Tournament: Damus | Round: 1 | Opponent: Immaculate Heart LM | Judge: Mason Munro
THE PROMISE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM IS FUNDAMENTALLY CORRUPT. Belief in a "better America" simply starves critique of the capitalist system that allows black and brown bodies to be shot at will. The myth of reformism, that of the capitalist state, is especially true in the context of the endemic of police brutality
The Internationalist ‘14
The Internationalist, 8-1-2014, "Killer Cops, White Supremacists: Racist Terror Stalks Black America," No Publication, http://www.internationalist.org/killercopswstalkblackamerica1507.html.//KOHS-AG
Every time there is an upsurge of popular unrest, the question of the state is posed point-blank. In 2011, leaders of Occupy Wall Street argued that beat cops were part of the "99." Substituting income statistics for class analysis, they blinded demonstrators to the fact that the police are the armed fist of capital. They kept insisting on this (and tried to stop the Internationalists from chanting "We are all Sean Bell, NYPD go to hell") even as cops were arresting hundreds on the Brooklyn Bridge. The populist Occupy "movement" disappeared after a few short months, partly due to coordinated national repression orchestrated from Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, but more fundamentally because protesters did not come to an understanding of the class nature of the capitalist state, and the fact that it cannot be reformed. Similarly with the abrupt collapse of the mass protests against police murder last December. Leftists chant "indict, convict, send the killer cops to jail" misleading protesters into thinking this is possible, although all of U.S. history shows the contrary. In the exceedingly rare case where a cop does time, it will be a slap on the wrist. And when they add "the whole damn system is guilty as hell" they don’t say what that system is. Yet for there to be a real struggle against the systematic racist police murder it is crucial to understand that this is rooted in racist American capitalism. Chants like "we want freedom, freedom – these racist cops, we don’t need ’em, need ’em" suggest that there could be non-racist cops, when the reality is that it is not just a matter of individual attitudes: all police are part of a machine of racist repression. The rhyming reformism serves to mask the stark reality – as revolutionaries from Marx and Engels to Lenin and Trotsky have stressed – that the state enforces the rule of the economically dominant class. "Who do you protect, who do you serve?" scream demonstration leaders as cops beat protesters bloody. For would-be socialists to pose this as a question to the cops, even rhetorically, buys into the lie (emblazoned on LAPD patrol cars) that police supposedly protect and serve "the people." The task of revolutionary Marxists is to tell the truth to the masses, that the police defend the interests of capital. The capitalist-imperialist rulers of the United States enforce their world domination with bloody butchery just as they do inside the U.S. A black U.S. president, Barack Obama, a liberal Democrat, kills Muslims and U.S. citizens with his drones with as little regard for the lives of the oppressed as his Republican predecessor George W. Bush. And their killer cops will keep on killing until their bloody rule is overthrown. Most of the mobilizations against police murder have been led by liberals, black and white, and reformists – that is, leftists who may call themselves socialist and even communist, but whose actual program is only to reform (and thus ultimately uphold) capitalism. While revolutionaries support genuine reforms (from the minimum wage to the right to same-sex marriage), the idea that state repression can be reformed away is characteristic of reformists. One of the problems liberals and reformists face in turning the often massive protests into an ongoing "movement" like the civil rights movement they seek to emulate is the absence of any even remotely credible reform demands. Over the last several decades any number of supposed reforms have been tried and all have failed to even put a dent in the rampant racist police terror. Demilitarize the police? Akai Gurley, Tanish Anderson, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, and most of those murdered by police have been killed by one or two cops on regular patrol. Disarm the police? Impossible in racist capitalist America, but beyond that, Eric Garner and 20 years earlier Anthony Baez were killed by a cop’s bare hands. Dashboard cameras on police cars? When Walter Scott was pulled over in North Charleston on April 4 for a supposed broken taillight, the dashcam showed no such thing – but it didn’t stop him from getting shot in the back and killed by the racist cop. Body cameras on police officers? This is the latest fad. It didn’t stop the shooting of Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 2, which was recorded by a bodycam, including the remark by the 73-year-old "reserve" cop that he thought he was firing a Taser. A new police chief? Under Republican plutocrat Bloomberg New York had Ray Kelly, under liberal Democrat de Blasio it has Bill Bratton, but the killing doesn’t stop. And now the liberal Democratic City Council has