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Piketty and the Political Origins of Inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2021

Richard Lachmann  and
Peter Brandon
Richard Lachmann*
Affiliation:
Sociology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA
Peter Brandon
Affiliation:
Sociology, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

We examine Thomas Piketty's explanations for steady and rising inequality in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the decline of inequality in the half-century after World War I, and the return of high levels of inequality since the 1970s. We specify empirical and conceptual problems with his analysis, which stem from his presentation of causality at a highly general and vague level. That leads him to confuse rather than clarify the causal relations among implacable economic forces, changes in technological innovation and population growth, ideology, and governmental policies and the outcomes that he seeks to explain. We identify social scientists and historians who are able to account for temporal and geographic variations in the political coalitions that propelled egalitarian reforms, and that in their absence cleared the terrain for reactionary anti-egalitarian policies that the rich incited for their narrow benefit. We explain why Piketty's limited conception of ideology is insufficient for explaining how mass opposition to inequality is mobilized. We show that if we want to combine the study of capital in the twenty-first century with that of politics, we need a broader conception of ideology than what Piketty offers, one that will allow us to specify how ideology affects parties, states, voters, and activists.

Keywords

inequalityideologypoliticsPikettywarpartiesstatesvoters
Type
Inequality in Piketty
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 752 - 764
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History

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Footnotes

Acknowledgments: We gratefully acknowledge helpful advice from Margaret Somers and Monica Prasad.

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