Are the Things Money Can Buy Increasing?

Should we be concerned that so many things in life are increasingly becoming matters of money? Or are we truly aware of this situation? Or have we become so accustomed to it that we now see it as normal? Have we completely lost our ability to be surprised or amazed by it? Is it now necessary to make financial calculations behind every action and task? Is it impossible to imagine a world beyond one where only money holds validity? Are these questions nothing more than idle chatter among workers, the unemployed, or retirees in coffeehouse corners? Or do they point to a painful but concealed truth?

As far as I can see and understand, we have thoroughly become accustomed to this situation and normalized it. So much so that even in Muslim consciousness today, there lies an unspoken acceptance that capitalism is a universal reality, while the Qur’an is merely a historical address. Is capitalism truly universal, but the Qur’an historical? I will save this question for a separate article, since the question itself deserves a full piece, perhaps even several. Here, I will speak of a person and a book that, when first introduced, faced objections, but whose claims were later confirmed by the very people who had objected.

When Francis Fukuyama published his book The End of History and the Last Man in 1992, declaring liberal democracy as the final ideological form of history at the end of the Cold War, this view was fiercely criticized by many thinkers, especially Marxists. According to Fukuyama, humanity had reached the peak of its ideological evolution; it was no longer the time for great historical conflicts, but for the institutionalization of the liberal-democratic order. This claim was inspired by a Hegelian understanding of historicity, viewing human history as a struggle for freedom and arguing that this struggle had culminated in a universal consensus with liberal democracy. However, critics regarded this view as naive, reductionist, and even a kind of imperial ideology. Could the polyphonic, conflictual, dynamic structure of history be so easily concluded? Yet the thirty years that have passed have, interestingly, not disproved Fukuyama’s thesis, but rather “quietly confirmed” it. A period emerged in which Marxist, socialist, theocratic, or alternative systems failed to create a significant counter-center of gravity; even circles defending these systems mostly employed liberal discourse and tools. So, does this situation truly signal the end of history? Or is liberalism’s crisis-ridden dominance a new form of hegemony?

The harshest responses to Fukuyama’s thesis naturally came from the Marxist tradition. Thinkers such as Perry Anderson, David Harvey, and Slavoj Žižek drew attention to capitalism’s structural crises, class inequalities, ecological destruction, and global exploitation, interpreting the declaration of the end of history as ideological manipulation. From a Marxist perspective, capitalism is a system that constantly produces its own crises, and these crises serve as the ground for new historical breakthroughs and revolutionary ruptures. Therefore, liberalism may not be the end of history, but perhaps only a temporary hegemonic order. However, these criticisms did not transform into a revolutionary force over the course of thirty years; on the contrary, they largely remained confined to an academic or marginal plane.

If we want to translate what is happening globally into our own reality, we encounter a picture that is nothing more than the confirmation of the obvious. Fukuyama’s ghost is wandering among us. If you look at what has happened in our country over the past thirty years, you can see everywhere how Fukuyama’s thesis has been validated. Peel back the surface of many of the problems we experience and look at their essence, and you will find the aims and workings of the liberal/capitalist order beneath them. You can easily see that the inflation problem, which we have lived with at times severely and at times more mildly since the 1990s, is in fact a consequence of the liberal/capitalist order, and that as long as this order remains, it will be impossible to escape such problems. Thinkers like Michael Sandel, whom we mentioned in our previous article, were concerned only with the market spilling over from the economic sphere into society. What he failed to see and articulate was the fact that the market would never remain confined to the economic sphere. Accordingly, Sandel was offering an inconsistent critique of the consistent expansion of the market economy. His criticism aimed at making the liberal/capitalist order sustainable; he never intended to abolish it. Implicitly, he too, like Fukuyama, regarded liberal democracy as the final ideological form of history. Our situation is similar to Sandel’s in relation to Fukuyama. Among us too, there are those who object to certain consequences of the liberal/capitalist order, but their objections aim at making it sustainable, not eliminating it. For this reason, they complain of high inflation and lament the volatile exchange rate, they suffer from the uncertain economic future, but in reality, they have no problem with the system itself. One must ask: if inflation remained low, exchange rates stable, and the economy more predictable, would all problems vanish? Or would this only make the liberal/capitalist order more sustainable?

