From reviews of Capital in the Twenty-First Century“The most important economics book of the year—and maybe of the decade.”—PAUL K R U G MAN , New York Times“Piketty’s economic analysis and historical proofs are breathtaking.”—ROB ERT B . R EI CH , Guardian—J OHN CAS S I DY, New Yorker“[Piketty] is now the most talked-about economist on the planet.”—RAN A FO R O O H AR , Time

Early acclaim for Capital and Ideology

T HOM A S P I K E T T Y is Director of Studies at L’École desHautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Professor at theParis School of Economics. He is the author of Capitalin the Twenty-First Century.

“Thomas Piketty’s magisterial global and connected history takes us on a whirlwind journey across the world during the past 500 years to show how shifting
ideas and politics have shaped a wide variety of inequality regimes. Fully embracing the power of historical analysis, Capital and Ideology emboldens us toreimagine what is possible today. Enormously rich in argument and evidence,
this tour de force by one of the most influential thinkers of our age is a must-readfor anyone grappling with the dilemmas of our present.”—SVEN BECKERT, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History“A book of remarkable clarity and dynamism. Drawing lessons from a breathtaking survey of different historical experiences, it teaches us that nothing is inevitable, that there exist a whole range of possibilities between hypercapitalism andthe disasters of the communist experience. It’s up to us to make our future. Let’sroll up our sleeves.”—EST HER DUFLO, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences

THE BELKNAP PRESS OF
H A R VA R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S“Might become even more politically influential than . . . Capital in the TwentyFirst Century.”—SI MON K U PER , Financial Times

THOMAS
PIKETTYR

C A P I T A L AND IDEOLOGY“A book that nobody interested in a defining issue of our era can afford to ignore.”

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. usa

CAPITALAND

IDEOLOGYR

THOMAS
PIKETTY
Author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller
Capital in the Twenty-First Century

hup.harvard.edu

THOMAS PIKETTY’S bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First

Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In
this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality
for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the
structure of a fairer economic system.
Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact.
Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs
that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material
and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups
that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of humanprogress over the centuries has been the struggle for
equality and education and not, as often argued, the sacralization of property rights or the pursuit of stability.
The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that
progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction
against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance,
intellectual specialization, and our drift toward thedead-end politics of identity.
Once we understand this, we can begin to envisiona more balanced approach to economics and politics.
Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power.
Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that not only will
help us understand the world, but will change it.

T RA N S LAT E D B Y A RT H U R G O L D H A M M E R
JACKET DESIGN: GRACIELA GALUP

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CAPITALAND

IDEOLOGYR
Thomas Piketty

Translated by Arthur Goldhammer

The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Mas­s a­c hu­s etts
London, ­E ngland
2020

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Copyright © 2020 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
First published in French as Capital et idéologie
Copyright © 2019 Éditions du Seuil, 2019
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer­ic­ aFirst printing
Design by Dean Bornstein
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

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Contents
Preface and Acknowl­edgments ​. ​vii
Introduction ​. ​1

Part One. In­equality Regimes in History

1. Ternary Socie­ties: Trifunctional In­equality ​. ​51
2. Eu­ro­pean Socie­ties of O
­ rders: Power and Property ​. ​65
3. The Invention of Owner­ship Socie­ties ​. ​99
4. Owner­ship Socie­ties: The Case of France ​. ​126
5. Owner­ship Socie­ties: Eu­ro­pean Trajectories ​. ​​156

Part Two. Slave and Colonial Socie­ties

6. Slave Socie­ties: Extreme In­equality ​. ​203
7. Colonial Socie­ties: Diversity and Domination ​. ​252
8. Ternary Socie­ties and Colonialism: The Case of India ​. ​304
9. Ternary Socie­ties and Colonialism: Eurasian Trajectories ​. ​​362

Part Three. The ­Great Transformation of the Twentieth C­ entury
10. The Crisis of Owner­ship Socie­ties ​. ​​415
11. Social-­Democratic Socie­ties: Incomplete Equality ​. ​486
12. Communist and Postcommunist Socie­ties ​. ​578
13. Hypercapitalism: Between Modernity and Archaism ​. ​648

Part Four. Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­liti­cal Conflict

14. Borders and Property: The Construction of Equality ​. ​719
15. Brahmin Left: New Euro-­American Cleavages ​. ​807
16. Social Nativism: The Postcolonial Identitarian Trap ​. ​862
17. Ele­ments for a Participatory Socialism for the Twenty-­First ­Century ​. ​966. ​1035
Conclusion ​. ​1043
Glossary ​Contents in Detail ​. 1045
List of T­ ables and Illustrations ​. ​1059
Index ​. ​1067

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Preface and Acknowl­edgments
This book is in large part a sequel to Capital in the Twenty-­First C­ entury(French edition, 2013; En­glish, 2014), but it can be read in­de­pen­dently. Like
the previous work, it is the culmination of a collective effort in the sense that
it would never have seen the light of day without the help and support of numerous friends and colleagues. I am of course solely responsible for the interpretations and analyses developed in the pages that follow, but by myself I
would never have been able to assem­ble the historical sources on which thisresearch rests.
I rely in par­tic­u­lar on the data collected in the World In­equality Database(http://­WID​.­world). This proj­ect represents the combined effort of morethan a hundred researchers in more than eighty countries around the world. It
is currently the largest database available for the historical study of income
and wealth in­equality both between and within countries. For the purposesof this book I have also collected numerous other sources and documents
concerning periods, countries, and aspects of in­equality not well covered by
WID.world, including, for example, data on pre­industrial and colonial socie­
ties; on inequalities of education, gender, race, religion, and status; and also
on religious beliefs, po­liti­cal attitudes, and electoral be­hav­ior.
Only the principal references are cited in the text and footnotes. Readersinterested in detailed information regarding the ­whole range of historicalsources, bibliographic references, and methods used in this book are urged toconsult the online technical appendix at http://­piketty​.p­ se​.­ens​.­fr​/­ideology.
­ ill also find in the online appendix many graphs andInterested readers w
data series not included in the text due to space limitations. I sometimes referto ­these sources in the footnotes.
The glossary at the end of this book contains definitions for several
terms that may be unfamiliar to readers, which are marked with an asterisk inthe text.
I am particularly grateful to Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, with whom I codirected the WID.worldproj­ect and the World In­equality Lab at the Paris School of Economics andthe University of California at Berkeley. Out of this joint venture came therecent World In­equality Report 2018 (http://­wir2018​.w­ id​.w­ orld), of which I
make abundant use in this book. I also wish to thank the institutions that

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made this proj­ect pos­si­ble, first and foremost the École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales (EHESS), where I have taught since 2000—­one of the few
institutions in the world where social scientists of all stripes can listen to andexchange ideas with one another. I also wish to thank the École Normale Supérieure and all the other institutions that joined forces in 2007 to create theParis School of Economics, which I hope w­ ill contribute to the developmentof the economics of the twenty-­first c­ entury, an economics that is at once po­liti­cal and historical, multipolar and multidisciplinary.
For their invaluable assistance I also wish to thank Lydia Assouad, Abhijit
Banerjee, Adam Barbé, Charlotte Bartels, Erik Bengtsson, Asma Benhenda,
Yonatan Berman, Nitin Bharti, Thomas Blanchet, Cécile Bonneau, Manon
Bouju, Jérôme Bourdieu, Antoine Bozio, Cameron Campbell, Guillaume
Carré, Guilhem Cassan, Amélie Chelly, Bijia Chen, Denis Cogneau, Léo
Czajka, Anne-­Laure Delatte, Mauricio De Rosa, Richard Dewever, Mark
Dincecco, Esther Duflo, Luis Estevez-­Bauluz, Ignacio Flores, Juliette Fournier,Bertrand Garbinti, Amory Gethin, Jonathan Goupille-­Lebret, Yajna Govind,Julien Grenet, Jean-­Yves Grenier, Malka Guillot, Pierre-­Cyrille Hautcoeur,
Stéphanie Hennette, Simon Henochsberg, Cheuk Ting Hung, Thanasak
Jemmama, Francesca Jensenius, Fabian Kosse, Attila Lindner, Noam Maggor,
Clara Martinez Toledano, Ewan McGaughey, Cyril Milhaud, Eric Monnet,
Marc Morgan, Mathilde Munoz, Alix Myczkowski, Delphine Nougayrede,Filip Novokmet, Katharina Pistor, Gilles Postel-­Vinay, Jean-­Laurent Rosenthal, Nina Rousille, Guillaume Sacriste, Aurélie Sotura, Alessandro Stanziani,
Blaise Truong-­Loï, Antoine Vauchez, Sebastien Veg, Marlous van Waijenburg,
Richard Von Glahn, Daniel Waldenström, Li Yang, Tom Zawisza, and Roxane
Zighed as well as all my friends and colleagues at the Centre François-­Simiandd’Histoire Économique et Sociale and the Centre de Recherches Historiquesof the EHESS and the Paris School of Economics.
I also owe special thanks to Arthur Goldhammer. Every time I go throughthe pages of the English version of Capital in the Twenty-First Century or Capitaland Ideology, I realize how fortunate I was to have Art as my translator. Without
his help, I would never have been able to communicate with English-speaking
readers with the same precision and elegance.
This book has also benefited from the numerous debates and discussions inwhich I have had the good fortune to participate since the publication of Capitalin the Twenty-­First ­Century. I spent much of 2014–2016 traveling around theworld, meeting readers, researchers, dissenters, and citizens e­ ager to join the debate. I participated in hundreds of discussions about my book and the questions

