Ibn Khaldun’s Labor Theory of Value and the Question of Race
Revisiting the “Nondebates of the 1970s” through The Muqaddimah
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2024.1195Keywords:
Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, Capitalism, Labor Theory of Value, Race, Racism, Origins of CapitalismAbstract
In the first volume of Capital, Marx argued that the labor theory of value could only be discovered in capitalist societies. Building on Marx’s premise, this article examines Ibn Khaldun’s (1377) The Muqaddimah, which presents one of the first labor theories of value in world history. After explaining different elements of Ibn Khaldun’s labor theory of value, the article revisits what Giovanni Arrighi referred to as the “nondebates of the 1970s” and proposes that North Africa was already incorporated into an Italian centered capitalist world-economy in the fourteenth century. Since a key element of Marx’s argument was the impossibility of the emergence of abstract labor in societies (e.g. ancient Greece) which do not have the idea of equality of human beings and human labor, in the latter part, the article analyzes Ibn Khaldun’s theory of race and human equality. We show that Ibn Khaldun, through his comparative and historical observations, acknowledged the equality of all humans and the constructed nature of race, influenced by geography, history, and political economy. The world-historical analysis and theoretical interventions of the article helps us rethink capitalism and racism as two major pillars of modernity.
References
Abu-Lughod, Janet. 1989. Before European Hegemony: The World-System A.D. 1250–1350. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alatas, Syed Farid. 1990. “Ibn Khaldun and the Ottoman Modes of Production.” Arab Historical Review for Ottoman Studies 1–2: 45–63.
______. 2006. “A Khaldunian Exemplar for a Historical Sociology of the South.” Current Sociology 54(3): 397–411.
______. 2013. Ibn Khaldun. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
______. 2014. Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology. London: Routledge.
Al-Azmeh, Aziz. 1981. Ibn Khaldun in Modern Scholarship: A Study in Orientalism. London: Third World Centre.
Al-Idrisi. 1989. Kitab Nuzhat al-Mustaq fi ijtiraq al-afaq. Lebanon: Alam al-Kutub.
Althusser, Louis. 1995. The Future Lasts Forever: A Memoir. New York: The New Press.
Amir, Samir. 1978. The Arab Nation: Nationalism and Class Struggle. London: Zed Books.
Anderson, E. N., and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 2005. “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers.” Pp.1–19 in The Historical Evolution of World-Systems, edited by Christopher Chase-Dunn and E. N. Anderson. Palgrave.
Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso.
______. 1998. “Capitalism and the Modern World-System: Rethinking the Nondebates of the 1970s.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 21(1): 113–29.
Balibar, Etienne, and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1991. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso.
Bashir, Haroon. 2019. “Black Excellence and the Curse of Ham: Debating Race and Slavery in the Islamic Tradition.” Reorient 5(1): 92–116.
Banaji, Jairus. 2007. “Islam, the Mediterranean and the Rise of Capitalism.” Historical Materialism 15(1): 47–74.
Biernarcki, Richard. 1995. The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1650–1914. California: University of California Press.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 1997. “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 62: 465–480.
Braudel, Fernand. 1984. Civilization and Capitalism III (15th–18th Century): The Perspective of the World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Burns, Kevin. 2006. Eastern Philosophy: The Greatest Thinkers and Sages From Ancient to Modern Times. London: Arcturus.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dale, Stephen F. 2006. “Ibn Khaldun: The Last Greek and the First Annaliste Historian.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28: 431-451.
Danermark, Berth, Mats Ekstrom, Liselotte Jakobsen, and Jan Ch. Karlsson. 2019. Explaining Society: Critical Realism in the Social Sciences. London: Routledge.
Dover, Cedric. 1952. “The Racial Philosophy of Ibn Khaldun.” Phylon (1940-1956) 13(2):107–119.
Fanfani, Amintore. 1933. Le Origini dello Spirito Capitalistico in Italia. Milano: Società Editrice.
Frank, Andre Gunder. 1998. ReOrient. California: University of California Press.
Gellner, Ernest. 1975. “Cohesion and Identity: The Maghreb from Ibn Khaldun to Emile Durkheim.” Government and Opposition 10(2): 203–218.
Go, Julian. 2004. “‘Racism’ and Colonialism: Meanings of Difference and Ruling Practices in America’s Pacific Empire.” Qualitative Sociology 27(1): 35–58.
