Why is capitalism closer to conservatism? Are we adequately thinking on the nature of capitalism which has been generally mentioned with liberal theories? This article dealing with these questions does not claim certain things but it aims to create a piece of question mark in the minds. May it be an interesting article that the author tries to engage with a hard matter like that for him? Let’s see where we will be heading to…
As liberalism is known; it is an ideology that the concrete freedom within certain boundaries is aimed to be achieved in the areas such as philosophy, politics, social life, economy so on. On the other hand, we can argue that the conservatism is another way of the abovementioned explanation of liberalism. Of course, we can indicate that the colors of the ideologies have different shades in themselves. Given the indication of this detail, it can be also said that these concepts are explained with their basic forms here. At the same time, we need to remember that these notions are always open to different evaluations due to the circumstances of time and place differences. Just like the capitalism… It has not been a long time after the enlightenment period and industry revolution. In this short period, capitalism and liberalism have been used to be mentioned together in the practice and theory. Relatively, one may argue that capitalism brought about innovations in the breaking points of the history. On the other hand, when we think a bit; we see the way of capitalism as it stimulates that commoditizing the things in hand, comfortably circulating them among certain hands, making profit over this circulation and damaging all living creatures to protect the profit when it is necessary. So, does capitalism remain closer to liberalism which has the features of freedom or conservatism which has unshakable equations? It became an interesting discussion topic for me. It is hard to draw a white and black picture concerning these concepts and their implementations. It requires more debates to elaborate on the matter with its different dimensions. When we look at the explanations of these ideologies on the paper without realizing contextual and experimental discussions, there is not a long distance between capitalist and conservative point of views. On the contrary, can this kind of a relationship among these concepts be a candidate to explain the roles of some actors who embraced these ideas and adapted themselves to the parameters of the system? Barış Can Sever