Piketty ideology 2

Collective learning and social sciences However, I do not intend to practice a generalized ideological relativism. It is too easy for the social scientist to keep an equal distance from different beliefs and not to speak out. This book will take a stand, especially in the last part, but I will try to do so by explaining as much as possible the path followed and the reasons that lead me to these positions. Most often, the ideology of societies evolves primarily according to their own historical experience. For example, the French Revolution arises partly from the feeling of injustice and frustrations caused by the Ancien Régime. Through the ruptures that it entails and the transformations that it undertakes, the Revolution in turn contributes to the lasting transformation of the perceptions of the ideal inegalitarian regime, according to the successes and failures that the various social groups lend to revolutionary experiments, as well as in terms of political organization than of ownership or the social, fiscal or educational system. These learnings condition the future political breaks, and so on. Each national political-ideological trajectory can be seen as a gigantic process of collective learning and historical experimentation. This process is inevitably confrontational, because the different social and political groups, besides not always having the same interests and aspirations, do not have the same memory and the same interpretation of the events and the meaning to give them for the future. after. But these learnings also often include elements of national consensus, at least for a time. These collective learning processes have their share of rationality, but they also have their limits. In particular, they tend to have a short memory (we often forget the experiences of our own country after a few decades, or we only remember a few bits, rarely chosen at random), and above all they are the most often narrowly nationalistic. Do not blacken the feature: each company sometimes draws some lessons from the experiences of other countries, by the knowledge they have, and also of course through more or less violent encounters between different societies (wars, colonizations, occupations, treated more or less unequally, which is not always the most serene or promising learning mode). But for the most part, the different visions of the ideal political system, the desirable property regime, or the just legal, fiscal, or educational system are forged from national experiences in this area, and almost completely ignore the experiences of other countries. especially when they are perceived as distant and belonging to distinct civilizational, religious or moral essences, or when encounters have occurred in a violent way (which may reinforce the feeling of radical strangeness). More generally, these learnings are often based on relatively crude and imprecise representations of the institutional arrangements actually experienced in different societies (including at the national level or between neighboring countries), both in the political sphere and in legal, fiscal and educational issues, which considerably limits the usefulness of the lessons that can be learned for the future. Of course, these limitations are not given forever. They evolve according to multiple processes of dissemination and mobilization of knowledge and experiences: schools and books, migration and intermarriage, parties and unions, mobility and meetings, newspapers and media, and so on. This is where social science research can play its role. By meticulously comparing historical experiences from different countries and cultural and civilizational areas, exploiting available sources as systematically as possible, studying the evolution of the structure of inequalities and political-ideological regimes in different societies I am convinced that it is possible to contribute to a better understanding of current transformations. Above all, such a comparative, historical and transnational approach makes it possible to form a clearer idea of ​​whatcould look like a better political, economic and social organization for the various societies of the world in the twenty-first century, and especially for the world society, which is the human political community to which we all belong. For all that, I do not pretend, of course, that the conclusions I will present throughout the book are the only ones possible. They seem to me to be those which logically derive from the available historical experiences and the materials I am going to present, and I will try to explain as precisely as possible the episodes and comparisons which seem to me the most decisive to justify this or that conclusion ( without trying to hide the extent of the uncertainties that remain). But it goes without saying that these conclusions are dependent on very limited knowledge and reasoning. This book is a tiny step in a vast process of collective learning, and I am infinitely curious and eager to know the next steps in this human adventure. I also want to add, for the sake of those who lament the rise of inequalities and drifts of identity, and also of those who fear that I lament in my turn, that this book is in no way a book of lamentations. I am rather naturally optimistic, and my first goal is to help find solutions to the problems that arise. Rather than always seeing the glass half empty, it is not forbidden to marvel at the astonishing capacity of human societies to imagine new institutions and cooperation, to hold together millions (sometimes hundreds of millions, if not billions) of people who have never met and will never meet, and who may be ignoring or destroying themselves instead of submitting to peaceful rules, even though so little is known on the nature of the ideal regime, and therefore the rules to which it is justified to submit. However, this institutional imagination has its limits and must be the subject of a reasoned analysis. To say that inequality is ideological and political, not economic or technological, does not mean that inequality can be eliminated as if by magic. This means, more modestly, that the ideological-institutional diversity of human societies must be taken seriously, and be wary of all rhetoric aimed at naturalizing inequalities and denying the existence of alternatives. It also means that the institutional arrangements and the details of the legal, fiscal or educational rules put in place in the different countries must be carefully studied, because