 This section describes the central myths required to sustain a capitalist economy. Since conventional approaches to social sciences do not mention this fact, it's important to emphasize that all societies are created by act of imagination and consensus on certain central narratives. A society is defined by a set of social networks which defines the roles and responsibilities, relationships and duties of all members of the society. This is the knowledge which creates the society and defines the identity of its members. This knowledge must be reproduced, must be taught from generation to generation in order for that society to continue to exist. So who creates this narrative, this underlying story which defines what that society is all about? Well, Mishaif Foucault says that these narratives are created by the people in power and they serve to support the structures of power. And the institutions of a society define what is to be considered as knowledge, how statements purporting to be knowledge are to be judged and how knowledge is to be produced. And basically the production of knowledge is intimately tied to the power structures of the society. One of the critical consequences of this understanding is that the ideas of the ruling class dominate the society. So as an example of this, the laborers in a capitalist society are not forced to labor and are not exploited by force. Rather they are educated to believe that their own exploitation is necessary for the survival of the system. And this system is the best of all possible ones so that there is no point in revolting against it. There is no alternative. One of the central myths which sustains capitalism is the myth of progress, the idea that under the realm of capitalism there has been massive progress for mankind. Actually the truth is that the emergence of capitalism and its subsequent growth has been a disaster for the mankind and also for the planet. But it has been painted as the greatest success of human history and this repainting of a disaster as a success is necessary for the survival of capitalism. And this propaganda is accomplished, this education of minds into believing in progress is accomplished by an educational system and other media. Some of the key ideas that capitalism must inculcate in members of a capitalist society in order to survive is that human lives can be bought and sold for money. This is necessary to create a labor market in order to motivate people to work for money instead of seeking spiritual progress or other non-monetary pursuits. They are taught to believe that the value of our lives can be measured in terms of money and in particular how much money I make is a symbol of my social standing. Helping the poor is harmful for productivity because it reduces the incentives for the labor class to work and that reduces the productivity which harms everybody, the whole society. So also we are taught that the goal of life is to maximize pleasure created by purchase of goods and that money which can be used to buy and sell lives and buy and sell goods. This is central to the acquisition of all pleasures that life has to offer, so the goal of our lives is to pursue money. One of the central tools for this brainwashing is economic theory and economic theory teaches us that the goal of our lives is to maximize the pleasure we obtain by purchasing goods and services. And it also conceals the role of money. It says that money is only used to facilitate exchange of commodities. Money is actually a veil. You can remove it from the picture to get an understanding of the real economy which is considered only with commodities. However, Galbraith finds the flaw in this picture and what he notes is that excessive production is necessary for capitalism and so capitalism produces massive amounts of excess goods surplus over and above what we need. And then it also uses advertising to condition minds to believe that they need these goods so that the demand for the excess goods is also manufactured just like the excess goods are manufactured. To be more technical, economic theory teaches us that everyone is in principle a laborer, we sell our lives in order to earn money and then we use this money to buy commodities. Marx wrote this as C transformed to M to C prime that is the commodity of labor is transformed into money by working and that that money is used to purchase goods which we need so money is transformed into more and different goods. We get deeper insight into what is happening by dividing what we purchase into the essentials which we need for survival and the surplus which is useless goods produced by capitalism which are required for the system. In reality the relations which govern the monetary economy which capitalism is are not CMC prime but the opposite. Capitalists use money to purchase labor and raw materials they then produce C prime the new commodities for purchase and they sell them to get more money. The goal of capitalism is to make money not to consume products also even though it appears that the goal of laborers is to purchase goods and that is what they are taught. Actually the laborers live in a precarious environment where their labor might be for sale or might not be and so they are also motivated to accumulate savings. So a society where everyone is driven by the desire to accumulate money is radically different from a society where everyone is driven by the goal to consume goods. So we conclude this lecture by noting that society is created by knowledge. The knowledge defines the social relationships, responsibilities, duties and assigns roles to different members. It creates the identity that we are members of our society and this knowledge must be imparted to all members to allow that society to continue to survive to be reproduced. It is the powerful elites of the society which construct this knowledge and educated all members to believe in this society so that everyone can fulfill their role in a contented fashion instead of revolting against the system. Islam however is unique in defining a natural social structure which is built into our fitra and is outlined in the Quran and the teachings of our Prophet Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam as exemplified by the society that was created.