Neoliberalism K—UMich 2013 neg 1NCs 1NC: Generic

The expansion of the market is simply a mask for organizations such as the World Bank, IMF, and the WTO to exploit the weaknesses of developing countries in disguise of economic reforms

(Padmakar, “Myth and Reality of Capitalism: Neo-Liberalism and Globalisation,” MAINSTREAM, VOL XLVII, NO 1, http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1111.html)//SG

IN these days of uncritical acclaim of globalisation by economists and the rest, the Bad Samaritans, a book by the Cambridge University economic historian, comes like an eye-opener.2 The “Unholy Trinity” of the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, and the financial institutions under their control or influence of those whom the author rightly describes as “Bad Samaritans” have taken advantage of the weaknesses of the developing countries, imposed on them the so-called package of economic reforms of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation otherwise known as the structural adjustment programme, that is, fiscal discipline, strict money policies, deregulation, dismantling public projects and programmes, reduced role of the state, low tariffs and removal of barriers to private investment—all aimed at making them a part of the free market world economy. In fact it is a self-serving strategy of the rich countries led by the USA intended to impose their dominance on the world economy through unfettered operation of their multinational corpo-rations even though it is detrimental to the economic interests of the common people of the developing countries. The rich countries have systematically tried to hide their real purpose by justifying their strategy of globalisation in a self-righteous manner as based on sound principles of free market economies which they advocate for the developing countries though they themselves had found it necessary to give a go-by to these principles and resort to economic protection in their own early stages of development. In tende-ring their advice to the developing countries they do not find it necessary to pay any attention to the well-being of the common people of the develo-ping countries nor the sovereign right of the governments of these countries to chalk out their own policies. They have sedulously fostered myths of rationality and sanctity of the principle of the free market economy though they are inconsistent with the economic reality. This has been facilitated by the recent upsurge of new-classical economics under the leadership of the Chicago School of Economics—Milton Friedman and his followers—which has virtually banished Keynesian Economics and the countervailing fiscal policies advocated by it as also the newly born Developmental Economics formulated by economists like Ragner Nauske and Roscustein Roden to evolve a positive strategy of development for the developing countries.

Trade promotes globalization and liberal economic policies causing more harm than benefits

(Tamas, “Globalisation and prospects of the world society,” CENTRAL EUROPEAN POLITICAL SCIENCE, Vol. 9, pp 8-9, http://cepsr.eu/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ATT81762.pdf#page=9)//SG

(c)The wave of liberalisation, involving both the progress in liberalisation of international trade and capital flows, and the worldwide spread of liberal economic policy of government, undoubtedly promotes globalisation and the growth of world trade and capital flows, on the one hand, but benefits more the stronger, the more developed partners, on the other. Trade liberalisation always works in favour of those with higher competitiveness, i.e. the more developed partners. "Capital account"liberalisation promotes rapid and fluctuating flows of "hot money", i.e. speculation-motivated transactions,rather than long-term investments, thereby contributes to the instability of the international monetary system, and the spread ("contagion") of disturbances in money markets. A too rapid, full and unprepared liberalisation, particularly in the field of finance,often causes more harm than benefit, as it was experienced by several developing and “transition” (former “socialist”) countries, where it led to a fall of economic growthand, in fact, to bigger disturbances in the economy than the preceding policy of state regulation.Liberalisationtends to sharpen competition, which stimulates technological progress, but may discourage cooperation, and by its disequalising effects contributes to the growth of international development gap under the conditions of the lack of institutionalised correcting- compensating mechanism. Such a mechanism would also require global governance.The international literature pays particular attention to various other effects of globalisation. Such as concerning “national sovereignty”, social welfare policies, national cultures, political conditions and convergence or divergence tendencies.

Link: Private Sector

The private sector co-opts politics resulting in increased neoliberalism through the dismantling of state control

Ugalde, Ph.D in Political Science at National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1996

(Francisco Valdés, “The Private Sector and Political Regime Change in Mexico,” NEOLIBERALISM REVISITED – Economic Restructuring and Mexico's Political Future, edited by Gerardo Otero, Westview Press, pg 135-36)//SG

The CCE was not just one more organization buta hierarchical instrument articulating a forced convergence between the CMHN's program and that of the rest of the private sector. An initial objective was to redistribute functions among organizations. Those dedicated to sectoral interests would no longer ex- pend their limited energies in efforts to promote classwide interests.The latter were reserved for class organizations, thus strengthening their capacity to act po- litically in a greater number of social and political processes. 6The CCE was cre- ated to accomplish wider objectives in this arena, to coordinate the activities of business associations with regard to all kinds of policies and issues. Its aim was to present an aggressive, united front, intent upon shifting political life in Mex- icoaway from populism in a moreliberal, business-oriented direction and Ca- pable of intervening systematicallyacross the entire spectrum ofpublic affairs. The new association was thusdedicated to promoting the expansion of pri- vate influence in the public sphere of society. Its project, as was soon evident,was to parlay the private sector's economic supremacy into supremacy within the state, purging thelatter of populist or nonconservative officials indecisionmaking circles and reinforcing the linkages with the conservative (mostly financial)bureaucracy. At the same time,the CCE emphasized the need to start a neoliberal downsizing of the state's intervention in the economy and a concomitant loosening of its political control, summed up in the code words "privatization" and "modernization."The former translates into a massive reallocation of economic resourcesin favor of the largest firms and consor- tiums; the latter connotes a weakening or dismantling of the ties between gov- ernment and labor as wellas the eclipse of the traditional(i.e., nonmodern)sectors of the bureaucracy. By the 1990s, capital's new forms of political participation had become a permanent feature of Mexican politics, even though reforms seen as contrary to business interests were definitively abandoned after 1976, when the Lopez Portillo administration made the recovery of private-sector confidence the major aim of its economic policies.These policies, however, met with indifferent success and eventuated in the most serious bone of contention between business and government in recent times—the nationalization of banks in 1982.