it is these decisive details that in reality make cooperation work and equality progress (or not), beyond the good will of both, which must always be presumed, but which is never sufficient, as long as it is not embodied in solid cognitive and institutional devices. If I succeed in communicating a little of this reasoned wonder to the reader, and convince him that historical and economic knowledge is too important to be abandoned to others, then my goal will have been fully achieved. The sources used in this book: inequalities and ideologies This book is based on two main types of historical sources: on the one hand, sources for measuring the evolution of inequalities, in a historical, comparative and multidimensional perspective (income inequalities , salary, wealth, education, gender, age, occupation, origin, religion, race, status, etc.); and on the other hand, sources for studying the transformations of ideologies, political beliefs and representations of inequalities and the economic, social and political institutions that structure them. As far as inequalities are concerned, I will rely in particular on the data gathered in the framework of the World Inequality Database (WID.World). This project is based on the combined efforts of more than 100 researchers now covering more than 80 countries on all continents. It brings together the largest database currently available on the historical evolution of income and wealth inequalities, both between countries and within countries. The WID.world project is the result of historical work initiated with Anthony Atkinson and Emmanuel Saez in the early 2000s, which aimed at generalizing and expanding research begun in the 1950s and 1970s by Simon Kuznets, Atkinson and Allan Harrison 1. This work is based on a systematic comparison of the different sources available, and in particular national accounts, survey data and tax and estate data, which generally go back to the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20 th century. , a period in which progressive income and estate tax systems were created in many countries, which also made it possible to see more about wealth (tax is always a way of producing categories and knowledge, not just tax revenue and dissatisfaction). For some countries, it may even begin in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries , particularly in the case of France, where the Revolution led to the early establishment of a unified property registration system. and their transmission. This research has put into a long historical perspective the phenomenon of rising inequalities observed since the 1980s and 1990s, and thus helped to feed the global public debate on these issues, as evidenced by the interest aroused by twenty-first century, published in 2013, as well as the Report on global inequality published in 2018 2. This interest also shows the deep need for democratization of economic knowledge and political participation. In increasingly educated and informed societies, it is becoming less and less acceptable to abandon economic and financial issues to a small group of experts with questionable skills, and it is only natural that more and more citizens wish to make their own opinion and commit accordingly. The economy is at the heart of politics; it does not delegate, any more than democracy. The data available on inequalities are unfortunately incomplete, in particular because of the lack of economic and financial transparency and the difficulties in accessing tax, administrative and banking sources in too many countries. Thanks to the support of hundreds of citizens, researchers and journalists, we have been able in recent years to gain access to new sources that the governments in place have so far refused to open, for example in Brazil and India, South Africa and Tunisia, Lebanon and Côte d'Ivoire, Korea and Taiwan, Poland and Hungary, and unfortunately more limited in China and Russia. Among the many limitations of my 2013 book, one of the most obvious is its occidental -centrism, in the sense that it places too much emphasis on the rich countries' historical experience (Western Europe, North America, Japan). This was in part due to difficulties in accessing adequate historical sources for other countries. The unpublished data now available in WID.world allow me in this new book to get out of the Western framework and develop a richer analysis of the diversity of unequal regimes and possible trajectories and bifurcations. Despite this progress, however, I must emphasize that the available data are still very inadequate, both in rich countries and in poor countries. I have also collected in this book many other sources and materials relating to periods, countries or aspects of inequalities poorly covered in WID.world , for example on pre-industrial societies or colonial societies, as well as on inequalities in status, occupation, education, gender, race or religion. As far as ideologies are concerned, the sources used will naturally be very diverse. I will of course seek the classic sources: parliamentary debates, political speeches, party platforms and platforms. I will use the texts of both theorists and political actors, because both play an important role in history. They provide us with additional insights into the patterns of justification of inequality that have prevailed at different times. This applies, for example, to the texts of bishops at the beginning of the eleventh century justifying the trifunctional organization of society into three clerical, warlike and laborious classes , as well as the influential neoproprietarist and semi-dictatorial treatise published at the beginning of the 1980s by Friedrich Hayek (Law, Legislation and Liberty), including writings by the Democratic Senator of South Carolina and Vice President of the United States John Calhoun to the justification of "slavery as a positive good" ( slavery as a positive good) in the 1830s. This also applies to the Xi Jinping and Global Times texts on the Chinese neo-communist dream , which are just as telling as Donald Trump's tweets or the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times on the US and Anglo-Saxon Hypercapitalist Vision. All these ideologies must be taken seriously, not only because they have a considerable impact on the course of events, but also because they all show in their own way attempts (more or less convincing) to make sense of social realities complex. But human beings can not help but try to make sense of the societies