically contribute to capitalism. The permutation helps them articulate how the plan and the alternative can co-exist, the no link argument helps disprove any severance arguments the neg could make, and the ADStA argument proves the importance of the plan, as there are some problems the plan would be best equipped to resolve–bolstering the combination of the alt/plan supported by the permutation!

- Framework, Capitalism Good, Alt Doesn’t Solve the Aff: Combining these arguments gives the affirmative the advantages of capitalism. If the affirmative’s plan really does bolster capitalism, they can argue this to be a good thing, rendering all of capitalism’s benefits

advantages to the plan. In conjunction with the ADStA argument, the aff can say that their plan is far better for the world than the alternative is.

And remember, you can write out your own arguments to read against the K, too! One that describes how the affirmative’s impacts outweigh the kritik could be useful, as could one that describes how the affirmative solves the problems of capitalism.

Coaches NoteSome of you coaches maybe aware of various theory arguments that can be run vs the kritik. At this moment we are not prepared to widely distribute those arguments please limit all arguments to the ones listed in the packet. Moving forward this maybe a part of future kritiks.

Thus the only theory arguments that can be run are:

Framework

Severance

After we have some time with this file this year in debates, that list could expand.

Thanks

***Negative–Neoliberalism K 1NC***

1NC Neoliberalism K 1/31st off (or Next off) is the Neoliberalism Kritik: A. The Link—Education is a tool of the existing capitalist order. By reforming it, the plan further empowers the ruling elite at the expense of the underclass.McLaren 15 [Peter McLaren, Distinguished Professor in Critical Studies, College of Educational Studies, Chapman University, “The Abode of Educational Production: An Interview with Peter McLaren,” Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research 26, 2015]

However, schools today (since the mid-1980s), are discernibly shifting their role from building the nation state and creating democracy-minded citizens to serving the transnational corporations in their endless quest for profits. The nation state, it appears, is losing its ability to control capital by means of controlling the transnational corporations. Corporations have become in many instances more powerful than nation states (although I am not diminishing the role of nation states here). Schools that were once an important political entity that had a public code-setting agenda in creating conventional rules and regulations to be followed by each citizen are fast becoming part of the private sector bent on creating consumers within the capitalist marketplace. As society abandons its outmoded historical garb and takes on new forms, the perpetuity of the existing social order is increasingly called into question. So-called non-political forces – those associated with financial and commodity markets – are now the dominant forces of indoctrination and code setting within our market society and this has greatly impacted education.Our collaborative existence as consumers has produced a closure on meaning through the very activity of opening up our desire to consume market commodities by means of a default set of blinders created by a capitalist imaginary that provides the formula or criteria of choice. Industrial capitalist schooling was occupied with conventional problem solving designed to provide students with the rules and conventions to solve particular problems via rule-based reasoning. Knowing the rules of the democratic state was the most important goal and this was often taught by means of a text book-assignment-recitation pattern. With the advent of consumer society and the replacement of Western high culture with transnational corporate culture (which relies on well-trained technical workers), the focus has moved away from conventional thinking to technical thinking . What this ultimately excludes, of course, is critical reflection, or producing knowledge from real-life problems or what Richard Quantz calls “meaningful action.”

Meaningful action does not always take place in situations where relevant knowledge is available or where people are aware what the right choices and actions might be. Meaningful knowledge does require some knowledge of technical reasoning but it requires as well the ability to interpret and critique – to make moral choices and to commit to some action even when relevant knowledge is not available. It requires larger patterns of understanding and reasoning – and it requires us to create and recreate its own foundations and goals as it goes along. Given the abandoning of political institutions such as schools by the state, the focus has been on technical problem solving as a means-ends reasoning that involves selecting from available rules those that will help individuals achieve a particular given end. In short, critical reflection is not a priority. It is in fact, the enemy of today’s education, even as schools tout the value of critical literacy and social justice agendas. Being a Marxist educator means that I see education as a path to socialism. Simply put, my struggle as a teacher is to create protagonist agency to fight three very powerful forces, what I call the ‘triplecides’—genocide, ecocide and epistemicide. I see capitalism as a form of genocide (see the work of Gary Leech) and a number of my students have been developing the field of ecopedagogy (turning

