Piketty or Marx? Capital in the Twenty-first Century: a fundamental criticism -- Part 3

Piketty or Marx? Capital in the Twenty-first Century: a fundamental criticism

Part 3 Transition to capitalist production

For his part, Piketty doesn't mention the transition from feudalism to capitalism, which was a very slow process until the late 18th century, impeded by the persistent strength of medieval traditions, protected by the monarchy and the aristocracy. He does, however, provide statistical evidence of a passage from a more-or-less economically stagnant world to a world of accelerated national growth, although he doesn't recognize capitalism as fundamentally different from feudalism. Nor does he consider "capital" something uniquely associated with capitalism. Marx and Engels, on the other hand, did explain the historical transition to capitalism.

The underlying assumption in Piketty's analysis is that "capital" has existed since ancient times; indeed he has a chart showing the ratio of the rate of return on capital to the growth rate of the economy starting at the year zero. He explains in Chapter 10 (p. 446): "In order to illustrate this point as clearly as possible, I have shown in Figure 10.9 the evolution of the global rate of return on capital and the growth rate from antiquity to the twenty-first century." But this ignores the basic facts of the evolution of social systems since the birth of civilization. In previous forms of society (barbarism, slavery, feudalism) capital either did not exist, or existed only in primitive forms (merchant's and usurer's capital). In these earlier stages of social development, the basic needs of the population were met by traditional practices of production and distribution that did not involve money. In slave societies production was carried out by slaves, and a portion of the product was given to them as survival rations. In feudal society, the work was done by serfs who provided labor services or a share of the product to the aristocratic landowners….

Full:

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