Will Malson LD: Capitalism Bad K-NC Page 1 of 4

LD: Capitalism Bad K-NC

We’ve come here today to provide an answer to the great question: to compete, or to cooperate? As
such, my philosophy is that cooperation is superior to competition as a means of achieving excellence.

What is the heart of the clash between competition and cooperation? In its truest and purest form, it is
the conflict between capitalism and socialism, the ultimate competition, and the ultimate cooperation.
When it comes down to it, do we want to be competing, or do we want to be cooperating? I’ll give you
the answer in 6 steps.

STEP 1: COMPETITION IS A EUPHAMISM FOR CAPITALISM.

Here’s why: The focus on competitiveness is founded on the geo-economic aspects of capitalism.
Timothy W. Luke [Department of Political Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA], “The (Un)Wise (Ab)Use of
Nature: Environmentalism as Globalized Consumerism?” Published by The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC) [began as college-level
center at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University during 1998 in the College of Arts and Sciences. The CDDC provides one of the world's first
university based digital points-of-publication for new forms of scholarly communication, academic research, and cultural analysis], Presented at the annual
meeting of the International Studies Association, March 18-22, 1997, http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tim/tims/Tim528.PDF (HEG)
Discourses of "geo-economics," as they have been expounded more recently by voices as diverse as Robert Reich, Lester Thurow, or Edward Luttwak, as
well as rearticulations of "geo- politics" in an ecological register, as they have been developed by President Bill Clinton or Vice President Al Gore, both
express new understandings of the earth's economic and political importance as a site for the orderly maximization of many material resources.6 Geo-
economics, for example, often transforms through military metaphors and strategic analogies what hitherto were regarded as purely economic concerns into
national security issues of wise resource use and sovereign property rights. Government manipulation of trade policy, state support of major corporations, or
The
public aid for retraining labor all become vital instruments for "the continuation of the ancient rivalry of the nations by new industrial means."7
relative success or failure of national economies in head-to-head global competitions typically are taken
by geo-economics as the definitive register of any one nation-state's waxing or waning international power as well as its
rising or falling industrial competitiveness, technological vitality, and economic prowess. In this context, many believe that
ecological considerations can be ignored, or given at best only meaningless symbolic responses, in the quest to mobilize as private property as many of the
earth's material resources as possible. This hard-nosed response is the essence of "wise use." In the on-going struggle over economic competitiveness,
environmental resistance even can be recast by "wise use" advocates as a type of civil disobedience, which endangers national security, expresses unpatriotic
sentiments, or embodies treasonous acts. Geo-economics takes hold in the natural resource crises of the 1970s. Arguing, for example, that "whoever controls
world resources controls the world in a way that mere occupation of territory cannot match," Barnet in 1979 asked, first, if natural resource scarcities were
real and, second, if economic control over natural resources was changing the global balance of power.8 After surveying the struggles to manipulate access
to geo-powerassets, like oil, minerals, water, and food resources, he did see a new geo-economic challenge as nation-states were being forced to satisfy the
rising material expectations of their populations in a much more interdependent world system.9 Ironically, the rhetorical pitch of Reich, Thurow and
Luttwak in the geo- economics debate of the 1990s mostly adheres to similar terms of analysis. Partly a response to global economic competition, and partly
a response to global ecological scarcities, today's geo- economic reading of the earth's political economy constructs the attainment of national economic
growth, security, and prosperity as a zero-sum game. Having more material wealth or economic growth in one place, like the U.S.A., means not having it in
other places, namely, rival foreign nations. It also assumes material scarcity is a continual constraint; hence, all resources, everywhere and at any time, are
private property whose productive potentials must be subject ultimately to economic exploitation. Geo-economics accepts the prevailing
form of mass market consumerism as it presently exists, defines its many material benefits as the public ends that advanced
economies ought to seek, and then affirms the need for hard discipline in elaborate programs of productivism, only
now couched within rhetorics of highly politicized national competition, as the means for sustaining mass market consumer
lifestyles in advanced nations like the United States. Creating economic growth, and producing more of it than other equally
aggressive developed and developing countries, is the sine qua non of "national security" in the 1990s. As Richard Darman, President Bush's chief of OMB
declared after Earth Day in 1990, "Americans did not fight and win the wars of the twentieth century to make the world safe for green vegetables."10
However, not everyone sees environmentalism in this age of geo-economics as tantamount to subversion of an entire way of life tied to using increased
levels of natural resources to accelerate economic growth.
Will Malson LD: Capitalism Bad K-NC Page 2 of 4

STEP 2: CAPITALISM PREVENTS AN ESCAPE FROM POVERTY.

