Eine kurze Geschichte der Gleichheit

by Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty über soziale Ungleichtheit und globale Gerechtigkeit.

"Das ist ja interessant, was Sie schreiben, aber können Sie es vielleicht auch kürzer sagen?" Diese Frage ist Thomas Piketty, der mit seinem umfangreichen Bestseller Das Kapital im 21. Jahrhundert eine internationale Debatte über die Ursachen sozialer Ungleichheit in Gang gebracht hat, oft gestellt worden. Piketty hat diese Bitten ernst genommen und das Ergebnis ist eine Weltgeschichte der sozialen Konflikte und Konstellationen und eine Lektion in globaler Gerechtigkeit.

In deiner Audible-Bibliothek findest du für dieses Hörerlebnis eine PDF-Datei mit zusätzlichem Material.

Genres: Economics, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, Sociology, Audiobook

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First published August 26, 2021

About the author

Thomas Piketty (French: [tɔma pikɛti]; born May 7, 1971) is a French economist who works on wealth and income inequality. He is the director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and professor at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of the best selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which emphasizes the themes of his work on wealth concentrations and distribution over the past 250 years. The book argues that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a global tax on wealth.

Piketty was born on May 7, 1971, in the Parisian suburb of Clichy. He gained a C-stream (scientific) Baccalauréat, and after taking scientific preparatory classes, he entered the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) at the age of 18, where he studied mathematics and economics. At the age of 22, Piketty was awarded his Ph.D. for a thesis on wealth redistribution, which he wrote at the EHESS and the London School of Economics under Roger Guesnerie.

After earning his PhD, Piketty taught from 1993 to 1995 as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995, he joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a researcher, and in 2000 he became director of studies at EHESS.

Piketty won the 2002 prize for the best young economist in France, and according to a list dated November 11, 2003, he is a member of the scientific orientation board of the association "À gauche, en Europe", founded by Michel Rocard and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

In 2006 Piketty became the first head of the Paris School of Economics, which he helped set up. He left after a few months to serve as an economic advisor to Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal during the French presidential campaign. Piketty resumed teaching at the Paris School of Economics in 2007.

He is a columnist for the French newspaper Libération, and occasionally writes op-eds for Le Monde.

In April 2012, Piketty co-authored along with 42 colleagues an open letter in support of then-PS candidate for the French presidency François Hollande. Hollande won the contest against the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May of that year.

In 2013, Piketty won the biennial Yrjö Jahnsson Award, for the economist under age 45 who has "made a contribution in theoretical and applied research that is significant to the study of economics in Europe."

Piketty specializes in economic inequality, taking a historic and statistical approach. His work looks at the rate of capital accumulation in relation to economic growth over a two hundred year spread from the nineteenth century to the present. His novel use of tax records enabled him to gather data on the very top economic elite, who had previously been understudied, and to ascertain their rate of accumulation of wealth and how this compared to the rest of society and economy. His most recent book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, relies on economic data going back 250 years to show that an ever-rising concentration of wealth is not self-correcting. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a global tax on wealth.

Reviews

[Nika · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

To say that I did not enjoy reading this book would be an understatement. It was so boring and dry, even for a book on economics, that I needed a few cups of strong coffee to force myself to get through it.
The title does it justice. It is hardly possible to say how many times the term 'equality' appears on the pages of Piketty's book. He mainly talks about equality and not about 'reducing inequality' and 'narrowing the gap between rich and poor', which would constitute a more appropriate frame for this discussion, in my view.

That being said, the book contains some useful data on social and economic issues (data on differences in income between countries and social groups within countries, property ownership, access to education, progressive taxation, etc.) which provide food for thought.
To make a long story short, the 19th century was a time of enormous inequality when the few owned almost everything and the majority of people owned nothing and were deprived of access to education, healthcare, normal housing, and so forth. Taxation was regressive in the 19th century allowing the rich to get richer and making the poor destitute.

Things started to change in the 20th century. A patrimonial middle class (around 40% of the population in developed countries) has emerged and become the main beneficiary of the 'great redistribution' of the last century. The remaining 60% of the population is divided between the wealthiest 10% and the poor 50%.
Progressive taxes (one of the pillars of a welfare state) and redistribution of wealth are the two major factors in the long march toward greater equality.
However, despite certain achievements, the concentration of property, capital, and power remains high today. After the end of WWII a significant reduction in the gap between rich and poor had been achieved. But since the 1980-s inequality has started to rise again.

In his, mostly justified, critique of the wealthy states and old colonial powers, Piketty at some points goes too far and makes somewhat controversial conclusions. As they say, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
For instance, examining the privileges of the global North, he notes:
"According to the available estimates, the financial assets held in tax havens represent between 10 and 20 percent of the total of the portfolios owned in Europe and in Latin America (which is already considerable), and this share is between 30 and 50 percent in Africa, in South Asia, and in oil-producing countries (Russia, the oil monarchies in the Middle East)."
But what prevents the elites of those countries from investing in their own countries instead of enriching foreign actors? The weakness of the state and the administration, suggests the book. Well, the example of Singapore comes to mind. According to Lee Kuan Yew, excellence is the key word of Singapore's recipe for survival in this harsh world.

Injustices and hypocrisies in our current world abound, but the question of what should be done remains open.
Piketty argues for much of his book that the current system seeks to perpetuate injustices, therefore deep changes are needed. He emphasizes different types of justice that should be promoted. He speaks of social, gender, educational, fiscal, ethno-racial, and ecological justice.
To tackle the problem of increasing inequality across the world the author proposes the concept of democratic, participatory socialism.
"In this book, I have defended the possibility of a democratic and federal socialism, decentralized and participatory, ecological and multicultural, based on the extension of the welfare state and progressive taxation, power-sharing in business enterprises, postcolonial reparations, the battle against discrimination, educational equality, the carbon card, the gradual decommodification of the economy, guaranteed employment and an inheritance for all, the drastic reduction of monetary inequalities, and finally, an electoral and media system that cannot be controlled by money."

The book argues that people all over the world have benefited from mass movements, revolutions, struggles, and crises. Those types of events ended slavery and contributed to the long exit from colonialism (still in progress), changing power relations and drastically reducing inequality. Global wealth tax, if implemented, can help reduce inequalities between the global North and the global South.

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The gist of Thomas Piketty's latest, A Brief History of Equality, is that inequality has been shrinking, not growing, for the past 300 years. Rotten institutions have been and continue to be replaced by better (or at least less rotten) ones. Income per person has increased (using today's purchasing power) from less than 100 euros to nearly a thousand euros per month. By the 1990s, he points out, GDP per hour worked was almost equal in the USA, France, and Germany. And this despite increased leisure time, a reduced work week, and more paid time off - that is wildly different in each country. The reduced hours and increased time off are the focus of endless studies, by labor, economists and the media. But by focusing on them, the media as well as economists missed the bigger point that GDP per hour was nearly equal across very different societal structures. Had they only known, it would have changed their entire range of outlooks. This is the kind of insight Piketty is able generate with easier access to far more data. It sets the tone for the book. Better outcomes can be seen if you know how and where to look.

That thousand euros a month, it should be noted, comes with a cost. To the planet. These so-called externalities are bills that are starting to be called right now, and will become far more damaging to the standard of living as time goes on. He says putting a monetary value on the environment cannot be done, so there is no amount of money that would accurately account for the damage or reduce the average monthly income. He calls it an intellectual and political dead end, but once again, it is where everyone is looking and publishing.

Inequality comes into it as the rich have polluted far more per person, while the poor suffer more per person. He criticizes the waste and pollution of billionaires building their own spaceships, while those in the global South can't have a sanitary toilet. The absurd geo-engineering proposals of billionaires will, once again, make everything far worse (as I have written elsewhere too). But Piketty has solutions for this, later on.

I have to say I am uncomfortable with his whole notion of carbon emissions per person. It simply weighs more heavily on less populated countries. So while North Americans are responsible for far more emissions (60% of the top 1% emitters), China, with four times as many people in a far smaller area, is much farther down the list in pollution per person. And this, even though Chinese cities (and there are a lot of them) top the league tables in unbreathable air every day, in competition with Indian cities - same story. Pollution doesn't care about how many people are involved. The whole planet is suffering from it. Not less in China than in the US. It just shows how dicey making claims with stats really can be. I wish he had been able to discover a more insightful metric in this domain as well.

Piketty says that only now are we finally able to analyze whole societies. There are enough records kept, old records digitized, and enough computerized data organized for retrieval, that economists like him are able to draw new insights from them. He has been at the forefront of this research. This book demonstrates new ways of looking at the world. I estimate that at least a third of the footnotes cite Thomas Piketty as their source.

He says the data portend great things: "The language of socioeconomic indicators is an indispensible complement to the natural language for fighting intellectual nationalism, escaping the manipulations of economic elites, and building a new egalitarian horizon." He is a man of the left, intolerant of intolerance, eager to share equally, and address injustices everywhere.

One equality issue is democracy. Despite the daily headlines, it is far better now than it used to be. The inequalities over the past 300 years are stunning. For example, the USA restricted the vote to only 6% of the population in its first election. Similar hypocrisy can be found round the world. Just describing how various supposedly democratic functions work in various societies, the inequalities jump off the pages of this book. In comparing voting rules in several countries, it transpired that Sweden had the most unequal system of all the unequal systems. Depending on taxes paid, wealth and income, the rich in Sweden could vote up to 100 times, sometimes giving one man the right and the power to elect whomever he alone wanted among the few eligible to vote at all.

Tax deductible political donations by the rich, who can afford the maximum, compare badly with the bottom 50% who struggle with the lowest amounts from any group. They also mean the poor have to make up for taxes not collected because of the massive deductions by the rich. The wealthy continue to divert ever more of what should be tax dollars to favored politicians. In the USA, since corporations are now people, those tax sources also end up in the hands of politicians who permit this situation to be.

He looks at the history of change and concludes that whatever rules are put in place, be they constitutions or laws, they raise barriers and are meant to make it difficult to effect change. The enabling documents actively prevent progress. For example: "None of the regime changes that have occurred in France since 1789 (there are about ten of them) took place in accord with the rules set for them by their predecessors," he says. Change is rough work, of necessity.

Piketty finds there are four large areas that factor in equality: the welfare state, progressive taxation, real equality, and anti-discrimination. The second half of the book is mostly about them.

The welfare state revolves around education, health and pensions. When nations began to divert funds into education, their economies tended to take off. Starting from zero before 1700, from 1700 to 1850 he found 1-2% of tax receipts went into education. That became 6-8% in the next 50 years, 10% after 1900, and 30% now. The welfare state is the clear winner over non-participation by government. It is a critical factor in improving equality and general welfare. It is a similar story in healthcare and in social security. Where they are implemented, societies flourish. Cut them back, and the whole society suffers. This is a talking point more politicos need to employ.

Land has, up until now, always been the basis of wealth, distorting economies and performance for centuries. At some point, someone said: this area is mine alone and no one else can use it - ever. And the rot set in. GDP and society as a whole became captured by property values and rents. Piketty proposes to take ownership back. It would sort of melt away fiscally as time went on, eventually reverting to the state for someone else to use upon dissolution or death.

He would cap entrepreneurs' ability to grow filthy rich while co-workers barely earn a living. He would give workers seats on boards, much as is the case in western Europe already, that would eventually give them control. He would heavily tax inheritances to break up multi-billion dollar estates. He would pool those assets, and give every citizen $25,000 at age 25, to start their own lives on a more solid footing (since the bottom 50% tend to own essentially no property at all). This is similar to giving every child a funded bank account, a popular topic in Washington, except we know where the money will come from under Piketty's idea. He calls all this "the continual circulation of power and property."

