SMS Debynasty 1

Mason Owen
A) Link
The Affirmative uses the state and its power over classes to express capitalism.
Glassman 04 (Jim Glassman, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, “Transnation hegemony and US labor foreign
policy: towards a Gramscian international labor geography”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2004, volume 22, pages 573-593)
In contrast, a 'Critical Economy' approach understands the state not simply as an institution limited to the 'government of the functionaries' or the
'top political leaders and personalities with direct governmental responsibilities'. The tendency to solely concentrate on such features—common
in much mainstream debate in IR—was pejoratively referred to as 'statolatry': it entailed viewing the state as a perpetual entity limited to actions
within political society (Gramsci 1971, 178, 268). Instead, the state presents itself in a different way, beyond the political
society of public figures and top leaders, so that 'the state is the entire complex of practical and theoretical
activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the
active consent of those over whom it rules' (ibid., 244, emphasis added). This different aspect of the state is referred
to as civil society. The realms of political and civil society within modern states were inseparable so that,
taken together, they combine to produce a notion of the integral state (ibid., 12, cf. Gramsci 1994b, 67). Within
this extended or integral conception of the state there is a fusion between political and civil society within
which ruling classes organise the political and cultural struggle for hegemony, to the extent that distinctions
between them become 'merely methodological' (Gramsci 1971, 160, 258, 271). The state was thus understood
not just as the apparatus of government operating within the 'public' sphere (government, political parties,
military) but also as part of the 'private' sphere of civil society (church, media, education) through which
hegemony functions (ibid., 261). Accordingly, civil society 'operates without "sanctions" or compulsory
"obligations" but nevertheless exerts a collective pressure and obtains objective results in the form of an
evolution of customs, ways of thinking and acting, morality etc.' (Gramsci 1971, 242). In these circumstances
'one cannot speak of the power of the state but only of the camouflaging of power' (Gramsci 1995, 217). Once again,
the notion of integral state was developed in opposition to the separation of powers embedded in a liberal conception of politics, hence a rejection
of the notion of the state as a 'nightwatchman', only intervening in the course of safeguarding public order, because 'laissez-faire too is a form of
state "regulation", introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means' (Gramsci 1971, 160, 245–246, 260–263). The state is not
therefore agnostic and the ensemble of classes that constitute it have a formative activity in civil society to the extent that the bourgeoisie governs
itself through banks and 'great capitalist consortia' reflecting the combined and unified interests of a particular class. As a result, Gramsci
maintained, 'the bourgeois class no longer governs its vital interests through parliament'. Instead, government,
or political society in the narrow sense, would rest on coalitions of class interests with such institutions
reduced to police activity and the maintenance of social order within an attenuated form of democracy
(Gramsci 1977, 167–172, 174–175).9 Thus it can be argued that the state in this conception is understood as a
social relation. The state is not unquestioningly taken as a distinct institutional category or thing in itself, but
conceived as a form of social relations through which capitalism is expressed . It is a view that reappraises
different modes of cultural struggle within 'a critique of capitalist civilisation' that goes beyond a 'theory of
the state-as-force' (ibid., 10–13; Gramsci 1995, 343–346, 357). It does so by introducing the 'theoretical-practical
principle of hegemony' that takes on an 'epistemological significance'. This means that the struggle over
hegemony revolves around shaping intersubjective forms of consciousness in civil society —'the trench-
systems of modern warfare' which have to be targeted 'even before the rise to power'— rather than focusing
on gaining control of the coercive state apparatus (Gramsci 1971, 59, 235, 365). It is through state-civil society relations, then,
that particular social classes may establish hegemony over contending social forces. By constituting an 'historical bloc', that
represents more than just a political alliance but indicates the integration of a variety of different class
interests, hegemony may be propagated throughout society, 'bringing about not only a unison of economic
and political aims, but also intellectual and moral unity ... on a "universal" plane' (ibid., 181–182). The
granting of concessions beyond the 'economic-corporate' level, within a 'compromise equilibrium', connotes
this struggle for hegemony (ibid., 161). Hegemony is attained by a fundamental social class but it is presented
as 'the motor force of a universal expansion, of a development of all the "national" energies' to become
identified with the interests of subordinate social classes (ibid., 182). An unstable equilibrium of compromises, characteristic of
the struggle for hegemony within 'the life of the state', also entails relating the economic realm to that of the
political and cultural spheres more broadly. This is essential as '  "civil society" has become a very complex
structure and one which is resistant to the catastrophic "incursions" of the immediate economic element
(crises, depressions, etc.)' (ibid., 235). As indicated earlier, the social function of the intellectual, 'whether in the field of production, or in that of
culture, or in that of political administration' (ibid., 97), becomes pivotal in overcoming the impact of such crises.

