Aff - Black Marxism 1AC - Michigan 7 2023 KLAB

1AC – Racial Cap K K Lab
Phase 1: Failures of the Standard Neoliberal Approaches
Neoliberalism innately destroys the notion of Environmental Recovery through its motive of serving the Stakeholder.
Labonté 22 [Ronald, professor at the University of Ottawa, “Ensuring Global Health Equity in a Post-pandemic Economy,” International Journal of Health Policy and Management, https://www.ijhpm.com/article_4272_79514f4469319bf15a737fce1b385a18.pdf ocp]
From Shareholder to Stakeholder Capitalism: More of the Same? The political economy that characterizes most of today’s world – capitalism – is centuries old, although its most recent form – neoliberalism – only became dominant in the 1980s.2 Neoliberalism’s core elements (trade and financial liberalization, low taxation, minimal state intervention, strong property rights) birthed our now familiar globalized economy, criticized almost at its outset for the inequalities it was fomenting. To WEF founder, Klaus Schwab, the problem Labonté 2 International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 2022, x(x), 1–5 lay less with capitalism itself than with its neoliberal emphasis on maximizing shareholder value, where economic decisions are based on creating the greatest return on investment in the shortest time possible. Schwab’s and the WEF’s promoted solution is ‘stakeholder capitalism,’ in which everyone (and not just shareholders) should have a stake in capitalism’s benefits.5 Few might object to the idea of all gaining (even if not equally) from liberalized market activities, but as one economist argued, the stakeholder model is essentially: “…just a way of bringing the opponents of capitalism to a common venture of extending its lifespan, while ignoring the system’s intrinsic and destabilizing profit motive” (W. Bello, interview communication, October 27, 2021). As one example, in a post-pandemic ‘Great Reset’ wealthy investors are encouraged to invest in businesses whose activities align with the Sustainable Development Goals. This, it is said, would allow them to “make a profit and still save the world.”6 To the extent that such investments go into non-fossil-fuel renewables this win-win hyperbole is a partial truth; but with many of these ethical investment portfolios being non-compliant with global climate change goals7 this may simply be ‘greenwashing’ what remains fundamentally profit-motivated investing. We might also ask: What economic policies and practices enable investors to become disproportionately wealthy in the first place? As a recent study noted, the stakeholder capitalism model will do little to redistribute wealth but will strengthen the private sector’s (not unself-interested and growing) role in global health governance.8 The Return of the State: Can Governments Mitigate Capitalism’s Inherent Inegalitarianism? The state is certainly a critical ‘stakeholder’ in capitalism since its policy choices enable or constrain the actions of economic actors within and across borders. The post-1980 drift to neoliberalism saw the state increasingly defer to market interests in efforts to have their countries remain globally competitive (T. Jackson, interview communication, October 28, 2021).9 Tax rates fell, financial markets deregulated, and inequalities within most countries soared.2 The 2008 global financial crisis saw a rapid volte-face, with wealthier country governments spending trillions of dollars to bail out ‘banks too big to fail.’2 The return of the state was brief, with austerity measures (fiscal contraction) quickly following to cover the public costs of rescuing private banks and investors2 at the cost of eroding health systems that proved ill-prepared for a global pandemic. The pandemic saw the state roar back once again, with many countries responding with wage support, people who matter most in society, the ones who protect our lives and care for us, the ones we applauded from our doorsteps during the pandemic, yet they were…left behind in terms of wages, security, the value of their jobs, their status in society” (T. Jackson, interview communication, October 28, 2017). Certainly, the need for greater public investment in health and social protection is an undisputed outcome of the pandemic, especially given how government responses to COVID-19 increased women’s care burdens, employment losses and experiences of domestic violence.10-12 Others saw massive government interventions in the economy as demonstrating that: “…all that neoliberal talk about government intervention is bad, bad, bad just got thrown out the window…what we’ve seen is the ideological assumption of neoliberalism laid low” (W. Bello, interview communication, October 27, 2021). Early post-pandemic recovery plans for those countries with the requisite fiscal capacities appeared to embody such transformative optimism. The original US multi-trillion Green New Deal promised substantial environmental protection, a rapid shift away from fossil fuels, and expansive new social spending.13 When it was later tabled as a following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the EU and many other countries are pivoting back to energy (fossil fuel) independence, questioning their 2021 commitments to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.18
The Carbon Tax by definition motives a goal of the Neoliberal to put a “Bandaid” on the situation to attempt to fix the issue with a temproayry fixation.
