This is capitalism

Systems are defined by their names. A system where capital is dominant is called capitalism; a system where common ownership is dominant is called collectivism. The labels of right and left used for systems, apart from the seating arrangements in the French parliament for those advocating different systems, have no feature that defines the essence of the system itself.

Capitalism resembles a perpetually hungry entity that wanders around as if constantly searching for food, killing whatever it finds. The rise of right-wing governments in European states and, finally, Trump scolding Zelensky and kicking him out of the Oval Office are pictures of this entity becoming increasingly rabid. After seeing the brutality Trump displayed toward Zelensky, we can now evaluate the situation more soundly.

Since the public cannot understand this trend, the task falls to the academic community. But does academia have an effort to perceive this trend and explain it to the public; or more accurately, is academia qualified to make such an effort? My answer to this question is a big “no”! Because the performance of an academic community that distributes Nobel Prizes for the naivety that the looting of global commons can be prevented not through political economy, but through some kind of management program, pushes me into an inescapable darkness. Specifically, prestigious universities in all developed economies, especially in the US, not only failed to foresee the 2008 crisis but also, either knowingly or out of ignorance, cannot bring themselves to pronounce the basic theoretical view that capitalism is at peace with crisis. The reason for this is so clear; academia not only fails to grasp that it is a superstructure institution of capital ideology, but it is also busy passing the time by filling positions and ranks with junk articles in an economics curriculum that it has rendered autistic. Well, could it be otherwise? At this point, beyond system and ideology, the problem of system and power comes into play. The academic world, which we assume to be an autonomous institution with free members, but which is forced to serve barbarism entirely, is in a state of helplessness where they cannot even understand the pool they are swimming in. Academia is in such a state of wretchedness that while it lives the dream of being free in the pool it swims in, it is incapable of even realizing that it is responsible for producing capital ideology because the pool itself is under capital ownership. As such, the academic community can neither perceive economic events as a historical stage nor apply a “theory” that provides a remedy by perceiving the process between the past and the future. In this state, academics also produce junk articles to get promoted without touching upon the day and the trend too much.

In capitalism, the ideological pressure on academia and the media by power pushes peoples into loneliness and helplessness. Analogous to the fact that drugs for the treatment of certain rare diseases are not produced because research and production costs cannot be met under the market conditions that arise for these diseases, the fact that increasingly impoverished peoples are left alone with their loneliness outside of academia and the media, as they lack economic power, turns into a silent scream that cannot be perceived by wealthy circles. How sad it is that while it is certain that those who can still remain in the center will be pushed to the outer rings bit by bit and left to their own fate, this situation is not perceived by them, and since the dominant power of capitalism is concentrated in the center, it can also be easily masked by the center. In the capitalist system of thought, where interests are shaped in a mutually exclusive position, the center's exclusion and suppression of the periphery is unfortunately a requirement of system consistency.

The fact that the peoples of the periphery, whom the center's exclusion gradually crowds, turn to rebellion and push the periphery to be reactive, also brings the hardening of the center to the agenda. Just as Trump's appointment as US president, Trump's scolding and kicking out of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in front of an intense media show is a clear image of the center suppressing the periphery. It is clear that the real issue is not that Zelensky came to the Oval Office in shabby clothes, but that he was a bit stingy in letting the US get its hands on his precious minerals.

Well, do you think the administrators of Turkey take into account for even a moment that Zelensky was roughed up by Trump? I don't think so. I have two serious reasons for this. My first reason is related to the painful situation where, according to the information provided by the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, 593 mining exploration licenses have been granted to 118 foreign firms, and operating projects have been given for 14 sites. Moreover, as clearly seen in the practice of the Canadian firm, the forests on the mining sites are also being destroyed. In short, both under and above the ground are being opened up as a lifeline to foreign firms, or rather to the central economy, and our own security forces are acting as guards for this robbery in a way that is shameful. Regarding the issue of how much share central countries get from precious metals, according to the news, Ukraine is luckier than Turkey, because it is stated that half of the minerals will be processed and sent back to Ukraine as aid. The second event from which politicians cannot learn a single thing from capitalist practices is the build-operate-transfer and public-private partnership practices with payment guarantees, which are currently plunging our economy into a deep crisis and dragging our people into poverty. Whether it is in the form of seizing mines or in the form of economic partnership or cooperation, the entire goal is to transfer resources from the periphery to the center; in other words, it is the application of velvet-gloved barbarism from the center to the periphery!

As always, the salvation of the peoples in this process depends on the laborers, the unemployed, or those with low wages based on exploitation, taking the lead in the salvation of the peoples through organization and solidarity that they will create through unity and togetherness based on their own problems.