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Capital, Social Reproduction, and the Rise of Inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2017

Alexis Spire
Alexis Spire*
Affiliation:
Iris – CNRS/EHESS
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Abstract

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Thomas Piketty’s book has the great merit of implementing a global analysis of inequality that compares countries and periods. However, he adopts a definition of social class that overlooks the importance of cultural capital. Furthermore, the role of social movements is relatively marginalized in his account, which also focuses on fiscal tools to the detriment of other forms of regulation. Nonetheless, this innovative and important book opens up new avenues of research in the field of political sociology.

Type
Reading Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 57 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2015

References

1. Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2014), 573 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

2. Ibid., 278ff.

3. Ibid., 252.

4. Bourdieu, Pierre, “The Forms of Capital,” trans. Nice, Richard, in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. Richardson, John G. (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 241–58 Google Scholar.

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8. Piketty, Capital, 314.

9. Ibid., 332 and 512.

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13. Piketty, Capital, 378.

14. Ibid., 241.

15. Ibid., 646, n. 42.

16. Even if we account for the amounts collected by the property tax, such a tax on capital would constitute a major upheaval, especially in countries that have entirely given up on taxing large fortunes.

17. Landais, Camille, Piketty, Thomas, and Saez, Emmanuel, Pour une révolution fiscale. Un impôt sur le revenu pour le XXIe siècle (Paris: Le Seuil, 2011)Google Scholar.

18. See the accusatory article by the editorial writer Chris Giles in the May 23, 2014 edition, and the convincing response Piketty published on his site a few days later: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/Piketty2014TechnicalAppendixResponsetoFT.pdf.

19. Bartels, Larry, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Martin, Isaac, Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20. Gramsci, Antonio, “Letter to Carlo, December 19, 1929,” in Letters From Prison, ed. Rosengarten, Frank, trans. Rosenthal, Raymond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 299 Google Scholar.