Lets just take the Capitalism… and push it somewhere else!

-Philosophy of Dr. Professor Patrick Star
SMS Debynasty 2
Mason Owen
B) Impact
Capitalism reduces everything to market abstractions—negates value to life and makes
extinction inevitable. This turns the case.
Kovel, Professor of Social Studies at Bard, 02
(Joel, “The Enemy of Nature,” p140-141)

The precondition of an ecologically rational attitude toward nature is the recognition that nature far
surpasses us and has its own intrinsic value, irreducible to our practice . Thus we achieve differentiation from
nature. It is in this light that we would approach the question of transforming practice ecologically — or, as we now recognize to be the
same thing, dialectically. The monster that now bestrides the world was born of the conjugation of value and
dominated labour. From the former arose the quantification of reality, and, with this, the loss of the
differentiated recognition essential for ecosystemic integrity; from the latter emerged a kind of
selfhood that could swim in these icy waters. From this standpoint one might call capitalism a ‘regime of the ego’,
meaning that under its auspices a kind of estranged self emerges as the mode of capital’s reproduction. This self is not merely prideful
the ordinary connotation of ‘egotistical’ — more fully, it is the ensemble of those relations that embody the domination of nature from
one side, and, from the other, ensure the reproduction of capital. This ego is the latest version of the purified male principle, emerging
aeons after the initial gendered domination became absorbed and rationalized as profitability and self-maximization (allowing suitable
‘power-women’ to join the dance). It is a pure culture of splitting and non-recognition: of itself, of the otherness of nature and of the
nature of others. In terms of the preceding discussion, it is the elevation of the merely individual and isolated mind-as-ego into a reigning
principle. ‘~ Capital produces egoic relations, which reproduce capital. The isolated selves of the
capitalist order can choose to become personifications of capital, or may have the role thrust upon
them. In either case, they embark upon a pattern of non-recognition mandated by the fact that the almighty dollar interposes
itself between all elements of experience: all things in the world, all other persons, and between the self and its world:
nothing really exists except in and through monetization. This set-up provides an ideal culture medium for the bacillus of competition
and ruthless self-maximization.
Because money is all that ‘counts’, a peculiar heartlessness characterizes
capitalists, a tough-minded and cold abstraction that will sacrifice species, whole continents (viz. Africa)
or inconvenient sub-sets of the population (viz. black urban males) who add too little to the great march of
surplus value or may be seen as standing in its way. The presence of value screens out genuine fellow-
feeling or compassion, replacing it with the calculus of profit-expansion. Never has a holocaust been
carried out so impersonally.

The Alt is to Vote neg and reject the Capitialist aspects of the Aff. Discourse is ineffective
unless it is backed up by concrete action. Endorsing the negative is a first step towards
creating movements that will destroy capitalism
Monbiot, 04 (George Monbiot, Professor of Philosophy at Bristol and Professor of Politics at Keele. Author, columnist, and political
activist. “Manifesto for a New World Order.” p. 249)

