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.