traditional forms of environmental education on their heads) –addressing the issues of ecoside, sustainability, ecosocialism and alternative epistemologies found often in first nations cultures.The moral imperative behind today’s neoliberalism reflects a distinct form of neo-mercantilism. The move in the US economy in the 1970s towards financialization and export production helped to concentrate wealth in the hands of CEOs and hedge-fund managers – and, as Chomsky and others have noted, this led to a concentration of political power, which in turn leads to state policies to increase economic concentration, fiscal policies, deregulation of the economic, and rules of corporate governance. Neoliberalism as it factors the field of education reflects the logic of possessive individualism, urging all citizens or potential citizens to maximize their advantage on the labor market; and for those who are unable to accomplish this requirement – a requirement, by the way, that functions as a moral imperative – such as undocumented workers, they must as a non-market underclass live in a bottom-tiered netherworld of sweatshop labor that serves those of more fundamental worth to the social order – the more successful capitalist class.

1NC Neoliberalism K 2/3B. The impact—Reforms to capitalism prolong it, causing mass extinction–massive change alone can solve.Parr, 13Adrian, Chair of Taft Faculty and Director of the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, holds a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the School of Architecture and Interior Design, 13 [The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, 2013, p. 145-147]

A quick snapshot of the twenty-first century so far: an economic meltdown; a frantic sell-off of public land to the energy business as President George W Bush exited the White House; a prolonged, costly, and unjustified war in Iraq; the Greek economy in ruins; an escalation of global food prices; bee colonies in global extinction; 925 million hungry reported in 2010; as of 2005, the world's five hundred richest individuals with a combined income greater than that of the poorest 416 million people, the richest 10 percent accounting for 54 percent of global income; a planet on the verge of boiling point ; melting ice caps; increases in extreme weather conditions; and the list goes on and on and on.2 Sounds like a ticking time bomb , doesn't it? Well it is.

It is shameful to think that massive die-outs of future generations will put to pale comparison the 6 million murdered during the Holocaust; the millions killed in two world wars; the genocides in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Darfur; the 1 million left homeless and the 316,000 killed by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The time has come to wake up to the warning signs.3

The real issue climate change poses is that we do not enjoy the luxury of incremental change anymore . We are in the last decade where we can do something about the situation. Paul Gilding, the former head of Greenpeace International and a core faculty member of Cambridge University's Programme for Sustainability, explains that "two degrees of warming is an inadequate goal and a plan for failure;' adding that "returning to below one degree of warming . . . is the solution to the problem:'4 Once we move higher than 2°C of warming, which is what is projected to occur by 2050, positive feedback mechanisms will begin to kick in, and then we will be at the point of no return . We therefore need to start thinking very differently right now.

We do not see the crisis for what it is; we only see it as an isolated symptom that we need to make a few minor changes to deal with. This was the message that Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez delivered at the COP15 United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen on December 16, 2009, when he declared: "Let's talk about the cause. We should not avoid responsibilities, we should not avoid the depth of this problem. And I'll bring it up again, the cause of this disastrous panorama is the metabolic, destructive system of the capital and its model: capitalism.”5

The structural conditions in which we operate are advanced capitalism. Given this fact, a few adjustments here and there to that system are not enough to solve the problems that climate change and environmental degradation pose.6 Adaptability, modifications, and displacement, as I have consistently shown throughout this book, constitute the very essence of capitalism . Capitalism adapts without doing away with the threat. Under capitalism, one deals with threat not by challenging it, but by buying favors from it, as in voluntary carbon-offset schemes. In the process,

one gives up on one's autonomy and reverts to being a child. Voluntarily offsetting a bit of carbon here and there, eating vegan, or recycling our waste, although well intended, are not solutions to the problem, but a symptom of the free market's ineffectiveness. By casting a scathing look at the neoliberal options on display, I have tried to show how all these options are ineffective. We are not buying indulgences because we have a choice; choices abound, and yet they all lead us down one path and through the golden gates of capitalist heaven.

1NC Neoliberalism K 3/3C. The Alternative—We endorse youth movements, which are necessary to radically challenge capitalism.Giroux 14Henry A., McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University [“Protesting Youth in an Age of Neoliberal Savagery,” CounterPunch, May 21, 2014, http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/21/protesting-youth-in-an-age-of-neoliberal-savagery/]

New rights, demands, visions, and modes of political representation dedicated to the public and social good need time and involve long-term commitments to develop. How the construction of alternative forms of power, strategies, and organization will be developed that can both challenge established powers and become more fully realized is not clear. Needless to say, while youth movements around the globe have and are providing what Hardt and Negri call “a scaffolding” in preparation for an unforeseen event that would provide the ground for a radical social break out of which a new society can be built, there is much to be done in preparation for such an event (Hardt & Negri:103). The challenge young protesters face centers on developing visions, tactics, and strong organizations that enable strategies for change that become more than ephemeral protests reduced to “signs without organization”, incapable of making a real difference (Aronowitz 2014).