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Preface and Acknowl­e dgments . ix

it raised. From t­ hese many encounters I learned an im­mense amount, which has
helped me to delve deeper into the historical dynamics of in­equality.
Among the many shortcomings of my previous book, two deserve special
mention. First, that work focused too exclusively on the historical experienceof the wealthy countries of the world (in Western Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca,
and Japan). This was due in part to the difficulty of accessing historical sources
adequate for the study of other countries and regions. It was nevertheless achoice that sharply restricted my focus and thinking. Second, the e­ arlier booktended to treat the po­liti­cal and ideological changes associated with in­equality and re­distribution as a sort of black box. I did propose a number ofhypotheses concerning, for example, changes in po­liti­cal ideas and attitudes
in regard to in­equality and private property as a result of the two world warsof the twentieth c­ entury, economic crises, and the communist challenge, but I
never tackled head-on the question of how inegalitarian ideologies evolved.
In this new work I attempt to do this much more explic­itly by examining thequestion in a much broader temporal, spatial, and comparative perspective.
Thanks to the success of the ­earlier book and the support of numerous
citizens, researchers, and journalists, I was able to gain access to tax rec­ords
and other historical documents previously restricted by the governments ofBrazil, India, South Africa, Tunisia, Lebanon, Ivory Coast, ­Korea, Taiwan,
Poland, Hungary, and many other countries around the world. Access to similar rec­ords in China and Rus­sia was unfortunately more ­limited, but we ­were
nevertheless able to make some pro­gress. With this information it was pos­si­ble to break out of the largely Western framework of the previous book anddevelop a deeper analy­sis of the nature of in­equality regimes* and their pos­si­ble trajectories and switch points. Importantly, ­these years of encounters,
discussions, and reading gave me an opportunity to learn more about the po­liti­cal and ideological dynamics of in­equality and thus to write a book that is,I believe, richer than the one it follows. The result is now in your hands, andyou, the reader, are ­free to judge for yourself.
None of this would have been pos­si­ble without my close ­family. Six years ofhappiness have passed since the publication of Capital in the Twenty-­First­Century. My three darling d­ aughters have become young adults (or almost: justtwo more years, Hélène, and you ­will join the club with Déborah and Juliette!).
Without their love and energy, life would not be the same. And Julia and I havenot ­stopped traveling, meeting ­people, exchanging ideas, rereading and rewriting each other’s work, and remaking the world. She alone knows how much
both this book and its author owe to her. And the best is yet to come!

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Introduction­Every h­ uman society must justify its inequalities: ­unless reasons for them arefound, the w­ hole po­liti­cal and social edifice stands in danger of collapse. ­Everyepoch therefore develops a range of contradictory discourses and ideologies forthe purpose of legitimizing the in­equality that already exists or that p­ eople be­lieve should exist. From ­these discourses emerge certain economic, social, andpo­liti­cal rules, which ­people then use to make sense of the ambient social struc­ture. Out of the clash of contradictory discourses—­a clash that is at once eco­nomic, social, and political—­comes a dominant narrative or narratives, whichbolster the existing in­equality regime.
In ­today’s socie­ties, t­ hese justificatory narratives comprise themes of prop­
erty, entrepreneurship, and meritocracy: modern in­equality is said to be just­because it is the result of a freely chosen pro­cess in which every­one enjoys equal
access to the market and to property and automatically benefits from the wealthaccumulated by the wealthiest individuals, who are also the most enterprising,deserving, and useful. Hence modern in­equality is said to be diametrically op­
posed to the kind of in­equality found in premodern socie­ties, which was basedon rigid, arbitrary, and often despotic differences of status.
The prob­lem is that this proprietarian* and meritocratic narrative, which
first flourished in the nineteenth ­century a­ fter the collapse of the Old Regime
and its society of ­orders and which was radically revised for a global audienceat the end of the twentieth ­century following the fall of Soviet communism
and the triumph of hypercapitalism, is looking more and more fragile. From it
a variety of contradictions have emerged—­contradictions which take very dif­fer­ent forms in Eu­rope and the United States, in India and Brazil, in China andSouth Africa, in Venezuela and the M­ iddle East. And yet t­ oday, two de­cades
into the twenty-­first c­ entury, the vari­ous trajectories of ­these dif­fer­ent coun­tries are increasingly interconnected, their distinctive individual histories not­withstanding. Only by adopting a transnational perspective can we hope tounderstand the weaknesses of ­these narratives and begin to construct analternative.
Indeed, socioeconomic in­equality has increased in all regions of the world
since the 1980s. In some cases it has become so extreme that it is difficult to

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justify in terms of the general interest. Nearly everywhere a gaping chasm di­vides the official meritocratic discourse from the real­ity of access to education
and wealth for society’s least-­favored classes. The discourse of meritocracy andentrepreneurship often seems to serve primarily as a way for the winners in­today’s economy to justify any level of in­equality whatsoever while perempto­
rily blaming the losers for lacking talent, virtue, and diligence. In previous in­equality regimes, the poor ­were not blamed for their own poverty, or at any
rate not to the same extent; ­earlier justificatory narratives stressed instead thefunctional complementarity of dif­fer­ent social groups.
Modern in­equality also exhibits a range of discriminatory practices basedon status, race, and religion, practices pursued with a vio­lence that the merito­
cratic fairy tale utterly fails to acknowledge. In t­ hese re­spects, modern society
can be as brutal as the premodern socie­ties from which it likes to distinguishitself. Consider, for example, the discrimination faced by the homeless, immi­
grants, and p­ eople of color. Think, too, of the many mi­grants who have drowned
while trying to cross the Mediterranean. Without a credible new universalistic
and egalitarian narrative, it is all too likely that the challenges of rising in­equality,
immigration, and climate change w­ ill precipitate a retreat into identitarian* na­
tionalist politics based on fears of a “­great replacement” of one population byanother. We saw this in Eu­rope in the first half of the twentieth c­ entury, and it
seems to be happening again in vari­ous parts of the world in the first de­cadesof the twenty-­first ­century.
It was World War I that spelled the end of the so-­called Belle Époque (1880–
1914), which was belle only when compared with the explosion of vio­lence that
followed. In fact, it was belle primarily for ­those who owned property, espe­
cially if they ­were white males. If we do not radically transform the pre­sent eco­nomic system to make it less inegalitarian, more equitable, and more sustain­
able, xenophobic “pop­u­lism” could well triumph at the ballot box and initiatechanges that w­ ill destroy the global, hypercapitalist, digital economy that has
dominated the world since 1990.
To avoid this danger, historical understanding remains our best tool. E­ very­human society needs to justify its inequalities, and e­ very justification contains
its share of truth and exaggeration, boldness and cowardice, idealism and self-­interest. For the purposes of this book, an in­equality regime ­will be defined asa set of discourses and institutional arrangements intended to justify and struc­ture the economic, social, and po­liti­cal inequalities of a given society. E­ verysuch regime has its weaknesses. In order to survive, it must permanently rede­514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 2

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Introduction . 3

fine itself, often by way of violent conflict but also by availing itself of sharedexperience and knowledge. The subject of this book is the history and evolu­tion of in­equality regimes. By bringing together historical data bearing on socie­
ties of many dif­fer­ent types, socie­ties which have not previously been sub­jected to this sort of comparison, I hope to shed light on ongoing transformations
in a global and transnational perspective.
From this historical analy­sis one impor­tant conclusion emerges: what madeeconomic development and h­ uman pro­gress pos­si­ble was the strug­g le for
equality and education and not the sanctification of property, stability, or in­equality. The hyper-­inegalitarian narrative that took hold a­ fter 1980 was in parta product of history, most notably the failure of communism. But it was also
the fruit of ignorance and of disciplinary division in the acad­emy. The excessesof identity politics and fatalist resignation that plague us t­ oday are in large partconsequences of that narrative’s success. By turning to history from a multi­
disciplinary perspective, we can construct a more balanced narrative and sketch
the outlines of a new participatory socialism for the twenty-­first ­century.
By this I mean a new universalistic egalitarian narrative, a new ideology ofequality, social owner­ship, education, and knowledge and power sharing.
This new narrative pre­sents a more optimistic picture of ­human nature than
did its predecessors—­and not only more optimistic but also more precise andconvincing ­because it is more firmly rooted in the lessons of global history. Of
course, it is up to each of us to judge the merits of t­ hese tentative and provisional
lessons, to rework them as necessary, and to carry them forward.

What Is an Ideology?
Before I explain how this book is or­g a­nized, I want to discuss the principal
sources on which I rely and how the pre­sent work relates to Capital in the
Twenty-­First ­Century. But first I need to say a few words about the notion ofideology as I use it in this study.
I use “ideology” in a positive and constructive sense to refer to a set of apriori plausible ideas and discourses describing how society should be struc­tured. An ideology has social, economic, and po­liti­cal dimensions. It is an at­
tempt to respond to a broad set of questions concerning the desirable or idealorgan­ization of society. Given the complexity of the issues, it should be obviousthat no ideology can ever command full and total assent: ideological conflictand disagreement are inherent in the very notion of ideology. Nevertheless,514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 3

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e­ very society must attempt to answer questions about how it should be or­ga­
nized, usually on the basis of its own historical experience but sometimes also
on the experiences of other socie­ties. Individuals ­will usually also feel called on
to form opinions of their own on ­these fundamental existential issues, how­ever vague or unsatisfactory they may be.
What are ­these fundamental issues? One is the question of what the na­
ture of the po­liti­cal regime should be. By “po­liti­cal regime” I mean the set ofrules describing the bound­aries of the community and its territory, the mech­anisms of collective decision making, and the po­liti­cal rights of members. Th­ eserules govern forms of po­liti­cal participation and specify the respective roles ofcitizens and foreigners as well as the functions of executives and legislators, min­isters and kings, parties and elections, empires and colonies.
Another fundamental issue has to do with the property regime, by which
I mean the set of rules describing the dif­fer­ent pos­si­ble forms of owner­ship
as well as the ­legal and practical procedures for regulating property relations
between dif­fer­ent social groups. Such rules may pertain to private or public
property, real estate, financial assets, land or mineral resources, slaves or serfs,
intellectual and other immaterial forms of property, and relations between
landlords and tenants, nobles and peasants, masters and slaves, or shareholders
and wage earners.
­Every society, e­ very in­equality regime, is characterized by a set of more orless coherent and per­sis­tent answers to ­these questions about its po­liti­cal andproperty regimes. ­These two sets of answers are often closely related ­because
they depend in large part on some theory of in­equality between dif­fer­ent so­cial groups (­whether real or ­imagined, legitimate or illegitimate). The answers
generally imply a range of other intellectual and institutional commitments:
for instance, commitments to an educational regime (that is, the rules governing
institutions and organ­izations responsible for transmitting spiritual values,
knowledge, and ideas, including families, churches, parents, and schools anduniversities) and a tax regime (that is, arrangements for providing states or re­gions; towns or empires; and social, religious, or other collective organ­izations
with adequate resources). The answers to ­these questions can vary widely. P­ eoplecan agree about the po­liti­cal regime but not the property regime or about cer­tain fiscal or educational arrangements but not ­others. Ideological conflict isalmost always multidimensional, even if one axis takes priority for a time, giving
the illusion of majoritarian consensus allowing broad collective mobilizationand historical transformations of g­ reat magnitude.

