1.3 Economism

All viewpoints that see the birth of capitalism as the natural result economic development can be categorized as economism. Marxism has been especially reduced to economism, in a way, from this perspective. So much so that capitalism has been perceived as if it was an economic model. Consequently, economy and politics have become the cornerstones of the social sciences, and, when the modern state is constructed, decisions taken on its economic life are turned into disciplines of science.

Capital generates profits through the exploitation of prices that are determined in the marketplace. This may have played an important role in the development of such a misconception-as if it was possible to have a capitalist development separate and outside of a general civilizational development, outside of history, society, and power relations. Paradoxically, those who most fiercely thought themselves to be anti-capitalist and have fought against it were the ones to give it this undeserved credit.

One can understand the English political economists and might expect them to present this new economy as a model as the economists and politicians of a country where capitalism won its victory. Thus, Karl Marx’s extensive study of this model has been both important and explanatory, especially his critique of the English political economists. It is extremely unfortunate that his monumental work was left unfinished and that later Marxists completely caricatured him. The fundamental flaw of this study is its failure to systematically analyze capitalism’s relationship with that of power and state. He sought to determine the role of ideology. His analysis on the mindset of capitalism is at times quite powerful. But Marx’s crucial mistake was to base himself on the positivist perspective, which by then had already left its mark on the intellectual environment and was the favorite ideology of the Enlightenment. Marx did not doubt the view that like the physical sciences, social sciences can be engineered as well. The result of this positivist perspective was that one of the most valuable studies of all time, Das Kapital, has had far less effect than it should have had. This perspective also brought about the treatment of his work as a sacred text instead of research. We know what disciples are capable of. Thus, Lenin’s efforts to analyze imperialism, monopolistic capitalism, state, and revolution did go beyond Enlightenment philosophy. Despite his many positive contributions. in my opinion the main factor underlying the collapse of the Soviet experiment was Lenin’s inability to surpass capitalist modernity.

The anarchists’ analysis of capitalism is also largely concerned with minorities. They tend to just condemn capitalism on economic grounds, as if the mere act of condemnation on economic grounds will bring ghoul its collapse.

The main reason for the ineffectiveness of all these schools of thought is the fact that the concepts their arguments are built upon are nippled by positivism. The typical argument runs like this: “All sciences have their own rules. Economy is a science; hence, it has its own rules. Capitalism is a system that generates crises and, in accordance with the rules of economy, capitalism is a system that cannot be maintained. What then needs to be done is to accelerate the working of these rules. As a result, capitalism shall collapse and communism shall be established.” This argument is built upon misconceived notions about social reality. Society has systematic (or perhaps quite chaotic) functions that far uceedes those generally stipulated by Enlightenment ideologies. Society, together with its intellectual and institutional structures (including its economy), qualitatively differ from the definitions made by positive sciences. Furthermore, while active, it mostly has a chaotic nature. Thus, the society requires different approaches when being analyzed and in connection requires the development of different approaches.

In light of the above criticism, we can proceed to establish a more understandable relationship between economy and capital. Firstly, although it may seem paradoxical, we should not regard capitalism in an economic system. There have been many important analyses of capitalism, especially and including that of Marx, but all of them are flawed by the assumption that an economic interpretation is imperative. Even Fernand Braudel fell into this trap when he explained the birth of capitalism with its feature to establish monopoly over prices formed in the market. Had sociologist Max Weber interpreted capitalism as a religious cult in its own right instead of ascribing the esprit of capitalism in Protestant ethics, his analysis would have had more explanatory power. Secondly, analyzing capitalism as a political regime will bring us closer to understanding the profit that is present in its essence. But we must avoid the pitfall of power-and-state-reductionism: we must not be thrown from economism into power-ism.

For I believe that capitalism is the culmination of an old tradition which has been militarily, politically, and culturally organized to cunningly usurp social values, especially those pertaining to material accumulation. Capitalism has gradually become the dominant social format in Western Europe since the sixteenth century. This birth can be described as the modern link of the tradition whereby a band of looters gathered by and around the strong man seizes the social values generated by mother-woman. Capitalism is the act of groups with advanced speculative intelligence who would not abstain from using violence when necessary and frequently. They are the early capitalists of England, the Netherlands, and, prior to them, of Italian city-states like Genoa, Florence, and Venice; they were intertwined with the state, and, like members of a sect, had their own special lifestyles 2.

