K - Capitalism - Michigan 7 2023 STARTER

Capitalism Kritik—2023 Michigan Starter Packet
Notes
This is a critique of both the function of the plan itself and the function of the background assumptions and power relations that give the plan meaning and legitimacy. According to 1NC Azmanova, wealth redistribution may seem radical (or even socialist) at a surface level, but ultimately functions to “inadvertently fortify the legitimacy of capitalism.” This is because focusing on the question of how wealth should be redistributed treats wealth itself as a given, and thus prevents questioning how wealth is produced in the first place. After all, for something to be re-distributed, its initial pre-distribution must be accepted as a foregone conclusion. Ultimately, this choice to focus our energies on wealth redistribution over wealth production enables capitalism “not only to escape a legitimation crisis, but also to successfully co-opt the emancipatory energies of protest and thus regenerate itself.”
The alternative is a new, more expansive conception of socialism than leftist movements and activists have traditionally forwarded. Socialism, according to 1NC Fraser, should be reconceptualized as not simply an alternative economic arrangement to capitalism, but more broadly as an alternative societal arrangement. Fraser says that a large reason that socialism has failed to gain traction in the past is because movements didn’t think big enough. They had a vision of how markets, labor, and wages should be reorganized, but failed to understand that capitalism functions at a broader level than that—a societal level. Changing the economic dimensions of capitalism may change the ways that wealth flows through society, but it doesn’t change how capitalism produces that wealth via the expropriation of value from the non-economic parts of society, such as nature, political arrangements, care work and social labor, and marginalized subjects who have been shut out of the economy altogether. A more expansive socialism would focus on changing those more fundamental arrangements of wealth production that capitalism both relies upon to exist and uses to regenerate itself when faced with crisis.
I tried to keep the 1NC shell short so it wouldn’t take up too much 1NC time, but to some degree, that comes at the expense of specificity and warrants. Feel free to swap out the 1NC link card for a more plan-specific one (or read both!). If you really want to commit, you may want to swap out the 1NC impact card for one of the longer unsustainability/impact/AT impact turn cards.
This file does not include Social Security links because the starter packet does not include a Social Security aff. My primary goal when researching this file was to facilitate as in-depth of debates as possible until more files are produced. This is also why I tried not to include too many cards for any given argument. Most of these cards are long and have many warrants, so my hope is that debaters will focus on drawing out as many of those warrants as possible. For headers/blocks that have multiple cards, you should pick and choose your favorites—reading all of them is likely unstrategic, because chances are they’re either repetitive or serve different functions that won’t necessarily apply in every round!
Topshelf
1NC
Their focus on emancipation via redistribution legitimizes capitalism and disempowers radical alternatives.
Azmanova, 20—Professor of Political and Social Science, University of Kent, Brussels School of International Studies (Albena, “Precarity Capitalism,” Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Crisis or Utopia, Chapter 5, pp. 131-134, dml)
It is not simply the alliance of center-left and center-right party elites and the electorates that propel them to public office who are the culprits for imposing “socially irresponsible rule.” The radical Left and the Far Right have done their share in contracting the space of political contestation. Calls against inequality (from the left) and for safeguarding societies from troublesome incomers (from the right) share a particular logic: they help to politicize the social evils that globally integrated capitalism incurs in the terms of distribution of membership within a given social order. This prevents questioning the social order within which equality and inclusion are being sought. When social harm is thematized in terms of inclusion and equality, it misrepresents instances of what I labeled as systemic injustice in chapter 2 as relational injustice instead. In other words, problems of the model of well-being generated by the sociopolitical system are translated as problems of one’s place or inclu- sion within it. This invites remedial policies of redistribution or inclusion/exclusion rather than radically altering the rules of the game. The most disturbing example of the fallacious politiciza- tion of otherwise valid social grievances is the recourse to xeno- phobia, where political actors have used the most easily available language of political mobilization—that of hatred—to cash in on social discontent.
With the exception of environmental protest, which does indeed target the overall logic of capital accumulation (the way goods are produced, distributed and consumed), the shared myo- pia across forms of social protest and intellectual critique involves focusing attention on instances of injustice rooted in the asymmetrical distribution of economic, political, or symbolic power among actors, a practice engendering inequalities and exclusion. The logical solution, then, is to equalize power relations through redistribution and inclusion, rather than alter the very logic of social reproduction. This inability to question the political economy of capitalism and the democratic framework of politics in terms other than distribution and inclusion persists. It is well illustrated by the Occupy movement and what are now con- sidered radical calls for justice, such as “We Are the 99 Percent” and “Tax the Rich.” While anger is rightly and poignantly mobilized against the uneven distribution of advantage in our societies, it leaves the mechanisms that produce advantage unquestioned—and the whole way of life sodden with injustice for all.