If, having read the previous six chapters, you have concluded that 'something ought to be done', then I have succeeded in one respect, and failed in another. I may have
It
convinced you that radical change is necessary, perhaps also that it is possible, even inevitable. But the measure of my failure is the placidity of your response.
costs nothing to agree that something should be done; indeed people like us have been accepting this
proposition for decades, and waiting for someone else to act on it. Constitutional change will begin only when
we reach the more dangerous conclusion that 'I must act'. There have been many occasions over the past few years on which we have
won the argument and lost the war. The campaigners who have exposed the injustices of the current global system often succeed
in generating a widespread demand for change, and just as often discover that this demand has no outlet. Our
opinions, in these circumstances, count for nothing until we act upon them. Until we present a direct constitutional challenge to its survival, or,
through such measures as a threatened conditional default, alter the circumstances in which it operates, those who maintain the dictatorship of vested interests will read what we write and listen to what we say without the slightest
sense of danger. In 16-19, after recoiling from the satisfaction he felt upon completing one of his revolutionary pamphlets, Gerrard Winstanley noted 'my mind was not at rest, because nothing was acted, and ... words and writings
were all nothing. and must die, for action is the life of all, and if thou dost not act, thou dost nothing'. This manifesto, and all the publications like it, is worthless unless it provokes people to action. There are several reasons why we do
not act. In most cases, the personal risk involved in the early stages of struggle outweighs the potential material benefit. Those who catalyse revolution are seldom the people who profit from it. In this struggle, most of us are not yet
directly confronting armed force (though this may well change as we become effective), so the risks to which we expose ourselves and our families are, as yet, slighter than those encountered by other revolutionaries. Nor, of course,
are the potential benefits of resistance as obvious, for those activists who live in the rich world, as the benefits of overthrowing Nazi occupation or deposing an indigenous tyrant, or breaking away from a formally constituted empire.
While most of the people of the poor world have an acute need to change the circumstances which govern the way they live, the problems the protesters in rich nations contest belong to the second order of concern: we are not
confronted by imminent starvation or death through waterborne disease, but by distant wars, economic instability, climate change and the exhaustion of resources; issues which seldom present immediate threats to our survival. But
while the proposals in this manifesto offer little by way of material self-advancement to activists in the rich world, there is, in collective revolutionary action, something which appears to be missing from almost every other enterprise
in modern secular life. It arises, I think, from the , intensity of the relationships forged in a collective purpose concentrated by adversity. It is the exultation which Christians call 'joy', but which, in the dry discourse of secular politics,
has no recognized equivalent. It is the drug for which, once sampled, you will pay any price. All those with agency are confronted by a choice. We can use that agency to secure comfortable existence. We can for ourselves a safe and
use our life, that one unrepeatable product of four billion years of serendipity and evolution, to earn a little more, to save a little more, to win the approval of our bosses and the envy of our neighbours. We can place upon our walls
those tombstones which the living erect to themselves: the framed certificates of their acceptance into what Erich Fromm has called the 'necrophiliac' world of wealth and power. We can, quite rationally, subordinate our desire for
liberty to our desire for security. Or we can use our agency to change the world, and, in changing it, to change ourselves. We will die and be forgotten with no less certainty than those who sought to fend off death by enhancing their
material presence on the earth, but we will live before we die through the extremes of feeling which comfort would deny us. I do not presume to lecture those who have little agency -among them the majority who live in the poor
world on how to manage their lives. Over the past five years in many of the countries of the poor world -though this is seldom reported in the West - people have tried to change their circumstances through explosive demonstrations of
grief, anger and hope. I have sought, with this manifesto, simply to enhance that hope, by demonstrating that there may be viable alternatives to the systems that subjugate them. But for most of the people of the rich world, and the
more prosperous people of the poor world, revolution offers the possibility of freedom from the constraints we impose upon ourselves. Freedom is the ability to act upon our beliefs. It expands, therefore, with the scope of the action
we are prepared to contemplate. If we know that we will never act, we have no freedom: we will, for the rest of our lives, do as we are told. Almost everyone has some sense that other people should be treated as she would wish to be.

Lets just take the Capitalism… and push it somewhere else!

