Part Three looks at the political and institutional structures that have shaped inequality over time, including taxation, social policies, and the relationship between democracy and capitalism. Part Two focuses on the emergence of new forms of inequality, such as educational and cultural inequality, and their relationship to economic inequality. Part One provides an overview of the historical evolution of inequality and the role that ideology has played in shaping economic and political systems. Contents Ĭapital and Ideology has four main parts, which describe the development of modern ideology, particularly centred around property and inequality, and the central problems in Euro-American, post-Soviet, Chinese, Indian and other societies today. Institutional change, in turn, reflects the ideology that dominates society: 'Inequality is neither economic nor technological it is ideological and political.'' Methods for redistributing wealth proposed in the book include the 'inheritance for all', a payment distributed to citizens by their country at the age of 25. Piketty, however, sees inequality as a social phenomenon, driven by human institutions. Paul Krugman wrote of the book, 'In Marxian dogma, a society's class structure is determined by underlying, impersonal forces, technology and the modes of production that technology dictates. In the book, Piketty outlines potential means of redistributing wealth, and explores historical and contemporary justifications for inequality. Capital and Ideology follows Piketty's 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which focused on wealth and income inequality in Europe and the United States.ĭescribed by Piketty as 'in large part a sequel' to its predecessor, Capital and Ideology has a wider scope, and Piketty has expressed his preference for the 2019 book. Capital and Ideology ( French: Capital et Idéologie) is a 2019 book by French economist Thomas Piketty.

Capital and ideology piketty