Piketty’s Capital: 21st-Century Gravitational Force?

Abstract

In his Capital of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty (2013) challenges the claim that the workings of capitalism in the West accord with the principles of equality and opportunity in a democratic society. Composed as much in the style of history as economics, what explains the appeal of this very long, carefully drafted and technically dense text? This review is woven of three threads: the method of research behind it; its fit with theory and practice in the critical social sciences; and what it exemplifies about the ambiguity of leaping from a science laboratory into the world of revolutionary praxis. To close, the European project of economic management will be briefly discussed, suggesting in reference to both French regulation theory and German Ordoliberalism why the recent Nobel Prize in Economics, which many consider Piketty’s work to merit, was lost in favor of another French economist, Jean Tirole.