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Özledik!.. Sayfalarımızı karıştırıp bakanları, alıp okuyanları, bizi anlamlı ve anlamsız bulan, tanımadığımız fakat var olan tüm okurları özledik. Kitapçıların dergi raflarını, evlerdeki kitaplıkları, sağa sola sayfaları katlanmış olarak bırakılan unutulan köşeleri, yerleri, masa üstlerini, çanta ve cepleri özledik. Devrimci kahkahanın keyfiyle ve hasretle tekrar Merhaba!

Geciktik!.. Otonom’un 17. sayısını çok geciktirdik. Siyasal süreçteki gelişmelere teknik olarak yetişemedik. Otonom üç ayda bir çıkan bir dergi. Çok ciddi siyasal gelişmeler oldu. Olmaya gebe ve olacak. Bütün olanlar yarın olacaklar ile ilişkili. Bir gelişme sonuçları olgunlaşmadan bir başka gelişmeyle gündemden düşüyor. Her gelişmenin potansiyelini yakalama durumu Otonom’un 17. sayısının çıkmasını erteletti. Gecikmemiz bu yüzdendir. Fakat 17. sayıyı çıkartmamız gerekli; daha fazla ertelemek ayıp olurdu. Bu yüzden 17. sayı güncelliği çözümleyen bir sayıdan daha çok kuramsal aporialar üzerine yoğunlaşan bir sayı oldu.

Yeni bir küresel egemenliğin, üçüncü dünya savaşı içersinden kurulduğunu biliyoruz. Savaş içinde bu egemenliğin kuruluşunun yoğunlaştığı coğrafyanın tam göbeğindeyiz. Bütün siyasal aktörlerin açığa çıktığı ve yeniden kurulduğu bir siyasal sürecin içinden geçiyoruz. İç siyasal dinamiklerin tarihten gelen çelişki ve çatışmaları küresel ve bölgesel güç ilişkileriyle açığa çıkmış bulunmaktadır. Bu güçlerin nasıl bir diziliş içersinde konumlanacakları bir virtüeldir. Virtüel kavramı potansiyel kavramından farklıdır. Potansiyel üzerinden sonuç kestirilebilinir; virtüelde ise sonuç kestirilemez. Süreç içindeki güçler, süreç sonucunda çok değişmiş bir konumda bulunabilir. Erken adımlar ve çözümlemeler tehlikeli sonuçlar doğurabilir. Güçler arası savaş yiğitçe sürdürülmemektedir. Kirli, oportünist, pragmatik ve kaypak bir zemin üzerinde savaş sürdürülmektedir. Buradan çıkarılacak sonuç şudur: Bu savaş egemenler arası bir güç savaşıdır. Söylem gerçeği yansıtmamaktadır. Tam bir Ortadoğu siyaseti içindeyiz. Bu savaş birinci cumhuriyetçiler ile ikinci cumhuriyetçilerin egemenlik savaşıdır. Emek bu savaşta taraf olmamalıdır.

Emeğin gündemi Tuzla tersanesinde yaşananlardı. Emek gündemini tutamadı. Küresel ekonomik kriz, Anayasa çalışmaları, Kuzey Irak operasyonu, türban olayları, sosyal güvenlik yasası, AKP’nin kapatılma davası, Ergenekon operasyonu vb. olaylar iç içe, peş peşe eşzamanlı gelişmelerdi. Bu gelişmeler, üçüncü cumhuriyetin kuruluş sancılarıdır. Bu sancıların yaşanacağı önemli bir yıl içinden geçeceğimiz kesindir. Gelişmelerle ilgili yazılarımızı bir sonraki sayılara bırakıyoruz.

Bu süreçte tüm emek cephesinin devrimci mücadelesini şimdiden komünist coşkumuzla   selamlar ve emeğin 1 MAYIS bayramını kutlarız. Görüşmek üzere!…

“The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism —that of Feuerbach included— is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively.”
The vulgar materialists, who leave out history as far as they are materialist and leave out materialism as far as they deal with history, do not “…conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity” . For Marx, objectivity is human sensuous activity, activity and practice. Both metaphysics, and structuralism and positivism turn the concept of “subjectivity” into a transcendental concept. Metaphysics affirms transcendentality of subjectivity whereas positivism negates it. For Marx, however, “subjectivity” is immanence. Marx detaches the concept of subjectivity from the transcendentality of the world of concepts and renders it immanent to the objectivity of human sensuous activity. For Marx, “Passion is the essential power of man energetically bent on its object” . “History is the true natural history of man” . In this sense, “subjectivity” is one’s conduct over his own conduct. The analytic duality between “subject” and “object” which metaphysics and positivism deify as the constitutive power disappears within Marx’s conception of subjectivity. The objectivity of historical materialism is the analysis of the politicality of the practices of class subjectivities.
For Spinoza, human being is relationality. And for Marx, labor is relationality. Human being or labor is the immeasurable being that changes, and transforms while changing, within subversiveness of its own creativity in becoming. For Spinoza, conatus is the effort of the being to maintain itself and survive, and for Marx the essential power of human being is passion whereas his relational nature is history. Human being or labor as a relational being is becoming and constitution within historical relationality. In this sense, labor is politicality; politicality is labor’s historical nature immanent to its material becoming and constitution. The politicality of labor is objectivity of subjectivity immanent to history.

Domination as Class: Capital
As the power to produce social value, labor is a creative power. This creative power is subjectified under a form of value production changing in relation to the historicality of social relations. Capital represents the historical form through which it politically expropriates labor as creative power. Capital is the alienated form of labor; it is the practice of commodification of labor which is classified under the form of wage labor. The self-affirmative practice of labor within dialectic is negation of negation. This dialectical law is the indispensable law of affirmation of being itself. Capital as a being affirms itself by negating itself as wage labor whereas wage labor affirms itself by negating itself as capital. Hence wage labor is the capitalized form of labor. The product of creative labor is capitalized by way of commodification as private property. The capitalized commodity faces labor as an alien power. Commodity production, which is a form of capital as an alien power, is the practice of expropriation of labor. In this sense, the creative power of labor is weakened through expropriation. In Marx’s theory of surplus value, productive labor represents the capitalized form of labor within the form of wage labor. Affirmation of productive labor means affirmation of wage labor as the capitalized form of labor. Against political expropriation of labor in the form of productive labor, the concept that we, as communists, should affirm is “creative labor”. Negation of negation as the dialectic of affirmative practice of being links to another law of dialectic: the unity of opposites. What operates between wage labor and capital is the law of the unity of opposites. The existence of one of them supposes that of the other. “Therefore, the demand that wage labour be continued but capital be suspended is self-contradictory, self-dissolving.” The contradiction between capital and wage labor is not antagonistic. The conflict that would come out of this contradiction does not constitute a social antagonism. The philosophical foundation of the concept of antagonism constitutes the essence of our political difference. We can specify two tendencies when reflecting on Marx. The first is objectivist, determinist and finalist interpretation of Marx whereas in the second we find a subjectivist Marx. Marx in his evaluation on 1848 Revolutions states that the antagonistic conflict in the class struggle of 1848 hit the contradiction between productive forces and production relations that had not historically developed and turned into an antagonism yet. According to the determinist and finalist interpretation of Marx that has its roots in Marx’s evaluation on 1848 Revolutions and references in the introduction to the book Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, there are two antagonisms: one is the antagonism that exists between classes from the very beginning and the other is the antagonism between the productive forces and the production relations, which is dependent upon historical development. Determinist and finalist Marxism subjects the former to the latter. This is the inevitable consequence of dialectical interpretation of antagonism. The theories of crisis are also founded on this false interpretation. Revolution sinks into the crises of capital. In fact there is no such duality; there is only one antagonism. The crisis of communist revolution is not dependent upon the crisis of capital. On the contrary, it is dependent upon the political crisis created by the subjectivity of practice of labor that becomes autonomous from the crises of capital. In determinist and finalist Marxism, labor and wage labor are the same thing. For such Marxism, the historical crisis of capital is the weakening of the ability of production relations to develop productive forces. At this historical moment the wage labor as productive force turns into a subversive power. It is not right to engage with revolutionary work unless this crisis develops. It is acceptable to adopt reformist demands tactically. However labor and wage labor are not the same thing. Labor is uncompromising from the very beginning; it produces social antagonism in its political subjectivity.
We should insist on the fact that capital is a relation that classifies labor in the form of wage labor. It is the power to command labor and its products. It is to expropriate the products of creative labor as private property. Capital is the ability to turn “power over” into “power to do”. If we consider politicality as the subjectivity of being’s self-affirmative practice, the politicality of capital is immanent to the dialectic of its self-affirmation. In other words, the politicality of capital is the subjectivity of production and reproduction of its own being as a class. Capital exists as long as it survives as a class. Its existence as a class depends upon classifying social labor in the form of wage labor. Capital splits, divides, and functions within class conflicts. In this sense, dialectic is the political philosophy of practices of classification.
The politicality of self-affirmative practice of capital is based on classification and power conflict between the “classified” classes. Capital not only classifies labor in the form of wage labor but also subjectifies wage labor as the power of production and reproduction of capitalism. This leads to the enclosure of politicality within the limits of conflict arising from the contradiction between wage labor and capital. That capital as a class constitutes its own class interest as the general interest of society means elimination of politicality of labor by enclosing it within the politicality of wage labor, and political expropriation of labor. Hence any politics of “labor” founded on politicality of wage labor is bourgeois. The modern era of capitalism is the historical experience of politicality of labor based on the politics of “wage labor”. Trade union and party politics, constitutional state and democratization of state constitute an “oppositional” politics of labor founded on bourgeois democracy in essence. Whether this politics is revolutionary or not depends upon contradictions, conflicts and crises immanent to capital’s dialectic of self-affirmation. In the modern era, whereas those imperialist countries powerful enough to overcome the crises of capital was able to reform the politicality of labor in the form of wage labor, this politics, which served in the Third World countries to constitute wage labor as a political class, turned into the revolutionary power of proletariat that undertook bourgeois revolutions. This is the essence of theory of “weak links” in the imperialist era. Politicality of labor depends upon constitution of wage labor as a political class. Whereas in Marx’s period, revolutionariness was identical with communist revolution, in the imperialist era revolutionariness and communism became significantly detached from each other. Although the concept of revolution had been immanent to politicality of social revolution before, it was rendered transcendental by becoming limited with political revolution. The politicality of communism has not been social revolution but social evolution to come after political revolution. The concepts have been replaced: social freedom with political freedom, social independence with political independence, social equality with political equality, social emancipation with political emancipation…The distance between the social and the political has expanded in political terms and politicality of labor has been alienated from sociality. Labor has been enclosed within the politics of constituting itself as a class. As Lenin said, “we are the state!” . And as Lukacs said inversely, “the class has directed dictatorship upon itself”. Politicality of labor has turned into the theory of power rather than a question of power. The theory of power is about the ability of a class to render its politicality immanent to its command over other classes. The concept of revolution has been transcendentalized. It should be re-revolutionized through becoming immanent to the politicality of labor.

