Johnson County Debate 2014

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The other team subordinates the State to the materialism of economic interests
And/or

The materialism of modern reality makes their impacts lose all meaning. Reconnection to spiritual
authority overshadows their artificial appendices.
Evola 53, Julius, Italian writer and esotericist, Men Among the Ruins, ch. 6 p. 165
The materialization and the soullessness of all the domains of life that characterize it divest of any
higher meaning all those problems and conflicts that are regarded as important within it. This subversive
character is found both in Marxism and in its apparent nemesis, modern capitalism. Thus, it is absurd and deplorable for those who pretend
to represent the political "Right" to fail to leave the dark and small circle that is determined by the demonic power of the economya circle
including capital-ism, Marxism, and all the intermediate economic degrees. This should be firmly upheld by those who today are taking a
stand against the forces of the Left. Nothing is more evident than that modern capitalism is just as subversive as Marxism. The materialistic
view of life on which both systems are based is identical; both of their ideals are qualitatively identical, including the premises connected to a
world the center of which is constituted of technology, science, production, "productivity," and "consumption." And as long as we only talk
about economic classes, profit, salaries, and production, and as long as we believe that real human progress is
determined by a particular system of distribution of wealth and goods , and that, generally speaking, human

progress is measured by the degree of wealth or indigencethen we are not even close to what is
essential, even though new theories, beyond Marx-ism and capitalism, might be formulated. The starting point should be,
instead, a firm rejection of the principle formulated by Marxism, which summarizes the entire subversion at work today: The
economy is our destiny. We must declare in an uncompromising way that in a normal civilization the economy and
economic interestsunderstood as the satisfaction of material needs and their more or less artificial appendiceshave
always played, and always will play, a subordinated function. We must also uphold that beyond the
economic sphere an order of higher political, spiritual, and heroic values has to emerge , an order that neither
knows nor tolerates merely economic classes and does not know the division between "capitalists" and "proletarians"; an order solely in
terms of which are to be defined the things worth living and dying for. We must also uphold the need for a true hierarchy and for different
dignities, with a higher function of power installed at the top ,

Forget their notion of progress it is better to stop completely and spiritual reorient than continue
the empty frenzy of modern life.
Evola 53, Julius, Italian writer and esotericist, Men Among the Ruins, ch. 6 p. 175
An ancient image, taken from a Buddhist text, is that of a man running breathlessly under the burning sun. At a
certain point this man may ask himself: "Why am I running? What if I were to slow down? " and then, walking more
slowly, he asks: "Why am I walking in this heat? What if I paused under a tree?"and in doing so he may come to
see that his previous running was caused by a foolish and feverish state of mind. Such an image indicates the
inner transformation, or metanoia, required to strike at the heart of the "hegemony" of work and to regain inner
freedom: this, however, not in order to shift to a renunciatory, utopian, and miserable civilization, but in order to clear
every domain of life of insane tensions and to restore a real hierarchy of values. Here the fundamental point is to
be able to recognize that there is no external economic improvement or social prosperity worthy enough (and
the temptations of which should not be absolutely resisted) when its counterpart is an essential limitation of freedom and of
the space necessary for everyone to realize his possibilities beyond the dimension conditioned by matter and by the
needs of ordinary life. Moreover, this does not apply only to the single individual, but to the collective whole and
the State as well, especially when its material resources are limited and foreign economic forces are pressuring it. Here autarchy may be
an ethical precept, because what weighs more on the scale of values must be the same for a single individual and for a State: it is better
to renounce the allure of improving general social and economic conditions and to adopt a regime of austerity
than to become enslaved to foreign interests or to become caught up in world processes of reckless economic
hegemony and productivity that are destined to sweep away those who have set them in motion.