1NC Frontline

1NC Shell
Ocean exploration and development is a tool of capitalism to
enhance production
PSL, 13 Party for Socialism and Liberation (The pillaging of the Earths oceans, Liberation News, May 31st
2013, http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/newspaper/vol-7-no-7/the-pillaging-of-the-earths-oceans.html)//jk

The oceans of the world are vast and deep. They cover 71 percent of the Earths surface and
contain 97 percent of the planets water. The oceans seem boundless in water, marine life
and energy to sustain the planets life and atmosphere. But the oceans are
experiencing profound stress, due to escalating factors directly related to
capitalist production and the degradation of the environment. Alarming
reports by marine scientists have been sounding the danger to the worlds
oceans and the need for urgent action. The International Programme on the State of the Ocean
(IPSO) warns that massive marine extinction already may be underway
due to rapidly worsening stresses on marine ecosystems. But, as capitalisms
search for profits intensifies, the devastation of the oceans is only
accelerating. Three main stresses global warming, acidification of the oceans, and decreased oxygen
have led to such declines in many of the marine ecosystems that the conditions have met or surpassed worst-case
scenarios predicted in the first decade of this 21st century. IPSO stated in 2011, [W]e

now face losing

marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a
single generation. Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our
activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of
climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally
significant extinction event in the ocean. It is notable that the occurrence of
multiple high intensity stressors has been a prerequisite for all the five global
extinction events of the past 600 million years. Such a catastrophe would,
needless to say, affect humanity and all life on Earth. Yet capitalists have
rejected in international forums even basic accords to limit the
exploitation of the oceans or to slow down the belching of fossil fuels into
the environment. By far the biggest abuser of the environment is the United
States.
Capitalism leads to nuclear war, environmental collapse, and
poverty
Brown 05 [5/13/05, Charles Brown is a Professor of Economics and Research Scientist at the University of
Michigan, CAPITALISM, EXPLOITATION, AND OPPRESSION, http://www.cpusa.org/party-program/] GKoo
The capitalist class owns the factories, the banks, and transportation the means of production and distribution.
Workers sell their ability to work in order to acquire the necessities of life. Capitalists buy the workers ability to

Because the capitalists own the

means of production, they are able to keep the surplus wealth created by
workers above and beyond the cost of paying workers wages and other costs of
production unpaid labor that the capitalists appropriate and use to achieve
ever-greater profits. This surplus is the source of profit. These profits are turned into capital which
capitalists use to further exploit the sources of all wealth nature and the working class. Capitalists are
compelled by competition to seek to maximize profits. The capitalist class as a whole can
labor, but pay them only a portion of the wealth they create.

do that only by extracting a greater surplus from the unpaid labor of workers, by increasing exploitation what
capitalists often call increasing productivity.

Under capitalism, economic development

happens only if it is profitable to the individual capitalists, not for any

social need or good. The profit drive is inherent in capitalism, and underlies
or exacerbates all major social ills of our times. With the rapid advance
of technology and productivity, new forms of capitalist ownership have developed
to maximize profit and exploit new markets. The working people of our
country confront serious, chronic problems because of capitalism.
These chronic problems become part of the objective conditions that confront each
new generation of working people. The threat of nuclear war, which can destroy all
humanity, grows with the spread of nuclear weapons, space-based weaponry, and a military
doctrine that justifies their use in preemptive wars and wars without end. Since the end of
World War II, the U.S. has been constantly involved in aggressive military actions
both big and small. These have cost millions of lives and casualties, huge material losses, as well as
trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Threats to the environment continue to spiral out of
control, threatening all life on our planet. Millions of workers are
unemployed, underemployed, or insecure in their jobs, even during economic upswings and periods of
recovery from recessions. Most workers experience long years of stagnant and declining real wages, while health
and education costs soar. Many workers are forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet. Most workers
now average four different occupations during their lifetime, many involuntarily moved from job to job and career to
career. Often, retirement-age workers are forced to continue working just to provide health care for themselves and

Millions of people continuously live below the poverty level; many

suffer homelessness and hunger. Public and private programs to alleviate
poverty and hunger do not reach everyone, and are inadequate even for
those they do reach. With capitalist globalization, jobs move from place to
place as capitalists export factories and even entire industries to other
countries in a relentless search for the lowest wages. Racism remains
the most potent weapon to divide working people. All workers receive lower wages when
racism succeeds in dividing and disorganizing them. Institutionalized racism provides billions
in extra profits for the capitalists every year due to the unequal pay racially oppressed
their families.

workers receive for work of comparable value. In every aspect of economic and social life, African Americans,
Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and Pacific Islanders, Arabs and Middle Eastern peoples, and other nationally and

Racist violence and the

poison of racist ideas victimize all people of color no matter to which
economic class they belong. Attempts to suppress and undercount the vote of African American and
racially oppressed people experience conditions inferior to that of whites.

other racially oppressed people are part of racism in the electoral process. Racism permeates the police, the courts
and prison systems, perpetuating unequal sentencing, racial profiling, discriminatory enforcement, and police
brutality. Capitalism causes other chronic problems in addition to racism, starting with ideological poisons used to
divide the working class and allies from each other: sexism and male supremacy, national chauvinism, homophobia,
anti-Semitism, and anti-communism. Much of this is spread by way of the mass media, increasingly owned and
dominated by monopoly corporations. The economics of the media are based on the promotion of consumerism

The
democratic, civil, and human rights of all working people are constantly
under attack. These attacks range from increasingly difficult procedures for
union recognition and attempts to prevent full union participation in elections,
to the absence of the right to strike or even unionize for many public workers. They range from
undercounting minority communities in the census to making it difficult for working people to run
for office because of the domination of corporate campaign financing and the high cost of advertising. These
attacks also include growing censorship and domination of the media by the
ultra-right; growing restrictions and surveillance of activist social movements and the Left; open denial of basic
rights to immigrants; and violations of the Geneva Conventions up to and including torture of prisoners. These
abuses serve to maintain the grip of the capitalists on government
turning everything into a commodity and advertising to sell more goods whether they are needed or not.

power. They use this power to ensure the continued economic and political
dominance of their class. The legal system is thoroughly racist and anti-working
class. U.S. prisons are bursting with over 2 million prisoners, with virtually no serious efforts at prevention or
rehabilitation. Prisoners face widespread abuse and the anti-labor exploitation of prisoners for sub-minimum wages.
Many are subject to the threat of the death penalty, which is never justified and which is frequently used against
innocent victims. At the same time, capitalist crime is on the increase, and these billionaire criminals are usually not

Corruption, speculation, fraud, market

manipulations, and theft on a massive scale are all increasing, while
enforcement of laws against them is cut. Women still face a considerable
differential in wages for work of equal or comparable value. They confront
barriers to promotion, physical and sexual abuse, continuing unequal workload in home
and family life, and male supremacist ideology perpetuating unequal and often unsafe conditions. The
constant attacks on social welfare programs severely impact single women,
single mothers, nationally and racially oppressed women, and all working
class women. The reproductive rights of all women are continually under attack ideologically and politically.
apprehended, prosecuted, or punished.

The ultra-right projects an ideology of Christian fundamentalism, which promotes restrictions on the role and

society. Violence against women in the home and in society at

large remains a shameful fact of life in the U.S.
activity of women in

The alternative is a personal rejection of capitalism

Holloway, 05
John, author of How to Change the World with Taking Power and his numerous works on the Zapatistas, Holloway
edited Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money and Post-Fordism and Social Form: A Marxist Debate
on the Post-Fordist State (1992), Professor at the University of Edinburgh and currently teaches at the Institute for
the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Puebla, August 15th, 2005, John Holloway
presented these at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, http://www.chtodelat.org/index.php?
Itemid=124&id=214&option=com_content&task=view
In thinking about this, we have to start from where we are, from the many rebellions and insubordinations that have

The world is full of such rebellions, of people saying NO to

capitalism: NO, we shall not live our lives according to the dictates of
capitalism, we shall do what we consider necessary or desirable and not
what capital tells us to do. Sometimes we just see capitalism as an allencompassing system of domination and forget that such rebellions
exist everywhere. At times they are so small that even those involved do not perceive them as refusals,
but often they are collective projects searching for an alternative way forward
and sometimes they are as big as the lacandon jungle or the argentinazo of
three years ago or the revolt in Bolivia just over a year ago. All of these
insubordinations are characterised by a drive towards self-determination, an
impulse that says "No, you will not tell us what to do, we shall decide for
ourselves what we must do." These refusals can be seen as fissures, as
cracks in the system of capitalist domination. Capitalism is not (in the first
place) an economic system, but a system of command. Capitalists, through
money, command us, telling us what to do. To refuse to obey is to break
the command of capital. The question for us, then, is how do we multiply
and expand these refusals, these cracks in the texture of domination.5. There are
brought us to Porto Alegre.

two ways of thinking about this. a) The first says that these movements, these many insubordinations, lack maturity

For them to be
effective, they must be channelled towards the conquest of state power either through elections or through the overthrowing of the existing state
and effectiveness unless they are focussed, unless they are channelled towards a goal.

and the establishment of a new, revolutionary state. The organisational form for
channelling all these insubordinations towards that aim is the party . The question of taking state
power is not so much a question of future intentions as of present
organisation. How should we organise ourselves in the present? Should we join a party, an organisational
form that focuses our discontent on the winning of state power? Or should we organise in some other way? b) The
second way of thinking about the expansion and multiplication of insubordinations is to say "No, they should not be

they should flourish freely, go whatever way

the struggle takes them." This does not mean that there should be no
coordination, but it should be a much looser coordination. Above all, the
principal point of reference is not the state but the society that we want to
create.
all harnessed together in the form of a party,

2NC Links

Arctic
The drive for profit undergirds the AFFs desire to exploit the
melting Arctic frontier such a view ignores capitalisms
contribution to accelerating warming and reifies the underlying
cause turns the case
Gingerich 13
Cecilia Gingerich, MA from NYU, member of the University of London Marxist Society, (Journal of Political Inquiry at
New York University, Spring Issue (2013), STABLE SYSTEM, CHANGING CLIMATE: Capitalism and the Warming of the
Arctic, http://www.jpinyu.com/uploads/2/5/7/5/25757258/stable_system_changing_climate.pdf) - AW
In recent years, the effects of climate change have grown increasingly evident. From
rising temperatures and sea levels to persistent droughts and unseasonal hurricanes, the last few decades have

The scientific
community has reached a consensus that climate change is manmade a direct
contained more environmental deviations than can be attributed to natural variation.

result of large quantities of greenhouse gasses being released into the atmosphere over the past few centuries. Yet

society
has largely beenas the saying goesopen for business as usual. I begin by examining some
few serious societal changes have been made, or even considered. Indeed, as I will explore in this paper,

of the basic mechanisms of capitalism and why they are incompatible with ecological sustainability. Such
mechanisms include profit motive, how value is measured in a capitalist system, the process of capital
accumulation, and a systemic contradiction. I then briefly critique the inclusion of these mechanisms in the green
capitalist solutions to climate change that have become popular today. Next, I present the case study of climate

I will
consider how the problematic mechanisms of capitalism I identify have
contributed to the recent warming of the Arctic, and how they currently
influence the policies that will determine the regions future. Lastly, having shown the
basic mechanisms of capitalism to be ecologically unsustainable, I
ultimately conclude that climate stability cannot be achieved
through them. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 2 II. Profit Motive and
change in the Arctic, since it is one of the regions in which climate change is occurring most rapidly.

Value in a Capitalist System Perhaps the most discussed climate change issue during the past few years in the
United States has been the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline was proposed by the North
American energy corporation TransCanada in 2008, and was designed to carry crude oil from the Athabasca Oil
Sands of Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska (Hovey 2008). People across the political spectrum have raised
concerns about the environmental impact of the pipeline. Many cite the high probability of oil spills and the
potential damage to several delicate ecosystems. However, it is the pipelines latent contribution to climate change
that provoked famed climate scientist and activist James Hansen to proclaim that if the Keystone XL is built, it will
be essentially game over for any hope of reestablishing a stable climate (McGowan 2011). Of course, some argue
in favor of the pipeline by claiming that it could create new jobs and make the nation more energy independent.
Still, studies vary widely on the number of permanent jobs the pipeline would provide, and while the pipeline would
certainly help to make the United States less dependent on foreign oil, it would do nothing to move the country
towards independence from fossil fuels. Yet the pipeline was not proposed by the government or any elected body
for the benefits now under discussion. Rather, it was proposed by a mega corporation that was motivated by the
sole objective of all companies in a capitalist system: profit. Profit motive is perhaps the most commonly recognized
mechanism of capitalism, and it is quite controversial. While there are many ways to debate profit motive, my
purpose here is to determine why it is incompatible with ecological sustainability. To understand profit motive, it is
essential to understand the meaning of profit in the context of capitalism. Colloquially, the Journal of Political Inquiry
at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 3 term profit is used to express a valuable return (Merriam Webster
2013). In economics, we most commonly think of this return in terms of money. Yet money is, of course, merely a
representation of value, and so it is really value itselt that must be defined in order to understand profit. The
question thus becomes: how is value measured in a capitalist system? A useful starting point from which to
approach this question is Karl Marxs famous distinction between a commoditys use value and its exchange
value. In the first chapter of Capital Volume I, he writes that it is the usefulness of a thing that gives it a use
value (Marx 1990, 126). He clarifies by stating that use value is conditioned by the physical properties of the
commodity, or, in other words, is attached to the commoditys nature as a material object (ibid.). He concludes
that natural resources, such as air, virgin soil, natural meadows, unplanted forests, etc., thus have use value,
since they all can be useful to humans (ibid., 131). By this definition, oil (even from the tar sands of Canada) clearly
has a use value, since it is a major energy source. However, it is equally clear that this is not the type of value that
TransCanada is marking down in its ledgers. In order to understand the nature of the value marked in ledgers, we
must turn to the other type of value Marx discusses: exchange value. Essentially, he uses this term to refer to the

type of value a commodity has in the market. This is not to suggest that a commoditys exchange value is the same
as its price; rather, exchange value is determined by the exchange relation between commodities. Marx uses the
example of corn and iron, which have an exchange relation because a certain amount of corn equals a certain
amount of iron (ibid., 127). Thus, all natural resources clearly also have this type of value in addition to their use
values including the oil that the Keystone XL Pipeline would transfer for later sale. Journal of Political Inquiry at
New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 4 Joel Kovel elucidates why breaking value into these two categories is
incompatible with ecological sustainability in his consideration of the nature of each type of value. In The Enemy of
Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?, Kovel describes the nature of use values as essentially
concrete and having a qualitative function (2007, 135). He goes on to explain, Being qualitative, [use-value]
retains the essential feature of differentiation, that distinct elements can recognize one another and form links and
associations (ibid.). An example of this is our relation to fresh water: through its use value we are able to recognize
it as a liquid substance that is part of our environment and that we, as humans, depend on to live. However, water
is bought and sold in the market, and so also has an exchange value. Yet exchange value has a mystifying effect,
which means that the qualitative function of water is no longer present. Explaining this characteristic of exchange
value, Kovel writes, Here, in sharp contrast to use-values, the sensuous and concrete are eliminated by definition
and a priori. All that is retained as the mark of exchangeability is quantity: this item, x, is exchangeable for so many
of y, which in turn is exchangeable for so many of z, and so forth, with no intrinsic end (ibid., 135-136). This
process of quantification is particularly hard on natural resources, because the process obscures that those
resourcesand all products that rely on themare not infinitely reproducible. Quantifying natural resources
obscures not only those resources positive qualitative functions, but also their negative qualitative functions. Not
only is it important to be able to recognize that fresh water is needed for human life, it is also important to be able
to recognize that, when burned, oil releases a gas that causes our planets climate to change. Yet since the
exchange value of oil does not reflect this function, we cannot expect a company like Journal of Political Inquiry at
New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 5 TransCanadawhich, like all companies in a capitalist system,
recognizes only exchange valuesto recognize it. The companys ledgers are full of numbers, not a list of the
qualitative functions of their product. The discussion now returns to profit motive, since in a capitalist system profit
is based on exchange values. Profit is therefore represented quantitatively: numbers on a balance sheet detached
from the qualitative functions of the products they represent. Clearly, the qualitative function is still important
because it dictates the demand for a product. However, even this nod to a products use value does not address the
issue of its possible negative effects on the environment. For example, oil will be bought and sold only as long as it
is used as an energy source. For however long that lasts, the profits from such transactions will represent only oils
exchange value. Thus, the companies that collect those profits need never consider anything outside that exchange
value, and indeed should not if they hope to survive in a competitive market. Although qualitative functions of
commodities are outside the logic of profit motive, this certainly does not mean that companies have never been
forced to consider such functions. However, the key word here is forced, since factoring in any negative functions
such as the fact that oil produces carbon dioxide, which causes climate changewould undoubtedly lead to
additional costs, or less profit. Recently, some attempts have been made to remedy this conflict of interests, which I
analyze in greater detail in a later section. For now, I will simply state that these attempts have been ineffective,
which is unsurprising given that they aim to counter the natural progression of profit motive, one of the systems
basic mechanisms. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 6 III. The Process of Capital
Accumulation No discussion of profit motive should be considered complete without considering the reason profit
motive exists in capitalism and what its ultimate objective is. The reason can be found in one of the systems even
more fundamental mechanisms: capital accumulation. In Kovels words, this is capitalisms foundation on an
economy geared to run on the basis of unceasing accumulation in which each unit of capital must, as the saying
goes, grow or die (ibid., 121). The mechanism is perhaps most obvious at the level of the individual capitalist,
who needs to constantly search to expand markets and profits or lose his position in the hierarchy (ibid.).
However, large corporations and national economies are also organized around this capitalist principle, and so too
seek to continually expand. Indeed, even mega corporations in monopoly-dominated industries like oil and gas
continue to accumulate more capital, despite the fact that they hold positions at the top of the hierarchy. This
highlights one of the potential problems of capital accumulation: it can go too far. There are few who criticize the
developments made possible in the technology sector during eras like the Industrial Revolution. However, as the
wealth of the global capitalist system becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer handsas the mechanism
demandsthe present benefits of the accumulation process might rightly be questioned. While control of all wealth
by a few elites undoubtedly bodes poorly for the future of societal structures like democracy, it could also
jeopardize the future of our physical environment. If the CEOs of Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell alone were able
to determine whether or not we embrace energy alternatives to fossil fuel, a sound bet could be placed against the
embrace of viable alternatives. Although this example might be a bit extreme, the Journal of Political Inquiry at New
York University, Spring Issue (2013) 7 giants of the oil and gas industry do have a great deal of political and
economic power both in the United States and globally, andaccording to the process of capital accumulationwe
can expect that power to only grow. Considering this potential impact of capital accumulation on the environment,
Kovel considers capital accumulation to be the root of capitals wanton ecodestructivity, since under such a
regime the economic dimension consumes all else (ibid.). He goes on to note that nature is continually devalued
in the search for profit along an expanding frontier and that the ecological crisis follows inevitably (ibid.). Here,
he references the important relationship between the accumulation process and profit motive: accumulation is the
what towards which profit motive is aimed, and also the why for which it occurs. However, the process of capital
accumulation does not always progress smoothly. Marx says one of the main causes of crisis in the system is an
internal contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production. Here, forces of
production refers to the combination of human labor power and all the things that aid in production (tools,
machinery, land, infrastructure, materials, etc.). The term relations of production refers to the relationship

