Piketty and Sandel on how the Left Went Astray [Claude summary]

New York Times Opinion, Two of the World’s Leading Thinkers on How the Left Went Astray, NYTimes, Jan. 28, 2025:

Thomas Piketty is one of the world’s leading economists, a socialist who has been studying the corrosive effects of inequality for decades. Last May, he sat down with Harvard’s Michael Sandel, one of the world’s most prominent political philosophers, for a talk at the Paris School of Economics about the moral limits of markets and the future of the left. They tussled over what liberals would have to do to counter a rising tide of nativism from Donald Trump and the other conservative politicians gaining traction around the globe.

In the months that followed, Mr. Piketty and Mr. Sandel kept talking over email, sparring over questions about identity and belonging: When do borders matter? How do you find a balance between nationalism and internationalism? What are our responsibilities to migrants, and how can we convince Americans that the system is fair?

Today, with Democrats struggling over how much of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda to support as well as the future of their party, Times Opinion has adapted Mr. Piketty and Mr. Sandel’s conversations. Both men have long been critics of mainstream liberalism from the distinct perspectives of their respective fields — Mr. Piketty as an economist, Mr. Sandel as a philosopher. Their back-and-forth, edited for length and clarity, builds to a surprising conclusion: that the left must reclaim a form of identity politics.

I asked Claude 3.4 Sonata to summarize their discussion.

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I’d like you to summarize the attached article. Be sure to attribute the arguments appropriately.

Sandel and Piketty agree that the left needs to reclaim a form of identity politics, though not the kind centered on ethnicity or religion. Their discussion reveals several key insights:

On immigration and borders, Piketty argues that while open borders should be the goal, they require proper funding mechanisms for public services. He criticizes Europe's current approach to migration, suggesting that the relatively small migrant flows are falsely blamed for broader economic problems.

Regarding voter behavior, Piketty emphasizes that support for politicians like Trump and Le Pen stems primarily from manufacturing job losses due to trade competition, not immigration. He argues that the left's failure to address trade and job issues has allowed the right to dominate the conversation about identity and belonging.

Sandel builds on this by suggesting that the left has ceded important political territory to the right, particularly around concepts of patriotism and community. He argues that economic and identity issues are deeply interconnected, pointing to how job losses in industrial towns affected not just wages but people's sense of dignity and recognition.

Both scholars criticize the Democratic Party's evolution into a party of educational and economic elites. Piketty suggests that Democrats should be willing to lose wealthy voters to pursue genuine redistributive policies. Sandel critiques the party's historical emphasis on college education as the path to success, noting that this alienates the majority of Americans who don't have university degrees.

Looking forward, they propose that Democrats need to:

• Break with neoliberal globalization
• Move beyond focusing solely on higher education as the solution to inequality
• Develop policies that respect multiple forms of aspiration, including home ownership and small business development
• Create a broader project of civic renewal that affirms the dignity of work
• Give citizens more voice in shaping technological change and environmental policy

The conversation concludes with both scholars agreeing that socioeconomic issues and identity conflicts are deeply intertwined, suggesting that neglected economic aspirations can transform into entrenched identity conflicts.