[P2P-F] Fwd: ZNet Commentary: Paul Street: Labor Day Reflections

Fri Sep 5 17:34:51 CEST 2014

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From: ZCommunications <no-reply at zcomm.org>
Date: Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 10:13 PM
Subject: ZNet Commentary: Paul Street: Labor Day Reflections
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<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBrwr0Ld4qlNcoNWEJTeqJV74KeumW8H99h9J7n2zC85koJNbQmkjPRUY0Oh7-2BvbEOA-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DcvvFWmW2wxgRIuKkYJ8fYcH-2FauIx8sX7Ch-2B0SbuefauEWlc6TmtvXvZe6PfjTpdi0My6EQuIQul6p-2BuIZCcm2A-2BjI-2F2v4R8RbK4H1-2BiWVHxZW66d5-2FDB6-2BZX7v4TSmPYg-3D-3D>.

Paul Street: Labor Day ReflectionsZ Communications Daily Commentary

The national United States holiday called Labor Day has for me
traditionally been a time for reading on the beach, for saying goodbye to
summer, and for reflecting on the history of workers and unions* [2]*.  This
recent Labor Day (two days ago) found me nowhere near a beach, but I did
manage to spend some time looking for references to workers and unions in
the pages of the passing summer’s surprise nonfiction bestseller – liberal
French economist Thomas Piketty’s 685-page historical and economic
tome *Capital
in the 21stCentury*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBpuFtMt6e3NvA1c8ymr7sWKoTHkJWXKZW7rdh9yJoP5j2nfpPgHJOqJU7PdTfmfvbA-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DfRBHuLChsmHyzabCgXRasZOdtnWiiF9-2BYlM8XOUcUdR3H71TDIMDv9ga7ijRQ3z52RkARP6vzOoxUKvA4ncNI7GWF757TNGdK6Pa0cpUJ-2F6VHhE4zrDV-2FjbJHOGoInAzA-3D-3D>
*.*

Except for a brief opening reference to South African workers who struck
and met deadly police violence in August of 2012, my search was
fruitless.  In his instantly heralded volume on the long history of
economic inequality’s ebbs and flows (in which he shows that capitalism’s
inexorable underlying tendency is towards the increased concentration of
wealth) in the world’s richest nations, Piketty gives no discernible role
or agency to workers, unions, labor parties, and working class struggle.
The deletion is so complete that the index to *Capital in the 21st
Century* doesn’t
contain the words and terms “unions,” “trade unions,” “workers,” or
“working class.”  That is quite consistent with leading Marxist
academician David
Harvey’s criticism
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBpUSg-2FFpe0DsQF3zFohIJomajB2NNZZFFLFfmP5U9IXiS8ygvmNqo9PYfc4e9PpqGc-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DdcctlKHrkIFf6mFD6c-2Bj84AEbQywlNtk5Vqq1IcppmQ-2Fv5KQKxpGXKL1eHR-2FA7JJHn-2FCaqm-2F6iF0reMH3g3TKFdxDliULszwLI9Kdixfj8Ui69fH5NzunLyncJRMCjJCg-3D-3D>
of
Piketty’s “mistaken definition of capital.”  Harvey rightly describes
capital as “a process not a thing … a process of circulation in which money
is used to make more money often, but not exclusively through the
exploitation of labor power. Piketty,” Harvey notes, “defines capital as
the stock of all assets held by private individuals, corporations and
governments that can be traded in the market no matter whether these assets
are being used or not.”

