BOOK REVIEW. Why Piketty Cannot Be Read and Reviewed in Isolation. Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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1 BOOK REVIEW BOOK REVIEW Why Piketty Cannot Be Read and Reviewed in Isolation Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty, 2014 The Belknap Press of Harvard University Constructing Capitalisms: transforming business systems in Central and Eastern Europe Roderick Martin, 2013 Oxford University Press Tom Lynch Alberta Children s Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary Central European Journal of Public Policy Vol. 8 2 December 2014 pp ISSN Tom Lynch Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Central European Journal of Public Policy Vol. 8 2 December 2014 Economist Paul Krugman 1 reviewed Thomas Piketty s Capital in the Twenty- First Century and praised it as a bona fide phenomenon about which conservatives are terrified. Notwithstanding this act of consecration, not all conservatives were terrified. In his May 23, , review, Chris Giles, economics editor of the Financial Times, criticized Piketty s data quality and definitions. Piketty published his response to Giles critique via the World Wide Web. 3 I share Krugman s view that Piketty s book is a phenomenon. I recognize that the book is a valuable contribution to a greater understanding of capitalism and wealth. I also have sympathy with Piketty s critics. My principal reservations with the book are technical, having to do with Piketty s conceptual approach. However, while reading Piketty, I developed a general unease about the analysis as a whole. Yes, it is well done. Yes, it provides much food for thought. But the way in which this book and its author have become ideological objects and entered into a broad Western political discourse about inequality and its effects caused me to consider how best to isolate these effects so that the book could be presented in a review format as a book and not a phenomenon. My sense of the challenge was that a review of an academic publishing phenomenon in the age of the internet and personal web pages should provide the traditional critique within a broader perspective that goes beyond the unique work. My solution balances Piketty s perspective with another equally strong academic perspective provided by Roderick Martin s Constructing Capitalisms: Transforming Business Systems in Central and Eastern Europe. The choice of Martin s book is deliberate. Both authors address the political, social justice and policy challenges of capitalist production in the twentyfirst century. Not as well known as Piketty, Martin is an industrial sociologist whose book focuses on the development of capitalisms in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) following the disestablishment of communism. Martin s book appeared in 2013, the same year as Piketty s original French version and it is a practical study of the way in which economics develops in a period of transition and how capitalism can have variants. Both authors deploy sophisticated analytical methods to study capitalism and both use challenging and comprehensive datasets to present their cases. Each book is a technical achievement of high quality. Each is geared to a professional or student audience. Reviewing Martin alongside Piketty balances the enthusiasm that obscures the flaws 1 Paul Krugman, The Piketty Panic, New York Times, April 24, Chris Giles, Piketty did his sums wrong in bestseller that tapped into the inequality zeitgeist, Financial Times, May 24 25, Thomas Piketty, Technical Appendix, Addendum: Response to Financial Times, May 28, 2014,

2 of Piketty s book with the criticism that obscures its virtues. Reviewing Martin with Piketty allows readers to develop a deeper understanding of the ways in which capitalism is developing in the twenty-first century. As Piketty s book is more widely known, I begin there. The strengths of Piketty s book include: the creation and use of extended time series data on income and wealth; a detailed case study analysis of wealth evolution in developed and developing regions; and, following a technique used successfully by Pierre Bourdieu, using the work of classical authors such as Jane Austen to create historical portraits of wealth from different eras and countries to complement his technical analysis. Piketty s (2014, 46) conceptual target is inequality in non-human capital. When he speaks of capital, he refers without further qualification to the sum total of nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market. Capital includes all forms of real property (including residential real estate) as well as financial and professional capital (plants, infrastructure, machinery, patents and so on). Piketty s conceptual approach relies heavily on what he calls two fundamental laws of capitalism. His first law is an accounting identity, α = r β, where α is the share of income from capital in national income, r is the rate of return on capital and β is the capital-income ratio (Piketty, 2014, 52). Piketty s (2014, 166) second law fundamental law of capitalism is an identity expressing the ratio between the savings rate and the growth rate of national income, β = s g. This ratio is the Harrod-Domar-Solow formula which Piketty 4 and Zucman 4 used in 2013 to study wealth-income ratios in rich countries between 1700 and An acknowledgement from Piketty that others developed the formula underlying his second law eventually arrives on page 230 when the author offers a broader discussion of the relationship between savings rates, population growth, technology and other factors. He explains the implications of the second law in his book to provide a straightforward comment about