The Ultimate Guide to Shutting Down Conservative Anti-Piketty Hysteria

http://www.alternet.org/economy/ultimate-guide-shutting-down-conservative-anti-piketty-hysteria



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Claim: Piketty is a dirty Marxist

There are two Marxes. One, a scholar of capitalism of repute, put forward testable hypotheses, some of which you may accept, some of which you may reject. The other is a conservative boogeyman, the human representation of all they find evil. If they dislike something, it must be Marxist.

James Pethokoukis, a formidable writer, went full hack for his National Reviewreview,

Thanks to Piketty, the Left is now having a “Galaxy Quest” moment. All that stuff their Marxist economics professors taught them about the “inherent contradictions” of capitalism and about history’s being on the side of the planners — all the theories that the apparent victory of market capitalism in the last decades of the 20th century seemed to invalidate — well, it’s all true after all.

How to respond: Most times someone drops the M-Bomb, he is intending to be provocative. With enough effort, you can make almost anything Marxist. While Marxists don’t agree on everything, and the term is very nebulous (Marx once said he wouldn’t describe himself as a Marxist), there are some pretty established rules for determining if someone is, indeed, a Marxist. First, he generally doesn’t write things like,

“Marxist analysis emphasized the falling rate of profit — a historical prediction that turned out to be quite wrong” (“Capital in the 21st Century,” page 52)

“Marx usually adopted a fairly anecdotal and unsystematic approach”. (“Capital in the 21st Century,” page 229)

“Marx evidently wrote in great political fervor, which at times lead him to issue hasty pronouncements from which it is difficult to escape. That is why economic theory needs to be rooted in historical sources …” (“Capital in the 21st Century,” page 10)

“… Marx totally neglected the possibility of durable technological progress and steadily increasing productivity.” (“Capital in the 21st Century,” page 10)