1

Protests are a ruse – they are a reactive form of politics that focuses purely on
affect and cedes institutional politics. Srniceke 15
Srnicek, PHD, and Williams, PhD Candidate , 15

(Nick, PhD IR @LSE, Alex, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a world without work)

Today it
appears that the greatest amount of effort is needed to achieve the smallest
degree of change. Millions march against the Iraq War, yet it goes ahead as planned.
Hundreds of thousands protest austerity, but unprecedented budget cuts continue. Repeated student protests,
occupations and riots struggle against rises in tuition fees, but they continue their inexorable advance. Around the world,
people set up protest camps and mobilise against economic inequality, but the gap between the rich and the poor keeps
growing. From the alter-globalisation struggles of the late 1990s, through the antiwar and ecological coalitions of the
early 2000s, and into the new student uprisings and Occupy movements since 2008, a
common pattern
emerges: resistance struggles rise rapidly, mobilise increasingly large numbers of
people, and yet fade away only to be replaced by a renewed sense of apathy, melancholy
and defeat. Despite the desires of millions for a better world, the effects of these movements prove minimal. A FUNNY
THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE PROTEST Failure permeates this cycle of struggles, and as a
result, many of the tactics on the contemporary left have taken on a ritualistic nature,
laden with a heavy dose of fatalism. The dominant tactics - protesting, marching, occupying, and
various other forms of direct action - have become part of a well established narrative , with the
people and the police each playing their assigned roles. The limits of these actions are
particularly visible in those brief moments when the script changes . As one activist
puts it, of a protest at the 2001 Summit of the Americas: On April 20, the first day of the demonstrations, we marched
in our thousands towards the fence, behind which 34 heads of state had gathered to hammer out a hemispheric trade
deal. Under a hail of catapult-launched teddy bears, activists dressed in black quickly removed the fence’s supports with
bolt cutters and pulled it down with grapples as onlookers cheered them on. For a brief moment, nothing
stood
between us and the convention centre. We scrambled atop the toppled fence, but for
the most part we went no further, as if our intention all along had been simply to
replace the state's chain-link and concrete barrier with a human one of our own
making.1 We see here the symbolic and ritualistic nature of the actions, combined with
the thrill of having done something - but with a deep uncertainty that appears at the first break with the
expected narrative. The role of dutiful protestor had given these activists no indication of
what to do when the barriers fell. Spectacular political confrontations like the Stop the War
marches, the now-familiar melees against the G20 or World Trade Organization and the rousing scenes of democracy in
Occupy Wall Street all give the appearance of being highly significant, as if something were
genuinely at stake.2 Yet nothing changed, and long-term victories were traded for a
simple registration of discontent. To outside observers, it is often not even clear what the
movements want, beyond expressing a generalised discontent with the world. The
contemporary protest has become a melange of wild and varied demands. The 2009 G20
summit in London, for instance, featured protestors marching for issues that spanned from
grandiose anti-capitalist stipulations to modest goals centred on more local issues .
When demands can be discerned at all, they usually fail to articulate anything
substantial. They are often nothing more than empty slogans - as meaningful as calling
for world peace. In more recent struggles, the very idea of making demands has been
questioned. The Occupy movement infamously struggled to articulate meaningful goals,
worried that anything too substantial would be divisive.5 And a broad range of student
occupations across the Western world has taken up the mantra of ‘no demands’ under the
misguided belief that demanding nothing is a radical act. 4 When asked what the ultimate upshot
of these actions has been, participants differ between admitting to a general sense of futility and
pointing to the radicalisation of those who took part. If we look at protests today as an exercise in public awareness, they
appear to have had mixed success at best. Their messages are mangled by an unsympathetic media smitten by images of
property destruction - assuming that the media even acknowledges a form of contention that has become increasingly
repetitive and boring. Some argue that, rather than trying to achieve a certain end, these movements,
protests and occupations in fact exist only for their own sake.5 The aim in this case is to achieve a
certain transformation of the participants, and create a space outside of the usual
operations of power. While there is a degree of truth to this, things like protest camps tend to remain
ephemeral, small-scale and ultimately unable to challenge the larger structures of the
neoliberal economic system. This is politics transmuted into pastime - politics-as-drug
experience, perhaps - rather than anything capable of transforming society . Such protests are
registered only in the minds of their participants, bypassing any transformation of social structures. While these
efforts at radicalisation and awareness-raising are undoubtedly important to some degree, there still
remains the question of exactly when these sequences might pay off. Is there a point at
which a critical mass of consciousness-raising will be ready for action? Protests can build connections, encourage hope
and remind people of their power. Yet, beyond these transient feelings, politics still demands the exercise of
that power, lest these affective bonds go to waste. If we will not act after one of the largest crises of
capitalism, then when? The emphasis on the affective aspects of protests plays into a broader
trend that has come to privilege the affective as the site of real politics. Bodily,
emotional and visceral elements come to replace and stymie (rather than complement
and enhance) more abstract analysis. The contemporary landscape of social media, for example, is
littered with the bitter fallout from an endless torrent of outrage and anger. Given the
individualism of current social media platforms - premised on the maintenance of an online identity - it is
perhaps no surprise to see online ‘politics’ tend towards the selfpresentation of moral
purity. We are more concerned to appear right than to think about the conditions of
political change. Yet these daily outrages pass as rapidly as they emerge, and we are soon on to the next vitriolic
crusade. In other places, public demonstrations of empathy with those suffering replace more finely tuned analysis,
resulting in hasty or misplaced action - or none at all. Whilepolitics always has a relationship to
emotion and sensation (to hope or anger, fear or outrage), when taken as the primary mode of
politics, these impulses can lead to deeply perverse results. In a famous example, 1985's Live
Aid raised huge amounts of money for famine relief through a combination of heartstring-tugging
imagery and emotionally manipulative celebrity-led events. The sense of emergency demanded urgent
action, at the expense of thought. Yet the money raised actually extended the civil war
causing the famine, by allowing rebel militias to use the food aid to support themselves.6 While viewers at
home felt comforted they were doing something rather than nothing, a dispassionate analysis
revealed that they had in fact contributed to the problem . These unintended outcomes become
even more pervasive as the targets of action grow larger and more abstract. I f politics without passion leads
to cold-hearted, bureaucratic technocracy, then passion bereft of analysis risks
becoming a libidinally driven surrogate for effective action. Politics comes to be about
feelings of personal empowerment, masking an absence of strategic gains. Perhaps most
depressing, even when movements have some successes, they are in the context of
overwhelming losses. Residents across the UK, for example, have successfully mobilised in particular cases to
stop the closure of local hospitals. Yet these real successes are overwhelmed by larger plans to gut and privatise the
 National Health Service. Similarly, recent
anti-fracking movements have been able to stop test
drilling in various localities - but governments nevertheless continue to search for
shale gas resources and provide support for companies to do so.7 In the United States, various
movements to stop evictions in the wake of the housing crisis have made real gains in terms of keeping people in their
homes.8 Yet the perpetrators of the subprime mortgage debacle continue to reap the profits, waves of foreclosures
continue to sweep across the country, and rents continue to surge across the urban world. Small
successes - useful,
no doubt, for instilling a sense of hope - nevertheless wither in the face of overwhelming losses .
Even the most optimistic activist falters in the face of struggles that continue to fail. In other cases, well-intentioned
projects like Rolling Jubilee strive to escape the spell of neoliberal common sense.9 The ostensibly radical aim of
crowdsourcing money to pay the debts of the underprivileged means buying into a system of voluntary charity and
redistribution, as well as accepting the legitimacy of the debt in the first place. In this respect, the
initiative is one
among a larger group of projects that act simply as crisis responses to the faltering of
state services. These are survival mechanisms, not a desirable vision for the future.
What can we conclude from all of this? The recent cycle of struggles has to be identified as one of
overarching failure, despite a multitude of smallscale successes and moments of large-scale mobilisation. The
question that any analysis of the left today must grapple with is simply: What has gone
wrong? It is undeniable that heightened repression by states and the increased power of corporations have played a
significant role in weakening the power of the left. Still, it remains debatable whether the repression faced by workers,
the precarity of the masses and the power of capitalists is any greater than it was in the late nineteenth century. Workers
then were still struggling for basic rights, often against states more than willing to use lethal violence against them.10 But
whereas that period saw mass mobilisation, general strikes, militant labour and radical women’s organisations all
achieving real and lasting successes, today is defined by their absence. The
recent weakness of the left
cannot simply be chalked up to increased state and capitalist repression: an honest
reckoning must accept that problems also lie within the left. One key problem is a
widespread and uncritical acceptance of what we call ‘folk-political’ thinking. (5-9)