These early capitalists were masters at accumulating incredible amounts of wealth. They accomplished this through a few innovations in the economic area, namely mastering the generation of big profits through the use of money, and by tampering with prices formed at markets around the world3. Depending on their time in history, these groups can be referred to as dynasties, aristocrats, or bourgeoisie. They differ from the bandits of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mainly in that they mostly established themselves in cities; they became intertwined with state authority; if needed, coercion was used in a more disguised fashion and as only a secondary tool.

If we were to believe their defenders, the early West European capitalists were able to render their first profits by using their intelligence and the amount of money they initially had within the framework of the innate economic rules. However, if the history of capital is properly examined it will be seen that this is nothing but a fairy tale: No economic rules underlay the colonial wars where the initial accumulation was extorted. Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, England, France, and earlier on cities like Venice and Genoa, obtained colonies entirely through coercion. And it was the obtainment of the colonies that enabled the accumulation of the initial capital (as a study of the markets of the nearby countries and the colonized areas will no doubt make clear). The forty thieves have turned into the bourgeois masters. The greatest distortion made by speculative Intelligence is in the area of economy and politics.

However. the various disciplines of economic science very successfully continue their main task of disguising the essence of capitalism. The theory that makes the most successful presentation will be rewarded. Economic science, more than any other science, has tampered with the facts and turned them inside out. Thus, the main aberration of the speculative intelligence is in the area of capitalist political economy. Capitalist modernity is the only system that has had the luxury to emerge totally from such a counterfeit science.

Participating in economic activity (that is, accessing the material objects needed to live) is the main problem of being alive. Economy is crucial for evolution to materialize. All living systems sustain their continuity through much needed objects that are suitable for their own digestive systems. This is a universal rule: evolution maintains continuity of life through differentiation. The universe has continuously striven for and enabled an equilibrium that would prevent the excessive growth of a particular species, preventing its invasion over other species. Excessive numbers of mice have been balanced with snakes; sheep, goats, and herds of cattle with beasts of prey, so that plants are not totally destroyed –thereby creating an opportunity for their continuous existence and allowing their development as a species. The question, “Why does natural evolution do this?” can only be answered by looking at its results. I believe the main reason for evolution is to ensure and develop the continuity of the living systems. Can this be called the brutality or justice of nature? Is it the result of a profound intelligence or is it linked to being primitive? Should it he included within the scope of metaphysics or not? All these questions regarding universality are meaningful and should be explored with the use of analytical intelligence. They can also be linked to existentialism.

The most significant answer that can be given to these questions is that evolution is continuously on the lookout for competency. It is as if the universe’s search for perfection and competency is desired or looked for throughout the course of time. Or else, how can we explain the evolution that has ended up creating the human being as well as the development of the tight-bonded human society? This magnificent evolution has also allowed for a formation called conscience and morals. What is the meaning? Mercy and justice! The essence of this principle has been expressed as: “Sheep and wolf would wonder about if opinions did not differ so.” ”There is another universality hidden here: is it possible for the lamb and the wolf to be friends? Human action has proved that this is indeed possible. That is, to think and act that a man is wolf to another man- capitalism’s principle of brutality-cannot be true is indispensable to being human5. In fact, do both the wolf and the sheep not have the same ancestry?

Capitalism tries to make the limited number of examples that may be perceived as acts of savagery throughout evolution as a pretext for its birth. More importantly, why should we not take the evolution from seaweed to moss, from moss to tremendously beautiful trees, leading to the rich system of grass eating animals (who do not eat each other) as an example for human life instead of formations that can be interpreted as evolution cancer? The only reason I am including such examples is to show that in natural evolution there is no room for developments that justify theories of capitalism’s birth. Included in such examples should also be the adverse principle of continuously increasing the army of unemployed in order to compel the people to work for low wages.

While the human species developed on the basis of incorporating all of the evolutionary processes within their structure, they continued their existence on the basis of sociality. If we are to interpret science, without becoming bogged down in the religion of positivism, then we must understand well that this is another important finding. In my next book this characteristic of the human species as well as its characteristic of moral selection or judgment (or, indeed, free selection opportunity) will be discussed6.