in which they live, however unequal and unjust they may be. I assume that there are always things to learn in the expression of these different ideological patterns, and that only an examination of all the historical discourses and trajectories can bring out useful lessons for the future. I will also use literature, which is often one of the best sources to illustrate the transformations of representations of inequalities. In Capital in the 21st Century, I used the nineteenth-century European classical novel, particularly the texts by Balzac and Jane Austen, which offer us an irreplaceable point of view on the societies of owners who flourish. in France and the United Kingdom in the years 1790-1830. The two novelists have an intimate knowledge of the hierarchy of property in force around them. They know better than anyone the secret springs and the secret borders, the implacable consequences for the lives of these women and men, their strategies of encounter and alliance, their hopes and their misfortunes. They analyze the deep structure of inequalities, their justifications, their implications in everyone's life, with a truth and an evocative power that no political speech, no social science text could match. We will see that this unique capacity of literature to evoke the relations of power and domination between social groups, to examine the perceptions of inequalities as they are felt by one and the other, is found in all societies, and can to give us valuable testimonies on very unequal regimes. In The Will and Fortune, a magnificent fresco published in 2008, a few years before his death, Carlos Fuentes draws an edifying picture of Mexican capitalism and social violence that crosses his country. In The World of Men, published in 1980, Pramoedya Ananta Toer gives us an insight into the functioning of the Dutch colonial and inegalitarian regime in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Indonesia , with a brutality and truth that 'no other source can reach. In Americanah , Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie offers us in 2013 a proud and ironic look at the migratory trajectories of Ifemelu and Obinze , from Nigeria to the United States and in Europe, and thus a unique point of view on one the strongest dimensions of the current inegalitarian regime. To study ideologies and their transformations, this book will also rely on a systematic and original exploitation of post-election surveys carried out in most countries where elections have been held since the Second World War. Despite all their limitations, these surveys provide an unparalleled observatory of the structure and dimensions of political, ideological and electoral conflict, from the 1940s to the late 1990s, not only in almost all Western countries ( and particularly in France, the United States and the United Kingdom, which I will focus on in particular), but also in many other countries that I will also examine, particularly India, Brazil or South Africa. One of the most important limitations of my 2013 book, in addition to its western- centered character , is its tendency to treat political-ideological evolutions around inequalities and redistribution as a kind of black box. I formulate some hypotheses about them, for example on the transformations of political representations and attitudes to the inequalities and private property induced in the twentieth century by world wars, economic crises and the communist challenge, but without any real to tackle the question of the evolution of unequal ideologies head-on. This is what I am now trying to do in a much more explicit way in this new book, by placing this question in a broader temporal and spatial perspective, and relying in particular on these post-election surveys, as well as on other sources. to analyze the evolution of ideologies. Human progress, the return of inequalities, the diversity of the world Let us now enter the heart of the matter. Human progress exists, but it is fragile, and it can at any time be shattered by the inequality and identity of the world. Human progress exists: it is enough to be convinced of observing the evolution of health and education in the world during the last two centuries (see graph 0.1). Life expectancy at birth increased from around 26 years in the world on average in 1820 to 72 years in 2020. In the early 19th century, infant mortality hit around 20% of newborns on the planet in their first year, compared with less than 1% today. Focusing on people reaching 1 year of age, life expectancy at birth increased from about 32 years in 1820 to 73 years in 2020. The number of indicators could be newborn to reach the age of 10, that for an adult to reach the age of 60, that for a senior to spend five or ten years of retirement in good health. On all these indicators, the long-term improvement is impressive. One can certainly find countries and times when life expectancy declines, even in times of peace, like the Soviet Union in the 1970s or the United States in the years 2010, which is generally not not a good sign for the schemes concerned. But over the long term, the trend towards improvement is undeniable in all parts of the world, regardless of the limits of the available demographic sources . Chart 0.1 World health and education, 1820-2020 Reading: life expectancy at birth (all births combined) increased from around 26 years on average in the world in 1820 to 72 in 2020. Hope birth rate among persons reaching the age of 1 has increased from 32 years to 73 years (infant mortality before age 1 has increased from around 20% in 1820 to less than 1% in 2020 ). The literacy rate among the world's population aged 15 and over increased from 12% to 85%. Sources and series: see piketty.pse.ens.fr/ ideologie . Mankind now lives in better health than it has ever lived; it also has more access to education and culture than ever before. Unesco did not exist in the early nineteenth century to define literacy as it has done since 1958, that is to say the ability of a person "to read and write, including, a statement simple and brief relating to his daily life. However, the information gathered from multiple surveys and censuses suggests that only 10% of the world's population over 15 was literate in the early 19th century, compared with more than 85% today. Here again, finer indicators, such as the average number of years of schooling that would have gone from barely a year two centuries ago to more than eight years in the world today, and more than twelve years