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A review by deleonhtx
Capital and Ideology by Thomas Piketty
5.0
This is, to date, the longest book I have ever read. It took me some months, but part of the reason is because I was in no rush to complete it. A 1000+ page book of history and economics might sound extremely tedious, but this book was far from it. It was an incredible, compelling journey.
Broken down into four parts, each one could have been a book of its own. I spent a lot of time sitting with each individual chapter not just to make sense of it, but also to just fully wrap my head around all that was being presented. Very few books around compare in terms of scope and ambition. But every part, every chapter, every sub-chapter carries insights that have a place in achieving the principal aims of this book: Capital and Ideology traces the historical and ideological roots of inequality, critiques the systems that perpetuate it, and offers a vision for a more just society.
I was particularly struck by some of the ideological findings, namely the reversal of electoral cleavages both here in the U.S. and around the world. The Democratic Party of the New Deal used to be driven by working class voters; today, it is driven by voters with collegiate degrees while non-degreed, working class voters are increasingly supporting the Republican Party. We saw this bear out in a dramatic way just past week with the reelection of Donald Trump as President, which, for example, some polls showed that White Men with no degree were +44 Trump, while White Men with degrees were +4 Harris. To see such a wide gap and shift in magnitude as the result of a single factor is already appalling, but even more illuminating was the fact that this sort of electoral cleavage is not exclusive to the U.S.
This all begs certain questions: Why? What explains this? Why has this same exact shift also happened in many other countries? Piketty gives a frank and clear answer: liberalism abandoned the working class. As the world was dramatically changing in the twentieth century, in the face of the Conservative revolution in the 1980's led in part by Reagan, Thatcher, and the Chicago School, while bearing witness to the rise of a global economy and community: Center-left parties failed to adapt their platforms to what had become a different world, and did not deliver agendas that working class people could relate with, support, and believe in. Liberalism prioritized the needs and interests of elites, leading, in the 21st century today, to the very unfortunate outcome Bernie Sanders declared the day after the Democrats lost once again to Donald Trump - "it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has abandoned them.
The threat of nativist, hyper-capitalist movements gaining power around the world looms as a significant challenge for those of us concerned with rampant inequality and combat climate change, which Piketty sees as two of the defining issues of the 21st Century. The book's last chapter, "Elements for a Participatory Socialism in the 21st Century," offers concrete reforms and policy recommendations based on and contextualized in the broader struggles for socioeconomic justice going back to the 19th Century. But given the importance of education in constructing political attitudes and ideology, it is not surprising that Piketty affirms that, at the center of any emancipatory political project, must also be educational justice. At a time when educational systems here in the U.S. are under attack - books being banned, college becoming unaffordable, DEI programs being cut, local school districts being taken over, public vouchers for charter schools being expanded, curriculums being white-washed - this point must be elevated to a higher place in the public discourse than it currently holds.
A special book like this is the culmination of an entire lifetime's rigorous and dedicated work, and it is also proof of the possibilities open to us at the top end of scholarship. It is very much a must-read given the precarity of the current political and socioeconomic moment (though it is not an easy book to recommend to anyone given its length).
My main critique of this book is that its descriptions of government financial systems may be based on inaccuracies debunked by the Modern Monetary Theory school of macroeconomics. For instance, Piketty argues for progressive income, inheritance, and wealth taxes not only to reduce inequality and promote redistribution, but also to help finance social policies included in his vision for a participatory socialism. However, MMT Economists like Stephanie Kelton, Pavlina Tcherneva, Randall Wray, Bill Mitchell, Matthew Forstater, and many others have long been showing that monetarily sovereign governments, like the federal governments of the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan, and many others do not need to tax in order to spend. Given that these governments possess authorities to issue their own currencies, they do not have any financial constraints. Hence, if, as Piketty proposes, the U.S. wanted to create a universal capital endowment for all of, say, $25,000 at the turn of age 25, then it could do so at any point without a need to acquire the revenue first via taxation.
This is not to say that there is no need to tax. Piketty's tax proposals should all be implemented immediately to help control the runaway accumulation of capital which is destabilizing political systems globally. However, the taxes are not needed to fund social programs - to spend or not to spend, it is simply a political choice to do so. To be fair, Piketty is a European Economist, where the countries of the European Union have effectively forfeited their monetary sovereignty and full control over their fiscal and financial capacities to the Euro. So it is understandable why Piketty stresses the importance of taxation since that is in fact what European countries need to do to fund his recommended social programs, but he never makes this distinction between European monetary systems and others, which, I am assuming, reflects that Piketty was simply not fully aware with the canon of MMT macroeconomic literature at the time of this Capital and Ideology's writing.
There is so much more that I can say about this book. I’ve only spoken to a fraction of it. Each part, each chapter merits its own review. I spent week after week for months turning the pages of the same book, each time wading through a different place in time and history, staring at graphs and analyzing data tables, one after another, around a hundred in total. When I finished it, I went to my room, laid down, stared at the fan on the ceiling, and just sat in the quiet. I reflected on all that I have learned, on the experience I just had. With this book, I sought to challenge myself and my understanding, and that I did. And I look forward to both sharing and applying the vast number of lessons from this book in all that I do. In the meanwhile, on my desk at my workplace I have stacks of all the books I have read this year. Adding Capital and Ideology this morning gave me the greatest sense of satisfaction, because no other book had single-handedly made the stacks taller.
Broken down into four parts, each one could have been a book of its own. I spent a lot of time sitting with each individual chapter not just to make sense of it, but also to just fully wrap my head around all that was being presented. Very few books around compare in terms of scope and ambition. But every part, every chapter, every sub-chapter carries insights that have a place in achieving the principal aims of this book: Capital and Ideology traces the historical and ideological roots of inequality, critiques the systems that perpetuate it, and offers a vision for a more just society.
I was particularly struck by some of the ideological findings, namely the reversal of electoral cleavages both here in the U.S. and around the world. The Democratic Party of the New Deal used to be driven by working class voters; today, it is driven by voters with collegiate degrees while non-degreed, working class voters are increasingly supporting the Republican Party. We saw this bear out in a dramatic way just past week with the reelection of Donald Trump as President, which, for example, some polls showed that White Men with no degree were +44 Trump, while White Men with degrees were +4 Harris. To see such a wide gap and shift in magnitude as the result of a single factor is already appalling, but even more illuminating was the fact that this sort of electoral cleavage is not exclusive to the U.S.
This all begs certain questions: Why? What explains this? Why has this same exact shift also happened in many other countries? Piketty gives a frank and clear answer: liberalism abandoned the working class. As the world was dramatically changing in the twentieth century, in the face of the Conservative revolution in the 1980's led in part by Reagan, Thatcher, and the Chicago School, while bearing witness to the rise of a global economy and community: Center-left parties failed to adapt their platforms to what had become a different world, and did not deliver agendas that working class people could relate with, support, and believe in. Liberalism prioritized the needs and interests of elites, leading, in the 21st century today, to the very unfortunate outcome Bernie Sanders declared the day after the Democrats lost once again to Donald Trump - "it should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has abandoned them.
The threat of nativist, hyper-capitalist movements gaining power around the world looms as a significant challenge for those of us concerned with rampant inequality and combat climate change, which Piketty sees as two of the defining issues of the 21st Century. The book's last chapter, "Elements for a Participatory Socialism in the 21st Century," offers concrete reforms and policy recommendations based on and contextualized in the broader struggles for socioeconomic justice going back to the 19th Century. But given the importance of education in constructing political attitudes and ideology, it is not surprising that Piketty affirms that, at the center of any emancipatory political project, must also be educational justice. At a time when educational systems here in the U.S. are under attack - books being banned, college becoming unaffordable, DEI programs being cut, local school districts being taken over, public vouchers for charter schools being expanded, curriculums being white-washed - this point must be elevated to a higher place in the public discourse than it currently holds.
A special book like this is the culmination of an entire lifetime's rigorous and dedicated work, and it is also proof of the possibilities open to us at the top end of scholarship. It is very much a must-read given the precarity of the current political and socioeconomic moment (though it is not an easy book to recommend to anyone given its length).
My main critique of this book is that its descriptions of government financial systems may be based on inaccuracies debunked by the Modern Monetary Theory school of macroeconomics. For instance, Piketty argues for progressive income, inheritance, and wealth taxes not only to reduce inequality and promote redistribution, but also to help finance social policies included in his vision for a participatory socialism. However, MMT Economists like Stephanie Kelton, Pavlina Tcherneva, Randall Wray, Bill Mitchell, Matthew Forstater, and many others have long been showing that monetarily sovereign governments, like the federal governments of the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan, and many others do not need to tax in order to spend. Given that these governments possess authorities to issue their own currencies, they do not have any financial constraints. Hence, if, as Piketty proposes, the U.S. wanted to create a universal capital endowment for all of, say, $25,000 at the turn of age 25, then it could do so at any point without a need to acquire the revenue first via taxation.
This is not to say that there is no need to tax. Piketty's tax proposals should all be implemented immediately to help control the runaway accumulation of capital which is destabilizing political systems globally. However, the taxes are not needed to fund social programs - to spend or not to spend, it is simply a political choice to do so. To be fair, Piketty is a European Economist, where the countries of the European Union have effectively forfeited their monetary sovereignty and full control over their fiscal and financial capacities to the Euro. So it is understandable why Piketty stresses the importance of taxation since that is in fact what European countries need to do to fund his recommended social programs, but he never makes this distinction between European monetary systems and others, which, I am assuming, reflects that Piketty was simply not fully aware with the canon of MMT macroeconomic literature at the time of this Capital and Ideology's writing.
There is so much more that I can say about this book. I’ve only spoken to a fraction of it. Each part, each chapter merits its own review. I spent week after week for months turning the pages of the same book, each time wading through a different place in time and history, staring at graphs and analyzing data tables, one after another, around a hundred in total. When I finished it, I went to my room, laid down, stared at the fan on the ceiling, and just sat in the quiet. I reflected on all that I have learned, on the experience I just had. With this book, I sought to challenge myself and my understanding, and that I did. And I look forward to both sharing and applying the vast number of lessons from this book in all that I do. In the meanwhile, on my desk at my workplace I have stacks of all the books I have read this year. Adding Capital and Ideology this morning gave me the greatest sense of satisfaction, because no other book had single-handedly made the stacks taller.