Prof. Dr. Erol Göka
Lester Thurow was quite a famous economist in the 1990s. His books Head to Head (“Kıran Kırana”) and The Future of Capitalism (“Kapitalizmin Geleceği”) were translated into our language, and he even visited our country for a conference. His work mainly focused on how the capitalist world system operated and where it was headed.
In The Future of Capitalism, he shared a Chinese proverb to describe the condition of our world: “We are like a fish taken out of water, frantically struggling to return. In such a situation, the fish does not question where its next move will take it. It only feels that its current condition is unbearable and that it must try something else…” He was trying to develop ideas about where a world was heading, as the gap between the North and South widened and income inequality both across the world and within individual countries increased.
Liberalism and democracy are not the same thing
We, who were educated under the tutelage system in Turkey, do not see the major difference between liberalism and democracy; we tend to think of them as inseparable counterparts. Today, the Islamophobic Westerners, who not only dislike societies other than their own but also deny them the right to democracy and whose thinking regarding freedoms is becoming increasingly shallow, are in an even worse situation than we are. Yet thirty years ago, at least in academic circles, they were able to discuss the relationship and contradictions between liberalism and democracy, and what should be done to achieve some kind of reconciliation between them. It was evident at first glance that liberalism was based on the individual, initiative, and profit, while democracy was inevitably based on society, solidarity, and collective organization. Thurow’s views were also shaped in the fertile ground of debates over liberalism and democracy.
Who are the ones fighting tooth and nail?
“The economic competition between communism and capitalism has come to an end; however, now a new race between two different forms of capitalism has appeared on the horizon… Individualistic Anglo-Saxon British-American capitalism will confront the communal understanding of capitalism embraced by the Germans and Japanese,” said Thurow, who, in Head to Head, extensively discussed the economic struggle between Japan, America, and Europe.
“America and England exalt individualistic values: brilliant businessmen, Nobel Prize winners, privileged salaries, individual responsibility, the ease of dismissal and resignation, profit growth, hostile mergers and acquisitions between companies; their heroes are the ‘lone cowboys.’
In contrast, Germany and Japan exalt communal values: work groups, social responsibility, teamwork, absolute loyalty, industrial strategies, and effective industrial policies that promote growth. Anglo-Saxon firms prioritize profit growth; Japanese companies play the game known as ‘strategic competition.’ Americans believe in a ‘consumer economy,’ while the Japanese believe in a ‘production economy.'”
Thurow supported the triumph of communal capitalism in the European Union and Japan. According to him, every privatization inevitably led to unemployment. Real success in the economy would emerge through social investments in talent, education, and knowledge — in other words, how you spend your money mattered greatly. Free trade zones would eventually disappear, while models like the European one — where countries supported each other and money collected in Brussels was used, for example, to build highways in Spain — would prevail.
If we disregard the philosophical depth of Thurow’s views, we can conclude that the facts that emerged over the past thirty years did not validate him; he failed to foresee the rise of China, the maneuvers of Russia, Israel’s disruptive role (a “thorn in the side”), and the developments in Southeast Asia. And we are right to think so. Far from achieving the victory Thurow imagined, Germany and Japan themselves began to follow the path of American-style individual capitalism. Thurow was terribly mistaken. However, I have never regarded what Thurow said merely as a competition between national economies; rather, he was trying to describe an entirely different and deeper reality.
Let us see how the great sociologist Zygmunt Bauman describes the socio-economic processes beginning in the 18th century: According to Max Weber’s conclusion summarizing the defining transformations of the 18th and 19th centuries, the birth of modern capitalism occurred when enterprises became separated from households. Thus, the first rupture in the great transformation that shaped modern society began. The 19th century was an era during which, as a result of struggles, trade unions became widespread, and efforts were made to impose restrictions and bring order to capitalism’s ruthless practices that turned workers’ lives into misery. Through the instruments of state and law, child labor was banned, working hours were reduced, and regulations regarding safety and hygiene were introduced. Efforts were made to protect the weak against the strong.
“The process we are undergoing today is the second act of the ‘Great Rupture.’ Capital has managed to escape from the much more restrictive, oppressive, and uncomfortable framework of the legal/moral guardianship exercised by nation-states into a new ‘neutral zone’ — an area where, if there are any rules at all, they are few and hardly limit, restrict, or hinder commercial ventures. The new territory to which these (global) businesses have migrated, when evaluated by the standards of the last two hundred years, is truly a transnational space… History is repeating itself, but this time on a much larger scale. The misery and devastation likely to emerge and expand as a result of business being freed from political and moral control are also repeating themselves… Once again, the business world has freed itself from local ties (this time not from households, but from nation-states). Once again, it has created a ‘transnational zone’ where it can almost entirely freely establish its own rules. It appears that the current old regime, represented by the dominant nation-states, is incapable even of slowing down, let alone stopping, the business world as it escapes democratic control.” (The Besieged Society, trans. A. E. Pilgir, Ayrıntı Publishing, 2018).