The dire event has already taken place. We are now nothing more than extras in the sustainable liberal/capitalist order. For the issues we complain about do not belong to the system itself—its essence or its structure—but only to some of its unsustainable consequences. What they fail to grasp is that this system can never truly satisfy anyone. Because no system that targets individual gain and gratification can ever cope with the boundlessness of human desire. To translate this more plainly: even if wages were raised far above inflation, even if the housing problem were solved for almost everyone, even if unemployment were eliminated, and even if record after record were broken in exports—would the problem be solved? No. Because no system that targets individual gain and gratification can ever cope with the boundlessness of human desire. As long as the very goal does not change, any action taken to reach that goal will carry no meaning. For human beings did not come into this world to secure and satisfy their individual interests. This world is not a place for securing and satisfying individual interests. That is why the liberal/capitalist order is not, in its essence, an economic model like technology, but a metaphysical challenge.

One of the clearest indicators of this challenge is the increase in the things money can buy. Today in Turkey, there is a single underlying reason behind the variety of people’s problems: the issue of money. One would have to be blind not to notice the repetition of this creed in the minds of everyone, from seven-year-old children to seventy-seven-year-old elderly people: “If you have money, all problems are solved.” Or, “There is no problem that money cannot solve.” In the society we live in, in our country, in the world, could there be a greater problem than this creed? Could there be a greater disaster than everything being subject to money and therefore to bargaining? Today, diplomas, health, law, family, friendship, piety, community, and civil society are all matters of money. For they are valued in proportion to their economic power. In both the subconscious and the conscious minds of society, there exists a strong and unshakeable creed that all of these can be resolved with money.

So, what was the transformation that gave rise to this new creed? How did we come to this point? Someone I value highly, both personally and for his book, gives an interesting answer to this question. Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation (1944) is a foundational masterpiece that exposes the historicity and ideological nature of the modern capitalist order, demonstrating that the market society is neither natural nor inevitable. According to Polanyi, the free market myth is not only a historical misconception but also a modern illusion that triggered one of the deepest social traumas in human history. Polanyi’s fundamental thesis is that, for most of history, the economy was a function of social relations; however, from the nineteenth century onward, especially after the Industrial Revolution, this relationship was reversed, with society becoming subordinate to the economy. Polanyi calls this “the emergence of the market society.” According to Polanyi, this “great transformation” was not merely an economic restructuring, but a profound transformation of human relationships with themselves, with nature, and with society. He directly links this process to the dominance of liberal economic thought and the classical economic paradigm that emerged after Adam Smith. Polanyi’s Great Transformation is a powerful critique not only of capitalism but also of the “separation of the economy from social life.” His thought teaches us that any discourse which naturalizes the economy distorts both history and society. The market is a social construct; to limit it is an existential right of humanity. Today, we can overcome the crises we face not merely with technical reforms but with a vision of humanity that is not market-based. Polanyi’s proposal is an invitation to think once again about the collective, the community, nature, and solidarity.

If I were to translate Polanyi’s words into the context of these lands, Polanyi says that in the past there were both rich and poor; there was the desire for money, the wish to earn more. Before the great transformation, the rich also lived relatively more prosperous lives. But wealth was not, in itself, a value. Much of the capital was not concentrated in a single hand. Simply being rich did not entitle someone to interfere in education, architecture, or politics. In fact, before the great transformation, wealth was largely something to be ashamed of. Especially in the Christian community, if wealth was not gained through knighthood or religious service but solely through trade, it was regarded as a matter of shame. One of the fundamental debates within the Church was even the question: “Can the rich enter heaven, or can they not?” Wealth was that controversial. The poor, on the other hand, lived under relatively harsher conditions, but they were not despised or looked down upon for being poor. If they were wise and devout, hardworking, honest, talented, and kind-hearted, they were respected and valued, especially if they lived without feeling ashamed of their poverty. Today, there are still rich and poor. But we have undergone a major transformation, and as a result of this transformation, we now stand in the opposite direction of the past. The course has given way to a great collapse. A profound difference has been created between today’s rich and yesterday’s rich, today’s poor and yesterday’s poor. Today, the rich are valuable simply because they are rich. There is almost no sphere into which their wealth cannot intrude. They are bold, reckless, insolent, and arrogant. Yet despite all these traits, they derive their power and meaning from their wealth. The poor, meanwhile, feel meaningless and worthless simply because they are poor, or they are made to feel that way. The fact that a poor person is wise and devout, hardworking, honest, talented, and kind-hearted has no meaning or value. Today—after that great transformation—what exists between the rich and the poor, the wealthy and the destitute, is not merely an economic distinction, but an ontological, political, sociological, psychological, and even theological distinction/discrimination. No earthquake could be more devastating, no fire more painful, no disease more deadly than this situation.

