Inequality and Legitimacy: Past, Present and Future

Thomas Piketty ends his latest book, Capital and Ideology, where he wants to set off: in a collective debate on the course of our societies. The ultimate goal of the book is “to enable citizens to reclaim possession of economic and historical knowledge” (1041) in order to effectively par- ticipate in public debate. This knowledge is twofold: on the actual tra- jectory of measured inequalities across human societies and on the way we, as societies past and present, make sense of them. To do so, Piketty chronicles the history, legacy and future of “inequality regimes” across time and space in a highly interactive way. These span the feudal “ter- nary societies” up to the 1800s, the “proprietarian societies” (or “own- ership societies”) up to 1914, the “slave and colonial societies” span- ning up to the 1960s, the “social democratic societies” from the 1940s to the 1970s, the “communist and post-communist societies” from 1917 through the end of the century, and the “hypercapitalist societies” (or “neo-proprietarian societies”) since the 1980s. These different societies define the plan of the book. Its novelty centres around the employment of ideology in the narrative and its policies to promote a “just society” from the way in which different societies have experienced inequality. This review focuses on each of these two elements.