It is a little surprising that Piketty does not credit or even mention Henry George, who framed the evils of private property 150 years ago in a global best selling book that shook people out of their miserable state of affairs and gave them hope. Property cannot be walled off from the world. The top ten percent cannot claim ownership of 90% of it. Minerals do not belong to property owners. Getting rich by raping the planet, and crippling it in doing so, cannot simply go on as is. Henry George spelled out solutions. Piketty sees practical ways of implementing them.

There could of course be no analysis of inequality without a discussion of slavery, and Piketty is ready, with new depth. His stats show where the concentration of slaves were, often making up 90% of the population. The economics of slavery were gigantic, making all the difference in the world. Slave revolts could and did upset entire national economies.

The colonies, Belgian, German, Italian, French, Dutch and English - were all stripped of any value. They were required to buy everything they needed from the mother country, at prices that were not negotiable. They were taxed mercilessly. They were not allowed to produce finished products. Education in the colonies was absurdly elitist, with 40 times as much spent on the education of the few wealthy from the mother country as on all the children native to the colony. Colonialism got everything wrong, turned everything upside down, and created intolerable inequality.

Mind you, things are only somewhat better today. Piketty's figures show that in the US, a child's chance of getting into university varies directly with its parents' income. Children of the 90th percentile have a 90% chance of getting in. Those whose parents in the 10th percentile have a 10% chance. The graph shows a straight line at a 45 degree angle. School funding is prejudiced towards richer areas, because a 5% increase means a lot more money for them than in a poorer school with a smaller budget and a building that is both inadequate and failing. And university endowments have grown as big some countries' GDP, which is clearly out of control (Piketty would reabsorb those funds too). But I digress. There's a lot coming at the reader in this book.

He calls for slavery reparations, and shows how they could be valued and how they could work. He thinks we really can't go forward as we would like to without resolving the issues of the past. On the other hand, his reparations plans do not include natives of the western hemisphere, whose few descendants are still discriminated against as much as those of slaves. Their ancestors were eliminated in genocide. Once you get started down the reparations road, where do you stop?

Being French, Piketty has special interest and knowledge to skewer his own country for its slavery, colonialism, world-beating greed and hypocrisy. It was France that in giving up on its slave colony now known as Haiti, extracted a treaty to leave it alone in exchange for "reparations" at a rate three times the GDP of the country. This has of course crippled the economy and made Haiti a neverending disaster point in the world. Despite numerous calls to return the money, France turns a deaf ear, and keeps plugging away at maintaining influence over its crumbling west African colonies, currently horribly unstable and dealing with constant harassment from ISIS and the resident military.

France banned slavery during its revolution of 1789, but Napoleon revived it jut 15 years later, in order to feed his war machine and financial backers. Racial discrimination in France today is rampant. Identical résumés topped with French names have four times the success in obtaining an interview as those with African or Muslim names. An African accented phone call will be told the apartment has already been rented, but a Parisian accented call just a minute later will receive an invitation to view it. Yet in its arrogance, France has declared everyone equal, and since there is no discrimination in the country any more, no one is allowed to collect data on it. By law. This is something one might expect to issue from a Vladimir Putin or a Xi Jinping, not a French president. So there is work to be done on inequality there today too.

Progressive taxation charges more to the rich than the poor. When countries implemented such policies, their economies bloomed. Top tax rates up to 90% had a most interesting effect on equality, according to Piketty's figures. Employers stopped paying outrageous salaries, since most of it went to taxes. Instead, the money got distributed as better pay down the line, improving the equality balance throughout the company. As Piketty puts it: "Beyond a certain level, there is no meaningful relation between managers' salaries and their economic performance and that these remunerations have mainly negative effects on low and middle-level salaries." Progressive taxation corrected it.

Progressive tax systems are directly correlated to better economic performance, not worse, he found. That governments have been lobbied by special interests into abandoning progressive rates is hurting economies all over the world. He says that top rates were cut in half to encourage growth but have had the opposite effect, reducing growth from 2.2% to 1.1% on average, globally. "Historically, it is the battle for equality and education that has made economic development and human progress possible, and not the veneration of property, stability and inequality."

The globalization and free trade movement ties these faults together like a Christmas gift bow. The rich have bullied their way to making their money stateless. That is, non-resident anywhere, and so untaxable anywhere. If anything is not to their profit, the rich can move their money elsewhere, tax-free. The rich nations have used threats and extortion to encourage the poorer nations to agree to this scheme. Former colonies, struggling to overcome their losing positions, seem the greatest to suffer from it: "If we examine their tax receipts in proportion to GDP, we see that the poorest states on the planet became poorer between 1970-1980 and 1990-2000, before gaining slightly between 2000 and 2020, though never reaching their starting point (which was very low to begin with). The fall in tax receipts is explained almost entirely by the loss of customs duties." He says their receipts stagnated at 15% of GDP, while rich countries' receipts climbed to their current 30 to 40%. How is this possible? The poorer countries had no time to craft and implement alternate revenue streams. They were simply and suddenly high and dry. They were told it would be good for them. Trickle down and other lies. For the rich, everywhere became a tax haven. "Making the market sacred and in absolute respect for property rights acquired in the past, whatever their magnitude or their origin, are only incoherent constructs seeking to perpetuate injustices and positions of power that are without foundation and that in the final analysis merely pave the way for new crises." In Fred Allen's lovely turn of phrase - a treadmill to oblivion.

Piketty sees all his progressive changes as attractive and doable. He sees global acceptance towards a goal of global equality, to the point of global management of redistributions of wealth and property.

The problem of course, is getting every nation to see the benefits. Just like in elections, when people vote against their own best interests, so internationally, getting countries to agree unanimously is all but impossible. Even something as seemingly trivial as droppng Standard Time for year-round Dayight Savings Time is opposed by some countries in the EU, preventing it from happening at all.

On top of that, not all countries are run rationally. The increasing number of military juntas and civilian dictatorships are non-cooperative at best. From Myanmar to Mali, from North Korea to Nicaragua, seeing things through a cost-benefit and equality lens is not on the table.

Progressives have made inroads, with various programs and pilots popping up in countries around the world. Universal basic income gets more exposure today than it ever has, for example. This book collects a large number of intriguing policies that could change the nature of society from winner take all to equal and supportive.

But Piketty is not naive: "I am not suggesting that such a system could easily be set up next month, but simply insisting on the fact that no less gigantic transformations of the legal, fiscal and social system continually occurred between 1780 and 2020, and that this process is not going to stop suddenly now." "The concrete forms of economic power and democracy still require reinvention, and always will." So the future is open to change as equality continues its slow but hopefully relentless spread.

David Wineberg

[P.E. · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Praise of Reciprocity

This work by left-wing economist Thomas Piketty is more or less a downsizing of Capital and Ideology with a few extra developments on the events occurring from early 2020 to August 2021. It deals with the many unjust forms of inequality we know today, documents how they persist and try to elaborate ideas and tools to change the situation for the better. With the best intentions, it falls short of doing so. Or is it me becoming each time more reserved about "decentralized socialism", jaded about "global inheritance reforms" and downright distrustful when it comes to talks of "participative democracy", and even more about "representative democracy"? One might think so.

So let us list some of the arguments made by the author, without more fluff.


1. Modern capitalism is rooted in colonization. Colonization still weighs on our policies. Colonization being the historical imbrication of industrial capitalism and world labour division systems, heedless exploitation of natural resources, military and colonial domination of the West.

(cf La modernité désenchantée, or, for a less contrasted point of view: The Tears of the White Man: Compassion As Contempt)

More, Piketty considers the current world economy as a form of neocolonialism (or neofeodalism).

'Le système économique actuel, fondé sur la circulation incontrôlée des capitaux, des biens et des services, sans objectif social ni environnemental, s'apparente dans une large mesure à un néocolonialisme au bénéfice des plus riches.'

2. Property rights, as every human convention, are not self-sufficient, they get relevance only in view of their social utility.

See Declaration of the Rights of Man, 1789:
'Art.1 Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.'

but also, in the same place:

'Art.17 Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.'

See Code Civil, Art.544:
'Property is the right to use and control things in the most absolute manner provided this use and control are not prohibited by the law.'

'à partir de 1795 avec le retour du principe censitaire, c'est une conception beaucoup plus conservatrice qui s'imposera, à savoir que les corvées ne sont finalement que des loyers qui doivent simplement être rebaptisés comme tel à l'avenir, et que tout autre décision risquerait par capillarité de mettre à mal tout le système de propriété.'

3. Asserts that the crises in 1929 and 2008 are caused by laissez-faire capitalism and neoliberalism, and that more are to come, the same effects following the same causes, with bank refunding and the philosophy of too-big-to-fail doing nothing to help.


4. Considers unacceptable and a great injustice to let the underprivileged pay for the wealthiest. Examples: In the 19th century, compensations for the émigrés aristocrats in France (le milliard des émigrés), compensations for former slave owners in France and the UK, compensations for Russian lords paid by their former serfs. Today: deregulated finance with no tax, while VAT and other proportional taxes weigh on the poor.

(also see: Le Crépuscule de la France d'en haut on the matter of who benefit, and who suffer the most from globalization as it is carried out in France).

'Les États ont mis en place un système légal où les acteurs économiques ont acquis un droit quasi sacré de s'enrichir en utilisant les infrastructures publiques et les institutions sociales d'un pays (système éducatif, sanitaire, etc.) puis de déplacer d'un trait de plume ou d'un clic de souris leurs actifs dans une autre juridiction [...].
Il s'agit de facto d'une nouvelle forme de pouvoir censitaire, au sens où les États signataires de tels traités, à partir du moment où ils refusent de revenir sur la parole des gouvernements précédents, peuvent se retrouver à expliquer en toute bonne foi à leur population qu'il est strictement impossible de mettre à contribution les premiers bénéficiaires de l'intégration internationale [...].'

'La dette haïtienne [...] fut pour l'essentiel repayée (capital et intérêts), avec un versement moyen d'environ 5 % du revenu national haïtien par an entre 1840 et 1915 [...]. Avec l'appui du gouvernement français, [les banques décidèrent] de céder le reste de leur créances aux États-Unis, qui occupent Haïti de 1915 à 1934 pour y rétablir l'ordre et sauvegarder leurs propres intérêts financiers.'

'Outre la réparation financière à Haïti, la question principale [reste] aujourd'hui celle de la réforme agraire à la Réunion, à la Martinique, en Guadeloupe et en Guyane, afin de permettre enfin aux personnes issues de l'esclavage d'avoir accès à des parcelles, dans un contexte où les propriétés terriennes et financières demeurent largement l'apanage de la population blanche, parfois issue [de familles de planteurs]'

5. Opacity of the modes of funding political campaigns, private schools, the media... Further entrenching the establishment.
See: Les héritiers. Les étudiants et la culture and La Langue des medias : Destruction du langage et fabrication du consentement


6. Enterprises where employees are part of the decision-making are more efficient (cf German cogestion)


7. Schools, research, energy, transportation,... all win by being operated by non-profit organizations (again, data is wanting to my taste...)


8. Protectionism is a vital tool at the hands of countries to shield their public property, develop their home industries, create assets, used in the past by successful capitalist countries. It has been used in the past by virtually every successful country in the globalized market now.

