The book is packed with fascinating detail and vast quantities of skilfully assembled data; it is written (and translated, by Arthur Goldhammer) in an accessible, conversational tone. But Piketty’s vital contribution is somewhat obscured by the book’s title. He is not in the business of uncovering the ideological dynamics that make the interests of the powerful appear to coincide with everyone’s general interest—what Boutmy called ‘political hegemony’—or in explaining the way they have historically operated. Instead, he gives us a systematic examination of inequality across time and place, and of the ideas the powerful have used to justify it ... Piketty’s confrontation with the void leads him to something like a liberal argument for socialism, and as the rescue packages for a world struck down by Covid-19 pile up, he has, at least for the moment, a captive audience. Whether or not his revolution without revolutionaries can get us where we need to go, his analysis of how we got here demands our attention.
My conclusion: the 1,200-page tome might become even more politically influential than the French economist’s 2013 overview of inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century ... In his overambitious history of inequality from ancient India to today’s US, Piketty recounts the justifications that recur throughout time ... Advocates of inequality will come up with the usual justifications. But now is the redistributionists’ best chance.
If inequality has become the subject of intense public attention, a good deal of the credit goes to the French economist Thomas Piketty ... And now...Piketty has published a yet more ambitious book, Capital and Ideology ... It encompasses history, political science, and political theory, and is even more voluminous than its predecessor. This reviewer must report that the eleven-hundred-page work broke an (admittedly unsteady) card table and later caused a carry-on to exceed the weight limit on an (admittedly stingy) European airline ... There’s a reason for the heft. Capital and Ideology sets out not only to describe capitalism but also to help us 'transcend' it. Piketty both diagnoses and prescribes: he tries to expose the contradictions of the reigning ideology of 'hypercapitalism' and its malign consequences...and, to stave off disaster, recommends a breathtaking series of reforms ... This picture is discouraging. If it’s also familiar, that is a tribute, in part, to the success of Piketty’s previous work ... Of course, the people who are most likely to hear—and heed—Piketty’s call to action, whether or not they scythe their way through his book, are all of the Brahmin left. Throughout the book, Piketty heaps praise on Sanders, Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Jeremy Corbyn ... if a candidate were to go the full Piketty—by proposing enormous taxes on the rich and taking steps toward surrendering sovereignty to a transnational socialistic union—do we really think that nativism and nationalism would retreat, rather than redouble? Would erstwhile supporters of Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump, and Geert Wilders evolve beyond their fears of Muslim migration and accept the new utopia?
Piketty’s book doesn’t do a good job of explaining how an inevitable collapse in property prices will affect the tax base and investment ... When you want to set a super-ambitious goal, it won’t do to get bogged down in details. Nitpicking questions haven’t defeated the populists, so why should they hinder new 'egalitarian coalitions'? ... I hope Piketty’s book shocks Europe’s listless center-left parties into moving beyond boring incrementalism ... If you can get through all of this book, you could believe that anything is possible—even 'participatory socialism.' But it isn’t, and its very impracticality only detracts from Piketty’s economic analysis.
The problem is that the length of Capital and Ideology seems, at least to me, to reflect in part a lack of focus ... Piketty provides what amounts to a history of the world viewed through the lens of inequality ... while there is a definite Francocentric feel to Capital and Ideology, for me, at least, the vast amount of ground it covers raises a couple of awkward questions ... The first is whether Piketty is a reliable guide to such a large territory. His book combines history, sociology, political analysis and economic data for dozens of societies. Is he really enough of a polymath to pull that off? ... The second question is whether the accumulation of cases actually strengthens Piketty’s core analysis. It wasn’t clear to me that it does. To be honest, at a certain point I felt a sense of dread each time another society entered the picture ... The bottom line: I really wanted to like Capital and Ideology, but have to acknowledge that it’s something of a letdown. There are interesting ideas and analyses scattered through the book, but they get lost in the sheer volume of dubiously related material. In the end, I’m not even sure what the book’s message is. That can’t be a good thing.
Unlike Capital, the new book lands on the world’s doorstep in the midst of an unfolding economic crisis, when the shutdown required to prevent the spread of the coronavirus is sending the world into a spiraling recession, with the wealthy fleeing to secluded second homes, while millions are thrown out of work or forced to do dangerous jobs. To come out the other side better off, the world will need new ideas ... In Capital and Ideology, Piketty has put forward proposals for long-term, permanent change, but impressively, they would also be immediately useful in speeding along the recovery ... Piketty’s own imagination of new worlds is grounded in a rigorous and detailed analysis of the institutions that have existed in the real world. His proposals, he insists, are limited to those based 'primarily on the historical lessons presented in this book.' He is uncovering ideas that have worked before. They could work again.
From the extraordinary wealth of its empirical material to the breadth of its cultural scope, and from the rare alliance of statistical precision and literary references to the level of its intellectual and political ambition, there is much to commend in this remarkable book ... Piketty’s bold agenda relies on three main pillars ... There are good reasons to contemplate each, but each is also highly problematic ... Piketty’s apparent disdain for the implications of his proposals is mind-boggling. He does not even bother discussing consequences ... Absent a systematic discussion of the implications of, and possible objections to, his ideas, they can hardly be regarded as serious policy proposals. In the end, what is deeply disturbing in his book is not the radicalism of his plans. It is the contrast between the thoroughness of his empirical analysis and his casual approach to policy issues.
A weighty tome in many respects, not least physically, with the book extending to more than 1,000 pages of history and dense political and economic argument ... The detail was similarly ample in [Capital in the Twenty-first Century], but there was a narrative energy that propelled the reader. I can remember reading that book, on my phone, waiting in a passport queue on a family holiday. That may, alas, say as much about me as the book ... But that singular clarity is absent in this book. Too often this book feels like a work of reference, albeit of extraordinary scholarship ... There are many very good books inside this single volume. From the study of changing voting patterns, to debating the compensation policies due to the abolition of slavery and analysing the impact of higher education on social mobility. All this and more is contained in these pages ... But this weakens the claim to greatness, a mantle that C21 justifiably deserves. It can overwhelm – too much runs the risk of offering too little ... However, that the benchmark is greatness, not mere excellence, shows why Piketty is now so vital.
Because Piketty believes, first of all, that inequality is manufactured, disruptive, and requiring justification, he never satisfyingly rationalizes egalitarianism. The nearest he gets is a very contestable demonstration that 'what made economic development and human progress possible was the struggle for equality,' with an emphasis on progressive taxation, 'and education'—hardly the working out of a world view ... So is he right about inequality? Obviously not ... Something like just over half of the book seems to be reasonably well done, if somewhat warped, history; parts one and two are genuinely interesting and many readers will find them useful. After this the subject matter becomes more partisan and technical ... the prose is rather ordinary and repetitive making short sections feel like long sections ... Despite an interesting start, Capital and Ideology is a thousand-page book with flaws that make its arguments feel remarkably emaciated.
At his best, Piketty draws the potential dry discussion of economic systems into the complex interplay of human systems of politics, ideology, and history, and into the manifold ways these systems have taken shape throughout time and place. Perhaps most invigorating of all is the degree of faith Piketty places in human imagination and the ability to right wrongs and make active decisions to shape our collective future ... Capital and Ideology grapples with these unwieldy questions as well as any one book can, leaving us a timely and potent passageway into some of the most pressing issues of our globalized age. While crisis exposes the fault lines of societies more starkly, perhaps it can also provide a new opportunity to draw plans and take an honest look at forging a new path.
At 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.
... an ambitious attempt to analyze inequality and offer ways to reduce it ... This meticulous analysis will interest those with a serious concern for economic public policy.
