Jacobin Magazine propone una recensione dell’ultimo lavoro degli economisti Alain Bihr e Michel Husson, Thomas Piketty: Une Critique Illusoire du Capital. Gli autori sostengono che nel suo recente saggio, Capitale e ideologia, Thomas Piketty, soffermandosi principalmente sulla crescita delle disuguaglianze – senza indagarne accuratamente l’origine all’interno del sistema economico vigente – e limitandosi a un’indagine sulla giustificazione ideologica delle stesse nei vari modelli di società presi in esame, abbia sopravvalutato il ruolo autonomo e regolatore della politica in seno ai processi di produzione capitalistici.

The media impact of Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology — and its 1,200 pages — don’t make it an easy subject of criticism, especially on the Left. He has become such a star economist that he now appears weekly on France’s leading public radio station, matched up against the editor of the country’s top financial daily, Les Échos, who previously monopolized the broadcaster’s economics coverage. This might even lead us to think that Piketty alone embodies left-wing economic thinking.

But such an assumption would be quite mistaken. For even apart from the weak political echo of Piketty’s book — notwithstanding its final chapter, which presents a platform for a “participatory socialism” for the twenty-first century — at a more intellectual level, heterodox economists have never rallied en masse behind Piketty’s theses. This was already noticeable when he published his previous bestseller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (issued in French in 2013 and in English the following year).

Indeed, the opposition to Piketty isn’t just a matter of liberal circles crying bloody murder over his attacks on property or his tax proposals. A number of discussions on the Left have highlighted debates and divergences, for instance, Piketty’s debate with Frédéric Lordon organized by l’Humanité this January, that with Benoît Borrits last September, or another with Cédric Durand.

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