Turn, protests perpetuate the idea that if you speak loud enough your voice will
be heard, which perpetuates capitalism. Rickford 16.
Russel Rickford (an associate professor of history at Cornell University. He is the author of We Are an African People: Independent
Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination. A specialist on the Black Radical Tradition, he teaches about social movements,
black transnationalism, and African-American political culture after World War Two). “The Fallacies of Neoliberal Protest”. Black
Perspectives. September 24, 2016. http://www.aaihs.org/the-fallacies-of-neoliberal-protest/ AGM

Fallacy Number Three: The Myth of the Disembodied Voice. Part of capitalism’s response to
grassroots opposition is to assure the distressed that their “voice” is heard. That the
authorities who “hear” you also enable your brutalization is immaterial. The point is to
convince you of your continued stake in the system. It is to guide you toward the
politics of representation and away from the politics of resistance. Of course, there are
other fallacies employed by the oppressor to confuse the oppressed. The fallacy of
inclusion v. transformation, for example. Or the fallacy of “diversity” v. genuine antiracism.
We are taught to be patriotic, to be patient, to strive to embody the very values of peace
and goodwill that this society defiles. These and other myths only perpetuate the system . They
leave intact our society’s basic power relations. And they cause us to police ourselves
and to seek interpersonal reconciliation rather than confront structural racism and
oppression. Truth is, we don’t need “diversity” training. We don’t need focus groups. We don’t need consultants and
experts. We
don’t need the apparatus of our oppression —racial capitalism itself—to rationalize
and regulate our dissent. The logic and techniques of the corporate world won’t end
 the slaughter of black people, or the dispossession and degradation of indigenous people, or
the transformation of the entire Global South into a charred landscape of corpses and
refugees. We need an uncompromising, multiracial, grassroots movement against white
supremacy, endless war, and vicious corporate capitalism. We need to build solidarity with the
resistance in Charlotte, Standing Rock, and Puerto Rico. We need to join the rebellions of workers and
the colonized all over the world.This is a human rights struggle. And it will be waged in
the streets, not in boardrooms, the halls of Congress, or other strongholds of global
capital.

Protests mask neoliberalism with “dialogue” and rely on authorities to listen to spur actual
change. Ricford 16.
Russel Rickford (an associate professor of history at Cornell University. He is the author of We Are an African People: Independent
Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination. A specialist on the Black Radical Tradition, he teaches about social movements,
black transnationalism, and African-American political culture after World War Two). “The Fallacies of Neoliberal Protest”. Black
Perspectives. September 24, 2016. http://www.aaihs.org/the-fallacies-of-neoliberal-protest/ AGM

Fallacy Number One: Dialogue and Awareness. The managers of the status quo hate
resistance. So they try to guide any dissent that arises into “safe” channels. You will notice a
proliferation of forums, discussions, and meetings organized by system administrators
and devoted to “dialogue” and “awareness.” The premise of such efforts is that the
problem of racial unrest stems from misunderstandings among rational and well-meaning
parties. Thus communication and moral suasion—rather than pressure politics—is the
answer. Fallacy Number Two: The Appeal to Authority. In our technocratic society, we are
conditioned to believe that experts and officeholders hold the answers to social problems.
Supposedly these professionals are able to mediate between contending groups and
interests. We are taught to endlessly petition established authorities for relief, never
realizing that such gatekeepers are themselves instruments of the status quo.

The Kritik outweighs the case - Neoliberalism guarantees global inequality and
planetary extinction – only a reinvestment in the collective good can solve.
Gillespie 8/19 – Paul, Dr Paul Gillespie is a former foreign policy editor with The Irish Times. He currently writes a regular column for the newspaper entitled 'World View'.
8/19/17 https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/paul-gillespie-the-west-must-wean-itself-off-unsustainable-growth-1.3190914

On August 2nd the Earth reached its sustainability overshoot date for 2017 . This indicator
measures how through over-fishing, over-harvesting forests, over-grazing land and
mostly by carbon releases we have used more than the planet can renew in a single
year. The date was September 17th in 2000. The indicator is produced by the Global Footprint Network which
calculates how many planets we would need to sustain the lifestyles of different countries, groups and individuals. This
year we would need 1.7 planets and they reckon, on present trends, two would be needed by 2030 .
If everyone
was to live like the average US citizen we would need five planets, like Ireland four, but like
Chad, Afghanistan or Cambodia less than one. If all countries were to grow to the point of consuming
as much as the wealthiest we would need 3.4 Earths to sustain us. Earth Overshoot Day is calculated by dividing the
planet’s biocapacity (the estimated amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year) by humanity’s
ecological footprint (humanity’s estimated demand for that year). This ratio is multiplied by 365 to get the date when
Earth Overshoot Day is reached. Sustainability they define as the condition in which all human beings can lead fulfilling
lives without degrading the planet. Planetary ecology This is a graphic and compelling way to document and publicise the
dangerous pressures on planetary ecology arising from present trends. Central to them is the pursuit of
 endless economic growth and insatiable consumption . There is a contradiction between these
imperatives and sustainability since we only have one planet available. How then can the contradiction be resolved? A
radical and original approach to these questions is offered by Jason Hickel, an anthropologist at the London School of
Economics in his recent book The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions. He uses the footprint
analyses to illustrate not only the urgent need to act but the grossly unequal impact of these trends,
their deep historical roots and how they can be effectively tackled. That can only be done if the capitalist
economics which makes such growth and consumption an inescapable part of our
lives is challenged and superseded. Along the way he notes that in the last century we have lost 50 per cent
of the world’s forests, up to 80 per cent of fish stocks and have seen 40 per cent of soil depleted by chemicals and over-
cultivation. He challenges United Nations figures and claims rates
of wealth rises and reductions of
poverty are grossly exaggerated if environmental and social impacts are included in
gross domestic product and if real living costs are also factored in. That shows the world is more
unequal than normally assumed, a trend reinforced by neoliberal economics from the
1980s. Eight individuals now control more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. Sixty per cent of our species (4.3
billion people) lives on less than five dollars a day, his definition of poverty compared to the UN figures of one quarter
that amount yielding an improving one billion people. The
historical roots of these inequalities come
from the expansion and imperial conquests associated with early European and later
American capitalism from the 16th century. That reversed Indian and Chinese domination of world
living standards and life expectancy up to the early 1800s. In the last century a skilful management of decolonisation
alongside strategic interventions against radical reformist regimes like those in Iran, Ghana, Egypt and Chile from the
1950s to the 1970s ensured continuing Western control of world rules and power. Bracing alternative This
is a well-
argued and bracing alternative account of world development and sustainability . It
adopts Edward Said’s notion of “contrapuntal thinking” to link the metropolitan core to the post-colonial periphery in
thinking about power, political priorities and agency. Hickel
supports degrowth strategies for the
richest societies and shows there are sustainable ways to find wellbeing while
abandoning unsustainable growth and consumption imperatives. Shorter working weeks,
universal basic incomes, a global minimum wage and Tobin taxes on financial
transactions could wean populations off them. This would not be another round of austerity but a step
towards a more equal world, capable of overcoming the scarcity assumptions driving current
economic orthodoxy and the capitalist power structures and legal dynamics built into
them. They threaten to destroy the planet if not challenged and stopped soon.

The alternative is a relentless class based politics against war – rather than
engage from within the military, confronting neoliberalism requires an anti-war
politics that connects domestic class politics to struggles against imperialism.
Gilmer 16 - Rachel Gilmer is chief of strategy for the Dream Defenders. December 13, 2016 http://www.alternet.org/local-peace-economy/we-need-new-kind-anti-war-
movement