The private sector insertion into politics removes the state from the economy resulting in the loss of “Social Justice”

Ugalde, Ph.D in Political Science at National Autonomous University of Mexico, 1996

(Francisco Valdés, “The Private Sector and Political Regime Change in Mexico,” NEOLIBERALISM REVISITED – Economic Restructuring and Mexico's Political Future, edited by Gerardo Otero, Westview Press, pg 136-7)//SG

Conceived along with the CCE in 1975, the private sector's political program has been amended and augmented in the light of subsequent events. A review of the major proclamations issued bybusinessorganizations during the last twenty years7reveals the following list of demands: (1) a market-oriented economy; (2) increased attention to the private sector's position, as opposed to that of other sectors, in government decisionmaking; (3) reduced bargaining power for trade unions; (4) an invigoration of civil society; (5) official recognition of the legiti- macy of business participation in politics, education, public opinion, and so forth.The first demand involves the privatization of government-owned enter- prises and the restriction of state intervention to regulatory functions. There are two aspects to the second demand: the reduction and specification of the pres- ident's power over economic decisionmakingand the establishment of rational institutional forms of bilateral decisionmaking. Thethird demand has been manifested in the attacks on collective contracts and negotiations(particularly in state enterprises, where labor has obtained the highest levels of income and social benefits) and on the formulation of proposals to modify Article 123 of the Constitution regulating labor, in accordance to the new status quo.A more robust civilsociety, the fourth demand,is conceived as one in which the indi- vidual, private initiative, entrepreneurship, modernity, citizenship, and the like are the regnant ideals, replacing statism, corporatism, and revolutionary na- tionalism in the public sphere. The final demand, which is self-explanatory, envisions a new and imposing profile for the private sector and its supporters in society. The triumph of such a program representsa major reformation of the state in today's Mexico—a rupture with the "social justice" tradition of the Mexican Revolution. That tradition may be characterized as a reformist practice related to the aforementioned political ambiguity of the Mexican state. Its legal foun- dations are the so-called social rights protected by the Constitution—more specifically, by Article 3, which provides that education is to be state-supported and nonreligious; by Article 27, which defines land and natural resources as the property of the "nation" and specifies that private property can be limited ac- cording to the "public interest"; by Article 123, which permits the state to in- tervene in industrial relations on behalf of labor; and by Article 130, which legislates the separation of church and state. The historical origins of these constitutional precepts are varied. The provi- sions concerning education date from the revolutionary period of 1910-1917; those dealing with land and natural resources harken back to the Bourbon re- forms of the late colonial era; the prohibition of clerical involvement in politics is rooted in the nineteenth-century liberal reform, which expropriated the agrarian properties of the Catholic Church. In order to restore stability in the aftermath of the revolution, the president was granted "permanent exceptional powers" to enforce the Constitution, thus attaining a dominant position vis-à- vis the legislature and the judiciary in Mexico's authoritarian political system.Because constitutional law has thus been enforced in a discretionary manner, the private-sector program has concentrated on changing it. The development of the private-sector agenda can best be observed in the forms of political activism adopted by business organizations. These may be grouped into two principal factions according to their attitudes toward politics in general: one moderate or technocratic, the other radical or populist (see Table 7.1) (Luna et al., 1987:13-43; Jacobo et al., 1989:6._9).8

Link: Democracy

The logic of capitalism and democracy are fully intertwined – there is no third way. Their plan uses democracy as a subversive tool to support authoritarian regimes and military dictators

Dubhashi, Ph.D. at Pune University, former Vice-Chanceller, Goa University, and an erstwhile Secretary, Government of India, December 20, 2008

(Padmakar, “Myth and Reality of Capitalism: Neo-Liberalism and Globalisation,” MAINSTREAM, VOL XLVII, NO 1, http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1111.html)//SG

