A Brief History of Equality

"A Brief History of Equality

By Thomas Piketty

Belknap/Harvard, 274 pages, $27.95

Thomas Piketty is back. The French economist is best known for "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" (2013), an 800-page book turbid with equations and numbers of all kinds.

Especially memorable to fellow economists is its signature formula, r > g -- which holds that the rate of return on private capital will always exceed an economy's growth rate.

In Mr. Piketty's view, this is "the central contradiction of capitalism," which locks society into an "endless inegalitarian spiral."

The book was one of the more improbable successes in the history of bookselling: 2.5 million copies were bought. Although impenetrable to anyone without a doctorate in economics, it came to be regarded as a game-changing weapon in the war to wrest wealth from the rich. And so the book turned into a totem for Western progressives. Yet surveys have shown that few who bought it read it, making it a challenger to Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" for the most unread book in history.

The title of Mr. Piketty's new work -- in imitation of Hawking -- is "A Brief History of Equality." He conceived it as a response to a question he's been asked by readers: "What you write is interesting, but couldn't you make it a little shorter, so I can share your research with my friends and family?" It's hard to dislike a man who isn't content with selling millions of books if they languish unopened on bookshelves. He wants to be read -- not just by economists but by "the best-intentioned citizen."

"A Brief History of Equality" starts promisingly enough. Since the end of the 18th century, Mr. Piketty writes, "there has been a historical movement toward equality." The world of the 2020s, "no matter how unjust it may seem," is more egalitarian than that of 1950 or 1900, or 1850, or 1780. The equality isn't just one of income or wealth but also of status, gender and race.

This claim is uncontestable. Any honest look at the past few centuries shows a stunning improvement in the human condition and a broadening of equality. But Mr. Piketty thinks there's not much "to brag about." To note a tendency toward equality amounts, instead, to a "call for continuing the fight." The equality we have, he argues, is the result of "revolts against injustice" -- including the transformation of "power relationships" and the overthrow of institutions supported by "the dominant classes."

So class struggle and revolutionary politics, as well as the welfare state and progressive taxation, are the real equalizers.

Efficient production, shrewd investment, or the genius and dynamism of innovators are sideshows. Stripped of its academic aura, "A Brief History of Equality" is pure Bernie Sanders or AOC. In truth, Mr. Piketty may even be to their left.

"All creations of wealth in history have issued from a collective process," he writes, because they depend on the international division of labor, the use of global natural resources, and -- wait for this -- "the accumulation of knowledge since the beginnings of humanity." This leads him to call not just for "basic income" and "guaranteed employment" but also for a state-mandated "minimum inheritance" for all citizens. He also wants poor countries to receive part of the taxes paid by "the planet's multinationals and billionaires," whose prosperity is "entirely dependent on the global economic system."

Behind Mr. Piketty's analysis is a rigid righteousness that regards equality as a moral pinnacle and inequality as repugnant. He sees today's socialists as the successors to the anti-colonialists, abolitionists and suffragists of the past. Capitalists, by contrast, are modern-day enslavers, heirs to a legacy of oppression. Mr. Piketty also dodges important questions. First: Why do we care about inequality per se? If a venture capitalist sells a new product and improves lives, and then buys a jet with his earnings, why is this bad? Similarly, we can all be equal though poorer: Do we really want uniform wretchedness? Inequality can be a symptom of kleptocracy, for sure (look at Russia) -- but it can also be due to a flourishing economy. Second: If we garrote our golden goose, will she still lay eggs?

Mr. Piketty insists that inequality is a "social, historical, and political construction" -- one that can be reconstructed along redistributive lines. "For the same level of economic or technological development," he asserts, "there are always many different ways of organizing a property system." But would the level of economic and technological development that has led to a radical erosion of political and material inequality have occurred without capitalism?

Mr. Piketty doesn't tell us.

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Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at Columbia University's Center of Capitalism and Society." [1]

1. REVIEW --- Spring Books: The Successful Socialist's Guide To Economics
Varadarajan, Tunku.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 09 Apr 2022: C.7.