Thread by @ibn_alJad

The first thing to understand is that Chinese and Soviet industrial policy never existed in a vacuum - they always depended on knowledge and materials from outside.

There are not multiple industrial systems in the world - there is one system with different tiers.

https://twitter.com/Cryptodownbad/status/1962321641892986892

They obtained technology by providing things that the West needed - in the case of China, cheap production and manufactured goods, and in the case of Russia, oil and gas.

To obtain this, they also had to drop open hostility.

The failure of Japan and Germany in WW2 is to a large extent economic. They lost access to the global markets and resources dominated by liberal powers like the UK and US, which strangled their war machines.

This is an enormous lesson in why industrial autarky doesn't work.

This is bigger than just access to resources. It's about comparative advantage and economy of scale.

Comparative advantage means increasing output via trade by having regions specialize in producing what they are best at.

If one region excels in producing apples and another oranges, total fruit output will be higher if one region produces solely apples and the other oranges, and they trade with each other, than if each were to produce enough apples and oranges to cover local demand.

Economy of scale means when you serve a bigger market, your production costs go down. A company that purchases equipment and runs it 24 hours a day is going to get more return on investment than one that runs it for 12 hours a day.

This means that access to bigger markets enables greater industrial efficiency.

On a global level, this efficiency is built on maritime shipping, which is why this system arose only after Britain achieved global naval hegemony.

Another important element of this system is extreme concentrations of wealth, which requires inequality, which in turn requires nationalism.

This inequality is what keeps skilled labor migrating to the West, and it's what generates overconsumption.

A large percentage of global economic activity is related to unnecessary consumer goods.

People build heavily decorated houses much bigger than what they need, buy cars that they don't drive 98% of the time, buy far more clothes than they need, go on unnecessary vacations, etc

Most of this is just about status, and the the more severe inequality becomes, the more people feel the need to climb the status ladder.

Higher consumption increases economy of scale, and it also increases productivity since people work more and harder to make status purchases.

When we talk about industrial policy of a khilafa, there are two possible scenarios. We could call these the autarkic and integrative approaches.

The autarkic approach are what Germany and Japan did in WW2, and the integrative approach is what Russia and China are doing now.

The autarkic approach means being starved of the necessary materials to keep the economy running, because withdrawing from the world market is an existential threat to the viability of the entire system.

The integrative approach means taking on a subordinate position in the system.

You can build up your own strength by this method, but in exchange you have to build the strength of the West as well by providing them with resources (natural or human).

The system is rigged so that you always give more than you get, and if you try to take more than you give, punitive measures follow.

This is enforced by means of international institutions.

A good example is the WTO, which facilitates international trade in a number of ways, including providing a standardized framework for arbitrating trade disputes (according to manmade law, of course).

Much of the world does not want to submit to these rules and institutions, but they have to just to maintain sufficient market access to pursue their industrial and trade policies.

Any state that pursues truly sharia based policies will never be accepted into these institutions, which is why we see supposedly Islamist regimes constantly making horrific compromises in terms of religion.

Autarkic approaches are dead in the water because they cannot gain access to the necessary materials and expertise to compete.

This discussion is all just hot air anyway, because Muslim countries are under occupation.

Talking about developing industry while your land is controlled by your enemy is frankly a waste of time.

Occupation today is not only by military means, but more importantly financial and infrastructural.

There is no industry without law, so we must understand technological systems as extensions of legal systems.

There is no country that adopts Western infrastructure and tech, except that its laws gradually become more like Western laws. Including China.

So there are many reasons there will be no industrialized khilafa.

First, reclaiming Islamic sovereignty will cripple technological capacity globally by shattering the unified world market.

Second, even presuming a world takeover by Muslims, the absence of riba, nationalism, more freedom and less taxation under sharia and generally better treatment of human beings would make the level of inequality necessary for modern technology impossible.

Finally, the system is unsustainable, in decline, and has not made the human condition better, not from a secular perspective and certainly not from an Islamic perspective.

Neither integrating into the system nor attempting to build alternatives are good strategic decisions.

There is a viable alternative, which is asymmetric insurgency coupled with terrorism, and it's alread very effective despite less than perhaps 0.01% of the Muslims actually actively supporting it.

If the number backing it increases, it would be even more effective.

For those who think this is not economically viable, please check this essay:

t.me/ummati01/933