Labor as a Non-Class Power
In Marx, the concepts of labor and wage labor are not identical. “Splitting of labour into labour itself and the wages of labour. The worker himself a capital, a commodity. Clash of mutual contradictions.” Wage labor is a sociological class as classified by capital. Wage labor is productive force of capital. And its political class character is determined as reformism. The class base of reformism is not petty bourgeois but wage labor. The discourses of Keynesian state, welfare state and democratization of state all represent enclosure of politicality of labor within politics of wage labor. In this sense, wage labor is not an antagonist class against capital. This is the substance of politics of radical democracy that has evolved from Bernstein to Laclau and Mouffe and so on.
Labor represents a non-class power against wage labor, and the de-classification against capital’s attempt to classify. Labor is the creative power of de-classification against capital and also labor as the classified productive force of capital. In this sense, this non-class power, the subversive power of de-classification against classification is immanent to the development of productive forces. In this sense, labor is an antagonistic power against capital from the very beginning. Politicality of labor is immanent to the antagonism of de-classification against classification. Whereas the class character of wage labor is sociological, the class character of labor is political. The practice of self-affirmation of wage labor depends upon affirming itself through negating capital. And the practice of self-affirmation of labor is insurgency through self-affirmation. Wage labor represents merely opposition to capital, whereas labor represents revolution against capital. The subjectivity of self-affirmation of capital is dialectical, whereas that of labor is not. Self-affirmation of labor is to lock and subvert classification by political practices of de-classification.
“…the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognized as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc. within present society…” For Marx, this is where the significance of proletariat arises. The significance of proletariat for Marx has nothing to do with its being the poorest and the most subordinated sociological class. For Marx the significance of proletariat is historical. The reason is that proletariat is the only power endowed with the politicality to refuse itself as a class. Hence the political significance of proletariat is not dependent upon its class interest in sociological terms. Politicality of proletariat is not only a challenge against capitalism but also against all classes, overall class history, and production and reproduction of relations of classification. This challenge constitutes the de-classification practice against classification and represents the constitution of political subjectivity of labor.

Politicality of Labor: Communalism
At this point, we should contemplate on the concept of “the political”. This is a problematic that the left should face. We may consider the subjectivity of self-affirmative practice of the being as the definition of politicality. If we consider the antagonism between constitution of subjectivity of labor’s self-affirmative practice, and capital’s self-affirmative practice, we would see the antagonistic difference between the politicality of labor and capital. Subjectivity of capital is to exist as a class. This class existence can only be maintained by the production and reproduction of social relations as relations of class production. For capital, the political is power struggle between classes. In this sense, political power or existential power of a class is to be Power. Power is immanent to the ontology of class being. Therefore, the being of a class is to dominate other class/classes that it has classified. This is what the idea of power to constitute one’s own class interest as the general interest of the whole society refers to. It is necessary to be power in order to change from a class in-itself into a class for-itself.
The most significant possibility for a power that needs to be a class to exist is to “free” the transcendental power sphere that would serve to dominate other classes. This is what bourgeois democracy advocated by political economists and liberals with the discourse of political freedom refers to. This is exactly the point where the distinction between the social and the political is maintained. Social inequality is supposed legitimate under the conditions of political equality. Sovereignty is displaced from social to political sphere. For capital, sovereignty is the transcendental power sphere, which constitutes social domination. It is constituted by representation. Social sphere delegates sovereignty to political sovereignty through representation. In this sense, the constitutive power of capital is transcendental power as the political sphere. State as a relation of power and domination is the constitutive power of capital. State is not only a relation of class domination, but rather a relation of production and reproduction of classes. Subsequently, the concept of the political surpasses and overwhelms the concept of the social. From now on, it is the powers that constitute and write history. For capital, to be power is something virtuous and honorable.
Labor does not need to delegate its own sovereignty to political sphere through representation. This sovereignty socially belongs to itself. Labor does not need any political sphere transcendental to social sphere, and hence Power, either. The reason is that the ontological being of labor does not require being a social class. Being a class is something external to its social fabric and nature. The ontology of subjectivity of labor’s practice of self-affirmation is immanent to the politicality of de-classification. In this sense, politicality of labor is not dependent upon being a social class, and production and reproduction of controversies between social classes. Political subjectivity of labor is antagonist in relation to that of capital from the very beginning. It is not a clash of sociological class interests and demands but of two different lives.
The political power of capital originates from its social power: money, knowledge, institutional organization and power. And labor has no sociality from which it derives its political power. The only power that labor has against capital is escape from, resistance to, insurgency and revolution against classification. Whereas capital produces and maintains its life through its domination, labor desires life within its insurgency. In this sense, what classifies labor is its insurgency. Capital wants labor to be a social class. Labor does not want to be a social class. Capital does not want labor to be a class in the political sphere whereas labor wants to be a class in the political sphere. What constitutes labor as a class is not its sociality but politicality. Labor is a non-class class. It is a class not for taking power but for subverting it. Labor is revolutionary not in order to reproduce itself as a class by taking power but to refuse itself as a political class and subvert the concept of class. Changing world without being power does not mean changing the world without subverting power. It means changing the world without being a class in our social sovereignty. This is what proletarian dictatorship means to us. Proletarian dictatorship is the organized violence of revolution for subverting power and refusing all relations of classification rather than for being power and class. We consider the proletarian dictatorship as the “Commune” that burned the guillotine.
Why Communalism? We do not here suggest the concept of “communalism” in opposition to the concept of communism. On the contrary, we define communalism as politicality of immanent constitution of communism. We think on not affirmation of labor through negation of capital but on subversion of capital through affirmation of labor. We consider the notion of politicality in terms of constitution of labor’s subjectivity. As for the opposition between the social as the immanent power and the political as transcendental power, we consider communalism to be the social as the immanent power. We object to the concept of politicality considered as practice of social classification. For us, politicality as classification means political expropriation of labor. We object to approaches that delay the practices of de-classification to the future from a determinist, economist and finalist point of view. We consider practices of de-classification as the becoming and constitution process of labor’s self-affirmation and self-valorization, which is immanent to the present. Communalism is immanent constitution of communism. It is revolutionizing the concept of revolution. It is counter-constitutiveness immanent to resistance. We consider communalism as the desire for revolution not for power but for life. What is the constitutive power and subject of communalism? The constitutive subject of communalism is not a sociological class. The politics that would constitute the political composition of any revolution forms the essence of the revolutionary theory. The discourses of political democracy, political independence, political freedom and political equality that have until recently served to turn a composition of sociological class interests into a Power have lost their ability to constitute working class as a revolutionary power. The expectation for a class composition founded on class alliances cannot be realized any more. The discourse that would constitute class composition today has turned into a politics of de-classification. It is social independence, social freedom, social equality and emancipation. The subject to be constituted by politics of de-classification is multitude. Multitude is neither a measurable sociological class nor a political class alliance. Multitude can only be observed if constituted as a political power and class. Multitude is a class concept. However it is a class concept that supersedes the concept of working class which is limited with the category of productive labor. Multitude as the constitutive subject of communalism is the immeasurable class constituted by politics of de-classification. Multitude is communalist autonomy and communism immanent to the present.

Otonom, no. 13, July-September 2006

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845.
ibid.
Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, “1844.
ibid.
Marx, Grundrisse, 1857.
Classification is here used to refer to production and reproduction of class relations in relation to subjectification as a power relation.
Lenin, Political Report to the Eleventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), 27th March 1922.
Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844.
Marx; German Ideology, 1845.

Quotation from the article

Within the modernist paradigm, the idea of communism has become a form of State politics. We think that this is the major stoppage that the revolutionary left in Turkey experience and the only way of going beyond it is political organization based on self-valorization of the real labour through immanent constitution of communism. As immanent constitution of communism, we adopt the notion of communalism. In Turkey, there is a need to make up-to-date rereading and rethinking Marx in the light of contemporary demands of practice. Since within their own experiences autonomous -marxist movement liberated such a rereading, we give importance to this movement, we share our commonness within the extension of these kinds of movements. We are invested within the discussions and clashes peculiar to Turkey, that are nevertheless carved out by general problems of revolutionary world left. In Turkey reading of Marx by revolutionary movements could not be emanated from modernist paradigm, it has been conferred with general ideological closures but also within its specific condition such a reading reproduced and deepened these closures. Here in Turkey Leninism comes first with respect to Marx. Thus, this way of comprehension constricted Marx into Leninism. Here in Turkey, we try to contribute to these rereading efforts and emancipative political experiences and we can not avoid saying that our job could be considered harder than our comrades’ jobs in the west, if we consider Turkey’s problematic and complicated articulation within modernization and the close effects of Stalinism and orthodox Marxism.