Mair 19 — Simon Mair, a Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, works in the systems analysis strand of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity, 2019 (“Climate Change and Capitalism: A Political Marxist View.,” resilience, July 11th, Available Online at https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-07-11/climate-change-and-capitalism-a-political-marxist-view/, Accessed 06-27-2023)//rjain
No decarbonisation under capitalism
Because of the structural drivers towards growth that we see under capitalism, it is extremely unlikely that capitalism can avoid catastrophic climate change. The structural drive for growth means that efforts to reduce carbon emissions will be overwhelmed by the expansion of economic activity. This is controversial to most mainstream environmentalists (and to many socialists). But it is the clear experience of the history of capitalism.
To date, resources have not been conserved under capitalism. Rather when we become more efficient or find new resources, this frees up resources that are used by other parts of the capitalist machine. This explains why, for example, renewable energy and nuclear power remain only a small part of the global energy system (Figure 2). Under capitalism, low-carbon energy sources have grown but they have not replaced fossil fuel at any meaningful scale. Instead low-carbon energy is simply another energy pot available to fuel growth in economic activity in order to generate profits.
The same is also true of energy efficiency gains. Energy efficiency can be a key contributor for decarbonising the global economy. But only if it is coupled to a plan to limit the size of the economy. Under capitalism, energy efficiency measures actually drive economic growth. This happens for the same reason renewable energy doesn’t lead to decarbonisation. Energy efficiency improves productivity and reduces costs. In this way it reinforces capitalist growth imperatives, driving the expansion of the economy which requires more energy to be used overall.
This is also why progressive action on climate change will undermine capitalism. We will only successfully avoid catastrophic climate change if we are able to break the dominance of the market, and break the social imaginary that ineffectually ties fulfilment to consumption.
So, where do we go from here?
The economy, the energy system, and the environment are all inextricably linked. Combining ecological economics and Political Marxism, I have set out a framework in which climate change can be seen not only as a consequence of capitalism but as fundamental to it. Widespread fossil fuel use was enabled by, and necessary for, the capitalist dynamics of productivity growth and expansion. Climate change is a feature, not a bug of capitalism.
To avoid catastrophic climate change, we have to break the expansionary cycle of the economy. Otherwise technological improvements, renewable energy, and energy efficiency gains will do nothing but add to the stock of ways that capitalists grow the economy and their profits. Likewise carbon taxes and other market mechanisms will simply reinforce the core dynamics of the market and any positive effects will be overwhelmed by growth. Growth will increase energy use, including fossil fuel use. This will plunge us into a world that we do not know how to live in. It is likely that ‘hothouse earth’ will eventually destroy capitalism. But not before destroying the livelihoods of millions through extreme weather, greater incidence of disease, and ecological breakdown. There is no reason to believe this will lead to a better future.
Breaking the expansionary cycle of the economy in a just way requires rolling back markets. We must instead use commons, household, and state-based production as the principal means of meeting the collective needs of society. Only in this way can we break the societal drive for productivity growth and expansion. There is nothing inherently more sustainable in non-market forms of production (all economic activity uses energy), but these systems lack the expansionary drive of markets. Consequently, energy efficiency gains and new technologies can be used to replace fossil fuels rather than add to them.
This transition has the potential to be hopeful, a chance to build a more humane system. This system will be materially poorer than today’s society. But this is not ‘eco-austerity’. Much of the energy we use today is in producing goods that we do not need, that do not fulfil our needs. Richard Seymour articulates this in the context of the labour theory of value:
The overproduction of ‘stuff’ is largely achieved by making a costly withdrawal from the worker’s body, a form of life-impoverishing austerity. And a great deal of that ‘stuff’ is not for workers’ consumption, but rather, where it is not consumed as profit and dividends, is dead labour whose main effect is to achieve a further extraction of labour. We might think of energy conservation as class self-defence.