Workers’ absence is quite a glaring omission from Piketty’s subject
matter.  If Piketty thinks that labor history and the broader history of
the working class and labor-capital struggle holds no bearing on the *long
duree* patterns of wealth and income distribution under the profits system,
he is badly mistaken.  You cannot begin to fully understand historical wage
and income patterns, the decline of inequality in the rich nations during
the middle third of the last century, or the dramatic upward
re-concentration of wealth and income over the last four decades (the long,
so-called neoliberal era that is correctly understood by Piketty as a
return to capitalism’s long-term anti-egalitarian norm) without “factoring
in” workers and class struggle. It’s more than pure coincidence that the
significant reduction in US inequality which took place between the 1930s
and the 1970s took place alongside *the emergence and consolidation of an
at first militant new mass-production unionism*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBo-2Bnf8JIxKWB8-2FfGX606oU2H-2FZ2FO8zb5zXAv5wFyqyTjkxrv8CSLqARNhDnO2CRZ0-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DUMNqVSLj3rZ7y6AsZoNAhm-2FMSPIB-2FdqxGoVQjZTAW16B87I0GnJs7W2pgwlkxiGoDXZ4tNbfB4LF4kF-2FXEreSLzWKNg8Ry6-2BrG-2BNhQugP1RVH-2FRzYMyrlBwPtdgyHumfA-3D-3D>
.*[2]*  And it is not for nothing that the US state-capitalist economic and
power elite launched a “one-sided class war” (former United Workers
President *Douglass Fraser*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBpen25nZJCRH91-2FIOreWioHeB0MTelXUqHE82WEIixw3Lvm1ccmB8ZLdExI92d0bwc-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DT2VsIb7L3i6cd4P5mx6s48OBNvGmcrDJqB8u-2BuItO7KTzc7DMBoXRPMKhnUV7ZCUoDBk2YWAuSUqRoY2MYtICzCJhF8SYKew4c8pPSiqHqpGcAi8DSXyRWnOo1hdOtUbQ-3D-3D>)
against workers and unions – a top-down campaign that has reduced US union
density (the percentage of US workers enrolled in unions) from *over 30 %
in the 1960s  to 11.3% (and below 7% in the private sector)  today*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBqVvZCG0S2zq0lsRU2ZWdTiV57vkSspVvi9wXiwJRgrdQNStCVQEc5eAW5Xv4xKpNk-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DWKCcPQVRLiEAQV5DoyhfIylC5pjg7Ho2ROQCzLxW-2BxE3Mhs2wGRLJfWrjgXnLbWROCTsboxopzu7fZorm0T9lU7EcBNyz6gmSad0NpJSMXLfqD4k54bv7iKYFI1HWJXlg-3D-3D>–
as an essential part of their effort to roll back “excess democracy’ and
re-concentrate wealth and power since the 1970s.

The deletion of workers, unions, and labor history is hardly the only
significant flaw in *Capital in the 21st Century*. Piketty’s “masterpiece”
(conservative French demographer Emmanuel Todd) is excessively long,
tedious, and (consistent with its failure to include working-class people
and their struggles) dull.  To make matters much worse, Piketty’s
“magisterial treatise on capitalism’s inherent dynamics” (elite academician
Dani Rodrik) praises Western capitalism’s “modern economic growth” for
having averted what he revealing calls “the Marxist apocalypse” (disparity
and poverty so great as to usher in a communist revolution) but pays no
serious attention to how “modern” growth-addicted capitalism is generating
a real-life environmental apocalypse
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBrsO9zCqcRmILY3grnUTLfJObLVVvr4OC3GQB36LgqNaleV-2Fm-2FKoMnUYZ6G7jJ-2FZRU-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DUFHhQinj2kV3eSzrJzRkzmyV-2F8LttZ0uu85-2BdsVz3FL56TSYTgp4CLMvPGtjWNLI0x7masFbXJiPKQCEPwIdbKjRneR7FnTnnJVl3LcTcW8pRZcD68gd8OUTMdXjeU0cw-3D-3D>
right
before our 21st century eyes.

Piketty foolishly sees the failure and collapse of the Soviet dictatorships
as events that discredit radical left anti-capitalism – as if serious left
radicals
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBqUg6sdzu-2FkUXliO33cKLlXkLe5SWcOuvu3iRn5V9LQqGcyeM9zIUcUHne2qDIxdtc-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DV0bXnzAH2WM3EGPiIVKnc8eXHrlxrlqByuALK7-2FGCZ513LcjtVTQHL-2B42Us1gcLFM8mJXMgklWOG3sPASEW-2Fr4QA3NiWYYc-2BXsWUAwgqhNZF9geOJMGheep5Mh9eZx5Qg-3D-3D>
have
ever thought that the Stalinist Soviet- bloc tyrannies represented a
workers’ and peoples’ alternative to bourgeois rule.

