A review by george_odera
The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor
5.0
Not many books are as compellingly argued as Pistor's Code of Capital. The book's thesis is simple:capital is coded in law, and law is the very cloth from which capital is cut. Pistor argues that accumulating wealth over long stretches of time requires additional fortification backed by the coercive powers of the State.
In a unique blend of history, legal theory, and economics, Pistor demonstrates how capital principally exhibits four key attributes: Priority, Durability, Universality, and Durability. Capital exhibits these attributes in the legal modules of corporations, trusts, convertible debt, intellectual property, and investment treaties and conflict of laws rules. Modern laws of capital are not legislated in parliament with the input of democratic processes, but in corporate law firms and financial institutions, who are the masters of the code. The law's inherent incompleteness, indeterminacy, and malleability is ammunition to these masters, enabling them to fashion it as they deem convenient.
A key theme in Pistor's book is the need to rethink inequality. Whilst inequality is presently viewed through the lenses class identity, focus ought to be shifted to the question of who has access to and control over legal code. By virtue of being backed by coercive powers of the State, legal codes are subsidies, and the feudal calculus is present in evert exemption and special treatment that capital and its holders enjoy.
In a unique blend of history, legal theory, and economics, Pistor demonstrates how capital principally exhibits four key attributes: Priority, Durability, Universality, and Durability. Capital exhibits these attributes in the legal modules of corporations, trusts, convertible debt, intellectual property, and investment treaties and conflict of laws rules. Modern laws of capital are not legislated in parliament with the input of democratic processes, but in corporate law firms and financial institutions, who are the masters of the code. The law's inherent incompleteness, indeterminacy, and malleability is ammunition to these masters, enabling them to fashion it as they deem convenient.
A key theme in Pistor's book is the need to rethink inequality. Whilst inequality is presently viewed through the lenses class identity, focus ought to be shifted to the question of who has access to and control over legal code. By virtue of being backed by coercive powers of the State, legal codes are subsidies, and the feudal calculus is present in evert exemption and special treatment that capital and its holders enjoy.