Capital in the 21st Century and Capital and Ideology look interesting, but they are both quite long. Are they worth the time? Some of the stuff he says in the introductions makes him sound like he might be kind of a lib.
He's absolutely a radlib/social-democrat. I read capital in the 21st century, and found it fascinating as a data driven analysis of historical trends. Super interesting, lots of insights to be gained, and he's actually a pretty clear and cogent writer (if dry). All the critics I've seen from the left concede that.
However, some of his explanations for those historical trends are perplexing and his solutions are laughably lib considering the scale and sheer power of capital he spent one thousand pages to describe.
It's actually an amazing case of cognitive dissonance, because he himself says that only extremely destructive events really put a dent in the concentration of capital in Europe (namely: WWI and WWII), and social movements were at best able to slow down the concentration of economic power of capital but never to stop or reverse it (in his view) which is some truly blackpill shit.
And then he essentially offers as a solution: let's just tax the rich more lol!
Like... Really? That's it dude? But the 3 centuries of economic data are cool, ngl
Here's some criticism of Piketty:
https://jacobinmag.com/2014/05/a-general-without-an-army
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2019/10/18/capital-not-ideology/
https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4683-why-are-you-acting-the-marxist-frederic-lordon-on-thomas-piketty-s-capital-and-ideology
Haven't read them but I saw them recommended in a thread where someone was asking for good resources about the history of capitalism.
i only just started reading capital in 21 century. it's an impressive piece of work full of data if nothing else.
