Piketty despises communism, but he considers the gradual extension of the sphere of private property (from land to manufactures, intangible capital, and data) and the parallel increase of shareholder power as capitalism’s main curse and a fundamental cause of the rise in inequality. A recurring theme of the book is a critique of the absolutism of property rights (what it calls proprietarisme). There are good reasons to contemplate each, but each is also highly problematic.ĮMPOWERING EMPLOYEES THROUGH REFORM OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCEįirst, corporate governance. The first is the empowerment of employees through a radical reform of corporate governance the second is a massive redistribution of wealth and income through an overhaul of the tax system the third, which essentially applies to Europe, is a move to transnational federalism. Piketty’s bold agenda relies on three main pillars. Wealth inequality, income inequality, and inequality of access to essential goods such as education and healthcare have reached levels where they cannot be addressed by tweaks on the margin of the sort usually discussed in the policy debates.

Purportedly realistic agendas, furthermore, often fail to tackle pressing challenges. Democracies nowadays need directions as ambitious as the welfare Keynesianism of the 1960s or the small government, free market project of the 1980s.

In the current context of social anger, catalogues of down to earth policy proposals neither convince voters nor provide policymakers with a guide for real-time decision making in an unpredictable environment. Piketty’s goal there is to offer a new paradigm to substitute the largely obsolescent social-democratic project. It is much shorter but at least as ambitious as the analytical chapters. This piece was also published on 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.įrom a policy standpoint, however, its last part, where the author offers an agenda to promote social fairness, deserves the most thorough discussion.

Thomas piketty capital and ideology