Is Piketty a socialist? I’m 90% sure he opens Capital in the a Twenty first Century with the claim that because the advanced capitalist states haven’t yet had a revolution, Marx was wrong. It’s to be expected of a French public intellectual, I suppose, but this demonstrates a severe misunderstanding of Marx(ism). His book is still worth reading.

Wolff is great. His analysis is often spot on. His ‘solutions’ can be very liberal but I think he’s trying to bridge a gap and shift the narrative. I think he’s a lot more radical than he sometimes appears. He knows that if he can find a way of appearing ‘reasonable’, he can get people to be open to the facts and narrative he’s sharing. And if people accept those facts and that narrative, they will eventually be amenable to Marxism. The co-op thing is by-the-by; Marxism leads all honest people to revolutionary thought.

Im not aquainted with Piketty, but as far Wolff goes, I think many will be tempted to write him off as too liberal. That might be correct, im not sure, but I think as far as his analysis of the current state of “the left in the US” (non existent basically) and ideas to at least push the needle a tiny amount, he’s pretty much just correct as far as I can tell. The idea of worker co-ops and stuff is, sadly, probably the only possibly achieveable move towards democracy in the workplace. His simplistic, but true, explainations and demistifying of economics is also valuable alone. If that was all he did was explain why the federal reserve is bullshit or why inflation is really happening that would be enough. Luckily he offers more than that of course.

I was tempted to write him off as well-meaning but too far engrained in the system to “get it” and I think that might not be completely wrong. I don’t really get any vibes of urgency from him ie we absolutely have to see the world (not the US, it’s basically irredeemable) move towards socialism basically right now. Perhaps he’s choosing his tone on purpose as to not scare off libs, who knows.

I guess to be done here, I think of Wolff and David Harvey, the two “western” old guys who have been Marxists since forever and also in education, as a dying breed of necessary intellectuals which serve a purpose of educating the masses of libs and hopefully radicalizing them. Unfortunately they are indeed dying off. Who comes out from Harvard now with a PhD and openly calls themself a Marxist while teaching economics or any subject? Probably a few, but having that pedigree and liberal credentials obviously serves him well as no one can say he’s full of shit. They mostly just ignore him because they kind of can’t deal with his argument (smart of them btw). I think in some hypothetical long term where the world moved towards socialism, hopefully the real world, people like Wolff, whoever fills his shoes decades from now, will end up being the final firewall between a true revolutionary government taking hold and the liberal status quo. Those types are fine radicalizing right up until the exact point of revolution but then, due to their material conditions, they resist the revolution right there at the end and side ultimately with liberals choosing status quo and “stability” they know over chaos but potential for what they really desire- or that’s what they said anyway. I think this is why I was inclined to group him with such types originally, although I do think he sides and has sided with labor his whole life. He will never face that impossible point where he is asked or told to surrender a position of luxury and comfort within the overall hierarchy because the chances of that time coming, in the US, are zero basically.