Youth in various countries need to cultivate a radical imagination capable of providing alternatives to capitalism that will offer a challenge not only to neoliberalism and its destructive austerity policies, but also a vision that speaks to people’s needs for a radical democracy, one that is capable of convincing diverse elements of a broader public that change is possible, and that existing systems of globalization and casino capitalism can be overcome. While the crisis of financial capital, among other dominant modes of oppression, must be challenged, there is also the urgent need for youth protesters to articulate “the broader dimensions of alienation beyond income disparity” (Aronowitz 2011). Issues of existential despair, meaninglessness, hopelessness, and a retreat into the orbits of privatization must be addressed if subjectivities and modes of agency are to be mobilized, capable of engaging in the long struggle for a radical democracy. Moreover, as long as these protest groups are fragmented, no significant change will take place. Planning effective strategies and building sustainable organizations will not work as long as there are divisions around authority, race, gender, class, sexuality, and identity. When these divisions function so as to democratize all demands and fail to provide some of democratic leadership, politics dissolves into a jumble of competing discourses and power becomes pathologized. As Sarah Jaffee points out,

The paradox of Occupy is that many of the things that made it succeed also made it splinter. The attraction to a “leaderless” movement was palpable, and the lack of demands made it possible for anyone to join in as long as they agreed with the basic premise that a tiny elite has too much power. Yet the idea of leaderlessness, as so many have written, masks the ways power continues to operate, and the lack of demands wound up as a refusal, oftentimes, to deal at all with existing systems. (Jaffee 2014)

Alliances among different groups, especially with workers and labor unions, must take place across national boundaries, motivated by a comprehensive understanding of global politics and its mechanics of

power, ideology, corporate sovereignty, and its devastating effects on people’s lives, and the reality and ideal of a radical democracy and more just world. The possibility for such alliances, unity, and comprehensive understanding of politics among the youth of the world is greater than ever before, given the new technologies and the growing consciousness that power is now global and has generated a need for new modes of politics (Epstein 2014:41-44; Aronowitz 2014a; Aronowitz 2014b). It is time for authentic rage to transform itself into an international movement for the creation of a genuinely democratic formative culture and an effective strategy for social, political, and economic change.

***Negative–Neoliberalism 2NC/1NR***

2NC Overview1. Explain what the Kritik argument is below, while answering the question “why should the ethical concerns of the kritik come before evaluating the impacts of the 1AC?”

a) Explain what will happen in the world of the plan (the impact).

2. Explain why if we do not change our way of thinking we will ultimately reproduce the same type of violence explain by the 1AC?

a) Explain how the plan is either a part of or prolongs the problem (the link).

3. How does the alternative solve the problems of capitalism?

2NC Answer to FrameworkOur interpretation for this debate is that the judge should evaluate academic truth regarding capitalism, because only this allows for it to be challenged. Failure to challenge capitalism both causes all the impacts we prove are rooted in it and limits the scope of education–if education reform really feeds into capitalism, then without the K, all topic education would too–our interpretation is necessary to address whether or not this is acceptable.

Write an answer to their fairness impact here:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Write an answer to their topic education impact here:________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2NC Answer to PermutationThe permutation is severance–it is an attempt by the affirmative to go back on their support of neoliberalized education present in the 1AC and proven by the link debate–this kills fairness because allowing the affirmative to cheat out of links means the negative can’t read Kritiks or Disadvantages.

2NC Answer to No Link (School Lunches)

Farm-to-school programs induce citizenship through consumption, reinforcing neoliberal ideology.Guthman 8

Julie, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz [“Neoliberalism and the making of food politics in California,” Geoforum, Vol. 39, No. 3, May 2008, p. 1171-1183, Accessed Online through Emory Libraries]

A third theme of contemporary food activism is entrepreneurialism and specifically the use of market mechanisms to solve problems. Although this idea, too, is more broadly indicative of neoliberal mentalities, the agro-food movement in some sense found its own path to it. This is most easily explained by the fact that organics, the flagship movement, was in fact always entrepreneurial – a green business. Still, even the community food security movement, which seeks to combat the causes of hunger, rather than the symptoms (Fisher and Gottlieb, 1995), looks to entrepreneurialism as a way out. Besides trying to improve “access” to supermarkets, many of its programs are about linking up consumers and producers, through community-based institutions such as urban gardens, cooperative buying groups, farmers’ markets, CSAs, and other food delivery services. In this case, the turn to entrepreneurial approaches was in part a concession to the decreasing political support for entitlement programs, in part a way to make the food insecure independent of the charity of others (Allen, 1999). In effect, its strategic alliance with the sustainable agriculture movement has put food security on par with farmer income. Not only is this particular “win–win” situation a falsifiable conceit (Guthman et al., 2006), it depoliticizes “hunger” itself, very much in keeping with responsibilization.

