Inequality Regimes

02ap2020 26mar20

“Thomas Piketty Takes On the Ideology of Inequality”

‘Every human society must justify its inequalities,’ the book begins. 

What follows is a comprehensive investigation of how different societies have done precisely that, 

ranging through what the book terms various ‘inequality regimes.'”

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 by charting in extensive detail

how differently it has operated at different periods of time, and

how its operation is conditioned by the ideologies with which it co-develops.

‘The market and competition,

profits and wages,

capital and debt,

skilled and unskilled workers,

natives and aliens,

tax havens and competitiveness—

none of these things exist as such,’ Piketty insists.

‘All are social and historical constructs’ that ‘depend entirely’ on the ‘systems that people choose to adopt and the conceptual definitions they choose to work with.’…

An exhaustive assessment of Capital and Ideology would require more space and expertise than I have, but the basic contours of the book are easy enough to describe.

“Thomas Piketty Takes On the Ideology of Inequality” [Marshall Steinbaum, Boston Review].