A Brief History of Equality (2021)
Thomas Piketty
274 pages
Inequality is an inevitable outcome of a free-market, capitalist system. And, given the fervor with which free-market capitalism is defended – particularly in the West – as the consummate (“end of history”) economic system, inequality appears to be an intractable problem, one simply to be endured. It might be beaten back a bit at times with this or that policy that tinkers at the edges of the existing regime, but any attempt to solve it that puts into question or proposes significantly altering our underlying economic system tends to quickly get buried under strident cries raising the boogeyman of Soviet-style communism.
French economist Thomas Piketty, however, challenges the acceptance of inequality as an inalterable reality. In his book A Brief History of Equality, he argues that one must needs take a longer view of the problem, and that a careful examination of our history reveals that, while inequality may be on the rise again in recent decades, from the viewpoint of the past several centuries a noticeable shift toward equality has occurred. And, through understanding that history – what has worked and what has not – more can yet be achieved.
In the opening chapters of his book, Piketty builds off the comprehensive data and analysis in his authoritative Capital in the Twenty-First Century (my review linked to at right LINKLINK) to describe the evolution of inequality over the past couple of centuries. He demonstrates the extreme levels of inequality reached during the Gilded Age and up to World War I, the reduction in inequality in the mid-20th century that led to the development of what he refers to as the patrimonial middle class, and, finally, the specter of a renewed rise in inequality since the 1980’s.
Though in later chapters he returns to the period around the mid-20 century to explore the events and policies that enabled a stretch of decades over which inequality dramatically declined, he first looks farther back, to describe how Europe and the US came to occupy a dominant economic position globally. He demonstrates their success as having rested heavily on slavery and colonialism, which enabled the establishment of an international system of both low-cost labor and access to resources, an advantage that could not be matched by individual countries operating within their own borders. And, even as slavery ended in the 1800’s, and colonialism in the 1900’s, instead of paying reparations to the enslaved and colonized for the harms done, Western powers often extracted reparations from those groups, using the funds to indemnify their business owners for losses, and so cementing the advantage their countries had gained.
Within Western countries too, he notes, inequality remained the norm: “In 1789 the French Revolution took an essential step by abolishing the nobility’s privileges, but it did not do away with the multiple privileges of money – far from it.” (95) Here, Piketty’s conclusions recall those of author Pankaj Mishra in Age of Anger (my review linked to at left), who argues that the anger that has repeatedly reared its violent head in revolutions over the past centuries, beginning with the French Revolution and continuing through to today, is rooted in the meritocratic society championed by the Enlightenment:
[Their] new society, though free of irrational old hierarchies, wasn’t meant to be democratic. Liberty primarily meant freedom for social mobility for the man of talent [and] means. … Hierarchy would still mark the new society: the mass of the people would remain necessarily subordinate to the authentically enlightened at the top. (Age of Anger, 59)
Piketty recalls that, in many countries, this hierarchy based on wealth dictated who could vote and even how much that vote counted, which perpetuated the existing system of advantages. He describes how these restrictions ended only well into the 20th century across the West, and then only through the kind of “revolutionary moments when political institutions are redefined in order to make it possible to transform social and economic structures.” (111) These revolutionary moments return to play an important role in the conclusions he draws from his analysis of the history of the lurching shift toward equality.
Piketty describes how the introduction of the welfare state (education, health care, and social security) in the West in the middle of the 20th century, funded by instituting progressive taxation with extremely high tax rates for the wealthiest, led to a significant decrease in inequality. And he charts the rollback since the early 1980’s of much of that progressive taxation, and the reduction in the welfare state that ensued. Perhaps most trenchant are his data and analysis demonstrating the reduced growth rate that has accompanied this regression; thus, for example, he ties the significant drop in funding for education to reduced effectiveness of the work force.
Over several chapters, he outlines policy proposals for a system that he refers to as both democratic socialism and democratic federalism. He makes clear that his are simply proposals, and that the details and evaluation of policies need to be worked out through the democratic process. He points out that such a process fundamentally differentiates the approach he advocates from nominally related, failed experiments in authoritarian states. (Though he does argue that “the rise of ‘Chinese Socialism,’ a statist, authoritarian model that is opposed on every point to the democratic, decentralized socialism defended in this book” (226) poses a risk to Western powers if they don’t take the need for change seriously.)
Although his history of the slow, halting push for equality and his wide range of policy suggestions form the core of the book, what I found most heartening – if also somewhat bracing – was his frontal assault on the deep-seated, set-in-stone impression of free-market capitalism as somehow being the final-stage, unimprovable economic system of human history, and the widespread conviction that it cannot, and should not, be changed.
Piketty makes clear, by contrast, through his careful and detailed references to the historical record, that change is possible, and in fact almost inevitable, noting that, along with our current economic regime, “inequality is first of all a social, historical, and political construction.” (9) He attacks, in particular, an unspoken assumption that lies at the very heart of our free market, capitalist system, arguing that
The idea that each country (or worse yet, each person in each country) is individually responsible for its production and its wealth makes little sense from a historical point of view. All wealth is collective in origin. Private property was instituted (or ought to be instituted) only insofar as it serves the common interest, in the context of a balanced set of institutions and rights making it possible to limit individual accumulations, to make power circulate, and to distribute wealth more fairly. (217)
To be clear (since the one-true-faith dogma of capitalism as the ultimate economic system is so strong as to likely promote sputtering outrage from its believers over this last quote): Piketty is not arguing against private property; he is simply making the quite obviously true statement that it is a political choice, and is, in fact, only an appropriate political choice if it best serves society as a whole.
His other key point is that however entrenched our current economic system may appear to be, and however impossible changing it can seem, change has happened in the past, and will happen again, when enough people are fed-up enough to make it happen. Looking back over the history of the past few centuries over which free market capitalism has evolved, he notes that:
Long-term movement toward equality [since the end of the 18th century] … is a consequence of conflicts and revolts against injustice that have made it possible to transform power relationships and overthrow institutions supported by dominant classes, which seek to structure social inequality in a way that benefits them, and to replace them with new institutions and new social, economic, and political rules that are more equitable and emancipatory for the majority. Generally speaking, the most fundamental transformations seen in the history of inegalitarian regimes involve social conflicts and large-scale political crises. (10)
The unambiguous warning from his analysis: significantly reducing inequality will take a revolution.
Together, then, I found these two messages as forming the key take-away from Piketty’s analysis of civilization’s checkered march toward increased equality over the past two centuries: the choice of economic systems is ours – it is not a fixed, inalterable fact; and, if our current economic system doesn’t work for us, and we want to pursue a more egalitarian approach, it is possible – but we will most certainly need to fight for it against those who benefit from the current system. For those concerned with the problem of inequality, A Brief History of Equality provides the outlines of potential solutions, but also a pointed warning that their implementation will likely not come without tumult and unrest.
Other notes and information:
Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf
