Endless Fight

Do you know what the Wagner Act is?

This law on workers' rights was passed in the United States in 1935. 

Under President Roosevelt in 1934, workers' rights were achieved in the United States with nationwide strikes, albeit with difficulty. 

Many lives were lost so that this law could be passed. Who and who were killed by the so-called lawmen who were directed by the landowners of America. What pain was suffered in those days.

But in the end, with this law, both the right to strike and working conditions were regulated for workers.

Work for one dollar a day, you have no other rights, no other chance!

You came from who knows where to California to work. If you had a penny, you spent it on the road. 

It's not like it was in the early days of America. Those who set foot on American soil in search of hope had to work for the landlords in order to survive, let alone to live, or at least to feed themselves.

The land had already been divided up, those early days when wild capitalism was flourishing and roaming around.  

You work in the apple orchards and even the bowl of food that is given to you to fill your stomach so that you can work is deducted from the pittance you can earn. 

You live in makeshift shacks. If you can call that living. 

There is not even a proper doctor if you have a pain, or if you get sick, or if you fall from a ladder in a tree and break something. 

There is not even a midwife to give birth in that settlement of dusty shacks built on the edge of the stone-covered lands.

Those who want to work are constantly moving from one landowner to another, like seasonal workers in our country. With no guarantees for anything. Maybe not even a dollar a day.

The working hours are not clear anyway. There are apples and they have to pick them day and night, there is no other way! You are just like slaves. You just work and work and work for pennies. Picking apples. And at your head are the faithful servants of the landowner. 

The landowners, the apple orchard owners, say three dollars a day at the beginning of the work, but then when it's time to pay them, they backtrack, they say one dollar a day, if you work for one dollar, work, otherwise get out. There is nothing you can do.

The American writer John Steinbeck wrote the famous novel "In Dubious Battle", which translates as "Endless Fight". 

The author wrote this novel in 1936. The movie of the novel was also shot. I recommend it to those who want to watch it.

In our country, union and strike rights were regulated by the 1961 constitution. But whether it was because these rights were constitutionally presented to the society from above, or because no effort was made to achieve them, the rights were first gradually trimmed by the politicians of the day, and then the 61 constitution was abolished with the coup d'état.

Workers' rights are still valid today, of course, but as we know, both the working class and those on fixed incomes have very low economic incomes.

Trade union rights and the right to strike are also being blocked by presidential decrees or by governor's offices on various grounds.

As unionized workers in the workplaces are gradually losing their jobs, the number of unionized workers is constantly decreasing.

Or, when you become a member of government-led unions, you don't get the rights you should. Because, as I said, there is already a secret pressure on this issue for security reasons.

I don't know if the current government's handouts are helping those in difficult situations, but the income distribution in Turkey is much worse than in many other countries in the world. It is getting worse day by day due to inflation.

Maybe our situation is not as bad as it is in poor countries in need of a slice of bread, but we are certainly in a much worse situation than the European countries we should normally compare ourselves to.

In terms of public awareness, I wish everyone had read John Steinbeck's novel, or at least watched the movie. 

Still, I think the problems today are much more complicated than the problems of those days. 

Today, even if we organize on a larger scale, the problems we are in are not easily solved with workers' rights or a slightly better income. 

The problem is much deeper, global.

Each country offers its own resources to its citizens at more favorable prices, of course, but prices are also formed under global influences.

Let me give an example: 

As we all know, Russia is a very rich country in terms of energy resources. 

But even standard gasoline (95 octane) is sold at gas stations for 51 rubles and 60 capitals per liter. If we convert rubles to dollars at the exchange rate of 74.66, that is 69 cents. In Turkish Lira, if we take the exchange rate of 18.40 to the dollar, it is 12 lira 72 kurus.

Yes, 95 octane gasoline costs 20 lira 37 kurus in Istanbul today. 

In proportions, gasoline is actually quite expensive in Turkey compared to Russia, but as I said, this is the country where oil comes from. So we need to look at the cost of gasoline in reality.

With the extraction and refinery costs, the price should have been around 15 cents maximum. 

But the pump price is 69 cents!

So it is still almost 5 (five) times more expensive than it should be.

There may be different reasons why the prices are so different from the cost, especially government taxation can cause the prices to be much higher than the cost. 

But since almost all products are affected by global pricing, this is an opportunity for the government. 

So even gasoline can be priced differently in Russia than its actual cost. 

In most cases, it is well above the real cost, no matter what product is under state control. 

The internal conditions of the countries, such as inflation, also add to this situation in terms of making prices much more expensive.

I mean, we have more problems than just labor rights and proper income distribution. For proper income distribution, first of all there has to be income. In the global market, it is not that easy for a country to generate income easily. After all, the price of everything is interconnected. Especially in energy-poor countries like ours, prices are really affected by external market conditions.

I recently watched a good discussion program on a TV channel where most of the participants were socialists and they expressed their views on how they think the economy should be managed in terms of the future of the country.

Although I actually agreed with many of the views expressed in the program, for some reason I thought of what I mentioned above. 

While watching the program, I realized how far behind what the participants talked about as a solution was.

I think this is where the real problem of this left-wing intellectual elite starts. 

They ignore the globalization of the world and its impact on the economy. 

At the time when these theories were put forward, there was no globalization. 

Today, we do not live in a bubble. Each country is naturally influenced by the other, like a united vessel. 

As the famous saying goes, if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, there is a storm in the US. 

However, I believe that the problem is even deeper than that. 

Especially with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the capitalist system has been accepted as a more valid system all over the world. 

Even the Soviets of the time, today's Russia, is ruled by capitalism.

Capitalism means capital. The accumulation of capital in the hands of some people is increasingly destabilizing the balance.  

While large masses of people have to settle for very low incomes, capital continues to accumulate rapidly in the hands of a very few rich people. If you look around the world, you will realize that the situation is much more dire.

I don't think markets are like compound pots, as is generally accepted, but rather they work in a dynamic way. 

If you were to give me an analogy, I would say the bottom of the deltas that form where a river flows into the sea. If there are tiny little tributaries that branch off from the bed of a big river, these are not streams that feed the river, they are tiny little tributaries that branch off from the bed of the main river, as I said, as in deltas. 

While most of the water coming from above continues to flow through the main river bed, the amount of water that falls into the small streams varies according to the drought conditions during the year. Maybe because of the level difference, sometimes they dry up completely.

I think this is how markets work, river or stream beds are like capital, the wider and deeper the bed you have, the more you get a share of the flowing water. In the same way, the more capital you have, the more share you get from the flow of money. As they say, money attracts money, just like that.

So is there a solution to this situation?

Is this how capital will always multiply?

Is the value of labor going to fall and fall?

In fact, this is a paradoxical situation, a two-edged stick in the mud, as we call it. Or a situation of spitting up or spitting down. The mustache and beard syndrome.

In order to do things, you need big capital. The country's prosperity depends on the balance in income distribution. I think these two extremes are in conflict with each other.

The more balanced the income distribution, the less capital accumulation, and therefore the less jobs, and therefore the less prosperity. 

The opposite situation is also unpleasant, the bigger the capital, the more jobs, but the more capital hegemony, so again low incomes, again the struggle for life on the breadline for those on fixed incomes.

But as I said, the priority should be in the generation of income so that there is something to distribute it evenly.

Is there no way out of this spiral?

Of course there is, both large capital accumulations and balanced income are possible. There are examples of this in the world.

It is necessary to balance capital and labor in such a way that one does not hinder the other. One should not hegemonize the other. 

But at this point I would say, first of all, look at our great leader. 

Atatürk gave a lot of thought to this issue. He found the solution in statism in the conditions of that day.

Today, I think we should change the compulsory statism of that day a little bit.

I don't think the views of socialist friends, such as the need to re-establish SEEs, the state should give jobs to everyone, everyone should work for the state, are valid views in today's competitive world. 

Yes, I think the state will be involved, the principle of statism will work, but only for the sake of market equilibrium.

More precisely, the state will support companies in the areas that the country needs in international competition. I don't mean that it will direct them, it will support whoever can be successful in whatever, but the priority of support will be the needs of the country. 

Within the country, it will first provide the conditions that will prevent capital from crushing labor. 

When necessary, it will intervene in the free market with the means at its disposal, and let me underline it once again with a bold line, ENOUGH. For this, it will have the necessary instruments at its disposal. If necessary, it will have production facilities, not in a cumbersome structure similar to SOEs, but especially in critical products, where it can increase its production when necessary.

On the other hand, it will also prepare capital for international competition, and as I said, it will incentivize it where necessary. Let me emphasize again, in the necessary areas, in areas that have potential for the country. For example, like South Korea, it will encourage the emergence of brands that can compete with the world in automobiles. Or South Korea has given great incentives for the famous cell phone brand. I am talking about these and similar situations.

This is the only way to achieve balance. 

But is there anyone in our political arena who promises this?

I don't know, I have not heard promises in this detail until today. 

Many parties are more concerned with how to bring foreign investment to the country. 

Some of them say that they will bring clean investment and accuse their opponents of unclean investment or village-colored money. 

The current government, on the other hand, is trying to discredit the others because they intend to go back to the old ways. 

Accusers accuse each other, but when you ask what the solution is, they all just mumble something. No one really talks about solutions. They pass it off with standard economic terms.

Anyway, we are waiting, let's see what comes out of the six-party table at the end of the month. Since so many different views are coming together, maybe they will come up with a real solution. I think the six table is very important.

On the other hand, I don't think the society will care about these details, no matter what remedy they think.

The social degeneration is on such a large scale that it seems to me that no one is worried about the future of the country right now. People are either worried about making a living or filling their pockets.

I think the owners of capital are thinking like a fish out of water, how can I take what is in the pockets of others, or what can I do to get cheaper labor and add to my savings.

If the owners of very large capital had wanted to do what they wanted to do until today, they would have done a lot in this country. 

When you think about it, there are so many things that need to be done to take the country to a higher level. 

But this country used to have capitalists who sold the same type of car to the society by changing a little bit here and a little bit there. 

The biggest problem of the capitalists was that the government should raise the customs fees so that our established order would not be disrupted with higher technology to be brought from abroad. 

So they would put all kinds of pressure on the government. Of course, since it was in the interest of politicians to back the power of capital in the elections, there were politicians in the political arena who would say yes to whatever capital wanted.

The current government today is not much different from the old ones. Maybe it wasn't like that in the beginning, but they have again become the power of the established order.

I say this, but at the same time they do not spare their oriental cunning. 

In these elections, they have adopted the slogan "Enough is enough!" in case they use it before the opposition.

I don't know if this slogan will catch on, maybe it will. For such a degenerated society, maybe whatever they say will work. 

If you remember, someone once said that if we said we would build a four-lane road to the moon one day, this nation would still believe it. A politician does not say such things for nothing. He probably trusts something and that's why he said that.

I think the subject has gone on for a long time. For some reason, this time the subject brings up the subject.

There is really a lot to do. 

I think the first priority should be to calm the country down a bit. In other words, normalization.

In the upcoming elections, I really wish that the table of six would draw a future perspective by taking these things into consideration.

Let them win this election for the better first, and then we can look at the rest later, I guess. The country really needs normalization.

I wish a Turkey with a balanced income distribution in peace, but more importantly, a Turkey that can reach the level of civilizations.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow.