The brown dog jumped over the blue fox

7/29/2019 The brown dog jumped over the blue fox

1/48

ENDI 2010 1Historical Materialism K Wave 1

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM K

1NC vs. critical affs.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 2

LINKS:

Postmodern/ post-structuralist theory .............................................................................................................................................................. 6Poststructuralist k of military............................................................................................................................................................................. 7Rejecting modernity ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 9Hegemony............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 11Anti-capitalism.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 12Imperialism .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 14Self-determination.............................................................................................................................................................................................. 15Revolution ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 16Terrorism .............................................................................................................................................................................................................. 17Identity .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 18Race........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 22RaceHistory ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 25Historical examples ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 26Post-postivism ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 27Language/discourse............................................................................................................................................................................................ 28China economy.................................................................................................................................................................................................... 29

ALTERNATIVE SOLVENCY:

Language / identity ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 31Undermines sovereingty ................................................................................................................................................................................... 32Statism................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 33Race ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 34Politics .................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 35Historical materialist epistemology good/alt solves ................................................................................................................................... 36

2NC:

AT: Marxism bad turns ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 38AT: Communism bad ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 39AT: Global violence decreasing bc of cap .................................................................................................................................................... 40AT: humanism bad - Rationalism holocaust ............................................................................................................................................. 41AT: Humanism badHeidegger ...................................................................................................................................................................... 43AT: Fem critique of hist mat ............................................................................................................................................................................. 44AT: Femexclusion of gender link ................................................................................................................................................................. 47AT: Alt kills environment ................................................................................................................................................................................... 48


2/48


1NC VS. CRITICAL AFFS

The affirmatives rejection of truth claims about the material role of actors and structures inhistory conflates all knowledge with Enlightenment rationality-this ahistorical viewpointprecludes the most relevant and politicizing modes of analysisPalmer '96 - Canada Research Chair in Canadian Labour History and Canadian Studies @ Trent University (Bryan D., "Old

Positions/New Necessities: History, Class, and Marxist Metanarrative," in "In Defense of History," Ed. by E. Meiskins Wood &John Foster, p.65-72, RG)

On one level this is not particularly new. But postmodernists/poststruc-turalists have wrapped their antagonism to history in a series ofintellectually seductive tautologies which beg the fundamental questions of the historical process. Central to this outlook is arefusal of post-Enlightenment systems of rational thought, which are reduced to a formnarrationand a substanceaccommodation of bourgeois rulethat relegates such "knowledge" to complicity with various oppressions.2 It is as thoughpoststructuralism, in an immense social reconstructionof the deep historical past, would like to see the entire eighteenth-centuryAge of Revolution, which was, to be sure, a bourgeoisproject, jettisoned. In some staggering leap of idealism, it seeks to pole-vaultover the class contents and transformations of thought associated with 1776,1789,1792, andthe Industrial Revolution, leapfrogging thenineteenth century, the experience of colonial revolt, and the first workers' state (1917). Yet all of these occurred as historicalprocess and have rich narrative structures of meaning in the politics and culture of modern times , from Blake and Beethoven to Marxand Munch to Veblen and Van Gogh. However incomplete the Enlightenment project, compromised as it was in its origins in thebourgeois proclamation of egalitarianism as a property-based legal right rather than a social condition of fulfillment, it was a

revolutionary transcendence of the feudal order, which had been confined for centuries in castelike conceptions of social stationand the incarcerating thought of superstition, divinity, and absolutism. It was the purpose of Marxism, as the maturingworldview of the emerging proletariat, to materialize and radicalize Enlightenment rationality, extending its potential not just to this orthat privileged sector of society, but to all of humanity. Just as Mary Wollstonecraft took the possibilities inherent in the Enlightenment's Pandora's box ofequality and extended her defense of the French Revolution and Thomas Paine's Rights of Manto a feminist articulation of the rights of woman, reaching well

past patriarchy's powerful presence in bourgeois thought and practice, so too did Marx build on Enlightenment idealism to construct itsoppositional challenge, historical materialism. Poststructuralism allows no such reading of distinctions and developments withinEnlightenment thought, condemning all post-Enlightenment modes of discourse as hopelessly compromised with the project ofsubordination. Particularly suspect in current theory is the Enlightenment "metanarra-tive," with its "explicit appeal to some grand narrative, such as thedialectics of Spirit, the hermeneutics of meaning, the emancipation of the rational or working subject, or the creation of wealth."3 This obsolete discourse, asupposed product of the modernist crisis of metaphysical philosophy, merely masks the disintegrations of such narratives, and their dispersal into the unstable

clouds of postmodernity's lofty discursiveness.4Postmodernists/poststructuralists thus disavow, in their formalist and ultimatistrejections, divergences of considerable, oppositional importance. They throw out Kant and Hegel as well as Marx, all of whomrely on metanarratives of one sort or another, little consideration being given to the fundamental differences separating such

systems of thought. All states are simply states, and hence oppressive, an anarchist might argue (Down with the Bolsheviks!); all warsare to be condemned, asserts the pacifist (We take no sides in Vietnam!); all metanarratives are suspect and compromised, there beingno master categories of explanatory authority, proclaims the post-structuralist (Away with all interpretive pests!). In the comment thatfollows I concentrate on the Marxist "metanarra-tive," an unfulfilled project of radicalizing Enlightenment rationality that much contemporary theory refuses in

its repudiation of historical materialism. Marxist metanarrative is rejected, ironically, at precisely the historical moment that it iscritically necessary, its insistence on reading history in classterms, as a succession of identifiable structures and agencies

propelled by material interests, being fundamental to the interpretation of the movement from past to present, especially inthe context of contemporary life, where humanity is more and more connected in the global dimensions of exploitation andoppression.5


3/48


1NC VS. CRITICAL AFFS

The alternative is historical materialism. Historical materialist analysis is epistemologically

superior to post-structuralism-it allows more effective analyses of power and the mobilization of

discoursesLapointe, 2007 [Thierry. "Beyond an Historicism Without Subject: Agency and the Elusive Genealogies of State

Sovereignty" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association 48th Annual Convention, Feb28, 2007


4/48


1NC VS. CRITICAL AFFSCONTINUEDuncovering an underground insurrectionary tradition that flew in the face of constituted authority in the opening decades of the nineteenth century, as well asstanding in stark revolutionary contrast to the stolid constitutionalism of later generations of working-class reformers and their Fabian historians. This is a long

way from Stedman Jones, whose politics of the 1980s had been formed within the conservatizing and hostile drift of the Labour Party away from the workingclass. He reads Chartism's successes against the politics of mass upheaval in the 1830s and 1840s, seeing in the movement's ideas and actions not the classmobilizations of the time but the hangover of an eighteenth-century politics that somehow distanced itself from the class actualities of the historical context.

There is no doubt that Thompson'sMakingis driven by a commitment to the revolutionary aspirations of the working class, past and present, but that does notundermine his text's authority precisely because it is, for all of its dissident commitments, engaged with the complexities of the material world of the earlynineteenth century. Stedman Jones, in contrast, searches for ways to distance himself from the specificities of Chartism's times. The supreme irony is that the"present" of Stedman Jones's text is nothing more than an ideological adaptation to Thatcher's Britain, a displacement of the past that pa ints a major history of

working-class mobilization into a derivative corner of denigration and denial. Thompson's "present," in striking contrast, is a moment of revolution thwarted, a

"heroic" challenge that, whatever its failures, remains significant to both the history of the working class and the class content of contemporary left politics.7 Itis when postmodernist/poststructuralist readings of history are scrutinized to see howmetanarrative is suppressed, resultinginevitably in a particular structuring of past, present, and future, that the costs and content of abandoning metanarrative aremost evident. When the French Revolution is interpreted, not as a contest between aristocracy and bourgeoisie, mediated by theinvolvement of the sans-culottes, but as the unfolding symbolic will of a population galvanized as much by imagery as politicalprinciple, the condescendingclassdismissiveness of contemporary histo-riographic fashion is strikingly evident.8An ironicconsequence of postcolo-nial deconstructive writing, with its understandable refusal of the Orientalist metanarrative, and its unfortunatetextualization of imperialist plunder and indigenous resistance, is the further silencing of those marginalized "others," whosedifferences are celebrated, but whose umbilical link to classformation on a global sale is twisted in the obscured isolations ofcultures and countries.9 In the words of David Harvey: Postmodernism has us accepting the reifications and partitionings, actuallycelebrating the

activity of masking and cover-up, all the fetishisras of locality, place, or social grouping, while denying the kind of meta-theorywhich can grasp the political-economic processes (money flows, international divisions of labour, financial markets, and the like) that arebecoming ever more universalizing in their depth, intensity and reach over daily life.10 Postmodernistic antagonism to metanarrative thuscarries with it a particular price tag, one in which the significance of class is almost universally marked down. That this process is embedded less in theory andmore in the material politics of the late twentieth century, with their "retreat from class,"11 a withdrawal hastened by new offensives on the part of capital andthe state, and conditioned by "actually existing socialism's" Stalinist deformations and ultimate collapse, is evident in one historian's confident statement. Patrick

Joyce claims that British history, once explained in terms of class struggle, must now be regarded differently: There is a powerful sense in which class may besaid to have "fallen." Instead of being a master category of historical explanation, it has become one term among many, sharing rough equality with these others(which is what I meant by the "fall" of class). The reasons for this are not hard to find. In Britain, economic decline and restructuring have led to thedisintegration of the old manual sector of employment, and of what was, mistakenly, seen to be a "traditional" working class. The rise of the right from the1970s, and the decline of the left, together with that of the trade unions, pointed in a similar direction to that of economic change, towards a loosening of thehold class and work-based categories had, not only on the academic mind, but also on a wider public. Changes going on in Britain were mirrored elsewhere, butthe greatest change of all was the disintegration of world communism, and with it the retreat of intellectual Marxism.12To "deconstruct" such a statement is toexpose the transparent crudeness of its content, which bears a disappointing likeness to Timemagazine. Even if trends in the 1990s were unambiguously of thesort pointed to by Joyce, it is most emphaticallynotthe case that the analytic meanings of this period of supposed change could be transferred wholesale to apast society quite unlike itwhat possible relevance can the fall of a degenerated and deformed set of workers' states(the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, etc.)

have on our exploration of the tangible class composition ofearly nineteenth-century society?Is it not rather unwholesome for supposed intellectuals to be barteringtheir interpretive integrity in the crass coin of political fashion, their supposedly pristine ideas dripping with the thoroughly partisan politics of a particularhistorical period? Joyce's words, ironically, confirm rather than undermine historical materialism. As Joyce alludes to the "fall" of class as a product of globalrestructuring, trade union and left defeat, the implosion of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the rise of the right, what are we to see but the actual

confirmation of "intellectual Marxism?" Did not Marx write that, "The ideas of the ruling class are in eveiy epoch the ruling ideas," andsuggest that at moments of "enthusiastic striving for innovation"which is certainly a characteristic of the postmodernsuchideas might well result in a "more deeply rooted domination of the old routine?"13 Historical materialism would suggest that there is aprofound difference between the trajectory of political economy in one epoch, and its attendant ideologies, and the actual socialrelations of production and contestation in another historical period. Joyce collapses the two. In doing so he does disservice, again, to bothpast and present. For while his simplified catalogue-like listing of the onward march of left defeat has some resonance in terms of contemporary politicaleconomic development, Joyce conveniently understates the presence of other dimensions. His accounting is one-sided and distortingly one-dimensional. Yes, tobe sure, the Stalinist economies and their ruling castes have, outside of Cuba and (less so) China, taken a headlong plunge into the privatization despotisms ofthe 1990s, which Marxists from the Trotskyist tradition have been predicting since the publication ofThe Revolution Betrayed(1937). Against those who saw in thebureaucratic grip of Stalinism a fundamental, if flawed, blockade against the restoration of market relations, Trotsky wrote: "In reality a backslide to capitalism is

wholly possible."14 Classpoliticswere dealt a severe blow in the capitalist counterrevolutions and Stalinist implosions of the post-1989 years. Nevertheless, thereis no indication that this has lessened the importance of class as an agent of social transformation and human possibility (a master category of metanarrative).

Indeed, it will be the revival of class mobilizations that will retrieve for socialized humanity what was lost over the course of the 1990s in Russia and elsewhere,or there will be no gains forced from the already all-too-apparent losses of recent capitalist restorationism. Almost a decade of tyrannical Yeltsin-like Great

Russianism and the barbarism of small "nation" chauvinisms should have made it apparent where the politics ofnationalidentity lead. Class, as both acategory of potential and becoming and an agency of activism, has thus reasserted its fundamental importance. More and moreof humanity now faces the ravages of capitalism's highly totalizing, essen-tializing, and homogenizing impulses, and these arecurrently unleashed with a tragic vengeance as even the once degenerate and deformed workers' states look to the ideologicalabstractions of the world market for sustenance rather than relying on proletarian powers. Mass strikes now routinely challenge capitaland its states, from France to Canada, from Korea to Brazil. Once-Soviet workers, who saw socialism sour in the stale breath of generations of Stalinism, are

voting Communist again, whatever the problematic connotations, in the 1990s. At the end of 1995, polls in the advanced capitalist economies of the WestCONTINUES


5/48


1NC V. CRITICAL AFFS

CONTINUEDalmost universally locate society's major discontents in the material failings of a social order that has visibly widened the gap between "haves" and "have-nots,"undermining the mythical middle class and depressing the living conditions of those working poor fortunate enough to retain some hold on their jobs. There are

no answers separate from those of class struggle, however much this metanarrative of materially structured resistance intersects with special oppressions. Classhas not so much fallen as it has returned. It had never, of course, gone anywhere. Identifiedas simply one of many plural subjectivities, class has

actually been obscured from analytic and political view by poststructuralism's analytic edifice, erected at just the moment thatthe left is in dire need of the clarity and direction that class, as a category and an agency, a structure and a politics, can provide.The legacy ofMarxism in general, and ofhistorical materialism in particular, is to challenge and oppose this obfuscation, providing analternative to such material misreadings, building an oppositional worldview that can play some role in reversing the classstruggle defeats and weakening of the international workers' movement that has taken place as capital and the state have been inthe ascendant over the course of the last thirty years.Those thinkers who have failed to see the transitory nature ofpostmodernism/poststructuralism, many of them academic fair-weather friends of Marxism, and have instead invested so much inrecent proclamations of their discursively constructed identity politics , may well be among the last to acknowledge theblunt revival of class in the face of contemporary capitalism's totalizing materiality.They will no doubt find some variantof "difference" to cling to, the better to avoid the necessity of engaging subjec tivity and its oppressive objectification undercapitalism, where class, in its singular capacity to assimilate other categories of being and congeal varieties of power, rules and is ruled, ametanarrative of exploitation within which all identities ultimately find their level of subordination/domination. This is indeed anold way of looking at the world. But postmodernism/post-structuralism notwithstanding, all that is old is not always without value . Asone "Old Man" of Marxism, a lifelong defender of radicalized Enlightenment values, once proclaimed, in a maxim particularly suited to the linked fortunes of

materialism's past, present, and future: "Those who cannot defend old positions will never conquer new ones."