Capitalism is structurally incapable of addressing poverty—the argument that free markets help
the poor is a self-serving myth.
Istivan Meszaros, professor emeritus at the University of Sussex, “Beyond Capital”, pg. xiii, 1995 (HEG)
The attempt at divorcing effects from their causes goes hand in hand with the equally fallacious practice
of claiming the status of a rule for the exception. This is how it can be pretended that the misery and
chronic underdevelopment that necessarily arise from the neo-colonial domination and exploitation of
the overwhelming majority of humankind by a mere handful of capitalistically developed countries—
hardly more than the G7—do not matter at all. For, as the self-serving legend goes, thanks to the (never realized)
‘modernization’ of the rest of the world, the population of every country will one fine day enjoy the great benefits of
the ‘free enterprise system.’ The fact that the rapacious exploitation of the human and material
resources of our planet for the benefit of a few capitalist countries happens to be a non-generalizable
condition is wantonly disregarded. Instead, the universal viability of emulating the development of the ‘advanced capitalist’ countries is
predicated, ignoring that neither the advantages of the imperialist past, or the immense profits derived on a continuing basis from keeping the ‘Third World’
in a structural dependency can be ‘universally diffused,’ so as to produce the anticipated happy results through ‘modernization’ and ‘free-marketization.’ Not
even if the history of imperialism could be re-written if a sense diametrically opposed to
to mention the fact that
the way it actually unfolded, coupled with the fictitious reversal of the existing power relations of domination and dependency in favour of the
underdeveloped countries, the general adoption of the rapacious utilization of our plant’s limited resources—
enormously damaging already, although at present practiced only be the privileged tiny minority—
would make the whole system instantly collapse.

STEP 3: CAPITALISM PREVENTS DEMOCRACY.

Capitalism enables elites to dominate politics—it does not foster real democracy.
Robert B. Reich, former Harvard University professor, “How capitalism is killing democracy,” Foreign Policy, September-October 2007
(HEG)
Capitalism and democracy, we've long been told, are the twin
It was supposed to be a match made in heaven.
ideological pillars capable of bringing unprecedented prosperity and freedom to the world. In recent decades,
the duo has shared a common ascent. By almost any measure, global capitalism is triumphant. Most nations around the world are today part of a single,
Three decades ago, a third of the world's
integrated, and turbocharged global market. Democracy has enjoyed a similar renaissance.
nations held free elections; today, nearly two thirds do. Conventional wisdom holds that where either
capitalism or democracy flourishes, the other must soon follow. Yet today, their fortunes are beginning
to diverge. Capitalism, long sold as the yin to democracy's yang, is thriving, while democracy is struggling to keep up.
China, poised to become the world's third largest capitalist nation this year after the United States and
Japan, has embraced market freedom, but not political freedom. Many economically successful nations--
from Russia to Mexico--are democracies in name only. They are encumbered by the same problems that
have hobbled American democracy in recent years, allowing corporations and elites buoyed by runaway
economic success to undermine the government's capacity to respond to citizens' concerns.Of course,
democracy means much more than the process of free and fair elections. It is a system for accomplishing what can only be achieved by citizens joining
together to further the common good. But though free markets have brought unprecedented prosperity to many, they have been accompanied by widening
inequalities of income and wealth, heightened job insecurity, and environmental hazards such as global warming.
Will Malson LD: Capitalism Bad K-NC Page 3 of 4

STEP 4: SOCIALISM SOLVES BOTH.