the relationships between the growth rates of economies and their savings rates. Why he initially presented the Harrod- Domar-Solow formula without suitable attribution is a question that must be answered by Piketty. I believe this was possibly a stylistic choice taken to advance, accelerate the exposition, but it was a confusing choice from the reader s perspective. Piketty wants to understand how wealth comes to be unequally distributed over time and what consequences wealth creation and transmission might have over the long term. In his introduction, Piketty poses three questions: 4 Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman, Capital is Back: Wealth-Income Ratios in Rich Countries , July 26, 2013 a) Was Marx s analysis correct that over time the dynamics of private capital accumulation inevitably leads to the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands? b) Do the balancing forces of growth, competition, and technological progress lead in later stages of development to reduced inequality and greater harmony between the classes, as Simon Kuznets thought in the twentieth century? c) What do we really know about how wealth and income have evolved since the eighteenth century, and what lessons can we derive from that knowledge for the century now underway? Each question deserves its own separate book. Properly understanding Piketty s integrated analysis requires a strong familiarity with economic theory, or at least certain variants of economic theory. The answer to question (a) appears to be that wealth has always been concentrated, and that, while there may be more hands involved today than in the past, concentration trumps greater numbers. The answer to question (b) appears to be that the Kuznets curve is not an adequate empirical generalization (Piketty, 2014, 274) to explain trends in inequality in the modern, industrial period. Rather than stabilizing, inequality has become greater and any relationship between reality and the assumptions of the Kuznets curve had to do with the historical context in which Kuznets worked and studied inequality (Piketty, 2014, 15). Piketty s answer to question (c) is that the world appears to be entering an age of inequality similar to the period of , which was characterized by the emergence of immense private fortunes based on capitalist accumulation and the subsequent inheritance and disposition of that wealth through individual bequests, family trusts and endowments to philanthropy. Piketty notes that once again there are numerous great personal fortunes largely derived from capitalist accumulation which will once again be passed on to heirs and otherwise disposed and dispersed, thereby becoming a major foundational element of inequality in the 21 st century. Piketty further argues that the levels of inequality that could result are posing a strong threat to the ongoing vitality of global democracy. To counter these predicted wealth, inheritance and inequality trends, Piketty advocates for a progressive global tax on capital. Piketty (2014, 471) recognizes that this policy recommendation is a utopian ideal. He suggests starting with regional or continental taxes. While this particular policy recommendation has received a great deal of critical and popular attention, Piketty outlines several others that are noteworthy as well:

3 1. Piketty (2014, 490) draws attention to pension reform in developed countries, summarized as follows One of the most important reforms the twenty-first century social state needs to make is to establish a unified retirement scheme based on individual accounts with equal rights for everyone, no matter how complex one s career path ; 2. Reforming the advanced educational system to ensure that social mobility is achieved in line with meritocratic principles (Piketty, 2014, 484 7); 3. In terms of managing public debt, a preference with strong arguments, for fiscal rather than monetary solutions (Piketty, 2014, ). Piketty offers a brief section on wealth in Canada (Piketty, 2014, 157 8). This section was problematic for this reviewer. When I read this section, my misgivings about his approach emerged. As a Canadian reading Piketty, I believe that many Canadian academics, as well as many economically literate Canadians, would be surprised to learn that today more than 98% of Canada is Canadian-owned and less than 2% is foreign-owned. Why surprise? Because much academic ink in Canada has been spilled documenting the opposite. Piketty s assessment of the Canadian case is most likely explained by recalling that his definition of capital and wealth includes all forms of real property, including residential real estate. Most home ownership in Canada exists in the legal form of joint tenancy in which both partners share equally the profit and loss from sales of homes. From the Canadian perspective, household ownership via bank mortgages usually implies significant institutional debt and long-term obligations for families. So while home ownership may constitute wealth at the individual or family level for Piketty, most Canadian academics that study trends in national and foreign ownership at the state level would not count home ownership towards a national balance sheet used to determine what proportion of the Canadian economy was Canadian-owned. Piketty s observations about Canada became more curious when he wondered why Canada s historical experience of capital/wealth growth differed from the United States even though both occupy the same continent. When contrasting the historic patterns of ownership and foreign investment in Canada and the United States, Piketty states that it is difficult to find purely economic reasons why these two North American trajectories should differ so profoundly. Clearly political factors played a central role. Yes, political factors played a role but so too did significant economic differences between the two countries, namely the different size of the market opportunity presented by each country and the slowness with which Canada developed a manufacturing base for economic growth. Are these differences salient according to Piketty s methodology and datasets? Perhaps not. However, Piketty s treatment of Can- ada crystallized this reviewer s concerns about an intellectual and conceptual looseness that seems to suffuse Piketty s text. My reaction was to recall Pierre Bourdieu s observation, borrowed from Marx, that scholars may confuse the logic of things with the things of logic. This unease of mine extended to Piketty s major policy recommendation the global tax on wealth. If wealth appears to trump attempts at economic equality, it is not just because of economics, but also because of a remarkable network of wealth makers who profit and do well out of current trends and patterns of inequality. Such a tax is likely to be opposed by investment counselling and wealth management technicians working with firms such as CapGemini Consulting, investment bankers, and the merchants, dealers and workers who profit from the sale of positional goods of interest to the wealthy goods such as privacy, security, art, exclusive real estate, super-yachts, football teams, jewellery, and Swiss watches. These wealth makers constitute a superstructure which would be difficult for any equality advocate to overcome. Overall, Piketty says little about the global industries, both real and virtual, that depend upon great wealth and which therefore support and sustain great wealth. My wariness of the book s conclusions and policy recommendations was further compounded by Piketty s allocation of most of his background analysis to a technical appendix available only on his website. Committed readers have to plough through 655 pages of text and notes in the book and then a further 97 pages of technical appendix in order to really understand that capital is back. This seems a heavy price to pay for the basic insight that inequality is a fundamental consequence of capitalism especially when others, such as CapGemini Consulting, make the same point with less fuss and somewhat greater clarity. Piketty asks the reader to pay this price because, given the way he sees wealth being transferred between generations in the twenty-first century, the issue at stake is nothing less than a reinvention of democratic governance such that all may have a fair chance at happiness. It is Piketty s hope that neither where you were born nor whether you were born black or white, male or female, should necessarily determine how well you live or for how long. One topic about which Piketty is even briefer than in the case of Canada has to do with wealth and inequality growth in Russia and the former eastern bloc countries between the late 1980 s and the present (Piketty, 2014, 186 7). Piketty s explanation is not one that seems to rely on either of his laws. His view is that the considerable growth of private wealth in Russia and CEE had nothing to do with saving or with his second fundamental law of capitalism, β = s g, but rather was the result of the transfer of capital ownership from government to private individuals. This is a rather simplistic view in contrast to the description of these changes by our second author, Roderick Martin

4 In contrast to Piketty s use of economic laws to explain trends in inequality and wealth, Martin (2013, 5) adopts an inductive, comparative institutional approach to focus on economic and political transformations that occurred in CEE in the latter part of the twentieth century. Martin s book examines economic change and the development of capitalism in four CEE countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. His national cases are chosen not only because they differ but also because they are similar in significant respects. Martin (2013, 6) poses his particular research problem in the following manner: Research on the four countries identified a range of different circumstances, a set of transformations, not a single transformation, constructing capitalisms not constructing capitalism, reflecting the importance of national differences in the transformation process. Martin (2013, 7) organizes his analysis into nine chapters and adopts a neoinstitutional approach to analyze his case study data, focused on four normative and legal elements: property ownership, capital accumulation, the relation between national business systems and international production systems, and the role of the state. He makes extensive use of a great deal of publicly available data from organizations such as the World Bank and Eurostat. He effectively summarizes much of the academic research and analysis that has focused on business system transformations in CEE. The books of Piketty and Martin are very different. Martin s analysis is a strong reminder that economic phenomena such as economic growth and inequality do not just happen but require work by many actors at both the individual and institutional level. Martin constructs an in-depth case study that is nothing less than a foundational analysis of the economic transformation in post-communist Europe between 1989 and the present. He has provided scholars studying the economic transformation of socialist countries with a remarkable teaching and research tool. Martin s (2013, 58 9) discussion of inequality is brief and to the point. The expectations associated with the Kuznets inverted U-curve hypothesis were not fulfilled. In all four countries, there were few signs that inequality