In our today’s part, we will discuss about the importance ofIlm-ul-Iqtisad (1903). This book was started with a notion, that it must be limited upto the syllabi of the University students. The same system is prevailing in today’s academic world. When I myself opted subjects for General Bachelor’s and Honour’s Public Administration, I opted, Philosophy and History. In our syllabi, I was proposed to read the textbook of Patrick’s ‘Introduction to philosophy’ and Sharma’s ‘India’s Ancient Past’ written since a century and a half ago. The same rule was applied with the Allama’s first book of Ilm-ul-Iqtisad(1903).
He not only wrote this textbook, but also textbooks for students of class fourth, fifth classes for Persian and Urdu for Punjab Board of British India. When we keenly read the life of Allama Iqbal, we find that he also wrote a book on the history of India with Munshi Lalla Ram Parshad in 1913, which entitled, ‘Tarikh-i-Hind (1913)’.
Allama Iqbal’s eye was the eye of seer. He not only, saw the future of the countries and societies of the world but, also prophesized about the educational ideas in coming future. From Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to Karl Marx’s Communism, from Adam Smith’s Capitalism to modern democratic ideas and nationhoods, from Toynbee’s Philosophy to Emmanuel Kant’s 17th century critique, anything can be found in his chronology of life. This gives us the background of his terminology of Hakeem.
In many of his collections, we see different intellectuals adjoined with the term of Hakeem. Hakeem signifies the personality of an intellectual or any great mind of its own era. In ‘Payam-e-Mashriq(1923)’, Iqbal pays respect to Hakeem Nietzche, Hakeem Einstein, Hakeem Francis Augustus Comte, Mussolini, Caesar, William, Schopenhauer, Tolstoy, Karl Marx, Hegel, Byron, Jalaludin Rumi, Goethe, Bergson, Locke, Emmanuel Kant, Browning, Ghalib, and Ameer Ammanullah Khan, the heathen king of Afghanistan.
Reasons of writing of Ilm-ul-Iqtisad: Why Muhammad Iqbal wrote this book? Why he understood science of Economics is imperative for Indians and particularly for Indo-Asian Muslims. Iqbal was keenly interested in the developments of Muslims of Indo-Asian sub-continent. From the death of Karl Marx in 1902, since a less time of five decades had passed when the term Capital was defined by the intellectuals of Communism. Karl Marx defines commodity as a substance of substitute. Which means the value of article or commodity is equal to another value of another article or commodity. He defines it:
”The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value (The Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value)
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.
Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various uses of things is the work of history.So, also is the establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects.
The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in convention.
The utility of a thing makes it a use value.But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of use value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities.Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value.”
Karl Marx, ‘Das Capital’, Progress Publisher’s Moscow, USSR 1971. Third edition Vol-1st, Page No:1.