between the systems two major classes, Capital and Labor, in which the former exploits the latter. The conflict of
interest within this second element alone is thought to lead to social and political change. In addition, the
contradiction is thought to lead to economic crises, and specifically to crises of overproduction. A crisis of
overproduction occurs when there is an excess supply of a commodity, or in other words, when there is not enough
demand. Such crises have occurred throughout the history of capitalism, and are frequently studied. However,
sociology and economics professor Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 8 James
OConnor contends that there is another contradiction in capitalism that exists between the forces of production
and relations of production on one side, and the conditions of production on the other (1998, 160). He predicts that
this second contradiction of capitalism will eventually produce a crisis of supply rather than demanda crisis of
underproduction of capital (ibid., 161). Since the conditions of production are the added element in this second
contradiction, it is important to know exactly how OConnor defines them. He looks to Marxs definitions of the
conditions, which include the laborpower of workers, communal, general conditions of social production, and
external physical conditions (ibid., 160). He then updates each category in modern terms, stating that laborpower
is now discussed in the terms of the physical and mental well-being of workers and that communal conditions are
discussed in terms like social capital and infrastructure (ibid., 160-161). He defines external physical conditions
as the viability of ecosystems, and provides some specific examples, including the stability of coastlines and
watersheds as well as soil, air, and water quality (ibid., 160). OConnor asserts that the conditions of production are
currently external to the system, and so constitute an added cost. More specifically, he states that individual
capitals lower costs by externalizing (or not including) costs on the conditions of production, which ultimately
causes those costs to rise for capital overall (ibid., 177). Perhaps the most obvious examples of crises that have
been caused by such costs are those related to resource scarcity, like the resource-related crises of the nineteenth
century (of coal, for instance). However, as some critics have pointed out, even these crises did not significantly
affect the capital accumulation process overall, despite the fact that the depletion of a specific resource is
detrimental to the Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 9 environment (Foster
2002). Still, crises directly related to resource scarcity will likely become more common with increased world
population and unpredictable climate change. We have seen such crises already, including the devastating drought
of the summer of 2011 in Somalia, which cost tens of thousands of lives and has been linked to climate change
(Straziuso 2013). The drought produced a food shortage: a crisis of underproduction. Of course, the economic effect
of such a crisis in Somalia is different than it would have been in a more industrialized nation in which more food is
produced to be sold on the market. However, there are already indications that similar climate change-related
droughts are occurring elsewhere around the planet, including in the agricultural areas of the United States (Gaskill
2012). By focusing on specific material resources used in production, OConnors critics have applied too narrow a
definition to the term conditions of production. Going back to OConnors original three-part definition, we can
see that his concept of the conditions is much broader. One condition that stands out in light of climate change is
infrastructure, which he lists as a communal condition of production. With two-thirds of the worlds largest cities
(of populations over five million) built at least partially on low-lying coastal areas, the infrastructures of these cities
are increasingly at risk of damage by rising sea levels and extreme storms caused by climate change
(Greenfieldboyce 2007). Such damage has already been shown to contribute unsuspected costs to infrastructure,
and if climate change intensifies, it seems likely that these costs could lead to the type of economic crisis OConnor
predicted. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 10 IV. The Limitations of Green
Capitalism One of the primary reasons that it is important to clearly identify the mechanisms of capitalism
discussed in the previous sections as ecologically unsustainable is because they often form the basis of proposed
solutions to environmental problems. Such solutions fall into the category of green capitalism, which is a broad
term used to refer to solutions that aim to resolve environmental issues through a capitalistic, market-based
system. Many of the most popular proposals to combat climate change fall into this category, and have been
endorsed not only by the mainstream environmental movement, but also by many leaders in the business world.
Indeed, the main draw of green capitalism seems to be that it allows business to continue as usual. Specific green
capitalist solutions to climate change vary widely, but here I consider a couple examples that illustrate how they
encapsulate the mechanisms of capitalism. The first is the buying of carbon offsets, which allows governments,
companies, and even individuals to pay a fee to offset their carbon emissions. The purpose of these offsets is to
attach some value to carbon emissions, since those emissions cause climate change. Most are purchased in a
compliance market in which governments or corporations must buy them in order to meet previously agreed-upon
quotas (like those set by the Kyoto Protocol). These offsets allow such entities to pay to reduce fossil fuel use in
general (by, say, investing in renewable energy) instead of limiting their personal fossil fuel consumption. The fact
that quotas on carbon emission are being set should not be underappreciated. However, carbon offsets seem to
have little to no impact on the problematic mechanisms of capitalism. Their goal is not to curb the growth of large,
fossil fuel-burning corporations, and as Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 11 a
consequence such corporations are able to grow, and the process of capital accumulation is able to continue. Fossil
fuel-dependent corporations maintain their positions at the top of the economic hierarchy, and the use of
renewable energy remains limited. In fact, global carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high of 35.6 billion tons
in 2012, and the rise has been directly attributed to an increase in in carbon emissions caused by the burning of
fossil fuels ("Global carbon dioxide emissions reach new record high" 2012). In light of this general support for the
status quo, it is unsurprising that there exists a growing voluntary market for carbon offsets. This market differs
from the compliance market in that it relies, at least in part, on marketing to attract customers. However, many of
the most common marketing narratives flaunt the fact that their product requires no significant change in behavior
from customers. Heather Lovell, Harriet Bulkeley, and Diana Liverman examine several such narratives in their 2009
paper Carbon Offsetting: Sustaining Consumption?, including one that they refer to as quick fix for the planet,
whereby any consumer can purchase offsets now, rather than undertaking perhaps more fundamental and (so the
argument goes) slower changes to corporate practices or individual behavior (2365). This narrative clearly

acknowledges that carbon offsets are not aimed at achieving fundamental, systemic change. A second example of a
green capitalist solution is the development of green products, particularly those that claim to support climate
stability by requiring less energy in production. This solution, like carbon offsets, may have some minor benefits,
such as raising awareness among consumers about how much energy goes into making the products. However,
most companies that produce such products certainly do not want consumers to buy fewer products, Journal of
Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 12 lest they should make less profit. Thus the products
also depend on (and support) the process of capital accumulation. An example of this type of green product is
Aquafinas 2009 water bottle design. It used less plastic and reduced the amount of petroleum used in
manufacturing, but did not address any of the more fundamental environmental problems associated with bottling,
shipping, and selling water for profit. Alternatively, some companies may state that their products are green
because they are made to last longer; these companies may even urge their customers to buy fewer products and
consume less. Still, the goal of such companies is to make money, and so they must sell their sustainable
products at a price that prohibits the majority of people from buying them. Relying on a niche market is not a
problem for a company, however, so long as it continues to make a profit. In fact, targeting a niche market may
even be the objective in some cases. This highlights once again the indiscriminate, quantitative nature of profits in
capitalism and the inability of green capitalism to alter that nature in any meaningful way. V. The Warming of the

While the effects of climate change can be seen around the planet already, they
are perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Arctic. This is undoubtedly due to the fact
that in the past half-century, temperatures in the region have risen roughly twice as much
as the global average (The Melting North 2012). In Greenland, for instance, this has meant an increase
Arctic

of 1.5C since 1951, compared with an increase of just 0.7C globally for the same period (ibid.). As temperatures

the regions characteristic ice has thinned and melted at an

alarming rate. This is due in part to the albedo effect, which occurs when light- reflecting snow and ice is
have increased,

replaced by more absorptive, darker-colored water or land (ibid.). Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University,
Spring Issue (2013) 13 In July 2012, an unprecedentedand largely unpredictedmelting of the Greenland ice
sheet occurred: a 97 percent surface melt over four days (Goldenberg 2012). The ice sheet contains almost seven
hundred thousand cubic miles of ice, the second largest in the world after the Antarctic ice sheet (Walsh 2012).
Scientists were so surprised by its melting that they admitted in a statement posted on NASA's website that they
initially believed there was a mistake in their data (Goldenberg 2012). As the ice melted, it drained directly into the
ocean and thus contributed to higher sea levels. For this reason, some scientists have even considered the 2012
melting of the Greenland ice sheet to be the big X factor in creating the devastating storm surges of Superstorm

Sandy (Walsh 2012). Arctic sea ice has been similarly shrinking. Head of the Polar Ocean
Physics Group and Cambridge professor Peter Wadhams predicted in September 2012 that it might melt completely

Sea ice does not contribute to rising sea levels like melting
land ice, but the loss of sea ice could also severely disrupt the regions
ecosystems. For example, ice algae depend on sea ice to live, since they grow within and on the underside of
by 2015-16 (Vidal 2012).

sea ice during the spring (The Melting North 2012). In turn, the lifecycle of the lipid-rich crustacean known as the
copepod revolves around the seasonal ice algae and phytoplankton blooms (ibid.). The copepod is a critical food
source for many of the regions largest animals, including walruses and polar bears, and so these animals futures
could also be jeopardized by the disappearance of sea ice and its accompanying algae (ibid.). The thawing of the
regions permafrost could have even more widespread ecological consequences. Currently tons of carbon dioxide
and methane (an even more potent greenhouse gas) are trapped in the permafrost, and they could be released in
large quantities if Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 14 warming continues
(ibid.). The reason such emissions would be undesirable is of course because greenhouse gases cause climate

We also know how and why greenhouse gas emissions increased so

drastically over the past few centuries. They came with the development of
fossil fuel-powered industry and the capitalist system that supported it. Even
change.

though the region had little industrial development of its own, this historic link allows us to attribute the current

Allowing the system to continue unchanged can

only lead to similar results, to continued warming in the Arctic and around
the world. The recent transformation of the Arctic shows that the effects of
climate change may occur significantly more quickly than initially predicted,
which suggests that a gradual transfer from capitalism to a more ecologically
sustainable system may not be drastic enough. Rather, it appears that what
is needed to prevent further climate change is a rapid, fundamental break
from capitalism. VI. Prospects for the Arctic Unfortunately, such a break does not
appear to be taking place. The well-worn mechanisms of capitalism
climate change in the Arctic to capitalism.

permeate nearly every position and policy that recently has been
put forth regarding the regions future. Nearly all of societys most
powerful actorsfrom corporations to states, and even international
organizationshave welcomed the warming of the Arctic as a political and
economic opportunity. They see in the regions natural resources the
potential for profit, and in its melting sea ice the possibility of
reduced shipping costs. Essentially, they see a new economic frontier.
Perhaps the most discouraging policies to have emerged are those
concerning the Arctics oil and gas reserves. The region is thought to contain 13 percent of the
worlds Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 15 undiscovered oil and 30 percent of

burning these reserves would further

climate change and its accompanying disasters. Still, the United States, Norway,
its undiscovered natural gas (ibid.). Of course,

Russia, and Greenland have all opened their portion of the Arctic to offshore exploration (ibid.). Several major
business deals have followed, including Royal Dutch Shells payment of 2.2 billion dollars for exploration rights off
the shore of Alaska in 2005 and 2007 (ibid.). Although Shell found oil and gas in the area in the 1980s, it chose not
to pursue it at the time because oil was then worth only fifteen dollars a barrel (ibid.). The recent deal came when
that price shot up to over fifty dollars a barrel. Clearly the motivation behind Shells deal in Alaska was profit.

Profit was also the motivation behind the United States entry into the deal. In
fact, in the case of the Arctic, states policies have often seemed as
motivated by profit as any corporations, as evidenced in the extensive
debates taking place over the rights to shipping routes in the region (provided
that ice melts enough to open such routes). China, for example, has expressed interest in the North-East Passage
above Russia and the North-West Passage above North America, since the passages would cut thousands of miles
off the nations current Atlantic-bound shipping route, which passes through the Strait of Malacca and the Suez

New shipping routes have also attracted

attention because they could allow for the extraction and transportation of
the regions natural resources. These include not only oil and natural gas, but
also elements like gold and uranium, rare earth minerals, and gemstones
(ibid.). As access to these resources has expanded, the eight nations that claim
land in the ArcticDenmark, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States
Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University, Spring Issue (2013) 16 have all reevaluated their
boundaries. This preparation for development comes despite the fact that the
eight nations belong to an intergovernmental organization known as the Arctic Council,
which initially claimed conservation as one of its primary goals (Bloom 1999). The
Arctic Council recently denied the environmental organization Greenpeace
observer status because several of the Arctic governments have been put off by Greenpeaces aggressive
Canal (Banyan: Asia and the Arctic dragons 2012).

methods (The Melting North 2012). Similarly, all the nations that have been granted permanent observer status
are European, and have expressed support for the economic opportunities that warming in the region present. One
such opportunity that has attracted considerable attention in Europe is Arctic tourism, which is expected to grow
substantially with the more human-friendly environment that rising temperatures will create (European

These development-oriented policies and positions provide a

particularly clear example of the connection between profit motive and the
process of capital accumulation. States seem particularly willing to
exploit the economic potential of the Arctic, which reflects their
need to recover after the economic crisis of 2008. In times of relative economic
Commission 2005).

stability, it might be possible that pressure from below could force democratic governments and international
organizations to consider the long-term environmental effects of their policies. However, during a period of

The process
of capital accumulation dictates that national economies must expand , and
so we should not be surprised when states value development over
conservation, especially during a time of crisis. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York
economic instability, short-term economic interests will rise to the top of government agendas.

University, Spring Issue (2013) 17 Also, it is important to remember the type of economic crisis James OConnor

Already,
flooding associated with higher sea levels caused by melting in the Arctic has
had significant economic costs. The cost of Superstorm Sandy in the United States alone is
estimated in the tens of billions of dollars (Rapoza 2012). Due to its significant damage to
infrastructure, the storms impact on the conditions of production is still
being felt months later. As the Arctic continues to melt, such storms
will become more common, and more economic costs will follow. VII.
predicted in his second contradiction of capitalism, even if the governments of the world fail to do so.

Conclusions In June 2012, The Economist ran a sixteen-page special report on the current perils facing the Arctic
from both climate change and development-oriented perspectives. In an attempt to speak to its business readers
sensibilities, the magazine stated in its conclusion that The World Bank has estimated the cost of adapting to
climate change between 2010 and 2050 to be seventy-five billion to one hundred billion dollars a year (The
Melting North). This quantitative figure tells us nothing about the impact of climate change on our environment, or
the conditions of our lives. It is possible that this figure does not reflect such changes at all. Furthermore, if policies
in the Arctic are any indication, we should be wary of the way capitalism might adapt to climate change. Many of
its fundamental mechanisms are incompatible with ecological sustainabilityfrom the way it measures value to the
profits it defines in terms of such value. Perhaps most importantly, capitalism is based on a process of continual
accumulation, and accumulation is, by its nature, unsustainable. Journal of Political Inquiry at New York University,

Since these mechanisms are inherent to the capitalist

system, it is not surprising that nearly all of the powerful actors operating
within that systemfrom states to private corporationshave failed to craft policies that
break with the mechanisms. The rise of green capitalism to the forefront of mainstream climate
change debate indicates the degree to which the mechanisms are entrenched. We can expect the
positions and policies that have contributed to climate change in the Arctic
and around the world to continue until the capitalist mechanisms themselves
are identified as problematic, and targeted specifically.
Spring Issue (2013) 18

Ocean exploration expands capitalism to new regions of the world

Parrish, 13 - managing director of the World Wildlife Fund. His Ph.D. is in conservation ecology. (Jeffrey,
Slate, Pirates of the Colder Meridians, September 12th 2013,
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/09/a_wwf_scientist_on_exploring_the_post_climate_cha
nge_arctic.html)//jk
Scientists saw it coming. Explorers who forecast change through satellite images or capture the disappearance of
glaciers on camera warned us that the massive ice sheets were melting. And in an increasingly warmer and more
crowded world, weve come to accept this as fact. Moreover, the just released 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change report makes it clear (or at least should) to even the most fervent doubters that these changes are
the fault of humans, of you and me. Yet whats surprised even the elite academy of climate scientists is the

climate
change is erasing the big white spot on top of the globe. And the gold rush
has begun. Exploration isnt dead here. In this newly accessible maritime
realm, treasure maps are being createdX marks the spot of new shipping
lanes, untold oil and gas reserves, lodes of rare precious metals, and
potential tourism destinations. Like pirates of the colder meridians, big
businesses and governments are swooping in to grab the booty from a
virtually unclaimed and weakly regulated region. Meanwhile environmental groups are
shockingly fast pace at which its happening. Tragically, and some 30 to 50 years before we expected,

partnering with local communities, the fishing industry, and others to help them chart their own destinies in this
fresh terrain, assuring protection for indigenous communities, local economies, and stunningly iconic wildlife like
whales and walruses, polar bears and pelagic birds. This is the norths new normal.

Aquaculture
Aquacultures disruption of natural metabolic reproduction reifies
capitals control over production
Clark and Clausen 08
Brett Clark, PhD sociology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Rebecca Clausen, PhD sociology at Fort
Lewis College, (The Monthly Review - 2008, Volume 60, Issue 03 (July-August),
http://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-oceanic-crisis-capitalism-and-the-degradation-of-marine-ecosystem/) - AW
Turning the Ocean into a Watery Grave

The world is at a crossroads in regard to the ecological crisis. Ecological degradation

under global capitalism extends to the entire biosphere. Oceans that were
teeming with abundance are being decimated by the continual intrusion of
exploitive economic operations. At the same time that scientists are documenting
the complexity and interdependency of marine species, we are witnessing
an oceanic crisis natural conditions, ecological processes, and nutrient cycles are being undermined
through overfishing and transformed due to global warming. The expansion of the accumulation
system, along with technological advances in fishing, have intensified the
exploitation of the world ocean; facilitated the enormous capture of fishes (both target and
bycatch); extended the spatial reach of fishing operations; broadened the species deemed
valuable on the market; and disrupted metabolic and reproductive
processes of the ocean. The quick-fix solution of aquaculture
enhances capitals control over production without resolving
ecological contradictions. It is wise to recognize, as Paul Burkett has stated, that short of
human extinction, there is no sense in which capitalism can be relied upon to
permanently break down under the weight of its depletion and degradation
of natural wealth.44 Capital is driven by the competition for the accumulation
of wealth, and short-term profits provide the immediate pulse of capitalism. It
cannot operate under conditions that require reinvestment in the reproduction of nature, which may entail time
scales of a hundred or more years. Such requirements stand opposed to the immediate interests of profit. The
qualitative relation between humans and nature is subsumed under the drive to accumulate capital on an everlarger scale. Marx lamented that to capital, Time

is everything, man is nothing; he is at the

most, times carcase. Quality no longer matters. Quantity alone decides
everything.45 Productive relations are concerned with production time, labor costs, and the circulation of
capitalnot the diminishing conditions of existence. Capital subjects natural cycles and
processes (via controlled feeding and the use of growth hormones) to its economic cycle. The
maintenance of natural conditions is not a concern. The bounty of nature is taken for granted
and appropriated as a free gift. As a result, the system is inherently caught in a
fundamental crisis arising from the transformation and destruction of nature.
Istvn Mszros elaborates this point, stating: For today it is impossible to think of
anything at all concerning the elementary conditions of social
metabolic reproduction which is not lethally threatened by the way in which
capital relates to themthe only way in which it can. This is true not only of humanitys energy
requirements, or of the management of the planets mineral resources and
chemical potentials, but of every facet of the global agriculture, including the
devastation caused by large scale de-forestation, and even the most irresponsible way of dealing with the element
without which no human being can survive: water itself.In the absence of miraculous solutions, capitals arbitrarily
self-asserting attitude to the objective determinations of causality and time in the end inevitably brings a bitter
harvest, at the expense of humanity [and nature itself].46

An analysis of the oceanic crisis

confirms the destructive qualities of private for-profit operations. Dire

conditions are being generated as the resiliency of marine ecosystems in
general is being undermined. To make matters worse, sewage from feedlots and fertilizer runoff from
farms are transported by rivers to gulfs and bays, overloading marine ecosystems with excess
nutrients, which contribute to an expansion of algal production. This leads to
oxygen-poor water and the formation of hypoxic zonesotherwise known as dead
zones because crabs and fishes suffocate within these areas. It also compromises natural processes that
remove nutrients from the waterways. Around 150 dead zones have been identified around
the world. A dead zone is the end result of unsustainable practices of food production on land. At the same
time, it contributes to the loss of marine life in the seas, furthering the
ecological crisis of the world ocean. Coupled with industrialized capitalist fisheries and
aquaculture, the oceans are experiencing ecological degradation and constant
pressures of extraction that are severely depleting the populations of fishes
and other marine life. The severity of the situation is that if current practices
and rates of fish capture continue marine ecosystems and fisheries around
the world could collapse by the year 2050.47 To advert turning the seas into
a watery grave, what is needed is nothing less than a worldwide revolution in
our relation to nature, and thus of global society itself.

Biofuels
Biofuels are poisoned fruit from the poisoned tree they serve only
to maintain the underlying system
Cock 11
Jacklyn Cock, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, and an
honorary research associate of the Society, Work and Development (SWOP) Institute, PhD - Rhodes University and
has been a visiting scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford University, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, the
Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, and the Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University, 2011,
(Green Capitalism or Environmental Justice? A Critique of the Sustainability Discourse, Focus Journal,
http://hsf.org.za/resource-centre/focus/focus-63/Jacklyn%20Cock.pdf) - AW

The ecological crisis is not some future and indeterminate event.

It is now generally acknowledged that we are in the first stages of ecological
collapse. Capitals response to the ecological crisis is that the system can
continue to expand by creating a new sustainable or green capitalism,
bringing the efficiency of the market to bear on nature and its reproduction.
These visions amount to little more than a renewed strategy for profiting
from planetary destruction1 . The business of sustainability, in this view, is
simply a new frontier for accumulation in which carbon trading is the model
scheme 2 . The two pillars on which green capitalism rests are technological
innovation and expanding markets while keeping the existing
institutions of capitalism intact. This is Thomas Friedmans green revolution which relies on
linking the two. As he insists, green technology represents the mother of all markets3
. More specifically, green capitalism involves: appeals to nature (and even the crisis) as
a marketing tool; developing largely untested clean coal technology through Carbon
Green capitalism.

Capture and Storage, which involves installing equipment that captures carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases
and then pumping the gas underground; the development of new sources of energy such as solar, nuclear and

the massive development of biofuels, which involves

diverting land from food production; the carbon trading regime enshrined in the Kyoto Protocols. Many of
these strategies put the onus of solving climate change on changing individual
life styles. This individualizing is illustrated by Al Gores documentary An Inconvenient Truth and relies heavily
on manipulative advertising greenwash to persuade us of the efficacy of these strategies. Greenwash is
also evident in much corporate sustainability reporting as part of their
presentation of a benign image of themselves. Sustainability: the
ideological anchor of green capitalism. In South Africa, as elsewhere, there has been a steep
wind, thereby creating new markets;

growth in the number of companies producing sustainability reports, and in the emergence of various corporate
indicators and guidelines. Media coverage is growing with, in 2010 alone, a Financial Times Special Report on
Sustainability, the publication of the quarterly Trialogue Sustainability Review as a supplement to the Financial Mail,
and the Earth supplement to the daily newspaper, Business Day. The current emphasis is on how sustainability can
increase profitability or, in the sanitized language of capital, can add value to a company. In 2004, the
Johannesburg Stock Exchange introduced the Socially Responsible Investment Index (SRI) to help crystallize good
triple-bottom line and governance policy and practices. Companies apply to be listed in 2008, 61 companies
made it onto the index, from 105 companies that were reviewed for inclusion4 . According to an asset manager,
Very important is that [social responsibility] should not mean lower returns. In fact it should sometimes mean
higher returns as the profile of some of these investments can be higher risk and lower liquidity5 . Chris Laszios
Sustainable Value: How the worlds leading companies are doing well by doing good emphasizes the importance of
a companys reputation, goodwill and stakeholder relationships. Based on this assumption, Laszio develops a strong
business case for taking a systematic approach to building stakeholder value, including shareholder value, through
the integration of sustainability in all aspects of a business6 . The cynicism involved is also illustrated by a
statement from a Santam executive, Even

if you dont believe in climate change, it

makes financial sense. In similar terms it has been claimed that the climate crisis represents a
lucrative entrepreneurial opportunity7 .This is congruent with the treatment of

disasters (often ecological) as exciting market opportunities, described by Klein as disaster

capitalism8 . Similarly, for the JSE, [I]nvesting in sustainability makes sense9 . From July 2010 all companies
listed on the JSE are required to publish an integrated sustainability report. Thus the worst corporate polluters in
South Africa all now produce lengthy sustainability reports. ArcelorMittal SAs 2009 sustainability report claims that
[o]ver the last year, we made an even greater commitment to engagement with all stakeholder groups by
accelerating interactions with communities, employees, regulators, government and advocacy groups. This claim,
however, is hotly disputed by Phineas Malapela, the chair of the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance10. Other major
polluters show a total neglect of environmental factors in their definition of sustainable development. For example,
BHP Billiton, the worlds leading diversified natural resources company, describes the companys vision of
Sustainable Development as follows: to be the company of choice creating sustainable value for shareholders,

The main
concern of the corporations remains profitability: the awareness that
shrinking natural resources could damage it, while measures such as energy
efficiency could reduce costs, reduce risks and enhance a companys public
image. The former CEO of Walmart recently described sustainability as the single biggest business opportunity
of the 21st century and the next main source of competitive advantage12. Hence the opening claim: the
sustainability discourse has been appropriated by neo-liberal
capitalism. Critiques of green capitalism Critiques of green capitalism are rooted in
the understanding that it is capitals logic of accumulation that is destroying
the ecological conditions that sustain life: through the pollution and consumption of natural
resources, destruction of habitats and biodiversity, and global warming. The expansionist logic of
the capitalist system means it is not sustainable. As Barbara Harris-White claims,
sustainable capitalism is a fiction13. She writes, sustainability has never been given a
testable definition it has been watered down to resources sustainably
available in the environment and even leached into mere growth14. Joel Kovel
employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, business partners and host communities.11

stresses that the cause of the ecological crisis is the expansionist logic of the capitalist system, and in similar terms,
Vandana Shiva stresses, the

same corporate interests that have created the

crisis try to offer the disease as the cure more fossil fuel based
chemical fertilizers15. If capitalism continues, the future looks grim. If
capitalism remains the dominant social order we can expect unbearable climate conditions, an intensification of
social and ecological crises and, as Ian Angus writes, the

spread of the most barbaric forms of

class rule, as the imperialist powers fight among themselves and with the
global south for continued control of the worlds diminishing resources. At worst
human life may not survive16. But at least in the short run as ecological breakdown accelerates,
the dominant classes will survive, living in protected enclaves in what Foster calls a fortress world. Fortress World
is a planetary apartheid system, gated and maintained by force, in which the gap between global rich and global
poor constantly widens and the differential access to environmental resources and amenities increases sharply. It
consists of bubbles of privilege amidst oceans of misery17. This retreat into fortified enclaves already exists in
South Africa now the most unequal society in the world as the powerful and the privileged move into the
growing number of gated communities and golf estates. However, the argument that the discourse of sustainability
is the ideological anchor of green capitalism does not mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater: the
immediate challenge is to reclaim the notion of sustainability by linking it to considerations of justice.

Technological fetishism fails to alter the conditions that cause

climate change and denies the role of capitalism in environmental
degradation
Foster, 10 - professor of sociology at the University of Oregon (John, Why Ecological Revolution, Monthly
Review, http://monthlyreview.org/2010/01/01/why-ecological-revolution/, February 3rd 2010)//jk

We are increasingly led to believe that the answers to climate change are
primarily to be found in new energy technology, specifically increased energy and carbon
efficiencies in both production and consumption. Technology in this sense, however, is often
viewed abstractly as a deus ex machina, separated from both the laws of

physics (i.e., entropy or the second law of thermodynamics) and from the way technology is
embedded in historically specific conditions. With respect to the latter, it is worth noting that,
under the present economic system, increases in energy efficiency normally
lead to increases in the scale of economic output, effectively negating any
gains from the standpoint of resource use or carbon efficiency - a problem
known as the Jevons Paradox. As William Stanley Jevons observed in the nineteenth century, every
new steam engine was more efficient in the use of coal than the one before, which did not prevent coal burning
from increasing overall, since the efficiency gains only led to the expansion of the number of steam engines and of

This relation between efficiency and scale has proven true for
capitalist economies up to the present day.[8] Technological fetishism with
regard to environmental issues is usually coupled with a form of market
fetishism. So widespread has this become that even a militant ecologist like Bill McKibben, author of The End of
growth in general.

Nature, recently stated: There is only one lever even possibly big enough to make our system move as fast as it
needs to, and thats the force of markets.[9] Green-market fetishism is most evident in what is called cap and
trade - a catch phrase for the creation, via governments, of artificial markets in carbon trading and so-called
offsets. The important thing to know about cap and trade is that it is a proven failure. Although enacted in Europe
as part of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, it has failed where it was supposed to count: in reducing
emissions. Carbon-trading schemes have been shown to be full of holes. Offsets allow all sorts of dubious forms of
trading that have no effect on emissions. Indeed, the only area in which carbon trading schemes have actually been
effective is in promoting profits for speculators and corporations, which are therefore frequently supportive of them.
Recently, Friends of the Earth released a report entitled Subprime Carbon? which pointed to the emergence, under
cap and trade agreements, of what could turn out to be the worlds largest financial derivatives market in the form
of carbon trading. All of this has caused Hansen to refer to cap and trade as the temple of doom, locking in
disasters for our children and grandchildren.[10] The masquerade associated with the dominant response to
global warming is illustrated in the climate bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in late June 2009. The
bill, if enacted, would supposedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent relative to 2005 levels by 2020,
which translates into 4-5 percent less U.S. global warming pollution than in 1990. This then would still not reach the
target level of a 6-8 percent cut (relative to 1990) for wealthy countries that the Kyoto accord set for 2012, and that
was supposed to have been only a minor, first step in dealing with global warming - at a time when the problem
was seen as much less severe. The goal presented in the House bill, even if reached, would therefore prove vastly
inadequate. But the small print in the bill makes achieving even this meager target unrealistic. The coal industry is
given until 2025 to comply with the bills pollution reduction mandates, with possible extensions afterward. As
Hansen observes, the bill builds in approval of new coal-fired power plants! Agribusiness, which accounts for a
quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, is entirely exempt from the mandated reductions. The cap and trade
provisions of the House bill would give annual carbon dioxide emission allowances to some 7,400 facilities across
the United States, most of them handed out for free. These pollution allowances would increase up through 2016,
and companies would be permitted to bank them indefinitely for future use. Corporations would be able to fulfill
their entire set of obligations by buying offsets associated with pollution control projects until 2027. To make
matters worse, the Senate counterpart to the House bill, now under deliberation, would undoubtedly be more
conservative, giving further concessions and offsets to corporations. The final bill, if it comes out of Congress, will
thus be, in Hansens words, worse than nothing. Similar developments can be seen in the preparation for the
December 2009 world climate negotiations in Copenhagen, in which Washington has played the role of a spoiler,
blocking all but the most limited, voluntary agreements, and insisting on only market-based approaches, such as
cap and trade.[11] Recognizing that world powers are playing the role of Nero as Rome burns, James Lovelock, the
earth system scientist famous for his Gaia hypothesis, argues that massive climate change and the destruction of
human civilization as we know it may now be irreversible. Nevertheless, he proposes as solutions either a massive
building of nuclear power plants all over the world (closing his eyes to the enormous dangers accompanying such a
course) - or geoengineering our way out of the problem, by using the worlds fleet of aircraft to inject huge
quantities of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to block a portion of the incoming sunlight, reducing the solar
energy reaching the earth. Another common geoengineering proposal includes dumping iron filings throughout the
ocean to increase its carbon-absorbing properties. Rational scientists recognize that interventions in the earth
system on the scale envisioned by geoengineering schemes (for example, blocking sunlight) have their own
massive, unforeseen consequences. Nor could such schemes solve the crisis. The dumping of massive quantities of
sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere would, even if effective, have to be done again and again, on an increasing
scale, if the underlying problem of cutting greenhouse gas emissions were not dealt with. Moreover, it could not
possibly solve other problems associated with massive carbon dioxide emissions, such as the acidification of the

The dominant approach to the world ecological crisis, focusing on

technological fixes and market mechanisms, is thus a kind of denial; one that
serves the vested interests of those who have the most to lose from a
change in economic arrangements. Al Gore exemplifies the dominant form of
denial in his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. For Gore, the answer is
oceans.[12]

the creation of a sustainable capitalism. He is not, however, altogether

blind to the faults of the present system. He describes climate change as the
greatest market failure in history and decries the short-term perspective
of present-day capitalism, its market triumphalism, and the fundamental
flaws in its relation to the environment. Yet, in defiance of all this, he
assures his readers that the strengths of capitalism can be harnessed to a
new system of sustainable development.[13]
Technological approaches to climate change only pass the buck on
to future generations- failure to destroy the root cause of climate
change makes extinction inevitable and means capitalists misuse
the technology
ROHRICHT, 6/29/14 M.A. Candidate, Ethics, Peace and Global AffairsB.A., Professional Writing & B.A., Philosophy (Alyssa, Counter-Punch, Capitalism and Climate Change,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/)//jk

Pursuing sustainable energy sources is an equally dubious response to the

climate crisis. Just as with geoengineering, the thought is that human ingenuity and
investment in new technologies will lead to cleaner and more efficient
industrial practices, thus reducing our GHG emissions. Yet this ignores the
very nature of the capitalist system of endless growth and accumulation, and
given the opportunity to expand further while expending less on energy and
resources, capitalism will naturally expand to fill the newly opened space.
This concept is often called Jevons Paradox, after William Stanley Jevons, a 19th century
economist who sought to examine why increased efficiency in the use of coal led to increased consumption.

What Jevons noted was a positive correlation between efficiency and resource
consumption, observing that as the use of coal became more efficient and thus
more cost effective, it became more desirable to consumers, creating more
demand and thus more production and consumption. On and on it goes. This is
called the rebound effect whereby gains in efficiency lead to a drop in the price of a
given commodity and a rise in demand and consumption. Any gains in
efficiency, then, do not lead to a decrease in consumption, but often have
the opposite effect. In fact, over the period of 1975 to 1996, carbon efficiency increased dramatically in
the US, Japan, the Netherlands, and Austria. However, studies show that during the same period, total emissions of

gains in fossil fuel

efficiency have resulted in increased use by the capitalist, industrialized
societies. As Karl Marx noted, capitalism prevents the rational application of
technologies because gains are only reinvested in the capitalist system and
used to further expand and grow capital accumulation. Renewable energy
poses similar problems. Drastic measures would need to be taken to change
the entire infrastructure currently built around fossil fuels. In order to keep global
warming to a 2C increase by purely technical means, about 80% of the worlds energy use
would have to be switched to carbon-neutral technologies like wind, solar, and bio-fuels. An article in
the New Yorker on inventor Saul Griffith noted that this would require building the equivalent
of all the following: a hundred square metres of new solar cells, fifty square
metres of new solar-thermal reflectors, and one Olympic swimming pools
volume of genetically engineered algae (for biofuels) every second for the
next twenty-five years; one three-hundred-foot-diameter wind turbine every five minutes; one hundredcarbon dioxide and per capita emissions increased across the board. Thus

megawatt geothermal-powered steam turbine every eight hours; and one three-gigawatt nuclear power plant every

To construct all of this carbon-neutral technology would require emitting

huge amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere, over and above what we are
already emitting to continue running the current system. Furthermore, largescale renewables can be just as destructive as other forms of energy. Largescale dams used for hydropower a supposedly clean energy have led to
destruction of habitats for both aquatic and land species, destruction of flood
plains, river deltas, wetlands, and ocean estuaries, reduction of water quality
and nutrient cycling and have been known to cause earthquakes. Biofuels,
similarly, cause huge environmental damage, sometimes using more energy
to grow and transport the crops than energy gained from it, not to mention the issue
of creating competition for arable land with the food industry. Once again, a boon for the capitalist
economy in creating new industry in sustainable energy is to the great
detriment of the environment and the climate, so long as the harms caused by these new
technologies can be written off as externalities. Focusing on technology whether through
methods to increase efficiency, through sustainable energy, or through
geoengineering do nothing to change the underlying capitalist system of
unfettered growth that has been at the source of the climate change problem
from the beginning. They are merely attempts at treating the symptoms of
climate change, not the cause. Karl Marx first employed the concept of metabolic interactions
week.

between humans and nature in the 19th century, recognizing the complex interdependence between the two.
Since man lives from nature and derives the very necessities to survive from it, nature is his body. He is a part of
nature and they are inextricably linked and so man must be in dialogue with it in order to survive. This complex
interchange he likened to the metabolism or material exchange within the body. But as man began to adopt
practices that disrupted this interchange, a rupture occurred with the relations between man and the natural world.
This rupture, driven by capitalist expansion, intensified with large-scale agriculture, harmful industries, and the
global market. Marx saw this rupture, or metabolic rift, occur as populations began to flock toward cities. In contrast
to traditional agriculture, where waste from food is recycled back into the soil, this new type of agriculture meant
nutrients (food) were being shipped to cities to feed the growing population, and thus not cycled back into the soil.
This caused the natural fertility of the soil to decline and nutrients in the city to accumulate as waste and pollution.
As soil fertility worsened, more and more intensive agricultural methods were needed, increasing the use of
artificial fertilizers, further harming the nutrient cycles of the soil. Capitalism continued to demand higher and
higher yields, requiring more and more intensive and harsh farming methods, greater fertilizer use, and so on,

Humans have
disrupted the natural processes of the earth in unimaginable ways. The very
creating a cycle of deterioration of the natural processes, and a rift between man and nature.

composition of the air we breathe is being altered by our ever-growing emissions of GHGs. The system we have put

As our
energy sources become more and more scarce and difficult to find and
extract, instead of scaling back and recognizing natures natural boundaries,
capitalism doubles down and employs even more dangerous methods.
Searching for market-based solutions to the climate crisis will not work.
When capitalism attempts to put a price on the natural world, it takes into
account only the interests of those with the greatest purchasing power.
Capital accumulation is the primary objective, and any costs that can be
externalized onto nature and the global poor will be. Technology in the
capitalist system has helped us to create ever-more energy-efficient
processes, yet a paradoxical relationship arises, where increased energy-efficiency leads to
our faith in for many years rests on a ceaseless hunger for accumulation, spurred on by fossil fuels.

increased economic expansion, negating any reduction in resource-use. Likewise, transforming our infrastructure to
more sustainable energy sources would require a such massive output of GHGs from fossil fuels to build that
implementing the change would push us over the climate cliff .

Geoengineering, the solution

touted by many cheerleaders of the capitalist system as the saving grace of

humanity, absurdly argues for altering the earths natural systems even
further, hoping that capitalism can continue undiminished. Technology may
help pass the buck to future generations, but it will not solve the problem.
Capitalism would have us grow indefinitely, but the earths natural carrying
capacity would have us reverse this trend. The interminable drive for
accumulation on which capitalism is solely focused has led humanity down a
path of near-disaster with the very systems that we rely on to sustain life
human and otherwise. If we continue down this path of relentless
accumulation inherent in the capitalist system, we cannot stop the climate
disaster.

Exploration
Ocean exploration allows the smooth transition of capital from one
place to another justifies annihilation of the space
Steinburg 99 [1999, Phillip E Steinburg is from the Department of Geography at Florida State University
and holds a PhD,~ The Maritime Mystique: Sustainable Development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world
ocean, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf] GKoo

many scholars have noted the important role that

speed and the conquest of distance play in contemporary capitalism. Even those
Regarding the first of these images,

who caution that this phenomenon masks the continued importance of place (for example, Cox, 1997) or continuity

ability to
transgress space with unprecedented speed and agility is a defining feature
of today's capitalist political economy. Within this system of hypermobile
capitalism, the ocean has taken on special importance as a seemingly
friction-free surface across which capital can move without
hindrance: "Water is capital's element The bourgeois idealization of sea
power and ocean- borne commerce has been central to the mythology of
capital, which has struggled to free itself from the earth just as the bourgeoisie struggled to free itself from
tilling the soil. Moving capital is liquid capital, and without movement, capital is a
mere Oriental hoard .... [The ocean] is capital's favored myth-element"
(Connery, 1995, pages 40, 56). There are several layers of irony here. If capital were truly able to
transcend the barriers to seamless mobility imposed by the distance and
nature of ocean space, then, at the point at which this transcendence were achieved, the ocean
could no longer have utility. Although the ocean may be "capital's favored
myth-element," its utility to capital as a transportation surface lies in
the ease with which it can be annihilated. As we have seen, the ocean's
service in a world of capital fluidity lies in the apparent ability of corporations
such as Merrill Lynch, Concert, and AT&T to wish away both its nature and the very space it
occupies. The underlying utility of the ocean as an antithetical space of movement (and the irony in capital's
with past political-economic processes (for example, Harvey, 1989) acknowledge that the

desire to annihilate it) is supported by Deleuze and Guatarri's iden- tification of the ocean as "a smooth space par

'smooth' spaces serve as

necessary counterpoints to the 'striated' spaces of capital whose physical
and social features and points of friction enable investment, sedentaritation,
excellence" (Deleuze and Guatarri, 1988, page 479). As sites of alterity,

enclosure, surveillance, and other processes asso- ciated with modern life (Deleuze and Guatarri, 1988, pages 474

agents of capital progressively seek to absorb and

'modernize' these smooth' spaces because they are resistant to essential capitalist categories and
institutions. Thus, the tendency to annihilate the formal independence of ocean
space is indicative of a more general tendency toward self-destruction ,
whether this annihilation is achieved through colonization by modernist
institutions of navigation and militarism (as is depicted by Virilio, 1986, pages 37 49, as
well as Deleuze and Guatarri) or through physical obliteration (as is idealized by Merrill
Lynch and Concert). Additionally, the intervening distance of ocean space amplifies
difference, and, as poli- tical economists have long asserted, the ability to
shift capital between 'different' places provides a crucial mechanism
for capital accumulation (Hilferding, 1981; Lenin, 1939; Luxemburg, 1964). Capital's
perverse desire to annihilate its "favored myth-element" although perhaps
rational from a short-run profit-maximization standpoint runs the risk of also
500). Despite their utility,

annihilating opportunities for the realization of value through movement ,

thereby reducing capital to the status of "a mere Oriental hoard."

Geoengineering
Geoengineering continues the subjection of the natural world to
capitalism- it fails to solve and only fills the pockets of capitalists
ROHRICHT, 6/29/14 M.A. Candidate, Ethics, Peace and Global AffairsB.A., Professional Writing & B.A., Philosophy (Alyssa, Counter-Punch, Capitalism and Climate Change,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/27/capitalism-climate-change/)//jk
This is the idea of dematerializing the economy or reducing the throughput of raw materials and energy into the
system without decreasing the systems output of goods and services. Basically, the economy will do more with
less. By switching to more sustainable sources of energy like wind and solar, increasing the efficiency of machinery
and appliances, and through geoengineering, proponents of the technological solution to climate change argue that

Giddens writes in The

Politics of Climate Change that we must take bold action to combat climate
change, and this means taking the plunge on geoengineering projects that
could save humanity from the harmful effects of climate change. We have
no hope of responding to climate change unless we are prepared to take bold
decisions. It is the biggest example ever of he who hesitates is lost. However,
further investing in technologies and in geoengineering is not a bold, new
decision, as Giddens contends. It is doubling down on exactly what we have
been doing for decades. Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques (one area of geoengineering)
mans ingenuity can pull us back from the brink of disaster. Economist Anthony

such as adding sulfate aerosols to the stratosphere to increase the albedo effect the amount of the Suns energy
that is reflected back into space and cool the planet are being seriously considered by many scientists and policy

The absurdity of pursuing massive projects that would greatly alter the
natural systems of the earth and that could have disastrous side effects is
evident. Gavin Schmidt, climate modeler at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies,
created the following analogy for geoengineering: Imagine the climate as a
small boat on a choppy ocean, rocking back and forth. One of the passengers
in the boat decides to stand up and deliberately rock the boat violently to the
protests of the other passengers. Another passenger suggests that with his
knowledge of chaotic dynamics, he can counterbalance the rocking of the
first passenger. To do so, he needs many sensors, computational resources,
and so on so that he can react efficiently, though he cannot guarantee that it
will absolutely stabilize the boat, and since the boat is already unsteady, it
may make things worse. Schmidt asks, So is the answer to a known and
increasing human influence on climate an ever more elaborate system to
control the climate? Or should the person rocking the boat just sit down ?
Market reactions to large-scale geoengineering such as releasing sulfate
aerosols, would result in the continued acceleration of resource use and
further capital accumulation, not to mention, it would do little to solve our
problems. Sulfate injection, to start, doesnt actually help to remove any CO2 from the atmosphere. It also
makers.

doesnt address other areas of climate change, including ocean acidification, which has far-reaching implications for
many species of marine life. Whats worse, since sulfate injection only manages to reflect more of the suns energy
without addressing any of the systematic causes of the increase of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere,
further increases of GHGs can continue, thus assuming the deployment of future sulfate injections and other
geoengineering solutions to no end.