Gorski, Philip S. 2004. “The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of Sociological Explanation.” Sociological Methodology 34: 1–33.
Harvey, David. 1999. Limits to Capital. London: Verso.
Hasan, Zubair. 2007. “Labor as a Source of Value and Capital Formation: Ibn Khaldun, Ricardo and Marx - A Comparison.” Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Islamic Economics 20(2): 39–50.
Ibn Haldun. [1377] 2012. Mukaddime. Istanbul: Dergah Yayinlari.
Ibn Khaldun. [1377] 1950. An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (1332–1406). Translated and arranged by Charles Issawi. London: John Murray.
Ibn Khaldun, Abd al-Rahman. [1377] 2015. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Bollingen Series XLIII. Translated by Franz Rosenthal, abridged, and edited by N. J. Dawood. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
______. [1377] 2021. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. The Classical Islamic History of the World, Volumes I, II, III. Translated from Arabic by Franz Rosenthal. Bollingen Series XLIII. Columbia, SC: Parker Publishers
Irwin, Robert. 2018. Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Karataşlı, Şahan Savas. 2016. “From Communal Patriotism to City-State Chauvinism: Transformation of Collective Identities in Northern Italy, 1050–1500.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 29(1): 73–101.
Katsiaficas, George. 2014. “A Personal Perspective on Individual and Group: Comparative Cultural Observations with a Focus on Ibn Khaldun.” Journal of Biosciences 39(2):327–332.
Lane, Frederic. 1966. Venice and History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Lawrence, Bruce B. 2015. “Introduction to the 2005 Edition.” In The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. The Classical Islamic History of the World,Translated by Franz Rosenthal, abridged, and edited by N. J. Dawood. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lie, John. 1991. “Embedding Polanyi’s Market Society.” Sociological Perspectives 34(2): 219–235.
Loveman, Mara. 1999. “Is ‘Race’ Essential?” American Sociological Review 64: 891–898.
Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume One. London:Penguin.
New York Times. 1981. “Reagan Cites Islamic Scholar.” Section A, Page 26. October 2. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/02/us/reagan-cites-islamic-scholar.html
Oweiss, Ibrahim M. 1988. “Ibn Khaldun, Father of Economics.” In Arab Civilization, edited by Ibrahim M. Oweiss and M. George N. Atiyeh. State University of New York Press. https://faculty.georgetown.edu/imo3/ibn.htm
Petty, William. [1662] (1899). The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, edited by Charles Henry Hull. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Polanyi, Karl. 1957. “Aristotle Discovers the Economy.” Pp 64–96 in Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory, edited by Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg & Harry W. Pearson. Glencoe: The Free Press.
______. 1977. The Livelihood of Man. New York: Academic Press.
Popper, Karl. [1934] 1965. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Harper.
Postone, Moishe. 1993. Time, Labor, and Social Domination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rees, Tom. 2019. “Who is Ibn Khaldun, Boris’ Favourite 14th Century Tunisian Sage and Economic Guide?” The Telegraph, November 19. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/11/19/ibn-khaldun-boris-favourite-14th-century-tunisian-sage-economic
Rodinson, Maxime. 1974. Islam and Capitalism. Pantheon.
Rodney, Walter. 2018. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Verso
Rosenthal, Franz. 2021. “Translator’s Introduction.” Pp. xxix–cxv in The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. The Classical Islamic History of the World, Volume I. Bollingen Series XLIII. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Columbia, SC: Parker Publishers
Sartori, Andrew. 2013. “Global Intellectual History and the History of Political Economy.” Pp.110–133 in Global Intellectual History, edited by Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori. Columbia University Press.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. [1954] 1987. History of Economic Analysis. London: Routledge.
Steinmetz, George. 2016. “Colonialism, Modern, and Race.” Pp. 1–3 in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, edited by J. Stone, R. Dennis, P. Rizova,A.D. Smith, X. Hou. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Turchin, Peter. 2009. “A Theory for Formation of Large Empires.” Journal of Global History 4(2): 191–217.
Vandenberghe, Frederic. 1999. “‘The Real is Relational’: An Epistemological Analysis of Pierre Bourdieu's Generative Structuralism.” Sociological Theory 17(1): 32–67.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System I. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Weber, Max. [1930] 1992. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Routledge.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Şahan Savaş Karataşli, Derek Clark
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.