I must emphasize that traces of a limited number of examples of savagery (like cannibalism) may be found in evolution and such examples may be interpreted as a disease, deviation, or a remnant of the human species’ evolution. Besides, we must understand with utmost clarity that the natural rhythm of evolution does not occur in this manner. In civilization in general or, more specifically, in its capitalist phase, a social system-the second nature- cannot be generated from such a remnant characteristic. We should not just determine this (maybe a task for academics) but also adopt it as an essential principle of life. if we were to accept such a view, it would amount to the crippling of our social interpretations.

Under the profound influence of the Enlightenment, and by basing his theory on positivist science, Karl Marx was quite ambitious to turn the study of economy into a scientific discipline.7 Thus, the idea of an evolutionary and universal societal development according to set stages became the base for economic science and for Marxism.8

When Marx formulated his theories, the notions of scientific certainty and linear progress were already deep-seated in people’s minds, and sociology was at its infancy. Romanticism, whilst attempting to combat this approach, fell into voluntarism, thereby aggravating the intellectual problems. Nietzsche’s approach was based mainly on relativist, cyclic, and emotional intelligence and was never developed any further. Within this intellectual turmoil liberalism took over and did as it pleased. On the one hand. capitalism philosophizes, or indeed religionizes, physical sciences (including chemistry, mathematics and biology) with positivism; on the other hand, it philosophizes or religionizes social reality with liberalism in the same way. This is how capitalism attained its ideological victory and with the onset of the nineteenth century, the system’s globalization can almost be seen to take place. The economic war, on the other hand, had been won earlier.

I will thus summarize the rhythmic development of the societal progress which is indeed notadverse to natural evolution. While doing this. I will attempt to substantiate my belief that acivilization based on excessive urbanization and the centers of state and power that growwith hierarchy and class distinction, force all life into either the category of “excessivelionization” or its reverse, “excessive cattlization.”

Let me expand: Since the earliest times, depending on their intellectual development, communities have searched for and developed the necessary material objects; their main concerns being food, shelter, protection, and reproduction. In accordance with these fundamental needs, they were satisfied with what they found to eat, took shelter in caves, defended themselves at riverbanks and the edge of forests, and gave priority to the fertile mother. Gradually, a hunting culture developed. This culture developed because it offered protection and nutrition. But at a certain stage of sociality there was tension between the women who were prevalent in gathering and (mainly) men who specialized in hunting, resulting in different cultural evolutions (a growing dichotomy that eventually gave shape to the “lionization of man” and the “cattlization of woman”). This, I believe, is how the two differing initial economies came into being. The woman’s culture reached its peak during the Neolithic period when, in the aftermath of the last glacial period (which ended around 15,000 BCE), the abundance of flora and fauna enabled a paradisiacal life. Since the period, the main stream of social development has become more differentiated in the times of written history and civilization and has left its mark on globalization. The extant developments based on language groups are also the product of this period.

The only important remark one could make about capitalism during this, the longest period of humanity’s history, is that the hunting culture gradually gave rise to the dominance of the man.

As far as can be discerned, the Neolithic culture that became permanent at around 10,000 BCE, was still predominantly woman-centered. The transition from caves to tent-like huts and the sowing of seeds, gradually led to the agricultural and village revolution. 9 Now the surplus product, however limited, could be stored.

Economy, not as an intellectual construct but in terms of its essence, can be traced back to this kind of accumulation. The roots of the term economy, “oikos and nomos,” are the Greek words for house and law/custom; thus, its original meaning was “household management.” The birth of the initial sedentary agricultural family groups, centered on the woman and based on the (albeit limited) ability to save and store durable food, led to the birth of economy. However, this was not an accumulation for the merchant or the market but accumulation for the family. This must be the true human economy. The development of a widespread gift culture prevented this accumulation, which would raise wrongful desires, from constituting any danger to society. (Quite possibly, the saying possessions bring greed is an insight stemming from the period of the gift culture.) Gift culture is an important economic system and is compatible with the rhythmic development of the human being’s social evolution.