The elimination of power inequalities within a system of social relations is valuable in its own right, but such efforts have tended to divert attention away from forms of domination rooted in the operative logic of the social system beyond a concern with equal- ity and inclusion within that system. This is not an unfortunate oversight that can be remedied easily. It is driven by a compelling logic: the insistence on inclusion and equality within a certain model of well-being gives that model validity and vigor. We have to value the world within which we seek inclusion and equality; the harder the struggle to achieve access and status within that world, the more we value it. In chapter 2, I referred to this conundrum as the “paradox of emancipation.” By falling into the trap of the emancipation paradox, social protest and intellectual criticism inadvertently fortify the legitimacy of capitalism, without solving the social crisis. We remain trapped in the inflammatory condition I called “crisis of the crisis.”
It is in this metamorphosis of the legitimacy relationship of current-day capitalist democracies that we find the key to the two paradoxes of the missing crisis of capitalism that I laid out in chapter 1. Capitalism avoids its legitimation crisis, even as it has violated the ground rule in its legitimation matrix of corre- lating social opportunities and risks. This is the case because the legitimacy deal—not despite, but through social protests—has gradually altered to exclude a robust social safety net. Social safety, even as it remains highly desirable, is no longer among the “political deliverables”—services public authority is required to deliver. By politicizing the roots of the crisis (e.g., a political economy that produces massive precariousness) into the frames of inequality and the menace of immigration, struggles against injustice are enabling the system not only to escape a legitimation crisis, but also to successfully co-opt the emancipatory energies of protest and thus regenerate itself. The pleading cry of the young Spanish Indignados—“We are not against the system, the system is against us”—was hardly a call for a revolution.
Capitalist accumulation is unsustainable, causes extinction and planetary immiseration.
Robinson, 23—Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Global and International Studies, and Latin American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara (William, “The Violent Crackup of the Post-WWII International Order: Notes on the Geopolitical Crisis and Global Capital,” Journal of World-Systems Research, Vol. 29, No. 1, dml)
Some scholars have framed the crisis of global capitalism in terms of a declining U.S. hegemony and the rise of a Chinese competitor. But no new nation-state power can supply the political authority necessary to stabilize the now-inextricably integrated global economy. The crisis of hegemony in the international system takes place within this single, integrated global economy. No one state, no matter how powerful, can control the process of global accumulation. This disjuncture between a globalized economy and a nation-state-based system of political authority generates enormous geopolitical tensions. The end of Western domination of world capitalism is upon us as the center of gravity of the global economy shifts to China. But China will not become a new hegemon. Rather, we are moving towards political multipolarity at a time of acute crisis in global capitalism—prolonged economic turbulence and political decay.
The breakdown of the political organization of world capitalism is not the cause but the consequence of contradictions internal to a globally integrated system of capital accumulation. Escalating geopolitical conflict is pushing us towards global conflagration. Wars provide enormous outlet for surplus accumulated capital. Historically they have pulled the capitalist system out of accumulation crisis while they serve to deflect attention from political tensions and problems of legitimacy. The most urgent task at this time is to prevent World War III. The more we understand the changing nature of this beast that is global capitalism, the better we are situated to work out strategies of resistance and transformation. The task before us is ever more urgent in the face of the threat of nuclear holocaust, the collapse of the biosphere, and ever more acute inequality, immiseration, and social disintegration around the world.
Vote negative to conceptually expand socialism beyond the economic. That generates credibility and unites emerging movements.
Fraser, 22—Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science at The New School (Nancy, “Food for Thought: What Should Socialism Mean in the Twenty-First Century?,” Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do about It, Chapter 6, pp. 141-143, dml)
In any case, "socialism," too, is back! For decades the word was considered an embarrassment--a despised failure and relic of a bygone era. No more. At least not in the United States.' Today, US politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wear the label proudly and win support, while organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America attract new members in droves. But what exactly do they mean by "socialism"? However welcome, enthusiasm for the word does not translate automatically into serious reflection on its content. What exactly does or should "socialism" signify in the present era?
The arguments of the preceding chapters suggest an answer. The expanded conception of capitalism outlined there implies that we need an expanded conception of socialism, too. After all, once we've abandoned the view of capitalism as an economy, we can no longer understand socialism as an alternative economic system. If capital is wired to cannibalize the "non-economic" supports of commodity production, then a desirable alternative to it must do more than socialize ownership of the means of production. Over and above that desideratum--which I wholeheartedly endorse--it must also transform production's relation to its background conditions of possibility: namely, social reproduction, public power, nonhuman nature, and forms of wealth that lie outside capital's official circuits but within its reach. In other words, as I shall explain, a socialism for our time must overcome not only capital's exploitation of wage labor, but also its free riding on unwaged carework, public powers, and wealth expropriated from racialized subjects and nonhuman nature.