Communism and Marx

The effort to open up channels from which contemporary revolutionary thought would be nourished makes indispensable the evaluation of all theoretical material up to now that has been interweaved by defeats as well as wins. This evaluation could only be realized, not through ideological closures but by a genealogical method integrating the present with the past and the future. The way of reflection on history should be inherent of the foundation of the movement; it should start out from the actual needs of contemporary class struggle, hence from definitions of spaces in which capitalist domination operates and condenses itself. Ideological closures, on the other hand, fades the theoretical production, reduces thought to a pattern. Then, the spokesperson becomes the fictive historiographies; the voice of history is lowered. Abstract and static categories substitute what is real, material and dynamic and these categories begin to acquire the truth in itself. Then instead of reflecting on history, settling with these categories, in the end we lost the dynamics of the formation of our own movement. That is, we lost not only the past but also the future. We make much of genealogical method to ensure that the history unveils itself and experiences liberate and talk with us as themselves and on their own. We want to establish a dialog with our own past, not to settle accounts with it by categorizing it.
We read Marx, within, through and beyond him from this axis. On the one hand exaltation without inquiry and on the other hand denial full of pure negation is the same thing. Both of them are transcendent and exterior to experience. The contemporariness of Marx as a moment in the line of revolutionary thought can only be seen within the today’s movement, with an immanent evaluation. Hence, the first step of such experience is to consider these closures. What is the ideological closure that Marx is subjected to? For us, the answer of this question is modernism. This modernist paradigm has closured Marx within a Marxism that assumes the developmentalism and industrialization in economical terms, and representation and central party in political terms. Moreover, some opponents of Marx, being oblivious to the difference between Marx and modern Marxism, content themselves with a reductive critique. We can go beyond Marx only from within Marx because Marx is not an abstract name but represents a historical and material moment within the class struggle of his own epoch. However Marx has been forgotten and the attributions to him have taken his place. Ideological reading of Marx presents to us a Marx figure that is isolated from the determinations of political struggle. Earmarking as “Young Marx” and “Mature Marx”, the expressions such as “Marx before becoming a Marxist” are all production of such ideological approaches. The continuities, fractures and ruptures in all writings of Marx have not been taken into consideration in terms of his epoch’s political struggle, and then Marx, losing the dynamics of his own becoming, has happened to be a doctrine that will be refused or accepted. It is said that Marx’s maturity and scientific approach start in 1848-1850. As Engels explains , after the defeat of June 1848, during his years of exile in London, Marx began his work on political economy in order to “lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society”. Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Grundrisse and Capital are the products of this period. As a common expression, these are the Marxist Marx’s writings. However, behind the fog of this maturity discourse, we cannot see anymore the rupture and conceptual transformation in Marx through its connection with a political defeat. Accordingly, Marx’s writings are not read politically but through development of scientificality of economical categories.
In our view there is no Young Marx or Mature Marx but a revolutionary Marx as a whole and also a Marx who shifted the reason of a political defeat from the political plane to economical plane and assumed the labour as an element of dialectical running of capital. This is the Marx who belongs to Capital. In the early writings that are disdained due to their “ideological deviations”, none of the conceptualizations –neither productive forces nor proletariat- are economically reduced yet. Objective and structural scientificality discourse does not yet block the subjectivity horizon in Marx.
1844 Manuscripts and German Ideology
The worth of Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts comes from the fact that, in this writings Marx denotes the form of capitalist domination as classification and expropriation of labour:
It goes without saying that the proletarian, i.e., the man who, being without capital and rent, lives purely by labour, and by a one-sided, abstract labour, is considered by political economy only as a worker. Political economy can therefore advance the proposition that the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the poor-house overseer.
Capital as a form of social relation incarnates in capitalist who subjugates the labour as private property and in worker as wage. The characteristic of capitalism that distinguishes it from the former forms of domination is the fact that capitalism adopts waged labour as the source of value creation. While in feudalism the source of value is land, in the capitalist mode of production based on commodity, this source is recognized as labour. This is the point of departure of political economy as “science”, the primary question of it is to measure this value. Hence, as we know from Marx’s analysis in Capital, the labour becomes to be measured as an abstract human labour, which is congealed in a commodity, consequently a qualitative entity of determining the price of a commodity in the market. Political economy, showing the change-value as the objective and natural quality of a product, represents the social quality of labour that changes through waged exploitation as the objective quality of a product itself. The capitalist way of negation of the control of productive subjects over their life and their production, the reversed control of object over subject germinates from the transformed quality of labour due to exchange-value. Capitalism operates by reducing labour to waged-labour, turning the social relations between real individuals into a form of relation between commodities. In Capital, Marx names this situation (the deformation of social relations in the form of commodity) commodity fetishism; this conception is the deepening of the concept of alienation in 1844 Manuscripts in the political economy field. In 1844 Manuscripts Marx shows that the bourgeois form of domination is set into operation through employment (waged-exploitation), and the fact that the only subject that can resist against this domination is the proletariat himself. Wage is a form of domination over the body. There is a reciprocal cause-effect relation between private property and wage and they both have been the core of capitalist domination as well as commodity production founded on the division of labour, and the domain of resistance against it. This is why “wages are determined through the antagonistic struggle between capitalist and worker.”
For us, after Marx, the fact that in 1844 Manuscrpits he saw the waged labour as the form of capitalist domination and the real, liberated human labour as the core of communism has not been sufficiently emphasized. Moreover, the evident political distinction between these two is discharged within the modernist ideology of work, and the real and creative human labour is reduced to waged-labour. In Marx who sunk below the epithet of “semi-utopian”, there is an insight of subjectivity and communism that still holds its contemporariness and waits to be politically worked out.
Communism: The real social power of labour
Within the modernist paradigm, the idea of communism has become a form of State politics. We think that this is the major stoppage that the revolutionary left in Turkey experience and the only way of going beyond it is political organization based on self-valorization of the real labour through immanent constitution of communism. As immanent constitution of communism, we adopt the notion of communalism. In Turkey, there is a need to make up-to-date rereading and rethinking Marx in the light of contemporary demands of practice. Since with their own experiences autonomous-marxist movement liberated such a rereading, we give importance to this movement, we share our commonness within the extension of these kinds of movements. We are invested within the discussions and clashes peculiar to Turkey, that are nevertheless carved out by general problems of revolutionary world left. In Turkey the reading of Marx by revolutionary movements could not be emanated from modernist paradigm, it has been conferred with general ideological closures but also within its specific condition such a reading has reproduced and deepened these closures. Here in Turkey Leninism comes first with respect to Marx. Thus, this way of comprehension constricted Marx into Leninism. Here in Turkey, we try to contribute to these rereading efforts and emancipative political experiences and we can not avoid saying that our job could be considered harder than our comrades’ jobs in the west, if we consider Turkey’s problematic and complicated articulation within modernization and the close effects of Stalinism and orthodox Marxism. Here, reading of Marx has been done not through the affirmation of communism but through the affirmation of capital in fact (in crisis discussions etc). This withholds us from the field of counter-constitution to destroy capitalism and instead drive us into the dialectics of objective conditions within which capitalism will abolish with its own contradictions. Between capital and waged-labour that are the two modalities of the same substance, there is no revolutionary antagonism. Only between capital and the labour which has the potentiality of rejecting capitalist domination, which cannot be waged and cannot be measured, there could be a revolutionary antagonism. This antagonistic space is determined by the subjective counter-constitutive power of labour, rejection of every kind of classification relations. The perspective of counter-constitution does not see communism as a problem of phase, a gradual passage; the only political route of constitutive labour against classification is declassification, which means the rejection of capitalism now and everywhere.
the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.
In German Ideology Marx and Engels point out the proletariat is the power that comprehends everyone who is rendered without property. The capitalist domination is founded not only on the alienation of the worker in the factory but also on the total alienation of all social relations of labour in life. In bourgeois society, the productive individual, slipping of being the subject of its own activity, becomes the carrier of the representation of class identity. Liberalism substitutes this alienation with a false category of individual. Marx denotes that in bourgeois society, the freedom of individual is in fact the freedom of private property and the real and material liberation of labour could only be possible with communism. The direct objective of the struggle of ones that are rendered without property for freedom is state because the state represents the mystification of interest struggles that arise from private property and the division of labour within a fictive discourse of general interest and unity, and in that sense the state is the expression of the highest alienation. Thus the struggle of proletariat is essentially against the state.
Yet the modernist Marxism has effaced the notion of communism. However Marx and Engels defined communism with these words: “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from premises now in existence.” For us, for Autonomy in Turkey such a notion of communism is still the point of departure. As long as communism is conceived as the final phase that is realized after capturing the state power with a bourgeois type of politics, as long as relations of classification sustain, the politicality cannot be a liberation activity. It would be Hegel’s abstract spirit. This kind of political practice would be reformist in its essence, it would not matter how leftist its discourse. For us there is an irreconcilable opposition between the instrumental reason and communism. We reject the instrumentalisation of political activity by way of reducing communism to an ideal, the instrumentalisation of resistance spaces, social relations and of people themselves. For us the instrumentalisation that creates gulfs between the discourse and the practice is a bourgeois kind of politics. Modernism is the highest point of this instrumentalisation.
Communism and Autonomy
We voice on every occasion that the most important agenda of the left in Turkey is to face with its own modernism. The left should detach the notion of communism from being an ideal, the final phase of finalism, to actualize it as the immanent constitution of revolutionary movement, departing from self-valorization of the labour itself. As long as the relation that determines the social characteristic of labour does not change, the capitalist logic of production does not change either. Capitalism has commercialized the social characteristics of labour on the world scale by turning the commodity into the power that operates all social relations. Thus social relations, being dehumanized, turn out to be relations between commodities. The commodity is the basic unit, the nucleus of capitalism; but the abstract sociality of capitalism is not a commodity fetishism that starts and ends in the first moment of production. As Holloway points out it is a fetishisation to which we are subjected in all daily life. So, what is the basic unit, the form of production of social relations in communism? This question is inherent to the construction of the real sociality of labour. With the real liberation of labour, individuals do not turn into the carries of class identities but become the real individuals, they valorize their own auto-activities, their own labour, their individual appropriation and this is communism. “While with the abolition of the basis of private property, with the communistic regulation of production (and, implicit in this, the destruction of the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved into nothing, and men get exchange, production, the mode of their mutual relation, under their own control again.” This control does not mean we must wait for the formation of material conditions of communism by capitalism. Communism is not state-property either. Today, the form of organization of real sociability of labour, the political organization of communism is autonomy. Autonomy is the political rejection of waged-labour, the construction of the real labour as the subversive power against the domination of capital. We read this control from this perspective. We don not try to reach communism by departing form Marx, instead we try to rethink Marx departing from the actual possibilities of constitution of communism, from communalism. In this sense autonomy is the general name of the political movement in which real labour constructs its own subjectivity not to fall under the capitalist domination. Today orthodox Marxism in Turkey constricted within the paradigm of ideological reading of modernism has lagged behind Marx himself. It cannot grasp anymore how capital actually works; consequently, it cannot denote effective strategies of struggle. Capital takes all its power from subjugation of productive power of labour. It uses labour as its own power and in exchange, it pays wage to labour. The wage is the means of domination on body excluding it from all creative and free openings; in fact it is the ensuring of reproduction of labour force. The creation of political conditions of communism is only possible by reappropriation of the productive activity of labour. The revolutionary practice with all its subversiveness should attack classification. We should leave the determinations of the dialectics of capital and instead affirm our own power. Today revolutionary practice, with a finalistic reason should not immobilize communism as an ideal; instead revolutionary practice should be the subjective constitution of communism now and everywhere.
Otonom no.12, March-May 2006.
1 Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850.
2 Capital, the preface to first German edition (1867)
3 “First Manuscript: Wages of Labour”
4 “First Manuscript: Wages of Labour”
5 German Ideology, Part I: Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook D. Proletarians and Communism: Individuals, Class, and Community
6 German Ideology
7 John Holloway, “Class and Classification: Against, In and Beyond Labour”, Ana. C. Dinerstein and Michael Neary ed. The Labour Debate: An Investigation into Theory and Reality of Capitalist Work, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2002
8 German Ideology, I, Private Property and Communism.

