5/5

What can I say that hasn’t been said before? I’m arriving a decade late to the party but this book still hits you like a ton of bricks. Now I think the economically minded will focus their analysis on R > G, which to be sure is a triumph of statistical analysis and data collection. For someone like me, who’s chief interest lies in the Industrial Transformation of the 19th century, the most revelatory content was actually the examination of the structure of inequality.

The emphasis on how little the structure of inequality in France changed between 1789 and 1914 was mind boggling to me. Picketty demonstrates that the new industrial society of proprietarians basically didn’t change the structure of inequality at all, despite the vast expansion of French wealth and changes in the political regime. This is a shocking and mind-bending claim that makes me seriously reconsider my priors about the rise of capital after 1848.

There is some good discussion of the importance of Capital Allocation vs Capital Accumulation in here that is the sort of neo-Marxist intervention that is sorely needed. The final part’s focus on the centrality of politics to the economic regime and emphasis on the study of political economy was like a cold drink of water in a desert. This is a masterpiece, and worth the energy of anyone who wants to seriously think about the evolution of capital.