A bit random, but I wrote a book review of @PikettyLeMonde's new book for @nature.
The introduction got me excited about the project's ambition, but the book left me disappointed.
Piketty's analysis of both ideology & capital leaves a lot to be desired. nature.com/articles/d4158…
The introduction got me excited about the project's ambition, but the book left me disappointed.
Piketty's analysis of both ideology & capital leaves a lot to be desired. nature.com/articles/d4158…
On the positive side, Piketty makes it very clear that inequality is not natural, but ideological and political. This is an important starting point for a conversation about what drives inequality and measures to take to build a more just world. However...
Piketty hardly engages with any of the vast amount of social science literature on ideology or explain what his ideas are founded on. Rather, simply says it's "against" Marx because he sees ideology as completely autonomous from economics.
This leads to strange observations, like seeing the social democratic coalitions of the 50s/70s as driven by ideology - divorced from political compromise and battles, and explaining colonialism as an issue of ideology - rather than material conquests.
Another disappointment is that ideology in knowledge production is completely ignored. Instead, Piketty labels his own empirical work “rational” and “unbiased”, but his policy recommendations “ideological”.
In general, economists’ perceptions of their own analyses as being free of ideology often hinder open and democratic debate. We don't need to look further than the "evidence" currently guiding UK policy to recognize the problems with this.
This means Piketty doesn't recognize the political battles over ideas in academia either, although this could help him to explain shifts since the 1970s, including Economics depts squeezing out Keynesian and Marxist perspectives.
As a consequence of his limited view of ideology, his solution - to propose a new ideology of "equality, social ownership, education & power sharing” - appears naive. It will take more to reverse contemporary inequalities than the falsification of ideologies that justify them.
One welcome surprise came towards the end, when he writes he wants "de-Westernize" his gaze. This is followed by a short discussion about the limits of his perspective given his training & upbringing. Recognizes that the book remains unbalanced. An example for others! @DivDecEcon
In terms of capital, I guess there's no big surprise for anyone who read his first book. I still find it somewhat ironic that Piketty keeps giving nodds to Marx, while simultaneously ignoring capital as a social relation. Instead, capital is more or less equated with wealth.
This view of capital limits Piketty's capacity to explain global phenomena. For example, when considering the effects of trade liberalization in the developing world in the 1980s, Piketty focuses in on loss of tariff income rather than considering how it affected production.
Consequently, his policy proposals also shy away from discussing the massive rebalancing of global finance and production that would be necessary for a more equal world, and instead focuses on aid transfers to governments and taxation.
As the French philosopher Lordon recently pointed out, despite Piketty’s stated aim to go beyond capitalism, his policy solutions neither challenge capital as a social relation nor the need for people to engage in wage labor.
Thanks @IliasAlami @cacrisalves @mariadyveke for helpful comments on earlier drafts! I had to edit a lot to more to make it accessible to & interesting for biologists, so some of the more complex economics points are lost. Might try to publish a different version as a blog later.