Probably the most striking turn food politics has taken is in the promotion of food and farming as means to self-improvement . Of course, providing nutritional information as a form of social improvement has a long history, from health food movements to Americanization campaigns (Levenstein, 1993), and farming has always been valorized in the American psyche. Nevertheless, the extent to which organic, local food has come to be intensely proselytized suggests something deeper going on about contemporary subject-making. Farm-to-school programs are sold with the idea of giving children the ability to make right choices, to improve standardized test scores, and to conform to normative body sizes (Allen and Guthman, 2006). Increasingly garden-oriented projects (in prisons, schools, and among “at-risk” populations) are viewed as mechanisms to produce “empowered”, self-sufficient subjects and encourage “citizenship” more broadly, irrespective of the actual production of food (see Pudup, this issue).

2NC Answer to Capitalism GoodNeoliberal capitalism causes more conflicts than it solves–capitalist “peace” comes from military interventions.Nitzan and Shimson 6[Jonathan Nitzan, professor of Political Economy at York University, and Shimshon Bilcher, teacher of Political Economy at colleges and universities in Israel, “New Imperialism or New Capitalism,” 2006, https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5578/1/MPRA_paper_5578.pdf]

Over the past few years, many "free market" strategists have become staunch supporters of the new wars. Their newly-found bellicosity is certainly significant. Until not long ago, most of them believed that peace and prosperity were brought by "liberalism" and "democracy" and that war and poverty were the consequence of "Bolshevism," "socialism," and other tyrannies. So why the sudden change? It all started with the fall of the Soviet Union. Overnight, the world had become "unipolar"; unipolar worlds are known for their instability, and instability is known to give strategic experts a change of heart. Presently, the center of global instability is the Middle East. The region is home to religious fundamentalism, anti-liberal culture, and plenty of weapons- conventional and other- wise. The region is also home to two-thirds of the world's oil reserves and one-third of its daily output. Previously, superpower rivalry kept the lid on this toxic brew. But now, with the Soviet Union gone, the mix of oil, fanaticism, and weapons is simmering, threatening both democracy and neoliberal prosperity. Evidently, the free countries of the world have no choice but to take up arms. The only way to defuse the Middle East threat once and for all is direct military intervention and, if need be, outright conquest. In the now-famous words of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman: For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower it is. ... The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist . . . and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps (1999: 373). And so a new hybrid was born: neoliberal wars. Radicals were quick to denounce the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq- for much the same reason that the free marketeers loved them. For the most part, they, too, accepted that the new wars were part of a neoliberal American imperialism- only that, in their view, this imperialism was deplorable since it spelled the continued exploitation and oppression of the postcolonial Third World. Unfortunately, few of those who espouse this position seem able to clearly define the concepts they use and show how these concepts explain the way American imperialism actually works. Is "American imperialism" a new breed of imperialism, or is it merely the contemporary reincarnation of what earlier took the form of Cold War imperialism, nineteenth-century British imperialism, Is- lamic imperialism, and Roman imperialism? Has there ever been a nonimperial capitalism, or is capitalism simply a form of imperialism? Who exactly are the rulers and subjects of this imperialism? Is the "American state" in the driver's seat- and if so, what constitutes that state? The Federal government? The White House? The Penta- gon? The American people? The Western countries? The governments of those countries? The transnational corporations? The IMF and World Bank? Bill Gates? All of the above? Does the "American empire" serve the interest of capital- and if so, what ex- actly is this interest? Does the "American Empire" serve capital in general, or only one of its "fractions"? What criteria should we use to answer these questions? In what sense, precisely, are developing countries "exploited" and "oppressed"? By whom and to what ex- tent? Is China "dependent" on and exploited by the United States, or is it the other way around? How do we decide? Can the labor theory of value help us measure this exploitation and dependency? And if not- how do we know? These questionsonce the basic staple of critical Marxism- seem to have disappeared. Few Marxists answer them and even fewer bother to raise them. Have these issues all been settled? Do they no longer matter? Or, perhaps asking them is simply too dangerous for what is now commonly referred to as the Marxist "tradition"? Ellen Meiksins Wood, for example, confidently defines globalization as the "economic imperialism of capital," with the United States as its "hegemon" (Meiksins Wood, 2002: 25). This new imperialism, she says, no longer has formal colonies and instead leverages itself through a system of sovereign nation-

