Piketty and Marx: Or, why no one needs to read anything

Less than a week ago, Jacobin magazine enumerated a list of nine canned responses criticizing the French neo-Keynesian economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Zachary Levenson gave us the guide for “How to Write a Marxist Critique of Thomas Piketty without Actually Reading the Book.” It ranges between Marx and Piketty’s radically different conceptions of capital to the latter’s conflation of derivatives stemming from finance and industry. “Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a long book,” Levenson writes, sympathizing with his readers, “and you just don’t have time in your busy schedule to finish it and formulate a materialist critique.” Don’t worry, he urges, “we’ve got you covered.”

No doubt: there’s plenty of truth to such a list, conceived as it is in parody. Many self-proclaimed Marxists are quite eager to dismiss the latest fad in social liberal economic thought, and counterpose the trenchant historical critique offered by Marx to the dry data analysis offered by Piketty. Who hasn’t heard some of these scripted objections bandied about by “radicals” who clearly haven’t read the book?

Yeah, from the blurb on the back it may seem a tired rehashing of Keynesian commonplaces (now almost a century old). Granted, it might appear that Piketty merely “repackages the commonly known as the expertly known,” as one reviewer has put it, by treating observations of inequality under capitalism as if they were earth-shattering discoveries. But does that really justify all the unlettered pedantry of the Marxish commentariat? Shouldn’t people read Capital in the Twenty-First Century before issuing a judgment?

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As it turns out, one needn’t read something in order to dismiss it outright — at least, if we’re to follow Piketty’s own example. In an interview Isaac Chotiner conducted with Piketty for The New Republic, a revealing exchange took place:

Isaac Chotiner: Can you talk a little bit about the effect of Marx on your thinking and how you came to start reading him?
Thomas Piketty: Marx? I never managed really to read it. I mean I don’t know if you’ve tried to read it. Have you tried?
Isaac Chotiner: Some of his essays, but not the economics work.
Thomas Piketty: The Communist Manifesto of 1848 is a short and strong piece. Das Kapital, I think, is very difficult to read and for me it was not very influential.
Isaac Chotiner: Because your book, obviously with the title, it seemed like you were tipping your hat to him in some ways.
Thomas Piketty: No — not at all, not at all! The big difference is that my book is a book about the history of capital. In the books of Marx there’s no data.

How strange it is that despite the fact that Piketty “never managed to read [Marx’s works],” aside from the Communist Manifesto (practically required reading for any undergraduate who takes a history course), he could confidently claim that “[i]n the books of Marx there’s no data.” Perhaps he thumbed casually through them? Maybe perused the index? Anyone who has so much as glanced at Marx’s economic manuscripts will know that there’s plenty of “hard” empirical evidence amassed, even if his argument doesn’t end up being crudely empiricist or positivistic. So it’s doubtful that Piketty took much time to acquaint himself with the writings of someone who he’s said collects no data. All those long hours Marx spent holed up in the British Library over the course of a decade were for naught, it would seem.

Of course, it should be patently obvious why Jacobin would want to anticipate and defuse potential criticisms of Piketty’s work. The “magazine of culture and polemic,” now widely-read and distributed, has built a name for itself on the basis of paeans to the welfare state (see the “manifesto for building social democracy” by Peter Frase and Bhaskar Sunkara published in In These Times) and articles extolling the virtues of market socialism (see Seth Ackerman and James Livingston). Little wonder, then, that their elder spokesman Corey Robin would rise to Piketty’s defense by condemning “Intellectual History at the New York Times.” If Marx’s theories or politics were shown to be at odds with the findings of Piketty, whose graphs and flowcharts they’re quite keen to appropriate, the jig would be up. Hence Levenson’s lighthearted sendup, as if there’s no good reason Marxists would object to the argument in Capital in the Twenty-First Century if only they read it.

As for myself, in my naïveté, I’m about a third of the way through Piketty’s massive tome. It’s not vulgar, even if some of its characterizations are a bit simplistic. The division of all hitherto existing accounts of capitalism into “catastrophism” (Malthus, Ricardo, Marx) on the one hand and “fairy tales” (Hayek and the Austrians) on the other can only be granted with extreme reservations, and even then only schematically for the purpose of argument. Probably just wasting my time, though. Krugman has written what will likely be regarded as the definitive review of Piketty’s book for the NYRB, a predictably glowing appraisal, so I could probably skim that and just forget about the remaining 450 pages. Doug Henwood’s review of Capital in the Twenty-First Century was already fairly serviceable, in any case.

The lesson here is a simple one: never read anything. It’ll only cloud your judgment.

14 thoughts on “Piketty and Marx: Or, why no one needs to read anything

  1. I actually like Jehu’s approach over on The Real Movement (http://therealmovement.wordpress.com):

    “A number of writers have attempted to critique Thomas Piketty’s Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century. However, I have found it a better use of my time to read and critique the Marxist critiques of Piketty’s 600 pages of worthless bourgeois simpleton trash.”

    At least his approach demands more from supposed Marxist critics… :)

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      • Sure. But the implication is that Keynesian commonplaces are dismissible (in part) because they’re almost a century old. But then why not Marx too if that’s the case?

  3. I don’t get what “Zachary Levenson” meant with “Point out that his solution is openly reformist, and besides, would require worker militancy on a scale not witnessed in nearly a century.” Probably, he thinks that the world is only North America and Western Europe.

  4. I don’t know about Piketty, but surveying the history of applied marxism, I can’t say I’m very impressed by its abysmal failure on so many levels. Old beardy may have had good intentions, but did he actually come up with anything that works out well in practice? No wonder marxism only survives as either a cult or a meaningless banner.

  5. It’s the urge to pontificate that doesn’t sit well with actually reading stuff, which is not all that unique to Marxism either. Nasty little human habit, which I’m not fully immune to myself alas. Maybe some psychoanalysis would be in order here, just to grasp where it comes from.

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  7. I didn’t read full work of piketty but i read his criticism of marx “LTRPF” , so its very obvious that pikettys criticism of law is really very weak . first it must be said that way he is calculating profit rates is fundamentally differs from marxian formula, i will not start to talk that he doesn’t understand marxs view of technological development , an so on and so on.. . i its not new from criticize Marx form neo-clasical theory ….

    but this ironical article from Jacobin magazine was really very shitty and ironical..
    i read roberts criticism of pikkety and esteban maito exellent work. and both of them are consecutive…

    https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/?s=piketty Roberts blog

    http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/55839/ maitos work.

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