'Le Japon depuis la fin du XIXe siècle, la Corée ou Taïwan depuis le milieu du XXe siècle, ou encore la Chine depuis la fin du XXe siècle et au début du XXIe ont tous pratiqué d'une façon ou d'une autre un protectionnisme ciblé leur permettant de développer une spécialisation et un savoir-faire dans des secteurs jugés prioritaires' //limite la capacité d'investisseurs étrangers à prendre le contrôle des unités de p°'

'Ce n'est qu'après avoir établi leur suprématie sur certains produits que les pays devenus dominants se mettent à verser dans le discours libre-échangiste, ce qui en pratique aboutit souvent à placer d'autres pays moins avancés dans leur dépendance durable.'

More about Western protectionism against China and India in the 18th century in the bibliography, bottom of the review.

'Chaque communauté politique doit pouvoir fixer les conditions à la poursuite des échanges avec le reste du monde, sans attendre l'accord unanime de ses partenaires. [...] chaque État doit, s'il le juge utile, se délier des engagements pris par ses prédécesseurs, surtout si ceux-ci menacent l'harmonie sociale et la survie de la planète. Il est cependant essentiel que ce souverainisme se définisse selon des objectifs de type universaliste et internationaliste, c'est-à-dire en explicitant les critères de justice sociale, fiscale et environnementale susceptibles de s'appliquer à tous les pays de la même façon.'

Undermines the basis of libertarian thought, insofar as it questions the validity of the status quo inherited from past feudalism, slave-trading, censitary regimes, and other privileges passed down from history. However, when are the ideal conditions realized for the rule of the market to be considered fair?

'Ce qui pose le plus problème avec la notion actuelle d'aide internationale c'est qu'elle présuppose l'existence d'un équilibre de marché fondamentalement juste, où chaque pays serait le propriétaire légitime des richesses qu'il aurait produites ou accumulées dans le passé, dans un splendide isolement.
[...] Les compromis et les dispositifs qui seront trouvés, comme les réparations ou les impôts mondiaux évoqués ici, seront toujours imparfaits et provisoires. Mais les solutions alternatives consistant à sacraliser le marché et le respect absolu des droits de propriété acquis dans le passé, quelles que soient leur ampleur ou leur origine, ne sont que des constructions incohérentes visant à perpétuer des injustices et des positions de pouvoir sans fondement, et qui en dernier lieu ne font que préparer de nouvelles crises.'

9. Every regime tries to make it as hard as possible to reform the principles it holds dear, and criminalizes every attempt to question them... Hence, if we are to abide by such principles, it isn't possible under such condition to break from status quo: every property transfer must be refunded, every treatise signed in the past must be carried through and followed by the following regimes...


10.For the same level of economical and technological development, there are always many ways to lay out a property policy, border policy, a social and political policy, a fiscal and educational policy.


11. Supranational institutions are more and more needed to provide solutions to issues of a supranational character.

See. La Rebelion de las Masas, for a specific outview about the natural process of expansion of the political entities from regions to nation-states and from nation-states to federations of states.


12. Redistribution, and dwindling of inequality are introduced as the best shot we have to answer to the environment crisis.

'Sans une action résolue visant à comprimer drastiquement les inégalités socio-économiques, il n'existe pas de solution à la crise environnementale et climatique.'

13. Argument of the necessary collective management of pollution and "external costs".

'Pour [Ken] Pomeranz, le développement du capitalisme industriel occidental est intimement lié aux systèmes de division internationale du travail, d'exploitation effrénée des ressources naturelles et de domination militaire et coloniale mis en place entre les puissances européennes et le reste de la planète.'

14. In the aftermath of a war or an ecological catastrophe, what is the solution if no transfer of wealth is to be performed?


Personal interrogations:

# What about the incentive, the drive behind economical activities?

# Nowhere is studied the process of creative destruction at work in capitalism. (compare with: "L'Etat social et l'impôt progressif, poussés jusqu'au bout de leur logique, permettent de poser les bases d'une nouvelle forme de socialisme démocratique, autogestionnaire et décentralisé, fondé sur la circulation permanente du pouvoir et de la propriété." Opposite ways, same conclusions? However, according to Piketty, capitalism doesn't deliver, social mobility is less and less important, wealth concentration is more and more important. However he doesn't say whether the wealth belongs to the same lineages/businesses, does not talk about entrepreneurs specifically. Possibly because according to him, even the most daring and successful entrepreneur owes most of his success to external factors, such as the infrastructure of his country, the benefits of past discoveries and resources shared by the state in general).

# What about purposeful (useful to the general public) discriminations?

# Isn't capitalism at least nominally making manufactured products and services available and affordable to more and more people?

# Piketty correlates directly income per capita and progressive tax. That is, according to his observations on the United States, the fall of the national income per capita is caused by the fall of progressive taxation. No other element factored in.

# In favour of "decentralized" and "self-determined" socialism: what are the key differences with capitalism? Is it mostly about decomodifying the economy? Is it about creating specific taxes and rules designed to profoundly change the economical behaviour of agents?... Is it that efficient to allow the "constant circulation of power and property"?


Further reading:

Context:
Nouvelle histoire de la Révolution française
La modernité désenchantée
La création des identités nationales. Europe, XVIIIe-XXe siècle
Le vol de l'Histoire. Comment l'Europe a imposé le récit de son passé au reste du monde

Colonial empires:
Musée de la Compagnie des Indes, Musée d'art et d'histoire de la ville de Lorient
L'histoire De La Réunion, Volume 1: Des Origines à 1848
Le goût de l'Inde
Le Japon
Histoire de la décolonisation au XXème siècle
Le Sanglot de l'homme blanc: Tiers-monde, culpabilité, haine de soi
Essais

Labour:
Le travail - Une sociologie contemporaine
A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember
À la ligne

Social reproduction:
Les héritiers. Les étudiants et la culture

Metamorphoses:
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World
303: Mémoires industrielles
Sur les chemins noirs
Le tour de la France par deux enfants d'aujourd'hui
Le Temps des immigrés : essai sur le destin de la population française
Le Crépuscule de la France d'en haut

Life, liberty and property:
Natural Right and History
The End of History and the Last Man


Other points of view:
La Rebelion de las Masas
Interventionism: An Economic Analysis
30-Second Economics: The 50 Most Thought-Provoking Economic Theories, Each Explained In Half A Minute

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brief History of Equality, by Thomas Piketty, is a fantastic sum of the authors previous works, notably Capital in the Twenty-First Century and Capital and Ideology - both of which I would highly recommend. This book is a succinct summation of both of those previous works. I value Piketty's work for its historical overviews of the concept of nation state, the impacts of global capital, the continued forces of colonialism, and inequality. This work is an excellent introduction to these concepts, discussing colonial era debt and its impact on the global south, the emergence of capital accumulation by the top decile of society, and the impacts of global capital on the well being and social mobility of the lower classes. Piketty excels at examining this and more, while building language and connecting historical concepts to create a holistic and analytical message. Piketty advocates for "pluralistic socialism" as opposed to the autocratic socialism emerging in China. He believes Western nations need to maintain living standards, and curb the influence of the elite to survive. Ideas like progressive taxation, inheritance redistribution, global capital controls, reimbursement of capital to victims of colonialism, and so forth. All of these ideas are highly progressive, and would not be supported by the average populations of any Western country, and would also be, with great hostility, targeted for failure by elites within each country, afraid of losing their status and resources.

Piketty's work continues to be highly influential in changing perspectives on socialism and its benefits and limitations, as well as the autarkic and oligarchic tendencies of liberal democracy, which often favour the elite with financial and pilocg privileges, design tax systems to their benefit, and burden the larger population with the externalities and failures of the elite. Clearly, change is necessary. Liberal democracies continue to promote policies of oppression, over utilize market forces to address financial stability, and actively suppress political innovation. As new centre's of power rise across the globe (think China) with very unique and authoritarian political aspirations, liberal democracies must change to address the criticism presented by these actors, which, although politically motivated, also hold candles of truth.

[William2]

I can say this so far, the writing is of great clarity. Superior math skills not needed. If you can read, say, Paul Krugman, or other popular economists of the day, you can read this.

Beautiful book production, sewn signatures and such.

[Seyed Hashemi · Rating 3 out of 5]

تحمل نظر مخالف؛
ضرورتی ناممکن؟

0-خوندن این کتاب 4ماه طول کشید. نوشتم که در یاد گودریدز بمونه. ما که یادمون می‌ره به طرفه‌العینی!

1- توماس پیکتی به عنوان یک آماردان/اقتصاددان حاذق، تاثیر بسیار مهمی در ادبیات فقر و نابرابری داشته است. برای مثال پایگاه داده نابرابری جهانی wid.world و گرازش سالانه آن، از مهم‌ترین پایگاه داده‌های جهان و گزارش‌های موجود است.
این دسترسی و تبحر پیکتی در جمع‌آوری داده‌ها، حتی در این کتاب هم واضح است.
پیکتی در دو کتاب معروف پیشین خود، "سرمایه در قرن 21" و "سرمایه و ایدئولوژی" خود بسیار مفصل به شرح و بسط نظرات خود پرداخته بود. اما دو کتاب پیشین مشکلی مهم داشت، علی رغم فروش میلیون نسخه‌ای، به اندازه کافی خوانده نشدند. برای مثال نهایتا حدود 5درصد از کسانی که این کتاب را در آمازون خریده بودند کتاب را تا ته خوانده اند.
دو کتاب پیشین به علت حجیم و تخصصی بودن، علی‌رغم فروش و هایپ خبری، کم خوانده شدند و پیکتی با این کتاب سعی کرده است چندسال پژوهش خود را در 300 صفحه به اختصار توضیح دهد. اینجا یکی از بزگترین مشکلات کتاب از دیدِ من ظاهر می‌شود: چرا پیکتی تک نفره این کتاب را نوشته است؟

به علت آنکه پیکتی به ادبیات دیگر رشته‌های علوم اجتماعی، مانند علم سیاست یا جامعه‌شناسی و...، آشنا نیست، کاری کرده است که بسیاری از تصورات و برداشت‌هایش از تغییرات و روندهای اجتماعی-سیاسی خام باشد. درحدی که برای مخاطب نامتخصصی مثل من هم گاف‌های موجود کتاب واضح بود و چندین جا و به تناوب می‌توانستم تشخیص بدهم در این موضوع خاص و برداشت کتاب، لااقل چندین پژوهش و نظریه نافیِ نظر نویسنده موجود است. جا داشت این کتاب با همکاری متخصصین رشته‌های دیگه نوشته می‌شد به نظرم. ما هم که مخاطب کتاب ایم باید حواسمون به این حفره خالی مهم باشد.
البته برای برخی، همین کتاب‌ هم که باز همگام با آمار و دیتا و اینا است سخت است خوندش.
2- پیکتی برایم قابل احترام است برخلاف برخی دیگر از هم‌صنف‌های چپش. کسانی مانند نائومی کلاین که با باد کردن هیولایی بنامِ "نئولیبرالیسم" و عدم آشنایی حداقلی با ادبیات علم اقتصاد، هر ایده در راستای حمایت از محیط زیست را که در اسمش "بازار" موجود است را تخطئه می‌کند، اپسیلونی برایم محلی از اعراب ندارند.
با اینکه در زب��ن کاملا چپِ پیکتی، که در بسیاری از مواقع موقع نقد و پیشنهاد دادن پا به ورطه‌ی ادعاهای قالبیِ چپ‌گرایانه می‌گذارد، نئولیبرالیسم و تجارت آزاد جهانی و... کلیتی منفی دارند، اما چون این بشر حداقل آشنایی‌ای با ادبیات علم اقتصاد دارد، چیزِ بنام "بازار کربن" را معادل بازاری کردن محیط زیست نمی‌داند و به عنوان یک راه‌حل به رسمیت می‌شناسد. برخلاف کلاین و هم‌کف‌هایش که کلا بعید است با چیزی به نام طراحی بازار اپسیلونی آشنا باشند.