Most probably. this period was also the beginning of the culture of sacrifice and the concept of sacredness. it is quite plausible that the notion of gods resulted from the community’s respect for its own identity due to, and the initial expression of, this increased yield. This increased yield brings praising with itself. Its roots rest on evolution as a community. To give one’s sell an identity, to exalt one’s self, to pray, to worship, to present one’s self as the increased progress of the intellectual world, are cultural elements closely associated with the agricultural revolution. Archaeological findings strikingly confirm this point of view. More concretely, the concepts of mother-goddess and sacred mother as well as the vast number of female figures can be seen as supporting evidence for this view.10

The danger feared would indeed eventually arrive: growing experience and intellectual development brought an increase in residual product accumulations. When these could not be depleted through gifting, the hunter-man, waiting on alertly, started to contemplate trading this surplus in addition to his profession and placed it in his culture. The accumulation of different surplus products in different areas put into motion what we will trade. The fact that these products satisfied reciprocal needs caused trade. as well as the merchant as the second big societal division of labor. Albeit with reluctance, trade and the merchant were legitimized because the products brought in further developed the division of labor and that in return made possible a more productive production and life. Trade became more meaningful when, on the one hand, there were food and weaving and, on the other hand, mineral deposits.

We know from history that trade was widespread after 4,000 BCE. For instance, the original city-state civilization called Uruk (4,000-3,000 BCE) in Lower Mesopotamia had trade colonies in Elam, the southwest of present-day Iran and Upper Mesopotamia, to the areas of present-day Elazig and Malatya. The first gateway to colonialism was thus formed. (Trade and colonization go hand in hand! Prior to Uruk, the dominant culture during 5,000-4,000 BCE is the Ubaid period. It is the first observed initial patriarchal culture prior to state formation and its colonies have been observed.) In return for pottery and textile products, (mostly) metal ware and wood products were transported. As the merchant and trade take shape, so does the market: The old centers for presenting gifts and performing sacrifices slowly turned into market places. The merchant, who attained the privilege to price the different products of the different regions, accumulated property on a scale not possible before: the primitive capitalist was born.

At the start of the trade era, the transition from a gift economy to exchange value had not
yet been made.

At this point, I think it is necessary to rethink Marx’s treatment of the labor theory of value. Indeed, trade paves the way for commodification (that is to say, turning a product or a good into a commodity, into merchandise) because goods are exchanged. To society, the importance of a good is its use value and the use value is how well the good satisfies a need. This is of importance to the human being.

Exchange value, on the other hand, is a highly contentious concept. It is, thus, of vital importance that it be correctly defined. The view that human labor is the basis of exchange value is highly disputable; this is true also for Marx’s analyses. Whether defined in terms of concrete or abstract labor, exchange value always has a speculative aspect. To illustrate, let us presume that the first merchant from Uruk, in one of his colonies along the Euphrates, tried to exchange stones and metal compounds in return for pottery. What would have determined the exchange value? In the first place, it would have been the degree of mutual need, and, secondly, the merchant’s initiative. If the need for his merchandise was great, the merchant would have been able to price it as he pleased; there was nothing that could have prevented him from doing so apart from his own conscience or whether he had the necessary power. What happened then to the role of the labor?

I am not arguing for the complete exclusion of the labor factor, but I do insist that it is not the main determinant of exchange value. This can be seen in all exchanges of goods throughout history. At times, there may be exchange of goods with equal value, but this will be more of a theoretical labor-value exchange. In practice, the decisive factor is speculation. In some cases, there may be an excessive accumulation of goods, leading to situations where they are abundant and not really needed or wanted and must be eliminated. In order to eliminate the goods there may be a need for additional labor. In such situations, the value of labor is not lost, but, once again, labor is not the decisive factor: it is the merchant who has the power to create shortages or redundancy, thereby determining the value of the good. Throughout history a good has always been produced as the end result of a multitude of unnamed workers. So, what is the mechanism that shall repay what owners of dead labor deserve? If we add to this the living labor of creative craftspeople and even the much- required social activity, then clearly such labor cannot in any way be meaningfully priced.

