Re:
Economic Systems
Question:-
Is it not materialism and consumerism that
are responsible for the widespread wastage of resources, pollution, ecological
disruption, mass extinctions and climate change that is threatening mankind?
Has Islam any solution to this problem?
Answer:-
The cause lies in (a) the increase in
population as well as in (b) the increase in the demand per person and in (c)
the way things have been organised. Much depends also on human ideas as well as
their motives and actions. There are physical, social and psychological factors
and these are inter-dependent. We have to go back further, to the causes of the
materialism and this will uncover a great many other problems. Some of these
causes began with the industrial revolution. This set up factories that
required organisation which caused a distinction to arise between owners,
managers and employees that are continuations of the more ancient master-slave
division.
The present Economic system is based on a
modified system of slavery - where the few control the many for the formers
profit, often via a hierarchical or pyramid system in which fewer and fewer
people have control the higher one goes.
A system compatible with Islam, which was set
up in a pre-industrial system, but nevertheless has certain rules that are more
appropriate and universally applicable for human welfare and development, would
have been quite different. It requires personal responsibility, mutual
consultation and prefers partnership. It abolishes slavery in all its forms.
But in order to appreciate the difference one
needs to understand the consequences of the Economic system created in the West
by accidental historical causes, but is now dominating the rest of the world.
It has the following features:-
(1) The owners control the resources and
finances, and therefore, the means of life which gives them power over other
people who become relatively powerless and have little say in their own or
collective affairs. A distinction also arises between supply, finance and
demand and between manufacture, distribution and consumption, such that
co-ordination between them fails.
(2) The owners are interested in profits.
They extract this from the work of the employee. The quality or real usefulness
of the goods to satisfy real needs is not a consideration unless it affects
profits which it usually does not. An increasing gap arises between the rich
and the poor, between over-indulgence and deprivation, obesity and starvation.
For the rich each unit of money has less value than it has for the poor.
Therefore, the rich can afford to waste resources while the poor suffer from
lack.
(3) The employees can be discarded like
useless goods, thrown out of work and their living, often en mass, when they
cease to be profitable to the employer. In fact, in order to keep wages, and
therefore, cost of production low and profits high, it is often necessary to
have a pool of unemployed people who can be offered low wages. However, unemployment
means that people cannot satisfy their needs and wants and do not have the
money to buy things. This depresses demand which reduces prices and, therefore,
profits of the employers. There is, therefore, a contradiction, and this
creates difficulties in maintaining a balance.
(4) The employer also determines the number
of hours people must work, how they work and their wages and salaries. This
means that some people work and earn much more than they need, while others
work and earn less than they. People cannot adjust their own work and earnings
according to their needs or wants.
(5) It is true that sometimes workers can
withdraw their labour in order to force the employers to increase their wages
or improve their conditions of work. But they can only do this to the extend
that their money runs out which is not very long. If they succeed then the cost
of production goes up and this means that the employer compensates for loss of
profit by increasing the cost of goods. This means that the cost of living goes
up, wages buy less and its relative value goes down. The result is renewed
attempts at increasing wages. There is a continuous inflation. If, however, the
employer cannot compensate for decline in profit then his investment is
withdrawn or transferred and production is reduced, causing loss of employment.
(6) Profits can be increased by changing the
balance between income and expenditure, price and cost. This can be done by:-
(a) decreasing cost per item produced by reducing the wages of workers, (b) making
workers work harder for their money to produce more goods, (c) increasing
efficiency of production through the use of organisation, standardisation,
regimentation and mechanisation, thereby reducing the number of workers
required, (d) increasing price per item (e) increasing the number of items sold
and employing more workers, (f) the use of inferior cheaper materials, (g)
expansion in the number of different things that can be manufactured. This
gradually absorbs all aspects of life and puts pressure on the environment but
also on people.
(7) Profits are increased by the mass
manufacture of foods and their adulteration with chemicals, intensive farming
with the use of fertilisers and insecticides, factory farming that mistreats
animals by confining them in small spaces while using hormones to increase
their bulk, mono-culture that destroys diversity and natural balances, the
promoting of fast foods, vitamin supplements and all kinds of drugs. The result
has been wide spread imbalance in diets, mal-nutrition, obesity and numerous
malfunctions, behaviour disorders and diseases.
(8) Profits are increased by increasing the
demand for goods by propaganda, biased advertisement, glamorisation and
tempting shop displays, creating incentives to buy by offering various rewards,
causing changes in fashion and design and by making less durable goods and
built-in obsolescence. In general it has become easy to manufacture goods
through mass production methods. There is pressure to sell things whether they
are needed or not. A great proportion of what people possess is entirely
useless.
(9) Time is money. Increase in wealth means
the increase of profit per minute. There is, therefore, a pressure for the
acceleration of the pace of life. This is further assisted by the increasing
number and speed of the means of transport - cars, buses, aeroplanes - and the
increasing bombardment of attention seeking stimuli pulling in different
directions that come from advertisement through the media of communication -
newspapers, magazines, radio, television, computers, letters and telephones. As
capabilities and adaptability is limited, the result of these developments is
increasing confusion and superficiality. Attention flits from one thing to
another with there being time enough for deeper thought and comprehension.
Immediate and instant satisfaction is sought.
(10) It is also possible to increase profits
by usury, taking advantage of other people's misfortunes and disabilities,
hoarding, creating scarcity, creating cartels and monopolies, manipulating the
stock exchange, coercion, swindling, bribery of officials, causing laws to be
passed that create patent rights or make compulsory charges for certain
services, and all kinds of criminal activities. The system encourages immoral and
unethical activities by allowing uncontrolled invention of complex schemes for
money making without requiring equivalent benefits.
