If you have read 'Capital in the 21st Century', Thomas Piketty’s acclaimed work, you may well be able to confirm that:
(a) Piketty regards the 'natural or spontaneous' tendency of capitalism is for the rich to get richer proportionately as well as absolutely;
(b) that he thinks that this tendency can be, and has been, stopped or reversed by certain outside events at least temporarily;
(c) that he himself doesn't think that the political interventions he proposes to try to do this are likely to be implemented.
In other words, he is inconsistent.
He ought to draw the conclusion that we do -- that the only way out of inequality is to replace capitalism with socialism (or communism, the same thing).
The position (b) doesn’t invalidate the socialist argument. Yes, the tendency can be temporarily slowed down but the point is that this will always only be temporary; in due course the 'natural or spontaneous' tendency will begin to win out again.
Nor are we necessarily have to be committed to (a) in full, i.e we only need accept that the tendency under capitalism is for the rich to get richer absolutely, i.e that they don't necessarily have to get richer relatively to the rest of the population. That depends on the specific property and inheritance laws in force at a particular time and place. It didn't apply to the sort of state capitalism in the old USSR where the ruling class collectively monopolised the means of production without individual private property rights and where being a member of the exploiting class was not handed down through inheritance.
The point is that, as Marx explained, the logic of capitalism is the accumulation of more and more capital out of surplus value extracted from the wage working class, irrespective of who owns or benefits from the accumulated capital.
ALB
(a) Piketty regards the 'natural or spontaneous' tendency of capitalism is for the rich to get richer proportionately as well as absolutely;
(b) that he thinks that this tendency can be, and has been, stopped or reversed by certain outside events at least temporarily;
(c) that he himself doesn't think that the political interventions he proposes to try to do this are likely to be implemented.
In other words, he is inconsistent.
He ought to draw the conclusion that we do -- that the only way out of inequality is to replace capitalism with socialism (or communism, the same thing).
The position (b) doesn’t invalidate the socialist argument. Yes, the tendency can be temporarily slowed down but the point is that this will always only be temporary; in due course the 'natural or spontaneous' tendency will begin to win out again.
Nor are we necessarily have to be committed to (a) in full, i.e we only need accept that the tendency under capitalism is for the rich to get richer absolutely, i.e that they don't necessarily have to get richer relatively to the rest of the population. That depends on the specific property and inheritance laws in force at a particular time and place. It didn't apply to the sort of state capitalism in the old USSR where the ruling class collectively monopolised the means of production without individual private property rights and where being a member of the exploiting class was not handed down through inheritance.
The point is that, as Marx explained, the logic of capitalism is the accumulation of more and more capital out of surplus value extracted from the wage working class, irrespective of who owns or benefits from the accumulated capital.
ALB
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