voted to hire 1,300 more cops than under Bloomberg/Kelly. A black police chief? A black mayor? Philadelphia has both, and its "stop and frisk" numbers rival New York’s. More black police? In the case of Baltimore, on top of a black mayor and police chief, almost half the cops are black, but both black and white officers were guilty of Freddie Gray’s murder. New police policies? "Stop and frisk" is now officially "reformed," so now it’s back to "broken windows" – harassing black and Latino youth for minor "quality of life" infractions. Residency requirements? Instead of holing up in white suburbs like Walnut Creek, California or New York’s Rockland County, police will just congregate in cop enclaves like Howard Beach or Eltingville on Staten Island’s South Shore. Community policing? So instead of patrolling poor black and Latino areas in convoys, like Israeli occupation forces in the Palestinian West Bank, they will increase the number of cops in permanent outposts while assigning a few community relations officers to coordinate with church leaders … and the SWAT teams are held in reserve. Civilian review boards? NYC, Philly and Baltimore all have them, and they’re not only utterly worthless in controlling police violence, they actually serve to legitimize it.
The Internationalist, 8-1-2014, "Killer Cops, White Supremacists: Racist Terror Stalks Black America," No Publication, http://www.internationalist.org/killercopswstalkblackamerica1507.html
As Karl Marx wrote at the time of the 1871 Paris Commune, under capitalist rule the state cannot serve the interests of the exploited and oppressed, no matter who is in the government or how much pressure is put on it, and the task is not "to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it." Under the Commune, the police were subject to the control of, and was recallable by, the working people – but that was after an uprising that suppressed the former army and police, i.e., destroyed the former state machinery. The idea that the capitalists and their politicians, while still the ruling class, would tolerate control of the police by those it is intended to repress is a total illusion. And those who think that the election of sheriffs makes any difference in their repressive role need only look at the racist sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona, who has been elected again and again. The entire legal system is based on the recognition that the police are the first line of defense of capital. As shown by the refusal of a grand jury to indict the cops who killed Eric Garner, even in the face of irrefutable evidence, the process is rigged to ensure impunity for the police. In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Post reporter Balko points out that, "Under the qualified immunity from civil lawsuits currently afforded to police under federal law, a police officer can’t be sued for mere negligence – or even for gross negligence that results in a fatality." But he admits that of his paltry list of reforms, modifying this immunity is the "least likely to be adopted." This is not some peculiar American or modern invention. Engels in The Origins of the Family notes about even the earliest appearance of the state: "Representatives of a power which estranges them from society, they have to be given prestige by means of special decrees, which invest them with a peculiar sanctity and inviolability." No amount of protest will convince the ruling class to muzzle its uniformed guard dogs, whom it requires to keep the poor and working people down. What’s needed is militant class struggle on a revolutionary program. The Internationalist Group has called for an end to all drug laws. We call for labor/black/ immigrant mobilization against police terror. We have acted to carry this out, with the unprecedented port shutdown to "Stop Police Terror" by Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Oakland this past May Day, and the "Labor Against Police Murder" contingent the same day, organized by Class Struggle Workers – Portland. Bringing to bear workers’ power to stop the wheels of commerce could stay the rulers’ hand for a time. At the height of struggle one can also mobilize to get the police and military occupation forces out, as the IG called for in Ferguson last August and again in Baltimore this spring.8 But such actions can only have a temporary effect. Ultimately, there is no solution to racist police brutality under capitalist rule: it is inherent in the system. Racist vigilantes, from George Zimmerman to Dylann Roof, act as auxiliaries. Whether in the form of KKK nightriders and racist sheriffs under Jim Crow, or mass incarceration combined with paramilitary police forces today, supplemented by massacres, American capitalism has always devised a way to keep its black, Latino and now increasingly immigrant wage slaves in thrall. The killer cops aren’t running amok, in contradiction to their assigned task, they’re doing their job to enforce racist "law and order" which is essential to American capitalism, and has been ever since African slaves were brought here in chains. The fact that year after year, from one end of the country to the other, virtually no police are indicted – much less convicted – for killing over 1,000 civilians a year is no accident.
