ADM 1122, Ders Notları: Neo-Liberalism (Lecture: 13.04.2010)

New Right is an ideology that can best be summarized as a synthesis of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism which are revived versions of their older counterparts.

Neo-liberalism especially supports this claim by having several concepts and notions that underline its connection with liberalism. Economic individualism is one of these notions, advocating an increase of individual freedom by eliminating government oppression, pushing individuals to be self-reliant; for example taxes should be kept minimal in accordance to this concept.

Another notion included in neo-liberalism is libertarianism, which was best summarized by Nozick’s beliefs, who pushed for extremely minimal government which would only be involved in the provision of security and life; if it is involved, that is. So libertarians see tax as coercion, forced labour, oppression.

But a key concept within the neo-liberal ideology is the revival of Austrian economics which consisted of Hayek’s beliefs that liberal-capitalist economy was made up out of a trial and error system, which was considerably better than market socialism in Hayek’s mind. This underlined the nature of New Right as a reaction towards Democratic Socialism.

The last important element of neo-liberalism consists of the ideas of Milton Friedman who believed that the only economic responsibility of the state should be the problem of inflation; in other words, monetarism. Monetarist concepts dictate that the government should only puruse a policy of sound money and sound regulations. So inflation would mean that the state is exceeding is limitations and assuming illegitimate roles which in turn means limiting the capacity of the state economically is necessary.

So neo-liberalism does not specifically differ from liberalism, it is actually a revival of it, including slightly different ideologies and concepts in this turn.

ADM 1122, Ders Notları: The Notions Key to Social Democracy (Lecture: 06.04.2010)

there are several notions of various concepts quite elementary to social democracy; the first of which being justice. social democracy aims for social justice, and what they understand from this is -unlike the liberal understanding of it, which involes the equality of opportunities- the equality of condition. however, social democracy does not actually push for absolute equality. they understand and accept that there might be inequalities stemming from individuals and their choices, and all it aims is the minimization of these inequalities and avoidance of them being permanent through various social concepts such as inheritance.

another notion is the notion of rulers. although democratic socialism clearly is in support of democracy, it opposes its represantative nature, instead vouching populist democracies in forms of workplace, grass roots or direct democracies, linking democracy directly to the people.

human nature is another notion in social democracy; in opposition to conservatist, liberal and fascist ideas which presupposes certain facts about the nature of human beings, social democracy believes that society shapes individuals and individuals are thusly impossible to be the target of assumptions. with that said however, social democracy still believes that individuals can and will be unique.

IR 110, Mid-Term Çalışması: St. Augustine

the conditions that gave birth to augustine's thinking involve, at the very core, the death of christ. we see this in two parts, first, he was born into a world which was growing more and more disappointed each day by the fact that christ did not come back and bring the rule of god to the world. and this resulted in the second reason why the death of christ is so significant to augustine's way of thinking; he firmly believed that nothing else in this world would bring people to or away from salvation except the reappearance of christ and no event other than the death of him was significant. he believed that the world, as god created, was complete with everything in its right place, however, human beings had the capability of disobedience. to augustine, god had two attitudes towards his creations when such disobedience took place; disappointment, and forgiveness. if we do obey him however, we will live in the city of god, if we don't, if we act on our pride, in other words, if we commit the original sin, we will live in the city of earth. in this life; god has created two intermediaries to counteract the two effects of sin: church to mitigate the alienation of man to god, the civil government to negate the alienation of man to man. and what's even more shocking is that... augustine thinks this is it. vast majority of the people will never get to live in the city of god, they will continue to wallow in their sinful and wicked lives and nothing can be done to remedy that in a short period of time and the civil order had to remain here. but why did augustine think like this? what was the difference that made plato think that a hierarchical civil order was in the nature of human beings, that made aristotle think that belonging to a civil order, a poltical body was the core of humanity while causing augustine to think that the civil order was a divine concept instigated to remedy the sins of the irrevocably wicked human beings? the answer is simple; augustine thought that the original sin had caused the human beings to lose their nature. he believed that this city might achieve order, but it will never be like the order in the city of god.