6/48


LINK: POSTMODERN/ POST-STRUCTURALIST THEORY

Their postmodernism is useless absent a concrete view at historical contextCox '95 - emeritus prof. of pol. sci. @ York Univ. (Robert W., "Critical Political Economy," in "International PoliticalEconomy: Understanding Global Disorder," Ed. by Bjorn Hette, p.31-32, RG)

First of all, there is no theory in itself, no theory independent of a concrete historical context. Theory is the way the mind works tounderstand the reality it confronts. It is the self-consciousness of that mind, the awareness of how facts experienced areperceived and organized so as to be understood. Theory thus follows reality in the sense that it is shaped by the world ofexperience. But it also precedes the making of reality in that it orients the minds of those who by their actions reproduce orchange that reality.

Theory is alwaysforsomeone andforsome purpose.We need to know the context in which theory is produced and used; and we need toknow whether the aim of the user is to maintain the existing social order or to change it. These two purposes lead to two kinds of theory.

What I shall call 'problem-solving' theory takes the world as given (and on the whole as good) and provides guidance to correctdysfunctions or specific problems that arise within this existing order . The other kind of theory, which I shall call 'critical' (although I do notthereby affiliate with any particular tendencies that have heretofore adopted that word) is concerned with how the existing order came into being and what thepossibilities are for change in that order. The first is concerned with specific reforms aimed at the maintenance of existing structures, the 'second with exploringthe potential for structural change and the construction of strategies for change.


7/48


LINK: POSTSTRUCTURALIST K OF MILITARY

Poststructuralisms characterization of the international system by inequalities in military power

overlooks historical materialist conditions underlying militarism and war.Lapointe, 2007 [Thierry. "Beyond an Historicism Without Subject: Agency and the Elusive Genealogies of State

Sovereignty" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association 48th Annual Convention, Feb

28, 2007


8/48


LINK: POSTSTRUCTURALIST K OF MILITARY

Poststructuralisms flawed epistemology denies empirical, historical, or cause-and-effect

investigations into IR

Lapointe, 2007 [Thierry. "Beyond an Historicism Without Subject: Agency and the Elusive Genealogies of State

Sovereignty" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association 48th Annual Convention, Feb

28, 2007


9/48


LINK: REJECTING MODERNITY

Rejecting modernity and calculative thought lumps together capitalisms distinct social relationsand dehistoricizes the specific conditions enabling racism, colonialism, and the HolocaustMalik '96 - senior visting fellow at the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey(Kenan, "The Mirror of Race: Postmodernism and the Celebration of Difference," in "In Defense of History," Ed. by E.Meiskins Wood & John Foster, p.127-131, RG)

By conflating the social relations of capitalism with the intellectual and technological progress of modernity, the product ofthe former can be laid at the door of the latter. The specific problems created by capitalist social relations becomedehistoricized. In postructuralist discourse racial theory, colonialism, or the Holocaust are not investigated in their specificity, asproducts of distinctive tendencies within capitalist society, but are all lumped together as the general consequence ofmodernity. In this waythe positive aspects of modern society its invocation of reason, its technological advancements, itsideological commitment to equality and universalismare denigrated while its negative aspectsthe inability of capitalism toovercome social divisions, the propensity to treat large sections of humanity as inferior or subhuman, the contrast betweentechnological advance and moral turpitude, the tendencies towards barbarismare seen as inevitable or natural.


10/48


LINK: SOVEREIGNTY

Post-structuralist rejections of states, the IR system, and diplomacy obscure the role of

sovereignty as a socially and historically situated forceno epistemologically relevant analysis

can exist absent an historically materialist approachHalliday 94 [Fred, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, A Necessary Encounter:

Historical Materialism and International Relations in Rethinking International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan), 47-73]

What these broad concepts of the 'mode of production' and the 'social formation' did entail was that analysis of any area of

human acitivity had to be seen in this socio-economic context, and not in abstraction from it. There is therefore no state, no

belief, no conflict, no power in general, or independent of this context. By extension, there is no 'international system', or any

component activity, be this war or diplomacy, abstracted from the mode of production. Indeed, International Relations is the

study of the relations not between states but between social formations. When this insight is applied to the issues of

international relations, a definite shift of focus becomes visible.Thus the state is no longer seen as an embodiment of

national interest or judicial neutrality, but rather of the interests of a specific society or social formation, defined by

its socio-economic structure. How far classes control the state, or are separated from it, has been one of the main issues of dispute within the field.

Sovereignty equally becomes not a -60- generic legal concept but the sovereignty of specific social forces.Its history is that

of forms of social power and attendant legitimisation within a formation.Security is removed from the distinct

theoretical sphere in which it has been placed and becomes the security of specific social groups and for specific

socioeconomic reasons. The history of the system is also seen in another light: the modern inter-state system emerged in a context of the spread of

capitalism across the globe, and the subjugation of pre-capitalist societies. This socio-economic system has underpinned both the characterof individual states and of their relations with each other: no analysis of international relations is possible without

reference to capitalism, the social formations it generated and the world system they comprise . 27 The second central theme,embodied in the very term for the paradigm itself, is that of history, and historical determination. In the first instance, Marx argued that history influenced

present behaviour. In the phrase he used on one occasion: 'the tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare upon the minds of the living'. But

it meant something more than this: Marx argued that the events or character of any society could only be seen in their historical context -- one had to ask

how the object of study came about, what the influences, of past events were, and what the impact of the past in shaping the current situation might be. 28

Just as he argued that society had to be seen in its socio-economic context, so he believed that the conditions of generation and a recognition of theircontingent location, were central to any analysis. To understand contemporary capitalist society, one had to see how it originated and what the problems

and tendencies conditioned by the past were, how it limited what people thought of as being their options, and led them to be influenced, or wholly

determined, by passions, illusions, identifications derived usually unwittingly from the past.


11/48


LINK: HEGEMONY

Hegemony creates a false universality based on material dominance and falsely conflates thisdominance with the natural course of history to create a coherent vision of world orderCox '95 - emeritus prof. of pol. sci. @ York Univ. (Robert W., "Critical Political Economy," in "International PoliticalEconomy: Understanding Global Disorder," Ed. by Bjorn Hette, p.43-44, RG)

The question of consumption models is closely linked to the question of hegemony. In the terms I have used, an indicator of hegemonywould be a preponderant ontology that tends to absorb or subordinate all others. One intersubjective understanding of the world excludes allothers and appears to be universal. It is often said that although United States economic power in the world has experienced arelative decline, the American way of life has never been a more powerful model. An American-derived 'business civilization', touse Susan Strange's term, characterizes the globalizing elites; and American pop culture has projected an image of the good life that isa universal object of emulationa universalized model of consumption. This constitutes a serious obstacle to the rethinking ofsocial practices so as to be more compatible with the biosphere.

A counterchallenge to the universalizing of American pop culture is the affirmation of other cultural identities.The most evident, and the mostexplicitly negating of American culture, is in Islam; but other cultures are also affirming alternative world-views.The hegemonies of the pastand present have universalized from one national culture or one tradition of civilization. A post-hegemonic world order wouldno longer be the global reach of one particular form of civilization. It would contain a plurality of visions of world order.In order to avoid such an order lapsing into mutual incomprehension and conflict, it would be necessary to move beyond a position of pure relativism in orderto achieve a kind of supra-intersubjectivity that would provide a bridge across the distinct and separate subjectivities of the different coexisting civilizations.

These various traditions of civilization are not monolithic and fixed. They develop dialectically like any historical structure.

Change may come both from internal contradictionsfor example, gendered power relations and social inequities can be sourcesof conflict and mutation in all cultures. Change can also come from borrowings and reactions to the practices of other culturesin a world that is becoming ever more closely knit. Selective adaptation rather than homogenization would characterize changein post-hegemonic pluralism.


