Now an economist proves what we already knew - capitalism doesn't work!

I was really interested to read about Thomas Piketty's new book 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century' which is being hailed as a 'groundbreaking'  work and, apparently, is making a real impact on economists. What Piketty has done is to 'prove' what many of us long thought was true - capitalism creates inequality, and left unchecked, ever increasing inequality. Piketty has done this by sifting through masses of economic data from the past couple of hundred years and he has written about his findings in a book which is accessible to the general reader.

All of this is good news - if it has a real impact on economics - and we can only hope now that it does. One hundred and fifty years or so ago Marx showed how capitalists expropriate wealth from working people through the mechanism of surplus value, and despite the fact that Marx had a huge influence politically, much of his work was ignored by mainstream economists, who were wedded to the capitalist economic system. Lets hope that Piketty doesn't suffer the same fate as Marx because economists whose ideas run counter to the prevailing order tend to have little impact in the end. This is because 'economics' is less an academic discipline and more a political justification of the current structures of economic power. 

David Harvey's new thought provoking book

I look forward to reading Piketty's book when I've finished a book I suspect will prove to be a much more interesting and thought provoking read - this is David Harvey's 'Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism'.  Harvey is a renowned Marxist who has lectured on Capital for many years. I'm only six contradictions into this book but Harvey has already nailed the iniquities and inefficiencies of capitalism and is well on the way to explaining what we must do to build an economy for the 99%. Its a book that I can thoroughly recommend. I'll get round to reading Piketty as soon as I can but I guess I owe him thanks already for proving what I have been saying on this blog for years - capitalism creates poverty.