On the budget

The shadowy semi-intellectuals who gave the green light to the transition to the presidential system in Turkey with the phrase “it’s not enough, but yes” need to be held accountable by the entire society today: have freedoms increased with this system, or have they been curtailed? Let us briefly look at the issues of freedoms, the concept of the public, and the right to use wealth within the budget process, which is an indicator of this grave process. 

There is no need to look at the Budget Law that will be published in the Official Gazette. Because the first sentence of the Budget Law will certainly begin with a flowery but deceptive sentence such as: "In line with the ultimate goal of increasing the country's welfare level, the basic objectives of the 2027 Program are to increase growth and employment, reduce the current account deficit, maintain a strong stance in public finance, and ensure and sustain price stability." However, the situation will not unfold like this at all during the process, because there will be no representatives of laborers, retirees, and the general public during the preparation and discussion of the budget. 

As a political document in which the executive branch is authorized by being enacted in parliament regarding how much of the social production will be allocated to which public service, the public budget reveals two important issues. The first is how much of the national income will be allocated to public expenditures and how the provided allocation will be distributed among public services; the second is the types of taxes and other public revenue items from which the necessary resources will be provided. However, when the subject is approached in terms of the social nature of the budget, it is understood that the budget is a document aimed at capital accumulation with a weak social character in line with the system's ideology, both in terms of the social burden distribution of public service costs and the social benefit distribution of public expenditures. The budget, which is seen as one of the foundations of bourgeois democracy, is essentially a formal public financial instrument that is far from ensuring economic democracy and can only partially provide even political democracy, under the shadow of the formation of parliament and the system's ideology. The way to sell such a document to the public is to mention the expression in the introductory sentence as the first sentence of the budget law in almost every budget year. 

The preparation of the 2027 budget is continuing at full speed in parliament. The heated arguments and clashes between the opposition and government supporters during the meetings held in the Budget Committee regarding each spending department are often reflected in the press. If researchers were to examine what happened under the roof of today's parliament after about half a century or more, they would reach a consensus that what they saw was a complete “sham fight.” It is assumed that with the adoption of the budget bill as a result of the heated debates in parliament, the budget volume and public expenditure distribution reach an optimal decision level quite close to social justice, outside of market operations, through democratic decision-making. However, in bourgeois democracies, the matter does not proceed in this vein at all. The flowery expression that governments do not neglect to put at the beginning of the budget bill every year is hammered into heads and hearts, but it is not implemented. The difference between rhetoric and actual implementation is based on the difference between the views of political democracy and economic democracy.

The definition of the budget, which sounds pleasant at first perception and creates a strong breeze of democracy, collapses like a house of cards due to its emptiness when poked a little. The fact that the promises made in budget texts are neither written in the text nor realized stems from the infrastructure and logic of the capitalist system. When we look at the history of capitalism, we see that two different concepts of democracy emerged as a result of two different types of revolutionary movements. The first of these is the “political democracy” concept and practice, known as bourgeois democracy, which emerged after the French Revolution of 1789 and is still in practice. The second is the “economic democracy” concept and practice, which emerged as a result of the development of industry in England in the 1840s and also takes into account the distribution of social income. Today, in almost all capitalist countries, the philosophy of public administration is handled and implemented in the context of the concept of political democracy. Accordingly, the dominant view is that every citizen is equal, and as an equal citizen, with the quality of having the freedom to vote and be elected, and as a voter or a determinant of those elected in the utopia of equal citizenship, every citizen can have a say, directly or indirectly, on the amount to be transferred from national production to the public sphere and the distribution of this amount to expenditure channels.  

However, this approach is contrary to both the dynamics of the capitalist system and the class nature of the capitalist state. In the dynamics of capitalist operation, on one hand, the distribution of social income deteriorates and classes are formed, while on the other hand, the state becomes dispossessed, transforms into a tax-state structure, and falls under the influence and dominance of the property-capital class. In this condition, the state structure, which moves away from the laboring segment and the people, turns into a position dependent on capital. If the kitchen of the operation is giving us these signals, then where do we put the populist rhetoric in the budgets and the superficial and formal explanations in the textbooks? For one thing, it is already understood from the difference between what is promised every year and what is actually experienced that the positive and populist rhetoric in the introductory sections of budget laws is a kind of process of masking the operation or creating social consent. Well, when we think about how society cannot develop a reaction to such an obvious contradiction repeated every year or hold its representatives in parliament accountable, we are faced with the system ideology that inhibits our thinking and ideological political propaganda tasked with similar functions. However, what is actually happening has nothing to do with what is promised in budget laws or what is listed in textbooks; it cannot, because in both sources, the hidden purpose is not to reflect the truth, but to transfer resources from the class that creates national value to the capital class without causing too much [theft], and to legitimize this transfer by enacting it with a budget document and placing it under state protection. This process is carried out in every field and stage, from the size of the budget to the social burden distribution of the tax burden and the sharing of public funds among expenditure items.

Such being the case, there is no benefit in constantly stomping on budget items. Because the entire document, down to the finest detail, is the result of a system and operation. Directing criticism at the budget prevents attention from being directed to the main source and, as it were, instills in society the belief that if important changes are made to the budget, things and the operation can be corrected. Therefore, it is necessary and more meaningful to look not at the budget, which is essentially a result, but at the capital movement processes that form the basis of the work and the state structure and philosophy structured upon it.