The Capitalism Kritik

The Cap K

By Aiden

Prerequisite readings

Know how K debate works and be familiar with language and descriptions of each part of a kritik.

Know what capitalism, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism are. Know basic arguments for why capitalism is bad and communism is good.

Intro

The cap K is, in my opinion, the strongest kritik. It’s got topical links to pretty much every argument that will ever exist, non-topical links to tons of practices in debate, and it links into pretty much every kaff.

This guide will focus on two main uses of the cap k --- rejoining kaffs, and topical kritiks.

Cap K Basics

I’m going to be using the most basic while still effective alt for the K here, which is Escalante (18 if you want to check the wiki). A quick summary of the alternative is that the communist party already exists, it just needs to convince normal people that they provide relief from the horrors of capitalism, which can obviously be extrapolated to the ballot in a debate round. Using Escalante or similar alternatives means you can fiat the alt given that it outright says that convincing people the party is good is the first step in revolution. Obviously, there’s more complicated alternatives, but Escalante is a pretty basic one which allows anyone who reads this guide to extrapolate to whatever alt they’re running.

Impacts you’ll be running most of the time are going to be slow extinction/sustainability stuff, you’ll hear this referred to as “climate apartheid”, where the oppressed are left behind while the world burns and the rich escape to wherever they’re safe. If you’re not comfortable arguing slow impacts like that, you can also go for the “capitalism causes nuke war imminently”, but that’s MUCH harder to prove than climate change impacts.

Links are pretty simple. Leftist news sources like Jacobin and radical journals like SOULS will have links to pretty much every single aff that could ever be read. It’s highly customizable to the aff your opponent will be reading.

Why do you want to read the cap k? Well, like I just said, links are easy, impacts are hard to contest, and most of all, it’s easy to understand. PF judges, even ones who say they’re familiar with the K most likely, aren't insanely comfortable evaluating kaffs, but it’s pretty easy to understand why capitalism is bad. A little bonus here is that many circuit judges and debaters are extremely progressive politically and aren’t opposed to the arguments made in a cap k, so you get a bit of a bias boost.

Cap K vs. the KAFF

Here, I’m going to go into the most common types of kaffs and explain how the cap k beats each one. You’ll understand how fiat is on your side, how you can come up with link blocks on your own, and the kaffs you should always rejoin with a cap k (in my opinion).

High Theory

The kaff category of “high theory” can be applied to (mostly) postmodernist/poststructuralist French philosophers from the latter half of the 20th century. This includes Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Giles Deleuze, and Frantz Fanon. The Cap K links into high theory in two main ways.

First, poststructuralist and postmodernist philosophies kill praxis. They lock discourse into elitist realms of theory instead of driving the proletariat toward revolution, which is the only way to solve any impacts. Both genres of philosophy attempt to destroy “truth”, which undermines any ability to focus on the material impacts caused by capitalism and focus our energy towards a revolution.

Second, high theory is CIA propaganda - there’s accounts that the CIA worked to translate postmodernist and poststructuralist work from French into English in order to sow disorganization in the left at the same time they were working to infiltrate grassroots leftist organization. A good introductory article to this can be found here.

Settler Colonialism

One of the easiest links for the K is set col. The link block is just an expanded version of “theories settler colonialism miss the forest for the trees - colonialism is an arm of modern capitalism which cannot be dismantled without understanding both as part of a larger, international system”.

Another link is that theorizing the “settler” and the “colonial” as separate peoples is both harmful and splinters the proletariat by creating divisions where none really exist - all but the elite are under the control of capitalism

Antiblackness

Here’s another easy link - on Black Studies you say that capitalism defangs radicalism and penetrates all studies - it follows that we can’t create Black Studies if all studies are neoliberal in the first place.

On societal examples of antiblackness, capitalism is always the root cause. Police killings, prisons, wealth gaps - all are created under the systems of capitalism which maintain class and hierarchies as necessary for a functioning society, a delusion which maintains bigotry and hate.

Ableism

Once again, cap is the root cause. Western able-bodied norms that value bodies as efficient machines started in the Industrial Revolution – market forces isolated the disabled into institutions creating the basis for the medical model.

Cap vs. Kaff Strategy

The biggest fight on the cap vs kaff is going to be the link level - if you can prove that the aff is capitalist, then it’s pretty easy to win the round. Given that you’re probably reading a much more pragmatic alt which is significantly more likely to solve for actual harms than whatever slop the aff read, winning the link is the first step in beating the kaff.

Then, once you’re confident you’ve won that the aff is in some way capitalist, you can focus on the alt. This is equally important - the 2NR should be half links and half alt. If you prove the alt dismantles capitalism and win the link that the aff’s impacts are caused by capitalism, then you win the round.

Cap K vs Topical

The Cap K is extremely strong vs topical affirmatives because it’s almost always true. Here I’m going to go through common links, but not dive too much into strategy, since it’s pretty similar to that of other kritiks.

Here’s a list of common links (you’ll notice similarities to kaffs):

1. Colonialism/necropolitics

2. Ignoring or tolerating capitalism in some way

3. Economy stimulation

4. Passing policies through a capitalist state legitimizes it

These have tons of sub-links that are applied to specific Ks, so I’ll attach some examples here.

Militarization and extraction in the Arctic can only be explained by capitalism.

Their contrived calls for ‘impending threats’ are a cover for the legitimization of military accumulation and capitalist crises.

Cooperation with Russia is a sham to avoid potential dollar collapse, expand soft power and gain capitalist profits.

There’s many more you can find on the wiki.

Responding to the Cap K

If you’re topical

1. T / FW - go read the guide on that

2. Commodification of the ballot - the cap k is self-defeating because it relies on extrinsic motivation in the form of the ballot, which reifies every value they claim to oppose in the space of this round

3. Perm - the perm is especially good against the cap k because it’s hard to prove that capitalism is a surmountable problem in the scope of one round

4. Alt solvency - capitalism alts are pretty bad normally - a global revolution which is probably the only thing that solves for their impacts is uniquely unlikely to happen in one round - especially if you win subject formation bad

5. Transition fails/outweighs - the elite fight back and just kill everyone or cause enough suffering that it outweighs the harms caused by capitalism in the first place

If you read a kaff

1. Perm - once again, it’s pretty hard to prove cap is the root cause in the first place, and even if it is, it’s also easy to argue that pragmatism outweighs - it’s better to fight smaller fights that we can probably win (ableism, antiblackness within debate, etc.)

2. The 1AC was more anticapitalist because it fights real-world issues instead of the theoretical harms caused by this big “capitalism” thing.

3. The alt sucks - once again, your kaff probably has a better/more unique alt that you can defend better compared to “we start revolution” or something similar.

4. Shrink framework - capitalism is pretty hard to prove psychic violence or in-round abuse. If your kaff links to any sort of debate-centric issue it’s probably easy to win ballot proximity compared to a nebulous revolutionary 1NC.

Original guide