Jean-Claude Delaunay

University of Paris-East, Paris, France

ABSTRACT

The importance of Piketty’s book is due to its “social-democrat reformist” inspiration. People all around the world know that capitalism is not working well and that it is now facing catastrophe. But they do not yet have the will to change it. This is exactly the core of Piketty’s book. On the one hand, he criticizes the social inequalities of capitalism. He stresses the fact that with capitalist globalization, inequalities and the power of capital are growing. He presents a massive quantity of global statistics to prove this. On the other hand, he is still in favor of capitalism and he thinks that capitalist globalization is the future of societies. He doesn’t say a word about the capitalist structure, based on basic inequalities between capitalists and workers. His proposals to counterbalance capitalist inequalities are therefore chimerical.

KEYWORDS

Inequalities; K/Y ratio; capital; capitalism; reformism

From: International Critical Thought 2017 7 (1)

Editor: Wang Yi