NEO-LIBERALS postulate that democracy and free market are natural partners in promoting economic development. Francis Fukuyama, a senior policy-maker in the US State Department, in his speech at University of Chicago in 1989 titled—“Are we approaching the end of history?”, claimed that free markets and free people are a part of an inseparable project of modernity and progress and represented the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and final form of human organisation. There is no question of a “third way”. Fukuyama’s claim turned but to be a myth because it was fundamen-tally illogical. There is a basic contradiction between democracy and free market. Democracy gives equal rights to each person while markets give weightage to the rich people. Hence democratic decisions usually subvert the logic of the market. No wonder “Bad Samaritans” here recom-mended policies that actively seek to undermine democracy. They have promoted the concept of “minimal state”—reduction in the scope of government activity and depoliticisation of the economy by establishing politically independent policy agencies like an independent Central Bank, independent regulatory agencies and even independent tax office. These policies in fact amount to undermining democracy by dimini-shing the scope of democratic control. In her powerful indictment of neo-liberal policy, comprehensively documented, Naomi Klein, the best selling author of No Logo, has shown how the radical advocates of capitalism sought to impose neo-liberal policies on the developing countries of the world by subverting democratic institutions and supporting authoritarian rulers and military dictators.3 The intellectual epicentre of radical capitalism and neo-liberal policies of marketisation, privatisation, deregulation, globalisation, based on free trade and free movement of capital and minimal state, was the Chicago School of Economics led by Milton Friedman. He formulated the theory that “crisis is the mother of change”, that is, crisis in any form—economic, political or military. Advocates of free market should not hesitate to create a crisis situation since it provides them with the opportunities to push through their neoliberal policies. The goal should be to see that “neo-liberalism” rules the world. When a crisis situation arises anywhere in the world, the neo-liberaliser should push through a whole gamut of new-liberal policies at one go irrespective of the consequences on the well-being of the people. This came to be known as the “shock therapy” administered by the “Chicago Boys” in Chile and other Latin American countries as also in China, the “Berkley Boys” in Indonesia and the wonder boy of Harvard, Jeffrey Sachs, who administered it in Bolivia, Poland and Russia. The ruthlessness of the “shock therapy” is analogous to the electric shock treatment administered by the CIA to the detainees in the Guantnamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons to extract confessions and the “shock-and-awe strategy” the American Army used in their attack on Iraq. The idea is that the individual or the country at the receiving end should be completely benumbed, disoriented and lose the will and the capacity to resist. Klein’s extensive documentation of the “economic shock therapy” should open the eyes of the “economic reformers” who indiscriminately support the neo-liberal policies. Like the Tsunami waves, the “neo-liberal policies” hit the fragile economies of Latin American and African countries as well as the economies of Russia and Poland shattered by the breakdown of communism leaving a trail of human distress and misery. In the somewhat different circumstances of China and South Africa the application of the neo-liberal policies had the same consequences, namely, gross inequality and human misery. In all these countries people were cowed down by authoritarian governments using ruthless power to crush resistance.

Democracy promotion provides an opportunity for the expansion of neoliberalism – this is unstable

Kurki, PhD @ University of Wales, Professor in International Relations Theory @ University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 13 Feb 2013

(Milja, “Politico-Economic Models of Democracy in Democracy Promotion,” International Studies Perspectives, pg 12-13)//SG

The fortunes of democracy promotion, a key post–Cold War policy agenda of the United States and the European Union,have been mixed. The policy practice arose with great confidence in the post–Cold War era, which also saw a great confidencebuilding up on the idea of liberal capitalist democracy.This is because the end ofthe Cold War saw a sharp turn in the fortunes of both capi- talism and democracy: It resulted in their confirmation as the foremost models of governance in modern societies. As Marc F. Plattner (1993:30) stated, in the post–Cold War worldliberal democracy and capitalist economic systems provide the ultimate ideal to aim for all societies.For Plattner (1997), the American model of democracy, in which both these characteristics have come together should serve as the effective end-state to which all states, at least those that wish to be modern and internationally accepted, should aim (see also Fukuyama 1992).This view, which of course did not arise in a power vacuum, but reflected both the power and the interests of key capitalist liberal democracy promoting states(see Robinson 1996), has directed the trends in democratization during the last few decades: Socialist and communist states have selected a path toward capital- ism and democracy, as have many Asian and Latin American states.Up until the mid-1990s, there was still a strong opposition to the “orthodox” Western model of capitalist democracy, notably in Asia. However, the Asian crisis confirmed, it seems, that national capitalist models would not be sustainable and would have to necessitate a turn toward more pure forms of the capitalist system (Krugman 2008) as well as liberal democracy (McFaul 2004:149–50). Liberal capitalism and liberal democracy triumphed: They also came to provide the mainstay of think- ing in all major international organizations, such as the World Bank and IMF. Crucially,belief in liberal democracy in the context of at least relatively liberal capitalist economy also came to inform all the core democracy promotion agen- cies and their policies, from the National Endowment for Democracy to the European Union(Przeworski, 1991; Burnell 2000; Patomaki and Teivainen 2004; Pridham, 2005; Simmons et al. 2008). Support for “capitalist democracy” has been especially strongly maintained by the United States. While liberal ideas have always been central to American democracy promotion (Smith 1994), George W. Bush’s administration’s “Free- dom Agenda” went perhaps further than most: Bush explicitly argued for eco- nomic liberty as a crucial condition for political democratization. Even in the middle of the financial crisis, it argued that “the surest path to that growth is free markets and free people” (Bush, 2008).This view did not arise from nowhere, however; it reflected the previous Clinton administration’s commit- ment to advancement of “market democracies” (Hippler 1995) and a wider long- term commitment to conjoining of markets and democracy (Foley 2007). Other democracy promotion actors too have seen democracy and markets as conjoined agendas. The European Union, for example, has attached its democ- racy promotion agenda, both through membership conditionality and the new neighborhood policy, to the advancement of “market systems” (European Com- mission 2004; Ferrero-Waldner 2006; Europa 2009). Liberal market capitalism and democracy are the core “shared values” of the European Union (European Commission 2004; Interviews with European Commission Officials, January 18 and 19, 2011). These views have, moreover, been adopted, surprisingly widely, also by some of the key civil society actors in democracy promotion. Thus, politi- cal foundations, once the defenders of ideological diversity in democracy promo- tion, have for example also come to the defense of a core liberal democratic model(Interviews with Brussels-based NGO actors, January 17 and 28, 2011).

