Neoliberalism K—UMich 2013 neg 1NCs 1NC: Generic
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- Cap causes economic interdependence that prevents war—intertwined economies mean governments have more to lose
- Capitalism empirically prevents war—no motive for expansion, overlap in national goals, and global market competition—data supports
- Capitalism promotes peace and makes war less desirable
- Capitalism solves environmental problems
- Private economic enterprise is more efficient and environmentally friendly—incentive to maintain resources to profit—productivity motive ensures environmental safety
- Globalization’s improvement of technology substantially improves society as a whole
- Foreign investment is better for the environment—critical example and empirically improves overall environmental standards
- Capitalism allows for market-based solutions to the environment—more efficient and accepted by the public
- Capitalism key to human choice—allows economic choice and democracy critical to human happiness
- Alternatives to cap eliminate individual freedom of speech and criticism—empirically proven by previous attempts at communism/socialism
- Cap solves poverty—only way to give opportunity for societal progress via economic advancement
- Poverty has massively decreased since capitalism has become dominant—more people with jobs and much less starvation
- Neoliberal policies have led to an era of enormous economic and social progress
- Transition causes war—massive societal upheaval
- Transition from capitalism causes economic collapse—proven by USSR—economic collapse causes desperate lashout and tension
AFF2AC blocksCap Solves WarCapitalism solves warEmpirics—21st century has been the least violent in history because of economic interdependenceTrade solves motives for war—no incentive to attackCap causes economic interdependence that prevents war—intertwined economies mean governments have more to loseNeoliberalism is the chief pacifying and stabilizing force in Latin AmericaParish and Peceny, Professors of Political Science ,University of New Mexico, respectively 02-- (Randall and Mark, “Kantian Liberalism and the Collective Defense of Democracy in Latin America”, Journal of Peace Research 39:2, 2002, http://jpr.sagepub.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/39/2/229.full.pdf)//AS We argue that systemic forces are becoming increasingly important in shaping a liberal peace in the inter-American system. Only in the past decade has this system taken on a consistently liberal character. The prevalence of authoritarian governments, insular economic models, and US preoccupation with Cold War security meant that the system rarely functioned as a liberal union prior to the 1990s. Today, however, nearly all Latin American states are governed by directly elected civilian regimes. The Organization of American States (OAS), the principal international institution in the region, is therefore composed almost entirely of liberal states for the first time in its history. In addition, virtually every state in the region has embraced liberal economic reforms and full integration into global markets. Finally, the system’s strongest power, the United States, behaves more like a liberal state in the post-Cold War era, actively promoting multilateral cooperation and democratic institutions. Together, a stronger OAS, increasing trade interdependence, and a more liberal regional hegemony have brought about an unprecedented transformation of the inter-American system. While a variety of studies have begun to emphasize these factors (Farer, 1996; Lowenthal&Treverton, 1994; Pastor, 1992; Remmer, 1993), none has fully integrated them in a theoretical framework that draws explicitly on the liberal argument. Capitalism empirically prevents war—no motive for expansion, overlap in national goals, and global market competition—data supportsGartzke, associate professor of political science and a member of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, 07 (Erik, “The Capitalist Peace”, American Journal of Political Science 51:1, 1/07, JSTOR)//AS The discovery that democracies seldom fight each other has led, quite reasonably, to the conclusion that democ- racy causes peace, at least within the community of liberal polities. Explanations abound, but a consensus account of the dyadic democratic peace has been surprisingly slow to materialize. I offer a theory of liberal peace based on capi- talism and common interstate interests. Economic devel- opment, capital market integration, and the compatibility of foreign policy preferences supplant the effect of democ- racy in standard statistical tests of the democratic peace. In fact, after controlling for regional heterogeneity, any one of these three variables is sufficient to account for effects previously attributed to regime type in standard samples of wars, militarized interstate disputes (MIDs), and fatal disputes.' If war is a product of incompatible interests and failed or abortive bargaining, peace ensues when states lack dif- ferences worthy of costly conflict, or when circumstances favor successful diplomacy. Realists and others argue that state interests are inherently incompatible, but this need be so only if state interests are narrowly