This is where the fraudulent English political economy reveals its true thee. Capitalism attained its initial victory as a system in England and the Netherlands. In order for it to be legitimized, theoretical justification was crucial. in particular an acceptable theory was needed to disguise its notice of speculative acquisition. Just as with the initial Uruk merchants’ religions. the construction of a new version of the mythological narrative was given to what they called the political economists, who were really the inventors of the religion of capitalism. What was being constructed was nothing but a new religion, with its own sacred book and intricate nets. Political economy is the most fraudulent and predatory monument of fictive intelligence, developed to disguise the speculative character of capitalism. The English classical school of political economy came up with just the right bait: the labor theory of value. I really do wonder why they decided on this notion. I suspect a main reason was to distract the Workers. Even Karl Marx could not refrain from taking this bait. I feel great sorrow as I make this critique, but I have to lay down my doubts ii I have any respect at all for science. The second big merchant rush can he seen from 2,000 BCE onwards, in the Assyrian colonies. No despotic regime-I shall explore the relationship between capitalism and power in later chapters-before them had created a civilization comparable to the one created by the despotic Assyrian regime based on trade and merchant colonies. Between 2,000 and 600 BCE, they established the most advanced global trade between a home country and its colonies the world had seen until then. The Phoenician merchants, at around the same period and with the support of the Egyptian civilization, were experts in trade and colonization as well, but not of the same magnitude as the Assyrians. An examination of the interwoven quality of Assyrian and Phoenician wealth with trade and tyranny would enable us to follow the European colonists’ trail much better and deepen our understanding of how countries like England, the Netherlands, and Portugal (as well to Spain, France, Belgium, etc.) appropriated such enormous amounts of wealth.

The morals and culture constructed on the base of this appropriation still have Lebanon and Iraq in its grasp; they are still subjected to most sorrowful wars. The need to secure the merchant and its colonies (or, rather, the merchant’s interests), has always been one of main reasons for war and the establishment of states. Trade, the petrol trade, is at the heart of the wars in today’s Middle East, too. We would well to carefully analyze the merchant civilizations.

As we move towards capitalism and the center of civilization shifts to Europe, it is once again trade that leads the way. With the coming Islam, the trade and merchant civilization, which had been born in the Middle East, took another leap forward during the Middle Ages. Khadlj and her employee Muhammad, who later became her partner, laid the foundations of their own trade civilization because of contention with the merchants and usurers of Jewish background and Syriacs of Assyrian descent. Through coercion their trade civilization based itself in Mecca and Medina. Under the religious disguise of Islam, the development of trade revived the ancient Middle Eastern cities. As the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires were defeated they attained large city and marketnetworks especially in Aleppo, Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus.

Globalization was achieved through their trade networks from China to the Atlantic Ocean, from Indonesia to inner Africa. A prevalent commodity and money market was formed. A huge amount of money was accumulated by Jews, Armenians, and Syriacs. European civilization is wholly based on this inheritance. The trade culture that made another advance via the Muslim merchants of the Middle East was moved to Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century via the Italian cities of Venice, Genoa, and Florence. Money and trade were the main reasons for the wealth of these cities, who led the trade between Europe and the Middle East until the sixteenth century. They achieved small victories for capitalism at city level in terms of concept as well as their implementation. Mediterranean piracy and price monopoly between the Eastern and Western sides of the Mediterranean played a major role in this achievement. Besides coercion, speculation was also eied effectively. As trade expanded capital, capital led to the city, the city to the market, and the market to the expansion of speculation: capitalist civilization had dawned. (As we will discuss in the next section, an earlier European version of the capital-based city civilization occurred during the classical Athenian and Roman eras. However, at the time capitalism did not secure its victory due to agriculture still being widespread and because of their defeat in religious wars.) From around 1300 to 1600 the successful trial of capitalism in the Italian city-states enabled capitalism to expand to Northwest and Northern Europe. Spain had already been conquered. From the sixteenth century, for the first time in their long history. the merchants had exceeded their previous victories over cities –they now attempted (and obtained) victory in countries as a whole.

By the middle of seventeenth century a world-wide market had formed. Africa and the Americas had been put under colonial domination. India and China had been reached through the Atlantic Ocean, dispensing with the need for the Ottoman Empire. Europe was on its way to full urbanization. For the first time cities began to prevail over agriculture. Feudal kingdoms turned into modern monarchic states. The Ottoman Empire, which was the last Islamic empire, experienced consecutive defeats. The Renaissance that started in Italy in the fourteenth century had spread all over Europe, resulting in the Reformation in Northern European countries. It seems that, for the very first time, religious wars were petering out. More importantly though, all the Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and even African and American cultures and their civilizational values had been channeled into Europe. On the one hand, we see the hirih of modern states and, on the other hand, the birth of nations.