NATO will be gathering in Istanbul on June 28-29 2004. It is evident that this meeting is not only a routine one. This meeting should be interpreted as the constitution of a new global sovereignty within the power mechanism of capitalism; hence it seems to have reached an important moment throughout this unfinished, ongoing process. We call this form of global sovereignty that is in the process of constitution as Empire. The ontology of Empire, being immanent in its action, is constituted through the third world war. The spaces of compromises entirely take place within the ontological extension of war. The analysis of the form of sovereignty courses through clarifying the war politics or how the constitution policy is militarized. NATO summit is the explicit declaration of the militarization of the politics of Capitalist Empire that is the new form of global sovereignty, with the Greater Middle East Project as the policy document of twenty-first century. This summit and the policy document, in its economic, social and political entirety, is the declaration of war against global labour. Empire has started a new McCarthyism with its discourse of democracy and security.

This text should be topical and timely with respect to the context of NATO and the Greater Middle East Project. Yet this can only be granted by running over the debates upon constitution. These debates seem to be related to imperialism and neo-imperialism, and are rather being conducted in academic circles. In political organizations, however, even though they do a lot of hard mental work, these discussions remain superficial, rather than being profound. Political schools cannot surpass the academic world. Many cadres, due to the insufficiency of political schools, are gravitated toward the academic world. This fact underlines the theoretical deadlock in the revolutionary movement. Because of this deadlock, theory is reduced to rotes, and movement is reduced to practice in the narrowed sense.

To be clear, it would be more reasonable to make Negri stand out with respect to the conception of empire, and Wood with respect to the conception of neo-Imperialism. Within the limits of our discussion, we will accentuate Wood’s critique of Negri. However, we will not make a profound discussion concerning these polemics, we will just pose the problematical areas and go by.

We are not Negrist; on the other hand, due to political responsibility, we have to be objective. Negri has been identified with his book, Empire. Yet his figure is not only composed of that book; he has a particular history, collected works that has accumulated through this history, a revolution theory that would be deduced from these works and a comprehensive paradigm. The name of Negri means, coming from political movement, to go beyond academic world and to be a discussion platform. The political school of Negri has determined the academic world. The critique of empire will not disprove him; rather it will serve to reading and debating him.

The discourse of Neo-Imperialism is the search for a reading on the new form of sovereignty of capitalism by holding on to the concept of imperialism. Wood is one of the most important and valuable addresses of such a reading. Here, the funny thing is that many who argue for Wood and against Negri do not know Wood well, just as many who argue against Negri do not know him either. Wood, who is argued for, is closer to Negri than the Wood proponents.

In the reading of the current operation of capitalist power, we can mention two tendencies: the first tendency says “Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is sufficient to speak for our times,” and the other says “Lenin’s analysis of imperialism is not sufficient for analyzing our times and a new sovereignty theory that can supersede Lenin is needed”. This is the core of debate. For Wood;

So the new imperialism depends on the universalization of market dependence and market imperatives. But we don’t really have a theory of imperialism that encompasses a world of universal capitalism, a world in which the whole globe is subject to capitalist imperatives. If you think about the classic theories of imperialism, in particular the Marxist theories, they’re all based on the assumption that imperialism has to do with relations between capitalist powers and a largely non-capitalist world. Take, for instance, probably the most sophisticated of these theories, Rosa Luxemburg’s. Her argument is that the capitalist system needs an outlet in non-capitalist formations, which is why capitalism inevitably means militarism and imperialism.

If we continue,

So, we do need a theory to deal with a world in which capitalism has become much more universal than these classical theories of imperialism ever imagined it would—not in the sense that the whole world has functioning capitalist economies but that the whole world is regulated by capitalist imperatives, and imperialism has to do with the manipulation of those imperatives. This universal capitalism is something that has only happened fairly recently.

It is clear that the classical theories of imperialism are not sufficient in reading and dealing with the condition that the empire of capital has reached, and in the analysis of this new condition we have no proper theory and that we need one. Within this context, Wood’s and Negri’s points of departure are one and the same. Negri and Wood adopt the second tendency. The difference between them is yet another aspect. Just a remark; encountering with Lenin, Negri is closer to Lenin whereas Wood keeps her distance. There is no dispute between Negri and Wood with respect to Lenin’s analysis of imperialism. For both of them it is an experienced problem; their discussion is an attempt to construct the episteme of the land that they dwell. For us, since we dwell in the same land, these discussions represent a kind of richness and diversities that will clear the way before us. We are concerned about those who seem to be unbending about Lenin’s theory of imperialism, and who, in fact, stealthily hide behind Wood’s critique of Negri. After underlining this fundamental distinction, we can continue to reflect on the need for a new form of sovereignty.

On Wood
The thrust of “We need a new theory” is very important for us. Yet the construction of a new theory necessitates a radical transformation. It is not possible to achieve this by covering in some cracks of old paradigm that knitted by our rotes. The new situation has torn the old paradigm up. Marxism should be updated by reconstructing the theory of labour that traverses the entire social relations. New constitution processes necessitate a new constitution of political philosophy. It is not possible to constitute a political theory that will clear the way for a revolutionary practice, without a rupture in the political philosophy itself.

Marx studied philosophy and law. While he was reading capitalism from a political perspective, activating his accumulation, he met with economy. He never reduced social relations of capitalism into a branch of study. Marxism is not a kind of sociological analysis. Marx’s political theory is based on the constitution of a new political philosophy. Unless we read Marx from this perspective, it is quite likely that we reduce Marxism into sociological study.

Wood tries to save Marx from sociological analysis by thinking sociologically. While she says “we need a new theory”, what she does in fact is to experience the contradictions of not being able to avoid the old paradigm, rather than to establish a new paradigm. In Wood, there is no political philosophy. Her political construction has gaps, contradictions and inconsistencies with respect to being constitutive. Thus, Wood is an address that examines the consistency of constitutive theories, rather than being a constitutive one itself. This position has two positive results: First, if the construction of a constitutive theory is weak, then by destroying it, she can prove that it was not really a constitutive one. Second, if the construction of a theory is sound, then she can fortify it by improving its insufficient points. Negri represents a constitutive frame; in our opinion, all criticisms will fortify the theory in terms of its accomplishment.

The Ontology of Global Labour

Now, you could say that in today’s global capitalism, the ‘economy’ has decisively triumphed over all other social principles and practices. The imperatives of capitalism have penetrated every human practice and the natural environment. And these imperatives now affect the whole world. In both those senses, the capitalist economy has become a universal system. Not only that, the economic imperatives of capital have broken through the boundaries of any existing or conceivable political form, and they’ve increasingly cast off the fetters of political regulation. So, we might be tempted to say that the impersonal operations of the economy have pretty much replaced anything we might recognize as imperialism. Or, at least, we might want to talk about a new imperialism, the imperialism of the economy.

Wood leaps from the definition of the imperialism of economy to a conceptual sphere: Empire of Capital or Capitalist Empire. Within this frame, Wood is not far from the concept of empire. While she can achieve to construct the ontology of Empire within the economical division, she misses the sovereignty dimension. In terms of the constitution of empire within economical dimension, she has no problem with Negri. Her lack of theoretical architecture in terms of politics causes contradictions; and because of these contradictions, irrelevant and unjustified criticisms are raised against Negri. While she says “the economic imperatives of capital have broken through the boundaries of any existing or conceivable political forms”, she cannot point out the transformation in the ontological structure of nation-states as a political form as well as the fact that nation-states are not the old nation-states any more, as a result of this transformation.

By saying, “the base/superstructure metaphor has always been more trouble than it is worth” , she indeed encounters this trouble. She cannot go beyond the duality of economical sphere and political sphere. This problem, which is not a problematic in terms of political theory, is indeed a problem in terms of political philosophy. She criticises Negri, without understanding his philosophy, as if he reduces these two spheres into a mechanical identity and allusively suggests that by the concept of empire, Negri means the global State. For in her opinion, empire, which is a form of sovereignty, is only possible as a global State in the political sphere. Departing from this critique, she erects the duality of political sphere and economical sphere, and enacts the relation between these two as a structural law. By abstracting imperialism from its political ontology and reducing it into economical sphere, she takes away the concept of sovereignty from the concept of imperialism. While with the concepts of “empire of capital” and “Capitalist Empire”, Wood accepts Negri’s determination that there is no outside any more, in the Empire, the inside-outside duality has been annihilated; she keeps, on the other hand, this duality in the political sphere. While she criticizes Negri in terms of “impersonal logic”, she does not hesitate, on the other hand, to define the operations of economical sphere, that is empire of capital, as “impersonal” mechanism. Hence, the production and the reproduction of capitalist power mechanisms cannot be analyzed. The power operates its domination through its hegemony. The production and the reproduction of power are bound to the ontology of the concept of hegemony. The production and the reproduction of capitalist domination are bound to economical hegemony. The capital has to constitute hegemony over all social relations, that is the only way of dominating labour.
“Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of all members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion. Capital is therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.” “Capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by means of things.”

In this context, the capital is impersonal. The ontological substance of Marx’s political philosophy is relationality. Marx’s doesn’t start from the ‘subject’; he rather starts from constitutive relation that constructs subjects. Being is an attribute; it is the movement and the action of relations. What is constitutive is the movement. Movement constructs subjects and defines itself as an impersonal subject by the abstraction of this relation between subjects. Hence in this relation, the being operates itself in everywhere and in everything. In terms of reducing this relation into a subject, subject is in non-place. When the extension of capital reduces itself into the space of subject, it becomes blocked. Extension constructs space; yet do not recognise the limits of space, and in the movement of the relation, it transgress these limits.

