Thursday, May 8, 2014
David Priestland — Are we at a Piketty tipping point for the left? Unfortunately, history suggests not
Priestland thinks we need a bigger crisis to move public sentiment radically to the left. Piketty's book is nowhere near sufficient.
Chances are looking good that we will get one. Little has been done to remedy the factors underlying the 2008 crisis, with even most of the weak reforms stymied by politics. Moreover, debt levels remain historically high.
The first factor all but guarantees another round, and the second that it will be deeper than the first. In addition, the public is fed up with bailouts, so the liquidation could be fierce, leading to debt deflation.
The Guardian (UK)
Are we at a Piketty tipping point for the left? Unfortunately, history suggests not
David Priestland
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16 comments:
I agree.
A big factor will be another stock market dive of 50% or more (as in 2001 and 2008-2009). The "ownership society" will be under fire if 401k savings accounts holding middle class life savings are hit again...
for follow up
A book like Piketty's can never move mass opinion to the left or right. It isn't a work of political motivation and rhetoric, and it's not full of passion or fire and brimstone. It's designed to move the opinions of intellectuals and the educated reading public. It's up to them - the one's of good will at least - to then participate in drawing on the ideas in ways that can inform popular political ideas.
bread and circuses... they learnt the trick a long time ago.
"It's designed to move the opinions of intellectuals and the educated reading public. It's up to them - the one's of good will at least - to then participate in drawing on the ideas in ways that can inform popular political ideas."
Sounds a bit like the Mont Pelerin view that society is shaped by intellectuals, not by 'the masses'.
Well, if nothing else it, it moved Krugman, and he seems to be taking up the cause of inequality now. His NYT bully pulpit is a megaphone.
But it has also moved the discussion as a whole to the subject of inequality, to the degree that even the right feels it has to respond.
Shifting the framing of the intellectual universe of discourse is a big step in moving the Overton window back toward the left after having been pushed right for decades.
"Sounds a bit like the Mont Pelerin view that society is shaped by intellectuals, not by 'the masses'."
I would not say "intellectuals" but opinion setters.
@y See Intellectuals, Ideas, Action — The French Revolution
Quote:
Insofar as we think about the French Revolution, we perhaps have a vague image of poverty stricken sans-culottes storming Versailles in righteous fury. The more sophisticated minded might bring up the inevitable conflict between a rising bourgeoisie and a political establishment built around a divine right monarchy, a landed aristocracy, and an ossified clergy. Actually, the situation is more complicated and depressingly familiar.
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The Societies were simultaneously a factory for producing ideologically sophisticated thinkers, charismatic speakers, and subtle politicians. They were a crucible for revolutionaries. The emphasis on ideology hardened the members and allowed them to be capable of ruthless action. The social nature of the organization prevented abstract navel gazing. The price for failure ensured only the strong and capable could survive.
Were these perfect? Obviously not ( they eventually destroyed themselves). Nonetheless, I believe looking at the societies provides a plausible example to follow. Intellectualism is dangerous when it is a solitary activity. It is a necessity when it is a social activity. For intellectuals and activists, things like book clubs, discussion groups, and societies dedicated to ideas are moderate first steps that can bring each group out of their comfort zone and eventually spark greater action. They separate the wheat from the chaff, develop leaders and followers (and we need both), and prevent either group taking refuge in a comfort zone. This, again, is something we could do now, in every city where there even a few of us, through private networks without fear of infiltration. They keep intellectuals from hiding in their basement and activists from being reactionary, philistine, and ineffective. It doesn’t sound like much, but then again, neither did a bunch of intellectuals sitting around talking about the rights of man. Look what they did.
Tom,
Krugman was already aboard the inequality bandwagon well before he read Piketty's book and before anybody was talking about it...
No, I'm just talking about something similar to what happened with Keynes. The General Theory wasn't a a big popular best-seller, or a commonly read political manifesto or popular political tract. But it had a major influence in that economists and others were able to use the ideas to build political and policy programs that in turn had broad appeal. When Nixon said "We're all Keynesians now", that was true of the conventional economic wisdom of his time. But it wasn't because any significant portion of the population had actually read Keynes's book.
That's true, Dan, but even though Stiglitz and Galbraith were hammering on it, Krugman wasn't really featuring it the way he has since Piketty. He is even involved in an institute dealing with it now after leaving Princeton. Krugman is an opinion setter in the Democratic Party and if he continues to hammer on inequality it will be a bigger issue than if he picks something else.
But with Keynes, you had the "threat" of communism. There is nothing to push these people of their course anymore, they're rigid ideologues, trying to reason with them gets you as far as a scientist talking to a creationist. They have the answers they're looking for, they don't question, they follow with religious devotion. I don't see much to be hopeful about unfortunately.
For all the talk on the internet, nothing is really flowing through to the main stream, the public still believe the big bad national debt is going to devour them and their children and grandchildren, they still believe the poor and unemployed are takers who they are paying for through taxation, and they still believe the government needs to cut spending.
The only time it will change, is when the mainstream media challenge the nonsense. But with the mainstream media being owned, run, and staffed by the people who are breezing through these disasters without a care in the world, and are actually increasing their wealth in the process, the chances of them challenging the status quo aren't very good.
" nothing is really flowing through to the main stream, the public still believe the big bad national debt is going to devour them and their children and grandchildren, they still believe the poor and unemployed are takers who they are paying for through taxation, and they still believe the government needs to cut spending."
James,
PIKETTY believes that...
"bread and circuses"
y,
right how about it... everyone should either be in STEM or the military... that would be the ideal society for sure...
who needs shared amounts of good food and the arts? they're a big waste of time for sure...
We should all be either digging ditches or in the military... sounds good...
???????????????
y,
You sound like Niall Furguson with this "bread and circuses" stuff...
"But with Keynes, you had the "threat" of communism. There is nothing to push these people of their course anymore"
There is a coalition building against the dominance of Western global capital and transnationals. The same dynamic that led to the capitalist-communistic conflict is alive and well and it will be as long as the West under the leadership of the US has its sights set on global hegemony, which means keeping the East and South as vassal states.
Do a search on Wolfowitz Doctrine, Washington Consensus, Carter Doctrine, and Monroe Doctrine. None of the this sits well with the BRICs and other emerging countries, which are now under the leadership of Russia and China developing a parallel system to avoid control by Western capital and it's crony governments.
The US is already "at war' and preparing for hot war with Russia, China, and Iran wrt to foreign and military policy.
The Cold War never ended in Washington's mindset. The Great Game is still very much on, with the US the global hegemon for this moment in history. What the next moment will bring is anyone's guess, as well as the phase transition in getting to it.
A new arms race is already underway, and that includes cyber warfare as well as other advanced technology. The US is confident it can dominate in this area, but the Western technological edge is eroding as the emerging world catches up.
The hawks in the West want to take advantage of the imbalance that they perceive to exist presently to prevent the ROW from ever catching up, and they are in charge of policy. This is not lost on those that the US has described in military doctrine as "enemies."
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