Author: Mohammad Asem Esmailzahi
Capitalism (part 13)
Individual Consequences that Form the Main Basis of the Social Functions of Capitalism (Continued)
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Obstructing the Knowledge of the Human Intellect
Capitalist thinking and its mechanisms constitute obstacles to the flourishing of the pure human intellect. They bury the knowledge of the human mind beneath the heavy and dark layers of love of wealth and excessive ambitions, covering its illumination and insight. In this way, all extreme attachments and uncontrolled passions create great barriers in the path of reason, its investigations, and its enlightenment.
What is meant by reason here is the human intellect, an intellect that values human beings and respects living creatures, plants, and even inanimate objects. It is the intellect that distinguishes good from evil and ugly from beautiful, that calls people toward moral values and the principles of altruism and humanitarianism. It is the intellect that suffers from the pain and hardship of others and grieves for the sorrow of the sorrowful. It is the intellect that condemns selfishness and self-worship and calls for love of others and human solidarity.
This is the intellect intended here, an intellect that gradually loses its radiance through material passions and attachments to wealth accumulation until it eventually ceases to function altogether. What is not meant is the instrumental reason centered on profit-seeking and self-interest.
Therefore, cunning tricks, opportunistic cleverness, and schemes born of selfishness and self-centeredness are not the intended meaning of intellect. Such behaviors often align with irresponsibility, lack of commitment, and violation of law. In pursuit of personal gain, they trample all moral values and human standards, break every boundary through deception, and step over every virtue while considering this a victory. In the logic of religion, such material calculations are nothing but deceit, hypocrisy, and satanic manipulation.
Liberal capitalist thinking is incompatible with this human intellect. When economic efforts move away from the goal of meeting human needs and achieving collective welfare, and when wealth accumulation itself becomes the objective and greed emerges, human beings lose the opportunity to think about anything except the increase of profit and capital. They are separated from companionship with reason and deprived of the illumination it offers. Consequently, they can no longer benefit from this light to restrain themselves from the endless pursuit of wealth or from seizing it from the hands of others.
Thus, the human intellect is prevented from offering moral guidance, distinguishing good from evil and human from inhuman, and becomes buried in the pit of material calculations.
Excessive possession of wealth also leads to excessive living, indulgence in desires, and destructive extravagance that consumes all human energies. It immerses the individual in the whirlpool of pleasure, indulgence, and hedonism. Such lifestyles, even at the personal level, become causes of the corruption of both body and soul and ultimately damage human reason.
Indeed, excessive gratification, indulgence in pleasures, and immersion in eating, sleeping, and sexual desires lead to the deterioration of the body, the waste of human energy, the loss of health, and the destruction of the balance necessary for the human temperament. This results in the disruption of equilibrium in all human faculties, especially the intellect.
The eyes, ears, and all senses of those obsessed with wealth become one-directional, focusing only on the direction of increasing capital while ignoring all other aspects and standards. Therefore, it can truly be said that they look at matters with defective eyes and deaf ears, examining events with a diseased and one-sided understanding. In this way, they remain deprived of perceiving and grasping the true realities.
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The Suppression of Human Emotions
Undoubtedly, among human characteristics, emotions occupy a very high position, upon which the life of the individual and society, the survival of the human species, the organization of the family, and many other aspects depend. In fact, it can truly be said that the weakening or death of emotions is accompanied by the weakening or death of humanity itself. Human beings live through their emotions even more than they live through their intellect.
The main foundation of altruism and social cohesion is also emotion. It is through emotions that human beings turn toward moral and civil virtues and distance themselves from animalistic and savage tendencies.
However, within systems of wealth accumulation and capitalist domination, human emotions become weakened or so strongly influenced by the greedy inclinations of money-worship that they lose their effectiveness within the human being.
The hardening of hearts and the stone-like nature of souls reflect this insensibility and the death of conscience and emotion among those who indulge in excessive pleasure and luxury. In a “liberal-capitalist” society, human beings are treated as tools and commodities, evaluated and valued only according to standards of productivity and profitability. Even knowledge, technology, art, and similar fields possess no intrinsic value; they become valuable only when they contribute to greater profit and increased production.
Thus, the capitalist perspective toward other human beings is not a moral or humane perspective, but an economic one. This type of outlook, treating humans as instruments and commodities, is one of the defining characteristics of capitalist thinking.
Indeed, if a person’s conscience is pushed aside and the heart becomes corrupted and hardened, the main pillars of human personality, belief, emotion, and other value-oriented inclinations, collapse. As a result, faith and morality decline. This decline then spreads to other dimensions of human existence and to the broader fields of scientific, cultural, economic, political, and social life, directing both thought and action toward unworthy conduct.
This hardness of heart becomes a powerful driving force in the lives of wealth accumulators and shapes the way they deal with society and their relations with people. Its inevitable consequence is the suffering of the people, the exploitation of their rights, and the draining of their lifeblood.
From this it becomes clear that human emotions do not rule capitalist societies. Rather, what prevails is hard-heartedness, insensitivity, lack of responsibility, injustice, and economic aggression, the necessary result of which is pressure upon others.
The Quran portrays the insensitivity of the wealthy and the view of the people toward them as follows:
«إِنَّ قَارُونَ كَانَ مِنْ قَوْمِ مُوسَى فَبَغَى عَلَيْهِمْ وَآتَيْنَاهُ مِنَ الْكُنُوزِ مَا إِنَّ مَفَاتِحَهُ لَتَنُوءُ بِالْعُصْبَةِ أُولِي الْقُوَّةِ إِذْ قَالَ لَهُ قَوْمُهُ لَا تَفْرَحْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ الْفَرِحِينَ»؛ Translation: “Indeed, Qaroon was from the people of Moses, but he tyrannized them. We had given him such treasures that their keys would weigh down a band of strong men. When his people said to him: ‘Do not exult; indeed, Allah does not love those who exult.’” [1]
It can be seen that the wealthy are intoxicated and delighted with their riches, and sorrow finds no way into their stone-like hearts. Immersed in pride and joy, they remain heedless of advice and indifferent to the suffering of the afflicted.
Yet such joy has no true depth. Public opinion and the judgment of humanity ultimately make life bitter for them. Even if the human conscience is buried beneath layers of the rust of pleasure-seeking, it continues to reproach them. Moreover, increasing anxieties about losing their wealth deprive them of peaceful sleep. [2]
To be continued…
References:
- Surat al-Qasas, verse 76.
- Kahf, Monzer, Religion and Economics: The Economic System of Islam and the Science of Islamic Economic Analysis, p. 431, translated by Sayyid Husayn Mir-Moazemi, Summer 2005, Qom, Iran.
