Overview: The Bridge of Becoming

Editorial Note: This essay serves as a concise overview of the longer article published in the In Comment section of Islam Today Journal. The full text can be accessed directly from the journal’s main website. For ease of engagement, a language translation feature is available in the sidebar menu, allowing readers to select their preferred language for consultation.

In “The Bridge of Becoming: Reimagining Work and Capital through Ibn Khaldun and Western Economic Thought,” Ahmed E. Souaiaia sets out to reframe how we think about economics by placing the concept of work at the very center of social life. The essay does not merely revisit the classic question of labor’s role in value creation; it advances a far-reaching argument that work is more than a material act—it is a moral, civilizational, and existential foundation upon which societies stand. To make this case, the author places the fourteenth-century North African thinker Ibn Khaldun into conversation with major figures of Western economic thought, such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Max Weber, and John Maynard Keynes. Through this comparison, Souaiaia demonstrates that modern economies, with their heavy emphasis on capital accumulation and financial instruments, have progressively distanced themselves from acknowledging work as the true basis of value and social order.

The article begins by drawing out Ibn Khaldun’s vision of work (ʿamal) as the necessary starting point of all prosperity. In the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun emphasizes that human beings cannot survive without effort; civilization itself arises because people combine their labor to secure the necessities of life. Work is not simply an economic act that generates wages or goods; it is the very activity through which human beings express their dignity, sustain their moral order, and build collective life. For Ibn Khaldun, therefore, the worth of wealth lies in its connection to work. Wealth detached from labor, or accumulated merely through ownership, speculation, or coercion, undermines both the moral and the material health of society.

Souaiaia juxtaposes this view with the gradual evolution of Western economic thought. Early classical economists like Smith and Ricardo acknowledged a strong connection between labor and value. Their labor theories of value recognized that human effort underpinned the production of wealth. Yet, as economic theory developed and capitalism matured, the emphasis shifted. Max Weber, with his analysis of the Protestant ethic, reframed work as a moral duty but one linked to the accumulation of capital as a sign of divine favor. Later, with Keynes and twentieth-century macroeconomics, the focus shifted still further toward the management of investment, debt, and state intervention—fields in which the movement of capital often eclipsed the lived experience of labor. In these frameworks, value increasingly appeared to flow not from work itself, but from the circulation and expansion of capital.

The author stresses that this divergence is not simply intellectual but institutional. Societies define what counts as “valuable work” through political choices, legal structures, and state power. The state plays a pivotal role in either elevating or diminishing the social and economic significance of work. By setting tax policies, enforcing property rights, or privileging certain forms of capital investment over others, states create the conditions in which capital may thrive at the expense of labor. In this sense, economic paradigms are never neutral: they reflect political decisions about which forms of human effort are recognized and rewarded, and which are rendered invisible.

Against this backdrop, Ibn Khaldun’s insistence on work as the ultimate source of value appears not as an antiquated notion, but as a corrective lens. He anchors value in the very activity of human beings striving together, emphasizing that surplus and wealth arise from extra effort beyond what is needed for subsistence. This framing situates work not only as the origin of wealth but as the foundation of social cohesion and moral life. By contrast, modern capital-centered systems risk eroding this foundation. When wealth is increasingly generated through financial speculation, debt instruments, or inherited capital, the link between effort and value is severed. This decoupling, Souaiaia argues, produces both economic inequality and a moral crisis: societies lose sight of the dignity of work, and with it, the ethical order that sustains communal life.

The article is structured in two parts. The first lays out the conceptual groundwork, tracing how thinkers from Ibn Khaldun to Smith, Ricardo, Weber, and Keynes understood the relationship between work, capital, and value. The second part moves into interpretation, drawing out the systemic implications of privileging one or the other. Here, Souaiaia adopts a systems-thinking framework, showing how ideas about work and capital are interwoven with institutions, state policies, and cultural norms. He makes clear that these are not abstract debates; they shape how societies organize production, distribute wealth, and imagine justice.

Souaiaia calls for a revaluation of work in contemporary life. He argues that money ought to function primarily as a store of the surplus generated by work, not as an autonomous source of wealth. Work, he insists, is “priceless” because it embodies the very activity of human becoming. To restore work to its rightful place at the center of economic life would not only produce fairer systems of distribution; it would also renew the moral fabric of society. By building a “bridge of becoming” between Ibn Khaldun’s premodern insights and Western economic theories, the article invites readers to imagine economic systems that are more equitable, sustainable, and human-centered.