MH-370
The AFF is a strategy of distraction a technique of flooding
insignificant information to keep capitalist resistance in check
Bremner 14
Neesha Bremner, Senior Fellow of HUMA - Humanitarian Media Agency, Multi-media journalist and communications
specialist, March 29, 2014, (Dames and Knights ~ Tony Abbott and the Art of Political Distraction,
http://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/03/29/dames-and-knights-tony-abbott-and-the-art-of-political-distraction/) - AW

There is an art to distracting the electorate and Abbott has embraced it

whole-heartedly and with a cynical zeal. Whom else would have the
cynical audacity to announce the possibility of finding debris related
MH370 from within parliament after his party had lost the vote to repeal the
Carbon Tax, a key platform of his partys election campaign, for the second time within four months. Yup
that distracted a big chunk of the media well done Tony. And when Abbott and his
Liberal Party tried to repeal the Mining Tax, another election promise, this week another fail as it was blocked by
the Senate. This admittedly was covered more veraciously across the media spectrum but this government with
strong support from aspects of the media is utilising distraction techniques at a level that is impressive and slightly
worrying. Why are the Liberal government and its allies trying to distract the electorate, what social controls are

Noam Chomsky calls this the

Strategy of Distraction. The key element of social control is the
strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from
important issues and changes decided by political and economic
elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous
distractions and insignificant information. Another gem of distraction announced
they trying to enforce. What do they not want Australia to see?

coincidentally around the time the senate blocked the Mining tax repeal and the Liberal party announced the selling
of Medicare Private along with a raft of legislation to enable the selling of State assets while Senator Arthur
Sinodinos hand to stand down as minister for being dodgy or a log in the flood waters of distracting nonsense
was the grand announcement that Australia is taking it back to the future with the re-introduction of Dames and

Adding to this distraction is another

classic technique of what Naomi Klein in the Shock Doctrine calls disaster
capitalism or what Antony Loewenstein in his 2013 book Profits of Doom coins as
vulture capitalism, the art of overwhelm. Or throwing so much potential or
actual change at the electorate all at once the public finds it difficult
to focus and therefore sweeping legislative changes can be made
while people try and get their bearings. Acts of overwhelm that have
fuelled the political miasma in the first six months of Abbotts Liberal government include:
Knighthoods to the Australian equivalent of the honours list.

the on-going horrific -ness of Australias asylum seeker policy and the coinciding profit driven outsourced
imprisonment of refugees, the debt mythology to justify cuts and austerity measures, royal commissions into unions
and a review of general work conditions for all working Australians, a barrage of attacks on the national
broadcaster, the ABC and the much publicised great repeal of unnecessary legislation such as protections from

What is interesting is how

similar the articulation of this out into the electorate is to how it was
implemented in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. The distinction perhaps being
discrimination. ( Which incidentally the government backed down from)

that though while the March in March movement, or what it represented, is still forming, over 30,000 people took to
the streets of Melbourne alone last weekend, to protest the government alongside thousands of others across

In Australia it feels like there is a

valid resistance against the tide of neo-liberalism and money first legislation
slamming its way into being. Firstly through a growing protest movement and
secondly through a dynamic small alternative media environment alongside the
SBS and the ABC airing stories and voices which hold power to scrutiny, though admittedly this could
change if Abbott and his cohorts succeed in undermining the public
Australia earlier in the week not that there was much coverage.

broadcasters. There is a pattern to this distraction and overwhelm and it is

disturbingly familiar.

MPA
The AFFs approach to environmental crisis is reactionary
management. Those interventions destroy the systems they
attempt to save and only relegate exploitation elsewhere
Bhm et al. 12
Steffen Bhm, Maria Ceci Misoczky, and Sandra Moog, PhD in Management and Sustainability, University of
Warwick, PhD in Business Administration, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, PhD in Sociology and Political
Science, University of Chicago, University of California at Berkeley, 2012, (Greening Capitalism? A Marxist Critique
of Carbon Markets, http://oss.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/33/11/1617.full.pdf+html) - AW

Contemporary neoliberal approaches to

the management of environmental problems posit that problems like the
excessive production and emission of greenhouse gases can be addressed by
assessing natural limits, and constructing market mechanisms to rationally
distribute access to environmental goods, rights to pollute, and rights to
make use of ecosystem services, such as carbon sinks (e.g. Tietenberg, 2006; Michaelowa &
Metabolic Rift and the Dialectics of Ecological Crisis

Dutschke, 2000; Stowell, 2005; Yamin, 2005). Efforts by Foster and his colleagues (Foster, 1999; Foster & Clark,

the inherently unpredictable and

dialectical nature of the way in which human productive activities
impact upon the non-human natural environment, and how natural
systems respond by shaping human productive systems in
unforeseen ways. These theorists argue that, due to the pace of commodification
and extraction of raw materials under conditions of capitalist expansion, and
2009; Foster et al., 2010), however, emphasize

due to the great distances which raw materials, food resources and waste travel in the ever-expanding circuits of

human interchange with the natural

environment under the conditions of capitalism results in significant
disruptions to natural ecosystems systems and biogeochemical
cycles. This is a dynamic which Marx himself theorized, most significantly in his writings on nutrient loss and
capitalist economic organization,

soil exhaustion in Europe in the mid-1880s (Foster, 1999). As Foster explains, Marx conceptualized continuities and
disruptions in the interchange between human modes of production and natural systems through his adoption of
the concept of metabolism (Stoffwechsel), originally developed by the German agro-chemist Liebig in 1840. Marx
appropriated Liebigs concept in his writings in Capital in order to describe the rise of an irreparable rift in the
interdependent process of social metabolism under conditions of capitalist production and urban-rural organization

Marx identified the rift brought about by

urbanization, and by agricultural and trade practices that despoil the earth
without replenishing its resources, thereby robbing whole regions of their
natural conditions of (re)production (Gimenez, 2001). Recently, studies have begun to
apply Marxs theory of metabolic rift to contemporary environmental problems , such as
(Marx, 1981, p. 949). Using this concept,

the fertilizer treadmill, ocean acidification and climate change (Clark & York, 2005; Clausen & Clark, 2005; Mancus,
2007; Clark & Foster, 2009). Foster and Clark (2009) and Foster et al. (2010) reject the supposition that the
preservation of nature can go hand in hand with the unlimited accumulation of capital, the sustained economic

that is at the heart of contemporary commitment to

sustainable development and the development of a green capitalist
economy. Foster and his colleagues maintain that such approaches present a
distorted account, advocating economic growth, but seeing wealth entirely in
terms of value generated through exchange. As Foster and Clark (2009) and Foster et al.
(2010) point out, new green fixes must create new profit opportunities in order to work. The main aim of
market-based approaches to climate change is to internalize more and
more climate change costs, in an attempt to get prices right. But, because
scarcity increases exchange value on the market, the destruction of
growth (UNCED, 2012, p. 9)

the environment and the commodification of new natural goods (like

carbon sinks) will inevitably increase profit opportunities for some at the
expense of others. Foster and his colleagues argue that such attempted fixes always entail negative
environmental externalities: unintended problems and spillover effects caused by the economic activity they allow
or promote (Foster, 2012). While proponents of sustainable development and green economy approaches
maintain that profit-making itself should not be seen as a problem, the argument put forward by Foster and his
colleagues is that this profit making is always dependent on externalizing costs and dumping these onto nature
and weaker members of society, as Gilbertsons (2009) example of a CDM biomass power generation project in

While ecological crises may precipitate

hardship and suffering for some populations, they will afford opportunities for
profit-making for those with the strategic resources and foresight to turn
moments of crisis to their own advantage. In summary, the metabolic rift
approach enables us to see the fundamental conflicts between
capitalism and environment sustainability. As Magdoff and Foster (2010) outline,
Thailand, briefly discussed above, illustrates.

capitalism is a system that must continually expand, in constant search for new sources of raw materials, cheaper
labor, and new markets. But a system, they argue (ibid.), that, by its very nature, must grow and expand will

Inevitably, this expansionist

strategy results in winners and losers, with clear implications for global social
and environmental justice.
eventually come up against the reality of finite natural resources.

Oil
Fossil dependence is an unsustainable model it enforces a vicious
cycle of exploitation and crisis
Anderson 12
Cory Anderson, Senior Fellow of The International Socialist Organisation, October 15, 2012 , (Capitalism, the
Environment, and Socialism, http://iso.org.nz/2012/10/15/capitalism-the-environment-socialism-2/) - AW

the world is going through an ecological crisis.

Wilderness is disappearing fast as whole ecosystems from forests to grasslands to
marshlands are becoming endangered. For the past two centuries, factories have
spewed forth pollution into the atmosphere, poisoning the very air we breathe while
lakes, rivers and even the ocean have been transformed into festering
sludge-pits. So much has the earth been altered that even its chemistry is changing, the build-up of carbon
Its apparent to everyone today that

dioxide threatening the delicate climatic balance of the past 11,000 years is acidifying the ocean and wrecking

One could be forgiven for concluding that humankind is

nothing but a cancer on the earth. Humankind and the Environment Humanity has not always
havoc with the weather.

been so destructive of nature. Every human society enters into a unique relationship with nature, which surrounds
it. For almost all of its two-million year existence, humanity has actually lived in relative harmony with the
environment. The isolated hunter-gatherer bands that made up human society until around 60,000 years ago were
dominated by their environment rather than dominating it. Their ability to survive was dependant on the abundance
of game, or what food their communities could gather or grow. Their direct dependence on the land is still reflected
in indigenous cultures the world over, who maintain a reverence for the earth. However, as people came to live
more settled lives, societies became more complex and more hierarchically structured. Some people became kings
and great lords who lived not by making their own wealth but by exploiting that of others. A salient feature of all
such class societies is the destruction of the environment, because exploiting other people also requires exploiting
the environment from which those people obtain their wealth. Deforestation was a major problem in the ancient
world. The forests of the Mediterranean were cut down for wood and charcoal, leaving little scrub and bare rock in
their place. Deforestation in the highlands north of Iraq caused so much soil to wash down the rivers that the
coastline of the Persian Gulf was altered. Through the middle ages, the exploitation of nature extended
deforestation into the heart of Europe, while rudimentary farming techniques impoverished the soil. Capitalism has
raised the exploitation of nature to new heights. Like previous class societies, capitalism revolves around the
exploitation of workers and the earth. Unlike previous class societies however, this exploitation has no limit. In
previous societies, exploitation was limited by what the ruling class could consume. Exploitation was direct and
brutal. Under capitalism, everything is a commodity that can be exchanged for money. And since there is no limit to
how much money the capitalists can accumulate (it can always be invested to make more money!) there is no
limit to the exploitation of either workers or the earth. Capitalism generates a division between the town and
countryside whereby wealth is sucked out of the earth and transported to the cities, where it is accumulated by the
capitalist class. Raw materials are broken down into their constituent parts; useful elements being retained and
accumulated in the form of factories, offices, great mansions etc., and waste elements are dumped. By
concentrating wealth in great centers of industry capitalism thus robs the earth of its vitality, severing ecological
cycles and creating a one-way flow of resources. Where efforts are made to revive the productivity of the earth it is
usually through the application of minerals taken from other parts of the planet, not by returning wealth to the
earth as a whole. As Marx put it, the metabolic relation between humanity and the earth is severed as capitalism
accumulates mountains of wealth on the one hand, and mountains of poverty, misery and desolation on the other. If
humanity is to have any chance of re-entering a sustainable relationship with nature, we need to stop the rot at its
source: capitalism and class society must be gotten rid of. The current exploitative system must be replaced by one
in which humans are not divorced from nature, but become the conscious aspect of nature. Doing that requires a
revolution: we must get rid not only of the exploitation of nature, but also the exploitation of one human being by
another. Nature and Capitalist Crisis To capital, nature appears as a sort of free gift in the process of
accumulation. Raw materials from nature require little or no labour to be transformed into commodities that can be
sold on the market. Previously, when money was backed by gold, profits could be made by simply pulling the
requisite amount of precious metals out of the ground. In a similar manner, commodities in other primary industries
are extracted directly from nature (although profits are less certain). Cows produce a minimum of milk and meat
independently of the action of the farmer, for example, fruit grows on trees and coal is found underground in a more
or less useable form. While vast sums can be spent on increasing and improving natural products, primary
industries are in the unique position in that they receive a portion of their raw material (and thus their product)
without having to purchase it. This is important because the very accumulation that is at the centre of capitalism
plunges it periodically into crisis. Beyond the all but the most rudimentary industry, the workers labour is needed
to transform natural elements into useful products. Workers labour is thus the source of all new value, and hence of
all profits. However, as capitalist accumulation proceeds more and more accumulated capital comes to be applied
to any amount of living labour, resulting in smaller profits being generated from any given amount of capital

invested. It becomes harder and harder to make a profit, until there is no longer any incentive for investment and
the system plunges into crisis. It is just this sort of crisis that we are going through today. The tendency towards
crisis forces capitalists towards an ever more savage exploitation of both workers and the environment. As the crisis
proceeds, capitalists around the globe are attacking working class wages and conditions, trying to increase the
production of new value by making workers work longer, harder and faster for less. Basically, the capitalists are
attempting to increase the amount of labour beyond that which is required to produce the workers wages
increasing the time the worker is effectively working for free. The economic crisis also adds further fuel to the
environmental crisis by driving capitalists to increase appropriation of free goods from nature. Thus, the onset of
the crisis in 2007-08 was announced by a surge in speculation on commodities such as gold, oil and food, in an

expanding mineral, oil and gas extraction is

one of the key ways that the National government is attempting to promote
economic recovery. Both the number and size of mines have increased since the National government was
elected in 2008. Fracking is already underway in Taranaki and could be extended to
attempt to find guaranteed returns. In Aotearoa,

other regions, and of course multinationals are prospecting up and down our coasts to assess reserves of oil and
natural gas. These developments in Aotearoa are part of a global trend .

The pressure on profits has

seen capitalists chase after the earths mineral wealth ever more recklessly.
Mining has been expanded over the past decade to ever more marginal areas with little
regard for the safety of either the environment or the mine workers with tragic results as we saw at Pike
River. Oil drilling is pushed ever deeper into the ocean, increasing the risk of
catastrophic oil spills and ever-more destructive techniques are
invented in desperate attempts to get the last bits of oil, gas and coal from
the ground. Whole mountains are destroyed, rocks ground up in the search for black gold and huge
volumes of liquid are pumped into the earth to release gas by fracturing the
very bedrock we rest on. Oil and harder drugs Each crisis that capitalism
entangles itself in raises the prospect of its destruction. As capitalism
approaches its limits it stumbles and falls, seemingly under its own weight. The
resources crisis is a reflection of this. The supply of fossil fuels is not
unlimited, yet a continuous supply of them appears to be essential to the
running of modern capitalism. Oil, in particular, is likened to a drug that capitalism cant
do without. Almost mystical powers have been attributed to the precious
liquid. Its supposed to be a fuel like no other, uniquely suited to producing the
smooth, continuous flow of energy required by modern industry. Some even
go so far as to look to the end of oil as precipitating the end of capitalism.
Unfortunately, the truth is somewhat more complicated. The end of oil wont by itself be the end
of capitalism because oil is not the wonder-fuel its made out to be. The
supply of oil is far from continuous, as the oil shocks of the 1970s made abundantly clear. Far from
being uniform, the energy derived from burning fossil fuels varies depending on
the availability of oxygen. The easily accessible, continuous supply of energy we receive from oil toady
is a result of the application of technologies like as the internal combustion engine, which manipulates the
properties of oil to produce a desired result. Central to capitalism still is workers labour, like making engines, not
oil. If it wont necessarily collapse without oil, could capitalism overcome its environmental crisis? Clearly not. An
un-ecological, unsustainable flow of resources lies at the very heart of capitalism. However, capitalism should not
be identified with any one of these resources it is possible that capitalism could transfer its dependence to some

Witness the
massive tracts of rainforest being cut down for eco-friendly bio-diesel, for
other form of energy. But it would come at a massive human and environmental cost.

example, or the swamping of whole villages and ecosystems to make way for hyrdo-electric dams.

Competition with clean and green power sources would also propel the
mining industry to redouble their efforts to compete by pulverizing the earth
for every last drop of oil and the very last lump of coal. We cant wait
around for capitalism to green itself, or collapse under its own
weight. It will have to be pushed.

Expansion of oil drilling subjects the world to corporate control of

resources and places profit above all at the expense of the worker
Eley, 10 Tom is a contributor for World Socialist Website (Tom, WSWS, The BP oil spill and American
capitalism, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/05/pers-m08.html, May 8th) //jk
These decisions led directly to the deaths of 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon and the environmental

The workers killed in the BP explosion are only the latest

casualties. According to data from the International Regulators Forum, from 2004 through 2009
offshore oil workers on US rigs were four times more likely to be killed in
industrial accidents and 23 percent more likely to be injured than oil workers
in European waters. While there were 5 loss of well control disasters on US drill rigs in 2007 and 2008, in
five other major offshore drilling nationsthe UK, Norway, Australia, and Canadathere were none. Since
2001 there have been 69 deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires or explosions
on oil rigs operating in the Gulf of Mexico alone, according to the International Association of
catastrophe in the Gulf.

Drilling Contractors. The incestuous ties between the MMS and the oil industry have not been severed with the
election of Obama. Obama was in fact the top recipient of BP employee donations in the 2008 election cycle, and
the company has mobilized tens of millions in a massive lobbying campaign that has brought on board such
powerful Washington insiders as Democratic Party kingmaker John Podesta, former Democratic House majority
leader Thomas Daschle and former Republican Senator Alan Simpson (a key member of Obamas bipartisan budget
committee). Current CIA director Leon Panetta has also served on BPs external advisory council.Only weeks
before the Gulf disaster, in an open sop to the oil companies ,

Obama declared his intention to

make large regions of the US coastline available for oil drilling.The Deepwater

Horizon explosion is the result of decades of deregulation, which proclaimed that the free market could best

the US government, under both Democratic

and Republican administrations, has worked to systematically eliminate all
constraints on corporate profit-making. The result has been disastrous for the
population of the US and the world. Corporations controlling vast social
resources make decisions affecting millions of people on the basis of profit .
Working hand in glove with regulators, little more than wholly owned subsidiaries of industry,
the corporate elite targets for elimination any outlay that diminishes profit
returns to the top executives and shareholders, whether it be environmental
protection, product safety, or workers safetyas a spate of recent deadly
workplace accidents has revealed. In industry after industry the story is the samemining, auto
production, transportation, telecommunications and, of course, the finance industry. Indeed, the eruption of
toxic oil from the bottom of the sea has its parallel in the eruption of toxic
assets that set off a financial crisis in 2008. Led by the Obama
administraiton, national governments responded to this disaster by bailing
out those responsiblethe financial eliteand leaving the working class to
foot the bill. In this sense, the crisis in the Gulf and the crisis in Greece are connected by a common social and
regulate its elf. Beginning in the late 1970s,

economic system. The assets of BP, Transocean, Halliburton and their executiveshundreds of billions of dollars
must be appropriated and used to make the people of the Gulf whole and to put in place a massive environmental
cleanup program. The executives and regulators whose policies caused the disaster should be criminally

The stranglehold of the corporate and financial elite over society and
its resources must be broken. This requires the implementation of a socialist program for energy
prosecuted.

production. The big energy corporations must be seized and converted into public utilities, democratically run by
the working class in the interest of social need.

Oil is the lifeblood of capitalism- a disruption of cheap oil would

collapse the entire system
Knight, 09 masters degree in Political Science from Lehigh University (Alex, End of Capitalism, Why is it
breaking down?, http://endofcapitalism.com/about/3-why-is-it-collapsing/) //jk

Oil is the lifeblood of capitalism; there is literally nothing on this earth that
can replace it as the dominant fuel for the engine of global capitalism. Its not
just that 40% of energy comes from oil, making it the worlds #1 energy source, the key point is that
the particular applications of oil are vital to the entire economic structure. For example, 99% of the worlds
pesticides are chemically produced from oil (and almost all industrial fertilizers derive from natural gas), which
means the entire industrial mode of agriculture that has taken dominance over the worlds farmland depends upon

every
single calorie of food in the United States requires at least 10 calories of
fossil fuel energy to bring that food to the plate. The pharmaceutical industry, chemical,
plastics, and military are equally dependent. In addition to being found in just about
everything we consume, petroleum is now also necessary for fueling the
extraction, production, packaging, and distribution of all other resources. Most
crucially, oil now powers 95% of all transportation, in the form of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel.
By definition the global economy depends on the rapid transport of people and
resources on a global scale, which means burning oil and dumping billions of tons of
abundant cheap petroleum. In fact, including tractors, chemicals, packaging, distribution, and cooking,

carbon into the atmosphere, causing global warming and destabilizing the Earths climate. Meanwhile, because oil
is such a powerful resource, states necessarily view it as a strategic imperative to maintain access to supplies. The
quest for cheap and available oil therefore becomes a prime motive for military action and warfare, as weve seen
in the actions of the US in the Middle East, where66% of the worlds remaining oil lies. Warfare
and climate chaos stand out as particularly devastating consequences of the massive rate of oil consumption, but

the reality is that the entire global assault on human justice and natural
ecosystems would in many ways not be possible without being fueled by
cheap and abundant oil. Luckily, oil as a resource is limited in supply (imagine the destruction if it
werent), and in fact according to a growing chorus of geologists, the worldwide supply of oil is now reaching its
ultimate maximum level and will soon enter decline.

The evidence shows that the global peak

oil production is here today.

This historic event is occurring approximately 40 years after the peak

discovery of oil, in the mid-1960s. Since that time, less and less oil has been found worldwide, while demand has

of Peak Oil, but it serves to point out that at least

54 countries have already reached their domestic peak oil, including the United
States. Data indicates that the immense run-up of prices in 2007-2008 can best be explained as a result of
skyrocketed. This isnt the place for a full explanation

global oil shortage, which certainly added stress to the financial markets and likely helped trigger the current crisis.