3- نقطه ضعف مهم کتاب این است که علاوه بر فکت‌ها و آمارهای جذاب و خوبی که دارد(البته در یکی دو مورد نمودارهای عجیب و مقایسه‌های واقعا احمقانه‌ای داشت) وقتی پای به کارزار تحلیل و نقد می‌رسه، یابوی چموشِ چپ‌گرایی نویسنده جفتک می‌اندازد و برگه‌های کتاب را از گل‌ولای حرف و ادعای قالبی پر می‌کند.
نویسنده در بخش‌های ابتدایی و حتی در ادامه کتاب، به صورت مشخص صرفا به متفکرهای چپ پرداخته و برای من که در ادبیات علم اقتصاد حداقل به اندازه خودم اندکی نظریه‌ها و...آشنا هستم، کاملا متوجه شدم این ادعاها هزار نکته و معارض داره، و این عبارت جادوییِ "پژوهش‌ها" نشان می‌دهند از اونجاهایی است که باید ترسید؛ پژوهش‌های ضد نظر تو که زیاد هم هستن رو چی‌کار کنیم؟

4- با اینکه به هزار و یک‌جای کتاب نقد دارم، اما واقعا در هزار و یک‌جای آن حرف حساب و مسئله مهم دیدم.
واقعا خوشحالم از وقتی که برای خوندن این کتاب گذاشتم و فشارهایی که موقع خوندنش تحمل کردم.

برخی بخش‌هایی که فصل به فصل موقع خوندن کتاب نوشتم:
{تاصفحه40 }
نسبت به تز اصلیِ کتاب که تا اینجا پیکتی تلاش کرده است مقدماتی از آن را بیان کند بسیار مشکوک ام. یعنی تغییرات اجتماعی را اولا، در تغییرات اجتماعی عمده منحصر کرده است و ناظر به همین انحصار، ایراد دوم ظاهر می‌شود که تنها جنبش‌های بزرگ، انقلاب‌ها و جنگ‌ها را علت تغییرات مهم اجتماعی می‌داند. البته نه تغییر اجتماعی به معنای مطلق کلمه، بلکه به معنای تغییر ناظر به برابری. ارجاعات بخش مقدمه که گویی پیشینه پژوهش بود، با اینکه برای من بسیار کاربردی و پندآموز بود، بسیار با سوگیری بود و تماما چولگی به سمت طیفِ چپ مطالعات اجتماعی داشت و به متفکرینِ چپ بهای بسیار داد.
{ تا صفحه83}
فصل سوم که کتاب سعی می‌کرد تاریخ برده‌داری، استعمار و رشد و توسعه‌ی غرب را نشان بدهد کاملا روایت تیپیکِ و قالبیِ چپ‌ها بود. البته واقعا هنرمندانه و کپسولی ارائه شده بود. مخلوطی از جزئیات و تئوری‌ها. ایده‌های اساسیِ هر اندیشمند را بعضا در یک پاراگراف خلاصه می‌کرد. واقعا حرفه‌ای بود این کار.
ولی کتابْ واقعا با سوگیری، منابع را انتخاب کرده است.
یه ذره این فصل برایم عذاب‌آور بود. ولی استفاده کردم واقعا، ذهنم مرتب شد.
برایم جالب است وقتی مسیرِ تحصیلیِ پیکتی را می‌خوانی که در کنار اقتصاد جدی ریاضی را دنبال کرده است و حال دارد سراغِ تئوری‌های ادوارد سعید و مردم‌شناسان و... می‌رود. جالب بود برام.
{تاص143 }
از خوبی‌های این متن بگم. یکی امتزاج خوبِ آن با واقعیت‌های تاریخی است. حجمِ وسیعی از کتاب، روایتِ نویسنده است از رخدادهای موثر در بالاوپایین‌های برابری در تاریخ. البته بعضا مشخص است که نویسنده تاریخ را به نفع خود مصادره کرده است. نمونه‌اش سرِ رخداد تاریخی مهمِ حصارکشی در انگلیس.

ترجمهٔ نشر نی هم واقعا خوب و تمیز است، البته مشخص است مترجم خیلی با اقتصاد و متونِ ترجمه شده در این علم دم‌خور نبوده است چون برخی عباراتی که ترجمه کرده است، معادل مصطلح آن عبارت نیست.
{ تاص177}
بازتوزیع بزرگ از 1914 تا 1980
این فصل در مورد یکی از مهم‌ترین برهه‌های تاریخ معاصر است. حوالی جنگ جهانی و جهان پس از آن.

فصلِ بعد هم "ماقبل نقد" بود از بس که بد بود.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Akkor hát foglaljuk össze! A jóléti állam és a progresszív adó, miután eljutottak saját logikájuk útjának végére, lehetővé teszik, hogy lerakjuk a demokratikus, önigazgató és decentralizált szocializmus új formájának alapjait, amely a hatalom és a tulajdon állandó körforgására épül."

Ennyike. Problem solved. Ilyen egyszerű.

Tényleg ilyen egyszerű? Lópikulát az.

Kezdjük ott, hogy maga az egyenlőtlenség is végtelenül összetett dolog. Nem pusztán arról szól, hogy mondjuk Franciaországban a lakosság leggazdagabb 1%-a birtokolja az összvagyon 25%-át, a legszegényebb 50% pedig az összvagyon 5%-t. Hanem létezik ettől függetlenül egy globális egyenlőtlenség is, amit Wallerstein centrum-periféria viszonyként definiált, és lényegében azt jelenti, hogy a gazdag országok a gyarmati múlt utórezgéseként mindent megtesznek, hogy a szegény országok csak addig fejlődjenek, amíg nem veszélyeztetik a Nyugat versenyelőnyét. És azt se felejtsük, hogy az egyenlőtlenség nem csak anyagi lehet, hanem megnyilvánulhat a hatalomhoz való hozzáférésben, vagy épp a környezeti hatásoknak való kitettségben - ez utóbbira szép példa, hogy amíg a Nyugat megengedheti magának a zöld pártok luxusát, addig a szegény országokat sújtja a klímaváltozással járó természeti csapások zöme, elsősorban a szárazság. Szóval bonyolult kérdéscsoport ez, nem nagyon lehet röpke 300 oldalban az egész folyamat történetét kielégítően felvázolni. Mondjuk Piketty igazából meg se próbálja - hiába az a kötet címe, hogy "Az egyenlőség rövid története", valójában éppen csak regisztrálja az egyenlőséggel kapcsolatos változásokat, a könyv bő harmadát ez ezekhez kapcsolódó javaslatok teszik ki. Ami mondjuk önmagában nem baj.

Érződik amúgy a szövegben valami kóbor optimizmus, ami azon alapul, hogy történelmi léptékkel mérve azért látszik a fejlődés: amíg 1914-ben az 1% leggazdagabb francia a vagyon 55%-át tudta magának, addig száz év múlva már "csak" 25%-ot. Ami azonban még mindig brutális különbség. Gondoljunk csak bele! Már az is megduplázná a legszegényebb 50% összvagyonát, ha ez az 1% a vagyona ötödéről lemondana. Csak hát nem mond le. Sőt még növelné is a különbséget, amiben nagy segítségére van Thatcher és Reagan neokonzervatív öröksége, akik a hidegháború sikerén felbuzdulva kisöpörték a liberalizmusból a baloldali elemeket, ami katasztrofális hatással volt az alsóbb néprétegek életszínvonalára*. Vajon hogy lehetne visszatérni a progresszív útra? Hogy lehetne ismét csökkenteni az egyenlőtlenségeket? Lenin persze tudná a választ, gyorsan és határozottan megoldaná, csak úgy lángolnának a bankok és a golfpályák.

Ám Piketty hál' Istennek nem Lenin, az ő javaslatai azért valamivel lágyabbak. Egyfajta "decentralizált szocializmussal" házal, ami betölti az űrt, amit a baloldali pártok itthon is tapasztalt elsorvadása okozott. Sorban végigmegy az összes egyenlőtlenség-típuson, és megmondja, mivel lehetne megoldani:
a.) Brutális vagyoni különbségek? Semmi gond, 80-90% elkobzásszerű adó a milliárdosokra, oszt jól van**. Ebből aztán telne garantált alapjövedelemre.
b.) Nagy az országok közti különbség? Megoldjuk: büntetőadó a multikra, abból finanszírozzuk a harmadik világot sújtó környezeti károk enyhítését.
c.) Kimentik a gazdagok a vagyont az adóparadicsomokba? Próbálják csak meg - majd felelevenítjük Biden javaslatát, aki nemes egyszerűséggel kiszámlázta volna az adóparadicsom-államoknak az USA adóbevételében emiatt keletkező hiányt***.
d.) Ésatöbbi, ésatöbbi.

Az összes javaslatban az a közös, hogy politikai hatalom kell hozzá. Leninnek ugye arra volt az élcsapat, hogy ezt a hatalmat kisebbségben is megszerezze és megőrizze - Piketty vágyai viszont csak akkor válnak valóra, ha terveihez megnyeri a választók többségét. Amivel ugye számos probléma van. Elsősorban az, hogy a sokat emlegetett legszegényebb 50% nem olyan absztrakt dologra vágyik, mint az egyenlőség, hanem 1.) pénzre 2.) illetőleg arra, hogy azt a picike pénzt, ami van neki, ne vegye el senki. A jobboldali populizmusok nagy felfedezése, hogy a 2.) ponttól való félelem alkalmasint erősebb, mint az 1.) pont utáni vágy - ha nem így lenne, a csóró texasiak nem delegálnák a legzsírosabb milliárdosokat a Fehér Házba, hanem simán kifosztanák őket. Mindez pedig azért lehet így, mert a kommunista blokk bukása magával rántotta a szocialista egyenlőségeszményeket is, és nem maradt más idea a frusztrált, megszomorodott szegényeknek, mint a nacionalizmus, ami külső ellenségeket kínál fel gyógyírként a belső problémákra. Láttunk már ilyet az 1930-as években. Egyetértek Pikettyvel, amikor azt mondja, hogy sürgősen meg kell teremteni azt a humánus, de félreérthetetlenül baloldali eszmei talapzatot, ami ezek az emberek alternatívaként tudnak elfogadni, mert csak ez vezet ki minket a parttalan "ki mennyit lop, ha hatalomba kerül" vitákból. És bár ez a könyv messze nem hibátlan, de értékelem az utat, amit ki kíván jelölni.

