Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Congrès Marx International V - Section Économie – Paris-Sorbonne et Nanterre – 3/6 octobre 2007 Who Pays for Crises of Capitalism?: A Class-Based Income Distribution Analysis in Turkey Ahmet Haşim Köse - Serdal Bahçe Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ahmet Haşim Köse Ankara University, Faculty of Political Sciences Department of Economics Dr. Serdal Bahçe Ankara University Faculty of Political Sciences Department of Public Finance The Turkish Economy had experienced two severe financial crises (in 1994 and 2000) during 1990’s. Certainly, these crises had significant repercussions upon the income distribution of the society. Up to date, these repercussions have been generally analyzed in a standard neoclassical framework that utilizes traditional tools such as income brackets, Gini coefficients or Lorentz Curve. These traditional tools consider the individuals or socially indefinite income groups as the basic analytical units. In essence, these crises have far-reaching effects upon the society, which could not be evaluated by such an analytical framework. As a general rule for a capitalist society the effects of crises upon the different social classes has not been equal. In the context of the Turkish financial crises, this study aims to analyse the redistributive effects of the crises upon the different social classes of the society. Although the bourgeoisie precursors argued that the cost of the crises that Turkey experienced in the last decade was almost equally distributed among the individuals of the society, the evidence drawn form the class-based income distribution analysis of the consequences of the crises have falsified this argument. A brief overview of the empirical evidence suggests that the financial crises have significantly changed the income and wealth distribution between the social classes such as workers, petty bourgeois and capitalists. In this context, the basic question which we aim to answer is “Who did pay for the crises?”. Undoubtedly, in an empirical analysis of social classes, the main problem is the transition from a theoretical conceptualisation to a concrete definition of social classes. In order to cope with this problem, we will follow a methodology that theoretically stems from a synthesis of Marxian writings and especially from G. Carchedi and E. O. Wright. However, apart from being theoretical constructs, social classes are also historical forms, which have been outcome of historical development of national capitalisms. This unavoidable fact has directed us to extend our research beyond the limits put by a pure theoretical class analysis and into a concrete analysis of historical determination of class positions in the capitalist social formation of Turkey. This extension necessitates a well-structured empirical analysis which will complement theoretical interrogation. For our empirical analysis, we use “Household Budget Survey” data sets, which have been irregularly conducted by the Turkish Statistical Institute since 1987. This survey gives information about consumption patterns, net disposable income and wealth positions of the households in Turkey. Moreover, it also covers a range of questions from which we can derive the class status of the households. We use 1994 and 2003 surveys within a comparative perspective as a representative of last two financial crises. In particular, we try to answer the following questions: (i) what are the basic characteristics of the household class structure in Turkey? (ii) On what grounds did the financial crises affect this structure? (iii) What were the magnitudes of redistribution effects of financial crises among the different social class? By answering these questions, we aim to interpret the meaning of our main question for different social classes in a capitalist society: is it really possible to share the effects of crises? If not, “who pays for crises of capitalism?”