Thomas Piketty’s *Capital in the Twenty-First Century* presents a
troubling puzzle for social democrats and for parties of the
centre-left, as well as for academics interested in developing a more
egalitarian public policy agenda. Supported by a previously unimagined
wealth of statistical detail, gained through the archival labour over
many years of a large team of researchers, Piketty’s book confirms
profound concerns about the long-range dynamics of capitalism. Wealth
does not naturally disperse down to the many, but sticks to the few, and
especially to those who carry the arbitrary advantages of patrimonial
inheritance. The facts of inequality are devastating, and come with an
accompanying sense of deflation at the level of policy and political
action. We may have come to see the grim facts of capitalism’s internal
dynamics more clearly than ever before, but it is much less clear that
we have the tools to cure capitalism’s disfiguring disease of
accelerating inequality. Hence we see that a common reaction to
Piketty’s work on the left is one of resignation or even despair. The
sardonic good humour and cautious optimism displayed by Piketty himself
can seem oddly out of place against the background picture that has been
created by his years of ground-breaking research. [click to continue…]
Posts by author: