"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"-- Provided by publisher.

"First published in French as Capital et idéologie, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2019"--Title page verso

Part one. Inequality regimes in history ; Ternary societies : trifunctional inequality -- European societies of orders : power and property -- The invention of ownership societies -- Ownership societies : the case of France -- Ownership societies : European trajectories. Part two. Slave and colonial societies ; Slave societies : extreme inequality -- Colonial societies : diversity and domination -- Ternary societies and colonialism : the case of India -- Ternary societies and colonialism : Eurasian trajectories. Part three. The great transformation of the twentieth century ; The crisis of ownership societies -- Social-democratic societies : incomplete equality -- Communist and Post-Communist societies -- Hypercapitalism : between modernity and archaism. Part four. Rethinking the dimensions of political conflict ; Borders and property : the construction of equality -- Brahmin left : new Euro-american cleavages -- Social nativism : the postcolonial identitarian trap -- Elements for a participatory socialism for the twenty-first century -- Conclusion.