Early in *Capital*, Thomas Piketty writes:

> [H]istorical experience suggests that the principal mechanism for convergence [of incomes and wealth] at the international as well as the domestic level is the diffusion of knowledge. In other words, the poor catch up with the rich to the extent that they achieve the same level of technological know-how, skill, and education. (p. 71).

Yet when he turns to policy prescription in part IV of the book, his
treatment of education is relatively brief and mainly forms a part of
his discussion of the “modernization of the social state.” By this he
means that ‘the tax and transfer systems that are the heart of the
modern social state are in constant need of reform and modernization,
because they have achieved a level of complexity that makes them
difficult to understand and threatens to undermine their social and
economic efficacy.’ Given the emphasis Piketty places on education as a
force for equality in the opening section of the book, the brevity of
the final discussion disappoints. He might have said much more. In what
follows, I will summarize Piketty’s educational policy prescriptions,
comment on the theoretical framework underlying them, and then point to
what I take to be an even more important source of education’s
egalitarian effects. [click to continue…]

Benedict Anderson has died. I’m hoping someone like Henry or Chris writes something more substantive in the coming days about his contributions. While I read Imagined Communities, it never touched me in the way it has so many other scholars and students. Reading people’s comments on Facebook and Twitter, I’m struck by how intellectually diverse his audience was, how ride-ranging his reach. All morning, people from so many different fields and persuasions have been testifying to Anderson’s impact upon them and their work. Which leads to a thought: I’d put Anderson up there with Clifford Geertz and, increasingly, Jim Scott as among the most influential scholars of the last half-century. All of them scholars of Southeast Asia. I’m sure other people have noticed this and/or perhaps written about this, so forgive my saying the obvious, but what is it about that region that has made it such a site of transformative scholarship and fertile reflection?

Update (10:45 am)

Somehow or other, it seems, Henry actually has already posted here on Anderson’s death. Weirdly, I only just saw it. Maybe he and I were writing at the same time? Anyway, read Henry.

Obituary here. His _Imagined Communities_ was an important book to me, as it was, I suspect, to many other people in the Crooked Timber community. Indeed, it’s the book that made me decide to do graduate studies in political science (how could it not be wonderful to work in a discipline where one could read novels and newspapers to reach grand conclusions about political and social life; I was to find out). He was of Anglo-Irish stock – how much that double alienation (membership of an unintegrated but socially privileged minority within a state based on the usual national myths) shaped his viewpoint has been the subject of a lot of amateur speculation. I liked his book on international anarchism (review here, combined with a review of Scott’s Art of Not Being Governed), but more for the details than the whole. There’s a funny anecdote in it about an assassination attempt on a Captain-General:

bq. With the help of two Asturian anarchists, a young Cuban nationalist called Armando Andre hid a bomb in the roof of the ground-floor toilet of the Captain-General’s palace. The device was supposed to explode when Weyler sat down on the pot, bringing the whole second floor down on his head. The plotters were unaware, however, that Weyler suffered so severely from haemorrhoids that he almost never used the facility, preferring an earthenware field-potty when he had to relieve himself. The bomb went off, but no one was hurt, and Weyler decided to inform Madrid that the explosion had been caused by stoppages which prevented the latrine’s gases from escaping normally.

with further references to how the General was “partly relieved” and to the “diehard colons” of the revolution. I like that he had a low (if somewhat pince-sans-rire) sense of humour, despite his formidable learning and clipped Etonian accent – I can only imagine that he took great delight in smuggling the story and dubious jokes into an otherwise serious and densely researched academic book. More of us should be like him.