states. Indeed, "It has, in fact, been a major strategy of capitalist imperialism even to create local states to act as conduits of capitalist imperatives" (2002: 24). Unfortunately, many of these states are not sufficiently integrated into the system, and there is a constant risk that some of them will rebel against the "rule of global capital" (2002: 24). In order to minimize this risk and keep these states subordinated, there is a need for "a new doctrine of extra-economic, and especially military coercion ." And since "even US military power cannot be everywhere at once . . . the only option is to demonstrate, by frequent displays of military force, that it can go anywhere at any time, and do great damage" (2000: 25) Thus, the overriding purpose of waging war now, declares Meiksins Wood, is not to conquer new territory as such, but to "demonstrate US hegemony" (2002: 26).

2NC Answer to Alt Doesn’t Solve the Aff

Specifics don’t matter–we must destroy capitalism now to avert extinction. Even if our alternative has some issues, it’s better than the plan.Herod 4 (James, Columbia University Graduate and Political Activist, Getting Free, http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/06.htm)

It is time to try to describe, at first abstractly and later concretely, a strategy for destroying capitalism. This strategy, at its most basic, calls for pulling time, energy, and resources out of capitalist civilization and putting them into building a new civilization. The image then is one of emptying out capitalist structures, hollowing them out, by draining wealth, power, and meaning out of them until there is nothing left but shells.¶ This is definitely an aggressive strategy. It requires great militancy, and constitutes an attack on the existing order. The strategy clearly recognizes that capitalism is the enemy and must be destroyed, but it is not a frontal attack aimed at overthrowing the system, but an inside attack aimed at gutting it, while simultaneously replacing it with something better, something we want.¶ Thus capitalist structures (corporations, governments, banks, schools, etc.) are not seized so much as simply abandoned. Capitalist relations are not fought so much as they are simply rejected. We stop participating in activities that support (finance, condone) the capitalist world and start participating in activities that build a new world while simultaneously undermining the old. We create a new pattern of social relations alongside capitalist relations and then we continually build and strengthen our new pattern while doing every thing we can to weaken capitalist relations. In this way our new democratic, non-hierarchical, non-commodified relations can eventually overwhelm the capitalist relations and force them out of existence.¶ This is how it has to be done. This is a plausible, realistic strategy. To think that we could create a whole new world of decent social arrangements overnight, in the midst of a crisis, during a so-called revolution, or during the collapse of capitalism, is foolhardy. Our new social world must grow within the old, and in opposition to it, until it is strong enough to dismantle and abolish capitalist relations. Such a revolution will never happen automatically, blindly, determinably, because of the inexorable, materialist laws of history. It will happen, and only happen, because we want it to, and because we know what we’re doing and know how we want to live, and know what obstacles have to be overcome before we can live that way, and know how to distinguish between our social patterns and theirs.¶ But we must not think that the capitalist world can simply be ignored, in a live and let live attitude, while we try to build new lives elsewhere. (There is no elsewhere.) There is at least one thing, wage-slavery, that we can’t simply stop participating in (but even here there are ways we can chip away at it). Capitalism must be explicitly refused and replaced by something else. This constitutes War, but it is not a war in the traditional sense of armies and tanks, but a war fought on a daily basis, on the level of everyday life, by millions of people. It is a war nevertheless because the accumulators of capital will use coercion, brutality, and murder, as they have always done in the past, to try to block any rejection of the system. They have always had to force compliance; they will not hesitate to continue doing so. Nevertheless, there are many concrete ways that individuals, groups, and neighborhoods can gut capitalism, which I will enumerate shortly.¶ We must always keep in mind how we became slaves; then we can see more clearly how we can cease being slaves. We were forced into wage-slavery because the ruling class slowly, systematically, and brutally destroyed our ability to live autonomously. By driving us off the land, changing the property laws, destroying community rights, destroying our tools, imposing taxes, destroying our local markets, and so forth, we were forced onto the labor market in order to survive, our only remaining option being to sell, for a wage, our ability to work.¶ It’s quite clear then how we can overthrow slavery. We must reverse this process. We must begin to reacquire the ability to live without working for a wage or buying the products made by wage-slaves (that is, we must get free from the labor market and the way of living based on it), and embed ourselves instead in cooperative labor and cooperatively produced goods.¶ Another clarification is needed. This strategy does not call for reforming capitalism, for changing capitalism into something else. It calls for replacing capitalism, totally, with a new civilization. This is an important distinction, because capitalism has proved impervious to reforms, as a system. We can sometimes in some places win certain concessions from it (usually only temporary ones) and win some (usually short-lived) improvements in our lives as its victims, but we cannot reform it piecemeal, as a system.¶ Thus our strategy of gutting and eventually destroying capitalism requires at a minimum a totalizing

