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Capital and Ideology

Thomas Piketty,

Arthur Goldhammer (Goodreads Author) (Translator)

4.29 · Rating details · 991 ratings · 196 reviews

The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system.

Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to r ...more

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Hardcover, 1104 pages

Published March 10th 2020 by Belknap Press (first published September 12th 2019)

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Dec 12, 2019 Laurent Franckx rated it liked it · review of another edition

No one would dare to suggest that Thomas Piketty lacks ambition.
Just a few years after he wrote an unexpected bestseller on inequality which was largely filled with dry discussions of data and graphs, he's back with another work that most people would see as the result of a lifetime's work.
"Capital et idéologie" is not just voluminous (just under 1200 pages). It is also wide ranging in its scope, and is actually composed of several parts that could easily have been published as separate books: a ...more

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May 15, 2020 Michael rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2020

Bailed, halfway through the third part. Piketty’s love of stats, charts, and graphs shines in this follow-up to his hit 2013 release Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which was one of the last decade’s most influential books and far more cohesive. Here, drawing upon research into many economic databases, he tries to do a lot at once: recount the history of inequality across European and colonized, pre-capitalist and modern, societies; explain the rise of the middle class in the wake of WWII; ...more

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Jun 26, 2020 Richard Derus marked it as to-read

Shelves: oh-no-not-again, lists-lists-lists, owned

Reading this behemoth is not easy...physically for me, psychically for more reactionary folk...but this article https://www.publicbooks.org/ideas-alo... provides an interesting précis of the book's developing themes. Author Katharina Pistor makes the clearest possible statement of the central problem we-the-people face in wresting control of the future away from toxic right-wing radicals:

Still, for Piketty, as for many progressives, a state that is capable of social ordering and of redistributin

...more

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Jul 04, 2020 Mehrsa rated it really liked it

I feel like I should get a cookie or a medal for finishing this MASSIVE book. Especially because some parts of it were so dry! He really does not need to go into so much detail to make his point, which is that ideology has been used in various countries across time to uphold systems of inequality. The details and the history were great and I am here for the thesis, but we really do not need to know so many details.

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Nov 07, 2019 Daniel KML rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is an impressive work and comparable in quality of research and ambition to Piketty’s previous work - Capital in the 21st Century. Its political impact will probably be even greater than his last book and it will shape many discussions on the global left for the years to come.

While Piketty, in his previous book, leveraged an astounding amount of research to bring forth one big bold idea (i.e., "r>g" as driver of inequality and one of the central contradictions of capitalism), he now combine This is an impressive work and comparable in quality of research and ambition to Piketty’s previous work - Capital in the 21st Century. Its political impact will probably be even greater than his last book and it will shape many discussions on the global left for the years to come.

While Piketty, in his previous book, leveraged an astounding amount of research to bring forth one big bold idea (i.e., "r>g" as driver of inequality and one of the central contradictions of capitalism), he now combines lots of new sources of data with the political history of societies (from colonial to present times in Americas, Europe and Asia) to assert that the history of societies is actually made by the clash of big ideas, and that these ideologies, many times used to justify inequalities, are in constant conflict and perpetual renewal.

According to him, we should keep pushing this fight of ideas, because it is a fight that is built on knowledge and experience sharing, and based on mutual respect and democratic deliberation, and that its ultimate outcome is to have a fairer society - in Piketty’s case, a society based on participatory-socialism with transnational federal governance striving for a less unequal society via a progressive tax on revenues, property and succession, and new modes of property ownership (e.g., labor representatives with voting rights in corporate boards). He also asserts that if we fail to make these changes, as societies get more and more unequal, governments will be dominated by fiscal competition (e.g., diminishing the size of the State and the support structure for those left behind) and identity conflicts (e.g., the recent wave of anti-immigration or anti-globalization movements).

Piketty has developed a remarkable oeuvre, with many details and discussions hard to summarize here (e.g., his diagnosis of the ever-changing dynamics of the left-right party system and voters profile, and how left parties have lost the working classes and become the party of intellectuals, can have many interesting derivations). The expansion of his frame of analysis to new geographies (other than France, UK and USA) such as India, Brazil and post-communist countries greatly enriches his arguments and findings.

This is a book that both fits current political discussions and serves as basis for longer-term reflections on society. Piketty’s recommendations at the end of the book are conceptually consistent and open for debate and improvement - but, in my opinion, very challenging to implement. My pessimistic side makes me believe that, given current trends on inequality and political discourse, we will probably see a new 1st World War or another major global disruption emerging in our apparent peaceful times. Only then, when facing post-mortem ruins, we might start thinking again as a whole society on how to mobilize international movements to strive for greater fairness, moving beyond market fundamentalism and achieving maybe what Piketty calls participatory-socialism at a world-level basis.

I believe that although very long (and sometimes redundant), reading this work can be very rewarding and elucidating. It opens the doors for a new range of discussions and demonstrates that multiple trajectories are possible for the way we organize our society (and resources). ...more

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Apr 04, 2020 Marks54 rated it really liked it · review of another edition

So, you are locked up at home and strongly encouraged/ordered to go nowhere for the foreseeable future. What should you be reading? To keep plowing through one’s normal queue seems questionable - these are not normal times and what is going to be waiting at the end when we eventually go back to normal? There is only so much to watch on Netflix.

So I started in on ‘Capital and Ideology’ by Thomas Piketty. This was officially out in early March and I had been hoping to have the time to work through ...more

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Apr 09, 2020 Gary Beauregard Bottomley rated it it was ok

For this book, the author lost sight of his own narrative and muddles his story telling by wandering away from what his real message was meant to be. I really enjoyed his other book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, and I noticed one of the things I wrote about that book in my notes on it was how the author had an overriding narrative while frequently saying ‘the data says…’ and always connecting the pieces to the whole, but, unfortunately for this book the author’s coherence never infiltra For this book, the author lost sight of his own narrative and muddles his story telling by wandering away from what his real message was meant to be. I really enjoyed his other book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, and I noticed one of the things I wrote about that book in my notes on it was how the author had an overriding narrative while frequently saying ‘the data says…’ and always connecting the pieces to the whole, but, unfortunately for this book the author’s coherence never infiltrates above the text.

I enjoyed the first half of the book where the author was laying out some of the history and providing context for how we justify our inequalities today as when the author will say ideologies allow us to justify injustice to such a degree that even when it comes to slavery and its abolition the debate never would involve remuneration for the enslaved but compensation for the slave holders up to the point where Tocqueville would suggest that the freed slave would have to work for a number of years to repay the slave holders for the slave holder’s lost capital.

The point the author is making is that we always think in terms of the paradigm that we existed in until we are no longer in that paradigm and then we think in terms of the new paradigm as if the old one never existed at all. The author will say ‘that elite discourse assumes the status quo and disruptions come difficultly’ (I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t want to look up the real quote, but the jest is there). [There is a bracketed aside I’m going to make. The author makes the point he won’t use the word ‘populist’, but I want to note he used the word ‘elite’ frequently, and as my last week NYT puzzle had as a clue ‘anathema to populism’ and the answer was ‘elitism’. Meaning that to define elite one can negate populist sense the negation of one implies the other. I’d even say it’s possible for the least elite of all a MAGA hat wearing hater to say that their ‘discourse assumes the status quo and disruptions come difficulty for them’].

