Capital And Ideology

By (author) Piketty, Thomas - Goldhammer, Arthur; By (author) Piketty Thomas; Translated by Goldhammer Arthur
Short description/annotation:
Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century showed that capitalism, left to itself, generates deepening inequality. In this audacious follow-up, he challenges us to revolutionize how we think about ideology and history, exposing the ideas that have sustained inequality since premodern times and outlining a fairer economic system.
Description:

A New York Times Bestseller
An NPR Best Book of the Year

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 revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.

Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity.

Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

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In an election cycle where the political discourse has been thoroughly shaped by Piketty’s work, his new book feels especially urgent.
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Ventures to trace the origin of inequalities and propose methods of eradication…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…Piketty has put forward proposals for long-term, permanent change, but impressively, they would also be immediately useful in speeding along the recovery.
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Nothing less than a global history of inequality and the stories that societies tell to justify it, from pre-modern India to Donald Trump’s U.S.
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Might become even more politically influential than the French economist’s 2013 overview of inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century…Piketty explains why this could be the moment for a turn to equality, and which policies could make that happen.
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Thomas Piketty’s books are always monumental…In the same way that Capital in the Twenty-First Century has transformed how economists look at inequality, Capital and Ideology will transform the way political scientists look at their own field.
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An astonishing experiment