Capital and Ideology

By Thomas Piketty

Book Overview

A New York Times Bestseller
An NPR Best Book of the Year

The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system.

Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system.

Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity.

Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674980824
• ISBN13: 9780674980822
• Release Date: March 2020
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 1104 Pages
• Weight: 3.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.2" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A proper review would take at least 500 words.

Well, forget it. If you want a long review, just read the book. Written by Dr. Thomas Piketty as a sequel to “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (2013), “Capital & Ideology” with a hard copy of 1093 power-packed pages. This is published through Harvard University Press. He says much of the data came from the World Inequality Database (look it up). The table of contents has lots of fancy words. However, once you read each section that could be a book in itself, those words will have meaning. A lot of the concepts and ideas of this book are well integrated. However, they have been stated by other authors down through the decades. So, what makes this book unique is that it is up to date and weaves the separate books into a coherent ‘Ideology”. After reading “Capital and Ideology,” you will want to look up authors Louis O. Kelso and Stuart M. Speiser, ISBN-13: 9780442270100 “A Piece of the Action” by Stuart M Speiser ISBN-13: 9780940989221 “Ethical Economics and the Faith Community” by Stuart M. Speiser ISBN-13: 9780936876467 “The USOP Handbook” by Stuart M. Speiser ISBN-13: 9781938220845 “Understanding ESOPs, 2020 Update” by Corey Rosen and Scott Rodrick ISBN-13: 9780837182117 “The New Capitalists” by Louis Kelso ISBN-13: 9780887301155 “Democracy and Economic Power” by Louis O. Kelso ISBN-13: 9781258052065 “The Capitalist Manifesto” by Louis O Kelso and Mortimer J Adler