A comment on two books: “Kapital & Ideology”, Thomas Picketty- & “Not so Black and White”, Kenan Malik

 

Two interesting books I recently read: Thomas Piketty´s “Kapital og Ideology”, & Kenan Malik’s “Not so Black & White”. Piketty concentrated the whole book on the concept: RACISM, its origin, variations, development and adoption by enlightened, reactionary and progressive European thinkers through almost four centuries; while Piketty, in his 1035 pages long analysis -17chapters- of the Inequality that dominated world history before and after the French, American and Haiti revolutions, its origins and its development as well. It is a very well documented analysis, based on thousand of documents and statistics on how property and ownership was exclusive among the old triparty system of Church, Kingdoms & Feudals were dominating the whole social, cultural and political stage, and how the ration of the three parties differ during the course of history-especially in concrete examples from France, Britain and Sweden. The french revolution was a radical point of departure from this formula, with laws that were issued by the general assembly in France in 1789- but failing short of supporting the total abolition of slavery and colonialism, in the Caribbean Islands, especially in Haiti, although the slogan of the revolution was: Brotherhood, Freedom and Equality.

The two above books are a well documented evidence of the unbalanced world we are still living in the 21th century, especially on the continued war crimes  that is unfolding whether in Ukraine,  or  right now in Palestine, mainly in Gaza, where war crimes and genocide are going on for almost 80 days,  covered by the complacency  of  western democracies-apart from the very few -that claim holding the charter of human rights and freedom of the individual: a Total Double  Standard and lack of Morality that we have seen through the analysis of the above two books’ main themes of Racism & Inequality. The same “stupidity” that dominates for centuries -if I may use Gustave Flaubert’s fictional terminology- are still alive.