Piketty’s data

[LBird]

pgb wrote:

I've not read everything of Marx by a long way, but describing someone as "a hired prize-fighter for the bourgeoisie" doesn't sound like Marx to me.

Here's the source, pgb. A bit about 'science' and 'disinterested' enquiry, too.

Karl Marx, Afterword in Capital, wrote:

In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power. Thenceforth, the class struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm%5BPenguin Classics edition, p. 97]So, I have it on good authority that Piketty is displaying 'the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic'.

[alanjjohnstone]

"I did deliberately aim the book at the general reader," says Piketty as we begin our conversation, "and although it is obviously a book which can be read by specialists too, I wanted the information here to be made clear to everyone who wants to read it.' I think that may well be the trite version, Brian, as Janet says, in the sense he may well put out the information for general consumption but i suspect a deeper motive due to his lack of application of the facts except, as i keep on saying, reforms that he and many other respected reviewer says will be impossible to apply. LBird suggests it is to make the professional economist mend their ways, not for the general reader to mobilise a campaign.As i said Keynes and Marx were very clear on what their readers should do and wrote specifically to support that instigation. I only comment from second-hand reviews but Piketty seems rather unconcerned what we do with his facts and figures other than go "tut-tut, thats awful". There seems to be a dearth real politics in the book. I believe a chapter out of 700 pages and as i said trade unions scarcely a mention …it is apparent that perhaps workers are very secondary to his world view.Adam has linked to Piketty's day to day politics elsewhere – reform of the EU – fiscal union and future poitical union and again a progressive tax…everything that can be done by the political ruling class and again the working class are invisible as any form of active agent in the process. The conclusion i make is that Piketty is very much an elitist who wants to make decisions FOR the people rather than build a system that they are responsible for their own decisions, so the fact he wanted information for all to read …and to his credit many say all his data is published …pity, he never went the whole way and make the book itself open source to be downloaded and read for free…there Janet is correct !!!. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/02/manifesto-europe-radical-financial-democraticI keep returning to the who and why he wrote the book and less on the how he wrote it which seems to be obsessing some commentators i have read.  

[pgb]

LBird wrote: Here's the source, pgb. A bit about 'science' and 'disinterested' enquiry, too.Karl Marx, Afterword in Capital, wrote:In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power. Thenceforth, the class struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic.

---

Thanks for the correction and the source which I eventually found in my edition (Kerr) of Capital 1 where it is in the Preface to the 2nd German edition. It must be the most extreme statement I think Marx ever made against so-called "vulgar economists". However, reading it in context does highlight the problem I have in understanding your views on Picketty. The "hired prize-fighters" Marx refers to were post-Ricardian "vulgar economists" whom he distinguished from classical political economists (esp. Ricardo) whose work he saw he saw as "scientific" because it concentrated on the reality rather than the appearances of capitalist society and by its honesty and intellectual detachment. This in spite of the fact that Ricardo was seen by Marx as a "the most classic representative of the bourgeoisie". Fairly clearly, in Marx's eyes you could be a representative of the bourgeoisie yet still conduct genuine scientific research on the bourgeois economy. Or, you could be a "vulgar economist" who was unscientific, intellectually dishonest, and an apologist for capitalism (although Marx was more inclined to stress the superficiality as against the apologetic character of vulgar economy). You have obviously placed Picketty in the latter category: you say that Picketty's data is "cooked"; he asked questions that already fitted in with his answers; his book is "ideological" (as opposed to "scientific"); he is a used-car salesman; just another apologist for capitalism, displays bad conscience, and of course is also a "hired prizefighter". Wow.I have been very slow in reading Picketty and am only now up to page 300. But nothing I have read so far gives the slightest support to your claims. Despite my long established skepticism regarding French theorists in many disciplines, I was pleasantly surprised to find Picketty lucid, no bullshitting, fair-minded in his assessment of others (incl. Marx), and certainly intellectually honest. Like Ricardo, he supports capitalism, but like Ricardo he is no apologist for capitalism. I have found nothing in his mountain of data and in his graphical representations, to suggest his data are "cooked". I cannot see why concentrating on inequality of wealth and income rather than the realm of production must render his work "unscientific". Indeed, I think he has done socialists and Marxists a service in mapping in such high detail the distribution of income amongst the wealthy, including the relatively wealthy amongst the top wage earners of the working class, which he reveals by looking at the top percentiles rather then the deciles common in official income statistics (as with most govt. sources I know of). His work also raises issues concerning the real heterogeneity (and fragmentation?) of the working class – something usually obscured in the two-class, owners and non-owners, model of Marx – which has important political implications. Wealth and income statistics, as Picketty argues strongly, are as much a political construction as an economic one.With all this in mind, I asked you in my original post what sources you would use if you were carrying out research into wealth and income distribution in modern capitalist societies, because I couldn't see how you could avoid using the same sort of data as Picketty, even though you claimed his data (or 'data') were "cooked". You said that you wouldn't be looking at Picketty's 'data' because you – as a self-defined Communist – would be looking at other things, specifically exploitation (obviously, because in Marxist terms it is within the realm of production). In the end, all you seem to be saying is that your "ideology" would select different economic and social issues as objects of study than the issues Picketty has chosen. Which is not saying very much, and provides no ground at all for making judgments on the quality and significance of Picketty's research. Which makes me wonder: have you actually read his book?

