We can declare this week Karl Marx Week for two reasons. First, May 5 is Marx's birthday and second, at this time in 2008 we had just begun to feel the effects of the results of the financial crisis that started in the U.S. in 2008. These results substantially verify what Marx wrote in the 1860s. The dynamics of this crisis affect the richest and the poorest in the world; thus, everyone's story intersects at some point.
Marx wrote in the prologue of the first volume of "Das Kapital," published in 1867, "If, however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and agricultural laborers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany things are not nearly so bad, I must plainly tell him de te fabula narratur [It is of you that the story is told - Horace]."
At this very point, especially in these days, Germany should not get optimistic by comparing itself to southern Europe as this is a crisis of the whole system. Furthermore, it will leave more damage in the upcoming years in developed countries, which are the source of the crisis. We are in the middle of days when everybody will have something in common in the story.
Undoubtedly, the European crisis cannot be overcome neither with the European Central Bank adopting monetary expansion nor with Germany's fiscal austerity policy. For recovery from the crisis, all countries should make a monetary and financial union on equal terms and then form a new European Constitution for political integration. However, this is not, of course, enough. Europe should say "No!" to countries like Germany declaring themselves centers that decide everything and develop a new expansion policy.
The EU's view of Turkey and its policies on Turkey should be completely changed.
On April 12, 1853, in his lead article in the New York Daily Tribune, Friedrich Engels wrote, "We are astonished that in the current discussion of the Oriental question the English journals have not more boldly demonstrated the vital interests which should render Great Britain the earnest and unyielding opponent of the Russian projects of annexation and aggrandizement. England cannot afford to allow Russia to become the possessor of the Dardanelles and Bosporus. Both commercially and politically such an event would be a deep if not a deadly blow at British power... the Turkish ports carry a very important and rapidly increasing traffic both with Europe and the interior of Asia. To understand this it is only necessary to look at the map."
Just like Turkey's stand against Russia's recent expansion policy, Engels, who contributed much to Marx's theory, discovered that the Ottoman Empire would take both political and economic stands against Russia's expansion at the very beginning of the Crimea War, which took place between 1853 and 1856. We have the same reality now. Today, differently from 1853, Turkey is not only important because of its commercial corridors, but also it is a very critical hub for energy corridors which will ensure the EU recovers from the crisis. More importantly, the EU needs a new hinterland as a market and capital in the east starting from Turkey in order to achieve a permanent and just political unity. Within this framework, we can comfortably say that the only obstruction for the EU's recovery from the crisis and expansion in peace and democracy is the nation-state approach of central countries like Germany inherited from 19th and 20th centuries.
Apart from that, developed countries, especially Germany, should lend an ear to developing and underdeveloped countries. The recent crisis showed that everybody's story becomes the same at a point. While the poor countries and regions in the world have the dynamics to rescue humanity from this crisis, developed ones, on the contrary, contain dynamics for new crises.
Let me show that the current developing or underdeveloped countries did have 60.9 percent of the global industrial potential back in 1830. In the 10 years until 1860 when Marx wrote "Das Kapital," this rate fell down to 36.7 percent. In 1953, when Marxist Paul Baran from the U.S. was writing the "Political Economy of Growth," the rate declined to under 6.5 percent. China's share in the global industry was 33.3 percent in 1800, 6.3 percent in 1900 and 2.3 percent in 1953. As historian David Christian notes, the term "third world" completely belongs to the 20th century.
In the 1750s, those countries were making 75 percent of the industrial production. At the end of the 20th century, this rate declined to 15 percent. Now, third world countries of the 20th century are leaving their mark on global industrial production. What is more, current developing countries and the eastern world develop not only in industrial production but also information technologies and enable the transition to information society.
In an effort to explain what is going on in recent history, I will mention two main points. The first is the change in the hierarchy of productive powers. The second is that global production equilibrium and forms of hegemony are transforming. While the West loses its productive power to the East, new political openings should develop. However, as the global left, which is supposed to undertake these openings, embraces a wrong heritage, it is not able to fulfill this mission.
Fortunately, we have hope. Even though we cannot achieve the homogeneity of the times when Marx told the story of all of us, we still got closer. The stories are getting identical again. Then, as an epilogue, let's say, "De te fabula narratur!" like Marx.
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