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Introduction . 5

Borders and Property
To simplify, we can say that e­ very in­equality regime, e­ very inegalitarian ­ideology,
rests on both a theory of borders and a theory of property.
The border question is of primary importance. E­ very society must explain
who belongs to the ­human po­liti­cal community it comprises and who does not,what territory it governs u­ nder what institutions, and how it w
­ ill or­ga­nize its
relations with other communities within the universal h­ uman community(which, depending on the ideology involved, may or may not be explic­itly ac­
knowledged). The border question and the po­liti­cal regime question are ofcourse closely linked. The answer to the border question also has significant
implications for social in­equality, especially between citizens and noncitizens.
The property question must also be answered. What is a person allowed toown? Can one person own o­ thers? Can he or she own land, buildings, firms,
natu­ral resources, knowledge, financial assets, and public debt? What practicalguidelines and laws should govern relations between ­owners of property andnonowners? How should owner­ship be transmitted across generations? Alongwith the educational and fiscal regime, the property regime determines the
structure and evolution of social in­equality.
In most premodern socie­ties, the questions of the po­liti­cal regime and theproperty regime are intimately related. In other words, power over individuals
and power over ­things are not in­de­pen­dent. H­ ere, “­things” refers to possessed
objects, which may be persons in the case of slavery. Furthermore, power over­things may imply power over persons. This is obviously true in slave socie­ties,
where the two questions essentially merge into one: some individuals own­others and therefore also rule over them.
The same is true, but in more subtle fashion, in what I call ternary or “tri­functional” socie­ties (that is, socie­ties divided into three functional classes—­aclerical and religious class, a noble and warrior class, and a common and­laboring class). In this historical form, which we find in most premodern civi­
lizations, the two dominant classes are both ruling classes, in the senses of exer­
cising the regalian powers of security and justice, and property-­owning classes.
For centuries, the “landlord” was also the “ruler” (seigneur) of the p­ eople who
lived and worked on his land, just as much as he was the seigneur (“lord”) of
the land itself.
By contrast, owner­ship (or proprietarian) societies* of the sort that flour­
ished in Eu­rope in the nineteenth ­century drew a sharp distinction between

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the property question (with universal property rights theoretically open to all)and the power question (with the centralized state claiming a mono­poly of re­galian rights*). The po­liti­cal regime and the property regime ­were neverthe­less closely related, in part ­because po­liti­cal rights ­were long restricted to prop­
erty ­owners and in part ­because constitutional restrictions then and now
severely ­limited the possibility for po­liti­cal majorities to modify the property
regime by ­legal and peaceful means.
As we ­shall see, po­liti­cal and property regimes have remained inextricablyintertwined from premodern* ternary* and slave socie­ties to modern postco­
lonial and hypercapitalist ones, including, along the way, the communist andsocial-­democratic socie­ties that arose in reaction to the crises of in­equality andidentity that owner­ship society provoked.
To analyze t­ hese historical transformations I therefore rely on the notionof an “in­equality regime”* which encompasses both the po­liti­cal regime andthe property regime (as well as the educational and fiscal regimes) and clari­fies the relation between them. To illustrate the per­sis­tent structural links be­
tween the po­liti­cal regime and the property regime in t­ oday’s world, consider
the absence of any demo­cratic mechanism that would allow a majority of citi­
zens of the Eu­ro­pean Union (and a fortiori citizens of the world) to adopt acommon tax or a redistributive or developmental scheme. This is ­because eachmember state, no ­matter how small its population or what benefits it derives
from commercial and financial integration, has the right to veto all forms offiscal legislation.
More generally, in­equality ­today is strongly influenced by the system of bor­ders and national sovereignty, which determines the allocation of social andpo­liti­cal rights. This has given rise to intractable multidimensional ideologicalconflicts over in­equality, immigration, and national identity, conflicts that havemade it very difficult to achieve majority co­ali­tions capable of countering therise of in­equality. Specifically, ethno-­religious and national cleavages often pre­vent ­people of dif­fer­ent ethnic and national origins from coming together po­
liti­cally, thus strengthening the hand of the rich and contributing to the growthof in­equality. The reason for this failure is the lack of an ideology capable ofpersuading disadvantaged social groups that what unites them is more impor­tant than what divides them. I w­ ill examine t­ hese issues in due course. H­ ere I
want simply to emphasize the fact that po­liti­cal and property regimes have been
intimately related for a very long time. This durable structural relationshipcannot be properly analyzed without adopting a long-­run transnational histor­
ical perspective.

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Introduction . 7

Taking Ideology SeriouslyIn­equality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and po­liti­cal.
This is no doubt the most striking conclusion to emerge from the historical ap­
proach I take in this book. In other words, the market and competition,
profits and wages, capital and debt, skilled and unskilled workers, natives andaliens, tax havens and competitiveness—­none of ­these ­things exist as such. All
are social and historical constructs, which depend entirely on the ­legal, fiscal,
educational, and po­liti­cal systems that ­people choose to adopt and the concep­
tual definitions they choose to work with. Th­ ese choices are s­ haped by eachsociety’s conception of social justice and economic fairness and by the relative
po­liti­cal and ideological power of contending groups and discourses. Impor­tantly, this relative power is not exclusively material; it is also intellectual andideological. In other words, ideas and ideologies count in history. They enable us
to imagine new worlds and dif­fer­ent types of society. Many paths are pos­si­ble.
This approach runs c­ ounter to the common conservative argument that in­equality has a basis in “nature.” It is hardly surprising that the elites of manysocie­ties, in all periods and climes, have sought to “naturalize” in­equality. They
argue that existing social disparities benefit not only the poor but also society
as a ­whole and that any attempt to alter the existing order of ­things ­will cause­great pain. History proves the opposite: in­equality varies widely in time andspace, in structure as well as magnitude. Changes have occurred rapidly in waysthat contemporaries could not have ­imagined only a short while before theycame about. Misfortune did sometimes follow. Broadly speaking, however, po­liti­cal pro­cesses, including revolutionary transformations, that led to a reduc­tion of in­equality proved to be im­mensely successful. From them came our mostprecious institutions—­those that have made ­human pro­gress a real­ity, including
universal suffrage, ­free and compulsory public schools, universal health insur­
ance, and progressive taxation. In all likelihood the ­future ­will be no dif­fer­ent.
The inequalities and institutions that exist ­today are not the only ones pos­si­ble,what­ever conservatives may say to the contrary. Change is permanent andinevitable.
Nevertheless, the approach taken in this book—­based on ideologies, insti­
tutions, and the possibility of alternative pathways—­also differs from ap­
proaches sometimes characterized as “Marxist,” according to which the stateof the economic forces and relations of production determines a society’s ide­
ological “superstructure” in an almost mechanical fashion. In contrast, I insist
that the realm of ideas, the political-­ideological sphere, is truly autonomous.

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8 . Capital and Ideology

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Given an economy and a set of productive forces in a certain state of develop­
ment (supposing one can attach a definite meaning to t­ hose words, which isby no means certain), a range of pos­si­ble ideological, po­liti­cal, and in­equality
regimes always exists. For instance, the theory that holds that a transition from“feudalism” to “capitalism” occurred as a more or less mechanical response to
the Industrial Revolution cannot explain the complexity and multiplicity ofthe po­liti­cal and ideological pathways we actually observe in dif­fer­ent coun­tries and regions. In par­tic­u­lar, it fails to explain the differences that exist­between and within colonizing and colonized regions. Above all, it fails to
impart lessons useful for understanding subsequent stages of history. When we
look closely at what followed, we find that alternatives always existed—­and al­ways ­will. At e­ very level of development, economic, social, and po­liti­cal systems
can be structured in many dif­fer­ent ways; property relations can be or­ga­nizeddifferently; dif­fer­ent fiscal and educational regimes are pos­si­ble; prob­lems of
public and private debt can be handled differently; numerous ways to manage
relations between h­ uman communities exist; and so on. Th­ ere are always several
ways of organ­izing a society and its constitutive power and property relations.
More specifically, ­today, in the twenty-­first ­century, property relations can beor­ga­nized in many ways. Clearly stating the alternatives may be more useful intranscending capitalism than simply threatening to destroy it without explaining
what comes next.
The study of t­ hese dif­fer­ent historical pathways, as well as of the many paths
not taken, is the best antidote to both the conservatism of the elite and the al­ibis of would-be revolutionaries who argue that nothing can be done u­ ntil theconditions for revolution are ripe. The prob­lem with ­these alibis is that theyin­def­initely defer all thinking about the postrevolutionary ­future. What thisusually means in practice is that all power is granted to a hypertrophied state,
which may turn out to be just as dangerous as the quasi-­sacred property rela­tions that the revolution sought to overthrow. In the twentieth c­ entury suchthinking did considerable ­human and po­liti­cal damage for which we are still
paying the price. T­ oday, the postcommunist socie­ties of Rus­sia, China, and toa certain extent Eastern Eu­rope (despite their dif­fer­ent historical trajectories)
have become hypercapitalism’s staunchest allies. This is a direct consequenceof the disasters of Stalinism and Maoism and the consequent rejection of all
egalitarian internationalist ambitions. So g­ reat was the communist disaster thatit overshadowed even the damage done by the ideologies of slavery, colonialism,
and racialism and obscured the strong ties between t­ hose ideologies and theideologies of owner­ship and hypercapitalism—no mean feat.