* Ha volt a Szovjetuniónak haszna, akkor az bizony az volt, hogy puszta létével rákényszerítette a Nyugatot, hogy a jóléti államot minden erejével fenntartsa. Mert ugye ha nem csorgatják vissza a kapitalista profit egy részét a szélesebb néptömegeknek, ezzel elősegítve a társadalmi stabilitást, akkor a néptömegek esetleg a kommunizmus ötödik hadoszlopává válnak. A keleti blokk összeomlása pedig azt jelentette, hogy ez a kényszer nagyon hamar meg is szűnt.
** Pont ma olvastam, hogy Elon Musk vagyona átlépte a 400 milliárd dolláros határt. No most ha őt megküldenénk egy 90%-os egyszeri vagyonadóval, akkor még mindig maradna nála 40 milliárd. Ha ezt igazságosan elosztaná mind a 12 gyereke között, akkor a lurkók fejenként 3,3 milliárdot kapnának. Azt gondolom, ennyi nagyjából elég ahhoz, hogy valaki ne nyomorogjon.
*** Ez mondjuk nagyon érdekes kérdés, mert ezzel a húzással Biden gyakorlatilag egy tucat nemzetközi egyezményt és szabályt szegett volna meg - nem nagyon fér össze ennek a lépésnek a propagálása a demokratikus jogrenddel, aminek amúgy Piketty nagy híve. Ezt az ellentmondást a szerző is érzékeli, de leszögezi, hogy minden eset egyéni elbírálást igényel. És hát elképzelhető olyan szituáció, ahol a törvények egyszerűen rosszak, hisz akik hozták őket, pont a status quo megőrzésében voltak érdekeltek. Ilyen esetben pedig nem tehetünk mást, mint felfüggesztjük őket. A probléma csak az, hogy egy USA bátran felfüggeszthet egy egyezményt Panamával szemben, senki nem tudja számon kérni rajta. Panama ugyanezt aligha tehetné meg. Mindez pedig - akárhogy is - elég aszimmetrikus helyzet.

[Brice Karickhoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this book wanting to like it for some reason - I guess I liked the idea of it. And it actually started strong. But then, in my opinion, it got real bad.

It should not be titled “A brief history of equality”, but “A brief history of oppression” or something, because it was ultimately more about class struggle than anything, which! Is! fine!; class struggle is important and I’ve actually had a bit of a pro-labor streak in my thinking lately. Anyway, said history picked up around 1500, which I found odd given the fact that many societies were actually far more oppressive and less equal before this point. Eventually, I understood why the author would start at this point when he essentially stated that inequality and oppression are a byproduct of capitalism. I have two major problems with the arguments that ensued:

1. Inequality is actually one of the most natural things there is (as opposed to being a byproduct of capitalism). He states that it is “first of all a social, historical, and political construction.” I am not nearly the academic that the author is, but to me this seems to miss the mark. When I look at the spectrum of all life on earth over the course of the last 5 million years, it seems that equality is actually the recent social invention, inequality is not a “construction” at all, but the natural default. This may seem like I’m nit-picking, but the argument above is presented as an axiom in the prologue of the book, so the degree to which I disagree is a pretty big deal.

2. In all his analyses, the author focuses on gaps in wealth, or property ownership. I agree that these are important, and increasing, and should be mitigated to a degree. However, this unidimensional measure of inequality is really convenient if your goal is to attack capitalism. Of course capitalism led to disparities in wealth, because it basically gave birth to the idea that accumulation of wealth (as capital) was even really a thing (beyond some hereditary feudal system). So yes, society breaks down to those who are, in the truest sense, “capital”ists, and those who aren’t, and then if you measure equality based on how much capital individuals have accrued, disparities are wide. The author does not bother to mention the unprecedented-in-human-history explosion in living standards of the “bottom 50%” during this 500 year capitalist experiment. We might’ve lost equality (as measured by wealth accrued), but with it we lost about 95% of deaths by starvation, violence, and infectious disease, not to mention the fact that social mobility, while still limited, at least exists for basically the first time in history.

So all of the above thoughts developed in the first 30% of the book or so. I wanted to keep getting riled up, but slowly I began to realize what was really causing my frustration: the author just says things as if they are obvious and true, when they are actually quite bold and contentions. Three examples:

-“in the future, this kind of indicator could play a growing role in assessing the extent to which countries respect their commitments and in defining compensation mechanisms, as well as in developing systems of individual carbon cards, which will certainly be part of the indispensable institutional tools for meeting the climatic challenge”

-“It is time to understand that the logic of remedial justice and universalist justice are complementary and have to move forward in concert, one supporting the other.”

-“each country, each citizen on the planet, should have some part of the tax revenue derived from multinational companies and the worlds billionaires”

Do I disagree full-stop with the notion that carbon cards could be important, or remedial and universalist justice are complementary, or everyone should receive tax revenue from multinational operations? Not necessarily. But to just state it like that is another matter.

So, after reading the quotes above and a few others, I took a deep breath upon realizing what kind of book this was going to be, and just sat back and plowed through a classic 3-star “this is how we fix the world” sermon.

[Jorge Zuluaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Breve historia de la igualdad” es un libro para abrir los ojos. Lamentablemente, no todo lo que uno alcanza a ver con la ilustración de Piketty es muy esperanzador. Sin embargo, hay que conocer lo mejor posible la historia de las luchas por la igualdad para tener argumentos a la hora de votar, tomar decisiones económicas o discutir con amigos y familiares.

Piketty es en general algo aburrido (muy académico y lleno de datos) pero sus análisis históricos, sus descubrimientos y las propuestas económicas que lanza en sus trabajos son tan importantes y relevantes para el futuro de todos, que sin duda alguna merece el “sacrificio”.

[Suman Srivastava · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guess what! Piketty wrote a short book. 😁. This is a pretty powerful book which has the intellectual rigour of his previous books, but is still more focused on the main arguments than the data.

Many authors are thinking of reforming capitalism. Piketty wants to reform socialism. He thinks the mistake that the Soviet Union made was to ban private ownership of the means of production. However to gain equality, the focus should be on redistribution. Hence his idea of democratic socialism.

Lots of controversial ideas here. But a fascinating book that’s worth reading.

[Thomas Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty, 2021 in French, 2022 in English, 274 pages, Dewey 305.09, ISBN 9780674273559. Translated by Steven Randall.


Abrogate the untaxed-free-movement-of-capital treaties. Tax the rich.

Big changes in law and society have been occurring regularly since 1780: it's worth saying what changes must happen, and how. p. 119. It is both desirable and possible to tax the rich and expand the welfare state. p. 45.


Chapter 7: Democracy, Socialism, and Progressive Taxation

Bankers, financiers, investors, and money managers planned and lobbied from the 1940s to 1980s, and succeeded in pushing through international treaties that give them a nearly-sacred right to enrich themselves at any country's expense, then whisk the capital away, tax-free, duty-free, regulation-free. pp. 170-174. This state of affairs must be undone to keep the world from being a colony owned and exploited by the super-rich.


Chapter 1: The Movement toward Equality

Progress exists. In 1820, world average life expectancy at birth was 26 years; in 2020 it's 72. Literacy among people age 15 or older rose from 12% to 85%. pp. 16-17.

A better indicator than GDP is "national income," which equals "gross domestic product" minus depreciation (such as depletion of natural resources), plus or minus net income or loss to the rest of the world. Selling off extracted minerals adds zero to national income. p. 23.

Global GDP is about 100 trillion euros. p. 24. (About $11,000 per person, 2020.) https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=...


Chapter 2: The Slow Deconcentration of Power and Property

The top 0.001% of French fortunes (500, out of 50 million adults) totaled 6% of all that could be owned in 2020, up from 2% in 2010 (6,000 times average wealth, up from 2,000 times ten years ago). p. 44.

From 1910 to 2020, the wealthiest 1% of the French lost a 31% share of total wealth: 55% down to 24%. The 50th-to-90th percentiles gained a 25% share: 13% in 1910; 38% in 2020. All of this transfer was pre-1985: the middle class has been slowly losing, the dominant class quickly gaining share since then. pp. 31, 42, 44.

Chapter 3: The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism

Forests covered 30-40% of Europe (UK to Denmark to Prussia, Spain to France to Italy) in 1500. By 1800, it was down to about 10% (16% France, 4% Denmark). p. 50.

China's and India's share in worldwide manufacturing, 53% in 1800, fell to 5% in 1900 due to protectionism by Europe. pp. 58-59.

The British East India Company and the Dutch East Indes Company were militarized robbers. p. 60.


Chapter 4: The Question of Reparations

Slaves (90% of Haitians) received 20% of the product of their labor (in food and clothing); the nonenslaved 10% appropriated 80%, in 1789. pp. 82-83.

Current wealth distribution among and within countries bears the deep mark of the slaveholding, colonial past. p. 93.

We must ensure egalitarian access to education, employment, and property. p. 93. Tax multinationals and billionaires: they got rich on the backs of the poor, who deserve and need a share. p. 94.


Chapter 5: Revolution, Status, and Class

Hundreds of French peasant and laborer rebellions, 1730-1789, led to the cancellation of nobles' privileges--but to strengthening the rights of property owners. pp. 5, 95-99.

In Sweden in 1871, there were dozens of districts where one wealthy man cast the majority of votes. Then in the 1920s, Social Democrats took control, adopted one-person-one-vote, progressive taxation, and greatly increased social services.

Everything is changeable. p. 107.


Chapter 6: The Great Redistribution 1914-1980

Two world wars and a great depression, 1914-1945, overturned the power relationships between labor and capital in the West. Very-progressive income and inheritance taxes reduced the wealth and power of the few, and brought opportunities and prosperity to the many. p. 121. The U.S. top federal income tax rate was over 90% from 1951-1963, and 70% until 1980. p. 131. The U.S. top marginal inheritance tax rate was 70% until 1980. p. 132. Taxing the rich, and repudiating and/or inflating away the public debt, freed the West from the yoke of indebtedness to the rich, until 1980. These were political fights that were won in midcentury, and must be refought and rewon to achieve a decent life for the many. p. 149. Total private wealth in Western Europe was six to eight years of national income from 1870-1914, two to three years from 1950 to 1980, now back up to five to six years in 2020. p. 141. Peter Lindert, Growing Public, 2004.


Chapter 8: Real Equality against Discrimination

Gendered, social, and ethno-racial discrimination is endemic nearly everywhere. p. 175. Governments spend more on rich kids' educations than on poor kids'. pp. 176-184. Ditto infrastructure and government services generally. p. 196. Women receive 38% of the payroll in France, men 62%, in 2020. (62/38=1.63; 38/62=.61) p. 185. The average income of blacks in the U.S. is 56% that of whites (1/.56=1.79), as of 2018. p. 192.


Chapter 9: Exiting Neocolonialism

National-government revenues were 13.7% of GDP in the poorest third of the world, including Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, in 2022-2019; 40% in the richest third, including North America and Europe. Nigeria, Chad, and Central African Republic government revenues were only 6-8% of GDP. Not enough for essential functions. pp. 209-210.

The largest financial portfolios worldwide are placed largely in tax havens. p. 211. Transnational billionaires are richer than states, much as in the French Revolution. p. 13.

Global-north investors continue to plunder the labor and resources of poorer regions. pp. 212-213.

Fortunes of over 10 million euros total half of global GDP. p. 215.

The impoverishment of the poor has been the source of enrichment of the rich. p. 216.


Chapter 10: Toward a Democratic, Ecological, and Multicultural Socialism

The Chinese government owns 30% of all that can be owned in China. Not housing, but most of industry. Western governments' net ownership is negative, thanks to a refusal to tax the rich, instead borrowing from them. pp. 231-235, 240.

The authoritarian, antidemocratic Chinese government expresses its official positions daily in /Global Times/: https://www.globaltimes.cn/ p. 233.


Piketty's other books:

Capital in the 21st Century (French 2013, English 2014) shows that, when the rate of return on capital exceeds the growth rate of the economy, inequality grows without bound. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Capital and Ideology (French 2019, English 2020) shows that, since 1789, supposed justifications for inequality have been successively revealed as false, and abandoned. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Piketty's World Inequality Database is a trove. https://wid.world

Figures and tables for this book are on Piketty's home page here: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/en/equality

Piketty recommends:

K. Pomeranz, /The Great Divergence/, 2000

Fernand Braudel, /Civilization and Capitalism/, 1982-1984.

