The book Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty became a best-seller this year, with its economic analysis of the growing worldwide concentration of wealth. It reflects and has contributed to a global discussion on inequality that has included speeches by President Obama and Pope Francis.
This spring, Art Perlo, a member of the CPUSA’s Economics Commission, was asked by the New Haven Public Library to prepare a discussion on the book Capital in the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty. He made the presentation on August 21, 2014 to a full and lively audience in the library’s program room.
The talk is titled, An activist view of Piketty, and includes seven sections:
1) Introduction
2) What does the book say about the history and causes of inequality?
3) Solutions proposed by Piketty
4) Critics from the right
5) Comments by progressives, leftists, Marxists
6) One Communist’s evaluation of Piketty’s Capital
7) Where do we go from here?
Below are links to a video of the presentation and the questions and answers. Parts of the talk will be extracted and expanded for a forthcoming article on politicalaffairs.net.
Part 1 (about 40 minutes) Art’s presentation on Piketty (audio improves after first 45 seconds):
Part 2 Questions and Answers (audio is poor for questions, good for answers).
photo: Creative Commons 3.0
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Art Perlo lives in New Haven, Conn., where he is active in labor and community struggles. He does research and writing on economic issues in Connecticut, including work with the Coaltion to End Child Poverty in Connecticut which helped pave the way for the movement for progressive tax reform in the state. He writes on national economic issues for the People's World, and is a member of the CPUSA Economic Commission.
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