Capitalism does not and has never had a Monopoly on Progress

News:

The global economic recovery continues, but at the same time the gap between prosperous countries and countries with developing and emerging markets is widening. This warning was issued by the International Monetary Fund.(Source:ru.euronews)

Comment:

Despite the ever-increasing economic gap between countries in the world, as well as between members of one society in capitalist countries, the idea that only Capitalism has a monopoly on progress continues to emerge in the public consciousness.

Most European thinkers, scientists and philosophers argue that Islamic rule will not have any place in the world today.

They believe that advances in science and technology occurred when Europe got rid of the hegemony of the church and separated religion from life. In their opinion, the church suppressed the development of science and thinking, since it was allegedly built on blind faith and superstition.

This incorrect approach deliberately ignores the fact that the West has borrowed a lot from previous civilizations, and especially from the Islamic one.

So the modern development of automobiles was primarily associated with the development of the internal combustion engine, in which the burned fuel acts on the pistons, causing the movement of other parts and thus driving the car.

These developments were based on the work of Al-Jazari, who in the 12th century invented the crankshaft and discovered rotational motion using connecting rods and cylinders. He was the first to integrate this principle into a machine.

This example shows that no civilization can claim that science or economical progress originally belong only to it, on the contrary, every civilization has only made its contribution to this universal area.

Muslim thinkers, scientists, engineers and experts have made significant contributions to science as well as many other disciplines. Much of this was later used by the West, which made further contributions to this area.

Before the rise of Islam in the Middle East, the local population did nothing for the development of science, but when these same people converted to Islam, they made a contribution that subsequent generations used to invent new things that we use in everyday life.

Islam was not an obstacle to science or economical progress, on the contrary, it was a factor that contributed to the fact that Muslims contributed to its development.

After we figured out that progress cannot be the monopoly of Capitalism exclusively, let's talk at what cost this progress was achieved in the West?

Some statistics. Despite the global GDP of $80 trillion, more than half of the world's population lives on less than $2 a day and 95 percent on less than $10 a day. Thus, despite truly colossal scientific and technological progress, poverty has only increased under Capitalism.

The next “success” of Capitalism was the creation of the greatest divide between the poor and the rich. While most of the world is barely surviving on a few dollars, the United States is home to most of the world's billionaires.

Therichest 1% of the world owns 40% of the planet's wealth, and 10% of the world's population owns 85% of the world's assets.

Capitalism suffered an obvious failure in the equitable distribution of wealth, and this, along with a widespread decline in morality and ethics due to the vicious idea of ​​freedom all this led to a demographic crisis in European countries and, as a result, to the rise of right-wing sentiments and populism.

Thus, on the one hand, Capitalism does not have a monopoly on progress, and on the other, against the background of other problems it has generated, its economic successes do not look so indisputable.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb utTahrir by
Fazyl Amzayev
Head of the Media Office of Hizb utTahrir in Ukraine