The deepening oil shortage will affect the United States and its
imperialist project in a unique way. Having risen to power on a sea of oil in the first half of the 20th
century, the U.S. reached its peak oil in 1970 and now imports over 2/3 of its
consumption. Still by far the largest consumer of oil, using over 25% of global
supply, the country is being forced into deeper and deeper debt to pay for it.
This enormous trade deficit is only counteracted by the willingness of foreign
countries from whom the United States purchases most of its stuff (Saudi Arabia
for its oil, China for its consumer goods), to recycle their dollars back into the US by
purchasing Treasury Bonds, stocks, real estate and other dollar-denominated
assets. As U.S. financial markets crumble, how long until these foreign
countries decide their investments are safer elsewhere, and pull the rug out from under the
Empire?
Can This Continue?

Oil leases are capitalist to their core- they risk human life in pursuit
of profit
Siegmund, 11 Contributor for DailyKos (Fred, Daily Kos, Oil Spills and Capitalism,
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/05/952978/-Oil-Spills-and-Capitalism#, March 5th)//jk

The BP oil spill started so long ago it is hard to remember the details. It began with the
explosion and death of 11 employees, followed by a fire and the sinking of
the drilling platform. The pictures of the flaming platform and the billowing smoke diverted our attention
from the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. The early reports down played the spill. We know the spill is
much bigger than the early BP reports when we read about a dead battery in the blow out
equipment and one failed containment effort after another. To top that off we had to listen to company CEOs blame
each other in Congressional testimony. I list some of the failures of BP because I have not heard politicians question
capitalism or whether it is best way to explore and drill for oil. Nor have I heard media commentary or anyone in

Capitalists complain government is

wasteful, inefficient and bureaucratic when private firms have the incentive
to minimize costs to compete with other firms. Minimizing costs also means
ignoring the environmental safety precautions that Congress and the public
wants in the leases, and also working to reduce enforcement. Oil leases are
usually discussed as an example of capitalism, but the continental shelf is the public domain as much
Congress question leasing drilling rights to private companies.

as the Washington Monument and Yellowstone Park. Capitalism requires private ownership with transactions
exclusively between private parties, not the government. When the government contracts with firms in the

Leasing
the drilling rights on the continental shelf is just one way to recover the oil if
Congress and the country decide to take the risk of a spill. Another way is to form a public corporation
construction industry to build roads or drill oil, the buyer side of the transaction is the government.

like Conrail, Amtrak, the Tennessee Valley Authority or the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Sustainable Development
Sustainable development serves capital accumulation for efficient
production and long term exploitation
Steinburg 99 [1999, Phillip E Steinburg is from the Department of Geography at Florida State University
and holds a PhD,~ The Maritime Mystique: Sustainable Development, capital mobility, and nostalgia in the world
ocean, http://mailer.fsu.edu/~psteinbe/garnet-psteinbe/s%26s.pdf] GKoo
Introduction: Three images of ocean space In December of 1994, the General Assembly of the United Nations
designated 1998 the International Year of the Ocean (United Nations General Assembly, 1994b),"provid[ing] a
window of opportunity for governments, organizations and individuals to become aware of the ocean situation and
to consider the actions needed to undertake our common responsibility to sustain the greatest common heritage we
have and without which we cannot exist" (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 1997a). Build-ing upon

the International Year

of the Ocean (IY0)(1) was designed to place the world ocean within the
discourse of sustainable development, a discourse that others have
noted is devoted to the rational management of scarce resources so that
nature can continue to serve as a material base for capital
accumulation well into the twenty-first century (O'Connor, 1994). As the statement
of objectives for the International Year of the Ocean reads, in its entirety: " The overall objective is to
focus and reinforce the attention of the public, govern-ments and decision makers at large on
the importance of the oceans and the marine environment as resources for
sustainable development. The major aim of the joint efforts during 1998 will be to create awareness
the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED),

and obtain commitments from governments to take action, provide adequate resources and give the priority to the

This is most important in

view of the increasing threats of pollution, population pressure, excessive
fishing, coastal zone degradation and climate variability to the finite resource
the ocean represents. Without a healthy ocean, the life-supporting system of the earth would be
seriously endangered" (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, 1997b; emphasis added). An IYO
planning document leaves little doubt about the overall orientation of the Year of
the Ocean toward what Esteva (1992) calls "the reign of scarcity": "Finite size must
be emphasized" in all IYO activities and publications (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission,
1997a). This application of the sustainable development discourse to the ocean
at the inter-governmental level has been supported by representations of the
ocean in the popular media. In 1995 alone, two major US publications, Time and National Geographic,
ocean and coastal areas which they deserve as finite economical assets.

featured cover stories celebrating the ocean as a resource-rich but fragile environment (Lcmonick, 1995; Parfit,

Time tells an optimistic story: The sea is a frontier replete with

opportunity, at last capable of being 'conquered'. National Geographic
tells a more pessimistic story: The sea is an endangered environment
wherein new technologies both respond to and reproduce scarcity (figure 1).
Both stories, however, place the sea within a discourse of sustainable
development similar to that constructed by the promoters of the IYO: As the sea is a space of
"finite economical assets," the commodification of its environment
should be guided by long-run planning for maximum efficiency and
productivity. Similarly, a 1998 supplement to The Economist celebrates the ocean
as a multiple-use space, but one in which certain uses are likely to crowd out
others and destroy the ocean environment unless we "take stewardship of the ocean,
with all the privileges and responsibilities that implies" (The Economist 1998, page 18).
Also asso-ciated with these efforts to promote investment in the sustained exploitation of the
1995).

ocean's riches is a general campaign for what Leddy (1996) calls the 'Coustcauization' of the
oceans. a popular movement to cultivate public interest in the ocean's biota with the effect of
generating support for further marine research and for governmental and/or corporate stewardship of
marine resources. In the USA, perhaps the most visible spokesperson for this
movement has been publicist/author/bureaucrat/oceanographer Sylvia Earle, supported by a
marine research and development military industrial complex represented by individuals such
as computer entrepreneur and former US Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard and retired Admiral James
Watkins, a former US Chief of Naval Operations and US Secretary of Energy who presently heads the Consortium for
Oceanographic Research and Education (Broad, 1997).

Tsunamis
Be skeptical of the AFFs so-called humanitarian agenda. Their
blanket approach is paradoxical ignores the structural inequalities
at play, which reifies neoliberalism
Ahli 10
Ashma I Ahli, In Pursuant of A Masters of Science: Development and Planning: Development Administration and
Planning, University College London, September 1, 2010,
( DISASTER CAPITALISM A Neoliberal catalyst towards further vulnerability,
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/icemic/documents/a-recipe-for-disaster-neoliberalism-natural-disasters-and-humanrights.pdf) - AW
Whilst further research on this topic may be beneficial regarding the depth and breadth of discussions concerning

this examination has made explicit is that a

failure of governance underlies most environmental problems (Satterthwaite,
2003:89). Although most disasters have natural triggers that cannot be avoided ,
their impact can be greatly reduced by understanding the complex social,
political and economic structures which determine who within the population
is vulnerable, and by subsequently protecting such groups. As Olshanky (2006) writes,
alongside adequately protective levees and hurricane warning and
evacuation planning in New Orleans, what is desperately needed above all is to
create equal opportunities for all future residents of the city, whilst Morrow
(1999) affirms that in Bangladesh, those geographically, physically, and economically
vulnerable to cyclones can only be truly disaster resistant when they are
prioritised in both top-level and grassroots mitigation planning. This is, however,
assuming that authorities deem the economic cost of such policies as
worthwhile. As demonstrated, I concur with theorists who remain sceptical of
the dedication of neoliberalist authorities to humanitarian agendas ,
particularly regarding the protection of the well-being and the
rights of those who may appear anomalous to the hegemonic norm .
socio-natural disasters and human rights, what

As such, I have utilised previous paradigms to frame my results which collectively go far in explaining why such

marginal groups
can suffer from social and political misrecognition, which excludes the plights
of certain groups from mainstream society. This leads to the cultural
depreciation, social ostracism and denial of civic rights of such groups, which
we have witnessed in the exclusion of minority groups in the rescue and
restoration efforts surrounding both disasters. However, Foucaults biopolitical
modernity embodies a somewhat more radical explanation behind the socio-political
conditions surrounding the events. Governmental power to foster life or disallow it to
the point of death (Foucault, 1990:138), strongly resonates within both cases, as evidence shows
that literal deaths, as well as metaphorical ones (social, political, cultural) demonstrated a large-scale
disempowerment that many citizens possessed to determine their own life
course. Furthermore, I believe that Baumans wasted lives and Giroux politics of
disposability, both of which argue that redundant or superfluous individuals
are downgraded to the status of waste and left unprotected in neoliberalist
society, has proved imperative to my analysis in order to provide
understanding to the apathetic, negligent and discriminatory governmental
behaviour regarding rights violations. This process appears inevitable in any
violations transpired. For example, both Honneth (1995) and Fraser (2000) identify how

society where corporate concerns displace democratic values (Giroux,

2006a:29). At the extreme, Bauman and Giroux indicate that disasters may even operate an
economic Darwinism, cleansing the social landscape from monetarily
undesirable and culturally dissenting citizens, fuelled by the logic of Baumans liquid
modernity and cultural homogeneity (Giroux, 2006a:63). In this neoliberalist modernity, worthless and
marginalised citizens are abandoned to the rhetoric of economic efficiency, ethical disengagement and selfresponsibility so as to be neither a drain on the privileged classes nor a burden on public consciousness (ibid.).

What remains consistent in these examples, therefore, is that in times of

disaster, governments are often apathetic and even negligent towards their
societal commitments towards disenfranchised groups. Disaster mitigation
and relief are impure public goods (Boyce, 2000:357), meaning that certain
minority members of society remain excluded from such benefits whilst
richer, more powerful, and more conventional citizens (in reference to neoliberalist
modernity) remain prioritised when it comes to governmental protection and investment. What I
believe reverberates most poignantly and significantly throughout this discussion, however, is
Baumans identification of the paradoxical ideology of modernity: of
authorities declaring the pursuit of happiness to be a universal
human right, and the survival of the fittest to be the prime means of
implementing it (Bauman, 2006: 79). This hypocrisy, I believe, is the nexuses
impossibility of the simultaneous existence of neoliberalist regimes
and the protection of international human rights standards
regarding socio-natural disasters.
The AFF is a paper faade when tsunamis hit, relief and
reconstruction are dictated and favored toward the rich.
Fraser 13
Steve Fraser, editor-at-large of New Labor Forum, a co-founder of the American Empire Project, and author most
recently of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace, Apr. 4, 2013, (A History of Disaster Capitalism,
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/history-disaster-capitalism?page=1) - AW

In 2007, a financial firestorm ravaged Wall Street and the rest of the country.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy obliterated a substantial chunk of the Atlantic
seaboard. We think of the first as a man-made calamity, the second as the
malignant innocence of nature. But neither the notion of a man-made nor
natural disaster quite captures how the power of a few and the vulnerability
of the many determine what is really going on at ground level. Causes and
consequences, who gets blamed and who leaves the scene
permanently scarred, who goes down and who emerges better
positioned than before: these are matters often predetermined by the
structures of power and wealth, racial and ethnic hierarchies, and despised and
favored forms of work, as well as moral and social prejudices in place before disaster
strikes. When it comes to our recent financial implosion, this is easy enough to see,
although great efforts have been expended trying to deny the self-evident. 'Man' did not bring the system to its
knees; the country's dominant financial institutions and a complicit government did that. They've recovered, the

Sandy seems a more ambiguous case. On the one hand, it's obvious
enough that an economy resting on fossil fuels played a catalytic role in
intensifying the storm. Those corporate interests profiting from that form of
energy production and doing all they can to defend it are certainly culpable,
not the rest of mankind which has no other choice but to depend on the
rest of us haven't.

energy system we're given. On the other hand, rich and poor, big businesses
and neighborhood shops suffered; some, however, more than others. Among them were
working class communities; public-housing residents; outer borough
homeowners; communities in Long Island, along the New Jersey shore, and
inland as well; workers denied unemployment compensation; and the old,
the sick, and the injured abandoned for days or weeks in dark and dangerous
high-rises without medical help or access to fresh food or water. Help, when
it came to these 'disadvantaged' worlds, often arrived late, or last,
or not at all. Cleaning up and rebuilding New York City and other places hit
by the storm will provide a further road map of who gets served and whose
ox gets gored. It's ominous, if hardly shocking, that Mayor Bloomberg has already
appointed Mark Ricks of Goldman Sachs to the business-dominated team
planning the city's future. Where would this billionaire mayor turn other than
to his fraternity brothers, especially in this era when, against all the odds, we still worship at the altar of
the deal-makers, no matter their malfeasances and fatal ineptitudes? Still, it is early days and the verdict is not in

incisive analysis by sociologists Kevin Fox Gotham and

of what happened after the 9/11 attacks in New York and in New Orleans
after Hurricane Katrina offers some concrete forebodings. Everyone knows that, as soon
as Katrina made landfall, the racial divisions of New Orleans became the
scandal of the month when it came to which communities were drowned and which got helped, who got
arrested (and shot), and who left town forever. To be poor in New Orleans during and
after Katrina was a curse. To be poor and black amounted to
excommunication. Gotham and Greenberg prove that, post-9/11 and post-Katrina,
reconstruction and rehabilitation was also skewed heavily in favor
of the business community and the wealthier. In both cities, big
business controlled the redevelopment processand so where the money
landed and where it didn't. Tax breaks and private sector subsidies became
channels for federal aid. 'Public benefit' standards, which once accompanied
federal grants and tax exemptions to insure that projects served some public
purpose, especially to 'benefit persons of low and moderate income,' were
eliminated, leaving poorer people out in the cold, while exacerbating existing
inequalities. Governments scurried around inventing ways to auction off
reconstruction projects to private interests by issuing tax exempt 'Private
Activity Bonds.' These were soon gloriously renamed 'Liberty Bonds,' though
the unasked question was: Whose liberty? The lion's share of grants and
exemptions went, of course, to the biggest corporations. In New York, more
on the post-Sandy future. However, an
Miriam Greenberg

than 40% of all bonds, or $2.4 billion, went to a single developer, Larry Silverstein. Second to Silverstein wasdon't
be shockedGoldman Sachs.

Yet these institutions and their inhabitants

represented at best a mere 15% of those affected, most of whom were
low-wage workers who, in some cases, ended up getting evicted from their
homes thanks to those business-oriented tax breaks. Federal aid, hypothetically tied to
building affordable housing and the creation of living-wage jobs ended up as just that: hypothetical. Naturally,

these mechanisms proved lucrative. More than that they are the means
by which elites use disasters as opportunities to turn wrecked cities
or regions into money-making centers and playlands for what in the nineteenth
century was called 'the upper tendom' and what we now call 'the 1%.' Indeed, the original 'upper tendom' faced its
own 'natural' disasters during the Gilded Age. Then, too, such catastrophes exposed the class and racial anatomy of
America to public view. Then, too, one man's disaster was another's main chance. Whether you focus on the cause

of the calamity, the way people reacted to it, or the means and purposes that drove the reclamation afterwards,
disasters and capitalism metabolized together long before 'disaster capitalism' became the nom de jour.

2NC Impacts

Turns Warming
Turns warming exponential consumption leads to extinction. Brink
is now and capitalism cannot solve
Li 12 [10/17/2012, Minqi Li is a Chinese political economist, world-systems analyst, and historical social
scientist, currently an associate professor of Economics at the University of Utah, ~ Socialism: The 20th Century
and the 21st Century (Thomas Weisskopf Festschrift Conference Paper), Google Books] GKoo

All human societies depend on the earth's ecological systems for

survival and development. Human societies use renewable and nonrenewable resources for

material production and consumption. The human production processes, in addition to producing useful goods and
services, generate material wastes and pollution.

To sustain the normal functioning of the

ecological systems, the hu-man consumption of nonrenewable resources
should be minimized, the human consumption of renewable resources should
stay within the ecological system's natural regenerative capacity, and the
material wastes generated by human ac-tivities need to stay within the ecological
system's natural absorptive capacity. Thus, to maintain ecological sustainability, the human
environmental impact (resources consumption and pollution) must stabilize at a level that
is within the ecological system's natural limit. However, the capitalist
economic system is based on production for profit and endless
accumulation of capital. The normal operation of capitalism tends to lead
to unlimited expansion of material produc-tion and consumption. The basic
laws of motion of capitalism are therefore in fundamental conflict with the
requirements of ecological sustainability. This may be illustrated by the following simple
formula: Environmental Impact = GDP * Environmental Impact per Unit of GDP Thus, unless the growth of
GDP is more than offset by declining environmen-tal impact per unit of GDP,
capital accumulation (economic growth) will result in growing environmental impact,
potentially leading to ecological collapse. After centuries of relentless capital
accumulation, many aspects of the global ecological system are now
on the verge of total collapse. In particular, climate change, caused by
greenhouse gases emitted by human consumption of fossil fuels, is now
threatening the very survival of human civilization. The global average temperature is now
about 0.8 degrees Celsius higher than it was in pre-industrial times and rising at a rate of 0.2 degrees per decade.

There is a growing consensus among scientists that if global warming rises

above 2 degrees Celsius, dangerous climate feedbacks may be triggered,
leading to the release of more greenhouse gases from the ocean and terrestrial ecological systems. In the
event of runaway global warming, much of the world would cease to
be inhabitable and catastrophic declines of global population may
ensue (Spratt and Sutton, 2009). Is it possible for the global ecological crisis to be
resolved within the histori-cal framework of capitalism? According to the defenders of
the existing system, capitalism is an exceptionally innovative system. With proper incentives, capi-talists would be
motivated to develop -eco-friendly" technologies that help to reduce environmental impact per unit of economic
output, allowing capitalism to achieve both endless accumulation of capital and ecological sustainability. However,
in reality,

the economic growth rate is almost always higher than the

reduction rate of environmental impact per unit of output, so that the
global consumption of most natural resources and the global generation of
most pollut-ants continue to grow exponentially. Why has capitalist
technological progress failed to deliver ecological sustainability? In addition

to various economic and technical limits, the pace of technologi-cal

progress is limited by the pace of infrastructure transformation. Each
year only a fraction of the existing capital equipment and buildings may be
replaced. Suppose an economy each year replaces 5 percent of its capital
infrastructure. Making the heroic assumption that the new capital is twice as
efficient as the old capital so that the environmental impact per unit of output falls by 50 per-cent for the
new capital, for the economy as a whole, this represents a reduc-tion of environmental
impact per unit of output by 2.5 percent. But a modem capitalist economy
often needs a 3 percent economic growth rate to prevent the unemployment
rate from rising. Thus, even with this very optimistic assump-tion about
technological progress, the rate of technological progress is smaller
than the economic growth rate required for capitalist stability,
implying rising environmental impact. In many areas, resources depletion and
environmental degradation are now proceeding at rates far above the
sustainable rates. Thus, to stabilize the global ecological system and achieve
sustainability would require not stable environ-mental impact, but declining
environmental impact. For example, to prevent long-term global warming of more than 2 degrees
Celsius, global carbon di-oxide emissions need to start to fall immediately, declining at an annual rate of 5 percent
from now to the end of the century. To prevent long-term global warming of more than 3 degrees Celsius (which
would carry a significant risk of runaway global swanning), global carbon dioxide emissions need to decline at an

it is
impossible for global capitalist accumulation to be made compatible
with global ecological sustainability. To the extent that the continuing
existence and operation of the capitalist world system is now in
fundamental conflict with the survival and development of human
civilization, capitalism has ceased to be a historically viable social system.
annual rate of 1.5 percent from now to the end of the century (Anderson and Bows, 2011; Li, 2011). Thus,

Turns Economy
Economic crisis is inevitable - capitalists love it. They rather let the
economy stagnate to gain more power
Bichler and Nitzan 14 [Shimshon Bichler is an educator who teaches political economy at colleges
and universities in Israel, Jonathan Nitzan is Professor of Political Economy at York University in Toronto, ~ How
capitalists learned to stop worrying and love
the crisis, http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue66/BichlerNitzan66.pdf] GKoo
Accumulation of what? The answer depends on what we mean by capital accumulation. The common view of this
process is deeply utilitarian. Capitalists, we are told, seek to maximize their so-called real wealth: they try to
accumulate as many machines, structures, inventories and intellectual property rights as they can. And the reason,
supposedly, is straightforward. Capitalists are hedonic creatures. Like every other economic agent, their ultimate
goal is to maximize their utility from consumption. This hedonic quest is best served by economic growth: more
output enables more consumption; the faster the expansion of the economy, the more rapid the accumulation of
real capital; and the larger the capital stock, the greater the utility from its eventual consumption. Utility-seeking

The
ultimate goal of modern capitalists and perhaps of all capitalists since the
very beginning of their system is not utility, but power. They are driven not to
maximize hedonic pleasure, but to beat the average. This aim is not a subjective
capitalists should therefore love booms and hate crises.2 But that is not how real capitalists operate.

preference. It is a rigid rule, dictated and enforced by the conflictual nature of the capitalist mode of power.

Capitalism pits capitalists against other groups in society, as well as against each other.
And in this multifaceted struggle for power, the yardstick is always relative. Capitalists are compelled
and conditioned to accumulate differentially, to augment not their absolute
utility but their earnings relative to others. They seek not to perform but
to out-perform, and outperformance means re-distribution. Capitalists who beat the average redistribute
income and assets in their favour; this redistribution raises their share of the total; and a larger share of the total
means greater power stacked against others. Shifting the research focus from utility to power has far-reaching
consequences. Most importantly, it means that capitalist performance should be gauged not in absolute terms of
real consumption and production, but in financial-pecuniary terms of relative income and asset shares. And as we
move from the materialist realm of hedonic pleasure to the differential process of conflict and power, the notion
that capitalists love growth and yearn for recovery is no longer self evident. The accumulation of capital as power
can be analyzed at many different levels. The most aggregate of these levels is the overall distribution of income

In order to increase their power,

approximated by their income share, capitalists have to strategically
sabotage the rest of society. And one of their key weapons in this struggle is unemployment.
between capitalists and other groups in society.

