Islam and Capitalism: A Muslim’s Defense of Capitalism
By Inas Younis, New Age Islam
02 April, 2014
There is a new kind of
entrepreneurship in America, the socially conscious kind. It’s the kind
which makes profits by condemning the profit motive. It’s a less
controversial form of capitalism which goes by different designations
like caring capitalism, creative capitalism and the newest buzzword:
conscious capitalism.
Conscious capitalists
are on a mission to rebrand themselves by launching philanthropic
initiatives at home and abroad. Their motto is, “to create financial,
intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, spiritual, physical, and
ecological wealth for all their stake holders.” Percolating beneath this
orgy of good will lies the suggestion that capitalism is a necessary
evil which needs the antidote of consciousness. That resources are
finite and those who have more are the reason others have less. Of
course the equation is not so simple because the problem of poverty is
not material but political. It has never been about a lack of
resources, but about the individual freedom to develop technology to
convert resources to material wealth. Sitting on top of an oil well
does not manufacture petroleum based products. But freedom, the
economic kind, does.
Conscious capitalism
is America’s apology for a capitalism corrupted by hyphenations. Crony
capitalism, corporate capitalism, conscious capitalism are all
approximations designed to avoid the reality that we live in a
relatively controlled and artificial economy. In a controlled economy,
Government interventions force an economy to function in a counterfeit
environment, where some are sacrificed for the benefit of others. A
government which makes concessions for some and not others, according
to the immediate social needs of some and the political needs of
others; opening the door to the political corruptions inherent in
today’s pressure groups politics. And all this is justified using the
argument that in order for capitalism to be compassionate, business must
be nudged to make decisions in the public's best interest. The
assumption being that our government is more equipped to look out for
your interests than a market governed by your dollar. But a big
government, like a corporation, will by definition become corrupt
because it is built on the highly specialized division of labour where
passing the buck is the only path to making one. And unfortunately,
many of today’s capitalists are beneficiaries of this artificial
environment. They employ government to act as a weight upon which they
can leverage productivity and ensure limited liability.
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