The capital, the ontological substance of capitalism, by way of creating economical sphere-political sphere duality, cannot be reduced to and be identified with the economical sphere. Political sphere is, too, involved in the extension of the concept of capital. State is a subject that is constituted by social relations, and it works and operates within these relations. The tension between the continuity of the measurable relations of subjects and the immeasurable movement of social relations is a law. Yet, how this tension will be dissolved is determined by the conflict itself. The capital, which as a relation of power, domination and property, is a sovereignty relation, cannot exist apart from these. Yet, it destroys their forms and then reconstructs them. Empire is constituted through the imperialist power relation of the capital. And the ontology of global capital, which has impeded the operation of imperialist power, has been constituting empire as a new form of sovereignty. Within this context, the impersonal logic in the conceptualisation of empire is not the establishment of indefiniteness, on the contrary, it is concretization of definiteness.

The Problematic of Nation State

Of course, these theories recognise that political forms have been very slow to keep up with the global economy. But the argument seems to be that, at the very least, there’s an inverse relation between the geographic reach of economic power and the importance of the nation-state or any kind of territorial state. This isn’t just a claim made by conventional globalisation theorists. It’s also at the root of the currently most fashionable theory of “empire,” the book of that name by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Their whole argument is based on the premise that the expansion of global capital means the development of a new kind of sovereignty.

First of all, this should be pointed out: This is not the case that this debate doesn’t include Wood; she is already involved in these discussions. Here is her starting point:
“But today, there’s a growing distance between the economic reach of capital and the reach of political power. Capital moves across borders and spans the world, while the state stays within its old territorial boundaries.” And “the empire of capital is certainly based on its unique ability to expand economic hegemony far beyond the reach of any territorial state, but its ability to do so paradoxically makes it more, rather than less, dependent on a system of multiple states”

Her point of departure is the imprisonment of the territorial state in its boundaries, faced with the power of economical hegemony to expand beyond borderless geographies. This is a very risky abstraction. This is the reading of the system of multiple states as a paradox. In fact it is not a paradox, but it is Wood’s own contradiction. Although she does a sound reading, she fails to voice it in the proper way. So, her problem with Negri is in fact her own problem. This risky claim could carry us to some correct results, yet it has already dynamited Wood’s own basis. For example, whereas the capital could constitute its empire, it could not constitute a global state that is identical with it, nor an empire of a territorial state. On these points, she has no problem with Negri. Nevertheless, Negri takes the system of multiple states as a point of departure, rather than the paradox between the geographical boundaries of the capital and the boundaries of the territorial sovereignty. The conceptualization that annihilates Wood’s position is the rejection of the very essence of imperialism. Imperialism is the transgression of the interwoven economical, political, military forces and sovereignty beyond the boundaries of nation state.
Imperialism itself has constituted the Empire.

The capital export influences capitalist development in the receiver countries through incredibly speeding it up. Therefore, although capital export tends to inhibit development in exporter countries a little bit, it is obvious that this inhibiton takes place at the expense of development and deepening of capitalism in the whole world.

Without seeing the internal character of neo-colonialism and imperialism, imperialism cannot be vulgarized by reducing it to political and military sovereignty of capitalist countries over non-capitalist countries. It is questionable to connect the constitution of empire to the transgression of economical sphere over the boundaries of state sovereignty; yet at the same time not grasp the imperialism, and moreover refer to neo-imperialism.

Empire is a new relation, constituted by imperialism itself and this new relation has constituted the system of multiple states through the system of single states. Thus, it is clear that we are in a new form of sovereignty. “Their (Negri’s and Hardt’s) whole argument is based on the premise that the expansion of global capital means the development of a new kind of sovereignty.” This sentence should be reformulated: “the globalization of capitalism has formed the ontology of a new form of sovereignty.”

Wood turns Negri’s analysis of the nation-state into a fundamental target of critique. Her criticisms have no validity with respect to Negri. We cannot understand such kind of reading. One that hasn’t properly read Negri would derive from Wood’s criticism such a conclusion: In the operation of empire, there is no place of nation states. Furthermore, the concept of State has lost its importance with respect to political struggle. This is an unjust conclusion.

In Wood, there is no other analysis, except the stress on the transformation of nation- state in transition from classical imperialism period to neo-imperialism period. Negri has lucubrated and written pages on these issues. Negri’s critique of modernism is itself an analysis of nation-state. In his analysis he constitutes modernism as the ontology of nation-state. He sees nation state as an operation within the power mechanism of modernism. Now, the characteristics of this power mechanism have been abolished. In fact he never claims that territorial state has been abolished. For Negri nation-state is not a geographical region; he constituted the geography of nation state in his analysis vis a vis economical, political and military contexts. While he mentions “the declining sovereignty of nation-states and their increasing inability to regulate economic and cultural exchanges,” he doesn’t mean that in the context of the command of empire, the nation state has been disfunctionalized. Rather, he means that the nation state cannot fulfill its functions in the power mechanism of modernism anymore. However, Wood charges Negri of claiming that the “nation state actually fades away”. It would be better to show that these criticisms are irrelevant and fictional by draw Negri out himself, and put an end to this discussion.

The Pyramid of the Empire
What Wood puts into debate repeatedly is the problematic of ‘state’ through nation-state. Although she underlines many very principal and well known but significant facts, the relation between them is expressed incoherently in such terms as ‘but’ or ‘however’. The matter is not to reveal facts in a right way but rather to constitute an episteme within a conceptual framework concerning deployment of facts. This is what we mean by saying that Wood has no architecture.
The debate on capital and state in terms of the notion of sovereignty is different from the debate on the form of state in terms of the form of sovereignty. Wood problematizes nation-state in terms of capital and state. As long as capital exists, the territorial state would also exist. The problem is to debate nation-state in terms of the form of sovereignty. For Wood this categorization is intricate. If you consider nation-state in terms of the debate on capital and state, you reduce the debate on nation-state in terms of form of sovereignty into the debate on capital and state. For the sake of consistency, it must be concluded that the state is no longer in need of capital, or that the state becomes insignificant for the production and reproduction of the body of capital. Surely, this approach is relevant for the liberals, however it is not fair to put Negri into the category of liberals as one wishes. For us, Negri puts nation-state into debate in terms of both the form of state and a new form of sovereignty. The thing we would like to emphasize is that there is a lack of theory of state form within the power mechanism of empire. Problematizing a proper issue is not the same as producing answers for it. Neither Wood nor Negri has produced answers for this problem. Some questions cannot be replied by theory but rather through politics.

Globalization, then, does not mean the decline of the nation state. If anything, the new form of imperialism we call globalization is more than ever an imperialism that depends on a system of multiple states. Precisely because the imperialism of globalization depends on extending purely economic hegemony and market imperatives far beyond the reach of any single state, it is especially dependent on a plurality of subordinate states to enforce those imperatives and to create the climate of legal and political order, the stability and predictability, that capital needs in its daily transactions.

Wood herself confirms the definition given by Negri concerning empire as ‘the form composed of a series of national and transnational organisms unified under a single logic of command’. ‘The single logic of command’ means subordination of the whole world through globalizing the economic hegemony and market imperatives. ‘A series of national and transnational organisms unified under a single logic of command’ means ‘system of multiple states’. Whether you define this ontology as imperialism or neo-imperialism, nothing matters. Constitution of a new political theory is a matter of constitution of a new epistemology in accordance with a new ontology. New ontology cannot be uttered with old epistemology. If you try to do this, you end up with confusing everything with concepts such as ‘imperialism’, ‘neo-imperialism’, ‘empire of capital’, ‘capitalist empire’ or ‘borderless empire of globalization’ since old concepts do not help. Constitutiveness is a matter of production of concepts. System of multiple states is the constituent and agent of globalization. Globalization functions on the whole through localization. Territorial states have been internationalized economically, politically and militarily. The internationalized territorial states operationalize ‘uniform logic of command’ at the level of national and international relations. In this sense, maintenance of sovereignty of nation-state is organically in relation with internationalization. Territorial states are crucial agents of the power mechanism of empire. Negri introduces supranational institutions, global corporations and non-governmental organizations as agents within the functioning of empire and considers all of them as constituting the aristocracy of empire. He calls the conflictual and contradictory relation of all these actors as empire being a new form of sovereignty.
For Negri,

On the top of the shrinking pyramid, there is a superpower; that is the USA, holding the global monopoly of coercive power. This is a superpower that prefers to act in collaboration with others under the umbrella of the UN rather than acting on its own.

And Negri identifies the USA as the monarch and associates the power of empire with Rome functioning through the tension between monarchy and aristocracy. Wood also includes the USA as an actor in the system of multiple states and defines it as imperialist.
The claim for being the king or kingdom of the empire is different from the empire of a territorial state. Since Wood considers empire of capital, capitalist empire or borderless empire of globalization as a system of multiple states, no global state is possible. Secondly, she does not use the concept of the US Empire and excludes any notion of empire of any territorial state:

‘The main place of capitalist power is, of course, the United States. But what I’ve been trying to suggest here is that this imperial power depends not only on its own domestic state but on the whole global system of multiple states. That means that every one of those states is an arena of struggle and a potential counter-power.’

However,

‘…not even the United States, with or without its allies, can ensure the compliance of so many states. Not even the most advanced military force can keep this global system in line all at once, by means of constant direct coercion.’

Negri and Wood are common on these two points. If we advance the commonality between them:

It is becoming increasingly clear that a unilateral or “monarchical” arrangement of the global order – centred on the military, political and economic dictation of the United States – is undesirable and unsustainable.

Therefore both of them emphasize the impossibility for the USA to turn the global system into an empire of its own kingdom. However they differ from each other on the question of whether empire has a center. When Negri says that in his own architecture there is ‘no center’ of the system that functions with multiple centers rather than a unique center, he is self-consistent and never allows any ambiguity. In contrast, he concretely reveals the new form of sovereignty functioning with multiple centers. We should notice ‘but’ and ‘however’ in the last two quotations by Wood: it is center ‘but…’, it is imperialism ‘however…’ No constituent political theory can be elaborated in such a situation of lack of architecture. Imperialism is a crucial and consistent theory. We could also move on with saying ‘imperialism but…’, however this would be disrespectful towards Lenin.

NATO
The tensions the USA created in the UN, NATO and EU before the Iraq war have been misinterpreted with old concepts. It has been self-confidently argued that the UN, NATO and EU had been paralyzed and would be dissolved. Real life has demonstrated that these calculations do not hold true. We anticipated that these tensions have risen since these institutions that had been functionalized within the power mechanism of imperialism have not yet adopted to the ontology of the new form of sovereignty. We have also claimed that they would survive rather than decline, by being restructured based on militarization of ontological politics of the new form of sovereignty. No need for being humble, life confirms us.

