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The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality Kindle Edition
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A compelling explanation of how the law shapes the distribution of wealth
Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else.
In this revealing book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively “codes” certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into capital—and lawyers are the keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best serve their clients’ needs, and how techniques that were first perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations—assets that exist only in law.
A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPrinceton University Press
- Publication dateMay 28, 2019
- File size1466 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"One of the Financial Times' Readers' Best Books of 2019"
"One of Business Insider's Richard Feloni's best books of 2019 on how we can rethink today's capitalism and improve the economy"
"A Project Syndicate Best Read in 2019"
Review
"Nothing less than a crisis theory of law."―Adam Tooze, New York Review of Books
"A fascinating book that demonstrates how the rights of capital have been entrenched in the international legal system. The Code of Capital opens the way for a thoughtful discussion about the treaties on capital flows and privileges that need to be rewritten. A must-read."―Thomas Piketty, author of Capital and Ideology
"A thought-provoking read, written in language non-lawyers will be able to grasp."―Business and Management
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07KM2FW65
- Publisher : Princeton University Press (May 28, 2019)
- Publication date : May 28, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 1466 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 316 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #184,336 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #8 in Securities Law (Books)
- #16 in Business Law Reference
- #31 in Franchising Law (Books)
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Customers find the book well-researched and informative. They find it compelling and interesting, offering unique insights into how capital is created. While some readers describe the pacing as tough, they appreciate the well-written content and compelling explanations.
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Customers find the book informative and engaging. They appreciate its well-researched content and unique insights into the creation of wealth and power. The book opens new perspectives for them and provides a compelling explanation of how capital is created.
"This well-written and deeply researched book should be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the intersection of law and economics..." Read more
"...The reason this book is so important and timely today is that as inequality and precarity soars, society debates platitudes based in elementary junk..." Read more
"...the evidences provided in the book are very compelling, and was worth the read. I would like to recommend the book to mu colleagues." Read more
"...It contains brilliant insights into the sources and maintenance of wealth. This book opened a fresh avenue of thought for me. I highly recommend it." Read more
Customers find the book informative and well-written.
"This well-written and deeply researched book should be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the intersection of law and economics..." Read more
"...The book is extremely readable, yet intense and robust in its demonstration." Read more
"...But yeah well written book, but very complex and not entirely convincing." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2019This well-written and deeply researched book should be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the intersection of law and economics and in understanding, in the words of the subtitle, how the law creates wealth and inequality. The term “law and economics” has come to mean to economists and conservative-leaning jurists the subordination of law to economics and its “natural” laws of supply and demand. Providing a robust antidote to this type of economics-centric thinking, this book by a legal academic makes clear that the “code of capital” owes its power to law that is backed and enforced by the state. The ability to create, preserve and pass on wealth is dependent on how the law governs contracts, property, trusts and corporations, and how it treats debtors and creditors (including in bankruptcy). Not surprisingly, even in democratic societies, these laws systematically privilege capital over labor, shareholders over other stakeholders, and creditors over debtors. While the focus is on the current globalized world of securitized debt, transnational investments, intellectual property, and even cryptocurrency, much of the analysis usefully entails looking back at how these areas of law evolved from feudal times through the Industrial Revolution and to the present, in which legal norms continue to privilege the rich and powerful. Moreover, while the role of legislators and courts is not neglected, the analysis emphasizes how for the most part the applicable law developed at the hands of skilled private lawyers serving their merchant/corporate clients one transaction or investment at a time, and how increasingly disputes are increasingly resolved through private settlements and arbitration walled off from public scrutiny.
Thus, a key take-away is: “Law that is backed by the threat of coercive enforcement increases the likelihood that the commitments that private parties made to one another and the privileges they obtained will be recognized and enforced without regard to pre-existing social ties or competing norms and that these legal claims will even be respected by strangers. As long as the threat of coercive law enforcement is sufficiently credible, voluntary compliance can be achieved without mobilizing it in every case.” The threat of coercive law enforcement and incentives to obey the rules diminish, however, in a globalized commercial world: “The legal protections capital enjoys are arguably the mother of all subsidies. Rising inequality is the logical conclusion of a legal order that systematically privileges some holders’ assets, but not others. This is the case especially in a globalized world, in which intervention on the side of the less advantaged can be so easily punished by capital taking to the exit.”
