Reproducing capitalism through survival: Pseudo-entrepreneurs and compensation-driven investors in Turkey
CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY, cilt.0, sa.0, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 0 Sayı: 0
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1177/08969205251379713
- Dergi Adı: CRITICAL SOCIOLOGY
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Scopus, Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), IBZ Online, Public Affairs Index
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Maltepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This article examines the restructuring of capitalist reproduction in neoliberal Turkey through
two interlinked dynamics: the transformation of self-employment into pseudo-entrepreneurial
outsourced labor and the increasing integration of wage earners into financial markets as a
survival mechanism. Rather than democratizing opportunity, these processes represent new
modalities of accumulation in which survival strategies are subsumed into capital. Drawing
on post-2018 data, we argue that wage earners are increasingly positioned as both exploited
labor and subordinate participants in rent-based regimes. We introduce “share-commodifying”
to capture how stable wage relations are dismantled and reframed as entrepreneurial risk-
bearing, and “compensation-driven financialization” to describe workers’ reliance on financial
markets, not for wealth creation but to offset stagnant wages and insecurity. Together, these
generate a “survival strategy trap”: adaptive responses to precarity that ultimately deepen
market dependence and capitalist control, reorganizing social reproduction by turning coping
strategies into vehicles of valorization.