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Thread: The Amazing Arab Scholar Who Beat Adam Smith by Half a Millennium

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    The Amazing Arab Scholar Who Beat Adam Smith by Half a Millennium

    Just like new fossil finds, discovery finds a Smithian in an older economist, or is Smith a Khaldunian?

    The Amazing Arab Scholar Who Beat Adam Smith by Half a Millennium

    In one of the most seminal works in the field of history of economic thought (History of Economic Analysis, 1954), Joseph Schumpeter argued that there is a “Great Gap” in the history of economics....

    Thanks to this self-created gap the most outstanding islamic figure of the Middle Ages, the Andalusian scholar and politician Ibn Khaldun is neglected in mainstream textbooks (Screpanti and Zamagni 2005, Roncaglia 2005, Rothbard 2006, Blaug 1985). Several of these works often misleadingly start to identify the roots of modern theories with discussing the mercantilists or the Scottish Enlightenment.

    ...Khaldunian thinking may be embarassingly familiar to today’s economists. He states that the division of labor serves as the basis for any civilized society and identifies division of labor not only on the factory level but also in a social and international context as well. Khaldun highlights on the example of obtaining grain that division of labor creates surplus value: “Thus, he cannot do without a combination of many powers from among his fellow beings, if he is to obtain food for himself and for them. Through cooperation, the needs of a number of persons, many times greater than their own (number), can be satisfied” (Khaldun p. 87).

    His example of the division of production process is completely forgotten by economists and it’s not less expressive than the pin factory of Smith: “such include, for instance, the use of carvings for doors and chairs. Or one skillfully turns and shapes pieces of wood in a lathe, and then one puts these pieces together, so that they appear to the eye to be of one piece” (Khaldun p. 519). What is more: opposed to Smith, Khaldun doesn’t make any distinction between productive and unproductive work.

    Based on this it’s easy to understand that Ibn Khaldun presented very similar ideas as Adam Smith, but hundreds of years before the Western philosopher....

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    Khaldun is relatively unknown as an economist because his ideas had no lasting impact. His ideas, like Hellenic philosophy and science, bore little fruit because Islamic civilization was fundamentally hostile to them. They bore fruit in the Latin West because Christianity and Islam really are different. This is particularly obvious when considers the impact of religion historically.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


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    Yes, the first paragraph continued:

    In one of the most seminal works in the field of history of economic thought (History of Economic Analysis, 1954), Joseph Schumpeter argued that there is a “Great Gap” in the history of economics. The concept justifies the general ignorance in economics curricula towards economic thinking between early Christian and Scholastic times, emphasizing the lack of relevant positive (“scientific”) economic thinking in this period.

    I've only ever heard of his in Rothbard's Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. The Scholastics knew of him as they translated Greek thinkers from the Arabic.

    The OP article mentions Reagan referring to him:



    As the OP article explains though that's a mistaken association with the Laffer Curve.

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    Arabs had great thinkers until Islam suppressed them.
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    Quote Originally Posted by Peter1469 View Post
    Arabs had great thinkers until Islam suppressed them.
    The funny thing is that Khaldun didn't have many nice things to say about Arabs.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Yes, the first paragraph continued:




    I've only ever heard of his in Rothbard's Economic Thought Before Adam Smith. The Scholastics knew of him as they translated Greek thinkers from the Arabic.

    The OP article mentions Reagan referring to him:



    As the OP article explains though that's a mistaken association with the Laffer Curve.
    TBH, I first heard of him in following a discussion about racism in the Arab world.
    Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.


    ~Alain de Benoist


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