The Internationalist ‘14
The Internationalist, 8-1-2014, "Killer Cops, White Supremacists: Racist Terror Stalks Black America," No Publication, http://www.internationalist.org/killercopswstalkblackamerica1507.html.//KOHS-AG
So despite the mass protests and pious talk of police "accountability," nothing has changed. Whether it is unarmed black men murdered by police, like Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, or the nine church-goers shot by a white-supremacist vigilante at a Bible-study session in Charleston last week, it is clear that murderous white racism is endemic in the United States. Soon another particularly egregious case will grab the headlines, and again there will be angry mass protests. Will they peter out or come to an abrupt end as they did last year with nothing to show for it? At most there may be a few cosmetic, symbolic changes like removing the Confederate battle flag, the banner of the Ku Klux Klan terrorists, that flies at state capitols and is part of state flags. But the racist killing will go on and on … unless we put a stop to it. But how? Tens of thousands of young people, black, white, Latino and others, and many older people as well, participated in the mass mobilizations last summer and fall. Over and over they chanted "black lives matter," "hands up, don’t shoot" and "I can’t breathe" – slogans that reflect a sense of anguish and impotence. Many were radicalized by the experience, as they could see that Obama’s America is anything but "post-racial," and the pretense of democracy is a cruel hoax. For that experience of activism not to turn into an exercise in frustration, like the endless antiwar marches that occur every time U.S. imperialism invades another country, it’s vital to draw the lessons of those protests – what they showed about the potential for struggle, but also what they did not, and could not, accomplish, and why not. It requires an understanding of the system of official and semi-official racist violence and murder that has characterized American capitalism ever since it solidified on the bedrock of slavery, and continues today.
Capital undergirds all oppression—-this project of mastery immiserates millions globally and results in extinction through environmental degradation and crisis creation.
Dyer-Witherford 99 (Nick, professor of Library and Info. Sciences at the U of Western Ontario. "Cyber Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism")
For capitalism, the use of machines as organs of "will over nature" is an imperative. The great insight of the Frankfurt School—an insight subsequently improved and amplified by feminists and ecologists—was that capital’s dual project of dominating both humanity and nature was intimately tied to the cultivation of "instrumental reason" that systematically objectifies, reduces, quantifies and fragments the world for the purposes of technological control. Business’s systemic need to cheapen labor, cut the costs of raw materials, and expand consumer markets gives it an inherent bias toward the piling-up of technological power. This priority—enshrined in phrases such as "progress," "efficiency," "productivity," "modernization," and "growth"—assumes an automatism that is used to override any objection or alternative, regardless of the environmental and social consequences. Today, we witness global vistas of toxification, deforestation, desertification, dying oceans, disappearing ozone layers, and disintegrating immune systems, all interacting in ways that perhaps threaten the very existence of humanity and are undeniably inflicting social collapse, disease, and immiseration across the planet. The degree to which this project of mastery has backfired is all too obvious.
