by
David Keenan
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[...] What the hell (I was in Paris). Afterwards I walked along the Seine in the early evening where groups of friends and lovers were drinking wine and picnicking on coats spread out on the grass (as the sun was going down). I sat on the grass (a couple with bare feet were sleeping on a blanket right next to me) until nearly ten o’clock when I guessed my friend would probably be home by now (either that or I would be sleeping on the grass next to them for the night, which actually appealed to me, in a way) but even so I went to one more bar but looking at all the unattainable women drinking on the pavement (with beautiful heels on and nylons and with handbags overflowing with personal stuff and their own lives that had nothing to do with mine) made me melancholy for the first time and I felt old, somehow (or too young), and wanted to go home.
[...] There was a pair of thick floor-length brown velvet curtains (that were pulled shut) and some candles burning (and some lamps) and on the couch there was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, done up with dark hair and red lips and oversized glasses (her hair like a dark silent river, a river that was moving in complete silence, that’s what it seemed like the first time I saw her) and her ears (don’t even ask me about her ears), I can’t even describe her ears, she had hair pulled back over one of them and it was like seeing the earth from space, the hollow earth (or seeing yourself as a foetus, in the womb of your mother), and she was smoking a cigarette, her arm at a perfect angle (taut, not without effort, but still somehow easy, relaxed), and she was so slim (barely budding) yet (still) she seemed sophisticated and mysterious and old. This relationship is ass-backwards, I said to myself. Her name was Valentine (how could it have been anything else?). This is Valentine, Patty said, my paramour (that’s how he introduced her). I felt unsophisticated (and poor). Valentine stood up and offered me her cheek. I forgot that in France you are supposed to kiss both cheeks so I did it all over again and she laughed but when I looked into her eyes they were like marbles. Let’s get something to eat, Patty said, grabbing his coat, and although I had already eaten I decided to go with the flow.
I began to think of people not as individuals but as destinations, as map points across this inhospitable desert, like an oasis of flesh, a port of spit and smell, and sometimes I would breathe it in, you know, with my legs spread in the back seat of a car or in a nightclub or in some bushes next to a train station and it would smell so bad that I would say to myself give me my own rotting corpse over the death in life of a suburban marriage, stick a glass bottle up my ass before you slide a ring onto my finger.
It was like a walking frame or a wheelchair, a crutch, which when you think about it is what most writing is, something to support the figure of the writer, so that he doesn’t fall back into the primordial soup of everyone else, which is no one.
So, even before Thomas Piketty’s book, the topic of ‘inequality’ had arrived in the economic mainstream, and with the following line of argumentation: inequality and poverty are no longer regarded so much as a consequence of capitalist economic growth, but rather as a brake on such growth and as a problem for stability. [...] What stands at the centre of attention are no longer the problems that the poor have with capitalism, but the problems that the poor pose for capitalism and its growth. The demand that follows from this is no longer a fundamental change of economic system, but merely a correction of the existing one – and not a correction of wealth to the benefit of the poor, but a correction of poverty for the benefit of wealth. The goal is not a better life for people – such a better life is only supposed to be a means of making economic growth smoother and faster. [...]
this is a v good assessment
[...] if all people owned an equal amount of wealth, all of them would equally profit from a strong growth of capital. In fact, however, wealth is unequally distributed, according to Piketty. He does not explain why that is. Rather, he assumes inequality as a given, and examines its development over time. This demonstrates, according to Piketty, that the strong growth of wealth in contrast to that of income exacerbates an inequality characteristic of all societies: those who have, receive (more). The rich become richer. According to Piketty, increasingly inequality is not a coincidence, but rather inscribed into economic development. Piketty says this is the case not only under capitalism, but also in other economic forms. However, Piketty does not wish for this diagnosis of growing inequality to be understood as a call to class struggle: ‘To be clear, my purpose here is not to plead the case of workers against owners but rather to gain as clear as possible a view of reality.’
p40 of Capital
[...] Only a few years afterwards, however, it underwent a drastic reduction. One reason for this was of course the loss of wealth in the form of ‘war damages’. A further reason was the devaluation of financial wealth in the form of government bonds: government bonds were already held in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but in the course of war financing from 1914 on, their importance increased. After the First World War, these assets were devalued by inflation. In order to minimize the effects of inflation upon the general public and curb the price spiral, rent controls were also introduced, which reduced the returns on real estate. And finally, in their financial need, governments decided upon higher taxes upon inheritance and top incomes, which further eroded wealth – at least in France, Germany, Britain and the US.
This taxation was something new. Before the war ‘tax rates, even on the most astronomical incomes, remained extremely low … This was true everywhere, without exception.’
Hidden behind these pure numbers, however, are radical changes within society. According to Piketty, states used their tax revenues in order to build welfare state structures. With the loss of significance of the super-rich, and a new relation between the state and the market, a new middle class emerged that could build up wealth by means of its labour-power and income. The emergence of this middle class was the result of the decline of the capital–income ratio. [...]
Piketty’s central point of critique is aimed at the legitimation of inequality. Bourgeois society’s self-description, in which inequality is a consequence of different abilities, will no longer be accurate in the future. To make a long story short: effort will no longer be worth it.
While Piketty attacks the dominant economic form, capitalism, he never argues in an anti-capitalist way. First of all, his ‘laws of distribution’ according to his work are valid in every economic formation, not just in capitalism (which he also leaves conceptually vague). For Piketty, growing inequality is a law of wealth per se, not of a specifically capitalist form of wealth. Secondly, his political demands do not amount to a fundamental transformation of the system, but rather are limited to a few changes in the tax system, which are supposed to make capitalism more stable. Piketty’s enormously constructive critique of capitalism makes him compatible to the reigning crisis discourse. Despite all coquetry, Piketty never misses a chance to distance himself from Marx’s ideas (which are attributed to him).