The book is actually enjoyable for the first half or so as the author lies out the inequalities brought upon us by slavery, colonialism, India caste system, serfs, Shia/Shite, French Revolution, Ternary Societies and so on up to how we justify our current system’s unfairness through economic proprietary of property. The author says history did not have to unfold the way it did but it takes in-grained ideologies and turning points in order to make the switch that happened that will make the world the way it is today.

There are a lot of other connections the author makes but he really drifts away from his own overriding narrative in the second half of the book and I’m reluctant to waste my time thinking about it so I’ll save you the details. The author did bring up Adolf Hitler’s autobiography in detail and I’m glad he did because one of the keys for understanding Trump’s fascism (and he is definitely a fascist) is hidden within that book and also within Oswald Spengler’s book ‘Decline of the West’. The author also invokes Hannah Arendt’s book on Totalitarianism, but mostly to support his call for trans-nationalism.

The author’s second half of the book is dedicated mostly to recommending solutions and analyzing the recent history of political parties and their relationship between the right wing Hegelians and the left wing Hegelians (he doesn’t use that label, he’ll call them identity politics and class politics), and he’ll show how their constituencies have changed over time and relates more to education than identity or class. Americans are familiar that recently the college educated tends more towards the Democrats and the non-college educated tends towards Republicans.

The author ignores the ‘Christian Nationalist’ in his categorizations and explains party affiliation by education level while downplaying the role of racism, sexism, and homophobism, or for those who are just not being part of the self-selected privileged class (basically the definition of Fascism, read Hitler’s autobiography) . The author made his argument specific to identity and class and purposely downplays the severity of the fascism as channeled by MAGA hat wearing haters. As the NYT said recently (about March 25, 2020) in an article concerning why the right wing denied the severity of the novel Corona Virus is they are told to distrust government sources, not rely on science, reject academics and rely on their feelings when it is agreement with their hate when channeled by their cult leaders.

As this book will say all ideological systems are in place to justify unfairness, but there is a story to be told and this book loses sight of that story. There were a lot of allusions to the financial crisis of 2008 in this book, I would recommend reading Adam Tooze’s book ‘Crash’ instead of this book. ...more

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Apr 13, 2020 Jeremy rated it liked it

Shelves: politics, sociological

Thomas Piketty’s previous book, Capital in the 21st Century, was (for this reader) one of the most important books of our age. In it, he marshaled a staggering array of quantitative and qualitative data to show how economic inequality developed and changed in Western Europe and the United states over the past ~250 years.

That book’s central conclusion: that economic inequality in our time is growing unabated towards levels not seen since the gilded age, is a powerful, dire forecast. All the more Thomas Piketty’s previous book, Capital in the 21st Century, was (for this reader) one of the most important books of our age. In it, he marshaled a staggering array of quantitative and qualitative data to show how economic inequality developed and changed in Western Europe and the United states over the past ~250 years.

That book’s central conclusion: that economic inequality in our time is growing unabated towards levels not seen since the gilded age, is a powerful, dire forecast. All the more so because of how eloquent and relentlessly his data proved it. It was a rigorous, erudite work that peeled back the lid on economic behavior in a way that was clinical, yet still all-encompassing. I think it’s nearly impossible to finish that book and not feel shaken by it. Even if you are already pre-disposed to progressive views on economics, Piketty’s assessment was a haymaker about one of the biggest unspoken trends in our world.

His newest, massive 1000+ page book, Capital and Ideology has an even loftier goal. Namely: to unravel the global history of economic inequality in terms of politics, sociology, and history.

Piketty is a highly formidable statistician, researcher and writer. But this is simply too much to unpack in a single book with so large a scope. In his desire to survey seemingly everything, the book tends to lose the focus and coherence that made his previous work so powerful.

The enthusiasm he gives to recondite subjects, such as medieval taxation reform, employee ownership rules in germanic companies, Indian Caste Quotas, Caribbean debt forgiveness, ad infinitum... are all commendable and brilliantly researched. They each deserve a separate book to really investigate, instead of the world-spanning gloss they receive here.

To be sure, Capital and Ideology does contain a few statistical bombshells. A chapter showing that political parties of all ideologies across virtually all countries are totally abandoning the less well off in favor of catering to different segments of the elite, manages to be utterly alarming for even this jaded, cynical reader. But even those sorts of powerful analyses are all too easily lost in the rush to encompass so much.

The book’s final sections, in which he attempts to use this deluge of a historical investigation to flesh out actionable policies to help reduce inequality is coherent, principled and profoundly ambitious. Many people will no doubt assail the sorts of massive, world-changing measures he advocates for.

But these proposals, as unprecedented as they might seem, are worth any serious person’s consideration. If there is one thing Piketty does succeed at in this book's massive examination, it's in showing that governments have, on numerous occasions in the past, taken powerful actions to help make their societies more equitable. As the Covid-19 pandemic, which as of this writing is still ravaging around the world has proven, seemingly lethargic nations can change quickly and powerfully, provided there is the will to do so.

While Capital and Ideology certainly ‘sticks the landing’ it is not, in my view, a major success. Thomas Piketty for all of his skill has bitten off more than he, or really anyone, can chew. If you want to encounter his thinking at its strongest and most focused, read Capital in the 21st Century, which is still in my view, one of if not the defining books of our time. ...more

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Nov 10, 2019 Zack rated it it was amazing

It was amazing. Thomas Piketty explains in vivid details how throughout history that everybody makes excuses to keep the poor...poor, and the rich...rich. He calls for an end to the Billionaire Class, the fact that they need to pay their fair share. For example, a few Billionaires in the USA make more money than the bottom half of America combined. Millions of Americans are barely getting by, paycheck by paycheck, while these guys get incredibly rich. He asks for a fair tax on the super-rich.

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Jun 23, 2020 Andrew rated it it was amazing

Shelves: european-union, politics-and-political-theory, global-history, economics-business-finance, socialism

Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty, is a magisterial look at inequality and its ideological tolerances in societies throughout history. The book starts with a long examination of the history of inequality touching on numerous subjects; trifunctional societies based on clergy, nobility and peasant are examined thoughtfully due to the influence these societies had on the development of economic and political systems. These class societies were based on principles of stability, keeping each cl Capital and Ideology, by Thomas Piketty, is a magisterial look at inequality and its ideological tolerances in societies throughout history. The book starts with a long examination of the history of inequality touching on numerous subjects; trifunctional societies based on clergy, nobility and peasant are examined thoughtfully due to the influence these societies had on the development of economic and political systems. These class societies were based on principles of stability, keeping each class in its place, and balancing the power of clergy and nobility while suppressing the rights of peasants. These societies were very unequal, with most of a nations wealth being held by the Church and Noble class, with the peasants utilized as serfs or renters on land, with little or no wealth held at all in this third estate. Piketty calls these societies Proprietarian - they built structures around the idea of owning or controlling property, including other humans. Property rights were sacred; ordained by God and King, and most peasants paid overlapping and all encompassing taxes on property they existed on; tithes, corvee labour, and such. Piketty looks at how states in Europe around the time of the French revolution, began to move beyond this system, removing regalian rights from the church and nobility and putting it in the hands of the state. This allowed taxes to become more egalitarian - meaning taxes were collected in a measured and constant way, instead of on an ad hoc basis in trifunctional societies. Furthermore, these discussions on taxes led to the growth of ideas on progressive taxation, and discussions on human rights, fair taxation, and political representaiton.