Major capitalist powers today are very unlikely to go to war with each other, if only because, however much their economies may be damaged by competition, they need each other as markets and sources of capital. So imperial hegemony in the world of global capital depends on controlling competitors without going to war with them.

Negri also agrees with Wood on this point. One of the most important dynamics of Lenin’s theory of imperialism is the inevitability of war between imperialist states. He considers this abstraction as an ontological necessity rather than theoretical possibility. Although today the world goes through a third world war, we cannot observe it as an open inter-imperialistic war. Many parties claim that the war between imperialist states is fought as regional war. However they are not able to explain why the ontological necessities of imperialist war do not materialize and they try to explain it with the fact of nuclear arms. Although Negri discusses the background for why there is no war between imperialist states, he does not construct empire as a new form of sovereignty through a new ontology of war or this ontology of war has not been constructed yet and it is lacking. We should acknowledge that Wood is more political on this subject.
Lenin considers the imperialist states as the workshops of the world market. The imperialist centers are factories as the production sites of the capital accumulation process within the world economy. They buy raw materials, turn out them into products and export them to the world market as commodities. Within the era of imperialism based on commodity export, the circulation area of the capital accumulation process of the world economy is the world market. In terms of the theory of sovereignty, the capital process is assured by constitution of economic hegemony through subordination of social relations to the market imperatives. Integration of relations of production, circulation and distribution depends upon the political power of the capital. The invisible hand is intertwined with the visible fist within a tense, harmonious and conflictual relation. This fist means nation-state at inside and imperialism at outside. Raw materials and especially energy sites are areas of occupation of imperialism. In the period of capital export of imperialism that transcends the period of commodity export, this essence does not change. The divergence between the geographies of production and circulation and the tensions rising from this divergence are, for us, the ontological essence of the theory of imperialism. Deepening of capital accumulation inside and repletion of national market has further increased these tensions.
The second essence is law of unequal development. The formation and maintenance of monopoly capitalism depends upon assurance of production process within national borders. Competition among imperialist states is pursued at two levels: with tariff borders at inside, and with war at outside. Unequal development in terms of national economies is inevitable due to this protectionism of the capitalist development on the basis of internal dynamics. Although the world market’s imperialist split is completed, it is open to re-split due to unequal development among imperialist states. Capital is inherently global. Capital develops and reinforces production and reproduction of social relations rampantly. In the global character of capital, the divergence between geographies of production and circulation is the most crucial ontological tension of capitalism. Imperialism has transcended this tension of capitalism. If it had not, destruction of capitalism would have been inevitable. In this sense imperialism is constitutive of empire. The tendency that ‘global capital is fluid over the smooth surface of empire’ is not true. This expression should be revised as: ‘global capital is fluid over the rough surface of empire.’ There is no longer divergence of production and circulation process within the capital accumulation process of the world economy. Fluidity has risen to surface from underground. Today the hybridity is the character of global capital. Location of the centers of global corporations in specific nation-states is not a claim that negates the hybrid character of global capital. If the mode of functioning of new sovereignty is grasped, it becomes recognizable that capital strengthens its hybrid character. Empire is the hierarchical command of hybrid functioning. Economical, social and political borders are obstacles and asperities for empire. Empire is sovereignty without borders, smoothening of the rough surface depends upon militarization of the politics of the empire. Whether this will be achieved or not will be determined by the class struggles of the 21st century.
In the imperialist era, the competition between monopolies performed the law of unequal development between countries by means of wars between imperialist states. Within Empire, the competition between global monopolies does not work on the basis of protection of production within national borders. There is no longer any borders to be protected. Maintaining the geographical national borders is possible to the extent that territorial states function within the borderless sovereignty of the empire.
Competition between global monopolies is structuring on the basis of technological advantage that makes labor more efficient. The technological production that increases labor efficiency determines social labor time and wages in the world economy. This situation makes subordination of the world to market imperatives of the world economy and constitution of economic hegemony necessary. Since the economy between imperial countries and the market relations become hybrid, protection of production within national borders that has led to inter-imperialistic wars has disappeared. The export of crisis inside the imperial countries and between each other is predicated upon constitution of economic hegemony through subordinating the other regions of the world to market imperatives. This situation is possible only if the third world is contained by turning it into a free trade zone. There is no need for open political coercion in order to subordinate the G20 countries, which have achieved the material and ideological infrastructure of modernity within the context of neo-colonialism, to the market imperatives. The capital of these countries themselves call for it, as the integration of geographies of production and circulation of global capital accumulation process enforces the capital of these countries to become organically the part of the hybrid functioning of global monopolies. The crisis created by Group-22 in the Cancun meeting of the WTO is a challenge against the obstacles of the imperial states in the way of globalization.
The ontology of global capital accumulation has internationalized and globalized all political forms of sovereignty. Localization and globalization are ontology of capital. In this sense, globalization constitutes itself through system of multiple states. This hybrid ontology can be maintained only through a hierarchical body that is structured by multiple centers but functioning with single centers. In this sense all the agents of globalization, in other words, the aristocracy of the empire struggles for becoming an actor in the hierarchy of sustainability of chaos of this multilaterally functioning system. The first cause of the world war we are passing through is the power struggle in the constitution of this hierarchy. The first cause will be constituted in relation to the second cause of the war.
The capacity of global capital to transcend the geographical borders inside and outside is predicated upon subordination of social relations within these transcended borders to market imperatives. The economical power of capital is not capable of transcending the borders of social relations that do not function according to market imperatives. The borders confronting the economic coercion of capital are transcended by the political and military power of capital. The global capital is confronted with nation-states structured with social relations that have not yet completed the material and ideological infrastructure of modernity and resisting the market imperatives of the world economy. The ontology of empire is a war waged against all of the nation-states, especially the Islamic countries, resisting and interrupting globalization. If necessary the borders of these countries can be divided and re-established. This is the second cause of the world war. The first cause is interrelated and intertwined with the second cause.
This rough surface of the capitalist empire has been smoothed by economical and political coercion. The aristocracy of the empire has delegated its political power to the military power of the USA as the monarch in order to eliminate the asperities resisting the fluidity of global capital. As Wood explains ‘the allies of the USA is content with the USA acting as the police of global capital.’ We call the relation between the aristocracy and monarch of the empire as Bonapartism. Bonapartism means delegation of political power of aristocracy to the military power of the USA in order to maintain, functionalize and develop the system operating with multiple centers. This relation has been established and maintained through the wars on Iraq in 1991 and then on Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan under the command of alliance between the UN and NATO. In the second Iraq war, this relation has been undermined. The USA has declared globalization as the empire of its own kingdom. Faced with this declaration, the aristocracy of the empire withdrew its political power from the Bonaparte. The last one and a half year has shown that the USA’s declaration of globalization as the empire of its own kingdom is not compatible with the ontology of the empire’s system functioning with multiple centers. Now there is a need for a new relation between the monarch and aristocracy of the empire: a new Magna Carta. The NATO meeting that is going to be held in Istanbul is declaration of the new Magna Carta. Empire has tended towards transition from Bonapartism to constitutional monarchy as a new form of sovereignty through a new Magna Carta.

Greater Middle East and EUROMED
EUROMED is the European-Mediterranean partnership. This agreement is a very crucial imperial strategy of the EU aiming at integration with the Mediterranean region. Unfortunately almost nobody has heard about this imperial policy influencing and determining many of the affairs in Turkey, Cyprus and the Middle East.
EUROMED that dates back to older times is a step taken at Barcelona Conference in 1995. The signatory countries are the EU and 12 Mediterranean countries: Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Malta, Cyprus, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Lebanon. The geography on which these countries are located includes the North Africa and Middle East. Most of the countries are Muslim Countries. GME is the expansion of EUROMED eastwards. This is not a coincidence. EUROMED is the draft of GME. Although GME is deployed as a discourse, its content is unknown. If one wants to learn about its content, it will be illuminating enough to look at EUROMED.
EUROMED is the particular document of subordination of all social relations to the imperatives of the global market as the single logic of command of the empire. The purpose is to turn the region into a free trade area on the basis of the principles of the WTO by 2010. We do not present here a comprehensive account of the EUROMED agreement. We will touch upon its importance and conclude.
The Barcelona Declaration as the constitution of EUROMED emphasizes three purposes in general. Firstly ‘creation of peace and stability that would be maintained through increasing political dialogue and security.’ Secondly, ‘creation of a common area of welfare through free trade area that the Mediterranean countries would form among themselves and with the EU through economic and financial partnerships.’ Thirdly, ‘developing social, cultural and humanitarian solidarity as to promote cultural exchange and perception between civil societies.’ And in terms of these titles, ‘maintenance of adjustment of the laws and standards of the Mediterranean partners in a rapid fashion with that of the EU in the areas of tariffs, free flow of commodities, intellectual and property rights, financial services and public purchases.’ The EU did not have any military power for realization of this project. The USA did not have any comprehensive and all-embracing political project on which its military power would be predicated. The imperial powers have compounded their power under the single logic of command of the empire. The GME is now directly facing us.
The NATO declared itself as the global security power in its meeting on January 3, 2003. It assumed maintenance of security in Afghanistan getting beyond the Atlantic borders. It expanded by including nearly all of the East European states. As Wood says ‘the borderless empire of globalization needs infinite war: a war without boundaries, a war that is endless in both purpose and time.’
NATO is from now on the central killing machine of the empire. The Istanbul meeting is declaration of the fact that global capital will rampantly operationalize the killing machine. After June 30 the UN will intervene and the NATO will be the occupation force in Iraq on the basis of the legitimacy of the UN. In the coming years, Israel in the first place and then Iraq, Jordan and Egypt will join the NATO and the empire will plague in the Middle East through NATO. It is time for communists. It is time for production of an anti-militarist discourse by the labor front that will transcend rather than confine itself only to imperialism and opposition to occupation. Let’s destroy the killing machines! Let’s close the weapon factories. A world without borders, states and war is possible…

1 Ellen Meiksins Wood, “Empire of Capital”, Praksis, 10 (Summer-Fall 2003), p. 247.
2 Ibid p. 247
3 Ibid p.240.
4 Ellen Meiksins Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism, (Cambridge UP, 1996), s. 49.
5 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, (Penguin Classics, 1967), p.97.
6 Karl Marx, Capital I, ch. 33.
7 Ellen Meiksins Wood, “Capitalist Empire and the Nation State: A New U.S. Imperialism?”, Against the Current, v18, p16, September/November 2003
8 Ellen Meiksins Wood, “Empire of Capital”, Praksis, 10 (Summer-Fall 2003), p 243.
9 Ibid, p 246.
10 V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, V.5, p.68 (Turkish edition)
11 Ellen M. Wood, “Globalization and the State: Where is the Power of Capital?”, Alfred Saad-Filho (ed.), Anti-Capitalism: A Marxist Introduction. Pluto Press: USA, 2003.
12 Hardt & Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press: London, 2000.
13 E.M.Wood, Capitalist Empire.
14 E.M. Wood, Globalization and the State.
15 Hardt & Negri, “Why We Need a Multilateral Magna Carta”.
16 E. M. Wood, Capitalist Empire.
17 E. M. Wood, ibid.
18 E. M. Wood, Globalization and the State.