Piketty says he “ha[s] *no interest in denouncing inequality or capitalism
per se* – especially since social inequalities are not in themselves a
problem as long as they are justified, that is, ‘founded upon common
utility,’ as article 1 of the 1789 *Declaration of the Rights of Man and
the Citizen* proclaims.” But what justifications of “common utility” can
possibly be found in the extraordinary level of the socioeconomic disparity
the profits system generates today? Just here in the US, where more than *16
million children – 22% of all children*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBp-2FcadkVhjVNW7eGcy-2Bm3cOoabemlkkjIw2zb7P91iajkoF2w4jC5vBdixEL37rQos-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DYx7Qo1xLK-2FPBsNXc3gzpV3npty3cFeS4yBT3qhkBDsysazYqhCRgRhJELWZOPVVzgMHa3eY8ZiuHLFxo0TB7yQ7AEt4r-2FNF2LYzhLY6jrWF5i2a9w-2BSF6IYm1aLjRbdXQ-3D-3D>
 *–* languish below the federal government’s inadequate poverty level, the top
1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBpuEhBlPTwsqQlvu44FfbfwuVuKhcf5inqF6DdCII-2FLqdfWPhj8CJ8qOR8c28amtpg-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DYj9o1EYbkHkWS-2BXrikXyX2itTD0NwuX1DfyxAhKGV0Wnar6YwHON60jVzwEaNOv-2BV8Ol8xVHn5Exxs0kV3NANBFVUwvVPVylVOaS59afT4eCbw6p41BcKJB1FMJgFIvEw-3D-3D>
and
a probably comparable share of the nation’s “democratically elected”
officials. *Six Walmart heirs*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBquftS-2FNs-2FrkKJBo2uCxyKdfkev4D7jNk4X2dONc-2BFGMQJKzMWMWscFlkV9BCGBnSE-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DVgcgyog6DHdnh7bJ4o8gvl16hB7ey-2Fo-2Bi-2BELsONHfOtcMme89Mhy2NTdmq1P4980z39amOXlZRtM7dey5PFJYS1vH9BwLSnGAw3DAfqD2ZbOtUI2kDkmxFUFRSXooq8lQ-3D-3D>
have more wealth between them than the bottom 40%. Between 1983 and 2010,
the Economic Policy Institut
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBoCj-2F445sjy3e-2B8kCoaqkzxW9-2Bv9DfK5IAi6MePgOiBq6MuZT4zGDTcijuuH2sqM1I-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DfjHS-2FyeU-2BDvWNyxS8Q0haK96aCY0tGgHfApA23uls2fFlcINOH3ISrxb5k0YYLShJ6ePRhvcfQI-2FdsNMDweuln9zsCa0fq3PlHwLedKu1GGIs4FzXJF3qZh043kAniTxQ-3D-3D>e
has calculated, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest
5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline.

