Analysis of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology” and Martin Hagglund’s “This Life”
I often commemorate Mark Fisher’s “Capitalist Realism” with a chill of both being awe-struck for its gripping diagnosis but at the same time, a grim reminder of our present labyrinth of capitalism. Events such as Capitol Hill on January 6th, the farmers revolt in India and even the Reddit revolt on Wall Street have done nothing to change this, but also have me realize that there is a certain amount of cracks forming in the globalism base. For the most part, people know that the present system is unjust. We cannot get too dreamy, especially without any clear vision of what our future should be, as Fisher aptly pointed out. I am an admitted realist and part of me wants to turn to Piketty for ideas on capitalism reform but Martin Haaglund makes you want to see beyond, even though he does not offer any clear vision himself, which to be fair, was not the intention of his book. One was an economical continuation of the equally ground-shattering “Capital”, the other is an argument for secularism and how it applies in todays world. Before I analyze Haaglund, it is hard not to now want to look beyond the wall and see the formations of something else, something different. Too often there is revolt such as the summer of 2020’s George Floyd killing, without any substantive change. We should seek somewhere that is different and clearly has equity and quality of living at the center of what it is trying to form. A society that emphasizes our freedoms to be ourselves and not be hinged to our mere survival.
Martin Haaglund’s “This Life” is one of the two recent, yet pre-Covid books that are still worth analyzing in this 2021 context. Haaglund deceivingly starts out on the merits of secular faith but it turns into a post-capitalism argument. It is a critique of both traditional religious faiths and socialist agendas that are still thinking within the frame of capitalism, are still caught in the ever-lasting, evolving labyrinth. Haaglund doesn’t care as much for the now and less for the past, but more to an envisioned a future. This I embrace, perhaps out of being raised Presbyterian. As secularists, it is a necessity that we try and make our world a better place. One idea he has is for all of us to have the right to decide how we spend our time. Our morality depends on the type of political/economical system we create. We should not be bound to others to give us structure. “Leading a satisfying life is not to achieve a state of consummation, but to be engaged in what I do and put myself at stake in activities that matter to me(pg. 18)”.
Haaglund’s philosophy is in many ways a secular take on Marxism. Marx was another fighter for us to be able to self-determine how we spend the most precious element of time. We should be able to think beyond our own survival, otherwise those above us are in control We must be allowed to all have the proper material resources and have access to a full education. It does not mean we are free from labour and as Haaglund adds what Marx offers is not a solution but a “clarification of a vital problem.” The possibility of freedom must always be the mission statement. This goes against the mighty wall of capitalism, that is all about the priority of excessive profit, the alienation of labour, exploitation of our time and money, our life being commodified and democracy insufficient at best.
Haaglund amusingly takes a strong swipe at our new age adulations and often misrepresentations of philosophies of Buddhism and Stoicism. Haaglund has no time for any philosophy that promotes detachment in its doctrine. Suffering is a key element of life. Life is a struggle and we will embrace this struggle. As Karl-Ove Knausgaard writes “death makes life meaningless because everything we have ever strived for ceases when life does and it makes life meaningful too, because its presence makes the little we have of it indispensable, every moment precious”(pg. 117). Beyond suffering, we have to be fighting for a transformation, a way of etching out our own freedom within the confines of life. This is the ultimate existential quest.
Capitalism now has wage labour for most of us, which is only a kinder form of slavery. We produce more commodities while having less and less means of buying them. We produce more items while needing less people to produce for the sake of greater profit. Haaglund asserts that the exploitation of workers is a necessity for capitalism to work. Yet few of us still seem to realize this. To gain greater profit margin, corporations use tricks such as hedge funds, advertising and surveillance information. Many forms of work right now are simply an extension of serfdom and do not represent any kind of freedom in any sense. The most important statement of the book and the one I cannot help but savour comes on page 269 when he says “for democracy to be true to its own concept of freedom and equality, capitalism must therefore be overcome.” Haaglund is instigating a new mentality of overcoming the mourning present in “Capitalism Realism.”
