Thomas Piketty is Professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Paris School of Economics and Codirector of the World Inequality Lab.
In an election cycle where the political discourse has been
thoroughly shaped by Piketty’s work, his new book feels especially
urgent.
*GQ*
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.
*New Republic*
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.
*Wired*
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.
*Financial Times*
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.
*ProMarket*
An astonishing experiment in social science, one that defies easy
comparison. In its ambition, obsessive testimony and sheer oddness,
it is closer to the spirit of Karl Ove Knausgård than of Karl
Marx…Will be impossible to ignore.
*The Guardian*
A book of remarkable clarity and dynamism. Drawing lessons from a
breathtaking survey of different historical experiences, it teaches
us that nothing is inevitable, that there exist a whole range of
possibilities between hypercapitalism and the disasters of the
communist experience. It’s up to us to make our future. Let’s roll
up our sleeves.
*Esther Duflo, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences*
A believer in how capitalism can be used to eradicate inequality,
Piketty argues for new taxation systems that might minimize the gap
between the one percent and the underserved. Whether he’s right or
wrong, his dazzling intellect makes for thought-provoking
reading.
*Washington Post*
Boldly proclaims that inequality is ultimately rooted in
ideology…Offer[s] a global history of how different political
systems have justified inequality, and how these systems have been
transformed over time.
*The Nation*
A magisterial history of economic development as seen through the
prism of inequality. It is breathtaking in its scholarship and
sweep (almost no corner of the globe is left unvisited) and
incandescent in its insights…[Piketty] casts his discerning gaze on
history’s sweep, not just to understand the world but also to
transform it.
*Foreign Affairs*
Spenglerian in scope, Piketty’s critique reaches far back in
history and across the globe…It’s an admirable corrective to the
usual Eurocentrism of Western economists…Piketty has modified his
thinking since his previous opus. Rather than imply that rising
inequality is a problem inherent in capitalism, he now suggests
that the levels of inequality we get are the ones we
countenance—that they’re entirely a matter of political and
ideological choices.
*New Yorker*
Packed with fascinating detail and vast quantities of skillfully
assembled data…A systematic examination of inequality across time
and place, and of the ideas the powerful have used to justify it…We
learn a good deal about the lengths to which the powerful will go
to assert their privilege (and the often outrageous injustice this
entails), and about the only things that have ever thwarted them:
mass violence and progressive taxation…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.
*London Review of Books*
Seven years after the publication of his best-selling Capital in
the Twenty-First Century, Piketty returns with a global overview to
understand some of the most pressing economic and social issues of
our time.
*New York Times Book Review*
The breadth of Piketty’s learning is extraordinary…Politicians who
hope for more than a short durée in power would do well to digest
the main thesis.
*Literary Review*
Both a history of the world and a theory of history. Every society
is unequal, and therefore constitutes an ‘inequality regime’
maintained not solely by force but also by ideology… Most of the
book is a history of how those ideologies have helped bolster
social structures characterized by extreme inequality, from feudal
and slave societies through colonial regimes to the hypercapitalist
world of today…The bleakly unequal impact of the coronavirus
pandemic on rich and poor may reinforce that discontent.
*Washington Post*
A work of political economy in the broadest sense—a staggeringly
ambitious effort attempting to synthesize centuries of history,
economics, and politics into one grand picture…A fascinating,
essential study both of where we came from and of two possible
paths forward: how we might create a better future for all human
society, and the dark possibilities should we fail.
*The Week*
Mixes history and polemic—case studies from modern Sweden and
Soviet Russia alongside a genuine political program to help
mitigate, at least, the cruelest inequities highlighted in his
first book.
*New York Magazine*
More like a history of the world than an economics book…An
awe-inspiring breadth of data is tapped…And after dives into such
detail, unlike the average data aficionado, Piketty always soars
back up to the big picture. On occasion, a blistering insight can
cut through reams of history.
*Prospect*
Bears little resemblance to anything else written by contemporary
economists, or even those of one or two generations past. The
tendency in economics now—as well as in a great deal of public
discussion—is to view the economy as a natural force, existing
independently from our ideas about what it is and how it ought to
work. This book systematically demolishes that self-serving
conceit…Makes clear that a political and ideological revolution is
necessary in order to achieve a new era of economic justice.
*Boston Review*
[In] Piketty’s magisterial survey of the central role that ideas
and discourse have played in alternately justifying and questioning
societies’ inequities, we are reminded that political uprisings,
financial collapses, and wars—think the French Revolution, the
Great Depression, and World War II—are what drive change.
*Harvard Business Review*
As in his previous book, Piketty’s quest to quantify and track
inequality is grounded in a rigorous analysis of data…In Capital
and Ideology, he also seeks to better explain how systems of
inequality persist and justify themselves…Ultimately as much a work
of history as of economics…Piketty’s latest work offers us plenty
of valuable ideas.
*The Nation*
[A] sweeping survey of the root causes of inequality…Loaded with
rich comparative data, much of which has been compiled for the
first time. This information includes not only standard economic
fare, such as data on growth and, of course, inequality, but also
political data on voting behavior, stratified by class. This allows
Piketty to show how political alliances were forged in the 1980s
and ’90s in support of a global order that fostered inequality.
*Public Books*
Just as powerful [as Capital in the Twentieth-First Century].
*Fast Company*
Has virtues that many post-Marxist critiques lack…Piketty’s
sweeping scholarship enhances, rather than obscures, his central
argument.
*The Economist*
[Has] the potential to start an important debate about how to
restructure society in a more egalitarian and ecologically
sustainable way.
*Nature*
Ranges widely across continents and centuries in its analysis of
economic inequality and the ways it is justified.
*Times Higher Education*
At its heart, Capital and Ideology seeks to understand why the less
advantaged masses, who’ve seen their share of the economic pie
drastically shrink in recent decades, don’t unite to press for
sweeping political changes that could bring economic justice…Given
the starring role that inequality has assumed in today’s political
discourse—in no small part due to his previous book—Piketty’s
latest effort is very welcome.
*Foreign Policy*
Thomas Piketty’s magisterial global and connected history takes us
on a whirlwind journey across the world during the past 500 years
to show how shifting ideas and politics have shaped a wide variety
of inequality regimes. Fully embracing the power of historical
analysis, Capital and Ideology emboldens us to reimagine the
possibilities of our present. Enormously rich in argument and
evidence, this tour de force by one of the most influential
thinkers of our age is a must-read for anyone grappling with the
dilemmas of our present.
*Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global
History*
Thomas Piketty’s new book starts where Capital in the Twenty-First
Century left off, revealing how inequality was allowed to develop
into an acceptable condition, now and in the past, in the West and
in the rest of the world. Still, not all is bad: if inequality is a
social construct, that means it can also be undone. Based on
monumental research, Capital and Ideology is an appeal to rethink
capitalism—if not for today’s politicians then perhaps for
tomorrow’s revolution!
*Reinier de Graaf, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, author of
Four Walls and a Roof*
[A] wide-ranging historical survey of ‘inequality regimes’—dogmas
that justify hierarchies of wealth and power…This ambitious
manifesto will stir controversy, but also cement Piketty’s position
as the Left’s leading economic theorist.
*Publishers Weekly (starred review)*
A significant work. The author interrogates the principal forms of
economic organization over time, from slavery to ‘non-European
trifunctional societies,’ Chinese-style communism, and
‘hypercapitalist’ orders, in order to examine relative levels of
inequality and its evolution…A deftly argued case for a new kind of
socialism that, while sure to inspire controversy, bears widespread
discussion.
*Kirkus Reviews (starred review)*
Outlines a fairer economic system for the world.
*Management Today*
The journey through this book is long but rewarding. Piketty’s
historical analysis of inequality around the world is fascinating,
and even the wishful thinking underlying his ‘participatory
socialism’ makes for interesting reading.
*Project Syndicate*
[Piketty] expand[s] his investigations across the globe and over
long periods of history to reveal how ideologies fuel
inequalities.
*The Wire*
Focuses on the relationship between inequality and the way in which
the concept of private property has evolved over time…Fascinating
analysis.
*American Affairs*
This is an immense work of scholarship on the history of
inequality. It also contains a penetrating analysis of contemporary
politics, especially the failures of what Piketty calls the
‘Brahmin Left,’ along with a radical new program of socialist
egalitarianism.
*Financial Times*
A truly monumental work, reviewing trends in income and wealth
inequality across of host of nations and eras, and attempting to
find some overarching explanation for them.
*Business Economics*
A remarkable achievement.
*Central Banking*
An important contribution by Piketty. He has enlarged the scope of
economic analysis appropriately to include political power and
ideology. The historical record he presents is greatly
enriching.
*Forum for Social Economics*
Adds something vital to the author’s decades-old, impressively
data-rich indictment of unequal wealth accumulation. This book
proposes a lively, tendentious, debatable account of the ideologies
that propel different property regimes—as well as a nuanced
genealogy of how such ideologies can change.
*Public Books*
Worth the wait. Like Capital in the Twenty-First Century, it is an
empirical tour de force that ends with a new policy proposal to
reduce inequality…But bringing the issue of ideology and power into
the debate over rising inequality is the truly great achievement of
Capital and Ideology…Piketty has distanced himself from standard
economics and provides a multidisciplinary, historical explanation
of inequality.
*Dollars & Sense*
Piketty’s own historical and cross-national analysis is deeply
informed by his concern with contemporary injustices, notably
income and wealth inequities but also the ecological crisis and
resurgent, racist or ‘social-nativist’ populisms.
*International Sociology Review*
His magnum opus…It is difficult not to agree with Piketty’s
compelling thesis—that inequality is a ‘man-made’ construct rooted
in ideologies that have historically been dominated by the
elite…Government officials and policymakers would find it useful in
charting new economic policies for the future.
*Arab Studies Quarterly*
The scope of Piketty’s inquiry sets his book apart from most work
by economists on inequality.
*Society*
An encyclopaedic, rewarding work that merits thoughtful
engagement…Piketty successfully puts forward a superb, data-driven
normative defense of democratic socialism. The principles that
Piketty proposes—fair tax, fair trade, clean air and, above all, a
democratic economy—have a huge amount to commend them, and make
this book an essential read.
*LSE Review of Books*
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