Issue Editors: Galip Yalman, M. Gürsan Şenalp, Muammer Kaymak, Pınar Bedirhanoğlu 
Modern Bourgeois Economics: Empty Wishes and Inadequate Diagnosis in the Face of Survival Problem
Serdal Bahçe
The evolutionary process through which the modern bourgeois economics has been passing has turned it into a well-defined dogma, this process has also eradicated the last remnants of the scientific outlook. This dogma has been prohibiting the questioning of three essential canonical premises: private property, capitalist commodity production and capitalistically organized markets. Modern bourgeois economics which has become a dogma has been hierarchically organized at both institutional and individual levels. Because of this organization, analysis of the reactions and remarks of prominent bourgeois economists will suffice for our purpose. The basic aim of this study is to evaluate reactions of the modern bourgeois economics against the 2007/2008 financial crisis and ensuing stagnation, and also Covid pandemics. This dogmatic trait of thought has proven itself to be unable to explain the basic tendencies that led to the 2007/2008 financial crisis, and the ensuing short recovery and then stagnation. The dogma’s choice for the basic factors underlying the crisis and the stagnation are no doubt of secondary importance. When the Covid-19 pandemics erupted, the first reaction of the dogma was to get paralyzed. Then on, it began to make calculations based upon life-surplus value trade-off and produce alternative policy schemes. Indeed, Corona unfolds not only the ridiculousness of capitalism, but the misery of modern bourgeois economics also.
Keywords: Modern bourgeois economics, dogma, methodology, 2007/2008 crisis, coronavirus, pandemic.
How Does New Institutional Economics Write Economic History? A Critical Perspective
Alp Yücel Kaya – Ali Onur Peker
Economic history, which was the most favorite discipline of social sciences during the 1960s and 1970s when Marxism was decisive in the determination of research questions, decayed in the 1990s. In the new conjuncture that the world economy entered in the 2000s, it regained its privileged position within the social sciences in general, in the economics discipline in particular especially by means of studies based on particularly New Institutional Economics. New Institutional Economics, as liberal economics that contains both classical and neoclassical schools, studies history of wealth and growth. Its perspective developed as critics of liberal economics differentiating, following Marx’s conceptualization, institutions as natural and artificial ones and focusing on natural ones. New Institutional Economics accepts such a differentiation but as opposed to the liberal economics, focuses on and studies artificial institutions. There exists however different approaches to define (artificial) institutions among the economic historians of New Institutional Economics; recent studies privileged religion, culture, law, politics, geography in the study of institutions. In this article, we will study economic historians who put forward political economy approach in the definition of institutions. These historians continue to study history of wealth and growth and pay attention to the conflict of interests; as such they incline to comeback to the context in which classical school studied economics. In this article we will review this political economy approach from the perspective of Marx’s critique of political economy. In order to develop such a critical perspective we will follow and discuss Şevket Pamuk’s last book that follows political economy approach of New Institutional Economics when studying economic history of Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey as well as its theoretical references.
Keywords: New institutional economics, political economy, economic history, institutions, economic sphere, non-economic sphere.
Debating Financial Accumulation in the Context of Transforming Central Form of Capital: Securitization and Intangible Capital
Tansel Güçlü
Financialization or the concept preferred in this study as financial accumulation has become a hotly-debated issue in the process of the 2008 GFC and after. Although the issue has been discussed from so many angles, the approaches to the phenomenon of finance as the sphere of enhancing speculative activities premised on the traditional categorical distinctions such as production and circulation or finance and industry have mostly kept dominating the analyses. This study aims to scrutinize financial accumulation with putting forward the inherent gap between the traditional categories built by those theories or approaches and the dynamics of capital accumulation they are trying to describe. In the context of transforming central form of capital, finance is analyzed as a result of conflicting historical process as the expression of capital in more abstract forms and as the process that transforms concrete level of social relations, and in this sense as the product of developing new forms of arbitrage. Accordingly, the frameworks associated with the central capital form of the previous period that have examined its crisis and directions are mostly insufficient to comprehend the crisis dynamics and working of the contemporary financial accumulation. In this regard, this study investigates the dynamics of securitization and intangible capital that give capital liquidity in the light of identifying the fundamental transformation from the centrality of the Joint Stock Company or Giant Corporation of the long 20th century to the centrality of derivative form. The ultimate aim of the study is to develop a framework that analyzes the actual working of accumulation and its new frontiers and explores the elements of political struggle against the current form of capital.
Keywords: Financial accumulation, financialization, derivative, securitization, intangible capital.