defined or when conquest promises tangible benefits. Peace can result from at least three attributes of mature capitalist economies. First, the historic impetus to territorial expansion is tempered by the rising importance of intellectual and financial capital, factors that are more expediently enticed than conquered. Land does little to increase the worth of the advanced economies while resource competition is more cheaply pursued through markets than by means of military occupation. At the same time, development actually increases the ability of states to project power when incompatible policy objectives exist. Development affects who states fight (and what they fight over) more than the overall frequency of warfare. Second, substantial overlap in the foreign policy goals of developed nations in the post-World War II period further limits the scope and scale of conflict. Lacking territorial tensions, consensus about how to order the international system has allowed liberal states to cooperate and to accommodate minor differences. Whether this affinity among liberal states will persist in the next century is a question open to debate. Finally, the rise of global capital markets creates a new mechanism for competition and communication for states that might otherwise be forced to fight. Separately, these processes influence patterns of warfare in the modern world. Together, they explain the absence of war among states in the developed world and account for the dyadic observation of the democratic peace. The notion of a capitalist peace is hardly new. Montesquieu, Paine, Bastiat, Mill, Cobden, Angell, and othersaw in market forces the power to end war. Unfortu- nately, war continued, leading many to view as overly op- timistic classical conceptions of liberal peace. This study can be seen as part of an effort to reexamine capitalist peace theory, revising arguments in line with contempo- rary insights much as Kantian claims were reworked in response to evolving evidence of a democratic peace. Existing empirical research on the democratic peace, while addressing many possible alternatives, provides an incomplete and uneven treatment of liberal economic processes. Most democratic peace research examines trade in goods and services but ignores capital markets and of- fers only a cursory assessment of economic development (Maoz and Russett 1992). Several studies explore the im- pact of interests, though these have largely been dismissed by democratic peace advocates (Oneal and Russett 1999a; Russett and Oneal 2001). These omissions or oversights help to determine the democratic peace result and thus shape subsequent research, thinking, and policy on the subject of liberal peace. This study offers evidence that liberal economic processes do in fact lead to peace, even accounting for the well-documented role of liberal pol- itics. Democracy cohabitates with peace. It does not, by itself, lead nations to be less conflict prone, not even to- ward other democracies. The argument and evidence provided here are bound to draw criticism. Skepticism in the face of controversial claims is natural, reasonable, even essential for the cumu- lation of knowledge. The democratic peace observation is supported by an exceptionally large and sophisticated body of research.2 At the same time, excessive deference to previous conclusions privileges conventional wisdom.3 A willingness to doubt that which we have come to believe is a hallmark of scientific inquiry. Indeed, the weight of existing evidence does not directly contradict this study as previous research has typically failed to address the claims of classical liberal political economists like Mon- tesquieu, Richard Cobden, and Norman Angell. As with previous research, this study finds support for a liberal peace, though the key causal variables, and some major policy implications, are considerably changed. Capitalism promotes peace and makes war less desirableBandow, A senior fellow at the Cato Institute and served as special assistant to President Reagan,2005, (Doug, “Spreading Capitalism Is Good for Peace” Cato Institute http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/spreading-capitalism-is-good-peace)//JS The shift from statist mercantilism to high-tech capitalism has transformed the economics behind war. Markets generate economic opportunities that make war less desirable. Territorial aggrandizement no longer provides the best path to riches. Free-flowing capital markets and other aspects of globalization simultaneously draw nations together and raise the economic price of military conflict. Moreover, sanctions, which interfere with economic prosperity, provides a coercive step short of war to achieve foreign policy ends.Positive economic trends are not enough to prevent war, but then, neither is democracy. It long has been obvious that democracies are willing to fight, just usually not each other. Contends Gartzke, “liberal political systems, in and of themselves, have no impact on whether states fight.” In particular, poorer democracies perform like non-democracies. He explains: “Democracy does not have a measurable impact, while nations with very low levels of economic freedom are 14 times more prone to conflict than those with very high