image, an awareness that we are attacking an entire way of life and replacing it with another, and not merely reforming one way of life into something else.¶ Many people may not be accustomed to thinking about entire systems and social orders, but everyone knows what a lifestyle is, or a way of life, and that is the way we should approach it.¶ The thing is this: in order for capitalism to be destroyed millions and millions of people must be dissatisfied with their way of life. They must want something else and see certain existing things as obstacles to getting what they want. It is not useful to think of this as a new ideology. It is not merely a belief-system that is needed, like a religion, or like Marxism, or Anarchism. Rather it is a new prevailing vision, a dominant desire, an overriding need. What must exist is a pressing desire to live a certain way, and not to live another way. If this pressing desire were a desire to live free, to be autonomous, to live in democratically controlled communities, to participate in the self-regulating

activities of a mature people, then capitalism could be destroyed. Otherwise we are doomed to perpetual slavery and possibly even to extinction.

***Affirmative–Neoliberalism 2AC**

2AC FrameworkFirst, is framework—Our interpretation of the debate is that the judge should only evaluate the plan versus a disadvantage or a competing counterplan. All else washes away the specifics of the1AC, which has two impacts:Second, fairness–letting the negative compare a broad but vague alternative to our specific policy proposal is unfair because their scope is unlimited while ours is confined to the United States government.Third, education–broad discussions of capitalism will trade-off with debates about policy specifics like the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act or the benefits of Farm-to-School, meaning we learn less about the resolution each year.

2AC PermutationPermutation, do both–capitalism partially causes many issues, but it isn’t all that’s at play–combining resistance strategies is key to resolve its impacts.Marsh 95

[James L., Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University, “Critique, Action, and Liberation”, p. 282-283]

What seems to be called for and to be more likely with the greater possibility and actuality' of economic and rationality' crisis is a union of workers and citizens groups, economic and cultural movements, purposive rational-action and symbolic interaction, macro- and micropolitics. Links with workers can remind citizen groups of the relationship of their own goals and movements to economic class domination and help supply a unity' to these various groups. On the other hand, movements centered around quality' of life remind workers that mere economic reforms and revolution are not enough either, transformation of quality' of life is essential. Moreover, movements centered on the problems of racism, sexism, and the devastation of the environment remind us of a legitimate specificity, plurality', and irreducibility within social movements. Even though racism, sexism, heterosexism. and environmental pollution are ultimately related to capitalism, they are not reducible to capitalist class domination. A legitimate differance exists among social movements that must be respected. In contrast to postmodernists. I would insist on a legitimate unity' or identity' that should be articulated, an identity-in-difference. Such a politics disavows either a one-sided unity' present in some traditional Marxism or a one-sided pluralism present in liberal or postmodern theories. Such a politics would be aesthetic as well as political, cultural as well as economic, micro as well as macro, but in contrast to many postmodern theories the aesthetic and cultural are linked to the critical and reflective. Rationality' is not simply or primarily instrumental or scientific as some traditional Marxism would have it or simply libidinal and aesthetic as some post-modem theory would have it. but a unity' of political, aesthetic, and scientific. Thus the aesthetic politics of Act-Up. an organization of AIDS activists, breaking into Dan Rather's newscast on CBS during the Gulf War has its legitimate place as do marches protesting the war or worker resistance on the shop floor. The symbolic protest of a Dan Berrigan at the King of Prussia nuclear facility in Pennsylvania has its place as well as political organizing in the Bronx around the issues of health care, housing, and food. Many legitimate struggles, kinds of struggle, and sites of struggle exist, none of which is reducible to the other, but which are or can be linked to one another in different alliances against a common enemy, a racist, sexist, heterosexist capitalism. Linking and alliance are not the same as subsumption and reduction , a common mistake. Such struggles have a common enemy, are subject to common norms of right, morality', and justice, and have a common goal of liberation taking the form of full economic, cultural, and political democracy. In contrast to a politics of assimilation that denies differences or a politics of rigid identity' that becomes separatist, my recommended politics is one of inclusion and alliance. Such a politics flows from the argument of the whole book. On a phenomenological level, cognitional-transcendental structure and the validity' claims of the ideal speech situation are shared by everyone equally, white or African-American, capitalist or laborer, woman or man. heterosexual or homosexual. No person or group of persons is privileged in the ideal speech situation, and each has an equal right to express her needs and desires and claims. Ethically the principles of right, morality, and justice forbid classism. racism, sexism, and heterosexism. Hermeneutically. these forms of domination are distinct but related and are not reducible to one another. Critically, the task of social

