Education’s relevance for Piketty

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Notes

1.  Piketty makes reference to the Washington Consensus briefly and indirectly, downplaying its disastrous consequences for a continent: ‘After 1980, moreover, the new ultraliberal wave emanating from the developed countries forced the poor countries to cut their public sectors and lower the priority of developing a tax system suitable to fostering economic development’ (443)’. His recommendation that ‘developing countries chart their own course’ is one more instance of methodological nationalism that ignores global political economic realities and the extent to which rich countries dictate terms to poor countries.

2.  Vakulabharanam (2015) delineates six dimensions that are necessary to the stabilization of a new regime of accumulation. Briefly these relate to new arrangements between different forms of capital, between different forms of labor, between capital and labor, between state and capital, institutional patterns that are profitable and stabilize aggregate demand and finally new behavioral norms and values. It would be a useful exercise to analyze the neoliberalization of education in relation to these six dimensions.