Socialism is key to democracy; it is committed to the causes of the poor. Ralph Miliband 94
RALPH MILIBAND [Marxist political theorist and sociologist], “THE PLAUSIBILITY OF SOCIALISM”, New Left Review I/206, July-August 1994 (HEG)

Socialism itself must be viewed as part of a democratic movement which long antedates it, but to which
socialism alone can give its full meaning. [1] The idea of democracy has been drastically narrowed in scope and substance in capitalist
societies so as to reduce the threat it posed to established power and privilege: socialism on the contrary is committed to a great widening of its compass.
The unenthusiastic prophet of democracy in the nineteenth century was Alexis de Tocqueville. In his introduction to
Democracy in America, published in 1835, de Tocqueville said that democracy, which he equated with the ‘equality of
condition’ he thought he had found in the United States, was also making its way in Europe. ‘A great
democratic revolution,’ he wrote, ‘is taking place in our midst; everybody sees it, but by no means everybody judges it in the
same way. Some think it a new thing and, supposing it an accident, hope that they can still check it; others think it irresistible, because it seems to them the
most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history’; [2] and in a preface to the twelfth edition of the book, written in 1848, he also asked:
‘Does anyone imagine that Democracy, which has destroyed the feudal system and vanquished kings,
will fall back before the middle classes and the rich?’ [3] Dominant classes in all capitalist countries have ever since the
nineteenth century fought hard and with a considerable measure of success to falsify de Tocqueville’s prediction: socialism is the name of the struggle to
Thus conceived, socialism is part of the struggle for the deepening extension of democracy
make it come true.
in all areas of life. Its advance is not inscribed in some preordained historical process, but is the result of
a constant pressure from below for the enlargement of democratic rights; and this pressure is itself based on the fact that the
vase majority located at the lower ends of the social pyramid needs these rights if those who compose it are to resist and limit the power to which they are subjected.

STEP 5: COOPERATION’S ULTIMATE MANIFESTATION IS SOCIALISM.

Socialism: “a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of
production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”
(Oxford American Dictionaries, 2010)

STEP 6: OUR ONTOLOGY, THE WAY WE RELATE TO COMPETITION AND

COOPERATION, IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS ROUND.

Ontological questions precede questions of policy because without understanding who we are in
the world, we cannot make meaningful use of the information available to us.
Bert Olivier [Professor of Philosophy at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He holds an MA and Doctor of
Philosophy in philosophy, has held postdoctoral fellowships in philosophy at Yale University in the US on more than one occasion, and has held a research
fellowship at the University of Wales, Cardiff. At NMMU he teaches various sub-disciplines of philosophy, as well as film studies, media and architectural
theory, and psychoanalytic theory. He has published widely in the philosophy of culture, art and architecture, cinema, music and literature, as well as the
philosophy of science, epistemology, psychoanalytic, social, media and discourse theory. In 2004 he was awarded the Stals Prize for Philosophy by the
South African Academy for Arts and Sciences, in 2005 he received the award of Top Researcher at NMMU for the period 1999 to 2004, in 2006 the award
for Top Researcher in the Faculty of Arts at NMMU, and in 2008 and 2009 he was both Faculty of Arts Researcher of the Year, and NMMU Researcher of
the Year], “Nature as 'abject', critical psychology, and 'revolt' : the pertinence of Kristeva”, South African Journal of Psychology, Volume 37, Issue 3,
Publication Date: 2007, ISSN: 00812463, (HEG)

any responsible human being who has taken note of the current state of affairs cannot and
In the light of this,
should not avoid making use of every possible medium to create and expand an informed awareness of
the situation, as well as a sense of urgency and the need to act, among as many people as possible. In my
experience, mere ‘factual knowledge’ is not sufficient to have the desired effect of galvanising people into action— in the present ‘information age’, people
with access to media (that is, the vast majority of people on the planet) are ‘better informed’ than in any previous era, but arguably just as apathetic as
by placing ‘information’ about the
‘informed’, judging by the deteriorating condition of natural resources.3 Rather, therefore,
precarious state of the earth in the context of not only a philosophical-theoretical but also, crucially, a
Will Malson LD: Capitalism Bad K-NC Page 4 of 4

critical-psychological interpretation, people are afforded the intellectual, psychological, and ethical4
means to appreciate what all this information means for them and for other creatures on the planet.

In conclusion, the choice before you today is thus: to embrace capitalism or socialism as an individual
ontology. With capitalism comes the continuation of poverty and the suppression of democracy – with
socialism comes the very heart of the democratic movement and the help to the poor that capitalism
inherently lacks. Thank you.