Changing the Course of Tax Narrative: Relationality, Sociality, and Postcapitalist Possibilities

Year 2023, Volume: 73 Issue: 2, 645 - 674, 30.12.2023

Metehan Cömert

https://doi.org/10.26650/ISTJECON2023-1197370

Abstract

This study seeks to challenge the mainstream understanding of taxes and argues that the theoretical foundation of tax narratives should be reconstructed with a critical eye. By broadening the scope of theoretical context, the study expands on the purely eco anomic conceptualization of taxes that has dominated the tax literature to date and introduces alternative interpretations that transcend mainstream barriers. In this context, starting from the argument that taxes cannot be understood solely through the realm of coercion the paper explores the integral role of taxes in shaping the modern fiscal state while highlighting their connections to broader concepts, such as “social transformation,” “ideology,” “class conflict,” and “the human individual.” Through these efforts, the study seeks to enrich the existing tax literature and concludes with “five theses” that encourage readers to view taxes through the lenses of “relationality” and “temporality,” and proposes a radical shift in the discourse surrounding tax debates within the context of postcapitalism.

JEL Classification : H10 , H20 , B50

Keywords

Tax, Public Finance theory, Fiscal sociology, Fiscal anthropology, Postcapitalism

Project Number

Yok

References

• Adloff, F. (2021). Capitalism and civil society revisited or: conceptualizing a civil, sustainable and solidary economy. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 34(2), 149-159. google scholar
• Bauman Z. (1976). Socialism - The Active Utopia. London: Hutchinson. google scholar
• Bauman, Z. (2017). Retrotopia. Cambridge: Polity Press. google scholar
• Berman, M. (1999). Adventures in Marxism. London: Verso. google scholar
• Björklund Larsen, L. (2018). A Fair Share of Tax: A Fiscal Anthropology of Contemporary Sweden. Springer Nature. google scholar
• Boden, R., Killian, S., Mulligan, E., & Oats, L. (2010). Critical perspectives on taxation. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 21(7), 541-544. google scholar
• Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical Reason: On the Theory ofAction. Stanford University Press. google scholar
• D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Ed.). (2014). Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era. Routledge. google scholar
• Dalton, H. (2003 [1922]). Principles of Public Finance. London: Routledge. google scholar
• De Viti De Marco, A. (1936). The First Principles of Public Finance, London: Jonathan Cape. google scholar
• Draper, H. (1970). The death of the state in Marx and Engels. Socialist Register, 7, 281-307. google scholar
• Eisenstein, L. (1961). The Ideologies of Taxation. New York: The Ronald Press Company. google scholar
• Eriksen, T. H. (2001). Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. Pluto Press. google scholar
• Forstater, M. (2005). Taxation and primitive accumulation: the case of colonial Africa. In P. Zarembka (Ed.), The capitalist state and its economy: democracy in socialism (51-64). Emerald Group Publishing Limited. google scholar
• Goldscheid, R. (1958). A sociological approach to problems of public finance. In R.A. Musgrave & A.T. Peacock (Eds.), Classics in the theory of public finance (51-64). London: Palgrave Macmillan. google scholar
• Gracia, L., & Oats, L. (2015). Taxation as social and institutional practice. In C.L. Cooper, C. Clubb and S. Imam (Eds.), Wiley Encyclopedia of Management. google scholar
• Graeber, D. (2001). Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. google scholar
• Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2018). How to change the course of human history. Eurozine. Retrieved from https://www. eurozine. com/change-course-human-history (date accessed: September 7, 2021). google scholar
• Gürkan, C. (2020). Fiscal sociology and Veblen’s critique of capitalism: insights for social economics and the 2008 crisis. Sosyoekonomi. 28(43), 295-311. google scholar
• Harvey, D. (2017). Marx, capital, and the madness of economic reason. Oxford University Press. google scholar
• Hay, C. (1999). Marxism and the state. In: Gamble, A., Marsh, D., Tant, T. (Eds.), Marxism and social science (152-164). London: Palgrave. google scholar
• He, W. (2013). Paths toward the modern fiscal state. Harvard University Press. google scholar
• Jessop, B. (1993). Reflections on the financial crisis of the postsocialist state. International Journal of Political Economy, 23(2), 9-34. google scholar
• Leroy, M. (2008). Tax sociology. Socio-logos. 3. http://socio-logos.revues.org/2073. (date accessed, September 24, 2021). google scholar
• Malinowski, B. (2005 [1922]). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: an account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagos of Melanesian New Guinea. London: Taylor & Francis. google scholar
• Mann, F. K. (1943). The sociology of taxation. The Review of Politics, 5(2), 225-235. google scholar