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Introduction . 9

In this book I take ideology very seriously. I try to reconstruct the internal
coherence of dif­fer­ent types of ideology, with special emphasis on six main cat­egories which I ­will call proprietarian, social-­democratic, communist, trifunc­
tional, slaveist (esclavagiste), and colonialist ideologies. I start with the hypoth­esis that ­every ideology, no ­matter how extreme it may seem in its defense ofin­equality, expresses a certain idea of social justice. Th­ ere is always some plau­
sible basis for this idea, some sincere and consistent foundation, from which it
is pos­si­ble to draw useful lessons. But we cannot do this ­unless we take a con­crete rather than an abstract (which is to say, ahistorical and noninstitutional)
approach to the study of po­liti­cal and ideological structures. We must look at
concrete socie­ties and specific historical periods and at specific institutions de­fined by specific forms of property and specific fiscal and educational regimes.
­These must be rigorously analyzed. We must not shrink from investigating l­ egal
systems, tax schedules, and educational resources—­the conditions and rules­under which socie­ties function. Without ­these, institutions and ideologies are
mere empty shells, incapable of effecting real social change or inspiring lasting
allegiance.
I am of course well aware that the word “ideology” can be used pejoratively,
sometimes with good reason. Dogmatic ideas divorced from facts are frequently
characterized as ideological. Yet often it is t­ hose who claim to be purely prag­
matic who are in fact most “ideological” (in the pejorative sense): their claim
to be post-­ideological barely conceals their disdain for evidence, historical ig­­ ill therefore leannorance, distorting biases, and class interests. This book w
heavi­ly on “facts.” I ­will discuss the history of in­equality in several socie­ties,
partly ­because this was my original specialty and partly ­because I am convincedthat unbiased examination of the available sources is the only way to make pro­g­ress. In so ­doing I ­will compare socie­ties which are very dif­fer­ent from one
another. Some are even said to be “exceptional” and therefore unsuitable forcomparative study, but this is incorrect.
I am well placed to know, however, that the available sources are never suf­
ficient to resolve ­every dispute. From “facts” alone we ­will never be able to de­duce the ideal po­liti­cal regime or property regime or fiscal or educational­regime. Why? ­Because “facts” are largely the products of institutions (such as
censuses, surveys, tax rec­ords, and so on). Socie­ties create social, fiscal, and ­legal
categories to describe, mea­sure, and transform themselves. Hence “facts” arethemselves constructs. To appreciate them properly we must understand theircontext, which consists of complex, overlapping, self-­interested interactions be­
tween the observational apparatus and the society ­under study. This of course

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10 . Capital and Ideology

does not mean that t­ hese cognitive constructs have nothing to teach us. It
means, rather, that to learn from them, we must take this complexity and re­flexivity into account.
Furthermore, the questions that interest us, which pertain to the nature of
the ideal social, economic, and po­liti­cal organ­ization, are far too complex toallow answers to emerge from a ­simple “objective” examination of the “facts,”
which inevitably reflect the limitations of past experiences and the incomplete­ness of our knowledge and of the deliberative pro­cesses to which we w
­ ere ex­posed. Fi­nally, it is entirely conceivable that the “ideal” regime (however weinterpret the word “ideal”) is not unique and depends on specific characteris­tics of each society.

Collective Learning and the Social Sciences

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Nevertheless, my position is not one of indiscriminate relativism. It is too easy
for the social scientist to avoid taking a stand. So I w­ ill eventually make myposition clear, especially in the final part of the book, but in so d­ oing I w­ ill
attempt to explain how and why I reached my conclusions.
Social ideologies usually evolve in response to historical experience. For in­
stance, the French Revolution stemmed in part from the injustices and frus­
trations of the Ancien Régime. The Revolution in turn brought about changes
that permanently altered perceptions of the ideal in­equality regime as vari­ous
social groups judged the success or failure of revolutionary experiments withdif­fer­ent forms of po­liti­cal organ­ization, property regimes, and social, fiscal,and educational systems. What was learned from this experience inevitably­influenced f­ uture po­liti­cal transformations and so on down the line. Each na­
tion’s po­liti­cal and ideological trajectory can be seen as a vast pro­cess of collec­
tive learning and historical experimentation. Conflict is inherent in the pro­cess­because dif­fer­ent social and po­liti­cal groups have not only dif­fer­ent interests
and aspirations but also dif­fer­ent memories. Hence they interpret past events
differently and draw from them dif­fer­ent implications regarding the f­ uture.
From such learning experiences, national consensus on certain points can nev­
ertheless emerge, at least for a time.
Though partly rational, ­these collective learning pro­cesses nevertheless havetheir limits. Nations tend to have short memories (­people often forget theirown country’s experiences ­after a few de­cades or ­else remember only scatteredbits, seldom chosen at random). Worse than that, memory is usually strictly
nationalistic. Perhaps that is putting it too strongly: ­every country occasion­

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Introduction . 11

ally learns from the experiences of other countries, ­whether indirectly or
through direct contact (in the form of war, colonization, occupation, or
treaty—­forms of learning that may be neither welcome nor beneficial). For themost part, however, nations form their visions of the ideal po­liti­cal or prop­
erty regime or just ­legal, fiscal, or educational system from their own experi­
ences and are almost completely unaware of the experiences of other countries,
particularly when they are geo­graph­ic­ ally remote or thought to belong to a dis­tinct civilization or religious or moral tradition or, again, when contact withthe other has been violent (which can reinforce the sense of radical foreign­ness). More generally, collective learning experiences are often based on rela­
tively crude or imprecise notions of the institutional arrangements that exist
in other socie­ties (or even within the same country or in neighboring coun­tries). This is true not only in the po­liti­cal realm but also in regard to ­legal, fiscal,and educational institutions. The usefulness of the lessons derived from suchcollective learning experiences is therefore somewhat ­limited.
This limitation is not inevitable, however. Many ­factors can enhance thelearning pro­cess: schools and books, immigration and intermarriage, parties
and trade u­ nions, travel and encounters, newspapers and other media, to namea few. The social sciences can also play a part. I am convinced that social scien­tists can contribute to the understanding of ongoing changes by carefully com­paring the histories of countries with dif­fer­ent cultural traditions, systemati­
cally exploiting all available resources, and studying the evolution of in­equality
and of po­liti­cal and ideological regimes in dif­fer­ent parts of the world. Such a
comparative, historical, transnational approach can help us to form a more ac­
curate picture of what a better po­liti­cal, economic, and social organ­ization
might look like and especially what a better global society might look like, since
the global community is the one po­liti­cal community to which we all belong.
Of course, I do not claim that the conclusions I offer throughout the book are
the only ones pos­si­ble, but they are, in my view, the best conclusions we candraw from the sources I have explored. I w­ ill try to explain in detail which eventsand comparisons I found most persuasive in reaching ­these conclusions. I ­will
not hide the uncertainties that remain. Obviously, however, t­ hese conclusions
depend on the very ­limited state of our pre­sent knowledge. This book is but
one small step in a vast pro­cess of collective learning. I am impatient to dis­cover what the next steps in the ­human adventure w­ ill be.
I hasten to add, for the benefit of t­ hose who lament the rise of in­equality
and of identity politics as well as for t­ hose who think that I protest too much,that this book is in no way a book of lamentations. I am an optimist by nature,

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12 . Capital and Ideology

and my primary goal is to seek solutions to our common prob­lems. ­Humanbeings have demonstrated an astonishing capacity to imagine new institutions
and develop new forms of cooperation, to forge bonds among millions (or hun­dreds of millions or even billions) of ­people who have never met and w­ illnever meet and who might well choose to annihilate one another rather thanlive together in peace. This is admirable. What is more, socie­ties can accom­
plish ­these feats even though we know l­ ittle about what an ideal regime mightlook like and therefore about what rules are justifiable. Nevertheless, our ability
to imagine new institutions has its limits. We therefore need the assistance ofrational analy­sis. To say that in­equality is ideological and po­liti­cal rather thaneconomic or technological does not mean that it can be eliminated by a wave
of some magic wand. It means, more modestly, that we must take seriously theideological and institutional diversity of ­human society. We must beware ofanyone who tries to naturalize in­equality or deny the existence of alternative
forms of social organ­ization. It means, too, that we must carefully study in de­tail the institutional arrangements and ­legal, fiscal, and educational systems ofother countries, for it is ­these details that determine ­whether cooperation suc­
ceeds or fails and w­ hether equality increases or decreases. Good w­ ill is notenough without solid conceptual and institutional under­pinnings. If I can com­municate to you, the reader, a ­little of my educated amazement at the suc­cesses of the past and persuade you that knowledge of history and economics
is too impor­tant to leave to historians and economists, then I w­ ill have achieved
my goal.

