The Disinherited Majority: Capital Questions – Piketty and Beyond
by Charles Derber
(Paradigm Publishers, £16.45)

CHARLES DERBER’S commentary is a response to Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century which has generated a level of debate that no-one would have expected when it was published last year.

A largely statistical analysis of income and inequality in the US and western Europe over the past couple of centuries isn’t something that normally courts attention but Piketty had come to a number of significant conclusions as a result of his study, all of which took on a timely relevance as a result of the ongoing world economic crisis.

Piketty contends that if left unchecked capitalism has a tendency towards greater inequality rather than convergence — so much so, that the 1 per cent really do dictate what type of society that the other 99 per cent will live in.

Why should this be seen as a problem? Because, Piketty argues, it is an assault on democracy and marks the emergence of patrimonial, caste-style capitalism in which inheritance rather than any sense of meritocracy plays the formative role.

A particularly appalling example of this is the fact that the 400 richest US citizens, with combined assets of over $2 trillion, now have as much wealth as all 41 million African-Americans in the US.

Piketty mocks the idea that income is in any way linked to productivity. The super-rich help themselves to more and more simply because they can. He is also insistent that the best economics is that which understands history and society, hence the need to revive the school of political economy.

And he challenges the idea that nothing can be done about this situation. Although he writes off socialism from the start, Piketty is keen to promote the idea of a “social state” where public ownership sits happily with private enterprise and in which limits to personal fortunes are set by a global wealth tax.

Critics like David Harvey have argued that the value of Picketty’s book lies largely in its presentation of data and that in terms of theory it’s actually more than a little weak. Others have seen Piketty’s solutions as a rehash of Keynesian-style social democracy.

Yet admirers, while taking all this on board, still see Piketty as having created a timely, detailed and exhaustively researched starting point. They tend to regard his project as ongoing and one which might well be radicalised by oppositional currents of the future.

This is an engaging commentary and the short and well-penned chapters, ending by raising a number of questions, are well suited to study groups. And insights from theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and from the novels of Jane Austen and Honore de Balzac liven up the commentaries, while notes on race, gender, war and the environment take up areas of analysis that Piketty has barely touched.

Well worth buying, even if you are not particularly interested in the words of the prophet himself.

Review by Steven Andrew