This savage inequality comes courtesy of the class-based socioeconomic
regime called capitalism,
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBpy7kYyQ-2FZ0Y0miypoooXBUFT0MuSk0jcWSfO7eSQPaqUSw4GF7izppcO-2FNgveFNEY-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DRdHUvBFgT8gg13tWLl-2FRTXT4PQEs-2BORqp6V3ZabFYvRCqD2k-2F0oGAPpA1-2BjlpwGhUfyZa7qatxKRKHC-2FW7IIv9PDSKJ-2Bjhc8XNM9BpGZrXhQw5DmMJxcjADBP6nqtOsFQ-3D-3D>
a
defining aspect of which is a constant underlying tendency towards the
concentration of more wealth in fewer hands. It also comes from forms of
elite business-class agency that Piketty does not come close to thoroughly
examining. Last May, the left economist Jack *Rasmus rightly took Piketty
to task*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBozvrPD-2FCz-2BEEtJmdmJaECT7cBX2Q3U9Oydw-2Bhts672XvK3IZIMZ1HXUAIfRbt-2FFOM-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DZeLIvdH6u6pfAjW9ixC5wsLLwz6Ox09RAoWUWI0uiQH-2BT7qEkPJ8OexY9SV1dnXbfIVLrtj2keD3MXJqqaSp-2Fzvu6tD2HIdTw-2F26tMCNu50OvO-2FgET7HCfrYElbNn6iXA-3D-3D>
for missing two leading explanations for strikingly increased inequality in
the US since the 1970s: “the manipulation of global financial assets and
speculative financial trading” and the “reducing of labor costs across the
board.” Focusing almost exclusively changes in the tax system (the third
leading explanation by Rasmus’ account), Piketty ignores both the
aforementioned top-down managerial class war and the remarkable
proliferation and de-/non-regulation of financial instruments (credit
default swaps and other complex derivatives and financial “innovations”).
These omissions are part of why David Harvey is correct to observe
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBpUSg-2FFpe0DsQF3zFohIJomajB2NNZZFFLFfmP5U9IXiS8ygvmNqo9PYfc4e9PpqGc-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5Da1uwM4JaIlLd2z-2BYPFhKUNfZQCJ60fpAw5w-2BEBgLH2xBwTtYGvCh4mV3eQlpl1fbJSFuO-2BFp-2BKNnzVjBsLsYS9e38CZP3v4tpZHt5QiMGQh-2FrT5qyvk-2FfkLKWAOGSKoTQ-3D-3D>
 that *Capital in the 21st Century* “does not tell us why the crash of 2008
occurred and why it is taking so long for so many people to get out from
under the dual burdens of prolonged unemployment and millions of houses
lost to foreclosure.”

What does the neo-Jacobin Piketty recommend in the way of solutions, so as
to bring inequality back into the proper bourgeois-revolutionary boundaries
of “common utility”? Proclaiming that that the standard liberal-domestic
tax, spending and regulatory agenda is now ineffective in the face of
capital’s planetary reach, he advocates a measure that is beyond the grasp
of any currently existing national or international body: “a global tax on
capital”– something Piketty candidly calls “a utopian idea” (*Capital in
the 21st Century*, 515). Only such a worldwide levy “would contain the
unlimited growth of global inequality of wealth,” Piketty writes.

Given the monumental logistical and political barriers to the
implementation of such a tax, it’s hard not to see Piketty’s heralded
*Capital* as feeding popular pessimism about the existence of any
alternatives to the United States’ drift into what former New York State
Tax Commissioner *James Wezler*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBoFa8FMmYkA6W763npZJCxe6OkElV6RKYXuD5iDiexQj7DEGDU-2B71AUNs0G-2FYpYEJM-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DY1pfZsGoTpHIf9TdCWDh8wMARCqkBY8JY2tenzsJ5zGiv8CvRcMSZhHguEBhQvb1eQ3KMKakEt-2BsvkBg1wiYxM6MLoGkK-2FyxmJGWpKT-2FfEVA-2FIKh4Pwos2F0Cxmmk3g9w-3D-3D>
calls
“a plutocratic dystopia characterized by wealth inequality approaching that
of *ancien régime* France.” Piketty feeds the “de facto mental slavery” (*David
Barsamian*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBouy70kOux0wtRXBndUJ9jWWW3gz2KXLyUyeZw2fOukY-2FJxzi2QPkGArtpAq-2F-2F9tgw-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5De-2FqNVpCeUCr4GxhzLk90a05zqZfmJ5vFiEgoKRhWtVAhjk-2BLJvqqUNZzofkVWPhJk0w49ALDzoPddKQudssDoOgnzunppvdLrEdGrY6Srcy5-2BCJeC8ktEhL4Auvg1hUsA-3D-3D>)
of our time: the widespread sense of powerlessness and isolation shared by
millions of citizens and workers and the intimately related idea that
there’s no serious or viable replacement for – and nothing much that can be
done about – the dominant order.

Given all this and more, including its oversized and tedious nature, why
was Piketty’s *Capital in the 21st Century* such a big hit with relatively
well-off, highly “educated” and supposedly “left”-leaning, bi-coastal US
liberals this last spring and summer? Dean Baker, co-director of the Center
for Economic and Policy Research, got to the heart of the matter last May,
at the peak of the Piketty craze. In an email to Columbia University
journalism professor Thomas B. Edsall, Baker wrote that “a big part of the
appeal is that *it allows people to say capitalism is awful but there is
nothing that we can do about it*.” The author of a comprehensive domestic
policy agenda for reducing inequality, *Baker told Edsall*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBoFa8FMmYkA6W763npZJCxe6OkElV6RKYXuD5iDiexQj7DEGDU-2B71AUNs0G-2FYpYEJM-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DfPhcT88ksQZxGOb3FUGr5naC9zxFXwsGIAPtEJtAgVFlToRr6u10fjq0TE-2FP1xAmOOxsDi-2FQUwYNVv4a-2FiELRycaar-2FFKTpD-2FUo-2FOesLl8QTZyClAbFw5FRGk7G6r9zsg-3D-3D>“that
many people will feel that they have done their part after struggling
through a lengthy book on economics, and now they can go back to their
vacation homes and say it’s all a shame.”

It takes a lot more time and energy to read Piketty’s *Capital in the
21st Century* than it does to vote for Barack Obama. Still, it’s hard to
miss the parallel here. Like poking a ballot card for the fake-progressive
president, purchasing (and maybe even working through some of) Piketty’s
book seems to help some liberals think they’ve made a contribution to
solving the world’s injustices even while it asks them to do nothing of
substance to fight inequality and justifies that nothingness by suggesting
that nothing much can be done anyway.

*Paul Street’s new book is  **They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy(Paradigm,
September 2014)*
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBpOxBOyolcdy-2B6XYJLlh541BpVVz2xarakddzCJ-2BZcDC17RURB8GGn5a-2BU9skYy07c-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DVQMYmg61w6jM6k1zMW5stU0sS9ZC3Xdb-2Bw6ouvoAlOUDENFLOaQ3SLYR0HW79kqZa-2FdG66UKt49dXofykiFHuNsaMCUiqUmSK8-2BSC1owD6uuwJ770Adp-2FNIU1kVZGsRug-3D-3D>

*Notes*

1. This is not to say that the first Monday in September is the most
appropriate day for such reflection, historically speaking. It isn’t.  May
First is. For reflections on the reactionary business class considerations
behind the official US Labor Day’s dating at the beginning of September
rather than May 1st/May Day (the international workers’ day commemorating
the Eight Hour Day Struggle in Chicago in 1886), see Ken Layne, “Labor Day
is a Scam to Keep You Poor and Miserable Forever,” Gawker (August 30, 2013)
<http://send.zcomm.org/wf/click?upn=9PHos1J7-2FD2Lw6jereECeNLGs3ocss1O2kcgD4VkZGxNQKyMz3VkxHcbWOxm-2F-2FK4zNQOFozl5YCGVxHlRDfLMfUZEtSILavXSjypeGX-2BMBrjbCejCjU3P6vAz8dXa-2B8aDF3JS-2BI73N-2FFHAmLPMlNIJKGSpyH3hhB3iW-2FcFzFjmc-3D_V-2FUUiW5KvBPNV-2FItFYsbuIFOqr58NacNTIV3-2FGcH-2BSA2fRiQrVAT2awJTq6ueLTr28j1wT9uI12g2AMlGDS5DZUJYcUKm3spRJCFprl99Pn3p6GslGafCaVS6fKT2qhK0uZmnmvjzFcvepRi-2BLPX1zAooAcdjXif2KxQBrUPM69w5xoC0-2F-2BkKhUoB-2BQvhIh8oEsunJAXZQqyAJdC7xNT4A-3D-3D>.
Thanks
to Matt Gardner for this source.

2.  For an account of declining inequality in the mid-20th century US that
is sensitive to the role of workers and unions, see Paul Krugman, *The
Conscience of a Liberal* (New York, 2007), Chapter 3, “The Great
Compression.”

ZCommunications, 18 Millfield St., Woods Hole, MA, USA, 02543
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-- 
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http://en.wiki.floksociety.org/w/Research_Plan

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