As capitalism headed toward victory, it based itself upon this history and culture, accumulation of trade, the civilization itself, political power, and the entirety of the world which had been marketed. How can we even think that it would have been possible for the capitalist economy in leap forward without the formation of these preconditions to base itself upon? Without them capital itself can’t even be envisaged. Its first step was the initial formation of cities, states, and class at Uruk in Lower Mesopotamia. The second huge step was the establishment of trade and urbanization in Phoenicia and Ionia. Its third huge step was taken in Italy, the Netherlands, and England when the capitalist economy achieved a permanent victory through huge trade, urbanization, and expansion to a world level. With this, capitalism had in fact established itself as above and anti-market, which is still the reality today under the hegemony of the USA. Here, again, Fernand Braudel is closer to the truth than Karl Marx as he insisted that capitalist economy is anti-market because it is based on speculative, monopolist price adjustments in big trade fields.“

We are witnessing a form of economy that is based on plunder. The appropriation of the accumulated commodities has indeed been most elegantly camouflaged in ideological wrapping. This is only possible under societal circumstances where devotion to religion and morals has become secondary, with the widespread development of the market within society’s structure, and where there is an increasing urban control of the rural. In this new form of appropriation, the mechanism of market price formed by supply and demand, and reflected via money, was considerably more advanced than in the past. Instead of the early loan sharks and dealer’s banks, there now were the highly sophisticated mechanisms of deposit slips, paper money, credit, accounting, and incorporations. These constituted the main topics of the economic contents in the modern age. But what was really missing was a scientific explanation. Providing this was taken up by the English political economists, and later, paradoxically, its opponents –especially Karl Marx and the socialists-continued this task for them.

This order of depredation called the capitalist economy has colonized all societies, all territories of the new and the old world, and re-enslaved them. It has enchained all power centers to itself, amongst others national states by means of debt (a form of appropriation). It has waged some of the bloodiest wars in history and tampered with the fabric of society in order to have its hegemony approved. Whilst this was the case, Karl Marx and his successors, as well as similar schools of thought, were not constructing a science when they declared capitalism as revolutionary in the face of the old society. I think Das Kapital is one of the most deficient books against capital and most open to wrong interpretations. Once again, I am not blaming Marx; rather, I am saying that aspects of history, state, revolution, and democracy have not been developed well. And the European intellectuals, who claim to be so scientific, based their analyses and research on Das Mimi. and did not In fact generate-not intentionally-anti-capitalist “lance and Ideology “on behalf of the workers.”

Liberalism won the ideological war when it took advantage of the fact that the birth of capitalism was declared revolutionary by these intellectuals. It also won the class war- despite the tremendous struggles waged by its opponents –by first assimilating the German social democrats, then the reel socialist system (including in Russia and China), and last but not least the national liberation systems by the powers of modernist ideology, nation-state, and industrialism. There is a clear defeat of these three currents (social democracy, real socialism, and national liberation movements) by liberalism, but unfortunately as yet there is no clear self-criticism. If their analyses of capitalism (which is nothing but a war against the working class, society, and its whole history) had been truly scientific, their opposition would not have been defeated to this degree. And, even worse, their inheritance would not have been wasted so easily.

Let us now proceed to define the reality that is called “capitalist economy” and evaluate it according to its functionality. I see no need to redefine basic economic terminology such as surplus product, surplus value. labor value, wage, profit, price, monopoly, market, and money, as there have been countless scrutinies of them. I shall thus proceed to examine the issues that I feel are lacking and at times comment on their content.

Capitalism has shattered all the historical accumulation of humanity. ii is a system that assimilates this accumulation mercilessly by employing refined methods, genocides, and nuclear horror. Economic and social conceptualizations such as profit and price, and bourgeois and proletariat are the initial steps to scientize (in the positivist way) this system.