Piketty goes on to examine historical societies in Eastern Europe, India and China as well. These areas of the world grappled with different and interesting forms of ideology and inequality. Russia was a society that adopted serfdom most harshly. Serfs were tied to the land with little rights to movement and political or human rights. This system was entrenched in later Russian society up to the reforms of the 19th century and the eventual collapse of Russia. Piketty compares Serfdom to Slavery and finds similar aspects and impacts on a nations economies and political systems. In India, especially after the British invasion and independence, the nation has struggled with cultural, caste and religious struggles. Although India is one of the most unequal states in the modern world, in terms of the bottom 90%'s share of income, the state is also a well functioning democracy that struggles with the colonial cast legacy. This has led to interesting and internalized systems of affirmative action - the most stringent in the world in some cases. Even so, glaring poverty is common, and India struggles with issues of tax collection, state capacity, and internal and external security issues that often revolve around identitarian considerations (think modern BJP and Hindu nationalism). China also had a system that was unequal in many ways, but developed different ideologies than Europe or India. The focus here was on state capacity and control over peripheries. China developed a bureaucratic examination system which Piketty compares to the modern US higher education system - similar numbers of participants, and with the ability to buy into specific exam categories or levels - comparable to US legacy students in high end universities.

A discussion on slavery and colonialism follows. These societies were the most unequal in history so far in terms of share of income. Haiti, Brazil, and the Southern US had similar levels of wealth inequality. In the emancipation of slaves, an examination of punitive actions to reward slave owners is had. This was an interesting discussion: in the UK the tax payer reimbursed slave owners through reparation payments - not slaves. In Haiti, France imposed a huge fine through gunboat diplomacy, and it was only waived by the French government in the 1950's. The US was the only slave system that did not reimburse their slave owners due to their loss in the civil war. However, instead they built in a system that separated and reduced the rights of black Americans, setting them in a cycle of wage poverty and near slavery, with much reduced civil rights and extreme prejudices that continue today.

Piketty then examines the birth of our modern neo-proprietarianism and capitalism, from its birth in pre-WWI society. This form of capitalism favoured capitalist classes in most countries- a very small percentage, and utilized labour from the working classes at low wages and with little rights. This form of capitalism led to imperialism and industrialization, with colonies supplying the raw materials for metropolitan growth. These nations were exploitative at their core; wealth transfers to colonies were often negligible and frowned upon - ie. France's Empire in Africa, with policy setting tending to encourage creating colonial budgets within the colony. However locals and natives were not hired often into the colonial administration, and if they were, they were paid at a much smaller rate than their white counterparts. This system collapsed after WWII due to high debt levels, destruction, and growing unrest over political rights and exploitation, leading to the decolonization of the 60's and 70's. High government debt levels encouraged macroeconomic policies that favoured wealth redistribution, inflation, and infrastructure investment, which heavily reduced the debt burden of nations toward their wealthier citizens. This was the most egalitarian time in human history, with progressive taxes set on wealth (up to 90% in the US and UK), the growth of social democracy in the Nordic countries and West Germany, and of course, the competing ideologies of US led social democracy, and USSR led communism.

Piketty examines both systems in detail. Communism failed because it too, led to systems of great inequality. Although shares of income were more evenly distributed than in the Western world, the USSR struggled to compete due to the inefficiencies of total government control over economies, which led to a stifling of innovation, and their overbearing political system, with little freedoms for the average citizen. The Western world, by contrast, explored social democracy. Colonies were shed and investments made in education and wealth redistribution, as well as public infrastructure. States in Europe, like Sweden and Germany, developed strong systems of co-management, improving workers decision making power in firm level bargaining and decision making, and encouraging democratization of work spaces, allowing the average citizen to vote and make decisions about their own incomes - a system that continues (in a reduced fashion) today. The US and UK, by contrast, began to embrace neo-proprietarian ideologies - focusing on shareholder growth over other forms of income distribution. This has led to our modern system of wealth inequality, where the moneyed classes own more than 50% of the wealth in some instances (the US, Middle East, Brazil and India are the most unequal areas of the world - even more so, in some instances, than Russia or China). This wealth inequality is justified as "fair", with ideas about personal property, meritocracy, and lassaiz faire business' as the main justifications. These ideas are proven false, however. The US education system is extremely unequal, from primary upward, with legacy students, donations, and poor education investment being the norm. Hard working individuals are most often passed over by legacy students, who utilize the low tax environment to receive money through their estate, invest it in capital for a high return, and engage in little productive or innovative tasks. Finally, the small government system is also a sham - the US government is massive and uses government policy to set up systems of inequality that favour the wealthy. Large corporations are cushioned with government bailouts in times of crisis, and banking and financial regulations favour financial speculation and adventurism or investments in infrastructure, research, or more stable and equitable investments.

The European system is discussed as well. The European Union lacks teeth in terms of any overarching political, economic, or taxation policies. This system leads to unequal interest rates and distributions of capital. For example, German tax payers pay about 0.2-0.3% of their funds to wealth transfers to Eastern European and Southern European states, while extracting almost 7% of many Eastern European countries GDP through transfers from private firms. This leads to a system where the richer economies grow, while the poorer economies struggle to keep up. It is clear then, why euro-skeptic ideals are growing, both in countries who engage in wealth transfers (Brexit, AFD, etc.) and those who see exploitation from Brussels (Poland, Hungary etc.)

Piketty examines many ideas throughout this massive tome, more than I can really discuss here. The take away for me is the interesting history of inequality regimes, and the way Piketty expertly frames politics in history in terms of economies, inequalities, and ideologies. Piketty engages with social democratic ideas - public ownership of critical infrastructure, high progressive wealth taxes, inheritance taxes, and income taxes, high investment in public education and research, racial and sexual equality, and so on. Piketty is critical of the socialism of the 1970's, due to its engagement with the shift to neo-proprietarian ideology in the 19980's, with exploitative international bodies like the World Bank and IMF, as well as their reluctance to alter the taxation system and promote the benefits of progressive taxation, while focusing on USSR style public takeovers. Piketty looks at the models of Germany and Sweden in particular as beneficial systems - these nations have the lowest level of wealth inequality in the modern world, with systems of co-management and unionization that encourage the average citizen to contribute to democratic decision making systems, as opposed to the US system of UK parliamentary system, with high levels of government control and wealth concentration, declining unionization rates, and low levels of engagement with workers, lower classes, and racial minorities. To be clear, the Swedish or German system are also not ideal, with issues of racism, competition with free market conservative parties, and so on being present.

Piketty also examines other modern systems - China, Russia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and so on. These areas all have differing ideals of wealth inequality - Russia as a oligarchical society, China with its idealized party-managed democracy, and the Middle East as authoritarian petro-states run by billionaires. These systems are all discussed in detail, and show that different ideas have an impact on wealth inequality - China is the most egalitarian of the three, with the Middle East being the least.