Immanuel Wallerstein, /The Modern World-System/, 1974-1989

[jess ~has abandoned GR~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Economic questions are too important to be left to others. Citizens' reappropriation of this knowledge is an essential state in the battle for equality. If this book has given readers new weapons for this battle, my goal will have been fully realized" (p. 244).

Piketty has written excellent books on economics that are unfortunately very huge, very technical, and pretty inaccessible for the everyday person. A Brief History of Equality was his attempt at condensing some of his research into a smaller and easier-to-read format to reach a larger audience.

I'm not sure if this book will have much wider appeal, as it is still very dense and requires some foundational knowledge of general political economy that isn't especially well-known in the US. However, as someone with an interest and academic background in the subject matter who has read his previous books, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and looked forward to when I could carve out time during the day to sit on the couch and dive in.

Very highly recommended, with the caveat that it is the sort of book that you should approach only when you're in the mood for deep reading.

(I'm now off to read a fun fantasy novel.)

originally posted at decafjess.com

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Se como eu já quiseram ler Piketty mas tiveram receio de se abalançar aos seus anteriores livros pela densidade de dados económicos ou pela enormidade de alguns com as suas mais de mil páginas, então são o público-alvo deste seu novo livro, "Uma Breve História da Igualdade" (2021/2022). Piketty resume em 300 páginas mais de 20 anos da sua investigação e as principais ideias que tem vindo a defender para uma nova era de igualdade, numa escrita imensamente acessível, sempre suportada por dados e gráficos. Confesso que me surpreendeu no discurso, pela enorme amplitude de ciências sociais que convoca desde a Sociologia à História, passando pela ciência política, o direito e a filosofia. Piketty usa dados económicos, mas acima de tudo trabalha, investiga e interpreta esses dados usando o conhecimento mais atual de cada uma das ciências envolvidas. Por isso, não se estranhe que a discussão vá das guerras e revoluções ao reformismo e alterações climáticas, mas assuma também como fundamentais a discussão do pós-colonialismo, racismo e feminismo. Contudo, para quem espera encontrar aqui um crítico das grandes desigualdades do mundo em que vivemos, Piketty é muito claro ao afirmar que nos últimos 200 anos a desigualdade diminuiu fortemente, sendo a partir desse ponto que projeta as suas ideias, apresentando-as como estímulos à manutenção e intensificação dessa tendência.

Ler texto completo no VI:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In this book, I have defended the possibility of a democratic and federal socialism, decentralized and participatory, ecological and multicultural, based on the extension of the welfare state and progressive taxation, power-sharing in business enterprises, postcolonial reparations, the battle against discrimination, educational equality, the carbon card, the gradual decommodification of the economy, guaranteed employment and an inheritance for all, the drastic reduction of monetary inequalities, and finally, an electoral and media system that cannot be controlled by money." -- A pretty decent summary of the book. Interesting ideas and lots of data, regardless of your politics.

[Tanja Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great little book about equality and how much we choose how the economic table is set. We’ve had a long history of letting the richest get away with everything and then a few decades, particularly around WW II when wealth redistribution actually led to an increased prosperity for all. This was destroyed by neoliberalism as touted by Thatcher and Reagan and it’s since gotten worse. We choose though, it doesn’t have to continue like this.

[Sergio Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente porque formula bem o problema das desigualdades e fá-lo com muito estudo e referência a trabalhos credíveis. Algum tecnicismo tornam-no por vezes um pouco aborrecido. O resumo histórico, apresentado de forma objectiva, permite alguma satisfação de perceber que, ao contrário de muita percepção, estamos devagarinho a caminhar para sociedades menos desiguais a todos os níveis. Também explica que os avanços só muito raramente se fazem sem crises e convulsões, o que, sabendo do caminho que o aquecimento do planeta está a trilhar e o aparecimento cada vez mais perto do poder de forças liberais, quase negacionistas, gera alguma inquietação quanto ao futuro próximo, nomeadamente por causa da enorme quantidade de eleições que vão ocorrer em 2020.
Apresenta ideias de soluções alertando, para que estas tem de ser mais profundamente preparadas. Muito ideológico, num momento que as forças mais conservadoras, populistas e impreparadas tentam afirmar a ideologia como algo a desprezar.
Sem dúvida um livro a ler, quanto mais não seja para pensar de onde viemos e para onde queremos ir.

[Hank · Rating 5 out of 5]

With Piketty, I have not only drunk (drank? drunken?) the cool-aid but selling it on the corner as well. Capital in the Twenty First Century was a best-of-the-year type of book for me and have formed much of my current, core economic beliefs.

It is a great blend of historical inequity, what sort of economics that inequity set up and how we are trying to deal with it now, with some suggestions as to the best way to do it. Capital clearly described why Billionaires are bad, A Brief History further cements that current opinion.

A Brief History is very much along the same lines as Capital but much short, much quicker to the point and much easier to read. I will be pushing this on as many of my friends as I possibly can.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is Thomas Piketty’s latest major book. His first two books - Capital in the 21st Century and Capital and ideology - were strong arguments regarding the origins and nature of economic inequality in the modern world and the problems that can be expected if steps are not taken to remedy this inequality and the related nexus of problems. Piketty also goes to great lengths to articulate the ideological and historical/political context in which this inequality has developed and why these threats to economic growth are showing in a variety of settings around the world. To do this, he follows up his economic analysis with an astonishing look at the settings in which inequality develops. Those interested should read Piketty directly and invest some time in doing so.

I admire this work not because I agree with the programs he proposes or highlights. I agree with some of it but have numerous caveats about others, but in their feasibility and in whether significant innovations of the sort he recommends are possible in contemporary settings. This thinking is much more engaging to me than what has come to be the new traditional neoliberal policy recommendations that has such a strong position in popular discourse today.

“A Brief History of Equality” focuses on the period in which much of the West experienced a narrowing of extremes in wealth and income inequality. This period lasted from WW1 until 1980, more or less. …so it is a Brief History because the period involved was brief in localtion, not because Piketty is leaving much out of his arguments. The book presents and analyzes movements towards greater equality and takes pains to located these developments in their social and institutional contexts. What were the conditions that made significant moves towards greater equality possible and what can we learn from this period to help make comparable moves ;of political economy in the decade of the 2020s?

The value of this is not the particular policies and arguments, although they are valuable and clearly presented. The real value of this book, although with Piketty’s earlier ones, is to put a story out “one the table” so that those pursuing progressive socialist programs can fashion more effective campaigns to engage the disparate set of parties needed to achieve successes with these initiatives. This is not a hard and fast platform, but a tool to help progressives and even liberals to more forward effectively.

The book is well written, accessible, and well worth reading.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Review of Thomas Piketty’s
A Brief History of Equality

Greg Cusack
May 2024, 2022

I first became acquainted with Mr. Piketty via his momentous Capital in the 21st Century, the first book about economics that I found clear, readable, and exciting. (Economics is, after all, not known as the dismal science for nothing!) Having said that, I believe this more recent work is, for the general reader, still a more accessible presentation (and it is a tad briefer, too). And, as in Capital, he thankfully includes a lot of very helpful tables and charts that assist the reader in better understanding his arguments.
Since I did not trouble to compare the table of contents of both books, I cannot say for certain that he covers the same ground as in Capital, but his approach here is more helpfully fixed on how economic and social equality – the basis, after all, for political equality – is achieved and maintained.

In any case, here is how he both introduces and summarizes what his numerous studies have revealed:
“What are the main lessons that can be drawn from this new economic and social history? The most obvious is no doubt the following: inequality is first of all a social, historical, and political construction.” (P. 9)

This point is of the utmost importance as there is an economic trope that would have us believe that any given economy is a response to the specific conditions in which it operates; in other words, “the economy” is an efficient, self-regulating mechanism that functions to maintain a sort of equilibrium between available resources and the demands placed upon it by citizens and governments. Moreover, since this is the case, economies function best and most efficiently if left “alone” by those who would “distort” its efficient operation through regulatory constraints of some sort.

Piketty helpfully points out that this is sheer blarney that seeks to mask how all economic systems are structured to respond to the wishes of those effectively in power! Nonetheless, a remarkably large number of American citizens have apparently swallowed this bilge which itself goes a long way towards explaining how our current social and political structures operate almost exclusively for the benefit of the wealthiest among us.

“The second lesson is that since the end of the eighteenth century there has been a long-term movement toward equality. This is the consequence of conflicts and revolts against injustice that have made it possible to transform power relationships and overthrow institutions supported by the dominant classes, which seek to structure social inequality in a way that benefits them, and to replace them with new institutions and new social, economic, and political rules that are more equitable and emancipatory for the majority.” (P. 10)
Much of this book is committed to tracking this “long-term movement” although, as Piketty notes as well, since the ‘70s a renewed commitment to the laissez-faire belief in unregulated markets has seriously eroded much of the gains achieved in the 20th century until the eighth decade.

“In addition to revolutions, war, and revolts, economic and financial crises often serve as turning points where social conflicts are crystalized and power relationships are redefined.” (P. 10)
Indeed, they do, as much of the “leveling” of the extreme wealth discrepancy that existed as late as the pre-World War I period was achieved wholly absent planning or intent, for it was the dual disasters of the two World Wars coupled with the Great Depression of the first half of the 20th century that exhausted much of the wealth of the upper classes. The programs initiated by FDR in his “New Deal” definitely helped a large number of Americans who otherwise would have seen little or no benefit from this wealth diminishment, and it was the programs intentionally pursued throughout the West – including the United States – after the end of World War II that created the greatest surge toward equality in history, a degree of widespread middle-class prosperity that unfortunately lasted only as long as Western governments continued support for such programs.

“It is also important to highlight another lesson issuing from history, namely that struggles and power relationships are not sufficient as such. They are a necessary condition for overturning inegalitarian institutions and established powers, but unfortunately they do not in any way guarantee that the new institutions and the new powers that will replace them will always be as egalitarian and emancipatory as we might have hoped.” (P. 10)

This is, unfortunately, what both the United States and much of Western and Central Europe have witnessed since the 1970s, as new governments committed to laissez-faire economics and the hoped-for “magic” of globalization have seriously lessened or even withdrawn their support for the kinds of policies that brought about such prosperity since the end of the Second World War.

The bulk of the book examines both the trend towards greater equality as well as the subsequent retreat from majoritarian prosperity. In the process, Piketty considers such various interesting facets of the past couple of centuries as the function and impact that slavery played in advancing the interests of a very few while oppressing millions, the critical role that estate and progressive income taxes had in reducing extreme wealth disparities in the past, and the new challenges posed by would-be progressive nationalists who speak a good game about serving the majority but who in practice prove to be committed primarily to securing and maintaining their own power while playing various elements of society off against each other. Certainly, we in the United States ought to understand this very well by now!

So, what about solutions?
It should be no surprise that among the things he advocates that we return to are such familiar things as pursuing full employment with jobs that pay a living wage, the use of estate taxes to prevent the rise of new inherited wealth elites that are very similar to those who ruled most of Europe for hundreds of years prior to the American revolution, the re-implementation of progressive taxes with rates similar to those used during the Eisenhower years when Americans enjoyed great and widespread prosperity, and rethinking such central matters as who has the right to own what.