Beyond the Dichotomy of Degrowth and Green Growth: Ecological Breakdown and Capitalism
B. Güney Işıkara
As the ecological breakdown deepens and we approach threshold values in terms of critical indicators, ecological movements gained momentum over the past years. Discussions around a Green New Deal that first occupied the U.S. political scene quickly gained a global character. Meanwhile, the left is struggling with the way the ecological crisis is framed independent of social relations and structural elements on the one hand, and having an internal debate around the correct narrative and actions plans, on the other. In this context, the green growth and degrowth schools clash implicitly or explicitly. The green growth camp proposes to rapidly increase green and renewable energy supply by means of Keynesian employment and (re-)distribution policies. The degrowth paradigm, on the other hand, which is much more dynamic and heterogeneous, problematizes capitalism and the growth imperative inherent to it, and thereby pushes the discussion to more radical grounds. Yet still, instead of disrupting the foundations upon which capitalism as a mode of production rises, it is contented with suppressing the outcomes. In this paper I will first present the dimensions of the ecological breakdown and widely used notions such as the Anthropocene as a context. Then, I will argue that the dichotomy of green growth vs. degrowth is a false one, and that it is impossible to organize social production consciously without replacing capitalism by an alternative mode of production.
Keywords: Ecological breakdown, degrowth, green growth, Anthropocene.
For a New Critique of Neoclassical Economics and Neoliberal Power: Thinking with Veblen and Foucault
Ceyhun Gürkan
Considering neoliberalism as a complex power structure beyond a certain set of economic policies, the diversity of power structures and relations naturally extends the scope of analysis and criticism of the neoliberal power. Moreover, when the inextricable link between power and knowledge is inevitably embedded in this analysis, the scope of the analysis and criticism expands more. The political and methodological critical analysis of neoclassical economics, which, with its early and late versions, is the main source of truth and knowledge-power of neoliberal power today, necessitates going beyond economics discipline. Considering neoliberalism as a power-knowledge complex, this essay attempts to think together Thorstein Veblen’s institutional and evolutionary economics and Michel Foucault’s analytics of power and governmentality. In the writings of both critics, it is Veblen, the father of the term, who is more involved in the critique of neoclassical economics. What they have in common is that they do not consider neoclassical economics as an ordinary subject of the economic critique. For both critics, power/culture/institution and knowledge are inseparable and understandable in their symbiotic relationship with each other. Within the theoretical and analytical frameworks of Veblen and Foucault, which are engaged with human action and social relations, a contemporary critique of neoclassical economics as a dynamic and action-oriented critical force has the potential to participate in the rising struggles and resistance against the neoliberal power complex.
Keywords: Neoclassical economics, neoliberalism, governmentality, Veblen, Foucault.
On the Relationship Between Neoliberal Development Paradigm and Depoliticization: Tools, Mechanisms, and Repercussions
Arda Bilgen
Thanks to the hegemonic position of neoliberalism in the past 40 years, the concept of depoliticization has become increasingly popular within academic and policymaking circles. Lately, increasing number of political and social scientists of different backgrounds have employed the concept, defined widely as either a post-political context or a governing strategy to rid the policymaking process of politics, to investigate various empirical cases. In the literature of depoliticization in Turkish, too, the number of studies that examine the political, economic, and social issues of Turkey in light of the concept has significantly increased. Studies have increasingly focused on questions such as how the state elites depoliticize the governance of the economy or how post-modern ideology depoliticizes the politics itself, especially after the 2000s. Based on a thorough review of the relevant literature, this article differs from its precursors but at the same time complements them by discussing the political theory behind the concept of depoliticization and by explaining the relationship between neoliberalism and depoliticization. The article puts forward through what sort of mechanisms, and why, neoliberalism banishes the politics through transferring the political to the economic sphere, which is imagined as a technical sphere immune from politics. Based on concrete examples, the article also discusses the impacts of such processes on how development is practiced across the world in general, and in Turkey in particular. Thus, it demonstrates that the concept of depoliticization does not stand on its own and is in fact a deeper concept in terms of its complex political and social roots, and a wider concept in terms of its various types and areas of utilization.
Keywords: Neoliberalism, development, depoliticization, politicization, technicization.
Value Form Analysis or the Critique of Illusion of Economics
Vedat Ulvi Aslan
Value form analysis is based on the categorial distinction between value and its form of appearance. Simple value relation between two commodities includes the whole conceptual content which reveals the importance and mystery of this distinction. Expression of the commodity’s value in the body of another commodity presupposes certain social mediations which are reflected in the conceptual content of this value relation. When these mediations are not analyzed, the forms that derive from social relations are fetishized. The counterpart of this fetishization in economics is its incapability of understanding those social relations that give rise to economic phenomena. Economics, as a result, turns economic categories into things in themselves. Economics, in this sense, becomes an illusion.