Last year’s We the Corporations by Adam Winkler provided a masterful legal history on how corporations won important constitutional battles for their own “civil rights” in the Supreme Court over the past 200 years. This book is equally ambitious in addressing how the rest of our common law regime has been shaped by corporate lawyers to advance the interests of corporations and their owners. Together, they go a long way in explaining their dominance in law, society and, inevitably, politics.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2023The basic argument in The Code of Capital is that almost everything that we call wealth is ultimately a human construction based in law and subject to review and change. What is the point of endlessly arguing about the ineffable logic of economics if that logic largely emerges from the fabric of law? No doubt social evolution has resulted in a set of laws that sort of "works" in the historical sense. But it is quite a reach to assume that the laws as they now stand represent some kind of unchangeable efficient pinnacle of mechanism for resource distribution for all time. Much more likely those laws are merely another political landscape upon which the endless struggle between the powerful and the rest plays out. And as such, they are changeable - and with that change, outcomes will be different. Moreover, this discussion is morally necessary because it is ultimately the power of the state - as the representative of the people - which is being used to enforce the claims of wealth among its citizens.
Pistor - who is a legal scholar from Columbia - explores with convincing and detailed example after example how the body of law has been manipulated to direct outcomes - usually with the interests of the wealthy and powerful in mind.
The reason this book is so important and timely today is that as inequality and precarity soars, society debates platitudes based in elementary junk economics, the US Supreme Court is championing originalism in law, there are the real technocrats in law and finance who continue to weaponize the playing field while the pointless arguments continue. You really don't have to worry about the answers if you can get people asking the wrong questions. And so Pistor is simply saying that we should be clear eyed about what wealth really is.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2020Not having any legal background, I had a hard time to getting used to author’s lengthy sentences and vague usage of conceptual parables. I could only make out of 70% of the whole book.
However the idea itself and the evidences provided in the book are very compelling, and was worth the read. I would like to recommend the book to mu colleagues.
- Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2023English law's first creation was in describing what could be titled. Over the following centuries that abstract thing (a title) became, with the coercive backing of the state, an ability to extract value in the form of currency from that entitlement. The book traces the impact of this invention as it has exploded into what we think of as Capitalism. It also describes that when this system is paired with other legal inventions it spins Capitalism into a self destructive spiral of loss and failure.
- Reviewed in the United States on January 23, 2020Once upon a time, a book comes out that overwhelms the reader.
Katarina Pistor's us of the code of capital is one of them. It literally redefines the relationship between power and money through the use or abuse of the law. Yet the basic mechanism is simple: after lobbying the governments and lawmakers, to get what they want, the wealth and corporate will use their money to hire superb lawyers ho will not just tell them how to apply the law, but will make state law into private law by using their powerful interests. Through a series of concrete examples, the Author forces us to see the reality. As lawyers, we run the risk to be instrumentalized in the transformation of the law into a weapon to the benefit of the wealthy. The book is extremely readable, yet intense and robust in its demonstration.
- Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2023I teach jurisprudence and law. I stumbled across this book on an Ezra Klein NYTimes podcast. It contains brilliant insights into the sources and maintenance of wealth. This book opened a fresh avenue of thought for me. I highly recommend it.