Based on this panorama, I believe that the struggle Thurow described as “tooth and nail” is actually between the democratic state, which represents collective reason, and the giant monopolistic corporations, which represent individual ambition. I interpret the communal capitalism advocated by Thurow as the intervention of collective reason and the democratic state not in production, but in distribution within the economy. In a world where democracy would truly be valuable and functional, the state, without interfering in the free market, would have to intervene in distribution to prevent injustices. However, monopolists, who thought only of increasing their profits, would not allow this. The struggle was inevitable, and it was global.
Today, this fierce struggle continues on a global scale, taking on different forms, and it constitutes the real cause of tensions that appear regional and conjunctural. Personally, I believe it is more accurate to define the sides of the struggle not by the type of capitalism they favor, but by naming the sides themselves. I am of the opinion that the sides are globalism — which seeks to push individual capitalism to its extreme and destroy nation-states regardless of the economic or political order — and nation-states. The internationalization of capital and the completion of capitalism’s global expansion process have made the tension between the system of nation-states and the pure sovereignty ambitions of finance capital increasingly visible, revealing that the fierce struggle is, in fact, between these two forces.
If we fail to thoroughly evaluate and understand it, we will not be able to fully comprehend any of the political and social situations we are experiencing; and in this fierce struggle, sometimes one side gains the upper hand, sometimes the other — but the ultimate victor has not yet been determined. However, if there is any truth to our analysis, there is still one more issue that must be clarified, one that has remained incorrectly memorized in our minds. That is the conceptual framework of the bipolar world and the position of the intellectuals who call themselves “leftists”… Let us see…
Old guards shifting in the darkness as the concepts of imperialism and class struggle fade away
In the past, leftists — at least in appearance — were on the side of the people. What made their words relatively reasonable was their claim to stand with the oppressed and to side with the struggles of victimized nations against imperialism. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Socialist Bloc, it was as if an invisible hand had caused the concepts of “imperialism” and “class struggle” to gradually fade away. They saw the state as the “oppressive apparatus of the ruling classes” and asserted that the final stage of struggles would be the withering away of the state.
States remain in place, yet the theses and concepts for which thousands of people sacrificed their lives have lost their brilliance before our eyes, fading away like stars collapsing into white dwarfs.
It was not only the Socialist Bloc that collapsed; the sudden emergence of post-structuralist and post-modern theories had also declared that Karl Marx had lost, not only to Nietzsche but also to Hegel. As the rich became even richer and sought to overcome the limitations and boundaries imposed by nation-states, it became increasingly evident that the state was not merely the representative of the ruling class but rather the manifestation of collective reason.
Some of the old leftists understood what they had lost and accepted it knowingly and willingly; others, completely unaware of what was happening, instinctively fell into their old habit of opposing the state, and thus unknowingly aligned themselves with the richest. They continued to claim they were fighting, but their struggle was no longer class-based or against imperialism.
Those who stood for justice and society — while maintaining their critical stance and never sanctifying anything — took a position in favor of the state as the representative of collective reason and worked for its democratization. Meanwhile, under the pretext of opposing despotism, the Marxist Left drifted toward defending the class interests of finance capital and the monopolistic bourgeoisie. The reasons for this lie hidden in the very process I have tried to describe…
Occasionally, I write articles on political philosophy. I generally try to discuss the nature and characteristics of the state, as well as the possibilities and prospects of establishing a strong democracy within a Muslim society. I also occasionally touch upon the great trauma that the Marxist Left, for some reason, behaves as if it never happened — the denial psychology created by the collapse of the Socialist Bloc.
In today’s world, where events and perspectives are undergoing such a rapid upheaval, change, and transformation, I have lately been focusing more on understanding these shifts and expressing humanity’s existential and spiritual problems. However, while contemplating the dynamics of events in the contemporary world — which I call the “technomediatic” world — and considering the backdrop of the real political stage, I make a conscious effort to always keep in mind the deadly struggle between the system of nation-states and the global dominance ambitions of finance capital. I recommend that you do the same.