• Martin, I. (2013). Rich people’s movements: grassroots campaigns to untax the one percent. Oxford University Press. google scholar
• Martin, I. W., Mehrotra, A. K., & Prasad, M. (2009). The thunder of history: the origins and development of the new fiscal sociology. In I. W. Martin, A.K. Mehrotra & M. Prasad (Eds.), The new fiscal sociology: taxation in comparative and historical perspective (1-28). Cambridge University Press. google scholar
• Marx, K. (1994 [1849]). The Trial of the Rhenish District Committee of Democrats. February, 8(1849), 323. Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 231 and 232, https://www.marxists.org/archive/ marx/works/1849/02/25.htm. (date accessed: June 11, 2020). google scholar
• Marx K. (2001 [1895]). The Class Struggles in France. London, The Electric Book Company. google scholar
• Marx, K. & Engels, F. (2004 [1848]). The communist manifesto. Penguin UK. google scholar
• McGee, R. W. (2003). The philosophy of taxation and public finance. Springer Science & Business Media. google scholar
• Mehrotra, A. K. (2017). Fiscal forearms: taxation as the lifeblood of the modern liberal state. In K. Morgan & A. Orloff (Eds.), The many hands of the state: theorizing the complexities of political authority and social control (17-34). New York: Cambridge University Press. google scholar
• Mumford, A. (2019). Fiscal sociology at the centenary: UK perspectives on budgeting, taxation and austerity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. google scholar
• Oats, L. (2012). Taxation: a fieldwork research handbook, London/New York: Routledge. google scholar
• OECD (1988). The revenue statistics of member countries 1965-87, Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. google scholar
• Ollman, B. (1999). The question is not “when will capitalism die?” but “when did it die, and what should our reaction be?”. Nature, Society, and Thought, 12(4): 471-478. google scholar
• Passant, J. (2016). Tax and the forgotten classes: from the Magna Carta to the English Revolution. Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal, 10(3), 67-88. google scholar
• Petersen, E. L. (1975). From domain state to tax state: synthesis and interpretation. Scandinavian Economic History Review, 23(2), 116-148. google scholar
• Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press. google scholar
• Plehn, C. C. (1921). Introduction to public finance. Macmillan. google scholar
• Prasad, M. (2018). Starving the beast: Ronald Reagan and the tax cut revolution. Russell Sage Foundation. google scholar
• Saez, E., & Zucman, G. (2019). The triumph of ınjustice: how the rich dodge taxes and how to make them pay. WW Norton & Company. google scholar
• Schumpeter, J. (1991 [1918]), “The crisis of the tax state”, In R. Swedberg (Ed.), Joseph A. Schumpeter: the economics and sociology of capitalism (99-140). Princeton: Princeton University Press. google scholar
• Seçilmiş E. (2022). Madun vergilendirilebilir mi?, In Hatice Gül Ertuğrul Kanacı - Ceyhun Gürkan -Sema Nur Tekin (Eds.), Kamu Maliyesinin Sosyal Teorisi: Disiplinlerarası Arayışlar, Heretik, Ankara, 2023. google scholar
• Sewell, W. H. (2014). The capitalist epoch. Social Science History, 38(1-2), 1-11. google scholar
• Sheild Johansson, M. (2018). Taxing the Indigenous: a history of barriers to fiscal ınclusion in the Bolivian Highlands. History and Anthropology, 29(1), 83-100. google scholar
• Sheild Johansson, M. (2020). Tax. In F. Stein, S. Lazar, M. Candea, H. Diemberger, J. Robbins, A. Sanchez & R. Stasch (Eds.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology http://doi. org/10.29164/20tax. google scholar
• Shirras, G. F. (1925). The science of public finance. Macmillan. google scholar
• Sneed J. T. (1961). Eisenstein: the ideologies of taxation. Yale Law Journal, 71(1): 186-194. google scholar
• Steinmo, S. (1993). Taxation and democracy: Swedish, British, and American approaches to financing the modern state. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. google scholar
• Streeck, W. (2014). Buying time: the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism, London: Verso Books. google scholar
• Tcherneva, P. R. (2014) Reorienting fiscal policy: a bottom-up approach. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 37(1), 43-66. google scholar
• Tilly, C. (1980). State, taxes and proletarians. CRSO Working Papers, vol. 213, 17-22. google scholar
• Urbina, D. A., & Ruiz-Villaverde, A. (2019). A critical review of homo economicus from five approaches. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 78(1), 63-93. google scholar
• Webber, C., & Wildavsky, A. (1986). A history of taxation and expenditure in the western world. New York: Simon & Schuster. google scholar
• Yun-Casalilla, B. (2012). Introduction: the rise of the fiscal state in Eurasia from a global, comparative and transnational perspective. In B. Yun-Casalilla & P. O’Brien & F. Comfrı Comfrı (Eds.), The rise of fiscal states: a global history, 1500-1914 (1-36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. google scholar