The Sources Used in This Book: Inequalities and Ideologies

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This book is based on historical sources of two kinds: first, sources that enable
us to mea­sure the evolution of in­equality in a multidimensional historical andcomparative perspective (including inequalities of income, wages, wealth, ed­ucation, gender, age, profession, origin, religion, race, status, ­etc.) and second,sources that allow us to study changes in ideology, po­liti­cal beliefs, and repre­sen­ta­tions of in­equality and of the economic, social, and po­liti­cal institutions
that shape them.
Regarding in­equality, I rely in par­tic­u­lar on the data collected in the WorldIn­equality Database (WID.world). This proj­ect represents the combined effort
of more than a hundred researchers in eighty countries around the world. It iscurrently the largest database available for the historical study of wealth andincome in­equality both within and between countries. The WID.world proj­ect514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 12

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Introduction . 13

grew out of work I did with Anthony Atkinson and Emmanuel Saez in the early
2000s, which sought to extend and generalize research begun in the 1950s and1970s by Atkinson, Simon Kuznets, and Alan Harrison.1 This proj­ect is basedon systematic comparison of available sources, including national accounts data,
survey data, and fiscal and estate data. With t­ hese data it is generally pos­si­bleto go back as far as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when many
countries established progressive income and estate taxes. From the same data
we can also infer conclusions about the distribution of wealth (taxes invariably
give rise to new sources of knowledge and not only to tax receipts and popu­lardiscontent). For some countries we can push the limits of our knowledge backas far as the late eigh­teenth or early nineteenth centuries. This is true, for in­
stance, of France, where the Revolution established an early version of a uni­
fied system of property and estate rec­ords. By drawing on this research I wasable to set the post-1980 rise of in­equality in a long-­term historical perspec­tive. This spurred a global debate on in­equality, as the interest aroused by the
publication in 2013 of Capital in the Twenty-­First C­ entury illustrates. The WorldIn­equality Report 2018 continued this debate.2 ­People want to participate in thedemo­cratic pro­cess and therefore demand a more demo­cratic diffusion of eco­nomic knowledge, as the enthusiastic reception of the WID.world proj­ectshows. As ­people become better educated and informed, economic and finan­cial issues can no longer be left to a small group of experts whose competenceis, in any case, dubious. It is only natu­ral for more and more citizens to want toform their own opinions and participate in public debate. The economy is at
the heart of politics; responsibility for it cannot be delegated, any more thandemocracy itself can.
1. See the fundamental work of S. Kuznets, Shares of Upper Income Groups in Income
and Savings (National Bureau of Economic Research [NBER], 1953) (based on US
data from the period 1913–1948, drawn from income tax rec­ords and national ac­
counts data, which Kuznets helped to create), and A. Atkinson and A. Harrison,
Distribution of Personal Wealth in Britain (Cambridge University Press, 1978)(based on British estate rec­ords for the period 1923–1972). See also T. Piketty, Top
Incomes in France in the Twentieth ­Century, trans. S. Ackerman (Belknap, 2018); A.
Atkinson and T. Piketty, Top Incomes over the 20th ­Century: A Contrast between
Continental-­European and English-­Speaking Countries (Oxford University Press,
2007); Top Incomes: A Global Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2010); T. Pik­
etty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century, trans. A. Goldhammer (Harvard Univer­sity Press, 2014), pp. 16–20.
2. See F. Alvaredo et al., Rapport sur les inégalités mondiales 2018 (Seuil, 2018). Also
available online at http://­wir2018​.­wid​.­world.

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14 . Capital and Ideology

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The available data on in­equality are unfortunately incomplete, largelyb­ ecause of the difficulty of gaining access to fiscal, administrative, and banking
rec­ords in many countries. Th­ ere is a general lack of transparency in economic
and financial m­ atters. With the help of hundreds of citizens, researchers, andjournalists in many countries, I was able to gain access to previously closed
sources in Brazil, India, South Africa, Tunisia, Lebanon, Ivory Coast, ­Korea,
Taiwan, Poland, and Hungary and, to a lesser extent, China and Rus­sia. Amongthe many shortcomings of my previous book, two deserve special mention.
First, that work focused too exclusively on the historical experience of thewealthy countries of the world (that is, in Western Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca, andJapan), partly b­ ecause it was so difficult to access historical data for other coun­tries and regions. The newly available data enabled me to go beyond thelargely Western framework of my previous book and delve more deeply into
the nature of in­equality regimes and their pos­si­ble trajectories. Despite thispro­gress, numerous deficiencies remain in the data from rich countries as wellas poor.
For the pre­sent book I also collected many other sources and documents
dealing with periods, countries, or aspects of in­equality not well covered by
WID.world, including data about pre­industrial and colonial socie­ties as wellas inequalities of status, profession, education, gender, race, and religion.
For the study of ideology I naturally relied on a wide range of sources. Some­will be familiar to scholars: minutes of parliamentary debates, transcripts ofspeeches, and party platforms. I look at the writings of both theorists and po­liti­cal actors to see how inequalities ­were justified in dif­f er­ent times and places.
In the eleventh c­ entury, for example, bishops wrote in justification the trifunc­
tional society, which consisted of three classes: clergy, warriors, and laborers.
In the early 1980s Friedrich von Hayek published Law, Legislation, and Liberty, an influential neo-­proprietarian and semi-­dictatorial treatise. In between­those dates, in the 1830s, John Calhoun, a Demo­cratic senator from South Car­olina and vice president of the United States, justified “slavery as a positive
good.” Xi Jinping’s writings on China’s neo-­communist dream or op-­eds pub­lished in the Global Times are no less revealing than Donald Trump’s tweets orarticles in praise of Anglo-­American hypercapitalism in the Wall Street Journalor the Financial Times. All ­these ideologies must be taken seriously, not only
­because of their influence on the course of events but also ­because ­every ide­
ology attempts (more or less successfully) to impose meaning on a complex­social real­ity. ­Human beings ­will inevitably attempt to make sense of the socie­
ties they live in, no ­matter how unequal or unjust they may be. I start from the514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 14

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Introduction . 15

premise that t­ here is always something to learn from such attempts. Studying
them in historical perspective may yield lessons that can help guide our steps
in the f­ uture.
I ­will also make use of lit­er­a­ture, which is often one of our best sources whenit comes to understanding how repre­sen­ta­tions of in­equality change. In Capital in the Twenty-­First C­ entury I drew on classic nineteenth-­century novels by
Honoré de Balzac and Jane Austen, which offer matchless insights into theowner­ship socie­ties that flourished in France and E­ ngland between 1790 and
1840. Both novelists possessed intimate knowledge of the property hierarchiesof their time. They had deeper insight than ­others into the secret motives andhidden bound­aries that existed in their day and understood how t­hese af­
fected ­people’s hopes and fears and determined who met whom and how men
and ­women plotted marital strategies. Writers analyzed the deep structure ofin­equality—­how it was justified, how it impinged on the lives of individuals—andthey did so with an evocative power that no po­liti­cal speech or social scientifictreatise can rival.
Lit­er­a­ture’s unique ability to capture the relations of power and domina­tion between social groups and to detect the way in which inequalities are­experienced by individuals exists, as we s­ hall see, in all socie­ties. We ­will there­
fore draw heavi­ly on literary works for invaluable insights into a wide variety
of in­equality regimes. In Destiny and Desire, the splendid fresco that Carlos
Fuentes published in 2008 a few years before his death, we discover a revealing
portrait of Mexican capitalism and endemic social vio­lence. In This Earth of
Mankind, published in 1980, Pramoedya Ananta Toer shows us how the ine­
galitarian Dutch colonial regime worked in Indonesia in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries; his book achieves a brutal truthfulness un­matched by any other source. In Americanah (2013), Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie offers us a proud, ironic view of the migratory routes his characters
Ifemelu and Obinze follow from Nigeria to the United States and Eu­rope, pro­viding unique insight into one of the most impor­tant aspects of t­oday’s in­equality regime.
To study ideologies and their transformations, I also make systematic andnovel use of the postelection surveys that have been carried out since the endof World War II in most countries where elections are held. Despite their lim­
itations, ­these surveys offer an incomparable view of the structure of po­liti­cal, ideological, and electoral conflict from the 1940s to the pre­sent, notonly in most Western countries (including France, the United States, and theUnited Kingdom, to which I w­ ill devote special attention) but also in many

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16 . Capital and Ideology

other countries, including India, Brazil, and South Africa. One of the mostimpor­tant shortcomings of my previous book, apart from its focus on the richcountries, was its tendency to treat po­liti­cal and ideological changes associ­ated with in­equality and re­distribution as a black box. I proposed a number ofhypotheses concerning, for example, changing po­liti­cal attitudes t­oward in­equality and private property owing to world war, economic crisis, and thecommunist challenge in the twentieth c­ entury, but I never ­really tackled headon the question of how inegalitarian ideologies evolve. In the pre­sent work I try
to do this much more explic­itly by situating the question in a broader temporaland spatial perspective. In ­doing so I make extensive use of postelection sur­veys and other relevant sources.

­Human Pro­gress, the Revival of In­equality, and Global Diversity
Now to the heart of the m­ atter: h­ uman pro­gress exists, but it is fragile. It is con­stantly threatened by inegalitarian and identitarian tendencies. To believethat h­ uman pro­gress exists, it suffices to look at statistics for health and educa­tion worldwide over the past two centuries (Fig. I.1). Average life expectancy
at birth ­rose from around 26 years in 1820 to 72 years in 2020. At the turn ofthe nineteenth ­century, around 20 ­percent of all newborns died in their firstyear, compared with 1 ­percent t­ oday. The life expectancy of c­ hildren who reachthe age of 1 has increased from roughly 32 years in 1820 to 73 t­ oday. We could
focus on any number of other indicators: the probability of a newborn surviving­until age 10, of an adult reaching age 60, or of a retiree enjoying five or ten yearsof good health. Using any of t­ hese indicators, the long-­run improvement is im­pressive. It is of course pos­si­ble to cite countries or periods in which life expec­
tancy declined even in peacetime, as in the Soviet Union in the 1970s or theUnited States in the 2010s. This is generally not a good sign for the regimes inwhich it occurs. In the long run, however, ­there can be no doubt that t­ hings
have improved everywhere in the world, notwithstanding the limitations ofavailable demographic sources.3

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3. Circa 1820, the life expectancy of a child who survived to the age of 1 was roughly
30 years in Africa and Asia and 41 in Western Eu­rope, for a global average of about
32. In 2020 it was 56 in sub-­Saharan Africa and more than 80 in the wealthiest
countries of Eu­rope and Asia, for a world average of about 73. Although t­ hese esti­mates are imperfect, the o­ rders of magnitude are clear. All life expectancies are
based on mortality by age in the year considered (the life expectancy of a person
born in that year is therefore slightly higher). See the online appendix.