The need for reflecting on Marx, passing through Marx beyond Marx and actualizing Marx requires to respond to the question “Why Marx?”. Political economy is the substance of capitalism and an anti-capitalist revolution is impossible without the theoretical and practical critique of political economy. Marx established the question of revolution within the critique of political economy to which he dedicated his whole life. It is impossible to contain or transcend Marx without facing him. This is our response to the question of “Why Marx?”

The left (especially in Turkey) has read Marx through Lenin. Within the imperialist era, Marx has been representative of the competitive era. It was told so and hence we have known it to be so. The second official dictate has been the distinction between non-scientific Marx and scientific Marx. This distinction has led to the de-emphasizing of Marx other than that of in the introduction to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Capital Vol.I. Like The Grundrisse, The German Ideology was published as late as 1933. This led to two consequences. Firstly, the political critique of Marx has been inhibited. Secondly, Marx’s critique of those who have turned Marxism into a state ideology, and party into state, and state into a means of domination over labor has been inhibited. These two consequences that contradict each other have served to what was expected. As a matter of fact, neither Marx would have been criticized nor they would have been criticized by Marx himself. And Marx has been effaced. In this way, the left has lost its intellectual power and effectiveness as being constricted within a narrow conception of practicality. In fact, Marx is representative of not the competitive era, but our very present. Life continues to claim for an anti-capitalist and communalist revolution. And Marx speaks on communism in his distanced “non-scientific” works before Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

In order to clarify the point, we’d like to mention two examples from interpretations on non-scientific works of Marx. What is interesting is that these interpretations can be found in the prefaces and introductions of these non-scientific works. Auguste Cornu contributes to Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts where he states: “What determines the semi-idealist and also utopian character of this work is determined by the fact that in this work a speculated future confronts against the malicious age of the past.” Jacques Milhau in his preface to The German Ideology states, “However they have not been Marxists yet. The development of their conception in theoretical terms remains dependent upon the problematic rising from the Kantian question of “What is human being?”… In this respect, although Marx and Engels have succeeded at investing the humanism inherited from Feuerbach with social-political dimensions and replacing his moral idealism with revolutionary missions, they could not avoid being trapped by speculative human science”. Many other similar examples can be given. However there is no need to whelm the text with so many quotations as the purpose of this text is not to reflect on the works of Marx. Well, then when has Marx become Marxist? When Marx and Marxism become scientific. However, while Marx had not been “scientific”, he stated: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”.

Before he became Marxist and hence when he was “Marx”, Marx had already distanced himself from idealism or semi-idealism, and speculative thinking. This is what constitutes his distance from Hegel. This is to disengage Hegel’s philosophy standing on its head from idealism and speculativeness and to constitute a materialist historical conception standing on its feet. The underlying fact in Marx’s overall polemic against Hegel is the critique of “speculativeness”. It is not that thought determines material life, but material life determines thought. Marx has never been engaged with speculative thought. After completing his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx did not concern himself particularly with Hegel. Feuerbach has already overturned Hegel and distanced himself from him. What identifies Marx is not his critique of Hegel, but his critique of post-Hegel philosophy. Marx has based his thought on the critique of left-Hegelians that have based themselves on the abstract human being detached from history and sociality, and vulgar materialism, and egalitarian, communitarian and utopian communism and Feuerbach. For Marx, Feuerbach withdraws from history when he is materialist, and is no more materialist when he takes history into account. Marx is materialist faced with Hegel, and historicist faced with Feuerbach. Marx is the founder of historical materialism.

Non-scientific Marx has been represented as a philosopher, a legist and a historian. Has not Marx considered history as a science? Then, is it political economy, which makes Marx scientific? While Marx was working on The Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, he was well aware of the significance of political economy. For Marx, the essential point is civil society, and political economy represents the anatomy of civil society. 1844 Manuscripts and The German Ideology are sound critiques of political economy. 1844 Manuscripts is also known to be called 1844 Manuscripts, Political Economy and Philosophy.

All the works of “non-scientific Marx” is immanent to the critique of political economy. Marx, in the introduction of Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy states his infamous abstraction as: “The first work which I undertook to dispel the doubts assailing me was a critical re-examination of the Hegelian philosophy of law; the introduction to this work being published in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher issued in Paris in 1844. My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term “civil society”; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. The study of this, which I began in Paris, I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsion order issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies…”. As another striking example, one can also refer to Marx stating that: “The salient points of our conception were first outlined in an academic, although polemical, form in my The Poverty of Philosophy, this book which was aimed at Proudhon appeared in 1847”. If it is a matter of referring to Marx’s scientificism, Marx is not a political economist, but a historian. He has analyzed capitalist social history on the basis of political economy. Marx has never detached himself from history, society and political economy.

The distinctions such as young Marx, mature Marx, non-scientific, semi-idealist or speculative Marx are false distinctions. These distinctions are not real distinctions and have led to critically negative political consequences. Marx has not envisaged for himself periodical distinctions such as semi-idealist, speculative and scientific. Readings of Marx based on these distinctions mean to reduce Marx into a text, separating him from the historical relations and the conflicts of these relations, within which he existed. The history of Marx is not the history of texts or concepts. Reading Marx through the history of texts and concepts is the speculativeness itself. Marx is the product of history and the history of Marx should be read through the class struggles of his own period.

The Rupture in 1848

It is all about the distinction between Marx before his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Marx after this work. This distinction is the result of reading Marx in terms of the changes in his theoretical thinking –from speculativeness, semi-idealism and utopianism to scientificism. Marx has been always concerned with political economy and the scientific analysis of political economy. Marx put those in his mind into practice depending on political conditions and time-related problems. What has been new for those in the 20th century had already become out of date for Marx.

This reading of Marx in terms of changes in theoretical thinking was a false reading and inhibited political critique of Marx. Obviously there is a difference, however this difference is not theoretical, but political and it is a matter of the defeat of 1848 revolutions and its political effects over Marx.

The production of theoretical or scientific knowledge is the product of conflict. Before and within 1848 revolutions, Marx was a revolutionary militant of the political struggle. Predominance of the polemical side of his works before Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is representative of this fact. The non-scientific Marx was in polemic with thoughts of those people politically influential on the working class struggle before the 1848 revolutions. These subjects were the political references, their foundations lying in the post-Hegel philosophy. The Communist Manifesto written in 1847 and which still today represents the political document of the future is the product of the League of Communists and revolutionary militant Marx. If it is a matter of making a distinction, this ought to be the distinction between Marx before The Manifesto and Marx after The Manifesto. Turning Marx into Marxism is not a theoretical but a political question.

The defeat of 1848 Revolutions totally undermined the forces and thoughts with which Marx was in polemic. It was impossible for Marx not be influenced by this fact. He went through this period under this influence. This influence has not been taken into account. It was not because it had not been recognized. It was a secret ignored although it was clearly recognized. This secret has been ignored for the sake of scientificism.

Marx was able to find the necessary time and conditions for working on political economy, which he always kept in his mind but could not realize, in the aftermath of the defeat of 1848 Revolutions. After the defeat in 1848 the Communist League was dissolved and Marx moved to England. He dedicated his long years of poverty and diseases to carrying out scientific analysis of political economy. The precious works such as The Grundrisse, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Capital were produced in this period.

The consequence of the defeat in 1848

It is necessary to rethink on Engels’ substantial self-critique on the defeat of 1848 Revolution in 1895, beginning with “But history has shown us too to have been wrong, has revealed our point of view at that time as an illusion”. A revolution was expected, but it did not arrive. Marx and Engels in their evaluations did not very much emphasize class alliances and tactical positions, which the left generally has been used to, in terms of the problems of organization, form of struggle and formation of class power relations. They offered a much more essential evaluation. In 1850, in The Class Struggles in France Marx suggests an abstraction of an objective and scientific law: “Given this general prosperity, wherein the productive forces of bourgeois society arc developing as luxuriantly as it is possible for them to do within bourgeois relationships, a real revolution is out of the question. Such a revolution is possible only in periods when both of these factors —the modern forces of production and the bourgeois forms of production— come into opposition with each other.” “What succumbed in these defeats was not the revolution. It was the pre-revolutionary traditional appendages, results of social relationships which had not yet come to the point of sharp class antagonisms.” The revolution that overturned Europe in 1848 crashed into “the results of social relationships that have not yet arrived to the point of sharp class antagonisms”. After the defeat in 1848, the interest has shifted from class power relations to the movement of objective laws. While Marx has criticized vulgar materialists for not being able to consider the subjectivity (praxis) which changes and transforms the world, as objectivity in Theses on Feuerbach and hence insisted on the notion of history, he turned to objective movement independent from subjectivity in the aftermath of 1848. In The Communist Manifesto history has been considered as the history of class struggles. In The German Ideology the motor force of history has been revolution. After the defeat in 1848, history has been rendered into the history of the development of forces of production. The famous introduction to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy was written in 1858 as an evaluation of the 1848 Revolution. If we consider the abstraction from the introduction suggesting that “No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed” together with evaluation on 1848, the significance of the evaluation on 1848 becomes more noticeable. The introduction is the “scientific” account of the evaluation on 1848.

The Secret: The Change in the Theory of Crisis

History is production and reproduction of the material life on the basis of the production of means of subsistence. The character of social relations is dependent upon the production of that society, what and how it produces. The forces of production are representative of the means of production that renders labor efficient, the formal character of the labor producing these means and the general welfare accumulated through social history. Marx calls it as “general intellect” in The Grundrisse. And the relations of production are determined by the character of the property relations. The forces of production function within relations of production; that is, property relations. Material production and reproduction of social life is dependent upon the tension between the forces of production and the relations of production.