As Polanyi put it, we no longer live in a market economy, but in a market society. In a market society, the things money can buy increase day by day, while the things money cannot buy decrease day by day. In such a society, almost all disagreements are disputes over numbers in matters of bargaining. All differences are merely differences reflected in economic indicators. As difficult as it is to express this on a theoretical level, experiencing it in practice is just as painful. I do not wish to speak of my own experiences and personalize the situation. I do not think it is a shameful matter, only that it may not be the subject of this medium for now. Yet many situations I have personally witnessed do indeed cause me serious concern. For example, regarding a man who had once been a caliph in a sect and later attained the rank of sheikh and began to act independently, those around him said, “Our sheikh has left his sheikh far behind.” While the economic power of our sheikh’s sheikh was of a certain level, our sheikh’s power was far greater. Can you see the gravity of a mindset that measures the virtue of a sheikh, to whom one devotes oneself on the spiritual journey of suluk, by his economic power? Since when has the spiritual quest and journey been translated into the language of economics? Since when has being regarded as one of the great spiritual figures been measured by economic strength? On the other hand, do you not also notice, do you not also feel, that in any setting, the one with more money has more say and decision-making power?

The situation I described above, although experienced somewhat later here than in the West, carries similar results. At this point, I would like to mention another figure and a book that I consider very important. The German sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money (Philosophie des Geldes), published as early as 1900. This book is not only an examination of the monetary economy, but also a profound reckoning with the entire sensory, moral, and epistemological structure of modern life. Unlike his predecessors, Simmel treats money not merely as an economic medium of exchange, but also as a determinant of social relations, individual freedom, cultural forms, and even personality structure. In a sense, this book is the philosophical phenomenology of modernity, grasping the invisible hands of money within a formal ontology and philosophy of life. According to Simmel, money, as the pure form of value, is the most abstract form of social relations. By eliminating the qualitative differences between goods, people, and services, it reduces everything to a single measure—quantity. Money’s effect on the “metaphysics of objects” is to dissolve the elements of life, rich in originality and content, into a mathematical grammar. This abstraction also shapes the spirit of modernity: the world is no longer understood as a meaningful context, but as a process in which comparable quantities circulate. This formal abstraction permeates not only the objective world, but also the inner world of the individual. Emotions, friendships, even beliefs are reinterpreted within the currency of marketization processes. Simmel’s concern regarding modern society is that money, by going beyond being a mere medium of exchange, becomes a total form that “deforms/empties” the integrity of life.

Simmel’s observations about money are truly striking. Particularly poignant is his point that money’s effect on the “metaphysics of objects” melts the elements of life, rich in originality and content, into a mathematical grammar. Money sees its new power in the increase of things it can buy or the decrease of things it cannot buy. Where no meaningful, acceptable, human, moral, social, or psychological limit can be set on what money can and cannot buy, it will not be possible for life to avoid becoming entirely subject to the market, for societies to avoid being dissolved into a mathematical grammar, or for money’s effect on the metaphysics of objects to be eliminated.

It is possible to encounter many academics, intellectuals, “clergy,” farmers, workers, and so on who complain about some of the consequences of the liberal/capitalist order, but unfortunately, not everyone has the awareness of how seriously it encircles life or the strong will to eliminate money. For this, we must first name the situation we are in and address things and facts by their actual names, or at least not shy away from naming them. I am naming it: we do not merely live in a market economy; we live in a market society. The clearest sign of this is that the number of things that can be bought with money is rapidly increasing every day, and that all issues are somehow related to money, that is, they become matters of bargaining. Simmel says, “Money has the power to bring together people who do not know each other.” If you are wondering what brings together people who otherwise would never come together, you need only follow the trail of money.

I would particularly ask that one not assume, in these writings of mine, that I only identify problems while remaining silent on solutions. As the stage of problem identification matures, my proposals for solutions will also begin to emerge. After all, just as someone who does not know what is good cannot complain about what is bad, someone who does not know what is right cannot complain about what is wrong, and someone who does not know what is beautiful cannot complain about what is ugly, so too someone who does not know what justice is cannot complain about injustice. I do not claim to know fully what is good, right, beautiful, or just, but I sincerely promise to share what I do know, while expressing with equal sincerity that I am not only open to discussion and criticism but in need of them.