ADM 1122, Ders Notları: The Notions Key to Fascism and Nazism (Lecture 11.03.2010)

there were several notions very key to the nazi and fascist ideology which largely defined the beliefs these political thoughts systems stood upon.

the first were the notion of race. french author arthur de gobineau detailed his idea of aryan racism which was widely supported and actively applied by the nazi administration. this idea of race referred both to the physical and spiritiual/intellectual characteristics as definitive distinctions of a race. according to this idea, everything, including the fate of a race was already coded by genetics. every race had a place in the world and wars must be sought if the purity of races were threatened.

a pseudo-science of measuring race; crainology was also popular during the height of the nazi reign. according to this idea, race and intellectual superiority had a distinct correlation; i.e. some races were genetically more intelligent than others. the origins of this ideal dates back to the concept of "volk" in the german nation. this concept included the folklore and the identity of the german nation. this fondness of self later influenced the nazi ideals, mixing with the idea of race.

another notion quite key to the ideology was the notion of citizenship. although fascism was an elitist ideology, it pushed for the participation of the masses, but this participation was not the same with the concept of participation in democracy which demands its citizens to participate in the elections to decide their own fates, instead, nazi understanding of participation was a show of the loyalty of the masses. rallies and marches were treated as proofs of the national unity, which was essentially the idea that individuals did not exist, only the state did.

the notion of structure in fascism was incredibly centralized, allowing no other power centres and suppressing and eliminating all other possible sources of power. in line with this idea, the concept of corporatism was also in application. according to corporatism, each section of the economy should have an administrative body overseeing the private business owners, allowing both the capital owners and the state to control the working class.

another interesting nuance within the ideology is the notion of change. unlike conservatism, fascism believes in sudden and even revolutionary changes and their use in the economical and political processes. while conservatism opposes all immediate changes, fascism uses direct shifts, disregarding everything, including the historical continuity which conservatism highly regards, to reach a certain goal.

ADM 1122, Ders Notları: The Problems That Fascism and Nazism Rose as a Reaction (Lecture: 02.03.2010)

while both fascism and nazism are self-applied labels of italian and german governments of the early 20th century, only nazism was a response to specific conditions, fascism was more like the continuum of an ideology that lingered in the italian culture for millenias

the first problem they saw was the weimar republic itself, which was the government established after the first world war and was in power until nsdap rose

weimar republic was a shadow of what the german nation-state once was, it had lost its colonies and was punished with a major compensaton by the winning forces of the first world war

the nazis used this weakness as a propaganda device

the second problem was also related to this, namely, the compensation forced upon the germans

it created an incredible depression, both economically and literally

the financial results were outrageous and the german people felt unjust

which was another problem the nazis saw, the alienation of the german people from the rest of the world, and the alienation from themselves, the nazis wanted the germans to be a part of the political world by actually ruling it, because that was what they thought they deserved, and this would give them the purpose they lost after the great war

but what i think the most important problem was

the political instability

i personally think that the only reason fascism won't be repeated was that democracy is now viewed as a working system

back then

it was new

germans had only unified in 1871 and they were unified as a kingdom

and only after they became a democracy that things became worse

now it can't be said whether there's a correlation or not but the nazis surely believed there was

and they built their argument on this

they thought that democracy didn't work because the amount of political parties were outrageous, the instability it caused was unacceptable and the unity it destroyed was much too valuable

on top of that was the rise of socialist/communist ideas

people who weren't socialists or communists

believing what hitler said about the ineffectiveness of democracy

believing his promises of a stronger germany

believing that all of these were their rights as the german race

elected him

he won the 1932 german election with 37% of the votes

ADM 1122, Ders Notları: Nazism and Fascism (Lecture 24.2.2010)

Although both fascism and nazism are very similar, they have slight differences seperating them from each other. Despite both of them being self-applied labels in the sense that both Benito Mussolini'si Italy and Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party called themselves fascists and nazis respectively and both of them sharing a similar ideal of national unity, the ideology of nazism has a slight nuance; unlike fascist ideology, nazis also believe in and act on racism. For nazis, politics involved -and for the most part consisted of- the struggle of races.

Despite this small difference, both ideologies are very close to each other in their opposition to other views and beliefs, specifically the popular ideologies of the 20th Century: liberalism, marxism, conservatism and democracy.

Nazis and fascists oppose liberalism because of the harm liberalism's focus on the individual inflicts on the idea of national unity. For these two ideologies nation is an entity itself and the individuals and individual groups within this entity can not exist if the nation was to act as one.