Put another way, consumption is an ineffective way of building a good life. Collectively limiting our consumption could open a path to a better economic system.
The Resolutions liberal economic reforms are nothing but a tool that the ruling class uses to solidify capitalism—basic income is a band-aid solution to cover up the system’s contradictions—they’ve identified the problem but refused to posit the correct solution—only a class-based analysis solves.
Booth 17 [Adam, Political activist, Marxist, regular writer for Socialist Appeal, “Universal basic income: utopian dream or libertarian nightmare?”, marxist.com/universal-basic-income-utopian-dream-or-libertarian-nightmare.htm, 2/10/17] //adhi
Race against the machine¶ An apocryphal tale is told about Henry Ford II showing Walter Reuther, the veteran leader of the United Automobile Workers, around a newly automated car plant.¶ “Walter, how are you going to get those robots to pay your union dues,” gibed the boss of Ford Motor Company.¶ Without skipping a beat, Reuther replied, “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?” (The Economist, 4th November 2011)¶ The story recounted above is likely fictional. Nevertheless, it draws upon – and highlights – a very real and grave concern amongst the more far-sighted bourgeois commentators today: the threat of “technological unemployment” – the so-called “race against the machine”.¶ Far from welcoming the advances in modern technology and the vast potential for liberating humanity that automation offers, the rapid pace of technological development today is seen as a dangerous and uncontrollable force that could make vast swathes of the working – and even middle – class obsolete in the not-too-distant future.¶ Who, in this scenario, the above anecdote asks, will buy all the plethora of commodities that the world economy’s vast productive forces continue to churn out?¶ Above all, this question of automation and machinery has begun to shine a light upon the contradictions of the capitalist system, exposing the rank hypocrisy of those politicians who demand austerity and attacks on ordinary people, whilst in the same breathe venerating the billionaire “entrepreneurs” who, between just eight of them, control as much wealth as half the world’s population put together.¶ It is becoming increasingly clear to those who have eyes to see that an army of robots has helped to create a “reserve army of labour”, as Marx described it: a mass of unemployed whose presence puts a downward pressure on wages for those in work. Those replaced by new technology are not retrained and re-educated in order to give them the skills required to keep up with this ever-accelerating treadmill of capitalism; instead they are thrown onto the scrapheap and forced into the rapidly expanding “gig economy” – a shadowy netherworld of bogus self-employment, insecure work, and zero-hour contracts.¶ The result is that, despite the array of automation and technology deployed in production, the growth in productivity across the economy has actually stalled; it is cheaper, from the point of view of the parasitic profiteering capitalist, to recruit from the ranks of the “precariat” desperately looking for a job than to invest in machinery that actually reduces the need for labour. From the perspective of capitalism, then, there is both “too much” automation – in terms of “technological unemployment” – and, simultaneously, “too little”, with the stagnation of productivity.¶ The system is broken¶ It is this context of a broken economic engine that we see the emergence of the demand for a “universal basic income”, or UBI: a uniform payment given to all in society, regardless of wealth or needs.¶ The idea behind the UBI, in theory, is that it would break the link between work and pay, providing – on the one hand – workers who have been made redundant by robots a safety net that prevents them from getting stuck in low-paid, precarious jobs, whilst also allowing them to transition from obsolete industries into new, more productive sectors. And – on the other hand – enabling the capitalists to invest in automation and new technology without the moral anxiety (or, more importantly, the practical concern) of adding to society’s legion of the unemployed. Et voilà! The wheels of capitalism are well and truly greased: investment goes up; productivity increases; the economy grows – and meanwhile workers are able to smoothly move from one job to another for the rest of their lives.