In all the countries where it is practiced, the capitalist system frequently enters into crises due to cyclical crises of ten, twenty-five and fifty years each, caused by the fall in the rate of profit, the inability to sell the commodities produced and include them in the capital cycle, the excessive accumulation of commodities caused by keeping the general wage level too low, and the fall in the rate of living labor inherent in living commodities.
These systemic crisis tendencies can never be resolved, they only change form by moving from one part of the world to another and from one type of problem to another. Especially with the neoliberal era, capital tries to overcome cyclical crises by spreading over time and indebting people through the credit mechanism, and by going to non-commodified parts of the world and spreading over space.
In this sense, how capital maintains its dominance over society and the individual despite crises is a problem that is being questioned and sought to be solved by the oppressed of the world. For a global anti-capitalist struggle, it is necessary to seek answers to how, by whom and from where the tools that capitalism offers us will be used. According to Harvey (2010), capital circulates between a number of interrelated “fields of activity” in the search for profit.
These areas of activity;
-Technological and organizational forms,
-Social relations,
-Institutional and administrative arrangements,
-Production and labor processes,
-Relations with nature,
-The reproduction of everyday life and species,
-Mental conceptions of the world.
Capital can neither circulate nor accumulate without touching each of these spheres of activity in some way. The study of the co-evolution of the spheres of activity is therefore important for understanding the character of capitalist society as a whole.
None of these fields dominates over the others, each has its own autonomous development possibilities. Each field is subject to constant renewal and transformation, both in interaction with others and through an internal dynamic that constantly generates innovations in human affairs. The relations between the spheres are dialectically interwoven through the circulation and accumulation of capital.
Throughout its history, capitalism has been in constant development in terms of technological and organizational forms. The process that has developed since the emergence of the factory system and the innovations in the functioning and management of the factory are indicators of this situation. Developments from the scientific management approach to fordist functioning and flexible functioning can be given as examples.
The field of social relations is in a position that affects other fields in the sense that it is the field in which class relations are formed and which is constantly changing as a result of the stage of capital accumulation. Institutional-administrative arrangements are realities specific to capitalism, which has come into being and continuously developed since feudalism began to be overcome. These arrangements are also important in determining the processes of production and labor. The reproduction of daily life and the reproduction of the species are among the activities that affect relations with nature and disrupt the natural appearance and structure of the environment. The field that conceptualizes and tries to unify all these areas is the mental conceptions of the world.
A revolutionary anti-capitalist movement can start from any of these seven different fields of activity. A survey of alternative ideas and oppositional social movements will show that there are different schools of thought on the most appropriate starting point. The important thing is not to stay where we started, but to change our current orientation according to the intended or unintended consequences of our interventions. Revolution has to be a movement. If it cannot move within, between and through different fields, it is going nowhere. It is necessary to think of alliances within the framework of the whole spectrum of social forces that have formed in different fields.
In our country, there have been political-social movements that have tried to understand capitalism and struggle against it since the 1800s when capitalism emerged. These social movements have often emphasized some of the above-mentioned fields of activity, some of them have attached importance to them and included them in their programs, and some of them have never attached importance to them. For example, pre-1980 revolutionary movements, while analyzing the world and Turkey, for many years focused on technological and organizational forms, institutional and administrative arrangements, and postponed solutions in other areas, or idealist movements emerged that were caught between the reproduction of daily life and the species and the mental comprehension of the world. Social movements, especially those that emerged after the 2000s, have included the ever-incomplete field of relations with nature within the sphere of political activity.
The political organizations that have recently been searching for anti-capitalist struggle both in the world and in our country have to take into account the fields of activity we have listed, create programs related to these fields, observe the sensitivities of these fields, and wage a struggle with a perspective that focuses on overcoming capitalism as a whole.
Sources:
Harvey, D. (2010). The Capital Conundrum: The Crises of Capitalism. Sel Publishing. Istanbul.