All in all, this book is fantastic and epic. It touches on so many subjects in politics, history, economics and sociology that it would be impossible for me to write a more comprehensive review. This book is both an examination of why and how societies develop inequality systems, and ideas top develop more egalitarian ones. Piketty by no means advocates for communist society, where ideally all incomes are equal. He instead looks at major reforms that are needed within our capitalist, liberal systems to create concrete change. This book is not just eurocentric, as the systems of democracy, liberalism, capitalism, and globalization touch all corners of the globe. The challenge, as Piketty points out, is the differences within or between nations and regions due to differing political cultures, histories, ideas, tolerances, and appetites for inequality. Piketty despairs the growth of social nativism in the modern world, and advocates for transnational agreements on taxation, rights, and commerce. Such systems are being experimented with in numerous ways; The EU's loose federation of nation states, the US system of global dominance, the Chinese system of Belt and Road and one party rule, and the federalized, decentralized Indian system, are a small sampling of the many different ways and systems that are being experimented with. These systems change, grow, contract and share with each other, and each one will have a major impact in some form on the future, in terms of how to combat wealth inequality, and the political resilience of systems.

I could say more, but on the last note; this is a book to read for anyone interested in learning how the world works. This is a yearning account of democracy, social justice, environmentalism and so much more, with the idea that changing how we perceive inequality, and asking for, and demanding a better system is an absolute necessity. It goes beyond petty party squabbles in the States to show that issues of inequality transcend a four year election cycle, and can be addressed in so many ways. A brilliant read, and a high recommendation. ...more

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Apr 10, 2020 Weronika rated it it was ok

As for a book of such magisterial dimensions, there is shockingly little content. The 1095 pages of my edition could be easily squeezed into no more than 250. And, no, there are no notes, Piketty refers readers to a website where references and bibliography may be found (for your convenience, suspicious reader!). The book has so many flaws that I do not know where to start. First of all, just like the first book by the author, it's dramatically franco-centric. I kept rolling my eyes for over 150 As for a book of such magisterial dimensions, there is shockingly little content. The 1095 pages of my edition could be easily squeezed into no more than 250. And, no, there are no notes, Piketty refers readers to a website where references and bibliography may be found (for your convenience, suspicious reader!). The book has so many flaws that I do not know where to start. First of all, just like the first book by the author, it's dramatically franco-centric. I kept rolling my eyes for over 150 pages of Part One, which is basically France, France and France. Piketty's viewpoint is so narrow, he routinely overvalues and extrapolates the French experience, which is quite unique. He also confusingly uses the French perspective as the perspective of Western Europe. In the end, to him Italy and Spain are Southern Europe, Germany (Prussia) is Eastern Europe, Great Britain is a case of its own, so what's left of the Western civilization? Well, your guess is right! France, France and France. This results , for instance, in erroneous claims undervaluing the proliferation and persistence of serfdom in Europe or overemphasizing the French Revolution at the expense of the 1848 revolution (much more relevant globally for the transformation of property-regimes).
The second part focuses on slave and colonial societies and I found it really interesting, again, because it largely ignores the relatively well-known history of slavery in North America focusing almost exclusively on slavery in French colonies. It also contains an interesting, though flawed description of the Indian caste system.
The remaining two parts discuss themes of property in a biased and perfunctory manner. As for a book that has "ideology" in its title there are very few references to ideology and to other literature. The author(s) seem(s) to have neglected their reading in literature, history, philosophy, the titles quoted are so fundamental, they do not go beyond secondary education. So one would expect at least some interesting data. Surprisingly, there is nothing new. The charts are very basic, with nauseatingly repetitive descriptions. The author does put forward his proposals regarding property, but they do not fit into any kind of data-based coherent argumentation that would be developed/supported by the book.
In all, I found the book mediocre. Its contribution to political, social sciences or economics is, if any, negligible. ...more

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Mar 30, 2020 Miguel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Sophomore slumps are the bane of writers with a prominent debut. Apparently some reviewers seem to think Piketty’s second major work falls under this category. This scattered unfair reception should come under scrutiny given the simple thought experiment of asking what the response would have been had this not been preceded by Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Had this been the case Capital & Ideology would have been hailed as the important major work that it is.

Most of the criticism hones in Sophomore slumps are the bane of writers with a prominent debut. Apparently some reviewers seem to think Piketty’s second major work falls under this category. This scattered unfair reception should come under scrutiny given the simple thought experiment of asking what the response would have been had this not been preceded by Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Had this been the case Capital & Ideology would have been hailed as the important major work that it is.

Most of the criticism hones in on the final chapter in which Piketty proposes some very high level counterbalances to the existing political/economic structure that has flourished to date and allowed gross inequality to thrive. These criticism seemingly ignore the prior 1000 pages that brilliantly lay out the ‘social, intellectual, and political history of inequality regimes’. It’s too bad that this is largely overlooked as the bulk of the book is a master class in showing just how societies across the world have evolved similar trends in political-economy: those that evolve to funnel and protect capital for a select few at the expense of the many.

Piketty’s explanation of the reasoning behind many voting against their economic interests are some of the most convincing written recently (even more so than what Ezra Klein put forward recently on ‘Why We’re Divided’): ‘The conservative revolution of the 1980s, the collapse of Soviet communism, and the development of neo-proprietarian ideology vastly increased the concentration of income and wealth in the first two decades of the 21st century. Inequality has in turn heightened social tensions almost everywhere. For want of a constructive egalitarian and universal political outlet, these tensions have fostered the kinds of nationalist identity cleavages that we see today in practically every part of the world… When people are told that there is no credible alternative to the socioeconomic organization and class inequality that exist today, it is not surprising that they invest their hopes in defending their borders and identities instead.’

With respect to Piketty’s proposals in the final chapter, it’s not as if he is harking back to a soviet style system or only putting forward a hackneyed version of “millennial socialism” (although one would think he were having only read the Economist’s book review): he openly states that these are overarching and not specific proposals to deal with these very real problems that he has so expertly laid out in the book.

One note on the audiobook – reading simultaneously the electronic version and listening to the audiobook, while a beneficial experience one needs to take into the account that the endnotes are read as part of the book, thus one has a jarring experience of having that material inserted into the main text. Net-net it would have been better had the endnotes been a separate section IMO.
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Apr 13, 2020 Veronica rated it liked it

Shelves: economics, the-age-of-social-distancing

Every human society must justify its inequalities.
- Out of the clash of contradictory discourses comes a dominant narrative or narratives—a clash that is at once economic, social and political— which bolster the existing inequality regime.
- Oratores: those who pray, the clergy; bellatores , those who fight, the nobility; and laboratores , those who work by tilling the soil, the third estate.
- Nineteenth century European ownership societies were born of a promise of individual emancipation an ...more

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Dec 28, 2020 Tuncer Şengöz rated it it was amazing

Shelves: economics

Only 6 years after his magnum opus, Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty is back with another massive book of 1105 pages: Capital and Ideology.

The book starts with a striking statement: "Every human society must justify its inequalities." Then comes a grand tour from pre-modern terniary societies to "neo-proprietarian" socities, from social democrasies to hyper-capitalism, from segregationism in USA to caste sistem in India. And finally, Piketty proposes a society based on social federal ...more

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Mar 19, 2020 Albert rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction-5star, favorites

I consider myself very fortunate to have found this book and to have been able to read it. It is beyond any doubt, the best book I have ever read.

Piketty gives me hope for a better world. In that sense, he inspires me, as the speeches and legacy of Martin Luther King have inspired me since my childhood.