[LBird]

pgb wrote:

Which makes me wonder: have you actually read his book?

Since I’ve already said on this thread that I’ve received and started to read the book, and I’ve already provided some quotes from Piketty, it ‘makes me wonder’ what the intent of your question is. I’ve already pointed out that your ‘tone’ in your first post to me was ‘uncomradely’, and I’m minded to think that you’re continuing in this vein.But, to give you the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume that you’re just a bit slow, rather than being insulting.Your main failure, so far, is to completely misunderstand the nature of the term ‘cooked’ in relation to ‘data’, in my posts. You appear to think ‘data’ can be either ‘raw’ or ‘cooked’, depending upon the trustworthiness of the ‘scientist’. For you, the nature of the ‘data’ is dependent upon the morality of the scientist. And you ‘trust’ Piketty.

pgb wrote:

…you say that Picketty's data is "cooked"; he asked questions that already fitted in with his answers; his book is "ideological" (as opposed to "scientific"); he is a used-car salesman; just another apologist for capitalism, displays bad conscience, and of course is also a "hired prizefighter".

Yes, Piketty is employing ‘cooked data’, he is employing an ideology which determines his questions and answers, and he is what you say I’ve said.

pgb wrote:

I have been very slow in reading Picketty and am only now up to page 300. But nothing I have read so far gives the slightest support to your claims. Despite my long established skepticism regarding French theorists in many disciplines, I was pleasantly surprised to find Picketty lucid, no bullshitting, fair-minded in his assessment of others (incl. Marx), and certainly intellectually honest.

You seem to have no grasp of science and its method, pgb, notwithstanding your ‘pleasant surprise’. This has nothing to do with ‘lucidity’, ‘fairmindedness’ or ‘honesty’. The scientific issue is that all scientists select their ‘data’: Piketty, me, you, Einstein, Marx, etc., etc. All ‘data’ is ‘cooked’, in this sense. My posts, if you’d read them, constantly show this contrast between the mythical, bourgeois-inspired ideology of ‘raw data’ and the scientific method which stresses the ‘theory-ladenness of data’. The only ‘raw data’ is ‘everything, everywhere, at all times’. The pretence that any ‘slice’ of reality is ‘raw’ is a myth: to ‘slice’ is to ‘cook’. Selection means parameters of selection, and parameters mean pre-existing ideology.

pgb wrote:

In the end, all you seem to be saying is that your "ideology" would select different economic and social issues as objects of study than the issues Picketty has chosen. Which is not saying very much, and provides no ground at all for making judgments on the quality and significance of Picketty's research.