levels.” Gartzke considers other variables, including alliance memberships, nuclear deterrence, and regional differences.Although the causes of conflict vary, the relationship between economic liberty and peace remains. His conclusion hasn’t gone unchallenged. Author R.J. Rummel, an avid proponent of the democratic peace theory, challenges Gartzke’s methodology and worries that it “may well lead intelligent and policy-wise analysts and commentators to draw the wrong conclusions about the importance of democratization.” Gartzke responds in detail, noting that he relied on the same data as most democratic peace theorists. If it is true that democratic states don’t go to war, then it also is true that “states with advanced free market economies never go to war with each other, either.” The point is not that democracy is valueless. Free political systems naturally entail free elections and are more likely to protect other forms of liberty - civil and economic, for instance.However, democracy alone doesn’t yield peace. To believe is does is dangerous: There’s no panacea for creating a conflict-free world.That doesn’t mean that nothing can be done. But promoting open international markets - that is, spreading capitalism - is the best means to encourage peace as well as prosperity.Notes Gartzke: “Warfare among developing nations will remain unaffected by the capitalist peace as long as the economies of many developing countries remain fettered by governmental control.” Freeing those economies is critical.It’s a particularly important lesson for the anti-capitalist left. For the most part, the enemies of economic liberty also most stridently denounce war, often in near-pacifist terms. Yet they oppose the very economic policies most likely to encourage peace.If market critics don’t realize the obvious economic and philosophical value of markets - prosperity and freedom - they should appreciate the unintended peace dividend. Trade encourages prosperity and stability; technological innovation reduces the financial value of conquest; globalization creates economic interdependence, increasing the cost of war.Nothing is certain in life, and people are motivated by far more than economics. But it turns out that peace is good business. And capitalism is good for peace. Cap Good—EnvironmentCapitalism solves environmental problemsTech innovation—abandonment of capitalism disincentivizes developing solutions for the environment because there’s no profit motiveOnly way to build coalitions to stop environmental degradation—cap brings people together in urban areas and motivate changePrivate economic enterprise is more efficient and environmentally friendly—incentive to maintain resources to profit—productivity motive ensures environmental safetyOnly capitalist nations can afford to worry about the environment—excess wealth is key to investment—proven by US investment in the environmentGlobalization’s improvement of technology substantially improves society as a wholeSzentes, Professor Emeritus of the Corvinus University of Budapest and member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2008 (Tamas, “Globalisation and prospects of the world society,” CENTRAL EUROPEAN POLITICAL SCIENCE, Vol. 9, pp 6, http://cepsr.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ATT81762.pdf#page=9)//SG As a matter of fact, globalisation has got more than one, single "face". It has potentially favourable and unfavourable effects alike.It brings about a challenge but also an opportunity. This follows also from the double-edge impact of its main motive forces: (a)The “revolution” in communication and information technologies substantially facilitates the expansion of economic relations between countries, internationalmigrationandtourism, and thenetworkingactivitiesof transnational companiesbuilding up and managing international production systems. It increasesthe tradability of services and also the scope of those services within the TNCs’ network, such as performed by regional headquarters, local marketing and procurement centres, accounting and financial bureaus, or even some R&D centres.Althoughspeaking about the “death of distance” is an obvious exaggeration(even in a strictly geographical sense, not to mention the “economic” and “cultural distance”9),the spread of remote employment opens new opportunities for those developing countries equipping their labour with appropriate skill and apparatus.The easier access to remote resources and markets, the reduction both of time and cost of transports, and the drastic fall in the costs of international as well as intercontinental information flows, etc., undoubtedly bring the various parts of the world closer to each other and promote the cross-border integration of production processes.The new information techniques, such as Internet, satellite and fibre-optic networks of worldwide telecommunication, etc.,make not only the costs decreasing but also the co- ordination even of those knowledge- and skill-intensive functions allocated in remote areas much easier than ever before.They facilitate also the quick responsiveness of the companies concerned and their affiliates or contract-manufacturers within the network, to any change on the demand or the supply side of the market.