This book is chock-full of information in the form of data and graphs. It explains how and in what form inequality has always existed throughout the ages. It also explains how the growing inequal I consider myself very fortunate to have found this book and to have been able to read it. It is beyond any doubt, the best book I have ever read.

Piketty gives me hope for a better world. In that sense, he inspires me, as the speeches and legacy of Martin Luther King have inspired me since my childhood.

This book is chock-full of information in the form of data and graphs. It explains how and in what form inequality has always existed throughout the ages. It also explains how the growing inequality in the western world has been ever-increasing since Thatcher and Reagan, even under all socialists governments, such as under Blair and Clinton. He explains by means of ample data how the left-wing socialist parties, including the Democrats in the USA, have slowly but steadily transformed from parties for the working class to parties for the higher educated. He not only discusses the political and ideological status in the western nations over many years, but also the situation in India, China and Russia.

I think the strongest aspect of the book is its emphasis on data, facts and figures. Where I myself often feel angry, or irritated in the view of so much injustice in the world, where inequality continues to increase to ridiculous levels, Piketty discusses all data with an emphasis on facts instead of emotions. He also analyses the various arguments that have been used, and are still used to defend the current situation.

It is not often the case that I learn as much from a book as have have learnt from Capital and Ideology. It has answered many questions I had about things I did not understand, and I can full heartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in understanding and improving the current extremely unequal word that we live in.

That does not mean that I don't see potential for improvement. The main aspect being that the book would have been even better if it would have had, say 400 pages instead of 1104. There is a lot of duplication of information in the book, and a lot of detail that could have been left out. I do understand, however, that reducing the page count to include only the essential information is easier said than done, and would take a lot of time. I dealt with it by often switching to fast reading mode, browsing over, in my view, unessential stuff.

Highly recommended! ...more

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Nov 25, 2019 K marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Part I:
Unequal Regimes in History
1. Ternary societies: trifunctional inequality
2. Societies of the European order: power and propriety
3. The invention of property societies
4. Ownership societies: The case of France
5. Ownership societies: European trajectories

Part II:
Slave Societies and Colonial Societies
6. Slave societies: Extreme inequality
7. Colonial societies: Diversity and domination
8. Ternary societies and colonialism: The case of India
9. Ternary societies and colonialism: Eurasian trajecto ...more

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Feb 03, 2020 Nils rated it it was amazing

Shelves: future-of-capitalism

A thundering follow up to Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century (2014), his era-defining examination of the growth of national inequalities. Whereas the first book examines what actually happened to inequality levels over time, particularly in the rich countries of the first wave of industrialization, this new book is a world tour of how different societies have ideologically justified inequality over time, particularly during moments of transition from one “inequality regime” to another

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Dec 16, 2019 Ietrio rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: junk

The imam of the current Socialism asks for the annulment of private property. Somehow TP is not a criminal conspiring to robbery, but someone who is so valuable to the society that taxes have to be collected in order to pay him and his family.

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Sep 06, 2020 Craig Bellamy rated it it was amazing

One of the most productive things that I have done during Melbourne’s lockdown is read Thomas Piketty’s latest work, Capital and Ideology (Harvard University Press, 2020). It is undoubtedly not the leisurely book to read, at 1150 pages, dense with footnotes, appendices, and graphs, spanning a three-hundred-year period, multiple countries, and the fields of economics and history. It is a monumental work of scholarship, and along with his last significant work Capital in the 21st Century (Harvard One of the most productive things that I have done during Melbourne’s lockdown is read Thomas Piketty’s latest work, Capital and Ideology (Harvard University Press, 2020). It is undoubtedly not the leisurely book to read, at 1150 pages, dense with footnotes, appendices, and graphs, spanning a three-hundred-year period, multiple countries, and the fields of economics and history. It is a monumental work of scholarship, and along with his last significant work Capital in the 21st Century (Harvard University Press, 2014), it provides a rigorously empirical, data-centric and troubling view of the undoing of financial egalitarianism in Western democracies. Piketty provides the historical reasoning of this, the monumental failure of the command economies of communism, the weakening of progressive taxations and other policies design to redistribute wealth (such as inheritance taxes) and the shift in the ideology of egalitarianism to ideologies based the uncritical embrace of ‘meritocracy’.

The primary cause of the significant shift is that the political left (Labour and Democrat’s) shifted from worker’s parties to parties of the educated (or what Piketty calls the Brahman left). A more educated demographic is more likely to vote left; the less educated are more likely to vote right. Politics has become less of a class battle and more of a battle between elites; the ‘Brahman left’ and the ‘Mercantile right’, with a bunch of Identitarian political cleavages to keep things interesting.

I will attempt to extrapolate the four key arguments.

Inequality has always been justified by ideology, from pre-modern ‘trifunctional societies’ (church, nobles, and warriors), to slavery, colonialism, communism to what Piketty terms ‘hyper-capitalism’. All regimes had an ideology to justify financial inequality from the slave states of the Caribbean and southern United States (that drew up to 100% of their income from the slave trade), to Belle Époque France, to 21st Century hyper-capitalist states. Piketty has a knack for measuring the transition of inequality through various historical epochs using vast data sets of national income, taxation, and inheritance records. During the late Belle Époque (the period after the French Revolution) a ridiculously small elite owned nearly all the property in Paris, justified by the post-revolutionary-meritocracy of mercantile ‘egalitarian exceptionalism’. It was only through the advent of progressive taxation and inheritance taxes in the 20th Century that France and other countries moved to a more quantifiable egalitarianism.

Piketty claims that communism was a disaster so great that its failure overshadows the regimes of colonialism and slavery that came before it (and this argument has infuriated the Chinese CCP so much, that they have banned his book in China). Plus, the failure to regulate capital through the experimental, centralised command economies of communism, has pushed western countries in another ideological and policy direction, to have very-little wealth in public hands. In fact, all that citizens now own through their governments (schools, roads, buildings, and agencies) is worth zero dollars once government debt is considered. Indeed, in some countries, governments must pay private enterprise interest as governments own less that they owe (and this has happened in the short timeframe of 10 years).

Social democratic policies are another area of focus of Piketty’s examination. Although they have not disappeared altogether (Norway, Sweden, Germany, and to a lesser degree, New Zealand and Australia), their influence on the world stage is marginal to the 21st Century libertarian notion of globalism (free-trade, tax havens, and ‘race to the bottom’ tax competition between nations). Piketty argues that social democracies should form federal alliances to regulate capital on a global scale, as they have so successfully domestically.

The social democracies were some of the most egalitarian societies the world has ever known, but this did not happen through mere cultural reasons or imagined ‘egalitarian exceptionalism’, but through clear policies linked to the unambiguous ideology of wanting to be egalitarian. This entailed political courage and enacting policies of wealth distribution through high progressive taxation and high rates of inheritance tax. The period from the Second World War until 1980 was a prosperous, high-growth, high-innovation period and this was archived through maintaining egalitarianism via high progressive taxation, especially in the US (up to 75%), which is now the most inegalitarian western economy. Piketty’s point is that fiscal egalitarianism and innovation are not mutually exclusive, and in fact, the opposite may be the case. Globalism needs to move onto a more egalitarian footing, and this can only be done through alliances of progressive, egalitarian countries, something like a federal version of the EU (that presently only collect and distributes 1% of European GDP).