Well, do you make your “judgments on the quality and significance of Picketty's research” based upon Piketty’s ideology or upon Communist ideology? Or do you pretend to be an ‘individual’ with a unique opinion? That is, some sort of ‘liberal’ ideology. You haven’t been open with us, have you?I’m open in my exposure of my ideology, and thus my viewpoint or stance, from which I make my judgments of Piketty. I agree with Marx, that bourgeois economists (like Piketty) are ‘hired prize fighters’ of the bourgeoisie, and not ‘objective’ commentators upon ‘raw data’.So, Piketty can be lucid, fairminded and honest, from a bourgeois perspective, and still be bullshitting us Communists. That’s because he himself doesn’t understand how capitalism works; if he did, he’d be a Communist.

pgb wrote:

Which makes me wonder: have you actually read his book?

And I wonder if you even know what you’re doing, reading Piketty’s book. Do you know Piketty’s ideology? Do you even know your own? Do you know what science is? Do you know that all science is ideological, and that all scientists are ideological? If you don’t know any of these things, please read up on it before you continue beyond page 300. Otherwise, you’ll continue to waste your time on the rest of the book.

[alanjjohnstone]

I haven't read the book so my opinion is rather questionable, although i have read several reviews. 

pgb wrote:

…he supports capitalism…he is no apologist for capitalism

For my benefit could you elaborate on this. How can you support capitalism and not apologise for its existence? i would imagine, many economists both right and left, can bitterly criticise elements of capitalism …such adjectives as "crony capitalism"…"predator capitalism" to name only two, yet accept and defend its fundamentals. Isn't this what Piketty doing, exposing what Ted Heath called the unacceptable face of capitalism ? It seems his past has made him rejects government-owned central planning I think LBird has and i definitely have , accused Piketty of wanting to rescue capitalism from what he considers to be its weakness…inequality becoming patrimonial (dynastic?) The FT headline is "Save Capitalism from the Capitalists by Taxing Wealth"As i said you have the advantage of me but some reviews seem to refute your claim that Piketty is fair-minded about Marx "Piketty scatters dismissive swipes at Marx from the beginning to end of Capital 21. Displaying woeful miscomprehension or propagating deliberate disinformation, he says, "Marx totally neglected the possibility of durable technological progress and steadily increasing productivity" " But as one famous blonde Mandy Rice Davis once quipped…"he would say that wouldn't he" and may be because of Piketty's rejection of state capitalism alternative.http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/andrews220314.htmlI think Adam has commented here or elsewhere that Piketty offers a counter to those who store too much value upon Marx's declining rate of profit.There seems to be a bit of confussion when Piketty tongue in cheek claims not to have read Marx. He has…but Harvey reckons not too deeply"There is much that is valuable in Piketty’s data sets. But his explanation as to why the inequalities and oligarchic tendencies arise is seriously flawed. His proposals as to the remedies for the inequalities are naïve if not utopian. And he has certainly not produced a working model for capital of the twenty-first century."http://davidharvey.org/2014/05/afterthoughts-pikettys-capital/Galbraith piqued i think that Piketty got all the attention when he claims to have documented the inequality in 1999 and offers his alternative approach." Raise minimum wages! That lowers the return on capital that relies on low-wage labor. Support unions! Tax corporate profits and personal capital gains, including dividends! Lower the interest rate actually required of businesses! Do this by creating new public and cooperative lenders to replace today’s zombie mega-banks. And if one is concerned about the monopoly rights granted by law and trade agreements to Big Pharma, Big Media, lawyers, doctors, and so forth, there is always the possibility (as Dean Baker reminds us) of introducing more competition."http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/kapital-for-the-twenty-first-centuryI'll let the two of them fight it out in the ring to who protects the system the most effectively."His work also raises issues concerning the real heterogeneity (and fragmentation?) of the working class – something usually obscured in the two-class, owners and non-owners, model of Marx – which has important political implications."Is this really a particularly a new revelation by Piketty. Doesn't it go back to Burnham and others as pointed out by Mattick's reviewhttp://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/06/field-notes/editors-note-much-ado-about-somethingAs i said before, we shouldn't treat Piketty with kid gloves, he is as much a danger as any avowed libertarian of the Ron and Rand Paul type …just different . 