Democracy promotion is unrealistic – Obama’s agenda switch was only due to embarrassment but still serves as a mask for the expansion of capitalism albeit with less of a hard liberalist policy. Also, their knowledge gathering is flawed – democracy promoters draw from a rag bag of evidence. Democracy and capitalism are discursively linked

Kurki, PhD @ University of Wales, Professor in International Relations Theory @ University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 13 Feb 2013

(Milja, “Politico-Economic Models of Democracy in Democracy Promotion,” International Studies Perspectives, pg 14)//SG

It would mean in the first instance that the confident assertions of some democracy promoters and policy-makers are overstated and unrealistic. Since the evidence seems to point in the direction that the link between democracy and capitalism is more contingent than is often thought, it seems that confident self-assured efforts to expand capitalist democracy to other parts of the world should perhaps be avoided. Indeed, a key consequence of the analysis here is that it forces democracy promoters to think more carefully about the justifications that they have for the models of democracy that they promote. As difficult, and in some senses unreason- able, as it is to call for political and policy actors to remain attuned to nuances of academic argumentation, making some note of the academic controversy over cap- italist democracy seems important at this juncture. This is important, both in terms of democracy promoters avoiding getting caught up in their own rhetoric traps— commitment to undefined liberalization when this clashes with support for social rights or social justice—and in terms of democracy promoters being able to develop more nuanced and coherent positions on this linkaging—more consistent “reform liberal” or “social model” alternatives, as well as liberal ones. Interestingly, as we have seen, Barack Obama’s administration has arguably already revisited this relationship—if not self-consciously. The shift in the Obama administration is not surprising in that a sense of embarrassment surrounds the talk of capitalist democracy in the wake of the financial crisis. Yet, it could also be justified in clearer and theoretically as well as evidentially more explicit and open terms. There are, as we have seen, more cautious complementarian lines that the administration could refer to, as well as important reform liberal varia- tions, which see democratic controls over markets as a key aspect of democratiza- tion. Such lines of thought would arguably fit with Obama’s wider policy agenda and, thus, consistent and systematic rethinking away from Hayekian lines of thought would arguably benefit, rather than harm, the Obama administration’s movement away from the hard liberalism of the Bush years. Similar reflection would assist the European Union in developing long sought after “coherence” in its democracy promotion. The European Union’s rhetoric of democracy promotion remains vague: It is generally built on the core princi- ples of free markets and liberal democracy, and the two are seen to go together. However, this “fuzzy liberal” actor also seeks to nuance its democracy promotion with some references to issues of social justice and workers rights (Manners 2006). Yet, the content of the European model then remains remarkably unde- fined, and as a result unconvincing and poorly legitimated in the eyes of at least those who expect strategic or political convictions of specific kind from this actor (International IDEA 2009). It is unclear whether it stands for social democracy, or in fact for hard core or moderate forms of economic and political liberalism. Reflection on the relationship of markets and democracy—even if it was to rec- ognize the plurality of such models—should help the European Union in its search for coherence and consistency in its democracy promotion. A key point that emerges from the survey of academic scholarship and which is worth emphasizing is that, in the scholarly literature, even when there is general agreement between authors, say on complementarity of capitalism and democracy, the exact logics of argument may differ widely. This is especially impor- tant to note in relation to the “complementarity” account and is crucial for thinking about redirections of democracy promotion practice. The subtleties of argument on why and how capitalism and democracy complement each other are important for not just academics but also policy practitioners to recognize, for they can come to have a crucial role in thinking about justifications of democracy promotion policies, and indeed the shape of these policies them- selves. Many democracy promotion scholars, as well as policy actors, tend to draw from a rag bag of evidence and conceptual orientation in justifying their support for capitalist democracy. Paying attention to these justifications and evi- dences is important to maintain a semblance of consistency and ideological or political coherence to democracy promotion however it is to be conceived. At the same time, it means that democracy promoters need not necessarily give up on a complementarian position, even though the Hayekian line can be recog- nized as problematic. Noting explanatory pluralism also reveals that the politico-economic argu- ments and models advanced now should be recognized as far from “natural” and self-evident, but rather as political projects of a particular kind. This is important for it challenges the underlying dynamics of much of recent democracy promo- tion. Democracy promotion has often been perceived as an apolitical technical bureaucratic affair: An exercise in “box ticking” by expert groups far removed from the political and social contexts of the target states’ democratizers (Kurki 2011). Contrary to a technical approach to democracy promotion, the approach here reveals the inherently contingent and political nature of this policy practice and the ideologically biased nature of the idea of democracy advances, as well as the conception of socioeconomic conditions of democracy. There is nothing “natural” about liberal capitalist democracy promotion. It follows that we must consider the different political and ideological conse- quences of the different positions on this and their consequences for democracy promotion. First, we must think about the political predilections of the different explanatory models. A Hayekian would seek to institute unconditionally the conditions of economic liberty in a state, this being seen as a fundamental and necessary condition for democratization. A Przeworskian (Przeworski 2000) would instead focus on ensuring economic development in a state to meet the level of economic income, which can be scientifically proven to be consistent with the rise of democracy. The emphasis here is more technical, but also less concerned with the insisting on laissez-faire capitalism as the necessary chosen model of economic development. A Moorian line of argument, on the other hand, would prioritize the need to understand the specific conditions of eco- nomic development and class formation within a given state and would be adverse to universalistic solutions, such as unconditional opening up of markets. This is not even to mention what the critics of the complementarian approach would say. A reform liberal, social democratic, or national capitalist approach might go further and argue that democratic values should be prioritized in the way in which market relations are encouraged within states. Thus, the guiding value in democratizing a state would be democratic control, not market values of efficiency. Thus, the economic and trade policies of democracy promoters should be subjected to measures of democratic control by target publics. Explor- ing which of these avenues democracy promoters, from the post–Bush United States to the European Union, exactly wish to follow would, it seems, be impor- tant in terms of deciding on the precise strategic directions of their democracy support. Justifications for interventions, but also the shape of the policies advo- cated—civil society support, institution building, rule of law reform, and trade policy—are affected in crucial ways. Finally, and relatedly, it is important to emphasize the fact that the explana- tory pluralism and complexity identified here is also important in making us realize the normative and political pluralism that may be involved in discussing the future of democracy promotion. It has been noted that the different positions on capitalism and democracy can lead to very different definitions and visions of democracy. While many of those who work with the idea that capitalism and democracy are complementary advocate a liberal democratic notion of democ- racy as the guiding light of analysis, many of those who see capitalism and democracy as contradictory reject a liberal democratic notion of democracy as their chosen normative ideal. They advance alternative definitions and visions of democracy, participatory models, social democratic models, or socialist models. Each of such models has very different democratic value hierarchies guiding it— some emphasizing liberty, others solidarity, participation, or socioeconomic equality—and attached to each is also a very different vision of the politico-eco- nomic systems that are appropriate for advancing those values. The recognition of explanatory pluralism then directs us to make note of the existence of multiple different normative (as well as explanatory) “politico-eco- nomic models of democracy” that might serve as basis for discussion over democ- racy promotion. While discussion of alternative politico-economic models of democracy may seem outdated to some and is rejected by some conservatives (Huntington 1990), this analysis reveals that such models still thrive and are evident and reflected in the explanatory accounts that can be given of the capi- talism–democracy relationship. These alternative visions not only envisage alter- native realities and power relations for social life but also undo the firm discursive linkage that has developed between capitalism and democracy during the post–Cold War years. Indeed, these visions are suggestive of the possibility that democracy and capitalism may not be either necessarily or coincidentally joined, but importantly “discursively conjoined” (Dryzek 2006). Challenging this discursive linkage provides one way forward. It provides an avenue for finding new ways of linking economic discourses and democracy, and indeed, new inter- pretations of the meaning, functions, and spheres of democracy (see e.g. Teivai- nen 2002).