theory is to criticize these forms of domination with the aim of overcoming them. Finally, on the level of praxis itself, each kind of group subject to its own distinct kind of exploitation can give rise to its own legitimate kind of social movement. It is true that on a hermeneutic-explanatory level class domination is more fundamental and definitive of our social situation than other kinds, but even here one form is not reducible to the other. Also, it is mistaken to infer from such privileging to a privileging on other levels. Ethically, for example, it is not clear that exploitation of labor by capital is worse than that exerted by white over Latino or Indian, heterosexual over homosexual, or man over woman. Here, we note again the advantage of methodologically distinguishing different stages, aspects, and levels in critical theory. Even if I privilege class domination over other forms on a hermeneutic-explanatory level, it may be that social movements arising from racism, sexism, and heterosexism have to be privileged at times in the late capitalist context. Which of these social movements takes the lead depends very much on different local, regional, and national situations. In addition to other kinds of indeterminacy and ambiguity, social theory has to own up to a certain indeterminacy on the level of praxis.

2AC No Link (School Lunches)Universalizing access to farm-to-school programs is a form of resistance to neoliberal inequalities.Allen 6

Patricia, Associate Director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California-Santa Cruz where she directs the Center’s social-issues research and education program; AND Julie Guthman, Assistant Professor in Community Studies at the University of California-Santa Cruz [“From ‘old school’ to ‘farm-to-school’: Neoliberalization from the ground up,” Agriculture and Human Values, Vol. 23, No. 4, December 2006, p. 401-415, Accessed Online through Emory Libraries]

Fortunately, school food programs also provide a perfect site for opposition to neoliberalization. Resistance can be justified in terms that are traditional and well-established in the American psyche, such as the importance of universal education. School food programs have the potential to politicize and mobilize many otherwise alienated people, fostering critical thinking and political action. Innovative school food programs can be developed that pair the values of equity and universal access with the latest knowledge about the role of fruits and vegetables in a healthy diet. Rather than concede the inevitable disparities of devolution, public funding and state support should be used to effect improvement across the board for all children , not just those who happen to be in “progressive” or affluent schools. Schools are still public institutions funded by public monies, sanctioned by law, public policy, and public will. FTS advocates can seize the power in this and develop healthy school food programs that meet the needs of all children regardless of their class, circumstance, or political cachet. A step toward resisting neoliberalization could be to develop healthy food programs in schools where they are most needed, which is not necessarily where conducive circumstances readily materialize.

2AC Capitalism GoodCapitalism good–it lowers the chance of conflictHarrison 11 [Mark, Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University, “Capitalism at War”, Oct 19 http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/harrison/papers/capitalism.pdf]Capitalism’s Wars America is the world’s preeminent capitalist power. According to a poll of more than 21,000 citizens of 21 countries in the second half of 2008, people tend on average to evaluate U.S. foreign policy as inferior to that of their own country in the moral dimension. 4 While this survey does not disaggregate respondents by educational status, many apparently knowledgeable people also seem to believe that, in the modern world, most wars are caused by America; this impression is based on my experience of presenting work on the frequency of wars to academic seminars in several European countries. According to the evidence, however, these beliefs are mistaken. We are all aware of America’s wars, but they make only a small contribution to the total. Counting all bilateral conflicts involving at least the show of force from 1870 to 2001, it turns out that the countries that originated them come from all parts of the global income distribution (Harrison and Wolf 2011). Countries that are richer, measured by GDP per head, such as America do not tend to start more conflicts, although there is a tendency for countries with larger GDPs to do so. Ranking countries by the numbers of conflicts they initiated, the United States, with the largest economy, comes only in second place; third place belongs to China. In first place is Russia (the USSR between 1917 and 1991). What do capitalist institutions contribute to the empirical patterns in the data? Erik Gartzke (2007) has re-examined the hypothesis of the “democratic peace” based on the possibility that, since capitalism and democracy are highly correlated across countries and time, both democracy and peace might be products of the same underlying cause, the spread of capitalist institutions. It is a problem that our historical datasets have measured the spread of capitalist property rights and economic freedoms over shorter time spans or on fewer dimensions than political variables. For the period from 1950 to 1992, Gartzke uses a measure of external financial and trade liberalization as most likely to signal robust markets and a laissez faire policy. Countries that share this attribute of capitalism above a certain level, he finds, do not fight each other, so there is capitalist peace as well as democratic peace. Second, economic liberalization (of the less liberalized of the pair of countries) is a more powerful predictor of bilateral peace than democratization, controlling for the level of economic development and measures of political affinity.

