Publicism

In the context of today's neoliberal policies, the concept of publicism, which stems from social policies, has occasionally become a subject of debate against the market-oriented approach that encompasses every area of society. I gave a speech on this topic at a meeting organized on publicism last weekend.

Today, I would like to present a brief summary of the ideas I defended at the meeting to you, our valued readers, and create a platform for discussion on this subject.

Capitalism operates based on two fundamental market dynamics. The first market is the factor market. In the factor market, there is a struggle both between capitals and between labor and capital. The factor market is where the exploitation of labor occurs.

The second market is the product market, where products are exchanged as commodities. Between the factor market and the product market, there is a functional relationship dominated by the former, excluding intergenerational inheritance or donation relationships.

In capitalism, which is built upon these two markets, almost all areas are treated within market transactions. Therefore: (1) while the shaping of production is generally determined by consumer preferences, the form that value-added takes in the factor market remains the primary determinant in the background; (2) the cooperative system cannot survive in capitalism; (3) public production is excluded, and privatization and private production are imposed; (4) "the commons," in the sense of shared usage areas, cannot be protected and are brought under market dominance in the long run.

In other words, it is clear that formations similar to the big state or social state experienced in the historical process, where the less developed forms of capital were reflected, should be seen as modified capitalism (a system with a changed operating mechanism) and do not reflect pure capitalism. Because in pure capitalism, the system dynamic is always and under all conditions triggered in the direction of capital accumulation; for this purpose, while all production is drawn into the market process, the majority of the value-added is also obtained by capital.

In this framework, the conflict between publicism and marketism is shaped around the struggle to ensure value-added formation by directing the production process against use-value and toward the rule of exchange-value in the first stage, and around the effort to increase the share of surplus value by suppressing wages and the consumer in the second stage. In short, capitalism forces all processes that are not traded in the market into the market to create surplus value.

In this structure of the capitalist system, theoretically, the private production system, not public production, is dominant. In the private production system, with exceptions, the production of nationalized state services is carried out by the state through a trust or tender system. This practice can be in the form of "public production-public financing" or "private production-public financing."

In the first case, the decision and financing of services offered to society for free are made by the public sector. In the second case, that is, in the private production-public financing system, although the service decision and pricing are made by the public sector, the financing is carried out by the public sector.

Although a certain amount of transfer is made to private capital in the private production-public financing system, the cost of the service is socialized and not reflected on the individual benefiting from the service. Although it is slightly different in the second case, in both cases, while the consumer is protected in terms of both production decisions and criteria for benefiting from the service, private capital shows a reflex to siphon resources by entering the public sphere even in the production of public goods.

The privatization policy that the private sector imposes on society, by taking public agents along with it, represents the transition of production and sharing preferences from the public to private capital, including seizing public assets below their value as "primitive accumulation." The reason for this preference, in accordance with the logic of capitalism, is to carry the created value-added to the market and to take a high share of surplus value from within that value-added.

Within the framework of these transactions, the results of marketism occur in the following direction: (1) increasing the product price to increase value-added, thus exploiting the consumer; (2) exploiting labor to increase surplus value. The results of marketism in the context of the "public sector-private sector" relationship are that the dominant capital power in the private sector surpasses public authority, and spending, tax, and administrative decisions are made against the public and social interests, but in favor of capital due to its weight. This situation is valid for society's access to semi-public services such as health and education, just as it is for consumer goods.

While discussing the subject of publicism, the public-political authority should also be discussed in the context of the effectiveness of the subject; in other words, the formation and functioning of the state apparatus should also be taken into account. In state-owned enterprises (KİT) and similar organizations, in addition to labor exploitation, the issue of the state encouraging capital at the expense of society through the application of low prices for products sold by these organizations to private sector production units via Council of Ministers decisions also comes to the agenda. This issue can be handled with the state-capital relationship or the Poulantzas approach and the capitalist state understanding. For publicism to be in the public interest as an intermediate regime in the capitalist system, it depends on the condition that the public weight, which can at least balance the weight of capital on political management, or a Habermas-esque public sphere system is effective. It is necessary for the public interest to carefully monitor and reject the fact that today's governance concept does not overlap with the public sphere, and is even on a completely opposite development line, in the name of democracy and publicism. Against publicism, marketism can also negatively affect the technology production capacities of the country's industry and researchers by entering the sphere of influence of powerful international capital despite the widespread public decisions of the country's economy.