Abstract
Following the recent success of the book of the French economist Thomas Piketty, Le Capital au XXe siècle (Capital in the Twenty-first Century), we offer the reader an analysis of the work of this author and, above all, its criticism, from a Marxist point of view. It is first of all his interpretation of the evolution and fundamental contradictions of capitalism that we examine. We reveal his bad reading of Marx (if reading there was), but also the defects of his very definition of “capital,” reflecting its proximity to neoclassicism. The criticism is then directed against his project of “tax revolution” and finally on his limited conception of democracy.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This could comfort the supporters of the degrowth thesis (see Chapter 9). But we are also entitled to think that, in the decades to come, growth (not just any growth, of course) is desirable to lift most of humanity out of poverty, which is possible if it is true that world demography is going to stabilize.
- 3.
Piketty (2013, p. 942).
- 4.
Long and Herrera (2018).
- 5.
Piketty (2013, p. 127).
- 6.
Ibidem, p. 943.
- 7.
Ibidem, p. 925.
- 8.
There was indeed in the Twentieth Century a certain dispersion, with the constitution of a patrimonial middle class. However, “it only snatched a few crumbs: hardly more than a third of the patrimony in Europe, and barely a quarter in the United States” (Piketty [2013], p. 411).
- 9.
Piketty (2013, p. 62).
- 10.
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Piketty (2013, p. 233).
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Diatkine (2021).
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Here: Casanova and Herrera (2014), Presentation.
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Piketty (2013, p. 27).
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Ibidem, p. 362.
- 16.
See Harvey’s Afterthoughts on Piketty’s Capital (May 17, 2014): http://davidharvey.org/2014/05/afterthoughts-pikettys-capital/.
- 17.
Piketty (2013, p. 125).
- 18.
Ibidem, p. 318.
- 19.
Read: Andréani (1999).
- 20.
- 21.
Observatoire international de la Crise (2019).
- 22.
- 23.
Herrera (2018).
- 24.
Here: Herrera (2022).
- 25.
It is surprising that Piketty does not refer to an important book, supported by solid statistics: Pourquoi l’égalité est meilleure pour tous (why equality is better for everyone) by Wilkinson and Picket (2013). Equality for everyone and all, therefore, including the richest, especially in terms of physical and mental health….
- 26.
Piketty (2013, p. 945).
- 27.
Also see: Bidet (2022).
- 28.
Cf. the study by Guilluy (2014).
- 29.
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Herrera, R. (2022). Thomas Piketty’s Regulation of Capitalism Through a “Tax Revolution”. In: Confronting Mainstream Economics for Overcoming Capitalism. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05851-6_6
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