Twenty-First Century Inequality & Capitalism: Piketty, Marx and Beyond begins with economist Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book. Most chapters critique Piketty from the perspective of critical theory, global political economy or public sociology, drawing on the work of Marx or the Marxist tradition. The contributors focus on elements that are under-theorized or omitted entirely from Piketty's analysis. These elements include the importance of considering class and labor dynamics, the recent rise of finance capitalism, insights from feminism, demography, and conflict studies, the Frankfurt School, the world market and the world-system, the rise of a transnational capitalist class, the coming environmental catastrophe, and others. The collection seeks to fully understand and suggest action to address today’s capitalist inequality crisis.
Contributors are: Robert J. Antonio, J.I. (Hans) Bakker, Roslyn Wallach Bologh, Alessandro Bonnano, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Harry F. Dahms, Eoin Flaherty, Daniel Krier, Basak Kus, Lauren Langman, Dana Marie Louie, Peter Marcuse, Sandor Nagy, Charles Reitz, William I. Robinson, Saskia Sassen, David A. Smith, David N. Smith, Tony Smith, Michael Thompson, Sylvia Walby, Erik Olin Wright.
Publication date: January 8, 2019
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Lauren Langman and David A. Smith
Part 1. Broad Reviews and Critiques
1 Class and Inequality in Piketty
Eric Olin Wright
2 Vautrin’s Lesson: Historical Trends, Universal Challenges, and Policy Responses
Basak Kus and Dana Louie
3 Turning Piketty into a Sociologist?
Sylvia Walby
4 Predatory Logics: Going Well beyond Inequality
Saskia Sassen
5 Complex Inequalities in the Age of Financialisation: Piketty, Marx, and Class-Biased Power Resources
Eoin Flaherty
6 Piketty and Patrimonialism: A Frankfurt School Critique of Piketty’s Use of Marx, Weber, Political Economy, and Comparative Historical Sociology
J. I. (Hans) Bakker
7 The Missing Element in Piketty’s Work
Roslyn Wallach Bologh
8 Critical Theory, Radical Reform, and Planetary Sociology: Between Impossibility and Inevitability
Harry F. Dahms
Part 2. Inequality
9 Beyond Piketty’s Economism: History, Culture, and the Critique of Inequality
Daniel Krier and Kevin S. Amidon
10 Accounting for Inequality: Questioning Piketty on National Income Accounts and the Capital-Labor Split
Charles Reitz
11 The Political Dimensions of Economic Division: Republicanism, Social Justice, and the Evaluation of Economic Inequality
Michael J. Thompson
Part 3. Global Inequality
12 Piketty on the World Market and Inequality within Nations
Tony Smith
13 Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century: Global Inequality, Piketty, and the Transnational Capitalist Class
William I. Robinson
14 The Piketty Challenge: Global Inequality and World Revolutions
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Sandor Nagy
15 Global Inequality, Competition, Uncertainty, and the Legitimation Crisis of Neoliberalism
Alessandro Bonanno
16 The Piketty Thesis and the Environmental Wall: Rentier Society, Post-Carbon Democracy, or Apocalyptic Ruin?
Robert J. Antonio
17 The Adventures of Professor Piketty: In Which We Meet the Intrepid Data-Hunter Thomas Piketty and Hear His Startling Story
David Norman Smith with art by Tom Johnson
18 21st Century Capital: Falling Profit Rates and System Entropy Postscript to “The Adventures of Professor Piketty”
David Norman Smith
19 From Inequality to Social Justice
Peter Marcuse
Conclusion: Capitalism, Contradiction, and Crisis
Lauren Langman and David A. Smith
Index
