How to Write a Marxist Critique of Thomas Piketty Without Actually Reading the Book
Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a long book, and you just don’t have time in your busy schedule to finish it and formulate a materialist critique. We’ve got you covered.
- Be sure to emphasize that Piketty’s conception of capital differs radically from Marx’s.
- Note that his model is fundamentally at odds with the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.
- Point out that his solution is openly reformist, and besides, would require worker militancy on a scale not witnessed in nearly a century.
- Something something law of value something.
- Okay, inequality. But then point out that he doesn’t explain it!
- Mention in an aside his affiliation to Ségolène Royale and the PS.
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Feign astonishment that people care now given that he simply codifies empirically what we already knew.
- Lament his conflation of finance and industrial capitals.
- Claim that you are going to buy it, though, as “the data will be useful.”