It is very rare that a scholarly work, particularly one filled with statistical dat, becomes a best seller, but Capital in the 21st Century by French Economist Thomas Piketty has become that in much of the world. Piketty has been attacked by rightists as a Marxist, which he has steadfastly denied, praised by liberals and progressives for providing an enormous quantity of statistical data to connect capitalism with deepening economic inequality and crisis, and criticized internationally by many Marxists for both stating the obvious and failing to offer any realistic solution ot the present global economic crisis. Below, I have posted Art Perlo's careful and clear Marxist analysis of Piketty's work. Art by the way is the son of the late Victor Perlo, leading Marxist economist, CPUSA activist, who worked in the New Deal government and whose writings on the economics of racism and many other subjects continue to have great value for today.
As Art says below, there are some difficulties with the links but hopefully our readers will find the presentation as stimulating and insightful as I did
Norman Markowitz
The talk is titled, An activist view of Piketty, and includes seven sections:
1) Introduction
2) What does the book say about the history and causes of inequality?
3) Solutions proposed by Piketty
4) Critics from the right
5) Comments by progressives, leftists, Marxists
6) One Communist's evaluation of Piketty's Capital
7) Where do we go from here?
Below are links to a video of the presentation and the questions and answers. Parts of the talk will be extracted and expanded for a forthcoming article to be submitted to PA.
Part 1 (about 40 minutes) my presentation on Piketty (audio improves after first 45 seconds): http://youtu.be/dDU1Wm2LCCM
Part 2 Questions and Answers (audio is poor for questions, good for answers) http://youtu.be/XzwwRk13ssU
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