There is a fundamental relationship between the oppression experienced by black

people living in the U.S. and the oppression experienced by people around the world
living under the U.S. empire. We are connected through legacies of white supremacy,
imperialism and neoliberal policies that advance corporate power at the expense of our
communities. The Movement for Black Lives is an anti-war, internationalist movement. We demand an end to
the wars being waged in Iraq and throughout the Middle East, across the continent of Africa, in our own neighborhoods
here at home and around the world, a reinvestment in black communities domestically and
reparations for the endless death and destruction that our people , and all working-class
people, have experienced at the hands of the corporate war machine. We recognize that
the State’s decision to invest in mass incarceration and policing over programs that
build the futures of black people—like free public education, affordable housing and a
guaranteed federal jobs program—is directly tied to their same decision to invest in
waging war and expanding U.S. military presence abroad. The U.S. government spends
more resources criminalizing poor people, incarcerating poor people and paying corporations to destroy
our communities and then paying them again to “build them back” than it does on actually creating
policies and programs to advance our wellbeing. We demand an end to the profiteering off our
suffering, our death and our destruction. The war in Iraq has led to the destabilization first and foremost
of the Iraqi people, but it has also contributed to the destabilization of communities across
the globe, including black, brown and working-class people in the United States.
Money that could be used to create jobs, build schools and equip communities with
the resources they need to thrive is instead being used to wage terror against our
people here and around the world, all while fattening the wallets of major U.S. corporations. Each day, the
United States spends nearly $10 million in Iraq, totaling over $2 trillion since the start of the war, with no end in sight. In
the years since 9/11 and the establishment of the U.S.-driven global war on terror, U.S. military spending has increased
by 50 percent, with hundreds of billions going directly to private corporations. Each year, we spend nine times more on
war than on education and 20 times more than on social security and unemployment programs. This
choice
means that instead of affordable education and job opportunities for young people,
we are sending many of them off to war—or waging war against them with police violence here at home.
My partner Steve, like many in our generation, could not afford college. His historically black college, Florida A & M
University, saw massive budgetary cuts under former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who was leading the war in Florida
against public education, black people and the working class while his brother George waged war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
FAMU has also experienced cuts federally under almost every recent presidential administration, including President
Obama. These cuts were targeted directly at historically black colleges and universities precisely because they are black.
As a result, his school lacked a strong financial aid program despite its status as a public university. His single mother
couldn’t afford to support him either. Steve went into the military because he felt it was the only path forward. Going to
war felt like a better gamble than a guaranteed life of poverty. Steve’s story is not the exception, but the rule of Iraq-era
veterans. This government’s decision not to invest in the lives of working-class people,
but in massive bailouts for Wall Street, means that increasingly, the working class —not
the governing class—is sent to war. More poor people have gone and been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan than in any
wars prior. Working-class people should not have to kill to make corporations richer, just
so they can pay for college and maybe get a good job. Since 9/11, the war on terror has killed at
least 1.3 million people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq alone. In addition, the U.S. has expanded
western colonial control over Africa in the name of fighting terrorism through the
establishment of the U.S. military program, AFRICOM. The U.S. has killed thousands across the
globe through drone policy and increased militarization of our communities domestically through surveillance, increased
policing and mass incarceration. Companies
like G4S have been contracted by the State to
incarcerate black people in the U.S., uphold apartheid in Palestine, guard Iraqi oilfields
and attack water protectors in favor of big oil in Standing Rock . We know our struggles are not
exactly the same, but it should be very clear that we are fighting against the same systems. Today, we live in a society
that imagines itself at war with an unnamed enemy that will always be there, so much so that we would rather spend
resources killing people than building the futures of young people. The
U.S. war machine, just like the
prison machine, runs on lies about who we are, what our problems are and what solutions should be
put forward to address these problems. It has created a culture of violence that presumes black
and brown people are innately criminal and terrorist, that people ought to kill one another all the
 time whether or not war is declared, and that death and incarceration are the only solutions to the problems we face.
The war machine centers money-making over actual diplomacy. It turned Iraq into a fully
privatized market, a playground for corporations to make money off of lies, invasion, death, occupation and
“reconstruction” of Iraqi communities. The post-9/11 war machine has boasted a culture in which corporations are
openly profiting off of the destruction of black and poor people. It happened in Iraq, it happened in Afghanistan, it
happens at home, it’s spreading and we need to stop it. Throughout history, black and brown people have been the
driving force pushing the U.S. toward the ideals it articulates but has never achieved.
Today, we continue this
legacy through courageously fighting to end the war against our people, repair harm
and attain the political and economic power necessary to determine our own destiny.
We do this because we know another way is possible. The black radical tradition calls on us to build a broad-based left
agenda rooted in ending imperialism, white supremacy and capitalism. We will not win if our only call to unite is to end
this war. We must be equally invested in building black, brown and working-class
communities here. We need a clear call for reinvestment. This is an opportunity for
our various movements to come together under a single agenda. This is a fight against
neoliberalism. This is a poor people’s movement against the uber-rich, regardless of political party, who see us as
collateral in their scheme to make billions. Donald Trump has presented himself as the anti-war,
anti-interventionist, populist president for and by the people. It is clear that the neoliberal war-making of the
Democratic party is a total disaster, so instead we have a fascist who claims anti-interventionism. Trump has co-opted our
language against intervention even as we see arms companies’ stocks rising since he became president. The
only
way we can defeat this fascism is by building a strong anti-war position, one that sees
the wars being waged against our comrades around the world as connected to the
wars being waged against working-class people in the United States . We need to build a
position that sees the expansion of policing and militarism against black people, immigrants of every race and working-
class folks in the U.S. as connected to the expansion of U.S. military presence abroad. The
time for status quo is
over. An anti-war movement that does not engage black people locally is not enough,
and a black liberation movement that is not loud and clear in its call to end U.S.
imperialism is also not enough. This is not to say our struggles are the same, but rather, we must recognize
that we are struggling under the same systems and that we know we cannot break free from these systems if anyone
around the world continues to suffer under them. So what will you do if Black Lives Matter is a put on a terrorist watch
list? What will you do if Trump follows through on his calls for mass deportations or for the establishment of the Muslim
registry? What are we all doing about Standing Rock? We live in the belly of the empire and because of this we bear a
particular responsibility for what is happening around the world. There is no longer time to see our struggles in silos. We
must work together to tear down U.S. empire. There is no excuse. Global liberation
depends on it.

