From Babylon to Lancashire: Unveiling the Hidden Logic of Modernity

My critique of political economy remains inseparable from my conception of modernity—a modernity aggressively marketed to the Arab consciousness through four centuries of Europe s ideological hegemony. This modernity didn t enlighten-;- it inflicted the Arab intellect with a cognitive malaise. European modernity was never revelation, but assertion-;- not awakening, but appropriation—the moment when the victor rewrote history in his lexicon, through his value system, within his cultural paradigm, then imposed it globally as the singular origin. What was packaged as "modernity" constituted merely an apparatus of domination: a symbolic order that aestheticizes violence and reconstitutes meaning to serve power. Yet this wasn t history s inaugural "modernity." Such phenomena recur wherever domination assumes structural form—wherever production and distribution succumb to capital s logic. Every alleged "modernity" has served accumulation-;- every "new rationality" merely reflects emerging modes of production. European modernity constitutes neither historical miracle nor, as Europe claims, capitalism as exclusively Western invention. Both represent contemporary manifestations of an ancient principle governing human relations since organized production began—since humanity first subjugated the world to its survival and expansion. Europe didn t create capitalism-;- it inherited, refined, and globalized it—not as unique achievement but as inevitability. Herein lies the grand deception.
No human society has existed without production/distribution systems, and none evade—to some degree—an imposed logic dictating who labors, what s produced, for whom, and by what means. This logic operates through supra-individual laws of motion, restructuring time, resources, and bodies to ensure its reproduction. Thus, capitalism didn t originate in seventeenth-century Europe, Lancashire s factories,´-or-through bourgeois ascendancy. Fundamentally, it s the governing principle emerging when surplus production encountered unequal distribution—when labor became commodity, time became metric, and humans became expendable energy. Capitalism isn t governance mode but structural logic, concealed beneath varied social formations: sacred empires, monarchies, mercantile bureaucracies.
Confusing "capital s laws of motion" with "social organization" leads many to misidentify capitalism as recent´-or-exclusively European. In truth, Europe didn t invent but inherited this logic, refined it, shrouded it in new semiotics, and rebranded it as "modernity." Capitalism begins not with machinery but human reduction to production costs-;- not with markets but the transformation of all relations into value-governed exchanges. Ancient civilizations understood this millennia before Europe. In Babylon, laws codified not just social relations but labor pricing, interest rates, contracts, property rights, and production norms. Markets existed, labor was commodified, money mediated exchange, and elites systematically redistributed surplus. Babylon s "modernity" constituted rationalized accumulation—exploitation codified, justified, and naturalized. Similarly, Islam s golden age developed its own juridical-theological-commercial rationality that organized markets, formalized contracts, and disciplined labor—all serving accumulation within the Islamic polity. Economic reason wasn t absent but hegemonic, albeit veiled in juristic discourse. This was distinct Islamic modernity, framing humans as economic agents while structuring social relations through calculated wealth distribution—never liberating them from being production means, however ethically disguised.All hegemonies manufacture their "modernities," reorganizing language, reason, and temporality to perpetuate domination. Europe wasn t first but became first to present its narrative as universal, claiming its modernity transcended prior cultures—as consciousness rather than power instrument. Thus, European modernity marked not just capitalist evolution but temporal appropriation—the recalibration of world history to Europe s triumph. Marketed as emancipatory project, it -function-ed as semiotic apparatus serving European capital accumulation. The "reason" it championed was calculative, not critical-;- its exported science was instrumental, not liberatory—measuring and subduing without questioning. European modernity declared itself both historical terminus and natural law, when merely power s latest iteration—capitalism s maturation requiring legitimizing discourse to mask brutality behind liberty s rhetoric. I reject modernity not from pre-modern nostalgia, but recognizing it as authoritarian choice disguised as historical inevitability. Those resisting capitalism in its own idiom inadvertently reproduce it-;- those discussing "progress" without structural critique unwittingly serve markets. Capitalism requires not apologists but adversaries fluent in its logic—therein lies the peril. The true contest isn t between tradition and modernity, but between domination s logic and liberation s.

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