Having read both Capital Vol I and Capital in the 21st Century, all I read out of this is that the author is upset that Pickety didn't use Marxist analysis, which like... of course he didn't? He's not a Marxist and his project is fundamentally different: to show this system is self-defeating and headed for crisis, within its own logic of modern bourgeois economics. If you don't like his definition of capital, well, ctrl-f and replace the word with something else and keep reading. Put him in his context and you can still get quite a bit out of his book.
What Pickety is great for is radicalizing nerds or other people that can appreciate his massive data sets.
What Piketty is bad in is to describe how the system is created. He uses plenty of data to argue about iron laws which aren't iron laws, but just some historic similarities which do not hold true in different conditions or states of the financial system or the system of political economy.
Having read both Capital Vol I and Capital in the 21st Century, all I read out of this is that the author is upset that Pickety didn't use Marxist analysis, which like... of course he didn't? He's not a Marxist and his project is fundamentally different: to show this system is self-defeating and headed for crisis, within its own logic of modern bourgeois economics. If you don't like his definition of capital, well, ctrl-f and replace the word with something else and keep reading. Put him in his context and you can still get quite a bit out of his book.
What Pickety is great for is radicalizing nerds or other people that can appreciate his massive data sets.
What Piketty is bad in is to describe how the system is created. He uses plenty of data to argue about iron laws which aren't iron laws, but just some historic similarities which do not hold true in different conditions or states of the financial system or the system of political economy.
Yeah you're right, and I'd also make the same critiques of Marx in a lot of cases.
:volcel-police:
:arm-L: :bit-nay: :bit-yay: :arm-R:
Is this a bit?