The kritik is about the pedagogy the judge endorses – endorsing class-based
internationalism is a prerequisite the plan.
McLaren et 04 - McLaren, Peter, et al. "Teaching in and against the empire: Critical pedagogy as revolutionary praxis." Teacher Education Quarterly 31.1 (2004): 131-153.

Admittedly, the sobering truth is that following the mass slaughter in Iraq a cloud of pessimism
will no doubt temporarily engulf the Arab world (do not forget, the Gaza strip is already littered with
bodies and ruins) as well as hope-deprived workers in oppressed nations around the world.
That is the bad news. The good news is that we are already beginning to see the moral
and political limits of the United States 'old fashioned' use of imperialist power in its
bloody territorial struggles. Even before the invasion of Iraq, a massive anti-war movement developed
interna tionally both in the neo-colonies as well as in the home citadels of imperialism
such as the United States and Britain. Whilst the outcome of the anti-war movement is much too difficult to determine in
advance, it is clear that in distributing an Old Testament form of moral retribution and imperialist aggression in defiance
of international law, Bush has shocked and enraged a broad array of social forces including a whole new generation of
youth who are now bristling with militancy and taking the first steps to becoming politically active .
Although some
of the more politically conscious and active youth already had a profound loathing of
U.S imperialism and its cruelties (e.g., the anti-sweatshop movement), many more young people
including students are now for the first time looking not only for an explanation of what
has taken place, but also a program to fight for and a strategy to win (Martin, 2002). They are asking: "What
can we do to stop the United States?" This is a question of special importance to those of us living in the homeland of U.S.
imperialism, especially given its long history of violent expansionism, gunboat diplomacy and racist oppression that has
provided the perks and comforts everyone here gets to enjoy (most people on this planet earn under $2.00 per day).
Recogniz ing that our political representatives (including those in the 'lesser evil' Democrat party) respond primarily to
the commands of a tiny, corrupt and unaccountable cabal, we argue that the
only historic force that can
put an end to U.S. imperialism is the multi-racial, gendered working class and radical
youth in the United States, who increasingly have nothing left to lose. Let us be clear. We are
not advocating the overthrow of the government or encouraging anyone to engage in illegal activities. But we do believe
that the effects of the anti-war movement are just one indication of the latent but explosive potential to create broad
opposition to imperialism in the United States. Events
like this provide a glimpse of how a mass
uprising of people might be developed to weaken U.S. imperialism and to get rid of
production for profit along with its attendant antagonisms including patriarchy,
national oppression (e.g., Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Native American, Hawai ian and other oppressed and
indigenous peoples), and white supremacy. It was, after all, the genocide of indigenous peoples and the theft of their
lands that provided the material foundation for U.S. empire. Our
starting point is that socialism is not a
discredited dream. It is a current that runs through periods such as the menacing
present and is animated by and in struggle against all forms of oppression and
exploitation. Whilst the anti-war movement will undoubtedly have to overcome certain internal problems to grow
much larger and to curb future wars in Syria, Iran or Venezuela, what we are seeing today is the emergence of a
completely new quality of social consciousness that could provide the concrete basis for an internationalist political
movement (Bloom, 2003). What matters here is that against the backdrop of U.S. imperialism, the
only way
students are ever going to win lasting 'peace' or the right to a decent education or job
is through the linking of their struggles with all the victims of the vicious ruling class ,
including workers whose blood, sweat and toil is the living fuel that makes the economy run (Bloom, 2003; Rikowski,
2002). In creating the conditions for social change, then, the
best pedagogy recognizes the limits of
traditional 'pragmatist' reformist pedagogical practice by prioritizing the need to
question the deeper problems, particularly the violent contradictions (e.g., the gap between racism and the