This point invites a disclaimer at the outset: to expand the idea of socialism is not to add epicycles to it. Far from simply appending more features to received understandings, it will be necessary to transform the very concept. That is in effect what I sought to do for capitalism in the previous chapters--by treating as structurally integral to it matters that are usually considered secondary--above all, gender/sexuality, race/ empire, ecology, and democracy. Now, in the present chapter, I seek to do the same for socialism. I aim to reconceive it, too, as an institutionalized societal order, one that is as comprehensive as capitalism--and hence, can claim to be a credible alternative to it. In this way, I hope to cast new light as well on many classical topoi of socialist thought: on domination and emanci pation; on class and crisis; on property, markets, and planning; and on necessary labor, free time, and social surplus. Each of those matters should assume a different guise once we view socialism, too, as more than an economy. What should appear as well are the outlines of a socialism that differs sharply from Soviet-style Communism, on the one hand, and from social democracy, on the other--a socialism for the twenty-first century.
I must begin, however, by revisiting capitalism, which is the necessary starting point for discussions of socialism. Socialism, after all, should not be a "mere ought" or utopian dream. If it is worth discussing now, it is rather because it encapsulates real, historically emergent possibilities: potentials for human freedom, well-being, and happiness that capitalism has brought within reach but cannot actualize. Equally important, socialism is a response to capitalism's impasses and injustices: to logjams that the system precipitates periodically and cannot overcome definitively; and to forms of domination that are so deeply grounded in it that they cannot be eradicated within it. Socialism, in other words, claims to remedy capitalism's ills. And so, it is there that we must begin.
Impact Framing—2NC
Our impact outweighs on scope. Defenses of capitalism don’t account for its extra-economic violence, which creates interlocking crises that make all their impacts inevitable. It’s try or die for the alt because changing wealth production, not just distribution, is critical.
Fraser, 22—Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School (Nancy, “Cannibal Capitalism: Are We Toast?,” Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet—and What We Can Do about It, Preface, pp. xiv-xvii, dml)
"Capitalism," too, cries out for clarification. The word is commonly used to name an economic system based on private property and market exchange, wage labor and production for profit. But that definition is too narrow, obscuring rather than disclosing the system's true nature. "Capitalism," I'll argue here, better designates something larger: a societal order that empowers a profit-driven economy to prey on the extra-economic supports it needs to function--wealth expropriated from nature and subject peoples; multiple forms of carework, chronically undervalued when not wholly disavowed; public goods and public powers, which capital both requires and tries to curtail; the energy and creativity of working people. Although they do not appear on corporate balance sheets, these forms of wealth are essential preconditions for the profits and gains that do. Vital underpinnings of accumulation, they, too, are constitutive components of the capitalist order.
In this book, accordingly, "capitalism" refers not to a type of economy but to a type of society: one that authorizes an officially designated economy to pile up monetized value for investors and owners, while devouring the non-economized wealth of everyone else. Serving that wealth on a platter to the corporate classes, this society invites them to make a meal of our creative capacities and of the earth that sustains us with no obligation to replenish what they consume or repair what they damage. And that is a recipe for trouble. Like the ouroboros that eats its own tail, capitalist society is primed to devour its own substance. A veritable dynamo of self-destabilization, it periodically precipitates crises while routinely eating away at the bases of our existence.
Cannibal capitalism, then, is the system to which we owe the present crisis. Truth be told, it's a rare type of crisis, in which multiple bouts of gluttony have converged. What we face, thanks to decades of financialization, is not "only" a crisis of rampaging inequality and low-waged precarious work; nor "merely" one of care or social reproduction; nor "just" a crisis of migration and racialized violence. Neither is it "simply" an ecological crisis in which a heating planet disgorges lethal plagues, nor "only" a political crisis featuring hollowed-out infrastructure; ramped-up militarism, and a proliferation of strongmen. Oh no, it's something worse: a general crisis of the entire societal order in which all those calamities converge, exacerbating one another and threatening to swallow us whole.
This book maps that massive tangle of dysfunction and domination. Expanding our view of capitalism to include the extra-economic ingredients of capital's diet, it brings together in a single frame all the oppressions, contradictions, and conflicts of the present conjuncture. In this frame, struc tural injustice means class exploitation, to be sure, but also gender domination and racial/imperial oppression-both non accidental by-products of a societal order that subordinates social reproduction to commodity production and that demands racialized expropriation to underwrite profitable exploitation. As understood here, likewise, the system's contradictions incline it not only to economic crises but also to crises of care, ecology, and politics, all of which are in full flower today, courtesy of the long spell of corporate bingeing known as neoliberalism.
As I conceive it, lastly, cannibal capitalism precipitates a broad array and complex mix of social struggles: not just class struggles at the point of production, but also boundary struggles at the system's constitutive joints. Where production butts up against social reproduction, the system incites conflicts over care, both public and private, paid and unpaid. Where exploitation crosses expropriation, it foments struggles over "race," migration, and empire. Then too, where accumulation hits natural bedrock, cannibal capitalism sparks conflicts over land and energy, flora and fauna, the fate of the earth. Finally, where global markets and megacorporations meet national states and institutions of transnational governance, it provokes struggles over the shape, control, and reach of public power. All these strands of our present predicament find their place in an expanded conception of capitalism that is simultaneously unitary and differentiated.
Armed with this conception, Cannibal Capitalism poses a pressing existential question: "Are we toast?" Can we figure out how to dis

Preview shortened. Download the file for the full document.