Link: Disasters/War

The Aff’s impacts and disasters are used as a mask for the unfettered expansion of unrestrained capitalist policies

Klein, Milibrand Fellow at the London School of Economics, 2007

(Naomi, “The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” p. 3-10)//SG

I met Jamar Perry in September 2005, at the big Red Cross shelter in BatonRouge, Louisiana. Dinner was being doled out by grinning young Scientol­ogists, and he was standing in line. I had just been busted for talking to evac­uees without a media escort and was now doing my best to blend in, a whiteCanadian in a sea of African-American Southerners. I dodged into the foodline behind Perry and asked him to talk to me as if we were old friends,which he kindly did. Born and raised in New Orleans, he'd been out of the flooded city for aweek. He looked about seventeen but told me he was twenty-three. He andhis family had waited forever for the evacuation buses; when they didn't ar­rive, they had walked out in the baking sun. Finally they ended up here, asprawling convention center, normally home to pharmaceutical trade showsand "Capital City Carnage: The Ultimate in Steel Cage Fighting," nowjammed with two thousand cots and a mess of angry, exhausted people be­ing patrolled by edgy National Guard soldiers just back from Iraq.The news racing around the shelter that day was that Richard Baker, aprominent Republican congressman from this city, had told a group of lob­byists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn'tdo it, but God did."2Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans' wealthiest devel­opers, had just expressed a similar sentiment: "I think we have a clean sheetto start again. And with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities."3All that week the Louisiana State Legislature in Baton Rouge hadbeen crawling with corporate lobbyists helping to lock in those big opportu­nities: lower taxes, fewer regulations, cheaper workers and a "smaller, safercity"—which in practice meant plans to level the public housing projectsand replace them with condos. Hearing all the talk of "fresh starts" and"clean sheets," you could almost forget the toxic stew of rubble, chemicaloutflows and human remains just a few miles down the highway.Over at the shelter, Jamar could think of nothing else. "I really don't see itas cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed uptown.People who shouldn't have died."He was speaking quietly, but an older man in line in front of us overheardand whipped around."What is wrong with these people in Baton Rouge?This isn't an opportunity. It's a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind?"A mother with two kids chimed in. "No, they're not blind, they're evil.They see just fine."One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans wasMilton Friedman, grand guru of the movement for unfettered capitalismand the man credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hypermobile global economy. Ninety-three years old and in failing health,"Uncle Miltie," as he was known to his followers, nonetheless found thestrength to write an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal three months after thelevees broke. "Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed,"as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunityto radically reform the educational system."4Friedman's radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the bil­lions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuildingand improving NewOrleans' existing public school system,the government should provide fam­ilies with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions, many runat a profit, that would be subsidized by the state. It was crucial, Friedmanwrote, that this fundamental change not be a stopgap but rather "a perma­nent reform."5A network of right-wing think tanksseized on Friedman's proposalanddescended on the city after the storm. The administration of George W.Bush backed up their plans with tens of millions of dollars to convert NewOrleans schools into "charter schools,"publicly funded institutionsrun byprivate entities according to their own rules. Charter schools are deeply po­larizing in the United States, and nowhere more than in New Orleans,where they are seen by many African-American parents as a way of reversingthe gains of the civil rights movement, which guaranteed all children thesame standard of education. For Milton Friedman, however, the entire con­cept of a state-run school system reeked of socialism. In his view, the state'ssole functions were "to protect our freedom both from the enemies outsideour gates and from our fellow-citizens: to preserve law and order, to enforceprivate contracts, to foster competitive markets."6In other words, to supplythe police and the soldiers —anything else, including providing free educa­tion, was an unfair interference in the market.In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repairedand the electricity grid was brought back online,the auctioning off of NewOrleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Withinnineteen months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Or­leans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by pri­vately run charter schools. Before Hurricane Katrina, the school board hadrun 123 public schools; now it ran just 4.Before that storm, there had been7 charter schools in the city; now there were 31. 7New Orleans teachers usedto be represented by a strong union; now the union's contract had beenshredded, and its forty-seven hundred members had all been fired.8Some ofthe younger teachers were rehired by the charters, at reduced salaries; mostwere not.New Orleans was now, according to The New York Times, "the nation'spreeminent laboratory for the widespread use of charter schools," while the American Enterprise Institute, a Friedmanite think tank, enthused that "Katrina accomplished in a day . . . what Louisiana school reformers couldn't doafter years of trying."9Public school teachers, meanwhile, watching moneyallocated for the victims of the flood being diverted to erase a public systemand replace it with a private one, were calling Friedman's plan "an educa­tional land grab."10I call these orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of cata­strophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting marketopportunities, "disaster capitalism."Friedman's New Orleans op-ed ended up being his last public policy recom­mendation; he died less than a year later, on November 16, 2006, at ageninety-four. Privatizing the school system of a midsize American city mayseem like a modest preoccupation for the man hailed as the most influentialeconomist of the past half century, one who counted among his disciplesseveral U.S. presidents, British prime ministers, Russian oligarchs, Polish fi­nance ministers, Third World dictators, Chinese Communist Party secre­taries, International Monetary Fund directors and the past three chiefs of theU.S. Federal Reserve. Yet his determination to exploit the crisis in New Or­leans to advance a fundamentalist version of capitalism was also an oddly fit­ting farewell from the boundlessly energetic five-foot-two-inch professorwho, in his prime, described himself as "an old-fashioned preacher deliver­ing a Sunday sermon."11For more than three decades, Friedman and his powerful followers hadbeen perfecting this very strategy: waiting for a major crisis, then selling offpieces of the state to private players while citizens were still reeling from theshock, then quickly making the "reforms" permanent.In one of his most influential essays,Friedman articulated contemporarycapitalism's core tactical nostrum, what I have come to understand as theshock doctrine. He observed that "only a crisis—actual or perceived—producesreal change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on theideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop al­ternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politi­cally impossible becomes politically inevitable."12Some people stockpilecanned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stock­pile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, the University of Chicagoprofessor was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid andirreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo." He estimated that "a new administration hassome six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does notseize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will not have an­other such opportunity."13A variation on Machiavelli's advice that injuriesshould be inflicted "all at once," this proved to be one of Friedman's mostlasting strategic legacies.Friedman first learned how to exploit a large-scale shock or crisis in the midseventies, when he acted as adviser to the Chilean dictator, General AugustoPinochet.Not only were Chileans in a state of shock following Pinochet's vi­olent coup, but the country was also traumatized by severe hyperinflation.Friedman advised Pinochet to impose a rapid-fire transformation of theeconomy—tax cuts, free trade, privatized services, cuts to social spending andderegulation. Eventually, Chileans even saw their public schools replacedwith voucher-funded private ones. It was the most extreme capitalist make­over ever attempted anywhere, and it became known as a "Chicago School"revolution, since so many of Pinochet's economists had studied under Fried­man at the University of Chicago. Friedman predicted that the speed, sud­denness and scope of the economic shifts would provoke psychologicalreactions in the public that "facilitate the adjustment."14He coined a phrasefor this painful tactic: economic "shock treatment." In the decades since,whenever governments have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the allat-once shock treatment, or "shock therapy," has been the method of choice.Pinochet also facilitated the adjustment with his own shock treatments;these were performed in the regime's many torture cells, inflicted on thewrithing bodies of those deemed most likely to stand in the way of the capi­talist transformation. Many in Latin America saw a direct connection be­tween the economic shocks that impoverished millions and the epidemic oftorture that punished hundreds of thousands of people who believed in a dif­ferent kind of society. As the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano asked,"How can this inequality be maintained if not through jolts of electricshock?"15Exactly thirty years after these three distinct forms of shock descended onChile, the formula reemerged, with far greater violence, in Iraq. First camethe war, designed, according to the authors of the Shock and Awe militarydoctrine, to "control the adversary's will, perceptions, and understandingand literally make an adversary impotent to act or react."16Next came theradical economic shock therapy, imposed, while the country was still in flames, by the U.S. chief envoy L. Paul Bremer—mass privatization, com­plete free trade, a 15 percent flat tax, a dramatically downsized government.Iraq's interim trade minister, Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, said at the time that hiscountrymen were "sick and tired of being the subjects of experiments. Therehave been enough shocks to the system, so we don't need this shock therapyin the economy."1' When Iraqis resisted, they were rounded up and taken tojails where bodies and minds were met with more shocks, these ones dis­tinctly less metaphorical.I started researching the free market's dependence on the power of shockfour years ago, during the early days of the occupation of Iraq. After report­ing from Baghdad on Washington's failed attempts to follow Shock and Awewith shock therapy, I traveled to Sri Lanka, several months after the devas­tating 2004 tsunami, and witnessed another version of the same maneuver:foreign investors and international lenders had teamed up to use the atmos­phere of panic to hand the entire beautiful coastline over to entrepreneurswho quickly built large resorts, blocking hundreds of thousands of fishingpeople from rebuilding their villages near the water. "In a cruel twist of fate,nature has presented Sri Lanka with a unique opportunity, and out of thisgreat tragedy will come a world class tourism destination," the Sri Lankangovernment announced. 1 8By the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans,and the nexus of Republican politicians, think tanks and land developersstarted talking about "clean sheets" and exciting opportunities, it was clearthat this was now the preferred method of advancing corporate goals: usingmoments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic en­gineering.Most people who survive a devastating disaster want the opposite of aclean slate: they want to salvage whatever they can and begin repairing whatwas not destroyed; they want to reaffirm their relatedness to the places thatformed them. "When I rebuild the city I feel like I'm rebuilding myself," saidCassandra Andrews, a resident of New Orleans' heavily damaged LowerNinth Ward, as she cleared away debris after the storm.19But disaster capital­ists have no interest in repairing what was. In Iraq, Sri Lanka and New Or­leans, the process deceptively called "reconstruction" began with finishingthe job of the original disaster by erasing what was left of the public sphereand rooted communities, then quickly moving to replace them with a kindof corporate New Jerusalem —all before the victims of war or natural disasterwere able to regroup and stake their claims to what was theirs.Mike Battles puts it best: "For us, the fear and disorder offered real prom­ ise."20 The thirty-four-year-old ex-CIA operative was talking about how the chaos in postinvasion Iraq had helped his unknown and inexperienced pri­ vate security firm, Custer Battles, to shake roughly $100 million in contracts out of the federal government.21 His words could serve just as well as the slo­ gan for contemporary capitalism—fear and disorder are the catalysts for each new leap forward. When I began this research into the intersection between superprofits and megadisasters, I thought I was witnessing a fundamental change in the way the drive to "liberate" markets was advancing around the world. Having been part of the movement against ballooning corporate power that made its global debut in Seattle in 1999,1 was accustomed to seeing similar businessfriendly policies imposed through arm-twisting at World Trade Organization summits, or as the conditions attached to loans from the International Mon­ etary Fund. The three trademark demands—privatization, government deregulation and deep cuts to social spending—tended to be extremely unpopular with citizens, but when the agreements were signed there was still at least the pretext of mutual consent between the governments doing the negotiating, as well as a consensus among the supposed experts. Now the same ideological program was being imposed via the most baldly coercive means possible: under foreign military occupation after an invasion, or im­ mediately following a cataclysmic natural disaster. September 11 appeared to have provided Washington with the green light to stop asking countries if they wanted the U.S. version of "free trade and democracy" and to start im­ posing it with Shock and Awe military force. As I dug deeper into the history of how this market model had swept the globe, however,I discovered that the idea of exploiting crisis and disaster has been the modus operandi of Milton Friedman's movement from the very beginning—this fundamentalist form of capitalism has always needed disas­ ters to advance. It was certainly the case that the facilitating disasters were getting bigger and more shocking, but what was happening in Iraq and New Orleans was not a new, post-September 11 invention. Rather, these bold ex­ periments in crisis exploitation were the culmination of three decades of strict adherence to the shock doctrine. Seen through the lens of this doctrine, the past thirty-five years look very different. Some of the most infamous human rights violations of this era, which have tended to be viewed as sadistic acts carried out by antidemo­ cratic regimes, were in fact either committed with the deliberate intent of terrorizing the public or actively harnessed to prepare the ground for the introduction of radical free-market "reforms." In Argentina in the seventies, the junta's "disappearance" of thirty thousand people, most of them leftist activists, was integral to the imposition of the country's Chicago School poli­ cies, just as terror had been a partner for the same kind of economic meta­ morphosis in Chile.In China in 1989, it was the shock of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the subsequent arrests of tens of thousands that freed the hand of the Communist Party to convert much of the country into a sprawling export zone, staffed with workers too terrified to demand their rights. In Russia in 1993, it was Boris Yeltsin's decision to send in tanks to set fire to the parliament building and lock up the opposition leaders that cleared the way for the fire-sale privatization that created the country's noto­ rious oligarchs.

The affirmative’s depiction of crisis is used to expand neoliberal policies

Greenberg, et al, Ph.D in Anthropology at University of Michigan, 2012

(James B., Thomas Weaver (Ph.D. in Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley), Anne Browning-Aiken (Ph.D. in Anthropology at University of Arizona), William L. Alexander (Professor of Anthropology at University of Arizona), “The Neoliberal Transformation of Mexico,” Neoliberalism and Commodity Production in Mexico, University Press of Colorado, pg 13)//SG

While such crises are routinely considered part and parcel of capitalism,the problematic aspect of framing them this way is that such a view may overly naturalize them and so remove them from consideration of how crises can be manipulated to achieve political ends(Toussaint 2005). In a world of highly integrated markets, where large systemic perturbations have become the norm, because crises spread they require ever more massive interventions to deal with them. Importantly,each crisis becomes a new opportunity to push new reforms and demand new concessions. During crises, measures that would be politi- cally impossible to enact in normal times are more readily accepted.Structural adjustment measures are a prime example. Other kinds ofcrises—in the form of natural disasters, wars, and the “war on terror”—provide opportunities for the advancement of corporate globalization into new areas and the forced restruc- turing of societies still reeling from the “shock” of such traumas (Klein 2007).The study of “disaster capitalism” is a burgeoning field,as applied anthropologists inspired by Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine” thesis (ibid.) are documenting the wayspeople devastated and displaced by catastrophes are re-victimized and made more vulnerable by recovery and rebuilding programs that are instrumental in advancing neoliberalism(see Gunewardena and Schuller 2008). The chapters by Greenberg, González Ríos, and Sesia provide ample evidence of neoliberal poli- cies that also used engineering crises within specific sectors. As they note in their respective chapters, after a campaign in which ejiditarios and communal land- holders were offered titles to the land they worked, the government withdrew credit and other subsidies to smallholders, effectively forcing them to sell or lease their lands. Vásquez-León’s chapter documents a similar move to privatize fishing efforts. Again, the government withdrew credit this sector depended upon and forced fishing cooperatives into bankruptcy. An adequate theory of Neoliberalism, however, must go beyond the capital N. We need a theory that also encompasses lowercase neoliberalism. The authors in this book have used two frameworks to understand small n neoliberalism—an anthropology of place rooted in Political Ecology, as defining and defined by sets of biophysical stocks and flows (see Greenberg and Heyman, this volume), and the anthropology of commodities and commodity chains. One of the common themes that emerges in the chapters by Emanuel, Carter and Alexander, González Ríos, Vásquez-León, Nahmad, Sesia, Browning-Aiken, and Greenberg is thatneoliberalism entails a profound transformation of governance and jurisdiction, effectively redefining economic, political, and social spaces and activities. The move away from corporate state-led capitalism toward neoliberal capitalism both altered Mexico’s economic and political institutions and profoundly reoriented the economy toward exports to generate earnings necessary to pay the interest on Mexico’s massive external debt. The emerging neoliberal state thus reframed and reoriented the stocks, flows, and activities that physically define particular places.

Their representations of disaster as something the US has to fix is a cover for the expansion of neoliberalism

Dubhashi, Ph.D. at Pune University, former Vice-Chanceller, Goa University, and an erstwhile Secretary, Government of India, December 20, 2008

(Padmakar, “Myth and Reality of Capitalism: Neo-Liberalism and Globalisation,” MAINSTREAM, VOL XLVII, NO 1, http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1111.html)//SG

EVER since Ronald Reagan of the Republican Party was elected the President of the US, an extremely conservative economic ideology advocating unbridled capitalism and free market, as preached by Milton Friedman and his Chicago School, has become the ruling economic ideology of the USA, going by the name of “Washington Consensus”. Under the Presidency of George Bush (Junior), it has reached its acme. This was manifested in the privatisation of even “core” functions of government, maximum deregulation, cut in expenditure on people’s welfare programmes and promotion of neo-liberal policies all over the world. The prolonged Iraq war from 2003 till date is an example of the extreme ideology. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfield brought the corporates into the heart of the US military. Logistic functions relating to the war were handed over to private companies like Halliburton with which Vice-President Cheney has been intimately connected. Health care and housing for soldiers were privatised. All the security functions were discharged by Blackwater including the security the US military base and its seat of governance (Paul Bremmer’s Green Zone area). Of course, production and supply of weapons and material were all handled by private companies. The contracts for Iraq oil exploitation were prepared by private firms. The selected contractors, whether for oil exploitation or constru-ction in infrastructure projects, sub-contracted, since they themselves had no operational base. The local Iraqi public sector enterprises were left-outs, so were the local professionals. The Defence Minister, Donald Rumsfeld, was a strong advocate of this approach of slim military, supported by a huge network of corporations. Billions of dollars spent on the Iraq War want to the coffers of these private corporations. The Department of Homeland Security, set up after 9/11, handed over $ 130 billion to private contractors to develop and install detection equipment and cameras against unproven threats. The war on terror, an un-winnable proposition, has become a permanent fixture of the global economic architecture. In the name of security. The Bush Administration fulfilled the corporate mission of merging political and corporate interests. The same approach was adopted in dealing with the calamity of Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in September 2005. The poor people were left homeless as their public housing was washed away. So were the public schools where their children studied. Milton Friedman saw in this the opportunity for privatisation of housing and schooling system. Here again the private contractors failed in housing the poor. The poor were provided with vouchers to be paid to the owners of the private schools which had a good business opportunity to make money. The money-making got the better of the provision of public services like education and health to the poor. No wonder the New Orleans rehabilitation programmes did no good to the poor. The Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, both “disasters”, have been good opportunities to corporate business for making money. Israel, the mini-USA in the Middle East, has discovered that “perpetual” war with Arabs, whether in Palestine or in Lebanon, is conducive to its dynamic economy. The rise of insecurity the world over has been an opportunity for Israel to develop the “security industry” in a big way. This is what Klein calls the “Disaster Capitalism” of today.

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