Keywords: Value, value form, fetishism, commodity, money.
Rethinking Economy or Reclaiming Critical Political Economy as a Beginning: A Historical Reading
Koray R. Yılmaz
One of the most fundamental issues should be questioned in the context of Economics is to naturalize it with all its conceptual and theoretical dimensions through dehistoricization. This tendency creates an illusion that the economic problems which there have been at least since the beginning of surplus production are addressed under the concept of Economics which has at best 150 years history. This illusion naturalizes this discipline, making its symbiotic relationship invisible with the given mode of production and class structure. This study has two purposes. The first is to reveal the historical character of the concept of Economics by pointing out that it has predecessors and probably successor. We demonstrate this through a comprehensive journey into the history of the concept. Today, Economics is generally considered as a “choice science”. So it has become detached from the traditional scope of the economy in general. The second aim of this study is to emphasize the necessity of the search for an “economy as science” that will bring up the real relations of the capitalist mode of production in the agenda. We tried to discuss the essential aspects of this kind of approach moving from the critiques of Marx on classical political economy and vulgar economy.
Keywords: Oikonomia, political economy, economics, critique of political economy.
Ethical-Political Economy in Aristotle’s Social Ontology
Engin Delice
Could Aristotle’s overarching of economics and political issues be considered within the context of “political economic science” in the modern sense? The expression “Political Economy” has no equivalent in Greek thought. However, it can be assumed that Aristotle used the term khrematistikē in the scope of “Political Economy Science”. Oikonomike in Politics I is a “kind of knowledge”; it is the “household management” knowledge that is related to the administration of households, the maintenance of subsistence – agricultural production – and the control of the household. The model of economic relations in Oikonomika II.1, the list of examples presented for the income of the state in II.2, clearly belong to the content of the “political economy science” in the modern sense. Accordingly, the political economy, which is a summary of the expression of “requirement”, “wealth” and “resources”, is at the centre of Aristotle’s economic theory. Rousseau’s explanations, the definition of A. Smith, the form of conception that Hegel offered it, Marx’s value analyses provide sufficient resources to evaluate Aristotle’s theory in the context of political economy. Is the economy, which in the “practical science” group exempt from ethical and political practices? In Aristotle’s theory, Economy stands between Ethics and Politics. As can be seen in Nicomachean Ethics, the striking aspect of this theory is that politics, as well as the idea of economy, is limited by ethical theory. Therefore, the expression of ethical-political economy is a more accurate determination, because these disciplines aim to manage human relations, even if their tools are different. Although the regulatory principle of the action is ethical, the end is political, which can give it a way to be also called poli-ethic theory, because “highest good” for the individual is combined with “highest good” of the society / state. What is good for the state is the end in itself for the development of social moments. Can the order of the developmental moments of society be interpreted as the existence of a social ontology? Although Aristotle did not use the expression “social ontology”, the relationship of practical knowledge fields (ethics, politics, and economy) shows the existence of community ontology while completing the series of human actions in the social-state union. Since Aristotle does not explain the development of social moments (family, society, state) in detail, systematic society ontology does not appear. However, the basic natural needs and forms of social relations (social moments) which are formed as a response to them, it gain existence as a structure that operates from disorder to order. The concept of “telos” in the system gives the ontological structure a metaphysical quality. However, the role of economic categories in the formation of the social structure (requirement, property, labour, production, exchange, trade, money, exchange, value, law, state, etc.) makes Aristotle’s social ontology materialist. From this point of view, Aristotle’s realization provides a historical basis for the assumption that historical materialist theory can be systematized as history ontology.
Keywords: Political economiy, poli-ethics, ethics, politics, social ontology, Aristotle, Marx, philosophy, Oikonomika.
Friedrich Engels: The Philosopher Who Identified Revolution and Science
Ragıp Ege
The aim of this inquiry is to highlight the depth and the importance of Engels’ impressive work. One of the Hegelian central concepts, the concept of “subject”, had deeply determined Engels’ understanding of the human reality. In the light of this concept, Engels proposed a very specific interpretation of phenomena as revolution and science; he identified these two concepts through a specific representation of the subject. According to Engels revolution and science are the subjects evolving towards the realization of their conditions of possibility and towards the advent of their time. What makes the attractiveness, persuasiveness and the force of the immense work he had created lies in this operation. A proper understanding of this operation requires a precise analysis of not only the specific thought experience of the author but also his specific life experience, i.e. the attention he had given to the specific conditions of life of the worker of the capitalism.
Keywords: Hegel, subject, labour, revolution, science, historical conditions of possibility, time of realization, Marxism.