Economism’s basic assertion is that the proletariat alone creates value through their labor, the capitalists (in a way the owners of the proletariat) in return for the invested money and other tools of industry snatch the remuneration from this value, calling it profit. This interpretation is expounded as a scientific certainty. (This must be what is called economic determinism!) However, a value description so removed from history, society, and political power is problematic. Even an individual deified as a capitalist or worker cannot construct value as such. Economic values have clear historical and social attributes. In the beginning, exchange of goods was a shameful act and the reason why all surplus was given as gifts can be attributed to this sacred meaning given to value. Even today no farmer will claim that the crop is all their production; they rather will say “thank God for the blessing” or that they are “benefiting from the cultivation of their ancestors’ property.” By this, they show a far better understanding of the source of the value than the so-called scientists.

How shall we then define the reward for a mother’s labor of carrying the proletariat for nine months and then nurturing him or her until he or she is fit to work? And how do we determine the owners and how do we reward all those who, over thousands of years, had contributed to the construction of production tools, which now have been stolen by the capitalists? Let us not forget that, in not a single case the value of the tools of production is equal to what it is sold for at the market. Even the technical inventions used in a modern factory are the products of thousands of people’s collective creativity. How are we to determine the value of their labor and whom are we to pay? Unless morals are totally denied, how can we possibly not acknowledge the social share of these unknown contributors? Will it be just to distribute these historical and social values between only two people? I can continue these important questions, but these adequately illustrate the problematic nature of the profit vs. wages dilemma.

Let us now relate the owners of profit and the earners of wages to the bourgeois and the proletarian classes. Is it factually correct to claim that these two classes were revolutionary at their birth and gave rise to the new society that replaced the old one? There is no counterpart in history for an alliance like this. There are not many historic examples that show these two classes opposing each other in a deep-rooted conflict Those that do exist, merely show the continuation of the tradition of old conflicts. But what stands out, observable from real life, is that just as the position of the slave was but that of an attachment to the Pharaoh’s body, the position of the worker is but that of an attachment to the bourgeois. There is no successful act of rebellion by slaves against their masters. Even Spartacus, often held to be an antecedent of the proletariat rising against the bourgeois, was nothing but a rebel who longed to become a master. Most likely he had nothing else in mind.

It should not be forgotten that the relationship between boss and worker, based on the slave-master relationship that is thousands of years old, is in many ways an interdependent relationship. It is not one of profound rebellion against and victory over the boss –there are only a few exceptions. The relationship that has mostly been maintained over the millennia is on the level of devotion to the boss. It is also clear that events often called workers’ rebellions are in fact the rebellion of semi-peasants and of people protesting against unemployment. Rebellions relate to general social influences and they reflect on the relationship between the boss and worker. What is more important, however, is that true rebellion is not a rights-struggle by the worker against the boss, but a struggle against proletarianization and being jobless. In my opinion, social struggle is more meaningful and ethical when it does not accept proletarianization and being turned into a worker as well as refusing to accept being jobless. We should not hail the slave, serf, and worker as they are oppressed. To the contrary, what should be hailed is the ability not to become a slave, serf, or worker. The common, opportunistic trend is to first acknowledge and define the masters and then to propose struggle to its servants. This is indeed the mindset that has frustrated all rights and labor struggles throughout history.

In short, it is neither possible to attempt any kind of sociology nor to develop a successful social struggle based on these early “scientific” concepts! As I point this out, I need to reiterate that I do not deny the role of labor, value, profit, and class but I do not approve of the way they are used in the construction of science and indeed of sociology.

Capitalism occurs at the higher levels of society’s economic life. In its early stages, capitalism is dependent on the accumulation of capital through price monopoly by big merchants in the markets. Capital, by definition, is monetary value that continuously increases itself. Huge value accumulations are squeezed out in far-off markets with enormous price differences between them. The second way to obtain enlargement is by demanding interest and iltizam in return for monetary loans granted to the state. 12 Famine, war, and mining ventures are periods and areas in which capital is able to grow. Aside from trade, capitalism participates in agriculture, industry, and transport when it deems these areas to be profitable. After the Industrial Revolution, the main area for capitalist profit was the industrial sector. Demand and supply are always manipulated so that the capitalist can determine both production and consumption. Profit margins increase proportional to capitalism’s ability to determine production and consumption. Big trade and industry were the profit areas during capitalism’s initial and maturity phases; however, today it is mostly the financial sector. Money, deposit slips, banks, and tools of credit assist the acceleration of capitalist economy by shortening, intensifying, and expanding the profit cycles. In this way, major speculative balloons are formed in profit rates and thus, periods of crisis are made intrinsic parts of the capitalist economy.