Smith 12(Candace Smith, Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. She completed her M.A. in Sociology from OU in May 2012, "Neoliberalism, Anomie, and Interpersonal Violence: Normlessness Leads to Criminality?", November 20, 2012, http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2012/11/20/neoliberalism-anomie-and-interpersonal-violence-normlessness-leads-to-criminality/)
Increasingly, there appears to be a connection between neoliberalism and the development of anomie. Such an association is unsurprising considering that neoliberalism encourages individuals to achieve ever greater success even though such a goal is unrealistic. In response to being blocked from realizing their never-ending aspirations, Merton (1968) argues that people in success-driven societies will feel deprived and frustrated as a divide forms between idealistic ambitions and factual reality. While such a divide has traditionally been the widest in developed capitalist states like the U.S., Passas (2000) contends that the growth of neoliberalism has exacerbated this problem in countries throughout the world. As a result, anomie, or the "withdrawal of allegiance from conventional norms and a weakening of these norms’ guiding power on behavior" has increased on a global scale (Passas 2000:20). Oozing with the anomie brought about by constant strain, neoliberalism can intensify the occurrence of violence as frustrated people struggle to live and to succeed in an unequal society. In response to this idea, it appears that as neoliberalism becomes more prominent in a country, it can be expected that anomie and, as a result, interpersonal violence within that country will increase.¶ When it comes to success-driven societies, both Durkheim (1951~1897~) and Merton (1968) argue that such environments can lead to the development of anomie as a result of the imbalance between societal expectations and realistic opportunities. Both scholars agree that the occurrence of means-ends discrepancies can cause to people to feel highly strained and frustrated. And, as people become increasingly aware of power and economic asymmetries, especially as globalization and neoliberalism become more prominent in a country, this sense of strain and frustration can grow. In response, some may choose to either partially or fully disregard previously internalized societal norms that no longer seem useful. As Passas (2000) explains, this means that conventional norms may lose much of their meaning and/or that they may lose their ability to guide pro-social behavior. Such a loss of norms results in anomie, or normlessness. Unfortunately, individuals dealing with anomie typically have limited options when it comes to turning to the state for help. This is because neoliberal policies have often already done away with many of the welfare programs, forms of assistance, and safety nets that had previously kept individuals afloat (Passas 2000). The loss of the state as form of relief can then further encourage the evolvement of anomie within a society.¶ Considering that anomie results in the full or partial loss of social norms, it is not surprising that anomie can lead to deviance. As Passas (2000) points out, normlessness almost necessitates deviance when legitimate means to success are blocked. Individuals facing such a reality feel less of a need to follow previously internalized social norms and more of a need to engage in deviant activities in order to reach their goals. This desire to succeed at all costs paired with a disregard for social rules can easily result in violence. As an example of this idea, Fullilove et al. (1998) found that the occurrence of a violence epidemic in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in New York City, was the result of growing anomie as the neighborhood disintegrated in the midst of social disarray. Braithwaite et al. (2010) further contend that recent violence in Indonesia was the result of societal-level anomie. Other studies (e.g., Messner and Rosenfeld 1997; Savolainen 2000), too, have indicated that there exists a strong relationship between anomie and violence. These findings are not counterintuitive. It makes sense that when people are feeling strained that their frustration (and the loss of previously held norms against deviance) can transform into acts of violence.¶ In an effort to more clearly articulate this overall premise, consider the case of Russia. As explained by Passas (2000), Russia began to slowly embrace neoliberal policies in the 1980s. By the mid-1990s, these policies had resulted in lifting import and export tariffs, liberalizing prices, removing domestic trade restrictions, minimizing the role of government, and privatizing public property. Hungry for freedom, the Russian populace lapped up these neoliberal ideas as consumptionist ideals replaced previously held socialist goals. Unsurprisingly, this zealous transition from socialism to capitalism brought about many consequences including severe and growing social inequality. Unable to overcome structural obstacles and unable to attain success, Passas writes that strain and frustration resulted in many Russians becoming increasingly anomic. Simultaneously, deviance began to increase as old social norms fell out of favor and the Russian government lost much of its autonomy. In response, rising anomie and deviance resulted in a criminal explosion. Since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, already high levels of homicide have increased dramatically, making Russia one of the world’s hotspots for murder (Pridemore 2002). Chervyakov et al. (2009) further note that, unlike in the USSR, murders in Russia are now much more likely to involve aggravating circumstances like rape or robbery. Bringing these findings together, Collier’s (2005:111) research suggests that violence in Russia after the transition to capitalism "resulted from inequitable distribution of wealth, rapid privatization, ~and~ a fall in real income" as well as the loss of the social safety net and an increase in organized crime. Altogether, Russia is a prime example of how the strain and frustration induced by neoliberalism can lead to anomie and, eventually, to violence.¶ By briefly evaluating the case of Russia, it is hopefully clearer how neoliberalism can directly contribute to anomie and indirectly contribute to violence. By creating incredible amounts of stress for those blocked by society’s goals (Durkheim 1957~1897~; Merton 1968), neoliberalism increases the amount of anomie found within a society. This anomie, research has indicated, can then manifest itself in frustration, deviance, and violence (Messner and Rosenfeld 1997; Fullilove et al. 1998; Savolainen 2000; Braithwaite et al. 2010) just as it has done in Russia (Pridemore 2002; Collier 2005; Chervyakov et al. 2009). Without a doubt, the occurrence of violence furthers the development of anomie in a society. This thus suggests that there exists a non-recursive relationship between anomie and violence in that each variable can exacerbate the negative effects of the other. In an effort to dismantle this relationship, Fullilove et al. (1998) argue that communities need to be improved from within while having structural problems addressed from the outside. Doing so, of course, would require very anti-neoliberal policies which,
Rupert and Smith 2 (Mark Rupert is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University, Hazel Smith is Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, "Historical Materialism and Globalisation: Essays on Continuity and Change," p. 2-3)SDL
Perhaps ironically, during the last decade when liberal capitalism seemed to have attained a kind of global apotheosis, the study of international relations has witnessed a revival of intellectual traditions associated with the legacies of Karl Marx and his many and Various interpreters. Emailing practices of critical scholarship, the traditions of historical materialism share a set of family resemblances: they aim at dc-reifying the apparently natural, universal, and politically neutral appearances of capitalist social reality, explicitly to resituate those abstract appearances in relation to the processes and social power relations implicated in their production and thereby enable their transformation by the human social agents whose socially productive activity constitutes their condition of existence. Marx suggested that such a transformation might emerge out of the Confluence of Capitalism’s endemic crisis tendencies, the polarization of its class structure and the immisemtion of the proletariat and, most importantly, the emergence of the latter as a collective agent through the realization of its socially productive power, heretofore developed in distorted and self-limiting form under the conditions of concentered Capitalist production. Traditional interpretations of Marx tended towards mechanical and economistic visions in which the crisis tendencies of capitalism played themselves out 'behind the backs' of historical actors. Leninist interpretations re-injected a sense of historical agency into historical materialism, but did so by empowering a vanguard of professional revolutionaries to seize the state and transform social relations in the name of the oppressed. Viewed in the light of either of these interpretations, historical materialism may appear to have been discredited by the apparent robustness of capitalist economies and the failure of the oft-predicted final crisis to arrive, and by the degeneration of the Bolshevik revolution into a profoundly anti-democratic system of one-party rule. But, as contributors to this volume demonstrate, there are resources within the traditions of historical materialism which counteract these regressive tendencies and which offer hope for a more enabling and participatory form of social organization than either liberal capitalism or Soviet-style bureaucratic socialism. These new historical materialisms share a skepticism towards mechanistic or vanguardist visions of social change. Progressive social change need not automatically follow in train behind economic crisis, nor can such Change be enacted or imposed by a revolutionary elite acting in the name of the inert masses of the oppressed. Rather, progresive social change must be produced by historically situated social agents whose actions are enabled and constrained by their social self-understandings. This recognition highlights the practical, material significance of critical analysis. In an era when Soviet-style socialism has collapsed upon itself and liberal capitalism offers itself as the natural, necessary and absolute condition of human social life, the chapters in this volume insist that the potentially emancipatory resources of a renewed and perhaps reconstructed historical materialism are as relevant in today's world as ever.