Foreign investment is better for the environment—critical example and empirically improves overall environmental standardsLiverman and Vilas, Regents Professor of Geography and Development, and co-Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona and Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Center for the Environment respectively 06 (Diana and Silvina, “NEOLIBERALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT IN LATIN AMERICA”, Annual Review of Environmental Resources, 6/23/06, University of Michigan Libraries)//AS Several authors (53, 54) suggest that neoliberal policies, especially privatization, foreign investment, and export orientation, have brought improvements in environmental policies and practices to the mining industry in most developed countries. They argue that private mining firms are more efficient in extracting minerals and thus better at protecting the environment because they have better production methods, technologies, and environmental practices (in essence that there are scale, technique, and composition effects) and because they wish to avoid liability risks, comply with home country regulations, and conform to export market expectations. As a result, companies that remained state or locally owned had to adapt to higher production and environmental standards to remain competitive in the international market. Borregaard et al. (53) studied the Chilean copper mining industry following privatization and found that foreign mining companies adopted environmental policies that go far beyond national regulations while introducing environmental measures between 5 and 10 years earlier than their national counterparts (both private and public). The authors cite studies that show that environmental impact assessments conducted by foreign mining companies were instrumental in defining the environmental impact assessment framework for the Chilean Environmental Law and that foreign environmental technology and management systems have enabled the transfer and diffusion of technology within the country. Improvements in Chilean mining practices occurred in the context of the transition to more democratic government from the military regime that had repressed public, including environmental, protest. Additional pressure came from several law suits filed and processed against mining companies during the late 1980s and from lobbying by U.S. copper producers to raise import tariffs of Chilean copper on environmental grounds during the early 1990s (53). The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) (51), finding that historical problems of waste, water acidification, high-energy consumption, and atmospheric pollution have been greatly minimized, except in old pre-1990 mining sites, agrees with the positive influences of foreign investment on environmental performance in Chile. However, they also find that water extraction in northern arid areas (where mining activities are concentrated) is of considerable concern and has created conflicts with other traditional users such as farmers and indigenous groups. The use of underground water in some northern regions in Chile has reduced the availability of surface water for irrigation and even for supplies to small towns. Capitalism allows for market-based solutions to the environment—more efficient and accepted by the publicCox, crop geneticist and writer 04 (Stan, “Can capitalism be harnessed to solve environmental problems, or is capitalism itself the problem?”, Grist, 4/24/04, http://grist.org/article/cox-economy)//AS Paul Hawken couldn’t agree less. [Editor's note: Read a Grist interviewwith Hawken.] When it comes to ideas for encouraging economic growth while preserving “natural capital” — natural resources and the ecological systems that support life — Hawken’s got a million of ‘em. He’s a business leader and environmentalist whose book Natural Capitalism, coauthored with Amory and Hunter Lovins, is packed with such ideas: everything from a proposal to establish markets in conserved energy (“negawatts”) to a blueprint for a super-efficient Hypercar, which, say the authors, has the capacity to haul the hydrogen economy from theory to reality.¶ Hawken told me, “Amory and I fully believe that a 99 percent reduction in the throughput of energy and resources is possible and will eventually occur.” Wow! How? One key is developing better technology; another is placing proper economic values on the ecosphere and its components. Once that’s done, Hawken and Lovins predict big gains in efficiency and a profusion of market-based environmental solutions.¶ Now, when efficiency is proposed as a key to sustainability, it brings to mind a paradox first posed by the 19th-century British economist William Stanley Jevons in his book The Coal Question. He noted that greater efficiency in the use of one resource, say coal, will increase profits, stimulate investment and growth, and lead to even greater consumption of coal and other resources.¶ When I asked Hawken about the paradox of efficiency, he said we have to take a whole-systems approach, and then Jevons’ argument won’t hold: “Dramatic increases in resource productivity must be accompanied by changes in subsidies and taxes that will lead to full-cost accounting. What we have now is the idea that it is too expensive to be radically productive. We tend to think it’s cheaper to double-glaze the planet than to convert to renewable energy.” What’s needed, he argues, is a complete revolution in worldview.¶ Hawken says that public policy and technology can push each other in the right direction: “For example, running cars on hydrogen is about five times the expense as gasoline. But if the car gets five times the efficiency per BTU, then there is no real cost difference. If you go to factor 10, then society is actually saving money by converting to hydrogen as a primary fuel source for transport. And we can begin to draw down [carbon dioxide] levels.”