12/48


LINK: ANTI-CAPITALISM

Traditional revolutions are deeply conservatisinga strategy based on consciousness andcounter-hegemonies derived from the relationship of subjects to history is necessary to combinepolitical, economic, and ideological struggleMcNally '96 - prof. of pol. sci. @ York Univ. (David, "Language, History, and Class Struggle," in "In Defense of History:Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda," Ed. by E. Meiskins Wood & John Foster, p.36-38, RG)

The contradictory character of working class consciousness is a highly dynamic phenomenon. To begin with, there is nohomogeneous consciousness within the working class. Among a single group of workers, some will veer towards near-total acceptanceof the ideas of bosses, supervisors, heads of state, and so on, while others will tends towards an almost thorough-goingopposition to such figures. Between these two positions one will f ind the majority of workers. But their consciousness will not be fixed. Greateventsmass strikes and demonstrations, union drives, and so oncoupled with the organized propagation of oppositionalideas can contribute to significant radicalizations; while defeats, setbacks, and the decline of oppositional discourse can have adeeply conservatizing effect.But whatever the existing state of affairs at any one point in t ime, Gramsci is clear that the contradictory nature of working class consciousnesscannot be eliminated. It is an intrinsic feature of capitalist society that the ruling class tries to win ideological consent to its rule(and that such efforts are usually successful to a significant extent), andthat the life experiences of workers, their resistance to exploitationand domination, generate practices which do not fit with the dominant ideas and which, in fact, entail an implicit worldview thatchallenges these ideas. Indeed, one of the crucial functions of a revolutionary socialist party for Gramsci is that it try to draw out

and systematize the worldview which is implicit in such practices of resistance. This view enables Gramsci to approach the question ofrevolutionary politics in terms of the contradictions which pervade the experience, activity, and language of oppressed members of society.

Revolutionary politics begins, be argues,with the common sense of the working class. This common sense contains all these, largely implicit,oppositional attitudes. And since socialism, as Marx insisted, is the self-emancipation of the working class, revolutionary ideas cannot be some foreign discourse

injected into the working class movement. On the contrary, the connection between revolutionary ideas and the working class must beorganic; it is the task of Marxists to show that socialism is the logical and consistent outgrowth of practices of working classresistance. The revolutionary party must thus be a living part of the working class movement; it must share their experiencesand speak their language. At the same time, it must also be the force that generalizes experiences of opposition into an increasinglysystematic program, the force which challenges the traditional and dominant ideas inherited by workers (patriotism, sexism, racism,etc.) by showing how they conflict with the interests and aspirations implicit in resistance to exploitation and oppression. Contraryto certain idealist renderings of Gramsci which have made the rounds in recent years, he is insistent that the building of such a mass counter-hegemonic movement does not take place on a strictly cultural plane or as some rarefied intellectual process of ideologicaldissent. Counter-hegemonies, he argues, are created through political struggle, movements in which economic resistance andideological combat go hand in hand . For the oppressed, in other words, "critical understanding of self takes place therefore through a

struggle of political hegemonies'" (p. 333). And "political parties," he insists, operate as the "historical laboratory" of counter-hegemonic worldviews; they are "the crucibles where the unification of theory and practice, understood as a real historical

process, takes place" (p. 335).


13/48


LINK: ANTI-CAPITALISM

The convergence of the state and market is the root cause of global capitalismvan Apeldoorn 2004[Bastiann, prof of political science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Theorizing the transnational: a

historical materialist approach, Journal of International Relations and Development, 2004, 7, (142176), ebscohost]

It is from this perspective that we may also understand the development of transnational relations into relations of capitalist production.The world

market itself generated transnational commercial and financial networks enabling the formation of transnational socialforces.How ever, it was only when, expanding from the English state-society complex outwards, capitalism transformed the

world market into a capitalist market based on the imperative of continuous expansion and deepening that capitalist social

relations started to develop across the boundaries of the newly established territorial units called states. It was therefore only

on the basis of this capitalist world marketand the internationalization drive of capital it inducedthat a process of

transnational (capitalist) class formation could develop (class relationsand hence class formationpresupposing production relations).The coming into existence of a transnational bourgeoisie went beyond earlier transnational structures of socialization inasmuch as it created a transnational

space for the exercise and reproduction of capitalist class rule.Such a transnational space first arose in the 18th century in the form of what Van der Pijl

(1998: especially chapter 3) has called the Lockean heartland, formed through the expansion of the British state-society complex to include parts of NorthAmerica and other regions through settler colonies, and in its commercial and political expansion confronting (sometimes resulting in war) so-called

Hobbesian contender states.It is thus that through this expansion we can witnessthough via many crisis and fits and startsa

gradual widening of the area of state-society complexes subject to the imposition of capitalist discipline and a concomitant

(deepening) commodification of social relations. It was with the industrial revolution that this expansionary dynamic of capitalism set in forgood.Thi s development reached a new climax when in the 19th century under the Pax Britannica the internationalization of capital deepened and the

liberal internationalist fraction of a Anglo-Saxon bourgeoisie became more and more cosmopolitan in outlook.

Questioning economics without attention to the relationship between structures and actors in thepolitical economy failsCox '95 - emeritus prof. of pol. sci. @ York Univ. (Robert W., "Critical Political Economy," in "International PoliticalEconomy: Understanding Global Disorder," Ed. by Bjorn Hette, p.32-36, RG)

The next question is: change in what? What is political economy? I suggest that political economy is different from both political science andeconomics as they are commonly understood. We sometimes hear international political economy defined as the politics ofinternational economic relations. This suggests an amalgam or rapprochementof the two fields.

Yet there is a methodological difference between political science and economics, on the one hand, and political economy, as Iwould like to define it, on the other. Political science and economics are actor-oriented studies. They take off from some rather fixed assumptionsabout the framework or parameters within which actions take placethe institutional framework of politics, or the concept of the market.

Within these parameters, they can often give quite precise answers to specific questions. Political scientists can analyse political processes within existing

structures and possibly give useful advice to politicians about how to gain or retain office or what policy options are feasible in terms of public support.Economists use the relationships derived from the rather abstract concept of a market to predict outcomes under differentconditions. Both provide examples of the application of problem-solving theory.Political economy, by contrast, is concerned with the historically constituted frameworks or structures within which political andeconomic activity takes place. It stands back from the apparent fixity of the present to ask how the existing structures came intobeing and how they may be changing, or how they may be induced to change. In this sense, political economy is critical theory.Historical structures

There is, of course, no absolute distinction between actors and structures. It is not a question of sacrificing the one or the other. Structuresare formed by collective human activity over time. Structures, in turn, mould the thoughts and actions of individuals. Historical change is to be thoughtof as the reciprocal relationship of structures and actors. There is a difference, however, between thinking of this actorstructure relationship asa process configuring structural change, and thinking of actions as conf ined within fixed, given structures in the manner of problem-solving theory.