either stabilized or attenuated as the economic transformations proceeded following the break-up of the 20 th century Soviet empire. Martin (2013, 56) cites a range of useful research studies by others suggesting that changes in inequality were as much a result of non-economic as economic factors. Martin has several must-read chapters for any serious student of European post-communist economies: one dealing with capital accumulation; one dealing with the international economy; and one which examines the role of the state. The cumulative impact of these three chapters is formidable as the reader begins to understand how the transformation of post-communist economies was a virtual bonanza for manufacturing and service companies from the West. While wealth was created locally, much was also exported. As state actors were coping with new ways of operating within their borders, they were simultaneously seeking opportunities to make the borders fluid though joining the European Union. Martin makes an important contribution to the broader study of economic transformation by bringing together a great deal of information regarding the role of Western academics in the development of market capitalisms in former Communist-bloc nations. Martin (2013, 211) also balances the account of transformation by noting how states often continued as owners partial or full of many enterprises. Close cooperation between the state and national and international economic actors becomes a decisive feature of the ways in which capitalisms developed in the post-communist era, with corruption being a common feature (Martin, 2013, 212 3). Martin s (2013, 210 4) discussion of the role played by corruption is nuanced. He allows the reader to appreciate how the weight of history in the region likely meant that state intervention in business activities remained more extensive than in liberal market capitalisms and that close relations between states and businesses provided the potential for some corruption to occur. Additionally, political parties faced the temptation of business contributions to make the business of liberal democratic politics work (Martin, 2013, 213). However, corruption was not always the end state. The political turnover in this region meant that political corruption could be checked more by political competition than by legislation (Martin, 2013, 213). Where Martin differs most from Piketty is the way his approach allows for a more open sense of the future. Martin (2013, 298) makes the point that [p] ath dependence does not imply that the future will be like the past: unexpected events may undermine current trends, even when the trends themselves have been correctly identified. Martin presents the future as a much more open set of possibilities, one that is negotiated. Economic possibility itself becomes a work in progress and not a deterministic process. Piketty s perspectives on the past and future of wealth are wedded to a much more deterministic view of the future that only radical utopian policy actions such as a global wealth tax can alter. Both theoretical approaches have their advantages and disadvantages and each suit their author s intent well. My experience of reading each book highlights the need for theoretical literacy of economics as a prerequisite for understanding inequality and economic transformations in the 21st century. Despite being a very different project, Martin s book offers clues about ways to achieve Piketty s policy prescriptions. Martin s historical assessment

5 of the ways in which CEE economies transitioned from communism to capitalism shows that such transitions are possible but only through the hard and sometimes unpredictable work of myriad state and non-state actors. This work creates its own social relations of production and its own sets of bureaucratic, entrepreneurial, intra-state and international interests. Martin s book aptly illustrates that there is a broad constellation of economic, political and social actors involved in maintaining and sustaining capitalisms and that what may be at stake is complex not just profit and wealth but also, more importantly, position and power. Martin s description of the efforts undertaken for changing economies in CEE well describes the effort required when political and social ideals infused with hope crash against the practical exigencies of what makes economies work. Piketty s book is likely to continue as better known than Martin s, but this does not make it the better one. Piketty provides a powerful starting point for discussing how capitalism contributes to and sustains a particularly skewed concentration of wealth. However, his major policy recommendation the global tax on wealth and inheritance is one even the author himself acknowledges is utopian. Piketty s goals are declaratory. He provides a rather unassailable diagnosis of inequality but he under-estimates the effort and the social and cultural capital required to achieve a better distribution of wealth in the future. Martin s analysis is a story of hope fulfilled and unfulfilled as much as it is a history of economic transformation from communism to capitalism. Hope is what Piketty appears to need in abundance. To my mind, the system of work and interests described by Martin provides the needed clues about how Piketty s policy solution might actually be achieved. Both authors and both books deserve a prominent place in a progressive public administration, public policy or business school curriculum. It is hard to conceive how any such program in Central and Eastern Europe could leave Martin s book off its student reading lists. Anyone with an interest in social justice must come to grips with Piketty s study of wealth and inequality