-Philosophy of Dr. Professor Patrick Star
SMS Debynasty 3
Mason Owen
Almost everyone, in other words, has a notion of justice, and for most people this notion, however formulated,
sits somewhere close to the heart of their system of beliefs. If we do not act upon this sense of justice, we do
not act upon one of our primary beliefs, and our freedom is restricted accordingly. To be truly free, in other
words, we must be prepared to contemplate revolution. Another reason why we do not act is that, from the days of our birth, we
are immersed in the political situation into which we are born, and as a result we cannot imagine our way through it; we cannot envisage that it
will ever come to an end. This is why imagination is the first qualification of the revolutionary. A revolutionary is someone who recognizes the
contingency of power. What sustains coercive power is not force of arms, or even capital, but belief. When people
cease to believe -to believe in it as they would believe in a god, in its omnipotence, its unassailability and its validity -and when they
act upon that belief, an empire can collapse, almost overnight. Those who possess power will surrender it only
when they see that the costs -physical or psychological –of retaining it are higher than the costs of losing it. There have been
many occasions on which rulers possessed the means of suppressing revolt -the necessary tanks and planes or cannons and cavalry divisions -but chose not to deploy them, because they perceived that the personal effort of retaining
power outweighed the effort of relinquishing it. One of the surprises of history is the tendency of some of the most inflexible rulers suddenly to give up, for no evident material reason. They give up because they are tired, so tired that
they can no longer sustain the burning purpose required to retain power. They are tired because they have had to struggle against the unbelief of their people, to reassert, through a supreme psychological effort, the validity of their
power. We cannot rely on this desistance -many others have fought past the point of all reason, seeking to hold on to power even at the expense of their own lives but it is one of those many psychological frailties which has always
threatened the survival of the systems the powerful create for themselves. It is an infirmity whose symptoms we should be ready to detect. There is something about our time which permits nothing to last for long. All the world's pre-
existing empires collapsed in the twentieth century, and no formal imperial system established within that century outlived it. Some have interpreted this as the end of history, the definitive triumph of capitalism and its attendant
ideology, market fundamentalism. But even this world order is already showing the classic signs of senescence. Its lieutenants have become obsessed with harvesting the fruits of office. * Its political class has been infected with
bizarre religious beliefs. Some of its most important agents -men such as George Soros and Joseph Stiglitz -have turned. The dictatorship of vested interests is succumbing to entropy. We can hasten its collapse, but only if we are

. This process has now begun, with

prepared to turn our intermittent campaigns into a sustained revolt. We must start to develop a strategic and systematic means of curtailing the Age of Coercion

the passionate debates required to start to design a world order which reflects the will of the world's people.

Framework:
Breaking down class related structures formed by capitalism is a perquisite to discussing
non – class issues
Jim Glassman, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, “Transnation hegemony and US labor foreign policy: towards
a Gramscian international labor geography”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2004, volume 22, pages 573-593
These patterns are referred to as modes of social relations of production, which encapsulate configurations of social forces engaged in the process
of production. By discerning different modes of social relations of production it is possible to consider how
changing production relations gives rise to particular social forces that become bases of power within and
across states and thus within a specific world order (Cox 1987, 4). To examine the reciprocal relationship
between production and power there is, then, a focus on how social relations of production may give rise to
certain social forces, how these social forces may become the bases of power in forms of stateand how this
might shape world order. Social forces, as the main collective actors engendered by the social relations of
production, operate within and across these spheres of activity by bringing together a coherent conjunction
between ideas, understood as intersubjective meanings as well as collective images of world order, material capabilities,
referring to accumulated resources, andinstitutions, which are amalgams of the previous two (Cox 1981, 139). It is with this framework that three
successive stages of world order have been traced within which the hegemonic relationship between ideas, institutions and material capabilities
varied and during which different forms of state and patterns of production relations prevailed. These are: 1) the liberal international economy
(1789–1873); 2) the era of rival imperialisms (1873–1945); and 3) the post-Second World War era of pax Americana (Cox 1987, 109). Therefore,
not too dissimilar to Open Marxism, it is worth stressing that the focus on social forces and periods of structural change within these world order
configurations prompts an open-ended inquiry into modes of class struggle. There is a focus on 'class struggle [be it intra-class or inter-class] as
the heuristic model for the understanding of structural change' (Cox 1996a [1985], 57–58; see alsoCox 1987, 355–357). Class identity is
therefore inscribed within the broader notion of social forces to emerge within and through historical
processes of economic exploitation. 'Bring back exploitation as the hallmark of class, and at once class struggle is in the forefront, as it
should be' (Ste. Croix 1981, 57). As such, class-consciousness emerges out of particular historical contexts of struggle
rather than mechanically deriving from objective determinations that have an automatic place in production relations (see Thompson 1968, 8–9
and 1978). Yet the focus on exploitation and resistance to it ensures that other forms of identity are included
within the rubric of social forces —ethnic, nationalist, religious, gender, sexual—with the aim of addressing how, like class, these
derive from a common material basis linked to relations of exploitation (Cox 1992, 35). In short, '"non-class" issues—peace,
ecology, and feminism—are not to be set aside but given a firm and conscious basis in the social realities shaped
through the production process' (Cox 1987, 353).

Lets just take the Capitalism… and push it somewhere else!

-Philosophy of Dr. Professor Patrick Star