14/48


LINK: IMPERIALISM

Confining discussions of capitalism in IR to imperialism is myopicHalliday 94 [Fred, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, A Necessary Encounter:

Historical Materialism and International Relations in Rethinking International Relations (Basingstoke: Macmillan), 47-73]

If realism can detach itself from its cousins -- social Darwinism, racism andMachtpolitik-- so can an interpretive Marxism

be distinguished from its instrumental companion. Such a distinction involves above all an examination of what Marx and Engels themselveswrote, and of the work of independent Marxists who, throughout the Leninist and orthodox communist domination of the subject, sought to provide an

alternative interpretation to that of the dogmatists. 1 Just as in sociology, history and other social sciences this independent, broadly 'Western', Marxist

current has been able to establish a recognised and analytically fruitful body of work, so there exists the potential for it to do so in the realm of IR. It is this

claim which the following chapter seeks to explore, with regard to a potential interaction of International Relations and the Marxist tradition. Despite

many decades of potential interaction, the establishment of a relationship between historical materialism and the discipline of international relations is still

at an initial stage. At various stages in the history of the discipline, there have been surveys of the implications of Marxi sm for International Relations inwhich already constituted points of contact have been identified. 2 Since the 1970s a number of writers have advocated further theoretical work, be it the

elaboration of a general Marxist approach to International Relations, or the development of domains in which the International Relations discipline, as

presently constituted, can strengthen its analytic endeavours by drawing on specific elements within historical materialism. 3 In an innovative and

judicious study, Andrew Linklater has examined the implications for IR of 'critical' Marxism, while stressing the constraints which the international

system imposes on any emancipatory project. 4 However, in contrast to such other areas of the social sciences as -48- sociology, economics or history,

historical materialism has never occupied a secure place within International Relations; there are many who seek to limit its application, be this explicitly,as was the case with those who denied its relevance, such as Martin Wight and Hans Morgenthau, or implicitly, by relegating it to a minor place, or by

presenting it in a selective interpretation, such that its pertinence is constricted. 5 This is achieved above all by blocking out the main theoretical questions

of Marxism. The fact that IR is almost wholly silent on what for Marxism is the central category of modern social analysis,

namely capitalism, is itself indicative. Equally, as discussed in Chapter 8, the degree to which the Cold War embodied not just

competing strategic interests, but different socio-economic ones, has been ignored in most IR literature. The sources of thisfailure lie on both sides of the relationship. International Relations as a discipline has arisen primarily within British and American universities, and as a

theoretical derivative of other disciplines in the social sciences. Neither institutional context, nor theoretical influence, have been ones in which Marxism

has had a prominent or generally recognised place. On the other hand, historical materialism has not itself developed the theoretical focus

needed for a comprehensive and generally intelligible contribution to International Relations. Much of what was produced in thename of Marxism, by communist regimes or those following them, was vulgar polemic, a repetition of certain standard, formulaic, readings of Marxism

itself and concentrated around a justification of political interests. The confining of Marxist discussion of the international to the

question of 'imperialism', and a one-sided and banal interpretation of the phenomenon at that, was as much the responsibility of those

espousing Marxism as of those opposed to it. 6 Those who, within the independent currents of historical materialism, have sought to elaborate aMarxist approach to International Relations have laboured under the theoretical difficulties that confront those who seek to analyse politics, and

ideological factors, within the confines of specific states themselves.


15/48


LINK: SELF-DETERMINATION

Historical materialist analysis shows that self-determination serves as a shield for imperialactions, justifying violent imperialist invocationKnox 10 - MPhil/PhD Candidate London School of Economics (Robert J., The Degradation of the International LegalOrder? Th e Rehabilitation of Law and the Possibility of Politics, Bill Bowring, Historical Materialism Volume 18, Issue 1,EBSCO, RG)

It is not simply the case that Bowring underestimates the degree to which rival positions are genuine attempts at coherence and, as such, all equally legal. It isalso the case that the tenets of Bowrings own position revolutionary conservatismhave, at various times, been used to legitimate and promote imperial

actions on the world-stage. A particularly useful example in this respect is self-determination. Whilst Bowring is certainly right to note theimportant role self-determination played in anticolonial struggle, he is curiously silent as to its invocation by various imperialistpowers. Th e most obvious example of this in recent times was the Russian invasion of Georgia under the rationale (amongst others) ofdefending the right to self-determination of Abkhazias ethnic Russians. Th is itself is widely viewed as a response to Kosovosunilateral declaration (and the attendant support of various world-powers) of independence, itself justifi ed in terms of self-determination.16 One can fi nd further examples of this in Bolivia, where those rich regions led by the Right threatened to secede17 and in claims ofIsraels defenders that its actions can be justifi ed owing to the need for the self-determination of the Jewish people.18 As TonyCliff noted, Israel frequently appealed to the idea that it was a loyal little Jewish Ulster in order to gain support.19 Indeed, the right of humanitarianintervention which Bowring decries has its modern genesis in the right of pro-democratic intervention articulated during theCold War, which was itself rooted in arguments from self-determination.20 Early on in the book, Bowring attempts to cut this off , arguingthat: Intervention or interference, however they are characterised, and in the name of whichever honourable motives, have never beenand most certainly arenot nowpart of the struggle of individuals or collectivities. (p. 6.) But this argument simply cannot work for Bowring. Firstly, because later in the book he

positively notes that [t]he USSR . . . found itself obliged to give very considerable material support to self-determination struggles(p. 38), this of course included military provision, which must be counted as a form of intervention or interference. More tellingly,

various countries that formed part of theThird-World movement were enthusiastic advocates of military intervention in the name ofanticolonialism and self-determination. This can be seen particularly clearly in the case of Goa, which India invaded to liberatefrom Portugals colonial occupation. Here, Indian UN ambassador Jha argued that Article 2(4) of the Charter would not be breached by its invasion ofGoa, since the wave of decolonisation had transformed its ambit, such that anticolonial violence could not be counted as aggression.21 Th is argument, both in

terms of its content and structure is startlingly similar to Reismans. As one can see, there is a direct lineage between the Third Worldsinvocation of self-determination and the imperialist invocation ofhumanitarian intervention.22 It seems diffi cult to arguethat these invocations can be meaningfully diff erentiated in law. Whilst their political content could not be more opposed, the abstract nature of legal claims

would compel a principled adherent to the law to support both (or at least refrain from criticising the latter on legal grounds). It seems especially diffi cult forBowring to escape these objections.


16/48


LINK: REVOLUTION

Their aff cant access the revolution the revolution is not a simple moment in timetheirUtopian alternative fails to examine cultural and political history and thus doesnt achieve truesocial change

Jameson '96 - head of the Lit. program @ Duke (Fredric, "Five theses on actually existing Marxism," April, 1996,http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n11_v47/ai_18205164/?tag=content;col1, RG)

But such arguments in their turn presuppose the taking of a position on what is surely the central concept in any Marxian "unity-of-theory-and-practice," namely

Revolution itself This is the case because it is the untenability of that concept that is the principal exhibit in the post- or anti-Marxianarsenal. The defense of this concept, however, requires a number of preliminary preparations: in particular,we need to abandon to iconologyeverything that suggests that revolution is a punctual moment rather than an elaborate and complex process. For example, many ofour most cherished iconic images of the various historical revolutions, such as the taking of the Winter Palace and the Tennis Court Oath, need to be set aside.

Social revolution is not a moment in time, but it can be affirmed in terms of the necessity of change in what is a synchronicsystem, in which everything holds together and is interrelated with everything else. Such a system then demands a kind of absolute systemicchange, rather than piecemeal 'reform," which turns out to be what is in the pejorative sense "Utopian," that is, illusory, not feasible. That is to saythat the system demands the ideological vision of a radical social alternative to the existing social order, something which can nolonger be taken for granted or inherited, under the state of current discursive struggle, but which demands reinvention. Religiousfundamentalism (whether Islamic, Christian, or Hindu), that claims to offer a radical alternative to consumerism and "the American way of life," only comesinto significant being when the traditional Left alternatives, and in particular the great revolutionary traditions of Marxism and communism, have suddenlyseemed unavailable.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n11_v47/ai_18205164/?tag=content;col1http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n11_v47/ai_18205164/?tag=content;col1http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_n11_v47/ai_18205164/?tag=content;col1


17/48


LINK: TERRORISM

Terrorism is the result of historical and material deprivation, not fundementalismwe have toput it in the context of struggles against Western capitalismMousseau '3 - Associate prof of IR @ Koc Univ in Istanbul, Turkey (Michael, "Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror,"International Security, 27(3), p.5-29, Project MUSE, RG)