2AC Alt Doesn’t Solve the AffSpecific alternatives are key to evaluate whether the critique is better—don’t optimistically assume that dismantling capitalism will solve all social ills.Sayer 95Andrew, Reader in Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University [Radical Political Economy: A Critique, 1995, p. 33-34]Any criticism presupposes the possibility of a better way of life; to expose something as illusory or contradictory is to imply the possibility and desirability of a life without those illusions and contradictions. This much has been established by critical theorists such as Habermas and Apel. Yet the notion that critique implies a quest for the good is a highly abstract one. Up to a point, particular critiques do imply something a little more specific than the standpoint of a better life. The critique of capitalism's anarchic and uneven development implies a critical standpoint or contrast space of an imagined society with a rationally ordered and even process of development. The critique of class points to the desirability of a classless society. Naturally, society would be better if its illusions, conflicts and contradictions were reduced, but we naturally want to know how this could be achieved . The desirability of a life without contradictions or illusions does not make it feasible.

Critical social science does not merely identify illusions, irrationality or contradictions but attempts to provide explanations of their sources, locating the 'unwanted determinations' of behaviour, as Bhaskar (1989) puts it. It would be strange, to say the least, if an analysis of the causes of problems such as hunger and exploitation were unable to indicate anything about alternatives which would eliminate them. If a critical theory cannot begin to indicate how to eliminate problems we must inevitably be suspicious of its claims to have identified their causes. If the alternative implied by a critical standpoint is not feasible , then any critique made from that standpoint is thereby seriously weakened. Not to put too fine a point on it, the critique of, say, capitalism's anarchic and uneven development would lose much of its force if all [END PAGE 33] advanced economies were necessarily anarchic and uneven in their development, though one could still criticize advanced economies - not just capitalist ones - from the very different standpoint of a 'deep ecology', calling for a return to small-scale, more primitive economies (Dobson, 1990).

We need to know enough about the critical standpoint and the implied alternative to be able to judge first whether it really is feasible and desirable. Since knowledge is 'situated' and bears the mark of its author's social position, this includes assessing whose standpoint it is made from. Does it privilege the position of a particular group (e.g. male workers, advanced countries)? Does it imply a society without difference? If it suggests greater equality on whose terms is equality to be defined?7 We have also to ask whether remedying one set of problems would generate others (it usually does), and whether these would be worse than the original problems. This is rarely considered in radical political economy, the usual implicit assumption being that all bad things go together in capitalism and all good things under socialism/communism. Yet it is possible that some of the 'contradictions' involve dilemmas which can't be eliminated along with capitalism. Evaluations in terms of desirability therefore need to be cross-checked with assessments of feasibility, and optimistic assumptions of inevitable improvement suspended .There are two kinds of feasibility which might be considered:

1 whether a certain desired end-state or goal can be realized - for example, how people can be politically mobilized to make it happen; and

2 whether, assuming enough people are willing to try to make it happen, the goal or end-state is feasible in itself, e.g. could one have an advanced economy without money?

It is usually only the first of these questions that radicals address, the standard response to utopian discussions being not 'would it work?' but 'yes but how are you going to get from here to there?' But while many might think it idle to ignore (1), it is surprising how little attention is given to (2), as if the journey mattered more than the destination. I fully accept that I am not offering suggestions on (1) in this book, and only ideas pertinent to (2): but then I don't see how large-scale political mobilization can precede a well-worked out conception of a feasible alternative.