While Haaglund, like anyone else I know of, does not offer any clear path alternative to capitalism, he certainly thinks certain Marxist principles should exist. The means of production should be for a common cause. Governance is meant to be collective. Yet that is stuck on being an ideal rather than a clear pragmatic application. Regardless, Haaglund wants us to overcome what he thinks are our limitations on reforms all being proposed in the context of capitalism, while we are unable to think past it. In other words, we are still in the frame of mind Mark Fisher tragically resigned himself to.
Haaglund even goes after the other author’s work I am anaylzing: Thomas Piketty. Piketty is stuck in thinking the context of capitalism according to Haaglund. The mode of production in capitalism inevitably always comes to a crisis. Alienation. We have all been there now. Working for the sense of cost limitation or maximum profit. A job that lacks any meaning. Most assigned the role of consuming commoditities. One of our resounding answers in recent times is an ugly form of nationalism. This overshadows or fails to grasp economic inequity. Our democracy today offers socialism for the rich and forced individualism for the rest. Any racial equity conceivably achieved is again unsatisfying if done in the context of capitalism. To go along with Rosa Luxembourg, any social reforms are a means to an end of something along the lines of a revolution. Haaglund insists the answer is beyond what we can see now. This is a religiousity vein shown by someone who ironically is a committed secularist. We first need to define capitalism(which he does in his own form) and then think beyond.
Thomas Piketty’s “Capital and Ideology” is not a contrary point of view to Haaglund’s but as was said, stays in the context of today minus the massive factor of Covid. His first goal for this book is to analyze countries he did not address in “Capital”, mainly those beyond the Western world. The word Marxist or revolution is not present with Piketty. Piketty mainly wants to play the role of an academic and diagnosis what ailments capitalism has and leave it up to us what to make of it.
Piketty excels as a historian. Yes, we are definitely less impoverished as global citizens than we were from say, 1720-1770 or earlier but we lost our ‘egalitarian period’ of 1950-80. This time period owes its successes to progressive taxation. Historically, it might interest us, as neglible a point it is in todays context, that in most medieval kingdoms the Church owned 25-33% of all private property. A more important historical conclusion is that extreme chaos causes change. This definitely can be shown in todays context. 1950-80 was spurned by the chaos of WW1, the Great Depression and WW2. It is in this extremity that capitalist reforms and reforms only can come.
In this updated version of “Capital”, Piketty commits to the necessary project of analyzing the effects of colonialism. Colonialism resulted in slavery, which had existed since the Ancient Greek and Roman Empires and it played a prominent role in the forming of our present-day modern world. Even more prominent is the effect of the highly criminal manner in which slavery ended. Usually, such as the case with the UK ending slavery in 1833, slaves were not compensated and were bounded to just a slight upgrade from slavery to long-term labour contracts. This relates to the lack of freedom as Haaglund talks about. The slave owners in contrast were almost always given massive compensation. This shows the priorities of the governments of the day were still on the side of the wealthy slaveowners. Countries such as Haiti are still paying the price for these policies, as France’s embargo forced Haiti to pay out millions to their past slaveowners. The after economic shocks of this still last till today. European coloinalism from 1500-1850 had the dual strategies of military domination and displacement or extermination. After Spain invaded Mexico in 1450, the population fell by 90% by 1600. The colonies exemplified economic inequality at its worst which is why they are repugnant to anyone these days who are descendants of the colonized. Education was reserved for the non-colonized. By WW1, this ironically meant a near self-destruction of the UK and France as they had become economically dependant on their own racist, colonial prisons.
It is important to weigh in on India and China. With India, their past empries of Maurya and the Mughal never ruled over all of present-day India. When the British Empire emerged there, one result was the escalated Hindu/Muslim tension that continues strongly today. The creation of Pakistan and Bangledesh meant that only 14% of today’s India is Muslim. Another important result is that while India’s caste system is ancient, it was greatly intensified during the British colonial period. In todays India, inequity is so deep that still over 50% of the population defecate outdoors(pg. 356). Piketty asks the question anyone with Marxist inhibitions needs to: why ws the most wealth, specifically from 1500-1800, set primarily in Europe? The answer is in military expansion and colonialism. This left it clearly above other empries such as the Ottoman and in China. The Opium War in China from 1839-42 was to force the Qing empire into selling opium to Europe. In the 20th century, this habit of military might and colonialism(in a different form, usually funded dictatorships)continued with the United States. In the Middle East, the colonialism enhanced by oil has made it currently the most inequitable area of the world. In that part of the world you see small populations, often undemocratic and dependant on their oil exports. Piketty’s answer to the European wealth during capitalism is in the historic cause, and that it is a deliberate, not a ‘natural’ process.