Those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder are the most vulnerable to the negative consequences associated withglobalization. Those with the most to lose, however, are patrons and their lieutenants who hold privileged positions in the old clientalist hierarchies. This is

whyleaders of terrorist organizations frequently come from privileged backgrounds. To maintain the clientalist structure thatcarries with it higher social status, these leaders seek to rally their client base by appealing to some antimarket ideology. Because itis in a [End Page 19] client's interest to have a powerful patron, leaders attract and maintain followers by demonstrations of strength. In thisway, the mass murder of Westerners serves two purposes: It reflects the leader's power, and it taps into widespread antimarketfury. Islam itself is not responsible for the social approval of terror. Patrons fearing the loss of their privileged statussuchas Osama bin Ladenfind an antimarket ideology useful to attract followers. They manipulate Islam to serve their own ends, just liketheir counterparts in Europe did a century ago by contorting Christianity to justify terror and mass murder.51In fact, Islam emerged in Mecca, the center ofsixth-century Mediterranean and South Asian trade, and the Koran stress the market values of universalism, equity, contractual exchange, and a degree of

tolerance toward outsiders (non-Muslims). 52The market economy in this region declined before market normsand liberal cultureintensified and expanded throughout the Islamic world, but the liberal origins of Islam demonstrate that religion can beinterpreted, and manipulated, to suit anyone's purposes. In societies steeped in market values, it is difficult to comprehend how anyone can engagein the mass murder of out-groups, or how anyone can support it. Individuals with market values believe that each person is responsible only

for his or her actions. Just as those who are not parties to contracts cannot be made obligated to them, individuals cannot be assumed to be responsible forany and all behavior of other members of their apparent in-group. It therefore seems absurd to blame individuals for the alleged bad behaviorof others, and this is the social origin of the presumption of individual innocence in market societies . From the clientalist perspective,in contrast, no one is innocent: Individuals share responsibility for the actions of others within the in-group; if followers do notsupport their leaders, then they are betraying the entire in-group. From the clientalist perspective, all in-group members are privilegedand all out-group members are enemies or, at best, outsiders unworthy of empathy. [End Page 20] A paucity of empathy is necessary fordoing harm to, and tolerating the suffering of, all out-group members. This is why international human rights are a concern promoted mostly by market

democracies. It is also why widespread social support for both terrorism and sectarian violence frequently arises in developingcountries but not in countries with deeply integrated markets.53Clientalist values also lie at the core of the social approval ofsuicidal mass murder. From the market perspective, all behavior should have some immediate utility for the parties to a contract. It is thus difficult tocomprehend the efficacy of suicide. But in cultures where the individual is less important than the group and the absence of scienceincreases devotion to insular beliefs, suicideunder conditions of extreme socioeconomic disruptionmay emerge as a sociallyapproved way of expressing ultimate loyalty to the in-group. In this way, cultural insularism, characterized by the absence of a marketeconomy, is a necessary condition for the social approval of suicidal mass murder and sectarian violence. Cultural insularism

combined with a particular grievancesuch as the negative consequences associated with globalizationcan create a deadlymix for Americans and other Westerners. Although latent anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism exist throughout much of the developing world,these are most likely to rise to the surface during economic criseswhen nascent middle classes lose their status and turnagainst emerging liberal values. This is what is happening, for example, in Indonesia where the recent collapse of the local currency has eliminated thesavings of the middle class, just as hyperinflation devastated the savings of Germany's middle class seventy-five years ago. Recent terrorist acts againstIndonesian Christians (as symbols of the West) and Westerners directly (the November 2002 bombing of a disco in Bali) are reminiscent of Germany's middleclass turning against those it identified with market values, such as European Jews and the West. The West, in this sense, means market civilization. [End Page21]
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT51http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT51http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT51http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT52http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT52http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT52http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT53http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT53http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT53http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT53http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT52http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v027/27.3mousseau.html#FOOT51


18/48


LINK: IDENTITY

Rejecting identity as a social construction takes it out of historical and social context, making itappear natural and justifying biological theories of raceMalik '96 - senior visting fellow at the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey(Kenan, "The Mirror of Race: Postmodernism and the Celebration of Difference," in "In Defense of History," Ed. by E.Meiskins Wood & John Foster, p.112-117, RG)

"Poststructuralist thinking," sociologists David Bailey and Stuart Hall have argued, "opposes the notion that a person is born with a fixedidentitythat all black people, for example, have an essential underlying black identity which is the same and unchanging. It suggestsinstead that identities are floating, that meaning is not fixed and universally true at all times for all people, and that the subject isconstructed through the unconscious in desire, fantasy and memory."1 The reminder that our identities are not naturally givenbut socially constructed is a useful antidote to the idea that human differences are fixed and eternal . Butby insisting that societyis inherently and irreducibly heterogeneous and diverse, and by rejecting any idea of "totality" that might allow us to see thecommonalities or connections among heterogeneous and diverse elements, poststructuralist discourse has undermined its owncapacity to challenge naturalistic explanations of difference.The paradoxical result, I shall argue, is a conception of identityscarcely different from that of nineteenth-century racial theory.The problem can be seen in the very concept of "anti-essentialism" asunderstood by postmodernist thinkers. Sociologist Ali Rattansi has described anti-essentialism as a "manoeuvre cutting the ground from conceptions of subjectsand social forms as reducible to timeless, unchanging, defining and determining elements or ensemble of elements'human nature,'for example, or in the case

of the social, the logic of the market or mode of production." Rattansi seems at first to define anti-essentialism simply as opposition to an ahistoricalunderstanding of social phenomena, hostile to the idea of timeless or unchanging social forms. But he slides from this rejection of ahistorical explanation to a

repudiation of social "determinants" altogether. He rejects any idea that social forms can be explained by reference to forces or pressureslike the "logic of the market" or the "mode of production" which permeate and shape the social order, even if thesedeterminants are conceived as historically specific. A non-essentialist understanding of society is apparently one that denies any unifying patterns orprocesses among the diverse and constantly shifting fragments that constitute society. In other words, Rattansi identifies anti-essentialism with an insistence on

indeterminacy. In this he reflects much postmodern thinking which finds the meaning of social forms not in relationsbut in differences.But this kind of indeterminacy is precisely the foundation of ahistorical explanations. How, for instance, can we understand the historical nature ofcapitalism as a specific social form without identifying the specific determinants that distinguish it from other social forms,in other times and places? We could argue about whether the "essence" of capitalism should be seen in the logic of the market,in the particular mode of production, in some other aspect, or in some combination of these. But unless we can characterize thefundamental specificitythe "essence," if you willof capitalist society, its distinctive "laws of motion" or systemic logic, we cannotdistinguish it from other types of societies. How, then, should we analyze race in modern capitalist societies? If we treat race asjust an "identity" detached from any specific social determinants, then race becomes not a historically specific socialrelation but an eternal feature of human societyjust as it is in reactionary biological theories of race, in which racial

divisions are a natural and permanent necessity.This may seem an odd conclusion to draw from postmodern anti-essentialism, because its roots lie

precisely in a hostility to naturalistic explanations of social phenomena, particularly positivism, which reduce social laws to natural laws, treating the laws that

govern human relations as quantifiable and permanent, just like the laws of nature. Because the positivist view of society underpinned nineteenthcentury racial theories, opponents of racial theory have always been hostile to naturalistic theories of society.