¶ Would that it were so simple. The reality is that productive investment today is at an all-time low, not because of any principled apprehension about the fate of sacked workers, but because of the enormous levels of overproduction – or “excess capacity” as the bourgeois like to euphemistically describe it – that hang like an albatross around the neck of the global economy. The capitalists invest, not to provide jobs, meet needs, or develop the productive forces, but to make profits. If goods cannot be sold because ordinary families do not have the money to buy them, then industry will be mothballed. And if the bosses can get more profit out of ten exploited workers than from one shiny new machine, then the workers will stay in place and productivity will remain sluggish.¶ Indeed, the relationship between work and pay has already been broken – but not in any positive sense. In all countries – both in the advanced capitalist countries and the so-called “emerging” economies – the share of wealth going to labour has decreased, with real wages remaining stagnant despite an increase in GDP. The working week grows longer, and yet take-home pay stays the same.¶ In whose interest?¶ Despite being raised on the basis of fundamentally false premises, the call for a UBI has nevertheless found an echo in this epoch of eye-watering inequality. Already, social and economic experiments involving UBIs are underway in a variety of countries, including Canada, Finland, and Holland. In Switzerland, a proposal for a SFr30,000 per annum (around £24,000 per year) UBI was rejected by 77% to 23% in a referendum on 5th June 2016. In Britain, meanwhile, the demand for a UBI has been raised by the leaderships of both the Labour Party and the Green Party.¶ For those on the Left, the UBI is proposed as a progressive demand: a reinforced safety net, beyond the sticking plaster of the current welfare state, funded through increased taxation on big business and the rich. Raised in such a manner, it is clearly a demand – like any genuine reform – that should be supported and fought for.¶ UBI, however, is not an inherently left-wing or progressive measure. The idea of a universal payment, in fact, has many advocates on the libertarian right. Indeed, even prominent bourgeois economists such as Milton Friedman have made similar proposals in the past, with his idea for a “negative income tax”.¶ For these respectable ladies and gentlemen, the concept of a UBI has great appeal as an extremely streamlined version of – or, worse still, replacement for – the welfare state. In one fell swoop, these small government zealots suggest, one could “simplify” (read: slash) vast swathes of the taxation and benefits system, “eliminating bureaucracy” and “reducing market interference”.¶ At the same time, one can clearly see the attraction of the UBI to the Schumpeterian liberals who preach the virtues of the invisible hand and the powerful transformative forces of “creative destruction”. Provide a primitive safety net, eradicate “barriers” to job creation such as the minimum wage, and give the anarchy of the market a free hand to destroy industries and jobs, without any planning or provision of education and retraining. It’s a libertarian’s dream – and a nightmare for the working class.¶ Some free-market fanatics, meanwhile, have even advocated the idea of a relatively large UBI payment, but (and here’s the catch) only on the proviso that pesky public services – such as healthcare and education – are scrapped, i.e. privatised, and opened up to profit.¶ Far from strengthening the conquests made by previous generations, therefore, one can see how the demand for a UBI can equally be raised by those looking to roll back and destroy such gains. Rather than increasing the welfare state in a progressive way by redistributing society’s colossal wealth, a UBI could instead become a deeply regressive fig leaf for a wholesale attack on – and privatisation of – public services, bolstering the capitalist market instead of weakening it.¶ Marxists will fight for any reform that genuinely improves the living standards of workers and the poor. But in order to ascertain whether we can support this-or-that demand, we must first ask: is it really a reform that is being proposed, or – in fact – a counter-reform?¶ In this respect, the call for a UBI in the abstract is meaningless. The devil is in the detail. Above all, it is necessary to analyse the question from a class point of view and look at who is raising the demand, and – most importantly – in whose (class) interest.¶ Who pays?¶ As with all such reforms, the most pertinent question is: who pays? Where, one must ask, would the money come from? Indeed, it is this key point that right-wing opponents to UBI highlight.¶ In the case of the Swiss referendum last year, the government came out against the £24,000 per year that was being proposed on the grounds of this amount being unaffordable (to put the proposed level in perspective, however, bear in mind that the cost of living in Switzerland is painfully high, and average salari

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