(11) The owner employers not only control the
actions of the employee but also their thoughts and conscience. The control comes
from the top which is remote from the base where all the work goes on. Though
this puts pressure on people to perform better and more efficiently, it is also
oppressive and unjust. A distinction also tends to arise between thinking,
motivation and action, between intellectuals, motivators and manual workers,
and between idealism, vitalism and materialism. There is often conflict and
contradiction between these. Only the few are required to think intelligently
and that in certain directions only, while the majority are not required to use
their intelligence and their faculties at all. On the contrary, they are more
controllable when they do not but waste them in trivialities and futilities,
and often in self-harming ways that are also costly, though profitable to the
controllers.
(12) Control by others leads to the
suppression of the sense of responsibility, initiative and creativity of the
majority and channels effort and psychological energy into narrower directions.
Most people drift along without any sense of values, direction or control over
their lives. As the organisation is pyramidal and there are fewer positions the
higher one goes and these carry greater wealth, power and prestige, there is a
struggle for promotion, a trampling over others in which the ambitious,
ruthless and cunning tend to win. There is, therefore, a general deterioration
of morality, of ethics, justice, compassion, truth, fellow feeling and social
cohesion, and people with self-centred, arrogant psychopathic tendencies rise to
the top.
(13) As profit requires work, there is a need
for vigour and energy which favours youth and leads to the devaluation of the
older citizens. This brings problems of employment and of pensions especially
when birth control reduces the earning population. The young are also more
easily manipulated and trained. In particular beautiful women are in demand by
male employers or managers. This causes great expenditure on cosmetics,
cosmetic surgery, and fashions in clothing, slimming and glamour magazines.
Much is also spent on Jewellery which takes away the labour force from the
essentials and increases their price.
(14) The pressure and stresses of work in
modern systems creates the need for relaxation and pleasure as compensation.
There is, therefore, great expenditure on modes of escapism in the form of
alcohol and drugs, and on fantasies provided by films, music, methods, goods
and places of entertainment. It also creates numerous physical and
psychological problems that require expenditure on health services - medicine,
doctors, nurses, hospitals and equipment. Though infectious diseases have
fallen due to advances in medicine, organic, psychological and psychosomatic
diseases have increased and these account for big proportion of national
expenditure as well as losses in income.
(15) As the system requires productive work,
defined as that which creates profit to the owners, it leads to the minimising
of wages that leads to the need for women to leave the home and join the
industrial work force. The increase in the work force so caused depressed wages
even further. Women are required to give their services, obedience and loyalty
to the employer rather than husbands and family. The spouses spend less time
with each other and the family and there is greater indiscriminate mixing of
the sexes in the work place and elsewhere. This causes greater sexual
temptations, particularly as it requires less commitment. The result has been
the collapse of the family. This not only deprives the new generation of an adequate
environment for moral and psychological development but also increases the
strains of life or decreases the possibility of relief from them. The attempt
to compensate for this, increases the desire for goods, expensive
entertainment, pleasure and the bill for drugs.
(16) We see therefore, that there is a
vicious circle. The system creates the very causes that keep it going. The
desire for goods and therefore, pressure on the planets resources, leads to a
way of life that create needs which would not otherwise exist, or would exist
to a much lesser extent. In fact, there are desires and urges that go beyond
real need or evolutional value because they have become mere habits, addictions
or obsessions created by social conditioning. There are also real needs and
inherent drives that have been misinterpreted and therefore, produce no
satisfaction. On the contrary, having been frustrated, they emerge with greater
urgency but are misunderstood yet again, thereby causing an exhaustion of
efforts and further malfunctions and disease.
(17) The economic system is now so large with
its own momentum and self-sustaining mechanisms that it has become almost
uncontrollable by human beings, but controls them instead in body, mind and
soul. Hardly anyone is able to think, desire or do anything outside the
parameters defined by the system.
(18) Human beings exist in interaction and
inter-dependence with their environment, forming a single system. Mankind as
the brain of the system has the natural responsibility for its welfare and is
accountable for what he does. The Socio-economic system they have created has
not only distorted their own nature by producing greed, materialism and
consumerism in man, but has also affected the environment through the
widespread wastage of resources, pollution, ecological disruption, mass
extinctions and climate change. These malfunctions may be regarded as the
punishment for human folly. But they should also be the stimulus for repentance
and change.
The Communists understood some of the problems
but attributed them to Capitalism. In fact, however, Capital refers to
resources that are beyond those used for consumption and are therefore,
available for investment in other things, and is, therefore essential to
progress. Not realising this fact they not only promoted and increased the
slavery but also ensured the stagnation that led to their collapse.
Under Communism, it is the State that
provides the Capital, but no one has personal interest in its efficient employment.
The Western system requires that there should be rich people so that they have
enough surpluses to provide the Capital. This often comes through usury or
gambling on the stock exchange. But Capital can be provided not just by
Governments or the rich, but also by groups of people. In a system compatible
with Islam, there would be no usury or gambling. The workers in the company
would be the owners responsible for the investment. Others in the community
could also invest in return for proportional profits. Companies could be
interlinked in that members of each also have shares in the others.
It is not difficult to see that many of the
environmental, social and psychological problems mankind faces today can be
radically reduced if the system based on Islamic principles were to be adopted.
However, this cannot be done in isolation. There also has to be a change in
thought, values and motives. Things arise within the context of a whole system
and it is the whole system that requires changing. This cannot be done by
revolution (in a short time) because of the inertia of human adaptability.
Revolution simply destroys and brings to power inexperienced people who have
the same mental habits. It is, however, possible to do this gradually by
conscious application of constant appropriate pressure.
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