The effect of unemployment on distribution is not obvious, at least not at first sight. Rising unemployment, insofar
as it lowers the absolute (real) level of activity, tends to hurt capitalists and employees alike. But the impact on
money prices and wages can be highly differential, and this differential can move either way. If unemployment
causes the ratio of price to unit wage cost to decline, capitalists will fall behind in the redistributional struggle, and
this retreat is sure to make them impatient for recovery. But if the opposite turns out to be the case that is ,

if
unemployment helps raise the price/wage cost ratio capitalists would
have good reason to love crisis and indulge in stagnation . So which of
these two scenarios pans out in practice? Do stagnation and crisis increase capitalist power?
Does unemployment help capitalists raise their distributive share? Or is it the other way around? Unemployment

Figures 1 and 2 examine this process in the United

States, showing the relationship between the share of capital in domestic
income and the rate of unemployment since the 1930s. The top panel of Figure 1
and the capitalist income share

displays the levels of the two variables, both smoothed as 5-year moving averages. The solid line, plotted against
the left log scale, depicts pre-tax profit and net interest as a percent of domestic income. The dotted line, plotted
against the right log scale, exhibits the rate of unemployment as a share of the labour force. Note that the
unemployment series is lagged three years, meaning that every observation shows the situation prevailing three
years earlier. The bottom panel displays their respective annual rates of change of the two top variables, beginning
in 1940. The same relationship is shown, somewhat differently, in Figure 2. This chart displays the same variables,
but instead of plotting them against time, it plots them against each other. The capitalist share of domestic income
is shown on the vertical axis, while the rate of unemployment three years earlier is shown on the horizontal axis (for
a different examination of this relationship, including its theoretical and historical nonlinearities, see Nitzan and

Now, readers conditioned by the

prevailing dogma would expect the two variables to be inversely correlated.
The economic consensus is that the capitalist income share in the advanced
countries is procyclical (see for example, Giammarioli et al. 2002; Schneider 2011). Expressed in simple
words, this belief means that capitalists should see their share of income rise in the
boom when unemployment falls and decline in the bust when unemployment rises. But that
is not what has happened in the United States. According to Figures 1 and 2,
during the post-war era, the U.S. capitalist income share has moved
countercyclically, rising in downturns and falling in booms. The
relationship between the two series in the charts is clearly positive and very
tight. Regressing the capitalist share of domestic income against the rate of unemployment three years earlier,
Bichler 2009: 236-239, particularly Figures 12.1 and 12.2).

we find that for every 1 per cent increase in unemployment, there is 0.8 per cent increase in the capitalist share of
domestic income three years later (see the straight OLS regression line going through the observations in Figure 2).

The R-squared of the regression indicates that, between 1947 and 2012,
changes in the unemployment rate accounted for 82 per cent of the squared
variations of capitalist income three years later.3 The remarkable thing
about this positive correlation is that it holds not only over the
short-term business cycle, but also in the long term. During the
booming 1940s, when unemployment was very low, capitalists appropriated a relatively
small share of domestic income. But as the boom fizzled, growth decelerated
and stagnation started to creep in, the share of capital began to trend upward. The peak
power of capital, measured by its overall income share, was recorded in the early 1990s,
when unemployment was at post-war highs. The neoliberal globalization that followed brought
lower unemployment and a smaller capital share, but not for long. In the late 2000s, the trend
reversed again, with unemployment soaring and the distributive share of capital rising in
tandem. Employment growth and the top 1% The power of capitalists can also be examined from the viewpoint of
the infamous Top 1%. This group comprises the countrys highest income earners. It includes a variety of formal
occupations, from managers and executives, to lawyers and doctors, to entertainers, sports stars and media
operators, among others (Bakija, Cole, and Heim 2012), but most of its income is derived directly or indirectly from
capital. The Top 1% features mostly in social critiques of capitalism, echoing the conventional belief that
accumulation is an economic process of production and that the distribution of income is merely a derivative of

Distribution is not a corollary of

accumulation, but its very essence. And as it turns out, in the United States, the distributional gains of the
Top 1% have been boosted not by growth, but by stagnation. Figure 3
that process. 4 This belief, though, puts the world on its head.

shows the century-long relationship between the income share of the Top 1% of the U.S. population and the annual
growth rate of U.S. employment (with both series smoothed as 10-year moving averages). The overall relationship

When stagnation sets in and employment growth decelerates,

the income share of the Top 1% actually rises - and vice versa during a longterm boom (reversing the causal link, we get the generalized underonsumptionist view, with rising overall
is clearly negative.

inequality breeding stagnation see Box 1). Historically, this negative relationship shows three distinct periods,
indicated by the dashed, freely drawn line going through the employment growth series. The first period, from the
turn of the century till the 1930s, is the so-called Gilded Age. Income inequality is rising and employment growth is
plummeting. The second period, from the Great Depression till the early 1980s, is marked by the Keynesian welfarewarfare state. Higher taxation and spending make distribution more equal, while employment growth accelerates.
Note the massive acceleration of employment growth during the Second World War and its subsequent deceleration
bought by post-war demobilization. Obviously these dramatic movements were unrelated to income inequality, but
they did not alter the series overall upward trend. The third period, from the early 1980s to the present, is marked
by neoliberalism. In this period, monetarism assumes the commanding heights, inequality starts to soar and
employment growth plummets. The current rate of employment growth hovers around zero while the Top 1%
appropriates 20 per cent of all income similar to the numbers recorded during Great Depression. How capitalists
learned to stop worrying and love the crisis If we follow the conventional macroeconomic creed, whether

U.S. capitalism is in bad shape. For nearly half a

century, the country has watched economic growth and real accumulation
mainstream or heterodox,

decelerate in tandem so much so that that both measures now are pretty
much at a standstill (Bichler and Nitzan 2013: 24, Figure 12). To make a bad situation worse, policy
attempts to get the economy going seem to have run out of fiscal and
monetary ammunition (Bichler and Nitzan 2013: 2-13). Finally, and perhaps most ominously, many
policymakers now openly admit to be flying blind when steering their
economies (Giles 2013). And yet U.S. capitalists seem blas about the crisis. Instead of being
terrified by zero growth and a stationary capital stock, they are obsessed with
excessive deficits, unsustainable debt and the inflationary consequences of the Feds so-called
quantitative easing. Few capitalists if any call on their government to lower
unemployment and create more jobs, let alone to rethink the entire model of economic
organization. The evidence in this research note serves to explain this nonchalant attitude: Simply put,
U.S. capitalists are not worried about the crisis; they love it.
Redistribution, by definition, is a zero-sum game: the relative gains of one
group are the relative losses of others. However, in capitalism, the end goals of those struggling
to redistribute income and assets can differ greatly. Workers, the self-employed and those who are out of work seek

Capitalists, by contrast, fight for power.

Contrary to other groups in society, capitalists are indifferent to real
magnitudes. Driven by power, they gauge their success not in absolute units of utility, but in differential
pecuniary terms, relative to others. Moreover and crucially their differential performance-readpower depends on the extent to which they can strategically sabotage the
very groups they seek to outperform. In this way, rising unemployment which hammers
to increase their share in order to augment their well being.

the well-being of workers, unincorporated businesses and the unemployed serves to boost the overall income
share of capitalists. And as employment growth decelerates, the income share of the Top 1% which includes the
capitalists as well as their protective power belt soars. Under these circumstances,

capitalists have to get the economy going?

what reason do

Why worry about rising unemployment and zero

job growth when these very processes serve to boost their income-share-read-power?

Turns Oil Wars

Capitalism developed the system that emphasizes oil it continues
to motivate governments to initiate conflicts
Urie 13 [9/20/13, Rob Urie is political economist in New York, ~ Capitalism and US Oil Geo-Politics,
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/20/capitalism-and-us-oil-geo-politics/] GKoo

Rough variants of capitalism were behind the growth of industry in

the West and industry is the primary military / non-military user of oil. The strategic
economic importance of oil to capitalist economies precedes its geo-political
import because industry (an economy) is needed to build the military
materiel of geo-politics before modern warfare is even possible. This
is true from the genesis of industrial capitalism through the production
destruction cycles of economic / geo-political actors across modern history .
The oil shocks of the 1970s were sold as geo-political in nature with the first in 1973
even called the Arab Oil Embargo even though Iran, then still a U.S. client state, and
Venezuela, were the main OPEC members in favor of embargo and both had
little quarrel with U.S.-Israeli relations. And multi-national oil companies based in the U.S. were
the primary actors holding oil off of world markets to raise the price. What was demonstrated with the embargoes
was the effect that suddenly limited access to oil had on Western industrial economies that were structured to be
wholly dependent on plentiful supplies at relatively low cost. Lacking the independent imperial relations needed to
secure plentiful, cheap oil France and Japan both aggressively moved their nuclear energy programs forward. Given
the relative immobility of nuclear energy, as opposed to nuclear weapons, these programs were conceived and built
for economic purposes. The embargoes caused swift, steep recessions and the paradox in Western economics of
rising prices coincident with falling economic production. The modern storyline of U.S. energy dependence /
independence was borne here and the last embargo in 1979 resulted from oil-rich Iran declaring its independence
from the U.S. And the hard turn right in Western academic economics evolved from the seeming paradox of

The point is sometimes made that political instability runs counter

to the interests of capitalists inferring that the desire for profits provides a natural check against the
stagflation.

historical tendency of capitalist economies to go to war at the drop of a hat and keep fighting years or decades after

The theory itself requires a quaint

notion of capitalism akin to antique Scottish economist Adam Smiths petite bourgeois shop keeps
who may have feared they would lose business if the rabble chased good paying customers
away. With Wall Street as an example, this theory fails in two central ways
Wall Street uses economic power backed by the threat of state power and
the power of Western institutions like the IMF (International Monetary Fund) to insert itself into
the possibility of achieving geo-political goals has passed.

political economies around the globe and then restructure them for its own benefit. (For examples: see Goldman
Sachs currency swaps and their effect on Greek political economy or the effect of IMF structural adjustment
programs in South America). The great mystery of the austerity hoisted on Western economies (that defies
political explanations) is straightforwardly the same creditors view of corporate accountsthe bankers view used
in workouts of corporate debt, applied to national accounts. The point: through exploitative economic extraction
based on naked power relationships Wall Street is both economically and politically destabilizing around the globe.
Capitalist imperialism isnt the mutually beneficial system of trade between equals of theorythe IMF, the supreme
tool of finance capitalism, is one of the most economically and politically destabilizing forces in world history. The

Wall Street is destabilizing is through an internal paradox of

capitalism itself. Even if Wall Street were populated by Adam Smiths shop
keeps opening their doors in the morning and waiting for customers to come in and transact for a
modest profit, the system of capitalism, its social component that produces a collective outcome
different from the simple aggregation of the parts, is fundamentally destabilizing. In recent years the
second way

late American economist Hyman Minsky has become best known for his theory that stability is destabilizing, that

in capitalist economies with developed financial institutions periods of

sustained stability lead to increased risk taking that produces financial
bubbles that in turn cause economic crises when these bubbles

inevitably burst. Mr. Minsky developed his theories for finance capitalism, capitalism where finance plays a
prominent role. But even industrial capitalism in which finance plays a less prominent role has regularly
recurring crises caused by commodities booms and busts and wars. Economists
and capitalists can disagree over the causes of these crises but their history as regularly recurring events is
undeniable. One other dimension of the de-stabilizing effect of capitalism is illustrated through the economic crises
in Western economies of recent decades. Wall Street in particular, and the corporate West more broadly, has been
provided its wish list in terms of the freedom to conduct business as it sees fit. Wall Street was effectively
deregulated, allowed to increase leverage, allowed to shift risks (within the system of finance and without) and
allowed to engage in predatory practices that actively harmed its customers under the rationale that business
leaders know what is best for business. In 2008 Wall Street hung itself with the rope it had
asked for and took the global economy down with it. If these same Wall Street executives were asked if they wanted
periodic crises of increasing intensity that produce widespread economic catastrophe the most likely answer is no.
But the desire for both economic stability and profits goes to Keynes insight that individual rationalities dont lead

Wall Street got exactly what it thought would be

good for business and economic catastrophe was the result . But the more
potent insight from Marx is that the system of capitalism itself is unstableprone to
crises, from the symbiosis of concentrated economic power and the state
power that serves its interests. In practice capitalism is a system of
economic imperialism. The capitalist cartoon of bourgeois shop keeps trading celery for shoes or
to systemic rationalities.

corporate CEOs wishing for political stability as they install warmongering political leaders is just that, a cartoon.

When the U.S. neo-cons in the George W. Bush administration argued that Iraqs, and more
broadly the Middle Easts, oil is of strategic importance they left unstated the
historical development that makes it strategically important. The
circular logic of the geo-political explanation, that oil is strategically
important because it is strategically important, leaves out how Western
capitalist development made it so through strategies of engineered
dependence. Capitalism, to the extent the term is descriptively accurate, is the political
economy that built this world where energy plays the economic
role it does. In the early twentieth century a group of industrialists lobbied local governments to tear out
existing mass transit systems so that they could sell cars, tires, gasoline and roads. The last serious discussion of
energy conservation in the U.S. was when Jimmy Carter was in the White House. In the middle of the most recent
U.S. war on Iraq the George W. Bush administration passed a tax subsidy to encourage businesses to purchase the
largest gas-guzzling cars in existenceHummers. Global warming caused by burning fossil fuels threatens the
continuing existence of life on this planet. So put another way, over a million people in Iraq died so we in the West
can drive SUVs. And Iraq was but one of Americas wars fought for oil. Comedian Jon Stewart, among others, has
made the point that for the all of the death, destruction and carnage the U.S. caused in Iraq we U.S.
corporations, dont even control the oilthe Chinese have been large purchasers of Iraqs oil without having
launched a devastating war to get it. What this argument misses is that oil industry profits went through the roof
from the higher energy prices geo-political unrest tends to generate. The George W. Bush administration probably
had no concept of the catastrophe it would create with its war in Iraq. But if you go to the neo-con literature their
theories have it that engineered chaos is a form of winning because preventing other monopolies, both economic
and political, from arising is as important as achieving local monopoly power when you already have global
monopoly power. And for those who werent paying attention, through illegal short selling, CDS (Credit Default
Swaps) depredations and backdoor deals through the New York Fed, Wall Street was in full cannibalization mode
during the very worst of the financial calamity in 2008.

generating machine.

Capitalism is a catastrophe-

Turns Cooperation
Capitalism destroys cooperation we control empirics and terminal
escalation
Spector 10 [2010, Alan Spector is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University and has a PhD in
sociology, ~ Neoliberal Globalization and Capitalist Crises in the Age of Imperialism, Book] GKoo

One might assume that the biggest,

wealthiest nations will see a need to cooperate to solve their common
problems, and indeed, in the short term, we can see meetings and conferences designed to encourage
cooperation. But underlying this whole process are serious potential problems
as the advanced capitalist countries compete with each other for
profits and control over the less developed countries (what Lenin called interimperialist rivalry), and that
can set the stage for sharper conflicts among the imperialist
countries themselves (Lenin 1969). This intense economic crisis puts even
greater strains on these capitalist economies and pressures them into finding more
international sources of profits, and this, in turn, increases the possibilities
for various types of conflicts, not just with smaller countries but with
larger ones as well. World War I appeared to have been started by a conflict between two different factions
How might this impact international relations?

from small countries in the Balkans, but these countries were proxies for the powerful nations that were battling for

the U.S. war in Iraq, begun in 2003, has

been characterized by some as a war for democracy. This has been critiqued by those
much bigger prizes, including Arabian oil. More recently,

who point out U.S. military inaction in the many other areas of the world where the lack of democracy has hurt
many more people. Others see it as a war for oil. This has been critiqued by those who point out that the United

A more subtle but still

economically based analysis sees the war as largely motivated by the
need to control the flow of oil to Europe, China, and other rivals of
U.S. imperialism. Stabilizing a regime in Iraq that would be friendly to U.S.
corporate interests is seen as providing a military base to protect U.S. oil
company interests in the whole region. It is seen as a way to neutralize Iran, perhaps turning it
States has vast quantities of oil, and, in fact, imports very little oil from Iraq.

into a U.S. ally, as it had been for a part of the twentieth century. It would protect the profits that U.S. corporations

It is not so much the actual

oil that the U.S. needs, but rather the huge profits that are made acquiring
and then reselling that oil to others who need it. Finally, controlling that oil has
other important politicaleconomic benefits. Neither France, nor Germany, Japan, Italy, or Spain
reap as middlemen, resellers of the regions oil to others (e.g., Europe).

own significant sources of oil. Russia has huge amounts of natural gas, but also eyes the clean, inexpensive Arabian
and Iranian oil. China has growing needs and is fervently seeking new sources of oil from the Sudan, Eastern

If the U.S.
corporations can maintain tight control on the oil resources of Iraq, and by
extension parts of that region, they can maintain an advantage over those competing
oil importers and thus assure U.S. control and domination over the oil resources of the
Middle East. It might seem counterintuitive to see allies such as the United States, France,
Germany, India, and Japan as rivals to be outmaneuvered by each other, but in a
capitalist world, all alliances are ultimately temporary while
competition is fundamental. Wallerstein, among others, has argued that there was a sizeable
Ethiopia, and Nigeria to Venezuela and Mexico. India, too, will have growing needs.

faction within the erstwhile Bush administration that was motivated not just by the so-called Clash of Civilizations
between the United States and the radical Islamic movement, but by the economic and political power of Western

More recently, President Obama has sent a force of

over 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. While Afghanistan may seem to be a
Europe, Russia, and China as well.

poor country with few resources, the reality is that it is strategically located for gas
and oil pipelines and for military positioning near Russia, China, and the oilrich areas in that region. When the USSR collapsed and much of Eastern Europe pushed aside the
various Soviet-style regimes, many mainstream politicians and political theorists postulated that the United States
would be the sole superpower for many years to come, the premier world power in a world that was embracing free
market capitalism. Even China was opening up its economy to U.S. investments. Within a few years, however,
various regional nationalists, especially in the Islamic world, were working to expand their political and economic
influence. It was not only the United States that would gain from the collapse of Soviet influence in much of the
world. Meanwhile, much of Western Europe moved toward closer economic and political integration, with a unified
currency, political alliances, and more coordinated international cooperation on environmental and other policies.
This unity might appear to help stabilize the global political situation, but it also creates pressure on some political
and economic interests within the United States. The Euro is being used in place of the U.S. dollar in parts of the
world, the opposition to U.S. foreign policy, military action, and human rights and environmental policy seems to be
growing, and European investments in areas formerly secure for U.S. investments, such as Latin America, are
competing with U.S. interests. The European Union, much of which President Bush derided as Old Europe in
decline, has helped bolster the Hugo Chavez regime in Venezuela and continues to trade with Cuba, as well as
lending support to other political movements that are at odds with U.S. imperialism. Currently, the European Union
is investing heavily in Mexico. China, too, is rapidly increasing its investments in Latin America. The recent war of
words between Russia and the United States, because Russia sees U.S. missiles near its border as a threat, is
another example of increased tensions among the great powers. This has been further intensified by the recent
conflict between Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where the United States has been propping up a
regime to stir up trouble along the Russian border. No one is predicting a massive inter-imperialist World War in the
near future. The big powers have much to gain from cooperation and much to lose from a major war. However,

the

increased rivalry among the major capitalist powers in a shrinking world,

combined with the rise in economic, technological, and political power of
China and India, will create more pressure on all the major capitalist
powers. World War I was unthinkable in the early 1890s, the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the
big influence that the Soviet government had over hundreds of millions of people over the next seventy years was
not imagined by anyone twenty years earlier, the rise of defeated Germany to world power status just twenty years
after its crushing defeat in World War I was not predicted by many, and the rather sudden collapse of the Soviet
Bloc around 1990 and the very different world that has developed since then were also unexpected just twenty
years earlier. How the increased economic pressures of today will be resolved cannot easily be predicted, but

history should caution us against predicting one hundred years of

world peace, especially as todays pressures and crises have become
globalized in this shrinking world.