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YearsIntroduction . 17
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10

90%
85%
80%
75%
70%
65%
60%
55%
50%
45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%

Life expectancy at birthLife expectancy at birth forchildren surviving to age 1
Literacy rate

1820

1840

1860

1880

1900

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

fig. I.1. ​Health and education in the world, 1820–2020
Interpretation: Life expectancy at birth worldwide increased from an average of
26 years in 1820 to 72 years in 2020. Life expectancy at birth for t­ hose living to age 1
increased from 32 to 73 years (­because infant mortality before age 1 decreased fromroughly 20 ­percent in 1820 to less than 1 ­percent in 2020). The literacy rate of ­those
15 years and older worldwide ­rose from 12 to 85 ­percent. Sources and series: piketty.
pse.ens.fr/ideology.

­People are healthier t­ oday than ever before. They also have more access to
education and culture. UNESCO defines literacy as the “ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed andwritten materials associated with varying contexts.” Although no such definition existed at the turn of the nineteenth c­ entury, we can deduce from vari­ous
surveys and census data that barely 10 ­percent of the world’s population aged
15 and older could be classified as literate compared with more than 85 ­percent­today. This finding is confirmed by more precise indices such as years ofschooling, which has risen from barely one year two centuries ago to eight years­today and to more than twelve years in the most advanced countries. In theage of Austen and Balzac, fewer than 10 ­percent of the world’s population attended primary school; in the age of Adichie and Fuentes, more than half ofall ­children in the wealthiest countries attend university. What had always beena class privilege is now available to the majority.
To gauge the magnitude of t­ hese changes, it is also impor­tant to note thatthe world’s population is more than ten times larger ­today than it was in the514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 17

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18 . Capital and Ideology
8.0

800 €
World population(in billions, left axis)

4.0

400 €

Average income per month and perperson (in 2020 euros, right axis)

2.0

200 €

1.0

100 €

0.5

1700

1740

1780

1820

1860

1900

1940

1980

2020

50 €

fig. I.2. ​World population and income, 1700–2020
Interpretation: Global population and average national income increased more than ten­fold between 1700 and 2020: population r­ ose from 600 million in 1700 to more than 7billion in 2020; income, expressed in terms of 2020 euros and purchasing power parity,
increased from barely 80 euros per month per person in 1700 to roughly 1,000 euros permonth per person in 2020. Sources and series: piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

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eigh­teenth c­ entury, and the average per capita income is ten times higher. From
600 million in 1700 the population of the world has grown to more than 7billion ­today, while average income, insofar as it can be mea­sured, has grownfrom a purchasing power of less than 100 (expressed in 2020 euros) a monthin 1700 to roughly 1,000 ­today (Fig. I.2). This is a significant quantitative gain,
although it should be noted that it corresponds to an annual growth rate ofjust 0.8 ­percent (extended over three centuries, which proves, if proof w­ ere
needed, that earthly paradise can be achieved without a growth rate of
5 ­percent). W­ hether this increase in population and average monthly income
represents “pro­gress” as indubitable as that achieved in health and education
is open to question, however.
It is difficult to interpret the meaning of t­ hese changes and their f­ uture im­plications. The growth of the world’s population is due in part to the decline
in infant mortality and the fact that growing numbers of parents lived longenough to care for their ­children to the brink of adulthood. If this rate of pop­
ulation growth continues for another three centuries, however, the popula­tion of the planet ­will grow to more than 70 billion, which seems neither de­

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Introduction . 19

sirable nor sustainable. The growth of average per capita income has meant avery substantial improvement in standards of living: three-­quarters of the
globe’s inhabitants lived close to the subsistence threshold in the eigh­teenth­century compared with less than a fifth ­today. ­People t­ oday enjoy unpre­ce­dented opportunities for travel and recreation and for meeting other p­ eople
and achieving emancipation. Yet several issues bedevil the national accounts I
rely on to describe the long-­term trajectory of average income. B­ ecause national
accounts deal with aggregates, they take no account of in­equality and have beenslow to incorporate data on sustainability, h­ uman capital, and natu­ral capital.
­Because they try to sum up the economy in a single-figure, total national in­come, they are not very useful for studying long-­run changes in such multidi­
mensional variables as standards of living and purchasing power.4
While the pro­gress made in the areas of health, education, and purchasing
power has been real, it has masked vast inequalities and vulnerabilities. In 2018,
the infant mortality rate was less than 0.1 ­percent in the wealthiest countriesof Eu­rope, North Amer­i­ca, and Asia, but nearly 10 ­percent in the poorest Af­
rican countries. Average per capita income ­rose to 1,000 euros per month, but
it was barely 100–200 euros a month in the poorest countries and more than
3,000–4,000 a month in the wealthiest. In a few tiny tax havens, which are sus­
pected (rightly) of robbing the rest of the planet, it is even higher, as is also thecase in certain petro-­monarchies whose wealth comes at the price of ­future
global warming. Th­ ere has been real pro­gress, but we can always do better, so
we would be foolish to rest on our laurels.
Although t­ here can be no doubt about the pro­gress made between the eigh­teenth ­century and now, ­there have also been phases of regression, during
which in­equality increased and civilization declined. The Euro-­American En­
lightenment and the Industrial Revolution coincided with extremely violent
systems of property owner­ship, slavery, and colonialism, which attained his­
toric proportions in the eigh­teenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Be­
tween 1914 and 1945 the Eu­ro­pean powers themselves succumbed to a phaseof genocidal self-­destruction. In the 1950s and 1960s the colonial powers w­ ere
4. National income is defined as gross domestic product (GDP) minus capital depre­
ciation (which in practice amounts to 10–15 ­percent of GDP), plus net income
from abroad (which can be positive or negative for a given country but sums tozero globally). See Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First C­ entury, chaps. 1–2. I w­ ill
return several times to the social and po­liti­cal issues raised by national accounts
and their vari­ous shortcomings, especially in regard to durable and equitable de­velopment. See esp. Chap. 13.

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20 . Capital and Ideology

obliged to decolonize, while at the same time the United States fi­nally granted
civil rights to the descendants of slaves. Owing to the conflict between capitalism
and communism, the world had long lived with fears of nuclear annihilation.
With the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989–1991, t­hose fears dissipated.
South African apartheid was abolished in 1991–1994. Yet soon thereafter, in theearly 2000s, a new regressive phase began, as the climate warmed and xeno­
phobic identity politics gained a foothold in many countries. All of this took
place against a background of growing socioeconomic in­equality a­ fter 1980–
1990, propelled by a particularly radical form of neo-­proprietarian ideology. It
would make ­little sense to assert that every­thing that happened between theeigh­teenth c­ entury and ­today was somehow necessary to achieve the pro­gress
noted above. Other paths could have been followed; other in­equality regimes
could have been chosen. More just and egalitarian socie­ties are always pos­si­ble.
If ­there is a lesson to be learned from the past three centuries of world his­
tory, it is that ­human pro­gress is not linear. It is wrong to assume that ­everychange w­ ill always be for the best or that ­free competition between states andamong economic actors w­ ill somehow miraculously lead to universal social har­mony. Pro­gress exists, but it is a strug­gle, and it depends above all on rational
analy­sis of historical changes and all their consequences, positive as well as
negative.

The Return of In­equality: Initial Bearings

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Among the most worrisome structural changes facing us t­ oday is the revival ofin­equality nearly everywhere since the 1980s. It is hard to envision solutions
to other major prob­lems such as immigration and climate change if we cannot
both reduce in­equality and establish a standard of justice acceptable to a ma­
jority of the world’s p­ eople.
Let us begin by looking at a s­ imple indicator, the share of the top decile (thatis, the top 10 ­percent) of the income distribution in vari­ous places since 1980.
If perfect social equality existed, the top decile’s share would be exactly
10 ­percent. If perfect in­equality prevailed, it would be 100 ­percent. In real­ity
it falls somewhere between ­these two extremes, but the exact figure varies widely
in time and space. Over the past few de­cades we find that the top decile’s sharehas risen almost everywhere. Take, for example, India, the United States, Rus­sia,
China, and Eu­rope. The share of the top decile in each of t­ hese five regions
stood at around 25–35 ­percent in 1980 but by 2018 had risen to between 35 and55 ­percent (Fig. I.3). How much higher can it go? Could it rise to 55 or even514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 20

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Introduction . 21
60%
India

Top decile share of total income

55%

United States
Russia

50%

China
45%

Europe

40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

fig. I.3. ​The rise of in­equality around the world, 1980–2018
Interpretation: The share of the top decile (the 10 ­percent of highest earners) in total na­
tional income ranged from 26 to 34 ­percent in dif­fer­ent parts of the world and from 34
to 56 ­percent in 2018. In­equality increased everywhere, but the size of the increase varied
sharply from country to country at all levels of development. For example, it was greaterin the United States than in Eu­rope (enlarged Eu­ro­pean Union, 540 million inhabit­ants) and greater in India than in China. Sources and series: piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

75 ­percent over the next few de­cades? Note, too, that ­there is considerable vari­ation in the magnitude of the increase from region to region, even at compa­
rable levels of development. The top decile’s share has risen much more rap­
idly in the United States than in Eu­rope and much more in India than in China.
When we look more closely at the data, we find that the increase in in­equality has come at the expense of the bottom 50 ­percent of the distribution,
whose share of total income stood at about 20–25 ­percent in 1980 in all five
regions but had fallen to 15–20 ­percent in 2018 (and, indeed, as low as 10 ­percent
in the United States, which is particularly worrisome).5
5. For the purposes of Fig. I.3 (and in the remainder of the book u­ nless other­wise
specified), Eu­rope is defined as the Eu­ro­pean Union plus allied countries such as
Switzerland and Norway, with a total population of 540 million, roughly 420 mil­lion of whom live in Western Eu­rope, 120 million in Eastern Eu­rope, and 520 million

