Abstract
Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology constitutes a landmark achievement in furthering our understanding of the history of inequality, and presents valuable proposals for constructing a future economic system that would allow us to transcend and move beyond contemporary forms of capitalism. This article discusses Piketty’s conceptions of ideology, property, and “inequality regimes”, and analyses his approach to social justice and its relation to the work of John Rawls. I examine how Piketty’s proposals for ‘participatory socialism’ would function not only to redistribute income and wealth, but also to disperse economic power within society, and I discuss the complementary roles of redistribution and predistribution in his proposals, and Piketty’s place in a tradition of egalitarian political economy associated with James Meade and Anthony Atkinson. Having elaborated on Piketty’s account of the relationship between economic policy and ideational change, and his important idea of the “desacralization” of private property, I present “seven theses” on his proposals for participatory socialism, examining areas in which his approach could be enhanced or extended, so as to create a viable twenty-first century version of democratic socialism.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Analyse & Kritik |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Early online date | 17 Jun 2021 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 17 Jun 2021 |
Bibliographical note
This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for detailsKeywords
- Piketty
- capital
- Ideology
- justice
- social justice
- capitalism
- socialism
- inequality
- Rawls
- social democracy
- democratic socialism
- power
- redistribution
- predistribution