John Weeks — "Why Is Capital In The 21st Century (C21C) Such A Success?"

About a month ago — this is a true story — after a meeting of Economists Against Austerity, I hailed a taxi in Westminster (the workers of the underground system were on strike). During the ensuring discussion with the driver I mentioned that I taught economics at the University of London before retiring. The driver then asked me, have you read this book by a Frenchman named Piketty?

A London taxi driver discussing an economics book, much less one 578 pages long (text only) qualifies the book as a “phenomenon” by the dictionary definition, “a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question”. And very much in question the cause is. I am in the process of writing a review of these 578 pages (plus the occasional excursion into a footnote), and at this point limit myself to speculating over why it has swept all before it.... 

I suspect — let me stress than I have never met Piketty, only heard him speak (see his Real News interview with Lynn Fries) — that a tactical decision was made to avoid discussion of macroeconomic policy in C21C, as well as to avoid directly confronting political debates. Most of the previous exposés of inequality had overtly linked to neoliberal policies of deregulation, especially in the financial sector. Several years of constant and duplicitous attack on this obviously correct causality by the mainstream of the economics profession, right-wing to the core, drove it from public discussion. So successful has been this counterattack that in both Britain and the United States a majority of people believe that excessive public sector spending explains the lack of a recovery if not the crisis itself.

When listing the many shortcomings of C21C we should not include “naivety”. Unless I am wrong, the decision was made to keep C21C narrowly focused on inequality, while padding that discussion with countless diversions into cultural and historical commentary. The goal was to stimulate debate over inequality rather than seriously deal with causality or policy. That is not the way I would have written C21C, but – hey – it worked. He put the inequality ball in play and now it is for progressives to score a goal with it.

Social Europe Journal
"Why Is Capital In The 21st Century (C21C) Such A Success?"
John Weeks | Professor Emeritus of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London