this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
82 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
22848 readers
245 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Ironically, I got radicalised by a book written by a Milquetoast centrist, Capital In The 21st Century.
It's essentially a capitalist thinking through the fundamental implications of capitalism, especially that the market demands that the rate of return must be higher than the rate off growth. Piketty goes through the history of the 20th century and how the post-war boom came about, and how it's equality was dismantled in the eighties in order to fuel greater returns.
Then he comes up with his policy recommendations, and it's.... a wealth tax. Which you know, I'm not opposed to, but the idea that's going to have the same sort of impact as the creation of the welfare state and WW2 is insane. Never mind that there's nothing in place to prevent the rise of austerity again. At that point I knew the only way to proceed was to dismantle the capital class in it's entirety.
Piketty proved empirically what Marx proved theoretically 150 years ago.
What zero theory does to a mf.
Incredible how he walks through the implications of Capital. And then, when he puts everything together pointing to the political necessity of revolution to stave off complete economic and civilisation collapse, he can't imagine the first and the second is bad, so he makes up some liberal story that won't solve it and can't happen because of what he's just said, but sounds nice and like it's not too much work.
You can't prove human behavior theoretically, you can make predictions, and you can measure reality to see if it matches. Both are critical.
I mean "prove" in the common usage, not as in mathematical proof.
If Piketty read Marx he wouldn't be astounded to find that indeed r > g, wealth accumulates and one class enriches itself at the expense of the rest.
If Piketty read Marx he would not be lost about interpreting his own data, suggesting a wealth tax as if that would reconcile the contradictory nature by which capitalist wealth is produced in the first place.
I actually started reading it recently! I saw hype a while ago and it was in my reading list and the cover was pretty.
I uhh, yeah there really doesn't seem to be that much substance to it? I check out the database to see if there was anything I could do with the data, and after I checked it didn't seem all that great called the World Inequality Database, link here.
I'm not sure if I'll finish it, like you said the authors centrist and so far appears to be milquetoast. I just, I think honestly I thought the data-driven aspect (quantitive) would be cool but there's not realy sophisticated modelling going kn as far as I can tell.
I don't suggest anyone read it... maybe flip through the first ~20 pages to get a feel for how the largest problems of our day are whittled down to narrow and eventually single issues. It's an interesting piece of rhetoric I'd say, how the author & people reading it come to believe in such a solution.
I read it too, I was unimpressed in the same ways too.
Your point on class resonates. Everyone I know claims they grew up “middle class”, or if they are summer house rich they say, “upper middle class”.
I’ve never met someone who says “I am rich” or “I come from wealth” or anything like that. It’s always I grew up “upper middle class”
I mean, the global wealth tax would work, but there's no way in hell the capitalist classes in each country would agree to it