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Islam – Comintern: Capitalism’s Ideological Enemies
Pat Lang points to a Krauthammer op-ed in which the neocon ideologist burps:
Gaza is now run not by a conventional political party but by a movement that is revolutionary, Islamist and terrorist. Worse, Hamas is a client of Iran. Gaza now constitutes the farthest reach of the archipelago of Iranian proxies: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army (among others) in Iraq and the Alawite regime of Syria.
This Islamist mini-replica of the Comintern is at war not just with Israel but with the moderate Arab states, who finally woke up to this threat last summer when they denounced Hezbollah for provoking the Lebanon war with Israel.
Lang sees the use of "Comintern" here as a pure propaganda tool. As communism is gone, (Iran supported) Islam is build up as the new goonyman.
But there could be more than just pure propaganda and the defense industry’s need of some enemy here.
The neocons and their economic ideological brethrens, the neolibs, may fear Islam as a danger to their radical capitalism.
The "moderate Arab states," the collection of U.S. friendly dictatorships, all act capitalistic in their outward relation. But they are not necessarily open as markets to western companies or business models. U.S. mortgage companies hardly fit this rejection of usurious interest in the Koran.
"…
O you believers, fear God, and renounce the excess of usurious interest, if you really believe. If you do not follow this ruling, you may expect the hostility of God and of his Messenger. If you repent, you will retain your capital, neither harming anyone else nor suffering harm yourselves. To a debtor in difficulty, grant a delay until his situation improves. And if you renounce your rights that will be better still." (Q.2, 275-280).5
Basic Islamic jurisprudential understanding of economics, i.e. the ideology of Islamic economics, has quite some aspects that are incompatible with capitalism.
It seeks an economic system based on uplifting the deprived masses, a major role for the state in matters such as circulation and equitable distribution of wealth and insuring participants in the marketplace are rewarded by being exposed to risk and/or liability.
How could any decent disciple of the Chicago school NOT strive to fight against this? Especially the "liability" point would certainly not rhyme with yesterday’s Supreme Court decision.
Therefore, could there be some perceived fear that a caliphate, a group of nations with a common Islamic economic understanding, is a severe threat to the global rule of the robber-baron guild?
Could there be some reason based in economic ideology that drives the swing of the Krauthammer against some new "Comintern"?
Please let me know your thoughts.
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An interesting side-point. A major modern work of Islamic economy was written by Muqtada al-Sadr’s father. In Iqtisaduna ("Our Economics") Sadr senior:
rejects capitalism’s notion that private property is justified in its own right, arguing instead that both private and public property originate from God, and that the rights and obligations of both private individuals and rulers are therefore dictated by Islam.
Could this explain some of the vitriol that is constantly spew against the keeper of this flame, Sadr junior?
A band of chimpanzees, or gorillas, or other apes spends most of its time laying about, or mating, or making mischief for entertainment. Life typically ain’t that hard — you find yourself some bananas, some grubs, some fruits as you need to, and otherwise you socialize.
When our species used to wander the planet hunting and gathering, it took a couple hours to half a day per person, on average, to gather all the food for the clan, make clothes, tools, and shelter. The rest of the time was invested in sitting around, or mating, or making mischief, or discussing whether there was a lightning deity, what stars are there for, and such.
There is a natural surplus with humans.
We’re bright, clever, efficient creatures who love to get the work done, and then lay about. We are, to this day, TGIF to the core. We work as we must, but we really delight in playing, both within this world, and within our minds.
When humans settled down to farming, there was a season of damn hard work, and then most of the year to invest in chores, upgrades, leisure. The productivity of our species made this approach to life even more abundant.
There is a natural surplus with humans.
Radical capitalism is when one human in the village figures out how to seize the surplus. Because owning the surplus gives them the means to rule the village, they claim it gives them the right to rule the village. The kings of this world add more villages, cities, whole continents after that, but the operating system doesn’t change.
The operating system is to seize the surplus.
If the entire human population, right now, were statistically represented as 100 people, one of those people would own 95% of the money and stuff, and everyone else would own the clothes on their backs, and have to come and go according to that one person’s rules and regs, or else their life would immediately become too difficult to sustain.
The American nation now issues debt in such levels that the newborn American — with their first breath — owes more money than they will ever earn, much less have discretion over. Is this not the very definition of slavery?
Islam militates against this approach to human living, instead directing each person to share their surplus, knowing that the umma, the brotherhood, will sustain them in turn if they are ever in need. Islam is a family religion, and the family is humanity.
American capitalism has each human living at the far end of a financial tapeworm, extracting from them their surplus as it arrives, so that they live from paycheck to paycheck, and can be discarded like the rind of a fruit when they can no longer work.
Some thinkers say that capitalism is racism, in that a human minus money is not a human. The capitalist operating system has no place in the machinery for them.
Well, we’re still getting our species organized.
When mankind does move beyond radical capitalism, into an operating system for spaceship Earth that doesn’t amount to Burning Down The House, it will be because people arrange to recognize the collective surplus as it rises from each human’s daily toil, and see to it that the surplus is not seized by that one proverbial individual, the radical capitalist, but is redistributed to the clan.
If ten thousand persons were put aboard an intergalactic spaceship for a species leap to the stars, they would not select radical capitalism as their operating system. That would be a disaster. They would select an ethos, an operating system, a lot closer to Islam’s family approach.
Nowadays, that natural human surplus gathers and flows into incredible pools of capital, into multiple piles of money stretching to the moon and back. We’re bright, clever, efficient creatures.
Why is our surplus allowed to gather into the hands of a very few humans?
Even monkeys know better.
Posted by: Antifa | Jun 23 2007 12:15 utc | 14
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