[alanjjohnstone]

The OECD prognosis (as interpreted by Paul Mason) less than optimistic about the future, regardless of Piketty's solutions.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/07/capitalism-rich-poor-2060-populations-technology-human-rights-inequality

[ALB]

You really should read the book and then you would see that Mason and Piketty share the same "prognosis" of slow growth and rising inequality this century. This could even be said to be the main theme of Piketty's book. It seems that the OECD too shares one of Piketty's imagined solutions of a tax on wealth (as no doubt would Mason). I can't remember if Paul Mason's has been one of the reviews you've recommended:http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/28/thomas-piketty-capital-surprise-bestsellerI really don't understand your picking on him in particular. OK, his solutions are pathetic and he gets Marx wrong. Ironically, though, as you will discover when you get round to reading the book, he too posits a tendency for his rate of return on capital to fall but says that this can be offset by counteracting tendencies so that it is not possible to say what the outcome will be.I think we need to be careful about joining in the state-capitalist chorus against him. Some mentioned Benjamin Kunkel's review. Here's his criticism of Piketty's proposed 'solution' of a global tax on capital:

Quote:

Piketty’s proposal entails the possibility of the democratic restraint of capital not just in one or two countries but in such a preponderance of them that governments everywhere will submit their wealthiest and thus most powerful citizens to a measure bound to repel them. Yet in his account of the 20th century ‘it took two world wars to wipe away the past and significantly reduce the return on capital’; redistribution was mainly an after-effect of hostilities. If the democratic control of capital has such scant precedent, how plausible can it be in the future? Citizens in the capitalist democracies of the mid-20th century felt strong identifications with starkly different political parties. Depoliticisation over the past generation is understandable, as parties of left and right converge towards the same vacant centre. (Piketty himself stoically supports a French Socialist Party even more cringing and feckless than others in Europe.) A recent study calculated that in the US the top 10 per cent of the income distribution enjoys an effect on political outcomes 15 times that of the remaining 90 per cent. Other countries are plutocratic to similar degrees. How are the executive committees of the ruling class in countries across the world to act in concert to impose Piketty’s tax on just this class?Socialist revolution frankly seems more likely.

Ah yes, but what sort of 'socialist revolution'?:

Quote:

Suppose a revolution in an advanced country gradually or suddenly transferred to the public all shares of corporations currently in private hands. Investment could thereafter be directed by publicly held mutual funds competing with one another for long-term returns, all of which revenue would flow to the general population or the administration carrying out its will. The size of the capital stock would be unaffected by the change in ownership. A far narrower wage schedule within and among enterprises would be one likely result.

Who's for a witch-hunt against Kunkel?

[alanjjohnstone]

It may well be on the best sellers list but most people who bought it won't read the book. Every book's Kindle page lists the five passages most highlighted by readers. If every reader is getting to the end, those highlights could be scattered throughout the length of the book. If nobody has made it past the introduction, the popular highlights will be clustered at the beginning. Thus, the Hawking Index (HI): Take the page numbers of a book's five top highlights, average them, and divide by the number of pages in the whole book. The higher the number, the more of the book we're guessing most people are likely to have read. The majority of Piketty readers get to Page 26 and give up and less than 3% actually compete it.http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-summers-most-unread-book-is-1404417569

[alanjjohnstone]

