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Courtenay Bayly Literature and Controversy Presentation
- 1. Popularity and the Taboo. Courtenay Bayly Literature and Controversy 27th April 2016
- 2. Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- 3. Controversy of the Unsaid Religion, sex, politics or money Taboos are “prohibitions … that cultures place around a whole range of possible phenomena” (Jenks 2003, p.45). “The laws of conversation” (Miller 2006, p.74). However, “what is forbidden … carries with it a propulsion to desire in equal measure” (Jenks 2003, p.45).
- 4. Audience “an economics blockbuster and a ‘must read’ to the young progressive intelligentsia” (Fonesca 2014) “Specific books … giv[e] direction and purpose to one’s life” (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg- Halton 1981, p.70)
- 5. Pre-Release “The year’s most popular and controversial book.”— Roland White, The Sunday Times “Despite the controversies surrounding it, the book throws much light upon one of the most important questions in economics: what determines the distribution of income and wealth” – Martin Wolf, The Financial Times “According to Piketty, the only real corrective to capital’s concentration is a global capital tax (because it is freely globally mobile), and a stiff inheritance tax. This is controversial, but what is not disputed is that inequality in income and wealth within each country has gotten much worse in the past three decades. The question is what do we do about it. For starters, we should read this excellent book.”—Ajit Ranade, Business Today
- 6. Reception “the early reviews of Capital in the Twenty-First Century roughly fall into four main groupings – critics who come at Piketty from the right, critics who come at Piketty from the left, reviewers who mainly praise the book, and reviewers who have clearly not read the book” (Pressman 2016, p.56) (Photograph: Chloe Cushman for The Guardian, cited Moore 2014)
- 8. The Guardian
- 9. Unread “Books [are] a status symbol” (Roemer 2008, p.92) and can be a tool in the performance of the “self-confirming definition of ‘intellectual’” (Williams 1981, p.222). The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt - 98.5% A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking - 6.6% Capital in the Twenty-First Century - 2.4%
- 10. “To be popular … with the right cohorts” “All citizens should take a serious interest in money, its measurements, the facts surrounding it, and its history. Those who have a lot of it never fail to defend their interests. Refusing to deal with numbers rarely serves the interest of the least well-off” (Piketty, 2014)
Notas del editor
- Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) is first and foremost a book about economics. It is rare that a book on the complex and often highly theoretical topic of economics can cause such hype as Piketty’s. For its acclaim and sales figures it has been compare to Marx’s Kapital and Keynes General Theory (Fleming 2014) and became controversial for a number of reasons: The Financial Times disputed Piketty’s research (Giugliano & Giles 2014) and Piketty’s conclusion and his later career decisions have had him labelled a Utopian Marxist (Hastings 2014) and a ‘Chattering Class’ distraction to the cause of inequality (Pizzigati 2014). Additionally, Piketty criticises capitalism, but then ultimately becomes a beneficiary of it. Today I’m going to focus on the controversy of the book’s popularity created by a specific brand of mild taboo flaunting. By boldly announcing in its very title that it will discuss the taboo subject of politics and money, make reference to popular culture and offer a challenge of an argument that affects everybody Piketty breaks free of traditional academic writing and invites in a mass audience.
- Religion, sex, politics and money are taboo conversation topics. “The meaning of ‘taboo’ … [is] on the one hand ‘sacred’ … and on the other ‘uncanny’, ‘dangerous’, ‘forbidden, ‘unclean’” (Freud 1950 p.18 cited Jenks 2008, p.45). Jenks agrees with Feud’s assertion that “taboos are prohibitions … that cultures place around a whole range of possible phenomena” (Jenks 2008, p.45) and therefore affect the way individuals think, behave and interact. It is simply good manners across different cultures and nationalities to not ask people you don’t know about their private life. “The laws of conversation generally discourage leaning too heavily on any subject; it should flow lightly, effortlessly, and without affectation” (Miller 2006, p.74). To bring up religion, sex, politics or money would disrupt this law. Capital in the Twenty-First Century about politics and money follows the rule that while “these prohibitions become very deep-seated” (Jenks 2008, p.45), “what is forbidden … carries with it a propulsion to desire in equal measure” (Jenks 2008, p.45).
- Piketty emerged from continental Europe, like the Beatles from Britain (Tracy 2014). Almost instantly his book became “an economics blockbuster and a ‘must read’ to the young progressive intelligentsia” (Fonesca 2014). Guardian columnist, James Elliott (2014) described Capital in the Twenty-First Century as the 50 Shades of economics. Elliott is referring to how within the first two months it had sold 80,000 copies (Tracy 2014), but I take his point at face value because what Piketty writes is superficially racy. It is superficially controversial. Piketty says that inequality is not only increasing, but it is inevitable within the structure capitalism. The main point of the book is Piketty’s formula: returns on capital are rising faster than economies are growing (r > g) (Piketty 2014a, p.25). Meaning that as free market capitalism continues, inequality increases and capitalism will eventually collapse in on itself. He has gone out of his way to inform the “general reader” (Piketty 2014b) of his findings by utilising references to Jane Austen (Piketty 2014a, p.53), Quentin Taratino (Piketty 2014a, p.163) and drama series Mad Men (Piketty 2014a, p.156). While I believe that Piketty as a successful economist and lecturer had valid, authentic reasons for wanting to open his field up to a mass audience and Harvard University Press’s original inability to keep up with demand concur with this suggestion (New York Times 2014), the position of the book market within the cultural industry (Adorno & Horkheimer 1997) mean that books have cultural capital that dictate taste. “Specific books … giv[e] direction and purpose to one’s life” (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981, p.70) and Capital in the Twenty-First Century offers the opportunity to indulge in the “pleasure in exerting power over oneself, in disciplining oneself” (Fiske p.49). This book was at the top of the New York Times and Amazon best seller lists weeks after it was released – the market has informed the audience what to read next.
