The salvation of the left

"The working class is democratic, because it always demands certain rights. But the working class is not progressive. Because the working class does not pursue developing the forces of production. On the contrary, in this respect it is conservative. For example, no trade union has a demand to develop the means of production. It does not want the computer to enter the production process. This resistance does not mean progressiveness, of course. This resistance is conservatism."

These words belong to Hüseyin Ergün, who was elected chairman of the SHP at its latest congress. Ergün, whom we hosted last Friday on the program called Tersi ve Yüzü that Ferhat Kentel and I present on Mehtap TV, is a serious figure who has closely followed, recorded and, in his own way, contributed to the entire course of the left movement in Turkey. He has been a founder or chairman of many organizations such as the Federation of Idea Clubs, the Workers' Party of Turkey, the New Democracy Movement and the Mülkiyeliler Union.

The interview he gave about a month ago to Neşe Düzel in the newspaper Taraf found the expected echo in left-wing circles. In fact, it is clear that in criticizing the left for the situations into which the Turkish left fell in its Ergenekon test, his concern has nothing to do with trying to present the left as a hopeless case. Some left-wing circles may perceive his words in this way and close themselves off entirely, and anti-coup circles may consume what he says only in this context. Yet what Ergün is really after in criticizing the left is not to beat up the left, but to be able to point to a real path of opening for left politics. His words pointing to the constantly intertwined histories of the left and coup-ism may resonate very differently these days, but in my view Ergün's critique of the left runs much deeper, extending to the left's failure to ever draw a more realistic map that would let it find its way in the gaps directly between theory and life. That is why the left that is the subject of Ergün's criticism is not only the left afflicted with coup-ism or Ergenekon-ism, but left politics itself in the general sense.

In this sense, one of the most important problems of the left is that, in its current state or trajectory, it cannot read the world well. This is of course not the left's only problem, but it is a very important one. The left continues to read the world not from within life but from within texts written for a certain period. Moreover, it takes as its basis not the other possible interpretations of those texts but their worst interpretations.

The developments experienced in the world of the 20th century did not confirm the left texts or predictions written for the 19th century. While the left's conceptions of social classes were already problematic, the new social strata that emerged in the 20th century and continue to emerge, and the new fields of conflict, rendered a worldview based on class analysis almost entirely invalid. But the language of left politics has never been able to adapt itself to the realities of the new world.

Moreover, the actors of left politics were not even able to notice the transformation taking place within themselves. They saw themselves as the savior Messiah the world was waiting for, and did not even notice that they were gradually turning into monsters from which the world needed to be saved.

Today, left politics, especially in Turkey, not only cannot promise salvation to anyone, but because of the anti-democratic processes it has caused through the power equations with which it has become articulated, has turned into a "sabotage" from which "one needs to be saved."

Meanwhile, in Ergün's account we also learn that the origin of the word sabotage is "wedging." The history of the concept is even more interesting... In the 19th century, workers in factories tried to prevent the machines from working by putting wedges between their gears, and thus to prevent the possible layoffs resulting from advancing technology. It is understood that this sabotage has no progressive aspect whatsoever and has, over time, worked its way into the left as an incorrigible habit.

After relating that Sadun Aren told him years ago "no good economist has come out of this socialist world either," Ergün attributes the reason to the left's ignoring the basic theories of economics, that is, the market. Yet when you reject the market, you remove a mechanism that works in the natural environment and put in its place a made-up, contrived mechanism in which everything is done by central planning and in which quality and diversity in production are never taken into account. This is the very essence of a chronic approach that only cuts the left's ties with life further.

Starting the critique of left politics from this point seems unavoidable for a left politics with stronger ties to life and reality, so to speak, "for the left's ultimate salvation."

In my opinion, what Ergün, who is also the author of a book titled "The Left in the Information Age," says is too important to be consumed within current debates, and deserves to be evaluated in the context of political sociology regarding the relationship between theory and life.