Turns War
Capitalism needs war opens markets and cheap resources
Bichler and Nitzan 06 [Shimshon Bichler is an educator who teaches political economy at colleges
and universities in Israel, Jonathan Nitzan is Professor of Political Economy at York University in Toronto, ~
Capitalism and War, http://www.globalresearch.ca/capitalism-and-war/3890] GKoo

The recent flurry of wars from Afghanistan and Iraq to Gaza and Lebanon
has revived talk of imperialism, military Keynesianism and the
military-industrial Complex. Capitalism, many radicals have long argued, needs
war. It needs it to expand its geographical reach; it needs it to open up new
markets; it needs it to access cheap raw materials; and it needs it to placate
opposition at home and pacify rebellious populations abroad.1 The common
perception is that war serves to boost the economy. According to this argument, military
conflict and high military spending in preparation for such conflict generates
overall growth and helps reduce unemployment. This feature of military spending turns
it into an effective fiscal tool. In years of slack, the government can embark on
military Keynesianism, increase its spending on weapons and pull the
economy out of recession. Over the longer haul, military expenditures are said to
undermine the peaceful, civilian outlook of liberal regimes. Spending on the
military boosts the business interests of the large armament
corporations, hardens the outlook of the security apparatus and
emboldens the top army brass. Together, these groups become increasingly
fused in an invisible, yet powerful, military-industrial Complex a complex
that gradually comes to dominate policy and pushes society toward
foreign aggression and military adventurism.
Interdependence doesnt necessarily stop war
Monteiro and Debs 14 [2/3/14, Nuno P. Monteiro is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale
University where he teaches International Relations theory and security studies and earned his Ph.D. in Political
Science from the University of Chicago, Alexandre Debs is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University
and received a Ph.D. degree in Economics from M.I.T.,~An Economic Theory of Hegemonic War,
http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/papers/MonteiroDebs(2014)Feb03Yale.pdf] GKoo

the opportunity-cost argument may gloss over some complex

strategic effects in crises of resolve. As the opportunity cost of war
increases, a given state may be less willing to declare war. Anticipating
this effect, another state may be more willing to escalate a conflict. As a
result, the net effect of interdependence on the likelihood of war may be
indeterminate (Morrow, 1999; Gartzke, Li and Boehmer, 2001).
First,

Capitalism makes war inevitableexcess capital is invested in the

militaryused to open new markets
Robinson, 7Professor of Sociology, Global and International Studies, Latin American and Iberian Studies at
the University of California-Santa Barbara (William I., The Pitfalls of Realist Analysis of Global Capitalism: A Critique
of Ellen Meiksins Woods Empire of Capital, Historical Materialism, 2007,
http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/politics/research/hmrg/activities/documents/Robinson.pdf)

By the early twenty-first century, global capitalism was in crisis. This crisis involves
three interrelated dimensions. First it is a crisis of social polarization. The system

cannot meet the needs of a majority of humanity, or even assure minimal

social reproduction. Second is a structural crisis of over accumulation. The
system cannot expand because the marginalization of a significant portion of
humanity from direct productive participation, the downward pressure on
wages and popular consumption worldwide, and the polarization of income,
have reduced the ability of the world market to absorb world output. The
problem of surplus absorption makes state-driven military spending and the
growth of military-industrial complexes an outlet for surplus and gives the
current global order a frightening built-in war drive. Third is a crisis of HIMA
legitimacy and authority. The legitimacy of the system has increasingly been called into question by millions,
perhaps even billions, of people around the world, and is facing an expanded counter-hegemonic challenge.

Neoliberalism peacefully forced open new areas for global capital in the 1980s and the
1990s. This was often accomplished through economic coercion alone , as Wood
would likely agree, made possible by the structural power of the global economy
over individual countries. But this structural power became less effective in the
face of the three-pronged crisis mentioned above. Opportunities for both intensive and
extensive expansion dried up as privatizations ran their course, as the former
socialist countries became re-integrated into global capitalism, as the
consumption of high-income sectors worldwide reached a ceiling, and so on. The space for peaceful
expansion, both intensive and extensive, became ever more restricted.
Military aggression has become in this context an instrument for prying open
new sectors and regions, for the forcible restructuring of space in order to
further accumulation. The train of neoliberalism became latched on to military
intervention and the threat of coercive sanctions as a locomotive for pulling
the moribund Washington consensus forward. The war on terrorism
provides a seemingly endless military outlet for surplus capital, generates a
colossal deficit that justifies the ever-deeper dismantling of the Keynesian
welfare state and locks neoliberal austerity in place, and legitimates the
creation of a police state to repress political dissent in the name of security.
In the post 9/11 period, the military dimension appeared to exercise an over
determining influence in the reconfiguration of global politics. The Bush
rgime militarized social and economic contradictions, launching a
permanent war mobilization to try to stabilize the system through direct
coercion. But was all this evidence for a new US bid for hegemony? A US campaign to compete with other
major states? To defend its own domestic capital? To maintain a critical balance and control major [state]
competitors? I trust my reasons for rejecting such an argument have been made clear in this critical article.

Capitalism ensures resource conflicts

Bhagwat, 11 (Vishnu, former Chief of the Naval Staff of India, Thee Weaponization of Space: Corporate
Driven Military Unleashes Pre-emptive Wars, July 13, 2011, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=va&aid=21432)

We must understand the reality of our present lawless world, where

corporate driven military might unleashes pre-emptive wars,
invasions and occupations and the UN system stands paralyzed , its
Charter disregarded , the Treaties and conventions signed and ratified ,
flouted at every step . It is necessary for us to focus on the stark truth that
those treaties and conventions do not protect humanity from the forces that

want to dominate and exploit the resources of the world using every weapon
system and all mediums --be they land , sea , the seabed or space and if
the world system does not create a balance very soon than even from
military bases that may be established on the earths planetary
system. Vladimir Putin, then President and now the Prime Minister of Russia, speaking at the European Security
Conference in Munich on 10th February 2007, said: The unipolar world refers to a world in which there is one
master, one center of authority, one center of force, one centre of decision making. At the end of the day this is
pernicious not only for those within the system , but also for the Sovereign himself from within ; what is more
important is that the model itself is flawed because as its basis there is and can be no moral foundation for modern
civilization ( and even less for democracy ). We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of
international law. We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations , force that
is plunging the world into an abyss of permament conflicts . I am convinced that we have reached that decisive
moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. We have to move heaven and
earth , the might of humanity to dismantle that decision making ruling elite in the joint corporate military board
rooms , be they located underground in the Strategic Command in Nebraska or at multi-locations in Wall Street ,

The unlimited quest for establishing monopoly over the

planet earths resources and markets , has led the world to witness
unending wars , sometimes referred to as long wars , if that phrase makes it seem less destructive , and
the unending pursuit of weapon platforms , for attaining full spectrum
dominance and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI ) or the Star Wars initiated by the free
market of the Reagan administration and Thatcherism , accelerating the death
and destruction that we have witnessed , all across the globe be it
in Angola , Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan , Iraq , Palestine , Central
and Latin America , Yugoslavia , Lebanon , Gaza and earlier in
Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia among other countries with the UN Security Council in some
the City ( London ) or Tel a Viv .

cases acquiescing and even assisting .

Turns Poverty
Capitalism causes savage inequalities their examplees are
historical anomalies and mathematically false
Graeber 14 [5/30/14, David Graeber is an American anthropologist, political activist and was formerly an
associate professor of anthropology at Yale University, ~ Savage capitalism is back and it will not tame itself,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/savage-capitalism-back-radical-challenge] GKoo

At that time, there was a series of assumptions

everybody had to accept in order even to be allowed to enter serious public debate. They were
presented like a series of self-evident equations. "The market" was equivalent to capitalism. Capitalism
meant exorbitant wealth at the top, but it also meant rapid technological progress and
economic growth. Growth meant increased prosperity and the rise of a
middle class. The rise of a prosperous middle class, in turn, would always ultimately equal
stable democratic governance. A generation later, we have learned that not one
of these assumptions can any longer be assumed to be correct . The real
He seemed touched by my naivety.

importance of Thomas Piketty's blockbuster, Capital in the 21st Century, is that it demonstrates, in excruciating
detail (and this remains true despite some predictable petty squabbling) that, in the case of at least one core

the numbers simply don't add up. Capitalism does not contain an
inherent tendency to civilise itself. Left to its own devices, it can be
expected to create rates of return on investment so much higher
than overall rates of economic growth that the only possible result will
be to transfer more and more wealth into the hands of a hereditary elite of
investors, to the comparative impoverishment of everybody else . In other
words, what happened in western Europe and North America between roughly 1917
and 1975 when capitalism did indeed create high growth and lower inequality was something
of a historical anomaly. There is a growing realisation among economic
historians that this was indeed the case. There are many theories as to why. Adair
Turner, former chairman of the Financial Services Authority, suggests it was
the particular nature of mid-century industrial technology that allowed both
high growth rates and a mass trade union movement. Piketty himself points to the
destruction of capital during the world wars, and the high rates of taxation and
equation,

regulation that war mobilisation allowed. Others have different explanations. No doubt many factors were involved,

The period when capitalism seemed

capable of providing broad and spreading prosperity was also, precisely, the
period when capitalists felt they were not the only game in town:
when they faced a global rival in the Soviet bloc, revolutionary anti-capitalist
movements from Uruguay to China, and at least the possibility of workers' uprisings at home. In other words,
rather than high rates of growth allowing greater wealth for capitalists to
spread around, the fact that capitalists felt the need to buy off at least some
portion of the working classes placed more money in ordinary people's
hands, creating increasing consumer demand that was itself largely
responsible for the remarkable rates of economic growth that marked capitalism's
"golden age". Since the 1970s, as any significant political threat has receded, things
have gone back to their normal state: that is, to savage inequalities,
with a miserly 1% presiding over a social order marked by increasing social,
economic and even technological stagnation. It was precisely the fact that people such as my
but almost everyone seems to be ignoring the most obvious.

Russian friend believed capitalism would inevitably civilise itself that guaranteed it no longer had to do so.

Their statistics are biased reject them

NC 14 [8/2/14, Nation of Change provides a free daily newsletter with articles from progressive writers and
initiates activistic calls to action, ~ The Seven Deadly Sins of Capitalism, http://www.nationofchange.org/sevendeadly-sins-capitalism-1391350401] GKoo

One of the most common arguments for global capitalism is that it

helps alleviate poverty. Problem is, global poverty statistics are generated by the
World Bank, an institution explicitly designed to promote
globalization. Critics argue that (1) the numbers are usually skewed by one or two
rapidly developing countries, (2) the definition of deep poverty as a wage of $1.25/day
is set arbitrarily low in order to yield the desired stats, and (3) daily
wages say nothing about access to potable water, adequate nutrition, healthcare,
education, community, and other things that determine quality of life.
Moreover, poverty rates mean little when economic disparity has increased so
dramatically in recent decades. Actually, a compelling argument can be made that global
capitalism doesnt alleviate poverty but causes poverty. After all, the aim
of globalization is to expand markets by infiltrating undeveloped (read: selfsufficient) communities and dragging them into the money economy, thus
creating new laborers and consumers. Could members of a gift-based, indigenous
tribe really be called poor? Only by the logic of capitalism, which defines
poverty as the inability to purchase ones basic necessities (which might include
designer clothing) from an outside party using fiat currency.
5) Poverty.

2NC Alternative

Thinking Good
We must realize the ubiquity of capitalism only then can we
ground new economic perspectives
Guerin 14 [6/26/14, Fred Guerin is an independent scholar with a Ph.D in philosophy, ~ The Compelling
Conclusion About Capitalism That Piketty Resists, http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/24489-the-compellingconclusion-about-capitalism-that-piketty-resists] GKoo

it is still conceivable that we could reverse

our present "conditioning" by thinking and acting in different ways - by
recognizing that, progressively, with the help of others, we could cultivate
radically different perspectives and practices (economic and otherwise). But any such
effort must assume that we are also acutely aware of the ubiquity
and the powerful force of capitalist propaganda. As Henry Giroux reminds
us "dominant power works relentlessly through its major cultural apparatuses to hide,
mischaracterize or lampoon resistance, dissent and critically engaged social
movements. This is done, in part, by sanitizing public memory and erasing
critical knowledge and oppositional struggles from newspapers, radio, television, film and
all those cultural institutions that engage in systemic forms of education and memory work."[10] Above all, the
possibility of alternative economic visions, perspectives and practices have to be
grounded in the reality that we share a limited world, and that we are
and have always been capable of creating an economic system and public policies
that preserve the health and well-being of the planet and all of the creatures
that inhabit it.
Notwithstanding all that has been said,

We must grow epistemologically in order to resolve oppression

Osajima 7 [February 2007, Keith Osajima is a professor and Director of the Race and Ethnic Studies Program
at the University of Redlands, ~ REPLENISHING THE RANKS: Raising Critical Consciousness Among Asian
Americans, JOURNAL OF ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES (JAAS)]

Conscientization for these respondents meant being able to name their world. That
is, a meaningful education had helped them to recognize and
understand the impact that societal conditions and forces of
oppression have on their lives and the lives of others. As Friere writes, the process of
conscientization, or education for critical consciousness, involves a constant
clarification of what remains hidden within us while we move about in the
world, and it provokes recognition of the world, not as a given world, but as
a world dynamically in the making. Such recognition often inspires
people to work against that oppression, thus beginning their active
efforts to transform the world. Naming the world was an important step
toward actively changing it.

2NC Blocks

AT Sustainable
Turns economy contradictions make financial crisis inevitable and
more destructive. Proves no solvency through the Aff
Li 12 [10/17/2012, Minqi Li is a Chinese political economist, world-systems analyst, and historical social
scientist, currently an associate professor of Economics at the University of Utah, ~Socialism: The 20th Century
and the 21st Century (Thomas Weisskopf Festschrift Conference Paper), Google Books] GKoo
In Chapter 1 of Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, Hyman P. Minsky made the following comments: It may also be

poverty, corruption,
uneven distribution of amenities and private power, and monopoly-induced
inefficiency ... are not inconsistent with the survival of a capitalist
economic system. ... A capitalist economy cannot be maintained, however, if it
oscillates between threats of an imminent collapse of asset values and
employ-ment and threats of accelerating inflation and rampant speculation ,
especially if the threats are sometimes realized. (Minsky, 2008 [1986], p. 6) Since the Great Depression, it has
been widely recognized that free market capitalism was
fundamentally unstable and a modern capitalist economy cannot function
normally without the intervention and regulation of a big government sector.
maintained that capitalist societies are inequitable and inefficient. But the flaws of

In The General Theory, John Maynard Keynes argued that capitalist invest-ment was fundamentally unstable and,
moreover, that the development of capital-ist financial markets was likely to have further intensified investment
instability (Keynes, 1964 [1936], pp. 147-64). Towards the end of The General Theory, Keynes proposed that "a
somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation of full
employment" (ibid., p. 378). However, Keynes insisted that the proposed socialization of investment would not
require social ownership of the means of production. I lyman Minsky argued that "big government" institutions were

In a modern capitalist
economy, the big government helps to sustain capitalist profits during
recessions and the central bank helps to stabilize asset prices during
financial crises. These institutions help to prevent the declines of capitalist profits and investment from
indispens-able for stabilizing the fundamentally unstable capitalist economy.

developing into a self-sustained downward spiral that had often plunged the free market capitalist economy into

However, big government institutions have

strong side effects. Big gov-ernment deficits in effect help to socialize
business losses, and the central bank's lender of last resort actions in effect
help to socialize risks of private financial markets. Despite the partial
socialization of risks and losses, invest-ment decisions continue to
be made by private businesses for the purpose of making private profits. Big government
capitalism thus encourages excessive risk-taking in finance and investment
and tends to increase the potential of financial instability. Thus, on the one
hand, big government institutions are indispensable for preventing
depressions; but, on the other hand, big government capitalism does not
abolish the inherent tendency under capitalism towards financial
instability. On the contrary, with the effective socialization of risks and losses, the
exces-sive risk-taking in private investment and finance has led to
frequent financial crises with increasingly destabilizing
consequences (Pollin and Dymski, 1994; Li. 2009). The financial crises necessitated
government interventions, forcing the gov-enunent to run large deficits during
recessions. The deficits that occurred in recessions were typically not offset by
surpluses during expansions. As a result, there has been a tendency for the
government debt to rise in relation to GDP. This tendency was intensified under
devastating depressions (Minsky, 2008 [1986]).

neoliberalism as interest rates tended to be relatively high in relation to economic growth rates (Li, 2009).
The govern-ment debt-GDP ratios cannot keep rising indefinitely. Beyond a certain point, the debt-GDP
ratio could be so high that the government's ability to stabilize the
capitalist economy would be seriously compromised. From the Marxist
perspective, this contradiction of big government capitalism reflects the
underlying contradiction between the capitalist system of private
appropriation and the objective tendency of socialization of production. While
the development of the capitalist economy requires growing social regulations through
institutions such as the big government and the central bank, the basic means of production
continue to be owned by private capitalists and used by private capitalists to make private
profits. Thus, on the one hand, a high level of socialization of investment risks and
losses has become indispensable for the normal operations of modern
capital-ism; but, on the other hand, the lack of social control over investment has led to growing financial
instability and increasingly large government debts. This underlying contradiction has
found its expression through progressively more destructive
economic and financial crises. Contrary to what Keynes argued, the eventual resolution of this
structural contradiction may require nothing short of a comprehensive socialization of the basic means of
production.

Capitalism is sustainable 2nd law of thermodynamics and 2nd law

of social dynamics
Ikerd 06 [2006, John Ikerd is a Professor Emeritus of Agricultural & Applied Economics at University of
Missouri Columbia, ~ Is Capitalism Sustainable?, http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/SFT-Sustainable
%20Captialism.htm] GKoo

Is capitalism sustainable? Not the type of capitalism that dominates

American and most global economies today. This is not a matter of personal opinion,
but a direct consequence of the most fundamental laws of science. Sustainability ultimately
depends upon energy because anything that is useful in sustaining life on
earth ultimately relies on energy. All material things that are of any use to humans food, clothes,
houses, automobiles, require energy to make and energy to use. All useful human activities working, thinking

All work
requires energy. In performing work, energy is always changed in form. In fact,
require human energy. Physical scientists lump all such useful activities together and call them work.

the natural tendency of energy to change from more concentrated to less concentrated forms gives energy its
ability to perform work. All material things, such as food, gasoline, plastic, and steel, are just highly concentrated
forms of energy. Matter can be converted into energy, as in eating food or burning gasoline, and the form of energy
can be changed, as in using heat to make electricity and electricity to produce light. However, even though work
invariably changes matter to energy or changes the form of energy, no energy is lost. This is the first law of

At first, it might seem

that energy could simply be recycled and reused forever, as if sustainability would be
inevitable. However, once energy is used to perform work, before it can
be used again, it must be reconcentrated, reorganized, and
restored. Unfortunately, it takes energy to reconcentrate, reorganize, and restore
energy. And, the energy used to reconcentrate and restore energy is simply no
longer available to do anything else. It has lost its usefulness. This is the law of entropy, the
second law of thermodynamics; the tendency of all closed systems to tend toward the ultimate
thermodynamics, the law of energy conservation, as in Einsteins famous E=MC2.

degradation of matter and energy; toward inert uniformity; an absence of structure, pattern, organization, or

The barren surfaces of the Moon or Mars are examples of systems

near entropy. Since loss of useful energy to entropy is inevitable, it might seem that
sustainability is impossible. Even if waste and pollution could be completely avoided in
differentiation.

the processes of using and reusing energy, the tendency toward entropy would continue. In
fact, life on earth would not be sustainable without the daily inflow of new solar energy. Sustainability ultimately

Capitalism is a very
efficient system of energy extraction, but it provides no incentive to reconcentrate
and restore energy to offset entropy. Capitalists have no economic
incentive to invest in energy renewal for the benefit of those of future
generations. Capitalists reduce waste and pollution or reuse resources only when it is profitable to do so,
meaning only when it is in their individual self-interest to do so. Capitalists have incentives to use
renewable energy to support current consumption, but not to re-storing
energy for future generations. Capitalism inevitably tends toward
physical entropy. The law of entropy applies to social energy and well as physical energy. All forms
of human energy labor, management, innovation, creativity are products of social
relationships. Humans cannot be born, reach maturity, and become useful
without the help of other people who care about them personally. People
must be educated, trained, civilized, and socialized before they can become
productive members of complex societies. All organizations including business organizations,
depends upon the use of solar energy to offset the unavoidable effects of entropy.

governments, and economies depend on the ability of people to work together for a common purpose, which in
turn depend upon the sociability and civility of human societies.

Human productivity is a direct

result of healthy personal relationships, within families, friendships, communities, and societies.
Capitalism inevitably dissipates, disperses, and disorganizes social
energy because it weakens personal relationships. Maximum economic
efficiency requires that people relate to each other impartially, which
means impersonally. People must compete rather than cooperate, if market
economies are to function efficiently. When people spend more time and energy working being economically

they have less time and energy to spend on personal relationships

within families and communities. When people buy things based solely on price rather than buy
from people they know and trust, personal relationships within communities suffer from neglect. Capitalism
devalues personal relationships and disconnects people and thus dissipates,
disperses, and disorganizes social energy. Capitalistic economies use people
to do work, while doing nothing to restore the social capital needed
to sustain positive personal relationships. There is no economic
incentive for capitalists to invest in families, communities, or society for the benefit of future
productive

generations. Capitalists build relationships or contribute to social causes only when such contributions are expected
to contribute to their profits or growth. Capitalists do not waste energy by investing in social capital.

Capitalism inevitably tends toward social entropy. Economies are

simply the means by which people facilitate their relationships with other
people and with their natural environment in complex societies. Economies
actually produce nothing; they simply transform physical and social energy into raw materials
and human labor, which can be exchanged in impersonal marketplaces. All economic capital is extracted from

Once all natural and social capital has been extracted,

there will be no source of economic capital. Without capital, an economy
loses its ability to produce; it tends toward economic entropy. Todays
capitalistic economies quite simply are not sustainable.
either natural or social capital.

Unsustainable the system requires state intervention thats

running dry
Carson 12 [5/25/12, Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society, ~ Why
Corporate Capitalism is Unsustainable, http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/25/why-corporate-capitalism-isunsustainable/] GKoo
These two phrases brilliantly describe the predicament of state-fostered corporate capitalism. Capitalism as an
historic system is five hundred or more years old, and the state was intimately involved in its formation and its
ongoing preservation from the very beginning. But the state has been far more involved, if such a thing is possible,
in the model of corporate capitalism thats prevailed over the past 150 years. The corporate titans that dominate
our economic and political life could hardly survive for a year without the continuing intervention of the state in the

is reaching its limits of

sustainability. Here are some reasons why: 1) The monopolies on which it depends are
increasingly unenforceable. Especially intellectual property. 1a) Copyright-based
industry has already lost the fight to end file-sharing. 1b) Industrial patents are only
enforceable when oligopoly industry, oligopoly retail chains reduce transaction cost of
enforcement unenforceable against neighborhood garage factories using pirated CAD/CAM files. 2) Cheap
production tools and soil-efficient horticulture are 2a) increasing competition from selfemployment 2b) reducing profitable investment opportunities for surplus
capital and destroying direct rate of profit (DROP) 3) State-subsidized production
inputs leads to geometrically increasing demand for those inputs,
outstripping the states ability to supply and driving it into chronic
fiscal crisis. For centuries the state has provided large-scale capitalist agribusiness with privileged access to
market to sustain them through subsidies and monopoly protections. This system

land stolen from the laboring classes. For 150 years, it has subsidized inputs like railroads, airports and highways for
long-distance shipping, and irrigation water for factory farming. But as any student of Microecon 101 could tell you,

subsidizing something means more and more of it gets consumed. So you

get agribusiness thats inefficient in its use of land and water, and industry that
achieves false economies of scale by producing for artificially large market areas. Each year it takes a
larger government subsidy to keep this business model profitable. 4)
Worsening tendencies toward overaccumulation and stagnation increase the
amount of chronic deficit spending necessary for Keynesian aggregate
demand management, also worsening the fiscal crisis. The state has built a massive
military-industrial complex and created entire other industries at state
expense to absorb excess investment capital and overcome the systems
tendency toward surplus production and surplus capital, and sustained
larger and larger deficits, just to prevent the collapse that otherwise would
have already occurred. In short, capitalism depends on ever-growing amounts of state
intervention in the market for its survival, and the system is hitting the
point where the teat runs dry.
Capitalism is unsustainable crises are accelerating
Halal 11 [9/3/11, William E. Halal has a PhD and is a professor at George Washington University and
president of TechCast LLC, ~ Technologys Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and
Society, http://www.wfs.org/content/continuing-crisis-capitalism-how-bad-will-it-get] GKoo
Leaders from Bill Gates to the Pope are worried about the Crisis of Capitalism, yet defenders of the American

Recent threats to shut down

the Federal government rather than pass any form of tax increase, for
instance, have the effect of taking money from the poor to protect the rich,
who already own the bulk of the nations wealth. This revolt of the rich against the poor
system that almost brought down the world economy are digging in.

highlights how extremely conservative our free market ideology has become ironically, at a time when markets

The US is entering its third market crash in a decade, leaving many

to wonder, how bad will it get? The nation has long struggled with a tension between
the values of free markets, limited government, and self-reliance that comprise
Republican ideals versus the need for community, cooperation, and social welfare that inspire Democrats. While
this was manageable when the country was growing, it has erupted into
warfare now that the economy is stalled. To put the statistics on income distribution in
perspective, the gap between rich and poor is among the biggest in the world, and
are failing.

it is eerily reminiscent of the gap that preceded the Great Crash of 1929. Todays Great Recession drags on largely
because the public has little to spend, causing stagnant market demand. Apart from the moral problem this poses

We used
to justify this on the grounds that Capitalism was more productive, but the
sorry state of our healthcare, research, infrastructure, public
schools, crime, and other indicators no longer supports that claim .
Whats worse, the dot.com bust of 2001, the banking crisis of 2008, and now
the crash of 2011 three crashes in a decade tell us something is seriously
wrong. Liberals are complicit in creating this mess, of course. The Democrats are also dug in,
protecting social benefits and a massive Federal bureaucracy that no longer
make sense in a changing world. President Bill Clinton had it right a decade ago: The era of big
for a largely Christian nation that professes to be Democratic, it now threatens survival of the system.

government is over. VP Al Gore was making progress reinventing government but lost the presidential election to

Todays crisis is a moment of truth. The old

American Dream of rugged individualism and lavish lifestyles no longer works in a
globalizing economy facing climate change, ecological overload,
peak oil, financial instability, and other mounting threats. The last thing the
George Bush. The rest is history.

world needs now is more self-interest and lavish consumption, nor does it need more government bureaucracy. Yet
Americans are locked in destructive conflict between left and right to avoid sacrificing these sacred cows. This fight

all energies are focused on beating the other

party rather than finding solutions. The differences are not really great because compromises are
is not only contentious, it is so bitter that

entirely possible. But a ferocious grip on outmoded beliefs drives conflict in a knowledge-based world that requires

More daunting still is the fear that even tax reform,

revising Social Security and Medicare, and other heroic goals if they could
be achieved may not be enough to revive the Nation. As a management
professor who has studied organizations during a long career, it is painfully clear that our present forms
of big business and big government are badly outdated for a
complex new world.President Obama should convene a conference inviting corporate CEOs,
collaborative problem solving.

government officials, labor leaders, and ordinary citizens to engage in a national strategic planning process. It
should also be carried online with wide participation to fully address these challenges, plan for a more difficult
future, and redefine the American Dream. For starters, Obama should appoint Al Gore as Czar of Reinventing
Government and GEs CEO, Jeff Immelt, as Czar of Reinventing Business. Absent some such breakthrough,

we

can only look forward to more economic gridlock and political

stalemate as the crisis mounts. Will all this intransigence cause business failures and
unemployment to reach levels of the Great Depression? Could the left and center mobilize a counter-revolt to
challenge the rich? Is it possible that the country could embrace opportunities to unify left and right into a more
creative American synthesis?

with less?

Or will we simply accept decline and learn to live

AT Self Correcting
Capitalism squeezes out wage earners prevents self correction
Sabnavis 14 [5/18/14, Madan Sabnavis has been the Chief Economist and General Manager of Credit
Analysis & Research Limited and has a masters in Economics, ~ Marx for the millennials,
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/marx-for-the-millennials/article6022729.ece] GKoo

The other law defines the share of income going to capital as the product of
return on capital and capital to income ratio. With the return increasing over
time with access to various assets, capital will get a larger share of income. In fact, when
wealth is inherited and can be diversified the returns are higher than in case
of an individual who has limited wealth and prefers safer avenues which earn lower returns.
This, according to French economist Thomas Piketty, is the crux of the
problem of capitalism, which creates a crisis in the long run because
when we over-invest in capital, there is little left for labour which is also what Karl
Marx spoke of. Marx spoke of a revolution, but the basic issue is that if wage earners are squeezed
out, who will buy the goods that the capitalist produces? Markets are
not self-correcting as is made out in textbooks and hence bourgeois
economics does not quite work.
Markets are not self correcting their evidence is based off of
flawed models
Stiglitz 13 [5/9/13, Joseph Eugene Stiglitz is an economist and a professor at Columbia University. He is a
recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the John Bates Clark Medal (1979). He is a
former senior vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, and is a former member, and Chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers, ~ The lessons of the North Atlantic crisis for economic theory and policy,
http://www.voxeu.org/article/lessons-north-atlantic-crisis-economic-theory-and-policy] GKoo
In analysing the most recent financial crisis, we can benefit somewhat from the misfortune of recent decades.

The

approximately 100 crises that have occurred during the last thirty years as
liberalisation policies became dominant have given us a wealth of experience and
mountains of data. If we look over a 150-year period, we have an even richer data set. With a
century and half of clear, detailed information on crisis after crisis, the burning
question is not How did this happen? but How did we ignore that long history, and think that
we had solved the problems with the business cycle? Believing that we had made big
economic fluctuations a thing of the past took a remarkable amount of
hubris. Markets are not stable, efficient, or self-correcting The big lesson that this crisis forcibly brought
home one we should have long known is that economies are not necessarily
efficient, stable or self-correcting. There are two parts to this belated
revelation: One is that standard models had focused on exogenous shocks, and
yet its very clear that a very large fraction of the perturbations to our
economy are endogenous. There are not only short run endogenous shocks; there
are long run structural transformations and persistent shocks. The models
that focussed on exogenous shocks simply misled us the majority of the
really big shocks come from within the economy. Secondly, economies are not
self-correcting. Its clear that we have yet to fully take on aboard this crucial
lesson that we should have learned from this crisis: even in its aftermath, the
tepid attempts to fix the economies of the United States and Europe
have been a failure. They certainly have not gone far enough. The result is that we continue to face

significant risks of another crisis in the future. So too, the responses to the crisis have not brought our economies

The loss in GDP between our potential and our

actual output is in the trillions of dollars.
anywhere near back to full employment.

Capitalism doesnt have the structures to fix itself

Li, 10 [Summer 2010, Dr. Minqi Li is an Assistant Professor Department of Economics, University of Utah, The
21st Century Crisis: Climate Catastrophe or Socialism] GKoo

The impending climate catastrophe is but one of several aspects of the

structural crisis of capitalism in the 21st century. We are currently in the
beginning of a prolonged period of global instability and chaos. Similar periods
of systemic chaos had happened before (for example, during the first half of the 20th century). Capitalism had
managed to survive earlier crises, through institutional adjustments without changing the systems essential
features (production for profit and endless accumulation of capital). Because of this historical observation, some
have developed the belief that capitalism is such a remarkably flexible and creative system that it can always
reform itself, adapt to change, survive crises, and meet challenges. But this belief is short-sighted and

for capitalism to exist and function, it

requires certain necessary historical conditions. Capitalism would remain
viable (and therefore reformable) only to the extent the necessary historical
conditions required for its normal operations are present. But the
development of capitalism inevitably leads to fundamental changes in the
underlying historical conditions. Sooner or later, a point will be reached where the
necessary historical conditions are no longer present, and capitalism as a
historical system will cease to exist. If one compares the current systemic
crisis with earlier instances of systemic crisis, what are some of the major
differences? First, in previous periods of crisis, the worlds natural resources
remained relatively abundant and the global environment remained largely
intact. Today, the global ecological system is literally on the verge of
complete collapse. The impending climate catastrophe is only one among
many aspects of global environmental crisis. Global capitalism has already exhausted
the environmental space for further capital accumulation. Secondly, the successful operations of
the capitalist world system require it be regulated by an effective hegemonic
power at the systemic level. However, with the decline of the US hegemony, no other
big power was in a position to replace the US to become the new hegemonic
power. Without an effective hegemonic power, the system would be unable
to pursue its own long-term interest and solve system-wide problems.
Thirdly, in the past the capitalist system had managed to survive crisis
through social reforms. In essence, social reform is for the system to buy off certain opposition groups
fundamentally ahistorical. Like every other social system,

by making limited concessions. The concessions have to be limited so that they do not undermine the essential

Today, the system has run out of its historical space for
social compromise. In virtually all the advanced capitalist countries, now a restoration of favorable
interest of the ruling class.

conditions for capitalist accumulation would require nothing short of large and sustained declines of working class
living standards. Will the western working classes simply surrender and give up their entire historical gains since
the 19th century? If not, Western Europe and North America will again become major battlegrounds of class
struggle in the coming decades. Fourthly,

the world has reached the advanced stage of

proletarianization. Marx famously predicted that the proletariat would become the grave diggers of
capitalism. For the entire 19th and much of 20th century, the process of proletarianization was largely limited to the

In the neoliberal era, as capital is relocated from

advanced capitalist countries to the rest of the world to exploit the reserve
army of cheap labor force, there have been large formations of industrial
West (the advanced capitalist countries).

working classes in the non-western world. Over time, the non-western working classes will
have developed the organizational capacity and demand a growing range of economic, social, and political rights.

For the capitalist world system, if its economic and ecological resources are
already so limited that it is no longer possible to accommodate the historical
demands of the western working classes, what is the chance for the system
to accommodate the demands of the much larger non-western working
classes? If the system can no longer survive by buying off its potential oppositions, can it simply survive by
repression, and for how long? How will the combination of these trends play out in the coming decades? Will the
current structural crisis turn out to be the terminal crisis of capitalism?
One thing is clear. If capitalism does survive the current crisis, there is
probably not much hope for the humanity to survive the coming global
climate catastrophe. For the humanitys sake, end capitalism before we
are ended by capitalism.

AT Framework
The framework debate is another method to avoid criticizing
capitalism reject it
Wolff 11 [10/4/11, Richard Wolff is an economist well known for his work on economic methodology and class
analysis. He is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting
Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also
taught economics at Yale University, ~ Occupy Wall Street ends capitalism's alibi,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/oct/04/occupy-wall-street-new-york] GKoo
If we believe democracy is the best way to govern our residential communities, then it likewise deserves to govern
our workplaces. Democracy at work is a goal that can help build this movemen t. We
all know that moving in this direction will elicit the screams of "socialism" from the usual predictable corners. The

The audience for

that rhetoric is fast fading, too. It is long overdue in the US for us to
have a genuine conversation and struggle over our current economic
system. Capitalism has gotten a free pass for far too long. We take
pride in questioning, challenging, criticising and debating our health, education, military,
transportation and other basic social institutions. We argue whether their
current structures and functioning serve our needs. We work our way to changing them so they
perform better. And so it should be. Yet, for decades now, we have failed to similarly
question, challenge, criticise and debate our economic system: capitalism.
Because a taboo protected capitalism, cheerleading and celebrating it
became obligatory. Criticism and questions got banished as heresy, disloyalty or
worse. Behind the protective taboo, capitalism degenerated into the
ineffective, unequal, crisis-ridden social disaster we all now bear. Capitalism
is the problem and the joblessness, homelessness, insecurity, and austerity it now imposes everywhere are
the costs we bear. We have the people, the skills and the tools to produce the
goods and services needed for a just society to prosper. We just need to reorganise our
tired rhetoric lives on long after the cold war that orchestrated it fades out of memory.

producing units differently, to go beyond a capitalist economic system that no longer serves our needs. Humanity
learned to do without kings and emperors and slave masters. We found our way to a democratic alternative,
however partial and unfinished the democratic project remains. We can now take the next step to realise that
democratic project. We can bring democracy to our enterprises by transforming them into cooperatives owned,
operated and governed by democratic assemblies composed of all who work in them and all the residents of the
communities who are interdependent with them. Let me conclude by offering a slogan: " The

US can do
better than corporate capitalism." Let that be an idea and a debate that this
renewed movement can engage. Doing so would give an immense gift to the US and the world. It
would break through the taboo, finally subjecting capitalism to the
critiques and debates it has evaded for far too long and at far too great a
cost to all of us.
Competitive policy options fail serves to crowd out class analysis.
Dont buy their proximate causes, debate oversimplifies economic
crisis
Wolff 08 [6/11/08, Richard Wolff is an economist well known for his work on economic methodology and class
analysis. He is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and currently a Visiting
Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York. Wolff has also
taught economics at Yale University, ~ Policies to "Avoid" Economic Crises,
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2008/wolff061108.html] GKoo
Recently, economist Joseph Stiglitz called the current crisis "avoidable." He blamed it on "ideology, special-interest
pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence." In tune with the norms of his profession, he proposed

Debates over the worsening economic crisis increasingly

turn on which "policies" to use to stop, reverse and "avoid" them. Conservatives
and liberals again rehash their old debates over their different policies as McCain and Obama did. The crisis
will deepen some more, and then a compromise policy will emerge from the new
President and Congress aimed to "solve the problem." Instead, we ought to
question the very idea of policy; that questioning would be a real
change from past practice. The problem is this: today's economic crisis was
caused by an immense accumulation of factors, far too many for any
policy to manage. Here is a partial list. Workers' wages stopped rising since the 1970s;
"policies" to fix the problem.

thereafter, they accepted rising loans instead of rising wages as compensation for their greater work and

Corporate profits exploded because they got ever more output per worker (via
computerization, etc.) while not paying their workers any more. Corporations deposited their rising
profits in banks who then loaned part of them back to workers, another part to
productivity.

investors for stock and then real-estate speculations, and yet another part to businesses for mergers. Other factors

low taxes, expensive wars, and resulting US government deficits. Then, too, China's
industrialization flooded the US with inexpensive products as that country accumulated
included

our massive dollar payments for them. China then lent those dollars back into the US to finance the government's
deficit and further increase banks' loanable funds. All these very different factors helped build up the house of

New mortgage
brokerage practices and credit card promotions induced more debt than borrowers could
afford. Competition among rating companies yielded incorrect assessments of
credit that has now crashed the entire economy. Still other factors also shaped the crisis.

financial risks of trillions in newly invented financial instruments (derivatives). This led to staggering global

Homebuilders' competition yielded excess

construction. The Federal Reserve increased the money supply and lowered interest
rates to offset the dot.com bubble burst in 2000. Nor is this list of factors even nearly complete. No policy
emerging from deals between conservative and liberal legislators beset by armies of lobbyists could ever
begin to control or manage the immense diversity of the causes of
the current crisis. Indeed, no policy of any kind -- whether imposed by a dictator, produced by
democratic consensus, or anything in between -- can "fix the problem ." No policy ever did. There
are just far too many causes of crises that one can see and list -- and too many more not yet
seen. The whole idea of policy is bizarre. The "right policy" represents
an absurd claim that this or that law or regulation can somehow undo the
many different factors that cumulatively produced this crisis. Policies are
"magic potions" offered to populations urgently demanding
solutions to real problems. Whether cynically advocated for ulterior motives or
actually believed by the politicians, promoters, and professors themselves, policy is the secular
cousin of religion. These days, the conservative policy amounts, as usual, to "let the private economy solve
the problems" and "minimize state intervention because it only makes matters worse." Conservatives
protect the freedoms of private enterprise, market transactions, and the wealthy from state
regulations and controls and from taxes. The liberals' policy, also as usual, wants the state to
limit corporate behavior, control and shape market transactions, and tilt the tax system more toward
benefiting middle and lower income groups. Both policies can no more overcome this
economic crisis than they overcame past crises. Historically, both
conservative and liberal policies fail at least as often as they succeed. Which
misallocations of scarce resources.

outcome happens depends on all the factors shaping them and not on the policy a government pursues. Yet, both
sides endlessly claim otherwise in desperate efforts at self-justification. Each side trots out its basic philosophy -dressed up as "a policy to achieve solutions." Conservatives and liberals keep debating. Today's crisis simply
provides an urgent sort of context for the old debate to continue. Each side hopes to win converts by suggesting
that its approach will "solve the economic crisis" while the other's approach will make it worse. Thus the liberals

displaced the conservatives in the depths of the Great Depression, the reverse happened in the recession of the
1970s, and the liberals may now regain dominance. In no instance were adopted policies successful in solving the
crises in any enduring way. The unevenness and instability of capitalism as a system soon brought another crisis
crashing down on our economy and society. The basic conservative message holds that the current economic crisis
is NOT connected to the underlying economic system. The crisis does NOT emerge from the structure of the
corporate system of production. It is NOT connected to the fact that corporate boards of directors, responsible to
the minority that owns most of their shares, make all the key economic decisions while the enterprise's employees
and the vast majority of the citizenry have to live with the consequences. The very undemocratic nature of the
capitalist system of production is NOT related to crisis in the conservative view. The basic liberal message likewise
disconnects today's crisis from the capitalist production system. Rather, each side insists that all crises would have

Conservatives and liberals

share more than a careful avoidance of connecting the crisis to the
underlying capitalist system. They are also complicit in blocking
those who do argue for that connection from making their case in politics, the
media, or the schools. While conservative and liberal policies do little to solve crises, the debate
between them has largely succeeded in excluding anti-capitalist analyses
of economic crises from public discussion. Perhaps that exclusion -- rather
than solving crises -- is the function of those endlessly rehashed policy
debates between liberals and conservatives.
been and would now be "avoidable" if only the right policy were in place.

AT Perm
You cant compromise with capitalists leads to extinction
Bookchin 07 [2007, Murry Bookchin is an author, orator, historian, political theoretician, and founder of
Social Ecology, ~ Social Ecology and Communalism, Book] GKoo
Except where its profits and growth opportunities are concerned,

capitalism now delights in

avowals of the need to compromise, to seek a common ground the language of its
professoriate no less than its political establishment which invariably turns out to be its own
terrain in a mystified form. Hence the popularity of market socialism in self-styled leftist
periodicals; or possibly social deep ecology in deep ecology periodicals like The Trumpeter; or more brazenly,
accolades to Gramsci by the Nouvelle Droite in France, or the Green Adolf in Germany. A Robin Eckersley has no
difficulty juggling the ideas of the Frankfurt School with deep ecology while comparing in truly biocentric fashion the

The wisdom of making friends

with everyone that underpins this academic discourse can only lead to a
blurring of latent and serious differences and ultimately to the
compromise of all principles and the loss of political direction. The
social and cultural decomposition produced by capitalism can be resisted
only by taking the most principled stand against the corrosion of
nearly all self-professed oppositional ideas. More than at any time in the past, social ecologists
navigation skills of birds with the workings of the human mind.

should abandon the illusion that a shared use of the word social renders all of us into socialists, or that ecology,
into radical ecologists. The measure of social ecologys relevance and theoretical integrity consists of its ability to
be rational, ethical, coherent, and true to the ideal of the Enlightenment and the revolutionary tradition not of any
ability to earn plaudits from the Price of Wales, Al Gore or Gary Snyder, still less from academics, spiritualists and

In this darkening age when capitalism the mystified social order par excellence
threatens to globalize the world with capital, commodities, and a facile spirit
of negotiation and compromise, it is necessary to keep alive the very
idea of uncompromising critique. It is not dogmatic to insist on
consistency, to infer and contest the logic of a given body of premises, to
demand clarity in a time of cultural twilight. Indeed, quite to the contrary, eclecticism and
theoretical chaos, not to speak of practices that are more theoretical than
threatening and that consistent more of posturing than convincing, will only dim the light of
truth and critique. Until social forces emerge that can provide a voice for basic social change rather
mystics.

than spiritual redemption, social ecology must take upon itself the task pf preserving and extending the great

Should the darkness of capitalist barbarism thicken

to the point where this enterprise is no longer possible, history as the rational
development of humanitys potentialities for freedom and consciousness will indeed reach its
definitive end.
tradition from which it has emerged.