KÜRESEL POLİTİK EKONOMİ

Marxism: is a theory and method for working class emancipation through socializing the means of production. Aims to end private property’s power over social relationships.

While Western Europe began to enter into capitalism and its market economy around 16th century onwards, the social relationships in Eastern part were not very conducive for broad market transactions. First agriculture was not very productive in the East and in order to compete with Western merchants and states, feudal rulers in Eastern Europe mostly chose to increase the burden of work and taxes over their serves. At that turning point in history, as market economy encouraged the development of civil initiatives and independent capital accumulation against feudal rulers in the West, general population in the East vastly suffered from growing pressure and restrictions on social and economic areas by their feudal landlords. Especially after the industrial revolution and overseas investments by Western capitalism, one can argue that there emerged a significant gap between two sides of the continent.

Civil Society: It generally refers to the sections of society and their political, economic activities, which are independent from government.

The most important reasons for Soviets’ emerging as an alternative forms of power were first, soldiers predominantly protested the conditions in the war front. Second, peasants demanded more equal land distribution and third workers wanted more just working conditions and better pay.

One of the followers of the Marx’s ideas in Russia, VI. Lenin, came up with a more radical idea that Russian society, workers and peasants, can only be saved by overthrowing the centuries old Russian tsarism and capitalist property relations through a working class led revolution. He called this working class party model “vanguard party”, a party that can lead workers in political struggle. According to Lenin, workers were not able to develop a political consciousness by themselves so they had to have a vanguard party.

Socialist economies tried to prevent economic instabilities like high inflation, unemployment and income inequalities through abolishing private owners- hip over the means of production. Then they created a command economy, in which major and minor decisions about the economic life were taken by the planning commissions of state. Though socialist planning increased the wel- fare of people in the first 50 years until 1980’s, it faced rising obstacles at the end of 1970’s as socialist economies left behind in technological innovation and producing more consumer goods. Western officials argued that, lack of incentives for innovation for individuals in socialist systems mostly resulted with bureaucratic inefficiency. Also lack of participation by the people into political and economic decision making through those seven decades further weaken the efficient operation of socialist planning.

The protest movements mainly questioned the feasibility of Soviet model in their domestic societies. Issues like collectivization of agriculture, power of secret police, productivity of Soviet factory management system, restrictions on art and culture, all were controversial topics that protesters raised in 1950’s. Same problems when they cause Prague Spring events in 1968 faced with the same fate of Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia (Williams,1997).

In 1985, amidst all the problems surrounding Soviet society, Mikhail Gorbachev, 54 year old politburo member, was chosen as the general secretary of the party. He saw the need for reform in the system and declared his program of Glasnost and Perestroika (Strayer, 2016: 167-188).

In terms of economic problems that Eastern European economies encountered during the transition to market economy, biggest issue was the lack of institutional framework. Eastern Europe populations did not have experiences with widespread market operations and associated legal regulations. For example, how to protect the private property rights of corporations and individuals after decades of communist era was not easy. In addition to that, economic policies that were advised by the IMF like privatization of state assets did not have necessary regulations that may prevent any plundering of public wealth during transition period. Also fast implementation of structural adjustment programs, i.e shock therapy, created mafia like organizations, who took advantage of those legal loopholes and even threatened the small property owners in the aftermath of the collapse of socialism. Countries, who politically controlled the market economy reform process achieved much stable results compared to hasty reform application of Russia in the 1990’s.

Poverty, lack of both industrialization and urban development were important problems of China even in early 1980’s.Opening up of China to foreign market operations after 1978 mainly closed this gap and country began to surpass other emerging market economies in the first decade of 21st century. At that point China used its enormous labor force that can be mobilized for industrial production as the country contains almost third of world’s workforce. In addition to above arguments, one can count the existence of state control over strategic sectors in China as another fact that made Chinese transition more successful. Unlike hasty privatizations of 90’s Eastern European economies, Chinese ruling party preferred to control important sectors, such as telecommunication, energy, transportation and opted to privatize the most unproductive state enterprises. Also Chinese ability to learn industrial design and production techniques from foreign corporations helped countries economic development. Though, these Chinese practices were a lot of times accused by Western countries for being unfair trade operations.

Capitalism: a mode of production that depends on private property and accumulation of profit through market exchanges.

Marxism: is a theory and method for working class emancipation through socializing the means of production. Aims to end private property’s power over social relationships.

Socialism: An economic system that is characterized by social ownership of means of production and workers self-management.

Comecon: Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, an institution that was made of 7 East European countries and USSR. It lasted from 1949 to 1991.

J. Stalin: Second leader of the Soviet Communist Party, served through 1924- 1953 and renowned for his idea of socialism in a single country.

Mikhail Gorbachev: 8th and the last general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, and the last leader of the USSR.

1991

Shock Therapy: In economics, sudden withdrawal of currency and price controls over markets and fast trade liberalization, privatization and cuts in social spending.

2000

D. Xiao Ping: Renowned for his market economy reforms, chair of Chinese Communist Party from 1978 to 1989.