¶ Cap K2 FreedomCapitalism key to human choice—allows economic choice and democracy critical to human happinessKey to VTL—humans are defined by ability to chooseCapitalism key to democracy and political activism—only in a free and capitalist society can people choose their own governmentsAlternatives to cap eliminate individual freedom of speech and criticism—empirically proven by previous attempts at communism/socialismCritiques of neoliberalism ignore valuable social movements and thinking—dooms progressive politicsBarnett, Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University 10 (Clive, “PUBLICS AND MARKETS What’s wrong with Neoliberalism?”, The Handbook of Social Geography, 2010, http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/emergentpublics/publications/barnett_publicsandmarkets.pdf)//AS What’s really wrong with neoliberalism, for critics who have constructed it as a coherent object of analysis, is the unleashing of destructive pathologies through the combined withdrawal of the state and the unfettered growth of market exchange. ‘Individual freedom’ is presented as a medium of uninhibited hedonism, which if given too much free reign undermines the ascetic virtues of self-denial upon which struggles for ‘social justice’ are supposed to depend. Underwritten by simplistic moral denunciations of ‘the market’, these theories cover over a series of analytic, explanatory, and normative questions. In the case of both the Marxist narrative of neoliberalization, and the Foucauldian analysis of neoliberal governmentality, it remains unclear whether either tradition can provide adequate resources for thinking about the practical problems of democracy, rights and social justice. This is not helped by the systematic denigration in both lines of thought of ‘liberalism’, a catch-all term used with little discrimination. There is a tendency to present neoliberalism as the natural end-point or rolling-out of a longer tradition ofliberal thought – an argument only sustainable through the implicit invocation of some notion of a liberal ‘episteme’ covering all varieties and providing a core of meaning. One of the lessons drawn by diverse strands of radical political theory from the experience of twentieth-century history is that struggles for social justice can create new forms of domination and inequality. It is this that leads to a grudging appreciation of liberalism as a potential source for insight into the politics of pluralistic associational life. The cost of the careless disregard for ‘actually existing liberalisms’ is to remain blind to the diverse strands of egalitarian thought about the relationships between democracy, rights and social justice that one finds in, for example: post-Rawslian political philosophy; post-Habermasian theories of democracy, including their feminist variants; various postcolonial liberalisms; the flowering of agonistic liberalisms and theories of radical democracy; and the revival of republican theories of democracy, freedom, and justice. No doubt theorists of neoliberalism would see all this as hopelessly trapped within the ‘neoliberal frame’ of individualism, although if one takes this argument to its logical conclusion, even Marx’s critique of capitalist exploitation, dependent as it is on an ideal of selfownership, is nothing more than a variation on Lockean individual rights. Cap Solves PovertyCap solves poverty—only way to give opportunity for societal progress via economic advancementCapitalism leads to greater wealth overall—solves poverty because excess wealth goes into social spending—empirically proven in Latin AmericaCapitalism is the only economic system that allows for social advancement—alternatives doom people in poverty to remain soPoverty has massively decreased since capitalism has become dominant—more people with jobs and much less starvationGlobalization and neoliberalism empirically increase welfare spending and redistribution of wealthRudra, Associate Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh 02 (Nita, “Globalization and the Decline of the Welfare State in Less-Developed Countries”, International Organization 56:2, Spring 2002, JSTOR)//AS Conventional wisdom suggests that all states, regardless of their partisan com- positions and national differences, would embrace neoliberal policies in order to maintain international competitiveness in a globalizing world." Consequently, the demise of the welfare state is expected for two reasons. First, generous welfare benefits are not regarded as good market-disciplining devices on labor. Both the resulting upward pressures on labor costs and the dampening effects on work incentives are claimed to adversely affect export competitiveness. Second, global- ization discourages governments from raising revenue. "Footloose capital," or the capacity to withdraw and shift both productive and financial capital with greater ease, has made it increasingly difficult for governments to generate revenues through taxation." This "race to the neoliberal bottom" in tax rates is compounded by governments' lowering taxes to compete with other states for international investors and to prevent capital flight. By the same token, state borrowing, which leads to higher debt and interest rates, also deters investment. The last two decades have thus become witness to the reification of Charles LindbIom`s "markets as prisons" idea." With increasing global competition, governments supposedly find it more difficult to protect citizens from market-generated risks and inequalities. By analyzing fourteen OECD countries, Geoffrey Garrett presents the most recent and convincing challenge to the notion that welfare states are crumbling under these pressures." Garrett"˜s analysis extends the globalization-welfare debate initiated by Karl Polyani, Jolm Gerard Ruggie, and Peter J. Katzenstein.'5 He demonstrates that international market exposure actually induces greater government spending on redistribution programs that compensate for market-generated inequalities. Key to Garrett"˜s analysis is the ability of labor-market institutions to effectively negotiate between government and labor. He convincingly argues that if labor markets are highly centralized and well developed, then labor and government can effectively coordinate economic performance with redistribution policies. He concludes that globalization has in fact strengthened left-labor movements, and, consequently, cross-national partisan differences in the developed world have been sustained. Neoliberal policies have led to an era of enormous economic and social progressNavarro,M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Public Policy, Sociology, and Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University, 2007 (Vicente, “NEOLIBERALISM AS A CLASS IDEOLOGY; OR, THE POLITICAL CAUSES OF THE GROWTH OF INEQUALITIES,” International Journal of Health Services, Vol. 37.1, pp47-49)//SG A trademark of our times is the dominance of neoliberalism in the major economic, political, and social forums of the developed capitalist countries and in the international agencies they influence—including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, theWorld Trade Organization (WTO), and the technical agencies of the United Nations, such as theWorld Health Organization (WHO), Food and Agriculture Organization, and UNICEF. Starting in the United States during the Carter administration, neoliberalism expanded its influence through the Reagan administration and, in the United Kingdom, the Thatcher administration,to become an international ideology. Neoliberalism holds to a theory (though not necessarily a practice) that posits the following: 1. The state (or what is wrongly referred to in popular parlance as “the government”) needs to reduce its interventionism in economic and social activities. 2. Labor and financial markets need to be deregulated in order to liberate the enormous creative energy of the markets. 3. Commerce and investments need to be stimulated by eliminating borders and barriers to allow for the full mobility of labor, capital, goods, and services. Following these three tenets,according to neoliberal authors, we have seen that the worldwide implementation of such practices has led to the development of a “new” process: a globalization of economic activity that has generated a period of enormous economic growth worldwide, associated with a new era of social progress.For the first time in history, we are told, we are witnessing a worldwide economy, in which states are losing power and are being replaced by a worldwide market centered in multinational corporations, which are the main units of economic activity in the world today.This celebration of the process of globalization is also evident among some sectors of the left. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in their widely cited Empire (1), celebrate the great creativity of what they consider to be a new era of capitalism. This new era, they claim, breaks with obsolete state structures and establishes a new international order,which they define as an imperialist order. They further postulate that this new imperialist order is maintained without any state dominating or being hegemonic in that order. Thus, they write (1, p. 39):We want to emphasize that the establishment of empire is a positive step towards the elimination of nostalgic activities based on previous power structures; we reject all political strategies that want to take us back to past situations such as the resurrection of the nation-state in order to protect the population from global capital. We believe that the new imperialist order is better than the previous system in the same way that Marx believed that capitalism was a mode of production and a type of society superior to the mode that it replaced. This point of view held by Marx was based on a healthy despisement of the parochial localism and rigid hierarchies that preceded the capitalist society, as well as on the recognition of the enormous potential for liberation that capitalism had. Globalization (i.e., the internationalization of economic activity according to neoliberal tenets)becomes, in Hardt and Negri’s position,an international system that is stimulating a worldwide activity that operates without any state or statesleading or organizing it. Such an admiring and flattering view of globalization andneoliberalism explains the positive reviews that Empire has received from EmilyEakin, a book reviewer for the New York Times, and other mainstream critics, notknown for sympathetic reviews of books that claim to derive their theoreticalposition from Marxism. Actually, Eakin describes Empire as the theoreticalframework that the world needs to understand its reality Transition Causes WarTransition causes war—massive societal upheavalEither alt solves or creates so much instability that society will never recover—any large-scale change will turn society upside downPeople used to capitalism are angered when wealth is taken away—will lash outTransition from capitalism causes economic collapse—proven by USSR—economic collapse causes desperate lashout and tensionRebelling against neoliberalism inevitably leads to a violent struggle characterized by the struggle to meet basic needs.Ceceña, Professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2009(Ana Esther, National Autonomous University of Mexico; Director of the ObservatorioLatinoamericano de Geopolítica and active in the Americas Demilitarisation Campaign, “Postneoliberalism and its bifurcations” Development Dialogue Issue 51, http://rosalux-europa.info/userfiles/file/DD51.pdf#page=35)//CS Both things have happened after 30 years of neoliberalism. The voraciousness of the market took the appropriation of nature and the dispossession of human beings to the extreme. Territories were ravaged by desertification and their inhabitants driven out. People revolted, and ecological catastrophe, which had reached an extreme point of irreversibility, started to manifest itself in a violent way. People rebelled against the advance of capitalism, blocking the ways that were taking it towards even greater appropriation. Armed insurgencies impeded access to the rainforest; civil revolts put an end to the building of dams, to intensive mining, to the construction of heavy-load roads, to the privatisation of oil and gas, and to the monopolisation of water. The market, by itself, was not able to defeat those people who were already out of its reach because they had been expelled; and from there, from the non-market, they were struggling for human and natural life, for life’s essential elements, for another relationship with nature, for an end to the pillaging. The end of neoliberalism begins when the extent of dispossession arouses the fury of the people and compels them to burst onto the scene. Download 1.47 Mb. Share with your friends:
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