As Piketty argues, one of the significant reasons that western countries (particularly the US), became so inegalitarian is because of shifting ideologies and voting patterns, especially on the left. Piketty uses post-election surveys to examine voter behaviour and discovered that there has been an almost complete reversal of voting patterns among a less-educated demographic. Since the 1980s, the less educated are more likely to vote Republican or Tory, and the highly educated are more likely to vote Labour of Democrat. This voting shift mirrors the reduction of progressive taxation and the heightening of inequality in western democracies. The policies of the left (or what Piketty terms the Brahmin left) are seen to support high-education and high-salaries, whilst neglecting the working classes. This is because of the pressure of global capital (or ‘race to the bottom’ taxation competition), a highly fractured polity, and the left and the individual state’s inability and unwillingness to tax and redistribute at the state level.

As a conclusion, Piketty seems to be arguing that we need to get over communism, try egalitarianism again, and learn from the social democracies. The state does not have to own everything (the means of production). It can foster egalitarianism through taxation and ‘fiscal justice’, inheritance taxes (that prevent inter-generational wealth accumulation), and workers-representatives on company boards (as is the case in Germany and Nordic counties). One of his more interesting ideas is that there ought to be an explicit public-inheritance, or that every 25-year-old could receive a sum of say, 200 thousand euros to set them up in life at an early stage. This money would come from an inheritance tax on the enormous fortunes. The ‘egalitarian ideology’ that justifies this is that wealth should be temporary and not accumulated over many generations (that could see us return to the nobility of pre-modern times).

I am fortunate enough to have read both of Piketty’s significant works, and the irony is, this type of scholarship is only possible in the 21st Century. The synthesis of quantitative data with a historical narrative on such scale using such techniques has all the hallmarks of emergent digital humanities (or ‘big reading’). Piketty has even made much of his data available for further analysis, visualisation, and debate in the classroom. The book was released just before the global coronavirus pandemic, so perhaps there is a historical moment now, as there was directing proceeding the Second World War, where we have the chance to recalibrate ideologically and again move towards egalitarianism.
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Dec 05, 2020 Adam rated it it was amazing

The definitive economic history. This book has made me feel comfortable talking and reading about politics and economics in a way I never before have. It's the missing context for the last 300 years. It's a long read but I'm very grateful for it. ...more

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Jun 12, 2020 Rahul Adusumilli added it

Shelves: economics, history, political-economy, social-justice, utopia-calls

“Today’s meritocratic ideology glorifies entrepreneurs and billionaires. At times this glorification seems to know no bounds. Some people seem to believe that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg single-handedly invented computers, books, and friends. One can get the impression that they can never be rich enough and that the humble people of the earth can never thank them enough for all the benefits they have brought. To defend them, sharp lines are drawn between the wicked Russian oligar ...more

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Mar 28, 2020 Stefan Bruun rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, economics

A lot of intriguing ideas and concepts. While I will probably never agree fully with Piketty, understanding the history and trajectory of countries and regions does indeed help explain the current political environments.

Many of the analyses are based on views that are inherently subjective. The data doesn't prove the views right or wrong but describes a development objectively. The missing piece in the book is the human. What happens to the human if you tax him/her 100%? Will they contribute to ...more

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Aug 24, 2020 Daniel1974nlgmail.com rated it it was amazing

The first 50 pages of Capital & Ideology of Thomas Piketty (Harvard 2020) alone already present a wiser and better informed position and read than anything else I have read about contemporary politics the last year. This is historical writing and analysis with the capital 'H'. And just as Capitalism In The 20th Century a mind boggling read in the style of Braudel, Wallerstein, etc. Not economy, not philosophy and more history and literary analysis than his colleagues are going to be wiling to fo ...more

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Jul 08, 2020 J M-B rated it liked it

Picketty’s previous book, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, was an exhaustive study of the way in which capitalism has promoted growing inequalities of wealth and, consequently, power. In passing, it offered a critique of economics as a discipline, proposing a return to the broader concept of ‘political economy’, embracing history and sociology (Capital in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 32-3). Picketty’s arguments about inequality were supported, if not driven, by a mass of empirical data (a Picketty’s previous book, ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’, was an exhaustive study of the way in which capitalism has promoted growing inequalities of wealth and, consequently, power. In passing, it offered a critique of economics as a discipline, proposing a return to the broader concept of ‘political economy’, embracing history and sociology (Capital in the Twenty-First Century, pp. 32-3). Picketty’s arguments about inequality were supported, if not driven, by a mass of empirical data (accessible via the online World Top Incomes Database) but were little concerned with the ideological justifications for the inequality that the system has created. That gap is now filled by ‘Capital and Ideology’ and its publication marks a significant contribution to his earlier critique of his own discipline by emphatically adding the qualification ‘political’ to the study of ‘economy’. This more recent book is a political intervention in both the political sphere of global civil society and the discipline of economics, which has played and continues to play, no small role in serving to justify inequality.

Picketty’s study of inequality societies covers pre-capitalist economic formations (which he calls ‘tri-functional’ or ‘ternary’ societies, meaning those based on the, somewhat over-simplified, division of labour between those who fight, those who pray and those who labour) and capitalist societies (which he calls ‘ownership’ or proprietarian’ societies) where private property (especially of the means of production) is ‘sacralized’, but theoretically available to all, and there is a strong, centralized state to protect property rights. Picketty focuses on empirical data measures of inequality across these social formations and the ideological rationales for inequality that the rulers articulate. He pays less attention, however, to the form of exploitation that leads to inequality within those societies which, in the case of pre-capitalist formations, take the very visible form of tithes or unpaid labour but - in capitalist societies - is achieved less visibly through profits accruing to capital while workers receive wages as the equivalent of their means of subsistence. This neglect of the mechanism by which the surplus product is appropriated undermines his understanding of the relationship between the economic form of the surplus product and the ideological justifications for the exploitation that leads to the inequalities he is studying.

From the outset, Picketty seeks to distinguish his own work from ‘Marxist’ approaches which, in his account, argue that the ‘state of the economic forces and relations of production determines a society’s ideological “superstructure” in an almost mechanical fashion’ (‘C & I, p. 7). This ‘base/superstructure model of capitalism, although derived from notes to be found in Marx’s ‘Grundrisse’, is a crude caricature of Marx’s social model elaborated in the more authoritative three volumes of ‘Capital’. It is a caricature because, in the first chapter of ‘Capital’, Marx’s elaboration of the fetishism of commodities provides the kernel of a theory of ideology by distinguishing a level of appearances from the underlying relations of production. It is crude because even those Marxists (e.g. Althusser) who rely on the metaphor of base / superstructure accept that the superstructure reacts back on the base. As early as his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ (1845) Marx rejected the materialist determinism that argues men are the product of their circumstances, stating that this is to forget ‘that it is men that change circumstances’. Picketty, however, seems himself to accept the metaphor of base / superstructure with the only difference that, for him, ‘the political-ideological sphere is truly autonomous’ (ibid.). Throughout the book, Picketty returns again and again to assertions that the events he is studying were not determined and might have evolved in any number of directions, but his extreme voluntarism is repeatedly undermined by the convergence of historical trends as revealed by his laudable commitment to basing his analysis on empirical data. The most obvious example of this conflict between his stance in support of autonomy for the political and ideological ‘sphere’ can be seen in his conclusions over the economic imperatives leading to the American Civil War where he concludes that accommodation with the South (by paying compensation for emancipation of slaves) would have resulted in federal debt amounting to 100% of national income, sufficient to make it ‘difficult to see any way out of the country’s predicament’ (pp. 236-8). The very fact of the convergence resulting in the transformation of pre-capitalist societies into a global capitalist system poses difficulties for Picketty’s voluntarist model of social development and leads to verbal formulations that reinstate some kind of ‘invisible hand’. Referring to his analysis of Japan, China and Iran, Picketty says that ‘many trajectories were possible and this leads us to minimize the role of cultural or civilizational determinism and to emphasize instead the importance of sociopolitical developments and the logic of events in the transformation of inequality regimes’ (p. 362). Here, Picketty’s distinction between ‘cultural or civilizational’ determinants in favour of ‘sociopolitical developments’ seems to suggest that the social and political institutions of the societies under discussion are in some way isolated from cultural and ‘civilizational’ factors. Moreover, the phrase ‘logic of events’ (which recurs at key points throughout the book) seems to posit some reified external force that looks suspiciously like the determinism Picketty is disputing.