Top reviews from other countries
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Dr. Ernst U. KoepfReviewed in Germany on October 3, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Katharina Pistor: The Code of Capital. Princeton University Press, Princeton (New Jersey) 2019
Der Untertitel lautet: "How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality". Die Autorin, Rechts-Professorin in New York, zeigt die Entwicklung vom englischen Common Law, das im 16. Jahrhundert zur Übernahme der gemeinschaftlich genutzten Ländereien durch die Lords führte, zum weltweit durchgesetzten privaten Recht der Konzerne. Die Philosophie der Engländer besagte, dass demjenigen Recht zu geben sei, der den größten finanziellen (und damit staatlichen) Nutzen aus einem Gut ("asset") herausholt. Der rechtliche Code, der diesen Rechtsanspruch realisiert, wird mit den Begriffen Priorität, Durabilität, Universalität, Convertibilität erklärt. Bezogen auf Wertpapiere ("assets") bedeutet das Bevorzugung des Eigentümers gegenüber Gläubigern, rechtlich dauerhafte Existenz, weltweite Gültigkeit und das Privileg, den zunächst virtuellen Marktwert jederzeit in eine Staatswährung umtauschen zu können. Der letzte Punkt macht aus finanzwirtschaftlichen Spekulationsgewinnen Reichtum und Wirtschaftsmacht. Gegenüber wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Erklärungen macht die Autorin geltend, dass durch die leistungsfähigen Rechtsabteilungen der Konzerne betriebene privatrechtliche Codifizierung entscheidend sei für die Konzentration des Reichtums in wenigen Händen. Militärische Gewalt und Sanktions-Androhungen der USA bringen Staaten dazu, gegenüber diesen Entwicklungen ihre Souveränitätsansprüche zurückzustellen. Ein kluges, lesenswertes Werk.
- Cliente de KindleReviewed in Mexico on December 16, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars A deep legal análisis of the role of law on rising inequality
I believe this book helps the General public to understand the lost legal modules for coding Capital and its impact in society as a whole.
- Amazon CustomerReviewed in France on January 1, 2021
2.0 out of 5 stars Too theoretical
Interesting, but imo not practical enough.
- The InferneratorReviewed in Canada on August 14, 2019
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Explanatory Complement to Piketty's Descriptive Research on Inequality
This crucial book is clearly written to clarify for a popular audience the all-important, all-governing current legal-institutional relations that support the growth of socio-economic inequality. Pistor explains how the Anglo Common Law works by enabling private law (private law firms representing the globe's 'incumbent' rich) to develop ('innovate') a complex bulwark of property and bankruptcy law apart from societies, states, and even judiciaries (not known for any democratic bias). With the assistance of the impressionable, comprador liberal-conservative political establishment first in the UK & US and second around the world, this Common Law-supported kingdom of private law has effectively reduced the democratic state to little more than a violent enforcer of that private law, as it maldistributes rights and obligations to the augmentation of socio-economic inequality and tyranny. Anglo civil law is distinguished--and so useful to powerful interests--as the legal code of a people with boundary issues, as Stoicist Svend Brinkmann might say. Not only does Pistor's clarification help the reader better understand the fundamental functioning of Anglo-American law, it also suggests structural and political points of change.
For example, by now, most law governing property around the world has never seen the light of a society's court system--It has never been subjected to any socially-rational justification and deliberation. It is simply privately manufactured, and operates as a credible threat ("But it's the law."), to channel wealth and enforce privilege and profound subordination in everyday relations. Were the majority of people--those who carry the risk and costs, who are legally obligated to deliver over the assets and work to the owners, but who do not accrue power--to somehow cohere and push back in the streets and on states, Pistor suggests, private-law's house of cards could tumble.
Upon further reflection, Pistor's sketch of capitalism's naked emperor points to the cyborg technology of policing and surveillance stitching the whole global accumulation and dispossession network together, on the back of climate and environmental crisis.
The book is written to educate a popular audience, explaining law in analogy to computer coding, where society is a computer-user cyborg that keeps getting more inequality and tyranny out of the code. Sometimes the book's concerns are those of lawyers, the coders. For example, Pistor explores whether encrypted blockchain systems can replace lawyers to produce contracts. No, they're too inflexible for a world that includes intrinsic, environmental, random, and agential forms of change. More likely is the unholy cyborg merger of blockchain systems and lawyers to create contracts.
2 people found this helpfulReport - Kean BirchReviewed in Canada on December 11, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
I really enjoyed reading this book. It's basically about how the law creates markets and what consequences this has. Much of the book is concerned with how different things are turned into assets/capital through different legal processes