Paris (AFP)
Author of "Capital of the XXIst Century", translated into 40 languages, the French economist Thomas Piketty answered AFP's questions on the occasion of the publication on Thursday of "A brief history of Equality", a book who wants to be an optimistic invitation to action.
Question: Why did you focus on the evolution of equality over the long term for this book?
Thomas Piketty: I show that the movement towards social, economic and political equality is a long-term trend, and which is not about to stop.
It begins with the French Revolution and the slave revolt in Saint Domingue, which mark the beginning of the end of privileged societies and slave and colonial societies.
The march towards equality has always been nourished by revolts against injustice, both within countries and at the international level.
It will be the same in the future.
Q: What would it take for this cause to progress again?
A: In recent decades, we have invented an almost sacred right to make a fortune by using a country's public infrastructure, its health and education system, etc., then to transfer its assets to another jurisdiction, leaving the bill to the rest of the country. population.
We must put an end to the free movement of capital without fiscal or social compensation.
And we cannot expect unanimity for that: each country must unilaterally exit this system, while offering the others explicit and quantified targets for fiscal and social justice and transnational assemblies to achieve them.
This is what I call universalist sovereignty.
Q: Can we impose strong environmental constraints on countries that first want to catch up with development delays?
A: The richest 1% on the planet emit more carbon than the poorest 50%, or nearly four billion people living in the countries that will bear the brunt of the richest lifestyles first.
A proportional carbon tax affecting the poor and the rich alike - and in practice often exonerating the latter - is not the solution and will only lead to new revolts, in the North as in the South.
Only a strong reduction in inequalities and a significant contribution from the richest will make it possible to get out of these contradictions.
Q: Hasn't China, with its spectacular development, become a model for poor countries, despite the widening inequalities that President Xi Jinping says today he wants to reduce?
A: Inequalities have grown enormously in China over the past 30 years.
Whatever Xi Jinping says, things have only gotten worse since coming to power (in 2013).
That said, China has real strengths to seduce the countries of the South.
To turn the tide, Western countries will have to get out of their arrogance and propose an alternative model of democratic, participatory, ecological and mixed socialism.
Q: What can be done to prevent the Covid-19 crisis from further widening the inequalities between countries?
A: Duties on vaccines must be lifted so that the countries of the South can finally start producing.
More generally, there is an urgent need to rethink international taxation in order to share the revenues from multinationals and billionaires.
On the one hand because the prosperity of the rich countries would not exist without the poor countries and the legacy of slavery and colonialism, and on the other hand because every human being should have a minimum equal right to health, to education and development.
Q: How do you want to influence the political debate in France during the presidential campaign?
A: This book is both a history and social science book and a citizen mobilization book.
By looking at how this movement towards equality actually happened, it is possible to better understand the struggles and mobilizations that made it possible.
Unfortunately, this process of collective learning of just institutions is often weakened by historical amnesia, intellectual nationalism and the compartmentalization of knowledge.
Economic questions are too important to be left to a small class of specialists and leaders.
The citizen's reappropriation of this knowledge is an essential step in transforming power relations.
© 2021 AFP