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22 . Capital and Ideology

If we take a longer view, we find that the five major regions of the world
represented in Fig. I.3 enjoyed a relatively egalitarian phase between 1950 and1980 before entering a phase of rising in­equality since then. The egalitarianphase was marked by dif­fer­ent po­liti­cal regimes in dif­fer­ent regions: commu­
nist regimes in China and Rus­sia and social-­democratic regimes in Eu­rope andto a certain extent in the United States and India. We ­will be looking much
more closely at the differences among t­ hese vari­ous po­liti­cal regimes in what
follows, but for now we can say that all favored some degree of socioeconomic
equality (which does not mean that other forms of in­equality can be ignored).
If we now expand our view to include other parts of the world, we see that­ ere even greater elsewhere (Fig. I.4). For instance, the top decile
inequalities w
claimed 54 ­percent of total income in sub-­Saharan Africa (and as much as
65 ­percent in South Africa), 56 ­percent in Brazil, and 64 ­percent in the ­Middle
East, which stands out as the world’s most inegalitarian region in 2018 (almost
on a par with South Africa). Th­ ere, the bottom 50 ­percent of the distribution
earns less than 10 ­percent of total income.6 The c­ auses of in­equality vary widelyfrom region to region. For instance, the historical legacy of racial and colonial
discrimination and slavery weighs heavi­ly in Brazil and South Africa as well as
in the United States. In the M­ iddle East more “modern” f­ actors are at play: pe­troleum wealth and the financial assets into which it has been converted areconcentrated in very few hands thanks to the workings of global markets andsophisticated l­ egal systems. South Africa, Brazil, and the ­Middle East stand at
the frontier of modern in­equality, with top decile shares of 55–65 ­percent. De­
spite deficiencies in the available historical data, moreover, it appears that in­equality in ­these regions has always been high: they never experienced a rela­
tively egalitarian “social-­democratic” phase (much less a communist one).
To sum up, in­equality has increased in nearly ­every region of the world since1980, except in ­those countries that have always been highly inegalitarian. In asense, what is happening is that regions that enjoyed a phase of relative equality

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in the Eu­ro­pean Union as such, including the United Kingdom. Rus­sia, Ukraine,and Belarus are not included. If attention is focused on Western Eu­rope alone, thedifference from the United States is even more marked. See Fig. 12.9.
6. The estimates for the M­ iddle East (and other regions) should be considered aslower bounds, given that income amassed in tax havens cannot be accurately ac­
counted for. For alternative estimates, see Chap. 13. The M­ iddle East is defined­here as the region extending from Egypt to Iran and Turkey to the Arabian Penin­
sula, with a population of roughly 420 million.

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Top decile share of total income, 2018

Introduction . 23
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%

EuropeChina

RussiaUnitedStatesSubSaharanAfricaIndia

BrazilMiddleEast

fig. I.4. ​In­equality in dif­fer­ent regions of the world in 2018
Interpretation: In 2018, the share of the top decile (the highest 10 ­percent of earners) innational income was 34 ­percent in Eu­rope, 41 ­percent in China, 46 ­percent in Rus­sia,
48 ­percent in the United States, 54 ­percent in sub-­Saharan Africa, 55 ­percent in India,
56 ­percent in Brazil, and 64 ­percent in the M­ iddle East. Sources and series: piketty.pse.
ens.fr/ideology.

between 1950 and 1980 are moving back ­toward the inegalitarian frontier, al­beit with large variations from country to country.

The Elephant Curve: A Sober Debate about Globalization
The revival of within-­country in­equality ­after 1980 is by now a well-­establishedand widely recognized phenomenon. Th­ ere is, however, no agreement on what
to do about it. The key question is not the level of in­equality but rather its or­igin and justification. For instance, it is perfectly pos­si­ble to argue that thelevel of income in­equality was kept artificially and excessively low u­ nder Rus­
sian and Chinese Communism before 1980. Hence t­ here is nothing wrong withthe growing income in­equality observed since then; in­equality has actuallystimulated innovation and growth for the benefit of all, especially in China,
where the poverty rate has decreased dramatically. But to what extent is thisargument correct? Care is necessary in evaluating the data. Was it justifiable,
for example, for Rus­sian and Chinese oligarchs to capture so much natu­ral
wealth and so many formerly public enterprises in the period 2000–2020, es­
pecially when t­ hose oligarchs frequently failed to demonstrate much talent514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 23

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24 . Capital and Ideology

for innovation, except when it came to inventing ­legal and fiscal stratagems
to secure the wealth they appropriated? To fully answer this question one
cannot simply say that ­there was too ­little in­equality prior to 1980.
A similar argument could be made about India, Eu­rope, and the UnitedStates—­namely, that equality had gone too far in the period 1950–1980 andhad to be curtailed for the sake of the poor. H­ ere, however, the prob­lems areeven greater than in the case of Rus­sia or China. Even if this argument ­werepartly correct, would it justify a priori any level of in­equality whatsoever,
without so much as a glance at the data? Growth rates in both Eu­rope and theUnited States w­ ere higher, for example, in the egalitarian period (1950–1980)
than in the subsequent phase of rising in­equality. This casts doubt on the ar­gument that greater in­equality is always socially useful. ­After 1980, in­equality
increased more in the United States than in Eu­rope, but this did not lead to ahigher rate of growth, much less benefit the bottom 50 p­ ercent of the income
distribution, whose standard of living stagnated in absolute terms and fell
sharply compared to that of top earners. In other words, overall growth of na­
tional income decreased in the United States, as did the share of the bottom
half. In India, in­equality increased much more sharply ­after 1980 than in China,
but India’s growth rate was lower so that the bottom 50 ­percent was doubly
penalized by both a lower growth rate and a decreased share of national income.
Clearly, then, the argument that the income gap between high and low earners
had been compressed too much in the period 1950–1980, thus calling for a cor­
rective, has its shortcomings. Nevertheless, it should be taken seriously, up toa point, and we ­will do so in what follows.
One clear way of representing the distribution of global growth in the pe­
riod 1980–2018 is to plot the cumulative income growth of each decile of the
global income distribution. The result is sometimes referred to as “the elephantcurve” (Fig. I.5).7 This can be summarized as follows. The sixth to ninth decilesof global income (comprising ­people who belonged to neither the bottom
60 ­percent nor the top 10 ­percent of the income distribution or, in other words,
the global ­middle class) did not benefit much at all from global economic
growth in this period. By contrast, the groups above and below this global­middle class benefited a g­ reat deal. Some relatively poor h­ ouse­holds (in the

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7. The “elephant curve” was first formulated by C. Lakner and B. Milanovic in“Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the G­ reat Reces­sion,” World Bank Economic Review, 2015. The estimates given ­here are from theWorld In­equality Report 2018 and the WID.world database, which give a better pic­
ture of the top end of the distribution.

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Cumulative income growth per adult, 1980–2018

Introduction . 25
240%
220%
200%
180%
160%
140%
120%
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%

The top 1 percent havecaptured 27 percent
of growth.

The bottom 50 percent
have captured 12
percent of growth.

Decline of lower andmiddle classes in
wealthy countries

Growth inemerging
countries

10

20

30

Prosperity of top
1 percent in all
countries
40

50

60

70

80

90

99

99.9 99.99

Percentile of the global per adult income distribution

fig. I.5. ​The elephant curve of global in­equality, 1980–2018
Interpretation: The bottom 50 ­percent of the global income distribution saw substantial
growth in purchasing power between 1980 and 2018 (60–120 ­percent). The top centile
saw even stronger growth (80–240 ­percent). Intermediate categories grew less. In sum,in­equality decreased between the bottom and ­middle of the income distribution and in­creased between the ­middle and the top. Sources and series: piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

second, third, and fourth deciles of the world income distribution) did improvetheir position; some of the wealthiest ­house­holds in the wealthiest countries
gained even more (namely, ­those in the tip of the elephant’s trunk, the ninety-­
ninth percentile or top 1 ­percent, and especially the top tenth and one-­hundredth of a ­percent, whose incomes ­rose by several hundred ­percent). If
the global income distribution ­were stable, this curve would be flat: each per­centile would pro­gress at the same rate as all the o­ thers. Th­ ere would still berich p­ eople and poor p­ eople as well as upward and downward mobility, but
the average income of each percentile would increase at the same rate.8 In otherwords, “a rising tide would lift all boats,” to use an expression that became
popu­lar in the postwar era, when the tide did seem to be rising. The fact thatthe elephant curve is so far from flat illustrates the magnitude of the change
we have been witnessing over the past three de­cades.
8. The elephant curve plots the growth of average income for a given percentile of the
distribution between two dates. Of course, a given percentile group does not con­tain the same individuals at both dates, as a given individual may move to a dif­fer­ent group or be born or die between the start and end dates.

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26 . Capital and Ideology

The elephant curve is fundamental ­because it explains why globalization isso po­liti­cally controversial: for some observers the most striking fact is that theremarkable growth of certain less-­developed countries has so dramatically re­duced global poverty and in­equality while o­ thers deplore the sharp increase ofin­equality at the top due to the excesses of global hypercapitalism. Both sides
have a point: in­equality between the bottom and m­ iddle of the global income
distribution has decreased, while in­equality between the ­middle and top has in­creased. Both aspects of the globalization story are real. The point is not to deny­either part of the story but rather to figure out how to retain the good featuresof globalization while getting rid of the bad. H­ ere we see the importance ofchoosing the right terminology and conceptual framework. If we tried to de­scribe in­equality using a single indicator, such as the Gini coefficient,* we could
easily deceive ourselves. ­Because we would then lack the means to perceive com­plex, multidimensional changes, we might think that nothing had changed atall: with a single indicator, several disparate phenomena can cancel one anotherout. For that reason, I avoid relying on any single “synthetic” index. I ­will always
be careful to distinguish the vari­ous deciles and percentiles of the relevant wealthand income distributions (and thus the social groups to which they correspond).9
Some critics object that the elephant curve focuses too much attention on
the top 1 or 0.1 ­percent of the global population, where the gains have been
highest. It is foolish, they say, to arouse envy of such a tiny group rather thanrejoice in the manifest growth at the lower end of the distribution. In fact, re­cent research confirms the importance of looking at top incomes; indeed, itshows that the gains at the top are even larger than the original elephant curve
suggested. Between 1980 and 2018, the top 1 ­percent captured 27 ­percent

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9. The Gini coefficient was in­ven­ted in the early twentieth c­ entury by the Italianeconomist and statistician Corrado Gini, who shared with his compatriot Vilfredo
Pareto a relatively conservative view of in­equality as a permanent feature of all
economies. See Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First ­Century, pp. 266–270. I ­will
have more to say about the importance of statistical indices and the ambiguous role
played in ­these debates by national and international statistical agencies (see Chap.
13). All Gini coefficients for distributions of wealth and income mentioned in thisbook are available in the online appendix. Simply stated: the Gini coefficient, which
by definition always lies between zero (total equality) and one (total in­equality),
generally lies between 0.8 and 0.9 when the top decile’s share is 80–90 ­percent, andfalls to 0.1–0.2 when the top decile’s share drops to 10–20 ­percent. We learn muchmore, however, from the shares captured by dif­fer­ent groups (such as the bottom
50 ­percent, the top 10 ­percent, and so on), so I urge the reader to think in t­hese
terms, focusing on o­ rders of magnitude rather than on Gini coefficients.

