Neoliberalism K—UMich 2013 neg 1NCs 1NC: Generic
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I: Class HierarchiesNeoliberalism precludes social mobility and maintains class hierarchiesLipschutz, Professor of Politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz 07 (Ronnie, “CAPITALISM, CONFLICT AND CHURN: HOW THE AMERICAN CULTURE WAR WENT GLOBAL”, Conflicts and Tensions, 2007, Sage Publications, http://www.ic.ucsc.edu/~rlipsch/pol160A/Anheier.pdf)//AS But almost certainly, this belief is incorrect (Jacoby and Glauberman 1995). Even the United States, a society with arguably the highest degree of upward (and downward) mobility in the world, is nevertheless characterized by relatively stratified social and racial relations as well as class structures (Scott and Leonhardt 2005; Brown and Wellman 2005).6 Moreover, as is widely recognized but rarely admitted, the capacity to ‘seize’ an opportunity, to accumulate wealth, and to move upward in the social hierarchy, is not merely a matter of either individual merit or Fortuna (e.g., Isbister 2001: ch. 5; Sen 1999). Success breeds success. Those who already have wealth are well-poised to acquire more, and rarely operate in isolation from others similarly well-off (Herbert 2005). They are well embedded in webs of social relations with people who are wealthy and well placed economically and politically, whose families and background are of a particular sort, and who know the ropes (which is why going to Harvard is so often a stepping stone to riches and public office; see Douthat 2005). Those lacking such advantages are rarely offered entry into that upper-class world (Wilkerson 2005). Social hierarchies are closely linked to societal divisions of labor which, in turn, are historically related to group, rather than individual, status, attributes and practices (e.g., Tilly and Tilly 1994; Brown and Wellman 2005). At the very least, those lower in the economic hierarchy must work all the harder to build the necessary networks. Efforts to remedy disadvantage have been half-hearted, at best (Katznelson 2005). As practiced in the United States, affirmative action, widely criticized as providing unfair advantages to excluded groups, in fact seeks to promote individuals, and not groups, on the basis of some indicator of merit and behavior (see, e.g., Fullinwider 2005; Brown and Wellman 2005). As a racial group, for example, most AfricanAmericans remain at the bottom of the American social hierarchy and division of labor (Daniels 2005), while those who have risen to political and economic prominence constitute a relatively small middle class. Still, the very essence of social stability requires that the possession of power and wealth by some be recognized as legitimate by those who lack these attributes (and who can hope that they may, someday, be as well-off). Moreover, that established hierarchy must constantly be naturalized through invocation of belief in the possibility of ‘self-improvement’.7 Social distancing is becoming more apparent between not only classes but between countries as well – this increases with time. A critical evaluation of modes of knowledge productionis necessary to halt neoliberal expansion.Navarro,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, pp 59-61)//SG That inequalities contribute to a lack of social solidarity and increase social pathology is well documented. Many people, including myself, have documented this reality (16). The scientific evidence supporting this position is overwhelming. In any given society, the greatest number of deaths would be prevented by reducing social inequalities. Michael Marmot studied the gradient of heart disease mortality among professionals at different authority levels, and he foundthat the higher the level of authority, the lower the heart disease mortality (17). He further showed that this mortality gradient could not be explained by diet, physical exercise, or cholesterolalone; these risk factors explained only a small part of the gradient.The most important factor was the position that people held within the social structure(in which class, gender, and race play key roles),the social distance between groups, and the differential control that people had over their own lives. This enormously important scientific finding, which builds upon previous scholarly work, has many implications; one of them is thatthe major problem we face is not simply eliminating poverty but rather reducing inequality. The first is impossible to resolve without resolving the second. Another implication is that poverty is not just a matter of resources, as is wrongly assumed in World Bank reports that measure worldwide poverty by quantifying the number of people who live on a standardized U.S. dollar a day.The real problem, again, is not absolute resources but social distance and the different degrees of control over one’s own resources.And this holds true in every society. Let me elaborate.An unskilled, unemployed, young black person living in the ghetto area of Baltimore has more resources(he or she is likely to have a car, a mobile phone, a TV, and more square feet per household and more kitchen equipment)than a middle-class professional in Ghana,Africa. If the