There are of course other methods to inflate profits; increasing unemployment (which causes wages to fall) and investment in countries, that have cheap labor are two examples. Finally, though this form of economy that originated in the ancient hunter and trade culture has grasped the chance to advance itself (through attaining power to fluctuate prices; to escape social supervision by loosening morals and religion; to enchain the political power through debt) and has formed a monopoly over the market, it is unavoidable that such an economy is ultimately nothing but an economy of plunder. It gains a foothold in industry only for profit, basing itself on the type of production and consumption that increases profit rates and results in crisis, decay, and collapse (which have been there since its birth) as it increasingly harms the social structure and the environment.

However, this is not the economy in its entirety. Trade, agriculture, and industry on the one hand, and transport, technical tools, and markets on the other, are not the inventions of capitalism. On the contrary, they are the fundamental social economic institutions that have been subjected to capitalism’s severe exploitation and plunder. They are determined by history and civilization and are intertwined with politics.

I have tried to show that economism is nothing but a tendency to distort the definition of capitalist economy. I have also attempted to show how capitalism should be interpreted in terms of history and society, politics and civilization, and its cultural ties.

Notes

1. Expanding on a remark by Cicero, Bookchin distinguishes between first nature and second nature. The second nature, society, emerges from within the first, biological nature. See, for example, Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1989).

2. Both the British and the Dutch East India Company, for instance, were state chartered trading companies who had been granted law-making and military powers.

3. A classic example comes from 1607, when Isaac le Maire dumped his stock in the Dutch East India Company, forcing the price down; he then bought it back at a lower price. See Murray Sale, “Japan goes Dutch,” London Review of Books, 23:7 (April 2001).

4. The expression “Koyun kurt ile gezerdi/lFikir baska baska olmasa” is from a song called “Giizelligin On Par Etmez” by Astk Veysel-one of the most prominent representatives of the Anatolian ashik tradition in the 2oth century.

5. Homo homini lupus; a variation of the proverb first coined by Plautus in the play Asinaria; later Thomas Hobbes drew upon the proverb in De Cive (On the Citizen).

6. Arguably, Western sociology was born when Auguste Comte in his 1848 work. A General View of Positivism, claimed that society operated according to absolute laws, just like the physical world. Compte held that all societies underwent a social evolution according to a general “law of three stages.” The immensely popular and influential early sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820- 1903) held that evolution. which took place through natural selection and “survival of the fittest,” affected social as well as biological phenomena. Like Comte, Spencer argued that all societies progressed over time and by stages; this progress is accomplished through competition. Influenced by Spencer and Darwin, Lewis H. Morgan (1818-1881) postulated three developmental stages for all societies, wherein technological progress was the force behind social progress. Morgan’s significant influence on Marx and Friedrich Engels can be seen in their theory of sociocultural evolution in which the internal contradictions in a society create a series of escalating stages that will culminate in a socialist society.

7. See William Roseberry, “Marx and Anthropology,” Annual Review of Anthropology, 26 (1997), 25-46.

8. Fernand Braudel, on the other hand, bases his interpretation of the birth of capitalism on broad observations and comparisons. Moreover, as he places his interpretation within the integrity of history, society, power, civilization-culture, and spatial development, he clarifies the problems associated with the question of method. Braudel is cautious about positivist approaches. [A.O.]

9. Archaeological excavations indicate that this way of life existed all over Upper Mesopotamia, especially in the inner arcs of the Zagros-Taurus Mountains (Bradostiyan, Garzan, Amanos (Nur) and Nevali Cori, Cayonii, Cemé Hallan at the inner skirts of Middle Taurus). [A.O.]

10. See for instance James Mellaart, Catal Huyuk: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). For a different interpretation, see the work of Ian Hodder; for instance his “Catalhoyuk 2005 Archive Report” (Available at http://www.catalhoyuk.com).

11. The Wheels of Commerce was the second volume of Fernand Braudel’s Civilization and Capitalism: 15th-18th Century (Palo Alto: University of California Press, 1992).

12. Iltizam was a form of taxation in the Ottoman Empire. Iltizams were sold off by the government to wealthy notables, who would then reap up to five times the amount they had paid by taxing the peasants and extracting agricultural production.