19/48


LINK: IDENTITY

Social constructivism rejects all causality, undermining any historical analysis of identityMalik '96 - senior visting fellow at the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey(Kenan, "The Mirror of Race: Postmodernism and the Celebration of Difference," in "In Defense of History," Ed. by E.Meiskins Wood & John Foster, p.112-117, RG)

But in its haste to dispatch naturalistic theories, poststructuralist discourse (and indeed much of modern sociology) takes up arms against notsimply naturalistic explanations of society, but against anycausal explanation, or at the very least, any explanation that assignspriority to certain causes over others. Any idea of determinationeven in its non-reductionist sense, having to do with what E.P. Thompsonoften calls the "logic of process" or Raymond Williams (inMarxism and Literature[1978]) describes as "a complex and interrelated process of limits and

pressures"is considered to be essentialist and therefore illegitimate. Postmodern anti-essentialists hold that theory can have no recourse todeterminants beyond empirically given phenomena. Essences and forces, whether natural or metaphysical, spiritual or historical, are fictitious. At best social"laws" are convenient fictions that allocate an order to empirical phenomena. At worst they are self-serving illusions which disguise some sinister interest or

power. For poststructuralists, then, social phenomena cannot be explained by reference to another property that bestows meaningon them. This kind of anti-essentialism renders all determinate relations contingent, bereft of any inner necessity.3

Poststructuralists deny the concept of an "essential" identity and stress instead "the phenomenon of multiple social identities."As Robin Cohen puts it, "the modern study of identity has ... dished the old 'essentialisms'for example the Marxist idea that all social identity could essentiallybe reduced to class identity." Instead it holds that "there are competing claims for affiliation that cannot be reduced to epiphenomena" and that "gender, age,disability, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, civil status, even musical styles and dress codes" are all "very potent axes of organization and identification."4The

recognition that human beings are subject to conflicting claims and identities is clearly important.The problem arises, however,when all "identities,"of whatever form, are treated as equivalent, so that personal lifestyle preferences such as "musical styles" are given the sameweight and significance as physical attributes such as "disability" or social products such as race and class, while , at the same time,each identity is conceived in isolation from specific social relations. In fact, there is already a problem in conceiving race or classas an "identity" in the first place. Social relations such as racial oppression become not social relations at all but personal attributes,or even lifestyle choices.When race is equated with "musical styles" or "dress codes," the "social" seems to mean nothing more thana particular decision that any individual may make, and "society" is reduced to the aggregate of individual identities. Theconsequence of the poststructuralist notion of society is that many contemporary writers treat social distinctions as personal orpolitical choices. There is a scene in Woody Allen's film Bananas, in which our luckless hero, played by Allen, bemoans the fact that he dropped out ofcollege. "What would you have been if you had finished school?" someone asks him. "I don't know," sighs Allen. "I was in the black studies program. By now I

could have been black." This seems to be the essence of the contemporary view of identity. As Robin Cohen observes, postmodernists seem to believethat "an individual constructs and presents any one of a number of possible social identities, depending on the situation. Like aplayer concealing a deck of cards from the other contestants, the individual pulls out a knaveor a religion, or an ethnicity, a lifestyleas thecontext deems a particular choice desirable or appropriate."5 In this spirit an increasing number of writers now view racial division as the result ofa deliberately chosen cultural exclusiveness. Winston James, employing Benedict Anderson's notion of an "imagined community," argues that, "Like all nations,nationalities and ethnic groups, Afro-Caribbean people in Britain have erected boundaries in relation to those with whom they identify."6 The suggestion is that

Afro-Caribbeans have chosen to establish distinctive cultural patterns, that they have asserted their right to be different, as a way of confirming their "imagined

community," of establishing what James calls a "new sense of fellowship." If this were true, however, racism would not be a problem. If we could chooseidentities in the way we choose our clothes every morning, if we could erect social boundaries from a cultural Lego pack, thenracial hostility might be no different from disagreements between lovers ofMozart and those who prefer Charlie Parker, orbetweensupporters of different football clubs. In other words, racial differences would not be social relationswhich exist apart from the preferencesof any given individual. They would simply represent prejudices born out of a plurality of tastes. But we knowthat in reality racialdivisions aresocial relations, that they are not simply the product of personal preferences, and that blackness amounts to more than asemester on a black studies program. It is not Afro-Caribbeans, or any other racialized group, who have "erected boundaries" separating them from the rest of

society.These boundaries are socially constructed not just in the sense that they are culturally specific, like personal tastes in music orclothes, but in the sense that society has systematically racialized certain social groups and signified them as "different"as Jameshimself acknowledges when he notes "the powerful centripetal forces of British racism."7 Black youth in Brixton or the Bronx have no more "chosen" their

difference than Jews did in Nazi Germany. Certainlyoppressed communities have often reacted to racial division by adopting particularcultural forms. In his autobiography, Miles Davis recounts how black jazz musicians in the forties responded to racism by developing bebop as a style that

would exclude white players.8 Similarly many Jews today continue to observe Jewish cultural rituals less out of religious faith than in response to anti-Semitism

and in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. But such cultural assertion is not the cause of racial identification, it is its product. This isone of the fundamental contradictions at the heart of postmodernism. Insisting on the "discursive" or "social construction" ofall knowledge and identity, under the cover of "anti-essentialism" it ends by effectively denying determinate historical relationsaltogether and thus effectively abandons its original principle that identity and the human subject are socially constructed.Poststructuralist discourse reduces (or deconstructs) society to the accidental interaction of individuals and removes the subjectfrom the terrain of the social . Determinate social relations are reduced to individual, personal attributes or at best to contingent relations betweenindividuals.There can be no "social construction" when the "social" itself has no existence apart from "discursively constructed"individual identities.


20/48


LINK: IDENTITY

Anti-essentialist critiques of identity collapse back into themselves and link to all of the disads topositivist epistemologyMalik '96 - senior visting fellow at the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey(Kenan, "The Mirror of Race: Postmodernism and the Celebration of Difference," in "In Defense of History," Ed. by E.Meiskins Wood & John Foster, p.117-121, RG)

The paradox of poststructuralist anti-essentialism, then, is this: it is an outlook that arises from a desire to oppose naturalistic explanationsand to put social facts in a social context. But by celebrating indeterminacy and by opposing the idea of totality, all in the nameof anti-essentialism, it has undermined its own ability to explain social facts his torically. Facts wrenched from their living context areapprehended only in their isolation.The irony is that this methodology resembles nothing so much as the radical empiricism ofthe positivists, the very theory of knowledge that anti-essentialism sought to overturn.This is not the place to resolve all thedifficult epistemological questions involved in the debate between postmodernism and its critics. Some of these questions are dealt with elsewhere in this book.But we are entitled to ask whether postmodernists can sustain an anti-racist project on the basis of their own, supposedly anti-racist, assumptions. Can theirepistemological assumptions support their own professed opposition to racial oppression? How, for example, would they distinguish between a racist history

and a non-racist one? On postmodernist premises, each would be valid in its own context.The capacity of postmodernists to challenge racistdiscourse is undermined by their own belief in the relativity of meaning. If we want to argue that a racist and a non-racistinterpretation of history are not equally valid, we are required to choose between them, to decide which is true and which is not,and that means we are obliged to accept that there is some standard against which we can judge them. What postmodernists dismiss as"totalizing" theories do not require us to encompass every possible "fact," as some postmodernists maintain, but they do give us some basis for choosing.

Anti-essentialism is supposed to be the very foundation of postmodernist anti-racism, but anti-essentialism as postmodernistsdefine it ends by disabling any anti-racist project.Antiracism, for example, surelyrequires some commitment to equality. It is certainly truethat "equality" is a historically specific idea, which has had different meanings in different social contexts. But the historicity of this idea does notchange the fact that a commitment to equality, and especially racial equality, presumes the existence of a "human essence."

