MixedThe NationAt just over 1,100 pages, Piketty’s new book surpasses Capital in the Twenty-First Century in size and scope by a considerable extent; it is, in many ways, a far more ambitious work in both its range and its politics ... While all of this will strike many readers as indisputably true, what may frustrate some is that Piketty never identifies a central force behind these world historical changes. There is no one motor, in his account, driving these conflicts forward. While Marx privileged class formation and class tensions, Piketty appears committed to unpacking each of the major transformations he identifies on its own terms, insisting on a multitude of alternative paths that might have been followed at any given moment. Some may find this approach nuanced; others may be put off by its unwillingness to dig in and take sides ... Piketty’s latest work offers us plenty of valuable ideas. But in the end, one can’t help but wonder if he underplays the extent to which individuals’ access to and relationship with wealth (their position in the property regime, one might say) influences how they look at the world and engage in politics.