While Piketty resigns himself to saying “things will probably be much the same in the future”(pg.469), he is adamant in sticking to the thesis that the problem is not capitalism itself but unregulated capitalism. If only we can “transcend the nation state”(hasn’t globalism done this?)and re-install progressive taxes. He agrees with Haaglund in the indirect sense that we have to go beyond what we did after WW2. However, solutions such as the German-based workers right to vote and have seats at their companies board seem not only stuck in the confines of capitalism, but seem out of touch when a huge number of our workers are through temp agencies. Sure, less progressive taxes=decrease in economic growth and access to education is vital but is the answer again to just fix them or to go beyond? “Make the world great again”seems to be an empty chant void of meaning.
Russia and China’s past delvings into Marxism or at least its variancies of communism have led to its present form of hypercapitalism. Lenin’s tendancies towards social democracy fell to Stalin’s authoritarianism in the Soviet style of vast numbers of incarcerations. While economic and educational growth flowered in the Soviet Union till at least the 1950s, the current result is that Russia is one of the most inequitable nations on the earth and past Stalin practices of incarceration of political opponents are obviously still present. Piketty feels we would all be better off if the world had more Mikhail Gorbachevs, not just in Russia but everywhere. A vision of social democratic and economic reform minus the revolution. In China’s case, it at least had a planned stage approach to switching to capitalism, which has undenyingly helped the country’s middle class. While the World Bank and the IMF enforced “shock therapy”upon Russia to exude the capitalistic triumph in the extreme, China has stabilized private ownership since the mid-2000s at 30%(pg. 607) and actually has more of a mixed economy than the West does.
On a global scale, most of the world is in a state where the country’s private assets well outpace any public ownership, meaning that most countries are in state of permanent debt. Piketty has always glaringly frowned upon debt and views it as a major problem with capitalism he would like fixed. He also is adapt at pointing out what statistics are distracting and which ones are worth paying attention to. Look at the national income before the GDP. The GDP does not pay heed to equitable distribution of income and wealth. The overall lack of transperancy on giving us access to those using tax havens or the details in legislations that make most of us pay tax yet exempt those using private jets(France’s carbon tax). After this, Piketty is stuck. The status quo still strongly resides with the hyperwealthy. Unions have been bottomed out. Even conventional religion has lost prevalence. That leaves us afloat with QAnon and other conspiracy theories, which is in itself a desperate grasp at any sense of power, delusional or not. Economic dire straits, meaning people have lost or are under danger of losing their basic needs pushes them to the extreme. We have to hinge onto WallStreetbets for a desperate claim at somehow beating the ultrarich at their own game. I cannot see either Haaglund or Piketty approving of this.
High inflation could be blamed for the end of the 1950-80 boom era but our current economic sufferings can be linked to high debt and a long stagnation of income. These are all choices of those who secure political and corporate power. Tax wise, Piketty proposes three different progressive taxes. First is an annual tax on property(property tax), a property tax on inheritances(I get it but for many like myself this is a slap on the face of what little we have to give our children) and an income tax. Indirect taxes should be abolished(I totally agree). Corporate taxes must be increased. Some type of UBI is needed. We can set the minimum basic income for individuals at 60 percent of average after tax income. This amount would decline as one’s level of income increases. UBI is built within capitalism and is simply a shift in capitalistic policy. This does not mean however it is not worth pursuing as a reform. Reforms themselves are often a more effective route to take than any empty revolution that others are eternally waiting upon.
Piketty’s ideas, which were unspoken of before he wrote “Capital” have now become almost dishwater-like bland, since to his credit, they are now integrated into the mainstream voicebox, even though, they fall short of becoming government policy. Piketty however has ideas that are in themselves ‘fragile’ in the sense of becoming a global trend or legistlation and moreover lacking a futuristic vision of the possible alternative that Haaglund mentions. We all need to dig deeper and truly talk to one another about what should come next. Originality and creativity are a must.
InAD Life 