By Dr. Mudh'her Mohammad Saleh
Financial Advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister and Member of Al-Nabaa Forum for Dialogue
Before economics became charts and numbers, it was a home. It was the warmth of a protective wall, daily sustenance shared fairly, and a delicate balance between need and desire. In its original Greek root, economics was nothing more than "household management", managing scarcity wisely, turning limited resources into a viable life, and deriving peace of mind from order.
The home was the original prototype of the state, where justice began at a dining table with fairly distributed portions. It was less about profit and loss calculations than about preserving cohesion, maintaining equilibrium, and preventing waste. When a home is managed wisely, it stands firm; when mismanaged, fault lines creep in through the smallest cracks.
Yet, lifestyles transformed. Home economics, once a school of production, became little more than a chapter in the memory of mothers and grandmothers. Yesterday's kitchens, which functioned as small-scale food-processing units, have become consumption hubs for prepackaged foods. The well-stocked stoneware jars (basteek) once filled with cheese, clarified butter, date syrup, preserved dates, seasonal jams, tomato juices, pastes, and dried goods prepared for lean seasons have all but vanished.
Our homes were integrated production units linked to the farm, the market, and the factory. The homemaker was a true production manager, operating household production functions no less complex than those of any small enterprise. The clay oven (tannoor), rooted in the ancient soil of Sumer and Mesopotamia, was more than a tool for baking bread; it was a symbol of relative self-sufficiency and an economy built on stewardship rather than dependency.
More than seven decades have passed, and the household production function has regressed to the point of near-extinction from daily life. In economics lecture halls back then, we used to ask: Should these domestic efforts be factored into national income accounting? Or do they remain invisible labor, unmeasured by gross national output despite their profound effect on social balance?
Then came the rentier influx, narrowing our vision of the economy down to a single pipeline, a mono-resource conduit that reshaped the balance of payments, consumption patterns, and societal taste. The home became a net consumer, relying on imported meats and packaged canned goods, celebrating a "national" product whose local identity extends no further than its packaging. The traditional crystal ice treats once sold in neighborhood alleys disappeared, replaced by glossy imported brands. Home-baked cakes yielded to store-bought, mass-produced pastries. The hand-spun yarns crafted in grandmothers' homes to make blankets and furnishings through neighborhood weavers vanished, just as the delicate hand-knitting from my mother’s needles, which fashioned winter clothing in warm colors, disappeared. Sewing machines have faded away, reduced to mere decorative antiques in our homes today.
Looking at the low female labor force participation rate, hovering around 13%, we realize this shift was not merely economic but deeply social and cultural. Lifestyles changed as a rentier-driven affluence took hold, one unbacked by parallel household or industrial production, relying instead on income streams detached from ordinary daily effort. Thus, the household surrendered its productive role, and the economy lost one of its quietest pillars.
Here arises an ancient question posed by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), the intellect of ancient Greece, regarded as one of history's greatest thinkers and one of the three pillars of Greek philosophy alongside Socrates and Plato. Aristotle distinguished between two concepts:
Oikonomia: The management of household affairs and resources to achieve sufficiency and stability, meaning the natural administration of resources to fulfill needs and secure self-sufficiency.
Chrematistics: The pursuit of wealth accumulation for its own sake, without limits.
Aristotle viewed the former as natural and moral, tied to life and its true purpose, whereas the latter veers away from human purpose when detached from actual human needs. Where, then, do we stand in a rentier household economy that has lost its productive weight while inflating its consumer footprint? Are we still within the realm of stewardship, or have we slipped into the logic of accumulation and consumption devoid of a corresponding productive base?
In its Greek origins, home economics was wise stewardship of household affairs, rational organization of resources, and a pursuit of stability and sufficiency, a concept carrying deep ethical and administrative weight, rather than cold financial metrics. Perhaps what we need today is not nostalgia for the past, but a revival of the spirit of Oikonomia in a complex, rapidly changing, rentier-consumerist world. It is a moment of reflection on the household as the primary cell of the economy: if its balance tilts, everything built above it falters; if it reclaims its weight, society might just regain some of its lost equilibrium.