Unfortunately, the term he uses to summarize this position is democratic socialism which, while I understand to be in the sense of the Social Democratic parties that played such a crucial role in post-war Europe in establishing and maintaining those policies that created widespread middle-class prosperity, will likely greatly disturb many for whom “socialism” is as foul a word and concept as “communism.” (Yes one more illustration of how poorly educated most Americans are in the wider world of politics and economics.)

For Americans, I would translate his term to the more American-traditional commitment to the equality and flourishing of all citizens through such instruments as once were the traditional appeals of the Democratic Party of the past (before it got dragged into – and under – by the false gods of globalism, efficient markets, and group identities that effectively supplanted American identity.

He argues that is only be returning to this commitment to the greater quality of all – coupled with the dual commitment to dramatically reduce the current wealth disparity between the top 1% and the rest of us – that the West in general, and the United States in particularly – will be able to successfully compete with the challenges posed by autocratic systems such as the Chinese which have brought great prosperity to most of their people even as its ruling class maintains powerful control of the main levers of society. He warns that if the current trends in “the West” continue, at some point citizens will demand a change in their governments so that they, too, can achieve greater prosperity and equality even if this means sacrificing some political freedoms.

This is a book that thoughtful persons of all political persuasions would benefit from reading closely.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've heard about Piketty for years. He seems to be a secular saint to the American left. So I was glad to see this short text come out, hoping to get an introduction to Piketty's work to help decide if I wanted to read any of his longer books like "Capital and Ideology."

But "A Brief History of Equality" turned out to be a frustrating book. I liked the first half of Piketty's text so much that I expected great things of the second half.

The first half presents a compelling look at inequality of income and wealth going back to the 18th century, but focusing on 1914-present. Piketty explains how European powers got rich from colonialism that I, viewing it from an American perspective, have never before grasped. Easy to follow charts and graphs visualize many important points well.

Finally, his cup-half-full argument that the past wasn't an idyll of egalitarianism but was in fact more unequal and brutal than today is a good reminder that we actually have made progress towards more equality in the last three centuries.

We've made more progress since 1914, when the gap between the rich and the rest of us was much wider than it is today, even with some partial backsliding starting in 1980 with the Reagan revolution. That's the good news: since we've succeeded in closing the equality gap in the recent past, we can certainly continue to make progress and get even more equality in the future, if only we do the right things. That's encouraging. That's perhaps the most important point of the book's first half.

I do wish a history of equality would've gone back further into history beyond the 18th century, perhaps to classical antiquity or even early civilizations or pre-civilization. Is equality natural to the human condition or was it just a historical anomaly made possible temporarily by the Industrial Revolution? Now that the economy is progressing to a new post-industrial stage, is it possible that equality will become imperiled?

Past performance wouldn't guarantee future results, as they say in ads for stock brokers, but the past might give us a clue as to whether equality is a feature or just a bug of the human condition. Only going back further would answer the question. Even a short book could have summarized the more remote past of equality in a few pages.

But I could have forgiven the book's relatively recent view if only its second part, presenting solutions, had been more compelling. While the first half set the stage well for some of Piketty's solutions to increase equality of income and wealth -- especially progressive taxation -- other solutions Piketty proposes in the second half of the book are too big a leap.

I'm thinking especially of Piketty's idea to take power away from the private sector and give it to the public sector and then, in turn, transfer that power from nation states to transnational organizations that would extend the reach of the European Union or the United Nations.

Why do we need to jump straight to an extremely ambitious international solution with little historic precedent outside the post-1945 era, and limited success even then? To tame corporate globalization, why can't we try proven nation-state approaches that worked in the past, like restrictions on free trade such as high tariffs on imports and incentives for domestic production for domestic consumption?

Maybe one of Piketty's longer books makes the case better for the transnational democratic socialism that he recommends here as the only alternative to a world in climate distress dominated either by the likes of ISIS on the one hand or Chinese non-democratic socialism on the other.

Does socialism play better in Europe than in the US?

Sometimes the book doesn't seem well adapted to an American audience. The occasional awkward phrase along with book titles formatted French-style with an initial capital letter but lowercase after that are joined by money amounts listed exclusively in Euros (even when talking about the US) and an overwhelming focus on the author's native France, then the EU, and only finally on the US and the rest of the world.

And for a book with the word "history" in the title, Piketty's use of the history that I am able to judge, American history, seems biased at best.

For example, a couple times in talking about the US Civil War, Piketty says that the "North" promised reparations to freedmen in the form of 40 acres of farmland and a mule. The federal government's failure to deliver on this alleged promise became a traditional grievance among African Americans. As a gesture of protest, 40 Acres and a Mule even became the name for Spike Lee's film production company, as Piketty notes.

But that's about politics, not history.

In January 1865, Special Field Order No. 15 issued by General William T. Sherman did confiscate from Confederate owners a 30-mile wide strip of coastal land stretching from South Carolina through Georgia into Florida. The order then distributed the land in 40-acre parcels to recently freed Black people, both locals and refugees following Sherman's army. And unfortunately for the freedmen farming these plots, after the war and only a few months later, in the fall of 1865, President Andrew Johnson did return the land to its original owners, displacing the freedmen.

President Lincoln approved Sherman's order, as a wartime measure to punish rebels and help Sherman offload the families of freed people who had attached themselves to Sherman's army in Georgia during his infamous March to the Sea. But neither Lincoln, nor Congress, nor General Grant as overall commander of the army, ever promised Black freedmen as a whole the proverbial 40 acres and a mule or any other form of slavery reparations. Sherman's order only applied to the coastal land and the freedmen in question at the time. Further, Special Field Order 15 could be countermanded by civilian authorities after the war, as it was.

The US government may have had a moral responsibility to compensate formerly enslaved Black Americans, but Washington had no legal obligation to offer compensation. Therefore, Sherman's battlefield order is a shaky precedent to argue for reparations in the future.

I happen to believe that slavery reparations of some kind may be a good idea for the US to consider. But we need to understand history accurately first. And Piketty does not appear to do so. If he has this kind of problem with American history, then it is reasonable for the reader to be skeptical of Piketty's treatment of all the other history, from European powers to China and Africa, that Piketty uses to support his claims.

Yes, it's possible for an American reader to translate (and discount) all this in one's own mind. But it slows down the reading and makes the text feel foreign and, thus, less applicable to the American situation.

And maybe Piketty's other, longer books are more convincing, and also better translated. But this book makes me wonder if this author's near godlike status in progressive public policy circles is earned or just hype.

[dantelk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yazarın Kapital kitabını okumuş, beğenmiş, ama biraz fazla "ütopik" bulmuştum. Bu eseri biraz daha erişilebilir olarak gördüm - belki de son iki yılda ütopyaya biraz daha fazla inanasım geldi. Sol görüşlü birinin kitabını okuduğumuzu unutmayark, yazılanları bir miktar şüphe ile yutmak lazım. Ama Acemoğlu'nun kapsayıcı kurumlar hikayesinden daha makul olduğunu düşünüyorum kendi adıma.

Okunmasını öneririm.

Notlarım:
- İki yy öncesine kadar, 50-60 yaşına kadar yaşamak bi ayrıcalıktı.
- Petrol çıkarıp bunu ihraç eden bir ülkenin kendine kattığı değer, sıfır. Neyi varsa satıyor aslında.
- ww2 sonrası en çok orta sınıf kalkındı. Fakir hala aynı.
- İngiltere'de kömür ya da yakacak ağaç kıtlığı, alternatif enerji kaynağı arayışlarına itti.
- Köle sayısı, kasıtlı olarak artırıldı.
- Köle sahiplerine kölelikten sonra telafi ödenekleri ayrıldı, başka çare göremediler. Kölesini satıp arazi alana haksızlık mı olaydı?
- Haiti free oldu, ama öyle bir borcun altına girdi ki, topyekun köle olsalar daha iyiydi.
- Hiçbir yerde bağımsız medya yok.
- Bir politik metni bir kadın okuduğu zaman, bunun inandıcılığı erkeğin okuduğu aynı metne göre daha düşük.
- Sosyal kotaları eklemek kolay, ama bunlar da kendilerince başka sorunlar yaratıyorlar.
- İngiltere, insanlara race'lerini soran tek "batı" ülkesi. Peki, bu insanlara ne hissettiriyor?

[Toomas Tuul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me feel more than I expected from a rather detailed analysis of economics of the 19-21 centuries.

First, it made me feel a little dumb. French economist Piketty wrote this book for an average reader, simplifying his previous 1000+ page deep-dives. I got the gist and that's all I could relay in a conversation about the book. I couldn't really argue or analyze most of it, since I just didn't understand.

Second, it made me hopeful. To see that my secretly growing anti-capitalist sentiment is so thoroughly discussed and calculated. As a result the author proposes realistic future scenarios that would reduce the massive wealth gaps in the world and use that money to fund climate action and universal education. I like to believe this is possible.

If there's a democratic-socialist underground group near me that discusses these things in candlelight, I'd be glad to join and listen. Might make me less dumb and more hopeful.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

A real disappointment.

I agree with Thomas Piketty often, as far as my ability to understand his thought goes. I knew that I would agree with him before I started to read this book, but I like to read books by people smarter than me who hold similar opinions, so I can reassure myself, rightly or wrongly, that my opinions have a sound basis in reality, and perhaps bring stronger and more coherent arguments to the table, on the rare occasions when I actually engage others in debate. I was in serious danger of learning something at many moments while reading.

But this book was such a chore to read that, well, I wondered what was the point in publishing it in the first place.

The first words in this book are:

”What you write is interesting, but couldn't you make it a little shorter, so I can share it with my friends and family?” (quotation marks in the original)

This is a very reasonable request, alleged made to Piketty by his readers, as three books of his published in the 21st century weigh in at over 1000 pages each, rendering them essentially unreadable to anyone who is not a graduate student, a professional economist-pundit or independently wealthy.

(This has led Piketty's books, especially Capital in the 21st Century, to be the latest in a long list of books that bureaucratic mandarins and self-styled opinion leaders in Washington, DC, my former home, like to pretend to have read, but have only heard or read about. Other books on this list include: de Toqueville's Democracy in America, anything by Adam Smith, Thucydides’ The History, Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Robert Caro's The Power Broker, and Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. But I digress.)

Perhaps I should blame the alleged readers quoted above, because the question as stated above should be amended as follows: “What you write is interesting, but couldn't you make it a little shorter and clearer, so I can share it with my friends and family?” Perhaps because the readers were insufficiently specific in this regard, the result here is, instead of an unreadable 1000-page book, an unreadable 245-page book.

I state again: I agree with Piketty's ideas, within my ability to understand them. For example, I think that progressive taxation is a good idea and worked in the past. It made society fairer and made more people have a stake in its continued tranquil functioning. Piketty extends this particular idea in ways that hadn't occurred to me, like: because of progressive taxation of income, corporations that might have handed over obscenely large bonuses to executives found other ways to dispose of their profits, like investing in company infrastructure or research and development. He also says that international agreements and treaties have made the current worldwide system of non-progressive taxation and easy tax avoidance much more difficult to undo. This state of affairs is the deliberate result of prolonged machinations by banks, wealth managers, and their representatives, Piketty says. All this, to me, seems reasonable.

Piketty wrote this book in French. Someone else translated it. I think that the book's unreadability is probably a result of the original text, so Piketty is to blame. I assume that the translator did his job correctly, that is, he didn’t alter the original text any more than strictly necessary.

I don't know the French language. I am completely ignorant of what is considered appropriate written discourse for French academics. I just know that, as currently translated, this book has many unnecessary words.

