Piketty = Economics minus Politics

Ever since the appearance of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty we have  received numerous emails from colleagues asking us to read/discuss the book, or to create and attend special sessions at professional meetings to listen to a panel discussion of this new work. We confess to not having read the book, but we did read a lengthy discussion of the book in the New York Times. The NYT article left with the following conclusions.


The NYT discussion of the Piketty book makes it appear to be very heavy on the economic side but very light on the political side. For example, the post-WW II "Golden Age" for workers (wage expansion, job security, pensions) is presented as if it were an aberration or an anomaly to an otherwise consistent trend of the dominance of capitalist profits over worker wages. What is missing in this pursuit of a pure economic principle is the understanding that in a capitalist system, profits will always be distributed according to the relative power of the players: capitalists, labor, AND THE STATE. The role of the State in 1945-1970 (the Golden Years) was very different than it was post-1970, when corporations were enabled by legislation from both political parties that permitted closing production in the US and expanding investment overseas, while protecting the profits garnered from overseas investment and production. 


Why all the silence on the role of politics in first shaping the economy and creating the Golden Years for workers, and then enabling corporations to dominate workers and destroy major sectors of the US economy (manufacturing, textiles, consumer electronics, to name a few). If Piketty is supposed to be a political economist (at least if he is to be viewed as the "new" Marx), let us try to put the politics back into political economy.