DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY
vol.9, no.2,
(July 2003)
Takis
Fotopoulos' reply to Omer Caha's Dialogue Article
I
would like first to thank Omer
Caha for his comments on my article and also for his interesting contribution on
the significance of the feminist movement-- and reformist movements in general--
in humanizing the system. His particular point of reference is the Turkish
feminist movement and its success in ‘humanizing’ the system. As my article
on the end of antisystemic movements
and the limited significance of reformist movements in improving the system had
as its main point of reference the advanced market economies of the North,
Caha’s intervention gives me the opportunity to refer to the corresponding
significance of such movements in the South,
with particular
reference to the case of Turkey.
However,
as the author, before embarking on a discussion of the significance of the
Turkish feminist movement, finds it useful to refer to the importance of the
socialist antisystemic movement with respect to the building of the welfare
state and the system of ‘distributive justice’ characterising the period
1950-mid
1970s,
one has to mention here that these achievements, which flourished during the
statist period of modernity, were in fact temporary aberrations to the
marketisation process.
Thus, the emergence of neoliberal globalisation during the period of neoliberal
modernity has to such a significant extent undermined these achievements of
social democracy that one wonders whether it is still meaningful to continue talking today about the ‘important contributions of these
movements on behalf of man’. Furthermore, it is ironic indeed that the author
claims that the chief reason for the demise of the antisystemic movements was
‘the humanization process of the system itself (which) leaves no further need
for the fundamental discourses to be promoted by social movements anymore’ at
the very moment that marks the collapse of the welfare state even in its last
European citadel, Germany, and when the system has just reached its brutality
apogee point. In other words, at the moment when the transnational elite which
manages the system today, in the aftermath of its other wars in the New World
Order (war in the Gulf, NATO war against Yugoslavia and war against
Afghanistan), has now embarked to a bestial preventive war and the subsequent
occupation of a country in the South (Iraq), with the hardly disguised aim of
looting its natural resources–an event unheard of since the second world war!
Having
said that, let us come to the criticisms raised on my article on the basis of
the Turkish experience. The author rightly stresses the importance of Turkey’s
historical background with respect to gender relations in leading to the
development of a reformist rather than an antisystemic feminist movement (as it
was largely the case in the North). Thus, it is not surprising that, within a
culture which secluded women from the public domain on the basis of the norms of
gender roles, the nature of the newly emerged feminist movement (following the
rise of the middle classes), would by necessity be a reformist one. By
necessity, because women’s exclusion from the public domain in Turkey took the
extreme form of physical seclusion
of many women within the harems; as the author mentions. The secular culture
promoted by the new elite which controlled the Turkish republic, which rose --at
the beginning of the last century-- on the ruins of the Ottoman empire, led to a
steady improvement in the status of women, who were given the right to vote and
to sit in parliament.
However,
all these changes to the status of women came from above, i.e. from a
progressive elite, rather than from below, i.e. from the struggle of women’s
movements as, for instance, was the case with
the suffragettes in the West. This had crucial implications on the
development of the feminist movement in Turkey. It is a necessary condition for
the development of antisystemic consciousness that whatever social reforms are
introduced by an elite are the result of social struggles, which may or may not
intensify and lead to a higher level of consciousness once the reforms are
achieved or reversed. But in the case of the Turkish feminist movement the
reforms which resulted in the improvement of women’s social status were purely
the result of aggressive action taken by the system introduced by the new
republic. No wonder that ‘the “system” is generally accepted by Turkish
feminist groups as the alternative of the traditional Islamic public sphere and
as a positive and open domain for women— particularly today when the rise of
Islamic fundamentalism in Turkey threatens to reverse even these reforms
introduced by the system.