I would like to raise two related questions to Thomas Piketty. The first
concerns his repeatedly declared conviction that economic theory cannot
explain trends in inequality by itself, that policies and institutions
are equally important, and that economists must therefore put forward
their hypotheses and explanations with this interdependence in mind.
Given what I have understood Piketty’s main thesis to be, I wonder up to
which point he is actually committed to that claim. The second concerns
Part Four of _Capital_, where Piketty sketches a proposal for how to
regulate capital in the 21st century. In a nutshell, my concern about
Piketty’s proposal is that there seems to be a friction between the
diagnosis offered in the rest of the book (which seems to draw a rather
bleak picture of the power of capital in the early 21st century) and the
suggested cure (which seems to rely on the optimistic hope that, once
well-minded citizens will have recognized the problem, the only hurdle
will be to find the right policy to fix it). To put it provocatively,
both my questions are inspired by the suspicion that Piketty seems to
hold on to a social-democratic optimism of sorts at all costs, whereas
his findings seem to push him in a different direction. With the label
‘social-democratic optimism’ I mean two things: on the one hand,
optimism about the role of policies and institutions in taming capital
on the one hand; on the other, the persuasion that what politics is
fundamentally about is making citizens understand what the problems are
in a well-minded, reasoned dialogue, and then they will be persuaded to
do the right thing. [click to continue…]

Thomas Piketty’s *Capital in the Twenty-First Century* is an important and valuable contribution to political economy, both empirically and philosophically. Piketty grounds his theory in vast empirical data,rather than settling for elegant mathematical models. He courageously embraces the fact that economic theory is inevitably value laden, and proposes a theory of the historical dynamics of wealth accumulation in order to offer an updated moral critique of capitalism. Grounding his prediction in the historical data and profoundly simple mathematics, Piketty projects that economic inequality is likely to increase and to favor those who own inherited capital over time. He advances the normative judgment that rising inequality is unjust and must be
contained. Although Piketty raises important concerns about the
possibility of growing wealth inequality, he fails to normatively ground
or argue for his presupposition that this inequality is unjust. Since
relative poverty can coincide with high levels of objective or
subjective well-being, this presupposition is brought into question.
However, there are causes of inequality (including wealth inequality)
that clearly can be shown to be unjust. By considering other forms and
causes of inequality and oppression, we can distinguish between those
forms of wealth inequality that are unjust and those that are
normatively benign. In this way Piketty’s concerns about growing wealth
inequality from inheritance can be partly justified, though of course
not empirically verified. Piketty’s argument for the injustice of
growing economic inequality has two parts. The first part is an
empirical, economic argument for the claim that returns from inherited
wealth will far outstrip income. This argument can be summarized as
follows. Let *r* be the rate of return on capital, and *g* be the growth
rate of the annual flow of national income.

1. If *r>g*, then (wealth) inequality will grow over time.

2. Individuals who own a greater amount of capital earn a larger *r.*

3. Growth, *g*, is likely to be slower in future.

4. If *r* is great enough and g is low enough, then there will be ever
more capital from older, inherited wealth, than from wealth saved
from income.

5. Hence, (wealth) inequality will increase, and inherited wealth will
make up the greatest amount of capital. [click to continue…]

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century tells us a great deal about the evolution of inequality in wealth and income over a long period and how that distribution is likely to evolve unless we intervene. What Piketty does not do is to tell us why inequality is bad or why people care about inequality, although we can glean some knowledge of his personal beliefs here and there. In what follows I draw on some aspects of Rousseauvian moral psychology to suggest that the reasons people care about inequality matter enormously and that because some people value inequality for its own sake, it will be harder (even harder than Piketty thinks) to steer our societies away from the whirlpool of inequality.

In the book, Piketty argues that, without significant political intervention, it is likely that wealth inequality will increase dramatically in the coming century and that a class of rentiers will come to dominate over those who earn their incomes from labour, just as previous classes of rentiers did before the twentieth century. His book tells of a U-shaped pattern in the evolution of inequality in the past hundred years, with high levels of inequality being reduced but then bouncing back. Striking levels of economic growth coupled with the destruction by war and revolution of the wealth that formed the background to previous inequality, led to societies that were an unprecedented combination of egalitarianism and meritocracy, where those who worked hard could do well for themselves and where the domination over the living by wealth inherited from ancestors had become greatly diminished.

[click to continue…]

Here. You have a few weeks to listen. You can celebrate Viv Stanshall day every day for a while.