whole world were just a single society, the Baltimore youth would be middle class and the Ghana professional would be poor. And yet,the first has a much shorter life expectancy(45 years)than the second(62 years). How can that be, when the first has more resources than the second? The answer is clear. It is far more difficult to be poor in the United States (the sense of distance, frustration, powerlessness, and failure is much greater) than to be middle class in Ghana. The first is far below the median; the second is above the median. Does the same mechanism operate in inequalities among countries? The answer is increasingly, yes. And the reason for adding “increasingly” is communication— with ever more globalized information systems and networks, more information is reaching the most remote areas of the world. Andthe social distance created by inequalities is becoming increasingly apparent, not only within but also among countries. Because this distance is more and more perceived as an outcome of exploitation,we are facing an enormous tension, comparable with that of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when class exploitation became the driving force for social mobilization. The key element for defining the future is through what channels that mobilization takes place. What we have seen is a huge mobilization, instigated and guided by an alliance of the dominant classes of the North and South, aimed at—as mentioned earlier—stimulating multi-class religious or nationalistic mobilizations that leave key class relations unchanged. We saw this phenomenon at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Christian Democracy in Europe, for example, appears as the dominant classes’ response to the threat of socialism and communism. The birth of Islamic fundamentalism was also stimulated for the same purposes.The progressive alternative must be centered in alliances among the dominated classes and other dominated groups, with a political movement that must be built upon the process of struggle that takes place in each country.The struggle for better health in any country has to be part of that broader struggle to build a better world, emphasizing that another world—based on solidarity—is possible. But,to intervene in and change current reality, we have to understand it, with a critical evaluation of the conventional wisdom that reproduces neoliberalism worldwide— an evaluation that should be uncompromising in the sense that it should fear neither its own results nor conflict with the powers that be. In that respect, this evaluation should include the political analysis rarely seen in scholarly work. And here, I am concerned that the newly establishedWHOCommission on Social Determinants of Health (18) is not looking at the basis of the problems that determine poor health, problems that are rooted in class as well as in race and gender power relations and in the political instruments through which such power is exercised and reproduced. The political determinants of health need to be understood and acted upon, however uncomfortable or risky this may be. Such is the intention of this article. The push for neolib has failed in the past and will fail again – the aff simply creates a system where the elite benefitsDubhashi, 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 Despite this, the World Bank and IMF imposed, as a part of the “conditionality” of their aid, neo-liberal policies on the countries of Latin America and Africa. From the 1980s when Latin America embraced neo-liberalisation, it had been growing at less than one-third the rate of the earlier days of protectionist policy; Chile’s experiment with neo-liberalisation led by the so-called Chigago Boys (a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago—the leading centre of neo-liberalisation) was a disaster; while African countries saw a fall in living standards, a damning indictment of neo-liberal orthodoxy of the World Bank and IMF which have been practically running these economies. Following the launching of the WTO in 1995, the rich countries made concerted efforts to push the developing countries into free trade through its regime as well as through bilateral and regional free trade agreements forgetting that industries in several developing countries would not survive if exposed to international competition before they had the time to improve their capabilities by mastering advanced technologies and building effective organisation. No wonder massive trade liberalisation proved harmful to several develo-ping countries. For example, whole swathes of Mexican industry, built during the period of import substitution, were wiped out. In Ivory Coast the chemical, textile, shoe and automobile industries collapsed. The agricultural sector in Mexico was also hit hard by subsidised US products, especially maize. Trade liberalisation has reduced growth rates. The Theory of Comparative Cost, on which the free trade policy is based, may be conducive to efficiency in the use of resources in the short run but not for economic development in the long run. There is a great deal of hypocrisy in the advocacy of free trade by the rich countries. In the Doha negotiations (2001) the USA and EU introduced