[Peace-discuss] Ibn Khaldun - 14th century Tea Party Guy

[E. Wayne Johnson]

But this item seems to do away with the irresponsibility of capitalism 
at its worst
> l)  The collective responsibility and internal feeling for the setting 
> up of
> a just system to encourage good deeds and prevent vice.
and points one back to sharing blessings such that those who gathered 
much had nothing left over
and those who gathered little had no lack, and really makes no place for 
the selfishness of the fortunate and the
abusers of mankind.  A sense of benevolence motivated by a good heart is 
much more desirable than forced
tribute with an unkept promise of a 'good cause', by a government that 
is bound to do injustice as Khaldun points out,
among many other things.



C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> Of course we, poor souls, have to read Ibn Khaldun's most interesting 
> reflections through the lens of the Great Transformation -- the coming 
> of the capitalist era, which he did not imagine and of which he would 
> not have approved.
>
> He did not foresee a society in which human life was controlled by 
> vast organizations that enriched themselves by extracting wealth from 
> the direct producers by means of the wage contract -- and were then 
> thought to have no further responsibility ("the free market").  Of 
> course no society could ever actually exist according to "free market 
> principles" -- it would immediately destroy itself -- but that remains 
> the theory of modern exploitation, necessarily mitigated in practice. 
> It insists that no one has a right to live unless they give up control 
> of what makes them human, their work of head and hands.
>
> Thomas More, Khaldun's rough contemporary (i.e., roughly in the way 
> that I'm a contemporary of Karl Marx') wrote of similar matters in the 
> Utopia (1516) and had his character conclude as follows:
>
>    "Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no 
> other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than 
> that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing 
> the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways 
> and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, 
> preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may 
> engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as 
> possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but 
> prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public 
> authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole 
> people, then they are accounted laws...”
>
> More, a lawyer and a government official, perhaps saw hazily the new 
> arrangement of society (the transition to which would be bloody), as a 
> result of which "All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is 
> profaned, and people are at last compelled to face with sober senses, 
> their real conditions of life, and their relations with their kind."
>
> I first encountered Khaldun in the now terribly unfashionable work of 
> Arnold Toynbee, which led me to Marx (and to which I'd been led by the 
> novels of Isaac Asimov...). Toynbee said that his work was inspired by 
> the Moqaddimah, "a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the 
> greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind 
> in any time or place."
>
> And the philosopher Ernest Gellner (d. 1995) -- who pointed out that 
> one of the better observations on class society came from the Prophet: 
> "subjection enters the house with the plow" -- praised Khaldun's 
> definition of government: "an institution which prevents injustice 
> other than such as it commits itself."
>
>
> E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>> One of the great ancient writers was the North African Arab historian 
>> Ibn
>> Khaldun [or Khaldoun], full name: Abdu r-Rahman bin Muhammad bin Khaldun
>> Al-Hadrami,(1332-1406) who is considered to be one of the founders of 
>> the
>> study of Economics.  Note that Khaldun was a "historian" and he drew 
>> from
>> texts already considered ancient.   His perhaps most famous work is his
>> "Moqaddimah", the "Introduction" to Khaldun's History of the World.
>>
>> Selim Karatas summarizes Ibn Khaldun's ECONOMIC PRESCRIPTIONS FOR A 
>> CIVILIZED
>> SOCIETY -
>>
>> Given political stability and solidarity, for the rise of the 
>> nations, there
>> must be:
>>
>> a)  A firm establishment of private property rights and freedom of 
>> enterprise
>>
>>
>> b)  Rule of law and the reliability of judicial system for the 
>> establishment
>> of justice
>>
>> c)  The security of peace and the security of trade routes
>>
>> d)  Lower and less taxation in order to increase employment, 
>> production and
>> revenues
>>
>> e)  Less bureaucracy and much smaller efficient army
>>
>> f)  No government involvement in trade, production and commercial 
>> affairs
>>
>> g)  No fixation of prices by the government
>>
>> h)  A rule that does not give monopoly power to anyone in the market
>>
>> i)  Stable monetary policy and independent monetary authority that 
>> does not
>> play with the value of money
>>
>> j)  A larger population and a larger market for greater specialization
>>
>> k)  A creative education system for independent thinking and behavior
>>
>> l)  The collective responsibility and internal feeling for the 
>> setting up of
>> a just system to encourage good deeds and prevent vice.
>>
>> http://www.liberty4urbana.com/drupal-6.8/node/176
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>
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