The most essential dynamic of the forces of production is the character of labor. In the capitalist society, the character of labor is signified by “waged labor”. Labor is classified in the form of “waged labor” by capital. Classification of labor in the form of “waged labor” represents constitution of private property. The problem is about the transformation of forces of production that produce and reproduce the relations of production (that is, relation of private property) into a subversive power. Labor turns into a subversive power against relations of private property resisting with de-classification against being classified in the form of “waged labor”. In this sense, transformation of forces of production into subversive power is immanent in the development of forces of production. In terms of the dialectic of capital’s self-affirmative practices, classification of labor in the form of “waged labor” represents development of forces of production. Labor is capitalized in the form of “waged labor”. In this case, for capital there is no antagonism between “waged labor” and “capital”. In terms of the dialectic of the capital’s self-affirmation, there is no antagonism between capital and waged labor, but there is contradiction. While capital’s practice of self-affirmation functions dialectically, labor’s practice of self-affirmation does not function in a dialectical manner! In terms of labor’s practice of self-affirmation there is no contradiction, but an total antagonism between “labor” and “capital”. For non-scientific Marx, Marx before The Communist Manifesto and Marx before 1848, the theory of crisis is based on the antagonism immanent to the self-affirmative practice of labor. The subversive power of labor is immanent to the development of productive forces. Subjectivity is objectivity in terms of subversive power. The problem is to transform this opposition into social antagonism. This is completely a political matter. Leninism is immanent to the labor’s practice of self-affirmation. Non-scientific Marx constitutes communism politically in opposition to private property. Communism represents the political practice itself that would destruct capitalism. In other words, communism is identical with “revolutionariness”, which is the essential question.

The scientific Marx expresses detachment of the theory of crisis from labor’s practices of self-affirmation to be constituted within capital’s practices of self-affirmation. “No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed.” Capitalism would not be destroyed unless capital does not achieve classification of labor under “waged labor” at a worldwide level. This conception has led to foundation of labor’s struggle for social emancipation onto the “contradiction” between “waged labor” and “capital” until the closure of the dialectic of capital’s practice of self-affirmation. This is exactly what Hegel’s dialectic means. German Marxism has also followed this path. Scientific Marxism is detachment of the subversive character of labor from its immanence to development of productive forces. As follows, communism has come to be considered as the moment of historical development when capital would dissolve itself automatically rather than as the subversive political practice against private property. Now social antagonism is emptied of its political character and confined within capital’s practice of self-affirmation. Evaluation and self-critique on 1848 represents the return to Hegel through dialectic. The state as the alienated power to be destroyed turns into regulatory and planning state within German Marxism, and with the October Revolution into a form of property; that is “state property” that would develop productive forces, meaning “waged labor”. Thus, social life is turned into “State”. And the state is deepened through militarization of society. In Hegel, everything culminates in the holy “State”. Social life constitutes the tissues of State. The October Revolution turned the society into State rather than destroying the State. As a manifestation of history, we actualized Hegel while criticizing him. This is our shame and we undertake it. It is our burden to undertake this shame in the name of our dignity.

OTONOM, No. 12 (March-May 2006)

We have stated before that we have entered into a very significant political process in terms of history of class struggle since determination of the date to start negotiations with the EU, and that the power centers were waiting for determination of the date for starting negotiations to start to speak in relation to new developments and hence in the next 10-15 years, we would pass through a very tense and severe period of reconstitution of the powers and power relations. The fascist movement reacted first. It is observed that fascism has been introduced again in order to suppress and terrorize the libertarian forces and exclude them as a political force from the political process.
This phenomenon cannot be considered as conjunctural. It signifies a political operation in the context of reconstitution of powers and power relations. The concept, the subject matter and timing seem to be well planned. It was not accidentally that the flag of Turkey was pulled down in Mersin during the Newroz celebrations. Addressing to one of the most sensitive concern of the society, it is apparently aimed to kill two birds with one stone. The main purpose is to restructure all social and political dynamics within the category of nationalism. Upon this purpose, the Kurdish question as the most sensitive issue in the EU process is preferred. One is either separatist or nationalist! We are aware that this is a well-known discourse. However, we are also aware that this official discourse has partly eroded although it sometimes worked well before. The important point that should be considered, implying a serious threat is that the fascist movement has been employing the anti-imperialist discourse. Discussions on whether the fascist movement employs the anti-imperialist discourse sincerely or not do not touch upon the strategic aspect of the matter. It is really necessary to consider the fact that the fascist movement argues against the Kurdish movement with an anti-imperialist discourse transcending the discourse of separatism. In this sense, the main purpose seems to be the reconstitution of social-political dynamics with an anti-imperialist discourse against the USA, EU and the Kurdish movement with reference to the concept of nationalism.

Imperial Fascism and Nationalism
There is no distinction as the inside and outside of the expanded production and reproduction process of capital accumulation. In any part of the world, it is not possible to maintain labor productivity and exploitation in the global competition and hence surplus value production without being organically articulated with global capital. In other words, capitalism orders global capital to subsume labor under its domination all over the world. Concentration of global capital is founded upon dissolution of national capitals. This means declaration of global sovereignty. Nation state is disciplining labor within borders. This means declaring, “Exploitation of labor within the national borders is now subsumed under the sovereignty of global capital”. In this sense, global sovereignty is a challenge against sovereignty of nation state as a form of sovereignty. The main tendency of the capitalist empire is the disintegration of the sovereignty of resisting nation states by means of war and re-disciplining them according to the notion of global democracy as well as commodification of all social relations by global capital. The nation states are relocated in the hierarchy of the capitalist empire. In other words, the national sovereignty is restructured in a postmodern manner. We call this new form of sovereignty that capitalism has come to adopt as “imperial fascism”.
Imperial fascism breaks sovereignty of the capital circles that have been dissolved by concentration and centralization of global capital. Nationalism is the response to this break. The powers and power relations shaped through the imperialist era of capitalism has been redesigned in the era of capitalist empire. This crisis of sovereignty among capitalist powers is the crisis of representation in the post-modern era.

The first and second republicans
The first Turkish Republic was founded upon the external threat of imperialism and internal threat of Kurds, Sharia and communism. The Independence War of 1919-1922 is the continuation of the First World War in our geography. In other words, the first republic has evolved through the First World War. The Ottomon Empire headed by the Unionists is one of the substantial actors of the First World War. The Ottoman Empire had not been considered as a small power, but instead as a weak but an imperial power decisive in the movement of history. The fact that it was allied with the Central Powers would not change it. Therefore, the first republic is the representative of the cultural heritage of the imperial history of 600 years. In this sense, the constitution of the sovereignty of the first republic should be considered beyond the matter of democratic nationalism; and an imperial nationalism inspired by the debacle in the First World War has been always present in the spirit of the state and society. Nationalism in our social and political history has been still constituted within the discourse of power to conquest, empire and world state, domination and power rather than within a bourgeois democratic discourse that puts nationalism of the oppressed against that of the oppressor. The clash between the political Islam and the first republic is not a matter of secularism but of power split. Political Islam is a political power inhering the heritage of the empire. It claims to have a share in power. The AK Party (Party of Justice and Development) as the initiator of liberalization of Islam tries to seem closer to imperial actors determinative in the global power mechanism and to solve the clash between the political Islam and the first republic relying on the EU process. And it has proceeded a long way in this attempt.
The process of membership to the EU is the constitution of the second republic. It represents a process through which all the powers and power relations would be reconstituted. This process has been considered from a very inward-looking perspective. The anticipation that the democratic demands of Islamic, Alevi and Kurdish powers would be resolved has also brought with itself a severe deadlock. This deadlock may drive the political and social process into a melee difficult to resolve. The political Islam has tended towards resolution of the problem with the first republic. Resolution of this problem depends upon constitution of the second republic. The army and the AK party are the constitutive forces of the second republic. However whether these powers could take steps or not depends upon an adequate strategic reading of the constitution of empire as the new form of sovereignty of capitalism and executing their forces in accordance with this reading. Turkey is located in the center of a geography where capitalist empire is constituted through war. It does not seem possible to bypass the process by daily politics. The wait-and-see politics has been deadlocked since the Kurds demand to be the constitutive power of the second republic.
The growth rate was recently announced to be 9.9%. It was the highest rate attained during the history of the republic. However no one mentioned about the rate of poverty. This growth rate is indicative of capital concentration; that is, centralization of capital through dissolution of small production. The big capital has deepened organic integration with global capital. The global economic and political process has weakened the sovereign power of the state. The state tries to bypass the reform process through preserving its sovereign power. It tries to preserve its sovereign power relying on either the USA or the EU. However it is clearly seen that both the USA and the EU has a common strategy in terms of imperial concept of capitalism. The state has been through a crisis of representation and sovereignty. It has to make a change in its political conception. The provocation of an attack against the Turkish flag was organized within this political deadlock. The social and political dynamics are reconstituted on the basis of the nationalism of the fascist movement. And the fascist movement has been extending the notion of nationalism as to include anti-imperialist and Kemalist discourse. The social and political powers are divided between Yes and No to the EU. The “yes” camp has adopted the political line of the second republicans whereas the “no” camp the political line of the first republicans. The first republicans have been considered to be nationalist, anti-imperialist, Kemalist whereas the second republicans are declared to be traitors. This crisis of representation and sovereignty of capitalism and capitalist powers is not our own crisis. Those stating, “Okay, it is not our crisis, but we should pursue daily politics” would find themselves on the same ground with the nationalist camp.

The Crisis of the Empire and the Communist Politics
Capitalism has been driven into a new crisis of sovereignty while undergoing through constitution of a new form of sovereignty. It is a crisis of representation and the nation state as a form of representation. The global capital has been challenging against all forms representation impeding its limitless expansion.  It is the crisis of the passage from national sovereignty and the nation state based on representative democracy to territorial states structured with global notions of imperial democracy. This is the dissolution of the form of sovereignty of modernism. This crisis can only be governed by imperial fascism. The crisis of national sovereignty produced by imperial fascism leads to local nationalisms. Imperial fascism drives humanity into barbarism promoting discourses of nationalism, war and religion. It is impossible to response to this crisis of sovereignty of the capitalist empire with the modernist discourse of nationalist left based on national borders and nation state.
The class struggles cannot be confined within national borders. The nationalization of politics of labor is an interdiction put forward by limitless capital without a nationality against labor. The class struggle has been globalized. The politics of labor can be liberating to the extent that it can initiate a global politics. The only way to avoid being a side in the war of sovereignty among capitalist powers is a global politics. This is the revolutionary possibility offered to communists by the cris