the proposal dubbed NAMA (Non-agricultural market access) which wanted the developing countries to open up markets for their agricultural products. The rich countries give out subsidies of $ 100 billion every year. In return for cutting tariffs by developing countries, they were not ready to reduce their subsidies substantially. Also while the USA has an overall tax rate of 1.6 per cent, the tax rates raised for the products of a large number of developing countries—four per cent for India and Peru and 14-15 per cent for poor countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Cambodia. The so-called level playing field gives one sided benefit to the rich countries, through non-trade policies like TRIPS which strengthened protection to Patents and other intellectual property rights. Subsidies are allowed for R & D, extensively used by rich countries. The rich countries give huge subsidies in the name of “reducing regional unbalances”. Thus in the name of the myth of free trade, the rich countries have in reality erected a new international trading system rigged in their favour. Neoliberal policies put schools at a disadvantage to socially exclude people Grimaldi, PhD in sociology and social research, 2012(Emiliano, “Neoliberalism and the marginalisation of socialjustice: the making of an education policy to combat social exclusion, International Journal ofInclusive Education, 16:11, 1131-1154)//JS Interestingly enough, the issues related to social justice, equity and inclusioncontinue to appear in the education policy documents, still having an apparent centralityin the national educational agendas in many countries. Then, we face an attempt tobring together and reconcile discourses constantly in tension such as economic rationalismand social justice (Mosen-Lowe, Vidovich, and Chapman 2009, 473).However, critical analysis has shown how what we are witnessing is neither a coexistencenor a combination but the marginalising and subjugation of the commitmentwith social justice and inclusive education by the hegemonic neoliberal discourse(Gewirtz, Ball, and Bowe 1995; Barton and Slee 1999; Armstrong 2003; Vlachou2004; Lingard and Mills 2007).Alexiadou (2002, 2005), in her analysis of New Labour and European Union policies,has extensively described how this subjugation takes place through a sequenceof discursive moves. Education is ‘given an enormous burden to carry in balancingincreasingly liberalised market-driven economies, with the requirements of a sociallyjust society’ (Alexiadou 2005, 102). Social justice is defined in the light of a minimalunderstanding of the concept of equality (Raffo and Gunter 2008) that refers to itsformal meaning (Brine 1997, 231) and stands in a sharp contrast with any distributional,cultural or associational idea of social justice (Cribb and Gewirtz 2003, 18).Problems of social exclusion are understood in terms of ‘individual’s right to competeon a (legally) equal basis for social opportunities’ and in the light of ‘the concept ofindividual meritocracy’(Alexiadou 2005, 115). Adopting naïve perspectives (Lingardand Mills 2007), discourses of school effectiveness, standardisation, meritocracy andperformativity do not address any of the wider structural inequalities causing thedifferent forms of exclusion. On the contrary they redirect the attention on schoolingand its failure, identifying in the reform of management and in the provision oftargeted support to weak and failing schools the key strategy to cope with phenomenasuch as exclusion, students’ under-achievement and dropout (Alexiadou 2005, 115).Social exclusion, in its various forms, is conceptualised as a ‘condition’ derivingfrom ‘unsuccessful participation in education and training’ (Alexiadou 2002, 73). Asa consequence a strictly causal relation is established between inclusion and educationalsuccess. They seem to become synonyms. Discourses of standardisation andperformativity (Gillborn and Youdell 2000; Ball 2003) frame the understanding ofeducational success in terms of achievement and under-achievement. Excluded youngpeople become those who are ‘not in the mainstream of social activity’, being it schoolor employment (Alexiadou 2002, 75). Such a condition is often causally related to theexhibition of negative behaviours and attitudes. The causal influence of wider socialstructures and social stratification (based on class, race, gender or religious divides) issimply ignored. This conceptualisation entails a delegation of the responsibility forexclusion on the individual, who has the ‘moral’ duty to take the opportunities offeredby the state, the school or the labour market. Within this discursive framework,schooling is given a primary role in combating social exclusion and disaffection ofyoung people. While disaffected, excluded or at-risk young people have to assume theresponsibility of their own lives (TeRiele 2006a, 139), schools have to give the opportunitiesand make them see the significance of education. Exclusion becomes thecombined outcome of individual faults and failing schools, where incompetentteachers ‘have low expectations, do not make learning exciting’, or assume ‘wrongroles’ (Alexiadou 2002, 76). 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