in the world. advanced countries would confirm the diagnosis. At the time of Austen and Balzac, less than 10% of the world's population attained primary school; to that of Adichie and Fuentes, more than half of the young generations of the rich countries go to university: what had always been a class privilege is open to the majority. To realize the magnitude of the transformations involved, it should also be remembered that the human population as the average income have been multiplied by more than 10 since the eighteenth century. The first rose from around 600 million in 1700 to more than 7 billion in 2020, while the second, as far as can be measured, went from an average purchasing power (expressed in 2020 euros) barely 80 euros per month and per capita around the world around 1700 to about 1,000 euros per month in 2020 (see graph 0.2). It is not certain, however, that these considerable quantitative progressions, of which it is worth remembering that they both correspond to average annual growth rates of barely 0.8%, accumulated it is true over more than three centuries (proof that it may not be necessary to aim for growth of 5% per year to achieve earthly happiness), represent "progress" in a sense as indisputable as those achieved in terms of health and education. Chart 0.2 Population and average income in the world, 1700-2020 Reading: the world population as the average national income increased by more than 10 between 1700 and 2020: the first grew from about 600 million inhabitants in 1700 to more than 7 billion in 2020; the second, expressed in 2020 euros and purchasing power parity, rose from just € 80 per month per inhabitant of the planet in 1700 to about € 1,000 per month and per capita in 2020. Sources and series: see piketty.pse.ens.fr/ ideology . In both cases, the interpretation of these developments is ambiguous, and opens complex debates for the future. Population growth certainly reflects in part the fall in child mortality and the fact that a growing number of parents have been able to grow up with children alive, which is not nothing. It remains that such a rise in the population, if it continued at the same pace, would lead us to more than 70 billion people in three centuries, which seems neither desirable nor bearable by the planet. The growth in average income partly reflects a very real improvement in living conditions (three-quarters of the world's inhabitants lived close to the subsistence level in the 18th century, compared to less than a fifth today), as well as new opportunities for travel, recreation, dating and emancipation. The fact remains that the national accounts used here to describe the long-term evolution of the average income, and since their invention at the end of the 17th and early 18th century in the United Kingdom and France, attempt to measure income. the gross domestic product and sometimes the national capital of the countries pose many problems. In addition to their focus on averages and aggregates and their total lack of consideration of inequality, they are only too slowly beginning to integrate the issue of sustainability and human and natural capital. On the other hand, their ability to summarize in a single indicator the multidimensional transformations of living conditions and purchasing power over such long periods of time should not be overestimated . In general, the real progress made in terms of health, education and purchasing power masks huge inequalities and fragilities. In 2018, the infant mortality rate before 1 year was less than 0.1% in the richest European, North American and Asian countries, but it reached almost 10% in the poorest African countries. The average world income was certainly 1,000 euros per month and per capita, but it was barely 100-200 euros per month in the poorest countries, and exceeded 3,000-4,000 euros per month in the world's poorest countries. richer, or even more, in a few tax havens that some people (not without reason) suspect of stealing the rest of the world, when it is not a country whose prosperity is based on carbon emissions and warming ahead. Some progress has been made, but that does not change the fact that it is always possible to do better, or in any case to seriously ask questions about it, rather than to indulge in a sense of bliss face to the success of the world. Above all, this undeniable average human progress, if we compare the living conditions prevailing in the eighteenth century and the beginning of the twenty-first , must not forget that this very long-term evolution was accompanied by terrible phases of unequal and civilizational regression. The Euro-American "Enlightenment" and the Industrial Revolution relied on extremely violent systems of proprietary , slave and colonial domination , which took on an unprecedented historical scale in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before the European powers themselves sink into a phase of genocidal self-destruction between 1914 and 1945. These same powers were then imposed decolonization in the years 1950-1960, when the US authorities ended up extending the civil rights to the descendants slaves. The fears of atomic apocalypse related to the communist-capitalism conflict were barely forgotten, after the Soviet collapse of 1989-1991, and apartheid South Africa was barely abolished in 1991-1994, that the world entered from the 2000s -2010 in a new torpor, that of global warming and a general tendency to identity and xenophobic withdrawal, all in a context of unprecedented rise in socio-economic inequalities within countries since the 1980-1990, boosted by a particularly radical neoproprietarian ideology . To claim that all these episodes observed from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first century were necessary and indispensable for human progress to be realized would make little sense. Other trajectories and unequal regimes were possible, other trajectories and other more egalitarian and just regimes are still possible. If there is one lesson to be drawn from world history of the last three centuries, it is that human progress is not linear, and that one would be wrong to assume that everything will always be for the better, and that the free competition of state powers and economic actors would be enough to lead us, as if by a miracle, to social and universal harmony. Human progress exists, but it is a struggle, and it must above all rely on a reasoned analysis of past historical developments, with what they include positive and negative.