Authoritarian state - Democratic state

          In the elections held in Hungary last week, the defeat of Orban—who had held power for a very long time, 16 years, with the support of both the US and Russia—despite very unfair electoral conditions, seems to have raised hopes in similar countries. Given that every country's historical conditions and immediate circumstances differ, one cannot expect the outcome experienced in one to inevitably occur in others, however desirable that may be. Furthermore, as my esteemed colleague Assoc. Prof. Dr. Hazal Papuççular has also pointed out, the new cadre that has taken power from Orban cannot go beyond the bourgeois understanding of democracy, because it is clear by the logic of the system that the new cadre, which is a prisoner of center-right policies, will not be able to prevent covert despotism while comforting the public within the framework of bourgeois methods.

            While applauding the change of power in Hungary by viewing it as at least partially positive, what do I mean by the expression that the new administration “will not be able to prevent despotism due to the logic of the system”? In other words, I would like to share with you an expression that seems much clearer to me than the concepts of politics that are widely diversified and marketed—such as despotic rule, semi-despotic rule, or liberal-despotic rule—which create complete confusion. To clearly present this, we must first take a look at past political revolutions or transformations. The 1789 French Revolution, which first appeared and deeply affected the entire Western world and has maintained this influence to the present day, is unfortunately on our agenda. The French Revolution, which was hammered into our minds with slogans of liberty, equality, and fraternity, was actually a bourgeois revolution. That is to say, those who had not even acquired the right to vote and be elected until that period, in short, those who had not truly gained citizenship rights, were elevated to the level of citizens. I do not know how freely they looked at each other as brothers, or how much they perceived each other as equals. Engels makes a truly beautiful inquiry into this; according to him, “can the boss and the worker be brothers, or even equals?” Can there be fraternity, equality, or even justice between different classes in a bourgeois state-legal system? Without questioning how the boss became a boss, or how the worker became dispossessed and reduced to a state of surviving only by selling their labor, they are legally free—the boss in terms of making money, and the worker in terms of choosing which boss to work for and selling their labor. In fact, the worker even has the freedom to die without selling their labor! That is bourgeois law!

            Let us assume that the state approaches every segment of society equally in accordance with the laws. Well, is this state just, or is it a despot at the service of a dominant class in society? We reach a conclusion based on our decision criteria. If we decide based on the principles of the 1789 French Revolution, we might conclude that this state is a just, or even democratic, structure. In this structure, the trio of “capital–the public and the state or politicians as agents of capital” is dominant. In some extreme cases, when the written and spoken media are also controlled and the public is inoculated with the desired dose, everything proceeds normally and the system can be perceived as democratic. Well, if we think that capital lords have replaced the feudal lords of the feudal era, we can see that this system is no different from a made-up feudal structure, albeit slightly changed from the past, for example, with the function of the feudal lord's armed guards transferred to the state's security forces. In fact, in the feudal structure, workers—that is, serfs or slaves—would certainly not be unemployed or destitute: whereas today, people can be condemned to death as urban unemployed. I wonder, which one would you prefer!

            About a century after the French Revolution, in the 1840s and beyond, when the industrial revolution began in England and the wage-labor system and the system of displaced labor slavery it forced began, the effective power of income distribution in creating a just society was understood, and the concept of “economic democracy” was brought to the agenda in contrast to the “political democracy” concept put forward by the French Revolution. Marx’s famous work Capital was also published in Hamburg in 1867. This period is important. In fact, it is seen that this period also has an important place in human history with the founding of the USA in 1776.

            The public can easily be transformed into a manageable mass through media and other Althusserian-type repressive apparatuses without even being perceived. If such a transformation can be made, my question is: Who, which circles, and for what purpose can carry out this transformation? It is the answer to this question that reveals the extremely important distinction between bourgeois democracy and economic democracy in terms of human dignity. Suffice it to say, to be expanded upon in future articles, that the despotism or understanding of democracy of states or political cadres is not solely related to how existing laws are applied, but deeply related to how laws and regulations are enacted and in whose favor they are enacted. I see no despair in concluding my words as follows: Bourgeois governments, even if they display a democratic appearance, are in essence and as spokespersons for capital, covertly despotic administrations.