The lesson the public should learn from crises

The deep crisis into which the AKP government has dragged Turkey creates a terrible economic cost for society on one hand, while offering an important political opportunity on the other. Today, I would like to discuss this issue with our valued readers in terms of building social consciousness.  

Let us first discuss the issue of poverty as an indicator of crisis. Let us take a look at the fact that this issue is discussed incorrectly by some politicians and our academic friends. In our friends' approach to poverty, poverty is defined, classified into different categories, and it is emphasized that poverty can be alleviated through public policies. Such an approach to the subject of poverty may be taken in the academic world, but in terms of discussing the issue before the public, this approach does not play much of a role in terms of creating a system logic. Because discussing the issue in this way causes the public to push the system into the background and display the problem of poverty as a result of the government's wrong policies. It is my conviction that in discussing the issue of poverty in terms of the formation of social consciousness, capitalism as a system should be brought to the fore. When the issue is handled as a systemic problem and a systemic approach is taken in solving the problem, it is very true that a result related to the system cannot be achieved in the short term, but capital and government circles, which perceive this rising attitude in public opinion as a threat, may act more tolerantly towards demands in order to appease the problem. Thus, while a temporary solution, even if short-term, is provided for poverty in the fight against poverty that deeply wounds society, social consciousness is also gained in the field of political struggle. 

Another area that pushes our people into poverty is the issue of the minimum wage. The issue of the minimum wage is also normalized by being handled with criteria such as the hunger threshold or the poverty line, and is legitimized by being abstracted from the functioning of the system. The issue of the minimum wage cannot be reduced to the mere cost of nutrition for the laborer whose labor is purchased. This approach applied to the minimum wage cannot be accepted as a fair resolution of the value produced in the distribution of wages and profits between the parties. Suppressing the minimum wage by claiming an inflation-creating effect is also not a valid thesis. Because this view has been refuted by the experiences of the last 11 months. The fact that inflation has risen even though the minimum wage has not been increased since the beginning of the year is proof of this situation. However, the fact that laborers and a large part of the public, who have difficulty in providing their daily livelihood as a result of minimum wage suppression, turn to the financial sector means that the laborer, who has been exploited in the production field, is also exploited in the financial field in the second stage, which, in this case, in addition to the further deterioration of income distribution, contributes indirectly to inflation through financial bloating. The issue of wages should be handled as a fair share of value-added, and this view should be accepted by capital and its allied government circles. The suppression of the minimum wage has no direct relationship with production, but is aimed at increasing profits in the inefficient industrial sector in terms of political power balances, as well as ensuring that the comfort of wasteful public administrators is not disturbed. This is the issue that the representatives of the labor segment in the minimum wage commission should realize during negotiations.  

Socio-economic problems such as poverty and the minimum wage should be kept on the agenda constantly so that public opinion can develop an idea about the system's logic and functioning. In short, when we consider socio-economic problems such as the minimum wage and rising poverty together, it is possible for us to see the phenomenon of crisis as a chance for social development. That is to say, great advantages, opportunities, and possibilities are hidden in crises for peoples. Economic crises provide societies with serious warnings about the system, because systems offer information and ideas to society more in times of crisis than in their relatively positive and stagnant phases. People who are squeezed during periods of crisis both perceive the functioning of the system and develop thoughts on ways to get rid of the troubles they have fallen into, and turn to actions. During periods of crisis, politicians are blamed, and various political proposals are developed. In other words, society can become politicized during periods of crisis. The politicization of peoples does not naturally occur in a single period of crisis, but every period of crisis provides a kind of maneuver and project development opportunity for peoples. 

Because peoples are anonymous and atomized, they may have difficulty in turning to collective behavior. The Gezi incident constitutes a typical example of this. Because, as seen in the Gezi incident, an unorganized popular movement is doomed to fade away or be suppressed by the state's apparatus of repression. Although such anonymous events that emerge in an unorganized manner are remembered as an important experience in society, they cannot leave much of a trace. However, just as every event or formation is a lesson from a social perspective, the Gezi incident undoubtedly constituted a very important social lesson. So much so that the lesson learned from the Gezi incident, even though it was not supported by organized groups or segments, was that popular movements can shake politics. Despite the fate that the Gezi incident suffered, it should be known that social events have a very important place in social development as extremely useful experiences for peoples. In other words, the importance of crises in terms of triggering popular mobilization is great. 

However, since putting social movements into an anti-system organized position exceeds the limits of trade unions, it moves beyond the trade union field and enters the field of activity of political parties. If the unity of domestic capital, which has merged with foreign capital, and the government can drag the people into poverty by applying imperialist pressure on society today, the responsibility for this should not be seen as the unorganized peoples, but as political organizations that do not hold themselves responsible for guiding the people in an organized way. The trouble of Turkey, which is being dragged into a deep crisis, is not who will be the president or for the how many-th time they will be president. In fact, the salvation of the country is not at all the ambitions for position and rank of the leftists of the past who shamelessly defend the presidential theater in the name of law by deigning to voice it almost as an official spokesperson. The current struggle of our people should be directed against all these farce structures that have surrendered to imperialism. In this struggle, there should be leftist organizations that can lead society in the front lines.