What a marvelous and ambitious book this is. I share all the reasons for
praising it: its breadth, its ambition, its grasp of history, and its
use of hard-earned statistical series. And I love the way Piketty relies
on various novels to paint the picture of class and economic strategies
in periods long gone. I also share many of the criticisms, particularly
by my brethren in political science, political theory, and political
sociology: its failure to comprehend the complexity of power, politics
or institutions. [click to continue…]

Thomas Piketty traces widening inequality in rich countries since the
early 1970s to increasing shares of income claimed by the top 1%. This
trend is decomposed into the increasing share of income accruing to
capital ownership, and the increasing share of labor income claimed by
corporate executives and financiers. Piketty shows that the increasing
share of labor income claimed by the top 1% is neither deserved nor
economically useful, in the sense of stimulating better products and
services, increasing economic growth, or providing other benefits to the
99%. Because he defines *r,* the return on capital, as the pure return
to passive ownership (excluding returns to capital that could be traced
to entrepreneurial activity or business judgment), it is evident that
capital’s share of income is also undeserved. But is it economically
useful? Piketty misses an opportunity to connect his analysis to a
critique of the ideology and associated politics that have driven
increasing inequality since the early 1970s. While he rightly claims
that the distribution of income and wealth is a deeply political matter,
and connects increasing economic inequality to the increasing political
clout of the top 1%, he does not identify political decisions, other
than cuts in marginal tax rates on top incomes, that lie behind
inequality trends. Filling in the ideological and political stories
gives us some clues as to policy instruments, other than the tax code,
needed to reverse the ominous trends he documents.
[click to continue…]

I taught Science Fiction and Philosophy this semester. One thing I realized I didn’t know – but I wished I did – was the history of semi-popular trends in the philosophy of mind (for lack of a better term.) A lot of science fiction is tied up with speculations about the nature of mind, of course. It would be surprising if all that didn’t reflect trends in aspirationally non-fictional speculations (again, for lack of a better term.) Crudely, I’ll bet there is more ESP in sf in eras when lots of people think that might be a thing. [click to continue…]

Our friend Erik Olin Wright has s long essay on How to be an Anti-Capitalist at Jacobin. Read the whole thing here.

An excerpt:

The Four Types of Anticapitalism

Capitalism breeds anticapitalists.

Sometimes resistance to capitalism is crystallized in coherent ideologies that offer both systematic diagnoses of the source of harms and clear prescriptions about how to eliminate them. In other circumstances anticapitalism is submerged within motivations that on the surface have little to do with capitalism, such as religious beliefs that lead people to reject modernity and seek refuge in isolated communities. But always, wherever capitalism exists, there is discontent and resistance in one form or other.

Historically, anticapitalism has been animated by four different logics of resistance: smashing capitalism, taming capitalism, escaping capitalism, and eroding capitalism.

These logics often coexist and intermingle, but they each constitute a distinct way of responding to the harms of capitalism. These four forms of anticapitalism can be thought of as varying along two dimensions.

One concerns the goal of anticapitalist strategies — transcending the structures of capitalism or simply neutralizing the worst harms of capitalism — while the other dimension concerns the primary target of the strategies — whether the target is the state and other institutions at the macro-level of the system, or the economic activities of individuals, organizations, and communities at the micro-level.

Taking these two dimensions together gives us the typology below.

Loyola University, a Catholic university in Chicago, is opposing a union drive among its contingent academic workers. On the grounds that it would violate the university’s First Amendment religious liberty.

What is at stake here, is Loyola’s guaranteed First Amendment rights of religious freedom and autonomy—essentially our right to define our own mission and to govern our institution in accordance with our values and beliefs, free from government entanglement. The United States Supreme Court long ago ruled that the First Amendment provides an exemption from NLRB jurisdiction in order to protect an institution’s religious liberty and identity. We are not alone in raising this issue, as religious institutions across the country have opposed NLRB jurisdiction in similar union-organizing situations on the same grounds that we have raised. Our position before the NLRB is not driven by anti-worker sentiment or hostility to organized labor. By raising the jurisdictional issue at the hearing, we are simply seeking to maintain our right to religious freedom, to protect the heart and soul of our institution and its mission.