Picketty does offer, however, a detailed and brilliantly documented history of global social inequality which is also a condemnation of that inequality. His commitment to voluntarism and the belief in ‘different trajectories’ is not simply a matter of historiography, rather it serves as the basis for his welcome argument that - right now - we have the opportunity to make rational choices to reject inequality regimes. Picketty is, as anyone who read his ‘How to Democratize Europe’ knows, a programmatic and interventionist academic. His argument in ‘Capital and Ideology’ extends to embracing his favoured option of democratic socialism in which global inequality is minimised by means of transnational policies that extend employee ownership and enforce progressive taxation at a global level that allows no safe havens for massive concentrations of private wealth. Picketty’s repeated criticism of the post WW II left/social democratic ascendency is that it failed to transcend the nation state (e.g. P. 870). It is instructive, therefore, to consider his conclusion about the reasons why his treaty to democratize the EU (which, with no expectation of it succeeding, i signed myself) failed to win support at the EU transnational level; it was, he says, ‘ultimately’ because politicians, especially in Germany and France, ‘continue to believe that the benefits of fiscal competition (in pressuring states to hold down spending at a time when taxes are already at historically high levels) outweigh the costs of the endless race to the bottom (which benefits those whose capital is most mobile or at least do not justify the significant political complications that would arise from trying to end it’ (917). Those ‘significant political complications’ include, precisely, a transcendence of the nation state as the default level of political and economic management of society. Picketty intends that his book should serve as ‘the basis for new thinking about participatory international socialism’ (p. 961) and he accepts that this is not deliverable within the existing structure of global institutions: ‘whether in Brazil, Europe or the US, it is impossible to reduce inequality as much as one would like without also transforming the political, institutional and electoral regimes’ (p. 957). This is a revolutionary statement. It is a statement that concedes that reform of existing institutions of democracy at the national level are insufficient to overcome capitalism’s drive towards intensifying inequality. Significantly, in his conclusion, Picketty returns to his ongoing debate with Marxism: ‘“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” wrote Karl Marx and Friederich Engels in The Communist manifesto (1848)’ (p. 1035). Picketty then opts to reformulate this classic line as, ‘the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of the struggle of ideologies and the quest for justice’ (ibid.). The changes he introduces in this re-formulation separate him from classic Marxism in two vital ways - first, he elides the material struggle of competing sections of society for the social surplus that is produced and focuses, instead, purely on the ideological conflict over the legitimacy of possession of the surplus product; second, he introduces a pluralism in which all sectional interests are capable of contributing to the ‘quest for justice’, with no distinction between those with a lot to gain from greater equality and those with a great deal to lose. Picketty divorces ideology from social position: ‘unlike the class struggle, the struggle of ideologies involves shared knowledge and experiences, respect for others, deliberation, and democracy’ (p. 1036). Picketty identifies two main strands of ideological cleavage one, identitarian (associated with the contradictions of globalism and with a focus on borders and and political community, veering towards the dangers of ‘social nativism’) and the other, based on class and committed to redistribution in the interests of greater economic equality (see p. 958). In promoting a return to a class based approach to social transformation, Picketty says ‘everything depends on equipping groups of different origins and identities with the institutional, social and political tools they need to recognize that what unites them outweighs what divides them’ (p. 959). Whereas he sees his own work is a contribution to that project, the project collapses into a circular argument when he acknowledges that ‘thinking will not change until successful experiments show that the innovations I am proposing can work’ (p. 990). In a footnote, Picketty clarifies precisely what this means when he adds, ‘I am thinking here of large-scale experimentation to be undertaken after new governments have come to power [...] my view is that only truly large-scale experiments can bring about decisive changes in perceptions’ (pp. 990-1, note 55). Thus, changes in ideology or social perception, can only arise after grand experiments that themselves require a change in social ideology.

Picketty has produced a great book that is firmly based in the tradition of utopian socialism. His plans for new global institutions capable, of applying progressive taxation that will leave no safe haven for massive concentrations of private wealth, requires only that we apply his proposals on a grand scale, after new governments have been installed. Picketty’s critical reading of the Communist Manifesto did, I am sure, extend to the section devoted to a critique of utopian socialists. There Marx wrote of the utopian socialists: ‘historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual, spontaneous class-organisation of the proletariat to an organisation of society specially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans’ (1). Picketty undoubtedly read this section and, just as undoubtedly, failed to see himself delineated in these lines. This blindness tells us a great deal about capital and ideology.
1. The Communist Manifesto, 1848, section 3. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...
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Aug 14, 2020 Gregg Wingo rated it it was amazing

Piketty has done it again! But in a very different way. The first book in this series, "Capital in the Twentieth Century" was fascinating as both an economics book but also its utilization of literature to dissect the nature of capital accumulation upon the lives of human beings. This book relies chiefly on long-term data analysis of the world's experiment with Capitalism. It is full of useful charts on income, wealthy, education, and voting patterns across the world and history.

But it is much m Piketty has done it again! But in a very different way. The first book in this series, "Capital in the Twentieth Century" was fascinating as both an economics book but also its utilization of literature to dissect the nature of capital accumulation upon the lives of human beings. This book relies chiefly on long-term data analysis of the world's experiment with Capitalism. It is full of useful charts on income, wealthy, education, and voting patterns across the world and history.

But it is much more than that. It is an empirical defense of Regulation Theory which makes it both an economic and historical work. Regulation Theory was a creation of both French economists and the Annales School of French historians. These individuals abandoned predictive pretensions and grand theory for historical analysis of people, government, laws, and markets. Conclusions are based on statistical analysis of historical records instead of economic modeling. Piketty has chosen to not utilize tradition common or academic names for concepts throughout the work in order to avoid knee-jerk reactions from readers in advance of his arguments and evidence. So let me explain certain aspects that will connect existing theory with the book's desire to avoid Postmodern literary wording hang ups.