- Harvard University Press’s webpage for Capital in the Twenty-First Century where you can also buy the book, plays the word controversy out across a number of different on-release reviews in order for an audience to interpret the word in their own way. Roland White describes it as popular and controversial, while Martin Wolf suggests that unnamed controversies should be ignored. Meanwhile Aiit Ranade focuses on Piketty’s actual workings.
- It has been noted by Pressman (2016 p.156) that “the early reviews of Capital in the Twenty-First Century roughly fall into four main groupings – critics who come at Piketty from the right, critics who come at Piketty from the left, reviewers who mainly praise the book, and reviewers who have clearly not read the book.” He goes on to suggest that there is overlap from right-leaning critiques and those who have not read the book and critics from the left who are praising it. Politics and economics are inevitably entangled and while Piketty himself describes himself as “not political” there has been considerable effort to pin him down as a French Socialist who is set to undermine capitalism. While many journalists chose to produce guides to capital like Adam Fleming’s for the BBC (2014), I can’t say that within the vast amounts of reviews any of them had “clearly not read it”, but I would like to now focus of two extremes of Pressman’s observation:
- The Daily Mail, right of centre tabloid ran with the headline, 700 pages of poppycock: A bestseller arguing capitalism doesn't work - and the only answer is eye-watering taxes, reveals Max Hastings. Larry Elliott of the Guardian reflects that the 1st May 2014 is when Piketty went viral, so Hastings’s review on the 5th is somewhat late to the party. Hastings describes Piketty as the “new kid on the block”, perhaps in comparison to Friedman considering the articles praise of Thatcher’s economic policies. Hastings’s despite his sensationalist language has definitely read or at least picked over the important bits of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. His searing anger at The Guardian’s reverence of Piketty suggest he has ploughed his way through it in order to prove himself right. However, this ideological dismissal of Capital in the Twenty-First Century doesn’t acknowledge that Piketty spent fifteen years researching over two hundred years worth economic and social-history across thirty countries. His seemingly controversial 80% tax on the rich is not so dissimilar to leveling out of wealth that happened naturally across Europe post-war with the rich’s loss of property. The Daily Mail’s rhetoric is that of the striving working class and there’s no way Hastings’s was going to agree with Piketty as the audience he is writing for would feel there was nothing left to strive for if the simplistic explanation is that 80% of their gain would be stripped from them. “and yet does not capitalism provide a structure which encourages personal aspiration” he asks. Hastings seems affronted at the very nature of Piketty’s work, Piketty’s critique of capitalism questions not only our willingness to discuss politics and money, but the very structure in which we live.
- In comparison to the Daily Mirror’s, ‘we’ll do this one article and that’s it’ approach, The Guardian appear to not have been able to stop talking about Piketty. Their interview with the author on 12th April revels in the possibility that a left leaning economist has replaced Friedman as the only economist people might be able to name (Hutton 2014). They were still talking about him in December 2014, describing him as one of the year’s most influential thinkers (Jones 2014) Prior to that in September they helpfully asked, ”why is Thomas Piketty's 700-page book a bestseller?” Heidi Moore asked several leading economists what they thought and a general consensus emerged that we live in a world where we are bombarded with information. We are forced to question the world we live in and post Occupy-movement and during this time of austerity there emerged a need for anxieties about the economy needed to be placated and Piketty’s work if it didn’t do that, certainly added another voice to the argument – 700 pages worth of voice. 1,5 million copies sold essentially on the back of what was not being said.
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century sold more hard copies than ebooks suggesting that people buying the book wanted to be physically involved in the hype surrounding it (Kelton 2014). “Books [are] a status symbol” (Roemer 2008, p.92) and can be a tool in the performance of the “self-confirming definition of ‘intellectual’” (Williams 1981, p.222). However, Jordan Ellenberg of the The Wall Street Journal was suspicious of all this book buying and devised the unscientific, but potentially useful Hawking Index to see how much of Piketty’s work the “general reader” (Piketty 2014b) was taking on. So, using Amazon’s “take the page numbers of a book's five top highlights, average them, and divide by the number of pages in the whole book. The higher the number, the more of the book we're guessing most people are likely to have read” (Ellenberg 2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century scored lower than the oft cited least read book, A Brief History of Time and it appears that most people haven’t read past page 26.
- This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Piketty’s main point is neatly laid out on page 25, so I wouldn’t blame anybody who wasn’t an economist for not reading the whole thing. The fact that he included popular culture references suggest that he wanted more people to begin to question our acceptance of capitalism, but it didn’t necessarily keep people reading. Piketty’s maths, his economics, his statistics are not radical or controversial. It is the cultural climate and audience to which the book was released that caused the hype and subsequent controversy. The cultural code of avoiding the subjects of religion, sex, politics and money are deeply ingrained within us, but these are often the most exciting things to talk about. Piketty’s book read or unread raises a lot of questions about how past political and economic factors will affect our future. Essentially Piketty won the culture industry’s game; he was in the right place at the right time with a catchy title.