Capital

[charlie]

This thread is dedicated to the discussion of Capital.

I just finished reading the Introduction to book called "Capital" by Thomas Piketty, and as someone with a natural-American sense of, and appreciation for, capitalism (although not understanding it well), I think reading a book about historical instances of capital inequality and distribution written by a socialist (at least I think he is, the person that recommended the book to me is) is important for analyzing my own understanding of such a topic. Especially considering the recent election of Mamdani in New York, this is book may be prescient. I will include this quote from the Introduction:

I belong to a generation that turned eighteen in 1989, which was not only the bicentennial of the French Revolution but also the year when the Berlin Wall fell. I belong to a generation that came of age listening to news of the collapse of the Communist dictatorships and never felt the slightest affection or nostalgia for those regimes or for the Soviet Union. I was vaccinated for life against the conventional but lazy rhetoric of anticapitalism, some of which simply ignored the historic failure of Communism and much of which turned its back on the intellectual means necessary to push beyond it.

I find this stance to be a bit refreshing since it seems that so many self-proclaimed socialists or communists in my generation look upon the Soviet Union, the bolsheviks or Marx with such reverence, as though they are unaware of the fruits of such ideas. But I am quite the opposite of a Materialist, so I'm not even sure I have the necessary framework to understand such ideologies.

Moving forward, I think one important framework that Piketty lays out is this distinction between return on capital, and return on productivity. Much of his work has consisted of building databases for historical records of capital, return on capital and productivity distribution between members in societies, classes in societies and among global societies. I'm really excited for this book and it's probably the last thing I should be doing with my time right now.