Turkish
feminists therefore mostly sped up the implementation of the reforms introduced
by a liberal and secular elite or simply functioned as the first line of defence
against the rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism which wished to move the clock
back towards the relegation of women to their traditional position in the
private realm. It is true, as the author rightly points out, that the evolution
of the Turkish feminist movement into a postmodern identity movement (following
a similar trend in the North within which the ‘new social movements’ by the
1990s had become transformed into supporters of ‘identity politics’)
represented an antithesis to the
universalising ‘homogenisation’ culture enhanced by the system that was
established by the Turkish republic. However, one could reasonably assume that
this antithesis does not represent any fundamental problem for the system
itself. In fact, as the modernization process has not yet been completed in
Turkey, the system simply attempts to balance the needs of modernization (which
includes the promotion of women’s rights) with the needs of neoliberal
globalization, whose ideology is expressed by the anti-universalistic postmodern
paradigm.
One
could therefore expect that as modernization proceeds (a process that will be
sped up when Turkey eventually joins the European Union) and the social status
of women is secured then there will be no problem for the full development of
postmodern identity politics and the phasing out of the above antithesis.
In
a nutshell, most of the achievements of Turkish feminists were very much
compatible with the modernization policies of the Turkish secular establishment.
In the light of this problematique, the conclusion drawn by the author (‘the
case of Turkish feminism secondly and importantly indicates that reformist
social movements might play a more
successful role in humanizing the system than
antisystemic ones’) is a non-sequitur, as
one could hardly argue that the humanisation of the Turkish system was
mainly the result of feminist
activity.
The
author then argues that ‘as the case of the socialist movement indicated in
the case of the former Eastern socialist regimes, an alternative system
established as a result of the activities of an antisystemic movement is not
always a positive development. The
fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran is another indication of
the same point.‘ Setting aside the Iranian example which is irrelevant
to my argument since the definition of an antisystemic movement that I had
suggested clearly referred to the socio-economic system established by the
market economy and representative democracy, the Soviet example does not of
course prove that antisystemic movements are not needed anymore or that they are
somehow inferior to reformist movements. The Soviet experiment is simply a case
of a failure of an antisystemic movement for definite historical reasons having
to do both with its ideology and the historical conditions under which it took
place, and in no way could it be used as a case to derive sweeping
generalisations about History. Nor could one accept
the author’s second argument that
‘the replacement of the system seems not possible by means of social
groups, which emerge and grow within the system itself’. Clearly, most
systemic changes in the last century (Russia, Eastern Europe, China etc),
irrespective of how we assess them against Marxist or any other
standards, were the result of struggles in which antisystemic social
groups (emerged and grown within the system itself) played a leading role.
Furthermore, the argument of legitimacy suggested by the author when he states
that the antisystemic character of social movements sometimes brings about their
end is, of course, true but this is as valid an argument against antisystemic
movements as would be an argument for ostracising revolutions from any
antisystemic activity as illegitimate!
The author’s conclusion
therefore that the humanization of the system is possible as the case of social
democracy and Turkish feminism has shown, is not supported by the facts, as I
attempted to show above. Social democracy has already proven to be a temporary
aberration whereas the humanization of the Turkish system, as far as gender
relations are concerned, was much more the effect of systemic policies rather
than of any feminist struggle. However, when the author argues that ‘the
humanization of the system is more important than its replacement with unknown,
empirically untested systems’ and that
he
sees the modern system as a paradigm and its representative democracy and free
market economy as ‘the historical accumulation of human experience’ he
rather mistreats History. The crucial question arising here is: in what sense do
representative ‘democracy’ (discovered by the American elites two hundred
years ago in order to exclude people from the direct management of their own
affairs),
which is a blatant distortion of democracy as created two and a half thousand
years ago, and the market economy, (which was also established at about the same
time that representative democracy was introduced) and led to the separation of
society from the economy, express the historical accumulation of human
experience? All this, not to mention that the author’s suggestion that the
humanization of the system is more important then its replacement with unknown,
empirically untested systems implicitly assumes that representative
‘democracy’ and the market economy represent the ‘end of History’, as
the indescribable ideologue of the system , Fukuyama, suggests!
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