Their opposition to marxism also stands on similar ideals, namely the oppostion to individual groups; in this case, the classes. Marxist belief focuses on the elimination of the exploitation of the worker class by the bourgeoise, which means that it advocates class struggles as a means to achieve a just society and this condradicts the nazi and the fascist belief because of its disruption of national unity.

Their distance from conservatism, however, is based on different ideals. At first, the conservatist sides of the early 20th Century supported the rise of nazi and fascist powers for they assumed this would stop the spread of communism which threatened to harm the traditional authority. However, the nazis and the fascists wanted a shift, they wanted to mobilize and energize the people which deeply harmed the ideas of traditional authority and the historical continuity which the conservatists believe.

And their opposition to democracy is somewhat based on these as well, while democracy supports and values equality and individual voice, fascism and nazism deeply disagree with this, instead believing that some people are inferior to others and they should be -either politically or literally- eliminated.

So, the political system of nazism and fascism is obviously totalitarian and the leaders are authoritarian, no individuals, no classes and no equality, just a single, total national (or racist) entity.

ADM1121, Ders Notları: Conservatism

Conservatism is essentially a response to liberalism, which built its foundation on the idea that every man is free to do whatever he or she wishes without infringing on other people's rights to do whatever they wish. Liberalists favor pure reason for deciding a political system while the conservatists believe that pure reason will never work on practice (with Edmund Burke going as far as claiming that pure reason belongs to god alone) so they believe that using history is far better than using something that can never quite see the big picture (the human mind) as the decider. History, they think, shows us what more or less worked, not necessarily in an ideal way, but it is safer than assuming that something new that was developed out of a reasoning that has no certainty of working in practice would work better. They view society as an organism, rather than the liberalist view of the society being a machine. For the liberals, every individual or group of individuals is a cog, their free-willed actions make the machine run; for conservatists, the society is an organism, with every individual or group of individuals having a task given to him (bkz: "ayaklar baş olursa bu iş yürümez"). So in this analogy, changes and improvements are a medicine, and the conservatists believe that if administered suddenly, all change and improvements will lead to an overdose, thus it should be spread slowly and carefully.

This is in line with their dependence to adhere to the status quo, but the problem here is that all of this seems like a giant and misguided rationalization for the very human wish of preserving power. Every source of power is one way or another conservatist, they might not necesarily be against change, but if that change is going to deprive them of their potency, then they oppose it. This is why they prefer slow, careful doses of changes/improvements, because if the differentiation is slow, it's controllable, but if it's sudden, a power shift becomes inevitable.

The idea that the society is an organism becomes even more apparent when you try to answer the question regarding the reason why some people are seen as the brains while some people are seen as the hands or the feet. The conservatists believe that there are certain qualities required for the act of ruling and those requirements can only be filled by someone who is born into them. For the conservatists, this meant that only the nobility was wise and prudent enough to override the faults created by the imperfections of the society. The noble man was a man of history and experience; thus he had to rule. He was also obliged to help the poor (bkz: "noblesse obligue") and take care of the unfortunate, because if not, they would bring about the end of the system and the traditional authority.

This, again, seems to support the idea that everything in conservatism is about the idea of preserving the power, rather than being opposed to progress. It seems like oppostion to change is a by-product of conservatism rather than the reason behind its emergence. They want the poor and the unfortunate to be in a position where they feel satisfied not because of altruistic reasons, they know that poverty and a dissatisfaction towards one's life would lead to a dissatisfaction towards the system, which would not necessarily bring about the end of system, but would definitely create a power shift. The idea that some people are just born more fit for the task of ruling seems like a concept created to keep the people who'd be called the feet in that analogy in check by implying that them being ruled instead of ruling is the only way to avoid total chaos.

So this creates the question of how to determine the difference between the ruler and the ruled in modern ages, because although this was as simple as what surname people had back in the early and late middle ages, nowadays, the concept of nobility does not have the meaning it had. It seems like modern conservatists determine that by using private property, in one way, shape or form. While the liberalists want private property because it's a birth-right, the conservatists seem to want it because of its help establishing a hierarchy. So the head of the organism in modern ages can only be the one with most neurons, rather than the one who was born as the head.