[Marxism] A Trip To Turkey, The Palace and The Turkish Peasants

[Mehmet Cagatay <mehmetcagatayaydin@xxxxxxxxx>]

I didn't know that Mr. Proyect is married with a Turkish lady until this
morning, when I read his articles about his trips to Turkey. It seems that
when I was curious about the nonexistence of the moderator, he was
actually in my dream neighborhood: Kadýkoy. Unfortunately, I was living in
Ankara now, the capital of Turkey, whose trademark is the bureaucratic
paleness of its daily life (Ankara is the city of dreams. Because in
Ankara, you can not carry on living without dreaming). I try not to miss
any chance to visit Istanbul, where I spent eight years between Super
Restaurant in Beyoglu and Kadýkoy Fasil near the Coast. Contrary to Mr.
Proyect, I detest Raki, among the alcohols whose flavor is probably the
worst in the world (I will not make any more comment on this matter to
avoid of denigrating Turkey's "national identity" and confronting the new
Turkish Penal Code.. Pardon, I forgot that our "spritual identity" (Hegel)
-the things that gather us- is not resides in our tastes but in our
insistent denial of the crimes of our ruling class). I simple believe the
holy Trinity of Beer-Wine-Whiskey...

Anyway, I would like to reply Mr. Proyect's some impressions on his visit
to Topkapý Palace. He wrore:

"Two thoughts have stuck with me about this Ottoman shrine to conspicuous
consumption. One, could it be possible that Turkey's current intractable
social and economic crisis and, moreover, the failure to develop into a
fully modern state be related to the fact that Turkish counterparts of the
sans-culottes never trashed such a palace in the course of a bloody
bourgeois-democratic revolution? Two, what does it say about the mindset
of the Ottoman rulers that they were attempting to a palace in the 19th
century that was modeled after 17th century Europe? What this time warp
tells me is that the Turkish ruling class--such as it was--had failed to
keep pace with the changing socio-economic realities of the capitalist
world. Rather than pouring money into gold dinnerware, it should obviously
have been building roads and telegraph lines."

As Engels identificated accuratly (in his letter to Marx bearing the date
of 22 December (1882), The non-evolution of the Ottoman's use-value
production's to capitalist accumulation originates its "semi-feudal"
(Engels) structure which obstructed the development of commerce and
indirectly precluded the birth of the merchant class. The landlords of
Feudal Europe and Ottoman landlords (derebeyi) are quite different that in
the Ottoman Empire, the ownership of soil was appropriated by the state
and only the authority to collect taxes (on definite rates devided between
the right of the state and the right of landlords) from production was
donated to very variated quality scale of the people of the Empire. What
makes one is a Derebeyi is not his family origins but his immediate
function in the distribution process. So either a cunning civil servant or
a succesful soldier could be become a landlord in anytime by attracting
the attention of servants who are sufficiently close the throne. Thus, in
this order, commerce is not the object of market but the object of
military expenditures and subjective extravagance of the bureaucrat class.
The surplus production from drudgery was not realized in a market but in
the orgies of ruling class and in the equipment of the army which was the
most vital apparatus for the Empire to expand by conquests and maintain
this unproductive-vicious circle. This expansion was stablized until they
bumbed their big head to the Western bourgeois.

In the last days of the Empire, the condition of the poor Turkish peasant
got worse. Because of the fiscal restrictions, ownership of the state
bacame only nomimal and the Ottoman state resort to a foxy solution to get
out of the expenses of organisation of tax collectors: Yes! Let us
privatize it!! (Turkish peasants was acquainted with privatisation long
before their first contact with capitalism). Ottoman state put its right
to collect taxes for auction. The profit of the best bidder is the
difference between the amount he has paid to the state and the amount he
would pull out from peasants. The Ottoman state interfered in neither the
rate of the taxes nor the methods of these usurpers.

This is the complate analogy of the perfect liberalism.

Lois Proyect: "What this time warp tells me is that the Turkish ruling
class--such as it was--had failed to keep pace with the changing
socio-economic realities of the capitalist world."

It can be related to the qualities of the ruling class: They were not
feodal landlords but bureaucrats.

This is a very short summary of a long and bitter tale. In conclusion, I
would like to make a quote from someone by altering his some words. Guess
Who:

"Indeed, Turkish history prides itself on having travelled a road which no
other nation in the whole of history has ever travelled before, or ever
will again. We have shared the restorations of modern nations without ever
having shared their revolutions. We have been restored, firstly, because
other nations dared to make revolutions, and, secondly, because other
nations suffered counter-revolutions; on the one hand, because our masters
were afraid, and, on the other, because they were not afraid. With our
shepherds to the fore, we only once kept company with freedom, on the day
of its internment."

"But Turkey did not rise to the intermediary stage of political
emancipation at the same time as the modern nations. It has not yet
reached in practice the stages which it has surpassed in theory. How can
it do a somersault, not only over its own limitations, but at the same
time over the limitations of the modern nations, over limitations which it
must in reality feel and strive for as for emancipation from its real
limitations? Only a revolution of radical needs can be a radical
revolution and it seems that precisely the preconditions and ground for
such needs are lacking."

If Turkey has accompanied the development of the modern nations only with
the abstract activity of thought without taking an effective share in the
real struggle of that development, it has, on the other hand, shared the
sufferings of that development, without sharing in its enjoyment, or its
partial satisfaction. To the abstract activity on the one hand corresponds
the abstract suffering on the other. That is why Turkey will one day find
itself on the level of European decadence before ever having been on the
level of European emancipation. It will be comparable to a fetish
worshipper pining away with the diseases of Christianity."

Mehmet Çagatay
http://weblogmca.blogspot.com/


                
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