Monthly Archives: April 2020

Quinn Slobodian’s Review Of Capital And Ideology

Posted on by
Leave a reply

Yesterday I had recommended Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven’s review of Thomas Piketty’s book Capital And Ideology, which raised important points about the book totally ignoring the need for a rebalancing of global finance and production.

However, there’s another perspective to look at a great point missed out in the review.

Quinn Slobodian has a Twitter thread, where he points out why Piketty’s book is important. He says:

[T]he central point of piketty’s book-in-the-book is devastating: left parties have gone from being the party of the poor and less educated to the party of the highly educated, losing ever more voters to the right.

and also on the EU Referendum/Brexit:

among the most striking passages are when he concedes the “no” votes on referenda and the “leave” vote on brexit were rare moments of clear classist voting pattern: “a complete divorce between the less advantaged and the European project”

Hence the need for an egalitarian internationalist movement.

Link

📅 Conference: The Legacy Of Wynne Godley

Levy Economics Institute has announced a virtual conference in commemoration of Wynne Godley on May 13th.

The site says that you can join by Google Meet.

Marc Lavoie’s talk is Wynne Godley And The Monetary Circuit. There’s a roundtable Godley’s Approach In The Current Crisis.

There are several new speakers who didn’t attend the conference in honour of Godley in 2011 such as Ken Coutts, Graham Gudgin, Bill Martin.

Poster from Levy Institute’s Facebook page.

Link

Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven’s Review Of Thomas Piketty’s Capital And Ideology

Nice review of Thomas Piketty’s book Capital and Ideology:

… his [Piketty’s] policy recommendations largely on wealth transfers. For example, rather than interrogating how we as society work, produce and consume, his solutions are biased towards redistribution without changing the core of the system.

This limits his capacity to explain global phenomena. This is clear in his view on the effects of trade liberalization: rather than exploring how the removal of barriers to imports in the 1980s led to a collapse of industry in the global south, Piketty focuses on the loss of income from tariffs. In the same vein, his proposals shy away from discussing the massive rebalancing of global finance and production that is necessary; instead, he focuses on aid transfers to governments, and taxation.

Picture from Thomas Piketty’s Twitter page

Link

Glenn Greenwald On Red Scare

Glenn Greenwald appears in one the recent episodes on the podcast Red Scare.

He talks of various things politics especially on why Bernie Sanders lost and also Jeremy Corbyn.

This at 1:10:00 caught my attention:

Everyone knew he was in favour of Brexit, like everyone knows he hates the EU but he felt like in order to just like worm his way through the Labour party kind of Blairites, he had to pretend against Brexit and be a remainer when everyone knew he wasn’t, so it was like this kind of like complete draining of his vibrancy and passion being forced into this box where he wasn’t comfortable.

Is Financial Times Socialist Now?

Posted on by
Leave a reply

Few days ago, “The Editorial Board” of Financial Times published an article calling for “radical reforms”.

The article says:

Radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.

…

The leaders who won the war did not wait for victory to plan for what would follow. Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, setting the course for the United Nations, in 1941. The UK published the Beveridge Report, its commitment to a universal welfare state, in 1942. In 1944, the Bretton Woods conference forged the postwar financial architecture. That same kind of foresight is needed today. Beyond the public health war, true leaders will mobilise now to win the peace.

So what explains this shift?

The important point is that FT which just speaks for the ruling class hasn’t become left-wing, it’s just adopting a left-wing policy. The number one point of liberalism—the ruling class ideology—is to prevent a left-wing rise. Anything for that, including the use of left-lite politics, temporarily.