Here’s what Pope Leo XIII had to say on the topic of labor unions and Catholic teaching in Rerum Novarum (1891):

The most important of all [workers’ associations] are workingmen’s unions, for these virtually include all the rest. History attests what excellent results were brought about by the artificers’ guilds of olden times. They were the means of affording not only many advantages to the workmen, but in no small degree of promoting the advancement of art, as numerous monuments remain to bear witness. Such unions should be suited to the requirements of this our age – an age of wider education, of different habits, and of far more numerous requirements in daily life. It is gratifying to know that there are actually in existence not a few associations of this nature, consisting either of workmen alone, or of workmen and employers together, but it were greatly to be desired that they should become more numerous and more efficient. We have spoken of them more than once, yet it will be well to explain here how notably they are needed, to show that they exist of their own right, and what should be their organization and their mode of action.

Ninety years later, Pope John Paul II reiterated that position in Laborem Exercens (1981):

All these rights [of workers], together with the need for the workers themselves to secure them, give rise to yet another right: the right of association, that is to form associations for the purpose of defending the vital interests of those employed in the various professions. These associations are called labour or trade unions….Their task is to defend the existential interests of workers in all sectors in which their rights are concerned. The experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensableelement of social life, especially in modern industrialized societies.

As did the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in their 1986 pastoral letter Economic Justice for All:

The Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions. This is a specific application of the more general right to associate. In the words of Pope John Paul II, “The experience of history teaches that organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life, especially in modern industrialized societies.”(58) Unions may also legitimately resort to strikes where this is the only available means to the justice owed to workers.(59) No one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself. Therefore, we firmly oppose organized efforts, such as those regrettably now seen in this country, to break existing unions and prevent workers from organizing.

And just a few months ago, the Archbishop of Chicago had this to say on the topic:

Similarly, the Church has consistently taught that workers have a right to have a voice in the workplace, to form and join unions, to bargain collectively and protect their rights. And the Church has never made a distinction between private and public sectors of the work. It was not 4 Msgr. Higgins who called unions “indispensable,” but Pope, now Saint, John Paul II in his powerful and still timely encyclical “On Human Work’” Work and unions are important not simply for what a worker “gets,” but how they enable a worker to provide for a family and participate in the workplace and society. Unions are important not simply for helping workers get more, but helping workers be more, to have a voice, a place to make a contribution to the good of the whole enterprise, to fellow workers and the whole of society….Across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, ten Popes have affirmed and expanded this very vision.

…

For example in view of present day attempts to enact so-called right-to-work laws the Church is duty bound to challenge such efforts by raising questions based on longstanding principles. We have to ask, “Do these measures undermine the capacity of unions to organize, to represent workers and to negotiate contracts? Do such laws protect the weak and vulnerable? Do they promote the dignity of work and the rights of workers? Do they promote a more just society and a more fair economy? Do they advance the common good?” Lawmakers and others may see it differently, but history has shown that a society with a healthy, effective and responsible labor movement is a better place than one where other powerful economic interests have their way and the voices and rights of workers are diminished.

…Ad [sic] I have to admit not every claim of religious freedom is valid and the law has to protect the basic rights of all.

…

The Archdiocese of Chicago employs 15,000 full and part-time employees in its agencies, seminaries, schools and parishes. We strive to be a just employer. I have asked our Archdiocesan staff to review all of our human resource policies to ensure we are practicing what we preach about the dignity of work and the rights of workers. We will work earnestly to address any gaps. After all, like everyone we also need to be accountable. Because the Archdiocese is an employer, some employees and some unions may want to organize in our workplaces. Some Archdiocesan employees are already organized and we work with their union to advance our mission and our mutual obligations to workers. Others are not. And that is because some “jobs” in the Church are really ministerial positions, and must answer to a higher law than those passed by legislatures, we may have differences in this area. But if we stay firm in our commitment to principled dialogue, we can resolve differences and move forward together.

The position of the Catholic Church on the right of workers to form trade unions, even within Catholic institutions (that exception that the Archbishop of Chicago carves out at the end of his address is pretty limited and certainly does not apply to adjunct instructors at a university that does not impose denominational or sectarian obligations on its faculty or students), is clear.

In the name of the First Amendment, in the name of a religious freedom to be Catholic and to follow Catholic teachings, Loyola claims the right not to be Catholic and to suspend Catholic teachings.