Without such a common essence, equality among different "identities" or social groups would be a meaningless concept. If humanity did not constitute a singlecategory, if in Foucault's words "Nothing in mannot even his bodyis sufficiently stable to act as this basis for self-recognition or for understanding othermen,"11 then equality between different human individuals and groups would be as meaningless as equating apples and oranges or, to use Levi-Strauss's analogyin his critique of Sartre, such "different domains" as "natural and irrational numbers."12The postmodernist might reply that the principle of "difference" impliesa truly radical egalitarianism, because it recognizes no standard by which one individual or group can be judged as better than another. But the point is that thisprinciple of difference cannot provide any standards which oblige us to respect the "difference" of others. At best, it invites our indifferenceto the fate of theOther. At worst, it licenses us to hate and abuse those who are different. Why, after all, should we nor abuse and hate them? On what basis can they demand

our respect or we demand theirs? It is very difficult to support respect for difference without appealing to some "total izing,"universalistic principles of equality or social justice. We can acknowledge that the concept of "rights" is historically specific andsocially constructed; but any argument in favor of equal rights, in whatever form, invariably brings us back to whatpostmodernists would call an "essentialist" explanation. Once such explanations, whether natural or social, are excluded, the very idea of

equality also becomes subordinate to the "contingency of prevailing identities."If the appearance of difference is taken at face value, in theabsence of any common "essence" beyond or beneath that appearance, then the appearanceof difference must be taken as evidence that there are indeed manydifferent categories of humanity and that they have nothing fundamentally in common. This is precisely the method employed by positivist racial theory, which

deduced from the appearance of difference (skin color, head form, and so on) the division of humanity into different categories or "races." Of course,contemporary theorists of difference deny that superficial biological differences define categorical distinctions, preferringinstead to emphasize historical or cultural factors. But cultural formalism is in substance no different from racial formalism. Bothmove from the apprehension of formal difference to posit the existence of different ontological categories.This is why the anti-essentialist tendenciesof poststructuralist thought inevitably puts in question equality itself.


21/48


LINK: IDENTITY

Identity politics are commodity fetishismour alternative is the only way to deal critically withcapitalism and other relations of power

Wood '7 - prof. of pol. sci. @ York Univ. (Ellen Meiksins, "Democracy Against Capitalism; Renewing Historical Materialism,"p.256-263, RG)

In these respects, the new pluralism has much in common with another old pluralism, the one that used to prevail in conventionalpolitical science - pluralism not simply as an ethical principle of toleration but as a theory about the distribution of social power .The concept of 'identity' has replaced 'interest groups', and these two pluralisms may differ in that the old acknowledges an inclusive politicaltotality - like the 'political system', the nation, or the body of citizens - while the new insists on the irreducibility of fragmentation and 'difference'. But both denythe importance of class in capitalist democracies, or at least submerge it in a multiplicity of 'interests' or 'identities'. Both have the effect of denying the systemicunity of capitalism, or its very existence as a social system. Both insist on the heterogeneity of capitalist society, while losing sight of its increasingly global power

of homogenization.The new pluralism claims a unique sensitivity to the complexities of power and diverse oppressions; but like theold variety, it has the effect of making invisible the power relations that constitute capitalism, the dominant structure ofcoercion which reaches into every corner of our lives, public and private. In their failure to acknowledge that various identities or interest groups aredifferently situated in relation to that dominant structure, both pluralisms recognize not so much differenceas simpleplurality.This latest denial ofcapitalism's systemic and totalizing logic is, paradoxically, a reflection of the very thing it seeks to deny.The currentpreoccupation with 'post-modern' diversity and fragmentation undoubtedly expresses a reality in contemporary capitalism, but itis a reality seen through the distorting lens of ideology.It represents the ultimate 'commodity fetishism', the triumph of'consumersociety', in which the diversity of'life styles',measured in the sheer quantity of commodities and varied patterns of consumption, disguisesthe underlying systemic unity, the imperatives which create that diversity itself while at the same time imposing a deeper and more global homogeneity.

What is alarming about these theoretical developments is not that they violate some doctrinaire Marxist prejudice concerning the privileged status of class. The

problem is that theories which do not differentiateand, yes, 'privilege', if that means ascribing causal or explanatory priorities - amongvarious social institutions and 'identities' cannot deal critically with capitalism at all.Capitalism, as a specific socialform, simply disappears from view, buried under a welter of fragments and 'difference'.


22/48


LINK: RACE

Treating race as a social construction ignores why racism happens in the first placenarratives ofspecificity like the aff crowd out historical materialist analysis of racial exclusion

Young 1 - professor of English @ University of Alabama (Robert, The Linguistic Turn, Materialism and Race: Toward anAesthetics of Crisis, Callaloo, 24(1), Winter 2001, pp. 334-345, Project MUSE, RG)

At the moment it is generally accepted that race is a social construction. It is also generally accepted that race has beenconstructed along an oppressive axis. The consensus is disturbed when one attempts to account for why oppression exists in thefirst place. The contestations are even sharper when one offers an account of race outside of the prevailing logic ofsupplementarity. With the postmodern disbelief in metanarrative (Lyotard) and the subsequent skepticism toward concepts, race is seen as a t rope, and it isnow very difficult to offer conceptual accounts of race. Hence narratives of specificity circulate and the experience of race establishes thelimit of intelligibility. Within this context I shall attempt to reclaim a concept-based materialist understanding of race. I willargue that race signifies alterity because of the division of labor. In other words race difference operates in the interest ofmaintaining and justifying surplus extraction.1My argument proceeds in three parts. First I engage the linguistic turn in social theory and foreground the implications for theorizing race. I critique someexemplary instances of poststructuralist accounts of race, and I especially engage the work of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., an influential exponent of continental

theory within African-American literary and cultural discourses. I argue that the linguistic turn enables narratives of specificity and thesenarratives displace relational inquiries. Consequently, the specificity of race is disconnected from underlying causal mechanisms.Next, I critically examine Cornel West. West is thought to offer an advance over the idealism in linguistic theory. However, I will show that his genealogical

materialism does not move us away from the idealism of Gates but ultimately ends up pointing us back to narratives of specificity. Once again theexperiential is privileged and the historical determinate conditions of possibility for such an experience is obscured. Byblocking an understanding of thehistoricity of experience, Gates and West limit intelligibility to the local, and I will show how this leads to very conservative understandings of race.

Finally I draw upon Richard Wrights Black Boy, which offers an effective counter to narratives of specificity.Wright also operates at the local level,but he situates it within the global.Wright articulates what I call an aesthetics of crisis because he demonstrates that daily life is the site ofcontradictions for a racially structured and exploitative social order. If race is deployed to maintain and justify an asymmetrical division oflabor then its very deployment in daily life exposes the fault line of dominant ideologies. The claims of the Liberal democratic state arecontradicted by the daily life of African-Americans. Wrights aesthetic of crisis not only brings into sharp focus the contradictions undercapitalism but also locates within daily life a utopian impulse.My reading operates from the modality of critique because critique moves from the immanent logic and situates race and its logic in history,in the global frames of intelligibility that help to reproduce the economic, political and ideological reproduction of a particularsocial formation. Critique is that knowledge practice that historically situates the conditions of possibility of what empirically existsunder capitalist labor relations and points to what is suppressed by the empirically existingwhat could be instead of what actually is. For example, arecent United Nations report concludes that the wealth of the seven richest men could completely eliminate world poverty. The

satisfaction of human need on a global scale is historically and objectively possible, but this is what is suppressed under theregime of capitalism. It is because of such possibilities that critique is so urgent because critique indicates that what is is not necessarily the real/true butrather the existing actuality which is open to alteration.The role of critique in materialist postmodern discourse on race is the productionof historical knowledges that mark the historicity of existing social arrangements and the possibility of a different socialorganizationone that is free from exploitation.Critique, then, is a modality that renders visible the unsaid in order to foreground the operations of power and the underlyingsocio-economic structure which connect the seemingly disparate events and representations of daily life. In sum, materialistcritique disrupts that which represents itself as natural, as inevitable, as the way things are, and exposes the way what is ishistorically and socially produced out of social contradictions and hence supportive of inequality. Critique presses the socialcontradictions into (aesthetics of) crisis and consequently critique enables us to not only explain how race operates so we canchange it but also to collect

The brown dog jumped over the blue fox

Documents

Transcript of The brown dog jumped over the blue fox