American Dream), under which students are forced to live . This means confronting the anti-intellectual
thuggery that pervades teacher education programs, particularly the kind that "rejects 'theory' (the knowl edge of
totality)" (Zavarzadeh & Morton, 1994, p. 3). Acknowledging
that capitalist education acts as a drag
on the development of 'critical' or 'class' consciousness by presenting a lifeless world
empty of contradictions, we argue for a Marxist theory of the 'big picture,' which enables
people to translate their daily free-floating frustrations with the 'system' into a set of ideas, beliefs and practices that
provide the basis not only for coherence and explanation but also action (Zavarzadeh & Morton, 1994, p. 3). Against
tremendous odds, the challenge over the last several decades has been to humanize the classroom environment and to
create pedagogical spaces for linking education to the praxiological dimensions of social justice initiatives and to that end
we are indebted to critical pedagogy. Yet, faced with the urgency for change, approaching social transformation through
the optic of revolutionary critical pedagogy ratchets up the struggle ahead. Revolutionary critical pedagogy dilates the
aperture that critical pedagogy has struggled to provide teachers and students over the last several decades by further
opening up the pedagogical encounter to its embeddedness in globalized social relations of exploitation and also to the
revolutionary potential of a transnational, gender-balanced, multiracial, anti imperialist struggle. A revolutionary critical
pedagogy raises the following ques tions for consideration by teachers, students, and other cultural workers: How can we
liberate the use value of human beings from their subordination to exchange value? How can we convert what is least
functional about ourselves as far as the abstract utilitarian logic of capitalist society is concerned — our self-realizing,
sensuous, species-being — into our major instrument of self-definition? How can we make what we represent to capital
— replaceable commodities — subordinate to who we have also become as critical social agents of history? How can we
make critical self-reflexivity a demarcating principle of who we are and critical global citizenship the substance of what
we want to become? How can we make the cultivation of a politics of hope and possibility a radical end in itself? How can
we de-commodify our subjectivities? How can we materialize our self-activity as a revolutionary force and struggle for the
self-determination of free and equal citizens in a just system of appropriation and distribution of social wealth? How can
we make and remake our own nature within historically specific conventions of capitalist society such that we can make
this self-activity a revolutionary force to dismantle capitalism itself and create the conditions for the development of our
full human potential? How can we confront our 'producers' (i.e., social relations of production, the corporate media,
cultural formations and institutional structures) as an independent power? Completely revolutionizing education does
not depend upon the great white men that capitalist education teaches us are our presidents, heroes and role models. It
relies upon the broad masses of people recognizing that the whole system is worthless and must be transformed to
reflect their interests. This
is the strength of a revolutionary critical pedagogy, that it is an
orientation of fighting for the interests of the multi-racial, gendered working class and
indigenous peoples all th through. It seeks to transform schools into political and
cultural centers, where crucial questions — from international affairs to education policy — are
debated and struggled over openly. It is a pedagogy that not only conjures up the
audacious urges of the oppressed but also enables them to fight back against the
system's repeated attacks by raising people's understanding of their political
opponents and developing their organization and fighting position. It is a call to battle, a
challenge to change this monstrous system that wages permanent warfare against the world and the planet, from cost-
effectiveness state terror in the 'homeland,' to the dumping of toxic chemicals on Native American lands and
communities of color and the devastating bombing campaigns against sovereign nations. It is a pedagogy of hope that is
grounded in the unfashionable 'reality,' history, and optimism of oppressed peoples and nations inside and outside of this
country. It is a pedagogy against empire. Because of this, we will settle for nothing less.