For example, Piketty begins many sentences with clauses like “It is obvious that …”, “We must also emphasize …”, or “Let us add …”. A writer may occasionally need to construct a sentence in this manner. However, frequently the writer can improve the sentence with no loss of clarity. In some cases, the entire introductory clause can be completely omitted, as in this example from page 163:

It will be noted that [T]he proposed system of financing is based on tax scales similar to those that were already used during the twentieth century, with rates ranging from a few percentage points for assets and income lower than average to 80-90 percent for the highest assets and income.

In other cases, sentences can be shorter and clearer by omitting several words and rearranging the ones that remain. Compare Piketty's sentence from page 173

But the fact is that it appears to be the only way to move forward.

with this sentence

It is the only way to move forward.

The weasel word “appear” in this sentence adds nothing, but sucks a little life out of the sentence. “The fact that” is completely expendable. The cumulative effect of scores of instances like the above render reading this book an onerous chore. At one point, I decided that my time would be better used cleaning the refrigerator.

I'm the sort of nerd who reads popular books and listens to explainer podcasts about economics, so when a word like “Hayekian” was introduced, I was able to maintain my sang froid. I only had one moment when a term of art amongst economists completely mystified me. It is “ordoliberal”. See an explanation here.

Something else I learned: On page 112, when Piketty writes

In the United States, Roosevelt had to threaten to “pack” the Supreme Court in 1937 so that it would lift the veto by which it was blocking his social legislation in the name of free enterprise, even though he had just been elected with 61 percent of the vote.

I was surprised to read this interpretation, since this moment in history is not generally presented as an effective maneuver by Roosevelt. In fact, I have an old-school paperback survey history of the US which calls it “the first and most devastating defeat of [Roosevelt's] presidency” (pg. 564 of The Penguin History of the United States of America by Hugh Brogan, pub. 1990). I learned that there are historians who dissent from this interpretation. See, for example, a review published on the website of The Nation magazine on June 27, 2023 of the book FDR's Gambit: The Court Packing Fight and the Rise of Legal Liberalism by Laura Kalman, which reportedly represents the court-packing fight as “a savvy, high-stakes move by perhaps the most politically astute president in US history.”

The problem that I have with this book is similar to the one I had a few years ago when I read a book by Eric Hobsbawm, who alleged that it was written with “the intelligent and educated citizen” in mind, but could not restrain himself from including untranslated French, German, and Latin, plus references to historical figures and events which were obviously common knowledge only to historians, economists, or other experts. The problem is: If you're going to write a book for the non-expert, you should have the wit, imagination, and powers of observation to make a good guess of what the non-expert knows and doesn't know. If you can't, don't do it, or, better yet, find someone who can help you rectify your ignorance.

If you refuse to do so, then people are justified in coming to the conclusion that the reason you won't express yourself clearly is that your ideas, clearly expressed, would be exposed as the cruel deceptions that they are. This is how Piketty's critics today can transform his call for a fairer world into a thinly-veiled attempt to re-establish failed tyrannies of the past and their policies, such as the confiscation of property and control of the entire economy by a creaky and inept bureaucracy.

I have nattered on at great length to arrive at this conclusion, but I wanted to demonstrate that, unlike many people who negatively reviewed this book, I actually have read it.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Харесвам книги, които с помощтта на статистически данни и обикновена логика обясняват прекалено емоционалните обществени теми. В тази връзка винаги се сещам за „Еволюцията на Бог“ на Робърт Райт, за Джоузев Стиглиц и книгите му за неравенството. А сега прибавям и Тома Пикети с тази кратка книга, която е написал, за да могат хората бързо и лесно да се ориентират в огромния труд, който той е свършил през годините, като е събрал всякакви статистики. Вярно е също, че статистиката отнема голяма част от съспенса, затова човек трябва да е поне малко изкушен от темата, за да се заеме с такива книги. Чувала съм коментари по повод избора ми на подобна литература и не са били ласкателни. Но според мен си струва да се разберат фактите зад емоциите, което пък би помогнало за ефективното разрешаване на съответния проблем.
В конкретния случай става дума за неравенството, което виждаме навсякъде. Неравенство, което поражда сериозни проблеми като ескалация на расизма и куп други говорения „против“ това и онова. Обаче когато човек види графика със статистически данни за разпределението на дохода между 10% най-богати и 50% най-бедни слоеве на населението във Франция през годините, или за процента на разпределение на публичните разходи за образование между децата на белите колонисти и децата на местното население в Алжир (78% от разходите за 4% бели колоности) може би започва да разбира, че бедните не са виновни сами за положението си.
Книгата засяга различните причини за неравенството по света, но съвсем накратко. Идеята е читателят да се насочи към проблема и да потърси още информация, ако има интерес. Отделено е внимание на предполагаемите положителни ефекти от прогресивния данък, причините за дискриминацията и възможните начини за справяне с нея, засилване на социалната държава, осигуряване на по-широк достъп до собственост, като същевременно се предприемат мерки за ограничаване на натрупването на такава в особено големи размери. По нашите географски ширини заставаме нащрек щом някой използва думата „социализъм“, но Пикети не е обременен от подобна психология. Той си проповядва един особен вид демократичен социализъм като алтернатива на неолиберализма, довел света до сегашните проблеми от всякакъв вид. Бих казала, че е убедителен и поне на хартия звучи чудесно. Остава да видим до колко ще е възможно да се приложи на практика, за което обаче ще е необходима сериозна социална мобилизация във всяка държава по света.
„В тази книга защитавам възможността за демократичен и федерале социализъм, децентрализиран и на участието, екологичен и етнически разнообразен, който се основава на социалната държава и на прогресивния данък, разделението на властта при управлението на предприятията, постколониалното преразпределение и борбата срещу дискриминацията, образователното равенство и въглеродната карта, постепенното преминаване към икономика на непазарен принцип, гарантране на заетост и собственост за всички, драстично намаляване на паричното неравенство и на избирателна и медийна система най-после извън властта на парите.“

[Ploni Almoni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Den franske økonom Thomas Piketty er en selvindlysende rockstjerne på den progressive venstrefløjs himmel. Det var ham, der gav os et reelt empirisk grundlag for at kritisere markedskapitalismen, så socialisme blev mindre end vibe og mere et reelt politisk værktøj igen.

I “En Kort Historie om Lighed” forsøger Piketty at komprimere sine tanker og idéer fra hans tidligere værker i en lille programmatisk bog. Det lykkes han kun delvist med.

“En Kort Historie om Lighed” vil nemlig mere end formatet kan bære. Piketty vil både give en generel introduktion til lighedens histoire og den mega-trend han ser imod mere lighed på flere akser (klasse, køn, nord-syd etc.), samtidig med, at han leverer et bud på en “demokratisk og føderal, økologisk og raceblandet deltagersocialisme, der hviler på en udvidelse af socialstaten og den progressive skat, magtdeling i virksomhederne, postkoloniale erstatninger og kamp mod diskrimination, lighed på uddannelsesområdet og CO2-kortet, den gradvise afvareliggørelse af økonomien, jobgarantien, arven til alle, den drastiske mindskelse af pengeuligheden etc. etc.”

Tak for kaffe. Det kan desværre ikke lade sig gøre at præsentere alle de tanker på en systematiseret måde på 275 sider (stor skrift), uden at læseren enten mister pusten totalt, eller sidder med en følelse af, at han har læst et mødereferat fra et lidt overentusiastisk onsdagsmøde i SUF, og ikke et reelt velunderbygget idékatalog fra en anerkendt økonom.

Forstå mig ret. Det er sympatisk, at Piketty vil det hele (klimakampen, klassekamp, ny økonomi, afkolonisering, erstatninger til slavegjorte etc.) på en gang. Det vil jeg også! Men i bogform bliver det en rodet potpourri.

PS: Graferne i bogen er grænsende til ulæselige. Seriøst, hvad sker der for alle de gråtonenuancer???? Det kan I gøre bedre (Informations Forlag)

[Guillermo Pineda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un aviso de alarma para el futuro cercano

Piketty presenta una interesante visión de la historia global desde 1820 hasta nuestro futuro cercano. En este proceso analiza el lento pero consistente avance hacia la igualdad social, económica y política mediante indicadores como el aumento en la esperanza de vida, las tasas de alfabetización y la expansión del sufragio masculino y femenino. Su enfoque se centra en la "Gran Distribución" (1914-1980) y reducción de la desigualdad, atribuyendo los progresos a los estados de bienestar y a la fiscalidad progresiva. Es muy interesante el énfasis de Piketty al cambio hacia mayor desigualdad observado post 1980 y las preocupaciones que esto presentan para el autor. Sin duda, su objetivo es no solo expresar su inquietud por la creciente desigualdad sino que, también, recomendarnos reforzar las políticas de estado de bienestar en los países del norte y del sur global. En el 2024, con la llegada de El Niño y la aceleración de la crisis ambiental, estas presiones son aún más marcadas y claras. Food for thought!

[Sebastián · Rating 2 out of 5]

Siendo generosos es un 10% datos útiles y un 90% propaganda. Para leer a Piketty creo que es mejor ir directamente a sus obras grandes. Capital en el siglo XXI o Capital e idología.
Aun así si tienes curiosidad, como tenia yo, de ver rápidamente de qué pie cojea con esto te haces una idea.

[Espen Stølan Holten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ja til velferdsstat og progressiv beskatning 🤷
Godt strukturert, nyansert og enkelt å følge Pikettys argumenter.

[Keenan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Brief" is an important qualifier for this book, which covers in a few hundred pages centuries in the history of equality, encompassing globalization, colonialism, socialism, capital flows, monetary policy, progressive movements, etcetera. Broadly speaking, the world is a far more equal place than in the distant past, with the gaps in income and property and access to education between the richest and poorest in most world societies narrowing significantly, thanks in part to large labour movements, the establishment of welfare states, the growth of representative democracies, and extremely progressive transfers of wealth from the private to the public sector. Equality has however been on the downtrend for the last 40 years as neoliberalism, free capital flows, multinational tax evasion, aggressive nationalism, and general conservative sentiment towards the welfare state apparatus have dug their fangs into societal progress. Aside from questions of wealth and property, this book also touches on matters concerning ethnic and religious inequality, briefly exploring reparations, affirmative action, quota systems, and colonial structures.

This book does a great job at balancing optimism for the future given how far we've come while also waving the red warning flags at the regressive trend of the past few decades, a trend made all the more worrisome as climate change, natural resource exploitation, and neocolonialism reach destructive highs. A bit too academic at times, this is nonetheless essential reading for a basic understanding of the global forces at work in the ebb and flow of human progress.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like Thomas Piketty, and when I read his books I find myself frequently agreeing with him. I particularly liked his thesis in "Capital and Ideology" that market economics and our common modern conception of property are choices and that there are other perfectly rational and perhaps fairer and better ways of organizing large scale modern society. In prior books, he was a pessimist about increasing concentration of wealth in the very richest people. Here he is an optimistic about trends over the past 100+ years toward more equality of opportunity, inclusiveness and a better life for the people at the bottom. Of course there is much more work to do and some disturbing trends in the opposite direction that he doesn't shy away from.

In the end I found this book a little disappointing only because I expect so much of Mr. Piketty. This one was good, but not groundbreaking and convincingly smart in the presentation of new ideas in the way "Capital" and "Capital and Ideology" were. This book is more a rehash of familiar ideas, but they are good ideas that bear repeating, so the book was still worth reading.