"I really don't understand your picking on him in particular."Similarly, i can't really understand why some are determined to defend him simply because he is a good statitician. Tsk Tsk…a witch-hunt, you say! Me and LBird on a thread devoted to Piketty (and some say i shouldn't be permitted to comment on it since i never read the book) raise issues that weren't particularly being brought to the forefront (granted you yourself invariably do qualify your comments) but a witch-hunt compared with all the glowing tributes…oh , i think you over-egg the pudding a little too much. As you say his solutions are pathetic. I think thats fair enough reason to pick on Piketty on this forum. i have tried to maintain my criticism on his practical politics and its political consequencs, rather than get into depths of what defines Capital and his knowledge of Marxian economics. Why not do the same with Kunkel? I'll be honest ..until i began to read about Piketty, i simply didn't know he existed despite whatever professional standing he possesses. My ignorance, once again. You can add many of the references to others in all the reviews, too, to my lack of knowledge …There are many out there i simply am not aware of much less even read.  If he was receiving the same media coverage…gaining such people as possible presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to praise him, supported by Krugman, i am sure , he would have appeared on my radar and deserved my ire but by all means start a let's put the knife into Kunkel thread and whoever else you think is misleading and diversionery …a very long list …and i will happily add a few dagger strokes.   Yes, i noted the OECD and Piketty have similar analysis similar solutions and similar possible gloom for all of us in the future. More the reason to try and advocate an optimistic alternative that we can demolish the whole capitalist edifice and not simply endeavour to re-shape it. We have to keep exposing the futility of Piketty (OECD) policies and promoting the viability of socialism. Those who insist he did us a service by providing information must now equally commend the OECD as has the blog.   http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-oecd-gloomy-future.html Raising another point, OECD, suggests the positive case for migration as a tool to ameliorate the economic problems of the future although admitting it raises political problems of implementation, what does Piketty say on the subject of immigration? I don't think i have read any referene to it by him, except perhaps indirectly in his EU manifesto. 

[alanjjohnstone]

Oh, you can sum up my view as simply …Piketty is not on our side. He may have scored for us an own-goal but he still plays for the other team and later on in the match, he may well be up front as an attacker, trying to score against us. A suitable crunch tackle now just might put him out of the game!Analogy suited for the World Cup times

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

…by all means start a let's put the knife into Kunkel thread and whoever else you think is misleading and diversionery …a very long list …and i will happily add a few dagger strokes.

I'm quite happy to play Cassius to your Brutus, Alan, in our determined campaign to kill any Caesar-like economist.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

I'm quite happy to play Cassius to your Brutus, Alan,

Interesting alliance between a Know Nothing and a Can't Know Anything ! Anyway, L.Bird, have you reached chapter 10 yet on "The Inequality of Capital Ownership"? If so, I'd be interested in what you think of it.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

LBird wrote:

I'm quite happy to play Cassius to your Brutus, Alan,

Interesting alliance between a Know Nothing and a Can't Know Anything !

Brilliant, ALB!

[alanjjohnstone]

OUCH!…,You-Know-It-All

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Anyway, L.Bird, have you reached chapter 10 yet on "The Inequality of Capital Ownership"? If so, I'd be interested in what you think of it.

No, I've only reached chapter 4, and that's only with some skipping!For me, reading bourgeois economists like Piketty is a bit like reading a 700 page account by a child about how the tooth-fairy puts a tanner under the pillow. It's full of 'interesting' detail like the wingspan of the fairy, how the pillow is filled with 'magic-down', so that the pillow floats up holding the head of the sleeper whilst the tooth-fairy deposits the 6d…No, I'm quite capable of seeing through the child's fairy-tale, I know where they've got this ludicrous idea from, and I just want to know why the tight-arsed parent only gave the kid a tanner for that bloody big, painfully extracted, molar.Pikitty, like all professors (and especially economists), is like a particularly slow kid who 'believes in' the tooth-fairy.I'm just surprised at how many regard his 'tales' as 'enchanting', rather than essentially misleading. pgb is apparently enamoured of the kid's curls and teddy-bear pyjamas. Ahhh, how cute! It must be the truth!Only the nasty Communists, LBird and alanjjohnstone (AKA "can't and don't know"), hate cute kids. Bastards!

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