Regulation Theory revolves around two central concepts: Modes of Regulation (MOR) and Regimes of Capital Accumulation (ROA). MOR is the basic system of rules and regulations that have been implemented by a society and on its exchange mechanisms. ROA is the impact of the MOR on the way wealthy is earned and retained in the society. Piketty analyzes this for the Ancien Regime, the First Industrial Revolution, the Second Industrial Revolution and Colonialism, the Fordist Era, and the first part of the 21st century. In this work, he also expands these analyses beyond the Western world where the historical record allows him to especially in India, China, Russia, and Brazil. In the introduction the author explains why the MOR and the ROA are integral to the title, "Capital and Ideology":

"Every human society must justify its inequalities: unless reasons for them are found, the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse. Every epoch therefore develops a range of contradictory discourses and ideologies for the purpose of legitimizing the inequality that already exists or that people believe should exist. From these discourses emerge certain economic, social, and political rules, which people then use to make sense of the ambient social structure. Out of the clash of contradictory discourses - a clash that is at once economic, social, and political - comes a dominant narrative or narratives, which bolster the existing inequality regime."

As you can see Rules equals MOR and Inequality equals ROA, Ideology equals Politics. Who wins the ideological (elections) fight defines the regulatory standards of the society and its markets. Piketty covers several different types of societies and how their rules and regulations have been the basis and justification of their systems but avoids their traditional naming styles. The Ancien Regime is, for instance, called Ternary Societies reflecting their division between the nobility, the priesthood, and the commoners. The Classical Liberal period is the Proprietarian or Ownership Society including its relationship to slavery and colonialism. The bulk of the Fordist Era is divided between Social Democratic systems and Communist states. Our current Neoliberal period is known as the Neo-Proprietarian Society. This connection between power and ideology is why the book covers not just economics but politics, elections, and voting franchise.

The author is not only interested in defending theories of Structural Marxism dating from the 70s, but rather, to provide solutions for an improved society in the future. He explores co-management law, progressive income and wealthy taxes, universal basic income, capital endowments, free education initiatives, and the need for a transnational regulatory regime. After avoiding loaded terminology he dives in with both feet and calls these reforms, this ideology: Participatory Socialism.

Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, reading this book is both fascinating and it will provide you with a vast body of facts and access to an even vaster online database. It is a big read but a worthwhile one. ...more

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Aug 01, 2020 Tom Shannon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

For the author to be this academically ambitious was an unexpected and a welcome surprise.
This book was long but as a truly energetic project of bringing to light historical socioeconomics and solutions for the future, it could have been much longer.

It was really refreshing to see a socialist economics that challenged the goal of pure state nationalization of industries. The idea of social ownership and redistribution was there but proposed with new solutions based on historical precedents.

It wa ...more

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Dec 24, 2020 Daniel rated it really liked it

Piketty’s second book is even more ambitious than the first. It has taken me a long time to finish it.

1. Basically, inequality had always been around. The rich had to create justification so that the vast poor can tolerate the inequality. The warrior class and the priest class had used the mandate of God or even the direct descendent of God to justify their hold. Then in societies with systemic slavery, the enslaved must be described as less than human.

2. Throughout history, capital had always ...more

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May 23, 2020 Darcy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2020, economics, politics, non-fiction, ideas

No review I can write will do this massive tome justice. I see the world the way Piketty does and am very comfortable with his conclusions. They seem pretty obvious mostly - and very sound. It is the detail he provides that so impresses; the facts, polls, tables and statistics are incredibly comprehensive.

The changing role of education in forming political alignment was interesting to reflect on and his insight into the challenges for the "Brahmin left" who are no longer offering working class c ...more

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Sep 02, 2020 Peter A. van Tilburg rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: politics

It took me 5 months to read but it was worhwhile. The study reveals quite some eye openers for me. To name some:
. The French revolution had no impact on the division of wealth. The ownership was not affected. The new power was afraid to take away the property of the wealthy and divide it.
. After this period the concentration of wealth and income became more unequal untill WW1. After the world wars it became clear that the ordinary man who suffered so much was entitled to better circumstances. T ...more

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May 19, 2020 Sanjida rated it really liked it

This is immensely ambitious, spanning the history of class and capitalism from the early modern era to the present day, in several European nations, the United States, India, and touching on several other Asian countries and post-communist societies. Piketty fits each nation into a pattern of a tripartite society that persists in some form even in today's neoliberal world order. There are lords/warriors/business and clerics/brahmins/intellectuals and workers/serfs. He tries to tie it all togethe ...more

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About Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty

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Thomas Piketty (French: [tɔma pikɛti]; born May 7, 1971) is a French economist who works on wealth and income inequality. He is the director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and professor at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of the best selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which emphasizes the themes of his work on wealth conc Thomas Piketty (French: [tɔma pikɛti]; born May 7, 1971) is a French economist who works on wealth and income inequality. He is the director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and professor at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of the best selling book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), which emphasizes the themes of his work on wealth concentrations and distribution over the past 250 years. The book argues that the rate of capital return in developed countries is persistently greater than the rate of economic growth, and that this will cause wealth inequality to increase in the future. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a global tax on wealth.

Piketty was born on May 7, 1971, in the Parisian suburb of Clichy. He gained a C-stream (scientific) Baccalauréat, and after taking scientific preparatory classes, he entered the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) at the age of 18, where he studied mathematics and economics. At the age of 22, Piketty was awarded his Ph.D. for a thesis on wealth redistribution, which he wrote at the EHESS and the London School of Economics under Roger Guesnerie.

After earning his PhD, Piketty taught from 1993 to 1995 as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1995, he joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a researcher, and in 2000 he became director of studies at EHESS.

Piketty won the 2002 prize for the best young economist in France, and according to a list dated November 11, 2003, he is a member of the scientific orientation board of the association "À gauche, en Europe", founded by Michel Rocard and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

In 2006 Piketty became the first head of the Paris School of Economics, which he helped set up. He left after a few months to serve as an economic advisor to Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal during the French presidential campaign. Piketty resumed teaching at the Paris School of Economics in 2007.

He is a columnist for the French newspaper Libération, and occasionally writes op-eds for Le Monde.

In April 2012, Piketty co-authored along with 42 colleagues an open letter in support of then-PS candidate for the French presidency François Hollande. Hollande won the contest against the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May of that year.

In 2013, Piketty won the biennial Yrjö Jahnsson Award, for the economist under age 45 who has "made a contribution in theoretical and applied research that is significant to the study of economics in Europe."

Piketty specializes in economic inequality, taking a historic and statistical approach. His work looks at the rate of capital accumulation in relation to economic growth over a two hundred year spread from the nineteenth century to the present. His novel use of tax records enabled him to gather data on the very top economic elite, who had previously been understudied, and to ascertain their rate of accumulation of wealth and how this compared to the rest of society and economy. His most recent book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, relies on economic data going back 250 years to show that an ever-rising concentration of wealth is not self-correcting. To address this problem, he proposes redistribution through a global tax on wealth. ...more

Books by Thomas Piketty

Why Save the Bankers?: And Other Essays on Our Economic and Political Crisis

La crisis del capital en el siglo XXI: Crónicas de los años en que el capitalismo se volvió loco (Singular)

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Quotes from Capital and Ideology

“We should not overestimate the extent of the diffusion of ownership that has taken place over the past two centuries: the egalitarian ownership society—or even, more modestly, a society in which the poorest half of the population owns more than a token share of the wealth—has yet to be invented.” — 3 likes

“Paradoxically, the sources available today (in the era of big data) are less precise than those that were available a century ago due to the internationalization of wealth, the proliferation of tax havens, and above all, lack of political will to enforce financial transparency, so it is quite possible that we are underestimating the level of wealth inequality in recent decades.” — 3 likes

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