Shortly after the demise of the Soviet Union, a 20-year-old French study traveler roamed the streets of Moscow, marveling at Red Square, Lenin’s mausoleum and, above all, the endless lines in front of the nearly empty shops of the Russian capital. . How is it possible, thought economics student Thomas Piketty, that these people were so terrified of capitalism’s inequality that they could create such a monstrosity? And how can we curb inequality without repeating the communist catastrophe?
This key question forms the crux of the books with which Piketty grew from 2014 into one of the export products in which France, in addition to brie and cabernet sauvignon, still specialized in the last century: intellectual superstars. Not that Capital in the 21st century, the brick-thick book with which the economist stormed the bestseller lists that year also had much in common with the dark shamanic prose of Foucault, Derrida and many other French icons. In more than 800 pages of line charts, mathematical formulas and ‘fundamental laws of capitalism’, Piketty explained how the gap between rich and poor had widened in the West since 1980, without Jan Modaal and the lower-middle-class people having improved significantly.
The fact that the book was such a blockbuster – Piketty sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide – had to do not only with the quality, but also with the zeitgeist. Capital in the 21st Century fell into a fertile ground of chagrin over bank bailouts, bonuses and austerity, and laid an empirical concrete foundation underneath. Like a long-snouted elephant, Piketty blew out the fairy tale of the ‘drip theory’, the idea coined by Reagan and Thatcher—and recently dusted off by British Prime Minister Truss—that the benefits of tax cuts for the wealthy trickle down to the less fortunate. Instead, the money appeared to have mostly trickled up in recent decades, Piketty showed.
His latest book, A short history of equalitywith 328 pages is a freeze-dried version of his two best-known works, Capital in the 21st Century and Capital and ideology (2019), together good for almost two thousand pages. “It’s all very interesting what you write, but maybe you could shorten it a bit so that I can get my friends and relatives to read it too,” Piketty jokes in the opening sentence about the many readers who asked him for a summary.
The result may be concise by Piketty terms, but reading it is still no pony camp. The 51-year-old economist’s books are like vitamin pills: packed with healthy information, although taste is not their strong point.
Many critics praise Piketty for his clear style, which is not unjustified given the tough material of his oeuvre. At the same time, you can use sentences like ‘It can be valuable to compare incomes in order to get a picture of the inequality within a specific society (to the extent to which the different social groups maintain financial relations), or between countries over a specific period of time (in which the extent to which contacts exist between those societies…’ – and it goes on like this – it is difficult to call it a miracle of elegance.
All the playfulness of his earlier work – references to Jane Austen novels, for example – Piketty has skimped on in his latest book. His sense of humor also cannot escape the urge to austere. And that’s a shame for a man who once took devilish pleasure in being a reporter for the… Financial Times, the newspaper that had frantically tried to undermine its investigation, to treat its posh interview column ‘Lunch with the FT’ to a midday meal of microwaved bolognese pasta, and pineapple chunks soldiered on with plastic forks.
A short history of equality presents the reader with a reform agenda so ambitious that it almost seems as if Piketty wanted to jump into the electoral gap between Bernie Sanders and Joseph Stalin. A ‘decentralized, democratic and self-governing socialism’, Piketty calls his program.
The ‘billionaire’ phenomenon is dying out if it’s up to Piketty, thanks to an annual wealth tax of up to 90 percent. Even the world’s richest person Elon Musk (estimated wealth: 253 billion euros) would be a billionaire within three years with Piketty’s tax rates and five years later plunge below 100 million euros. The highest income tax rate also goes to 80 or 90 percent. In order to reduce global inequality, he also proposes a worldwide tax of 2 percent on wealth above 10 million euros, the proceeds of which will flow into the treasuries of all countries in proportion to the population.
Whereas roughly half of all people in Western countries never inherit a cent, Piketty argues in favor of giving every citizen who blows out 25 candles a basic inheritance of 120,000 euros, although he notes that this amount is only illustrative, ‘a a more ambitious approach is therefore also possible’. In addition, there is a basic income and a job guarantee, in other words a full-time job paid by the government for anyone who wishes. A transcontinental parliament, in which African and European parliamentarians sit, for example, must deal with issues of global importance, such as climate change or tax avoidance. And quasi-worker self-government, called “participatory socialism” by Piketty, should lead to entrepreneurs losing the majority of votes as soon as their company has more than ten employees.
‘The principle of equality of opportunity is often defended by everyone on an abstract and theoretical level, but as soon as someone starts talking about its implementation in practice, the wealthy are afraid of it like the plague,’ writes Piketty in defense of his proposals. He points to US education figures, which show that the admission rate to higher education among children from the richest 10 percent of all families is three times higher than among the very poorest children.
Yet it is unfortunate how stepmotherly Piketty also addresses the fundamental questions his reform agenda raises in his latest book, especially for someone who has otherwise been so thorough in mapping inequality. For example, what is the ideal degree of inequality in a society, and why? His latest book doesn’t even address this question, while Piketty in Capital in the 21st Century got no further than the clincher that differences in wealth are only justifiable when they serve the ‘common utility’. And what exactly ‘usefulness’ means could only be answered through ‘democratic consultation and political confrontation’.
The enthusiasm for Piketty’s ‘gradual de-marketing of the economy’ also remains unanswered, as does the practical question of how he intends to see his plans come to fruition. That’s strange, because A short history of equality overflowing with belief in manufacturability. Was Piketty in Capital in the 21st Century still pessimistic about narrowing the gap between rich and poor – only ‘the chaos of war’ could have done that in the twentieth century – in his latest book he sings full praise of the ‘social struggle’ as the engine of political change .
Quite after John Lennon, you could say that Piketty is a dreamer, with his future vision of a world without too many possessions. The social struggle that should lead to a reality of basic heritages, transcontinental parliaments and ‘taxes like confiscation’ never gets fleshed out anywhere in his book. “The march to equality is a struggle with an uncertain outcome, and far from being marked out,” writes Piketty, and that is what the class fighters of all countries have to deal with.
Thomas Piketty: A Short History of Equality. Translated from the French by Alexander van Kesteren. De Geus; 328 pages; € 24.99.
