stuartw2112
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Hi Adam,
Interesting, I shall read carefully when I get that far and get back to you (as I hint in my review, I reviewed it before I’d finished reading it!). But if you can’t get it, I doubt I will! CheersPiketty is not a socialist or Marxist and doesn't remotely pretend to be. This makes his argument more powerful in a way. When the right attack him for being a socialist or Marxist, when he obviously isn't, they stand revealed as being exactly what Marx said they were: apologists for wealth and power, not remotely interested in a scientific approach to economic questions. Piketty is against extremes of inequality but not inequality per se – this is consistent with his position. But it's the position of most socialists too – the demand is not for equality, but for the fulfilment of individual need, of freedom.
FWIW: me on Pikettyhttp://bigchieftablets.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/an-introduction-to-thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/
I've only just started the book, but it is living up to expectations. It is lucidly written, in clear English (well, the translation is…), full of fascinating details, provides a comprehensive historical overview, is based on exhaustive analysis of actual data rather than airy speculation, is refreshingly modest about what it hopes to achieve, and is rooted in real-world political and economic debates, not to mention in the everyday experience of daily life. No wonder the Marxists are having to try hard to pretend not to hate it!
Marx was an Hegelian who assumed, for the sake of argument, that the political economy of his day was basically right, was the high point of scientific achievement, and then examined where the logic of the argument turned into its opposite. He was attempting to put socialist argument on a sounder (more 'scientific') footing.Graeber is an anarchist and an anthropologist who shows how human economies actually operate, and how capitalist economies might have arisen out of them. In this sense, he is complementary to Marx, and shows the historical/anthropological basis for what Marx would have called commodity fetishism and wage-slavery.Piketty is an economist and a liberal who shows, from exhaustive analysis of data, that capitalism does not live up to its own ideals, and is never likely to, and who therefore proposes radical (utopian) reforms to save it from itself.
Reviews of Piketty's (and Graeber's) book by Marxists that say "well, it's not Marx, is it?" are a bit depressing. If it was Marx, it wouldn't be worth reading, or writing, would it? Both Graeber's book on debt (which I've read) and Piketty's book (which I've started) are wonderful and informative and will be of profound help to anyone who wants to understand the modern world.
Found this a very useful summary, of relevance to the debates on here:http://alittleecon.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/the-basics-of-modern-monetary-theory/
Yes, Adam, I am broadly sympathetic to the Socialist Resistance article you link to, though I don't share the author's political standpoint – I am not a Leninist or Trotskist, nor a stagist, nor a revolutionary biding his time. I'm a libertarian socialist, wanting to work with other socialists, within a democratic context, trying to figure out a way forward and what a socialism of our century will look like.I'll leave it there as I seem to have exhausted the patience of some of your comrades, and they are right that the discussion started to go round in circle long ago. All the best
Indeed, Jools, agreed. If anything shows the dangers inherent in not trying to organise a left unity opposition, in having no Owen Jones voice in the mainstream, it's the rise of UKIP.
To believe that socialist reforms are not possible due to the nature of capitalism, you'd have to believe that Marx's laws of capitalism are basically the same in nature as Newton's laws. I don't share this faith. To believe that it was the crisis itself that opened up the space for radical criticism is fair enough, but then again, someone had to move into that space – and the people who do that most energetically and successfully are probably those not burdened with beliefs in iron laws. It's people like that that will find the way out, if there is one.
Left Unity has stood on a (currently) "unrealisable" set of socialist reforms, the SPGB stood on a platform of one big unrealisable socialist reform. I don't see the difference. I'd be interests to know what constituted a big breakthrough. Have the Greens made one? Have Ukip? That's where we're gunning for.
Thanks Adam, was looking forward to your analysis. What your conclusion should have said, though, is something like this: "given that LU has been going for barely a year, it had made remarkable progress, polling the same vote as longer established left parties where it has stood, and in one place doing rather better, beating the Tory candidate. Left Unity has also had a remarkably successful press operation, and its success, as well as the good work of people like Owen Jones and Caroline Lucas, had made the overall climate more open to left ideas generally. We in the SPGB have benefited from this too, so we offer our thanks to our left comrades and congratulate LU on its rapid progress."