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Introduction . 27

of global income growth, versus just 12 ­percent for the bottom 50 ­percent(Fig. I.5). In other words, the tip of the pachyderm’s trunk may concern only atiny segment of the population, but it has captured an elephant-­sized portionof the world’s growth—­its share is twice as large as that of the 3.5 billion indi­viduals at the bottom end.10 In other words, a growth model only slightly lessbeneficial to ­those at the top would have permitted a much more rapid reduction
in global poverty (and could still do so in the ­future).
Although this type of data can clarify the issues, it cannot end the debate.
Every­thing depends on the ­causes of in­equality and how it is justified. How
much can the growth of top incomes be justified by the benefits the wealthy
contribute to the rest of society? If one believes that greater in­equality always
and everywhere leads to higher income and better living standards for thepoorest 50 ­percent, can one justify the 27 ­percent of world income growth cap­
tured by the top 1 ­percent—or perhaps even at higher percentages—­why not
40 or 60 or even 80 ­percent? The cases mentioned ­earlier—­the United Statesversus Eu­rope and India versus China—­suggest that this is not a very persua­
sive argument, however, ­because the countries where top earners gained themost are not t­ hose where the poor reaped the largest benefits. Analy­sis of t­ hesecases suggests that the share g­ oing to the top 1 ­percent could have been reduced
to 10 or 20 ­percent, or perhaps even less, while still allowing significant improve­
ment in the living standards of the bottom 50 ­percent. ­These issues are impor­tant enough to call for more detailed investigation. In any case, the data sug­gest that t­ here is no reason to believe that t­ here is just one way to or­ga­nize theglobal economy. Th­ ere is no reason to believe that the top 1 ­percent must cap­
ture precisely 27 ­percent of income growth (versus 12 ­percent for the bottom
50). What the global growth figures reveal is that the distribution of gains isjust as impor­tant as overall growth. Hence t­ here is ample room for debate about
the po­liti­cal and institutional choices that affect distribution.

On the Justification of Extreme In­equality
The world’s largest fortunes have grown since 1980 at even faster rates than theworld’s top incomes depicted in Fig. I.5. G­ reat fortunes grew extremely rapidly
in all parts of the world: among the leading beneficiaries w­ ere Rus­sian oligarchs,
10. The scale ­adopted in Fig. I.5 overstates the size of the top 1 ­percent in terms of
population but understates its share of total growth. See the World In­equality Report 2018 (wir2018.wid.world).

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28 . Capital and Ideology

Mexican magnates, Chinese billionaires, Indonesian financiers, Saudi investors,
Indian industrialists, Eu­ro­pean rentiers, and wealthy Americans. In the period
1980–2018, large fortunes grew at rates three to four times the growth rate of
the global economy. Such phenomenal growth cannot continue in­def­initely,­unless one is prepared to believe that nearly all global wealth is destined to end
up in the hands of billionaires. Nevertheless, the gap between top fortunes andthe rest continued to grow even in the de­cade ­after the financial crisis of 2008
at virtually the same rate as in the two previous de­cades, which suggests that
we may not yet have seen the end of a massive change in the structure of theworld’s wealth.11
In the face of such spectacular change, many justifications of wealth in­equality have been proposed, some of them quite surprising. In the West, forexample, apologists like to divide the rich into two categories. On the one hand,­there are Rus­sian oligarchs, ­Middle Eastern oil sheiks, and billionaires of vari­ous
nationalities, be they Chinese, Mexican, Guinean, Indian, or Indonesian. Critics
question ­whether such ­people “deserve” their wealth, which they allegedly owe
to close ties to the powers that be in their respective countries: for example, it
is often insinuated that t­ hese fortunes originated with unfair appropriationnatu­ral resources or illegitimate licensing arrangements. The beneficiaries sup­posedly did l­ ittle to stimulate economic growth. On the other hand, t­ here areentrepreneurs, usually Eu­ro­pean or American, of whom Silicon Valley innova­
tors serve as a paradigmatic example. Their contributions to global prosperity
are widely praised. If they w­ ere properly rewarded for their efforts, some say,they would be even richer than they are. Society, their champions argue, owes
them a moral debt, which it should perhaps repay in the form of tax breaks orpo­liti­cal influence (which in some countries they may already have achieved on
their own). Such hyper-­meritocratic, Western-­centric justifications of in­equality
demonstrate the irrepressible ­human need to make sense of social in­equality,
at times in ways that stretch credulity. This quasi-­beatification of wealth often
ignores incon­ve­nient facts. Would Bill Gates and his fellow techno-­billionaires
have been able to build their businesses without the hundreds of billions ofdollars of public money invested in basic research over many de­cades? Would thequasi-­monopolies they have built by patenting public knowledge have reaped
such enormous profits without the active support of ­legal and tax codes?
Most justifications of extreme wealth in­equality are less grandiose, however.
The need for stability and protection of property rights is often emphasized.
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11. See Fig. 13.1.

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Introduction . 29

In other words, defenders admit that in­equality of wealth may not be entirely
just or invariably useful, especially when it reaches the level observed in places
like California. But, they argue, challenging the status quo might initiate a self-­
reinforcing pro­cess whose effect on the poorest members of society would ul­
timately be negative. This quasi-­religious defense of property rights as the sinequa non of social and po­liti­cal stability was characteristic of the owner­shipsocie­ties that flourished in Eu­rope and the United States in the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries. The need for stability also figured in justifications oftrifunctional and slave socie­ties. Lately, the stability argument has been aug­
mented by the claim that states are less inefficient than private philanthropy—
an old argument that has recently regained prominence. All of ­these justifica­
tions of in­equality deserve a hearing, but they can be refuted by applying thelessons of history.

Learning from History: The Lessons of the Twentieth ­Century
To understand and learn from what has been happening in the world since 1980,
we must adopt a long-­term historical and comparative perspective. The currentin­equality regime, which I call neo-­proprietarian, bears traces of all the regimesthat preceded it. To study it properly, we must begin by examining how thetrifunctional socie­ties of the premodern era, which ­were based on a ternary
structure (clergy, nobility, and third estate), evolved into the owner­ship socie­
ties of the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries and then how ­those socie­ties
collapsed in the twentieth ­century in the face of challenges from communism
and social democracy, world war, and, fi­nally, wars of national liberation, which
put an end to centuries of colonial domination. All h­ uman socie­ties need tomake sense of their inequalities, and the justifications given in the past turnout, if studied carefully, to be no more incoherent than t­ hose of the pre­sent.
By examining them all in their concrete historical contexts, paying close atten­
tion to the multiplicity of pos­si­ble trajectories and forks in the road, we canshed light on the pre­sent in­equality regime and begin to see how it might betransformed.
The collapse of owner­ship and colonialist society in the twentieth ­century
plays an especially impor­tant role in this history. It radically transformed
the structure and justification of in­equality, leading directly to the pre­sent
state of affairs. The countries of Western Europe—­most notably France, theUnited Kingdom, and Germany, which had been more inegalitarian thanthe United States on the eve of World War I—­became more egalitarian over

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30 . Capital and Ideology

Top decile share of total income

50%
United States

45%

Europe
Japan

40%
35%
30%

20
20

10
20

00
20

90
19

80
19

70
19

60
19

50
19

40
19

30
19

20
19

10
19

19

00

25%

fig. I.6. ​In­equality, 1900–2020: Eu­rope, United States, and Japan
Interpretation: The top decile’s share of total national income was about 50 ­percent inWestern Eu­rope in 1900–1910 before decreasing to roughly 30 ­percent in 1950–1980 andthen rising again to more than 35 ­percent in 2010–2020. In­equality grew more strongly
in the United States, where the top decile share approached 50 ­percent in 2010–2020,
exceeding the level of 1900–1910. Japan was in an intermediate position. Sources andseries: piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

the course of the twentieth c­ entury, partly b­ ecause the shocks of the period
1914–1945 resulted in a greater compression of inequalities t­ here and partly­because in­equality increased more in the United States ­after 1980 (Fig. I.6).12
In both Eu­rope and the United States, the compression of in­equality in the
period 1914–1970 can be explained by l­ egal, social, and fiscal changes hastened­ reat Depression
by two world wars, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the Gof 1929. In an intellectual and po­liti­cal sense, however, ­those changes ­were al­
ready ­under way by the end of the nineteenth c­ entury, and it is reasonable tothink that they would have occurred in one form or another even if t­ hose crises
had not occurred. Historical change takes place when evolving ideas confront

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12. For the purposes of Fig. I.6, Western Eu­rope is defined as the average of the United
Kingdom, France, Germany, and Sweden. See Figs. 10.1–10.3 for a separate analy­sisof long-­term developments in the vari­ous countries of Eu­rope. See also the online
appendix, Fig. S0.6, for the corresponding annual series.

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Introduction . 31

the logic of events: neither has much effect without the other. We w
­ ill encounter
this lesson numerous times in what follows, for example, when we analyze theevents of the French Revolution or changes in the structure of in­equality in India
since the end of the colonial era.
Among the changes that contributed to the reduction of in­equality in thetwentieth c­ entury was the widespread emergence of a system of progressive tax­
ation of both income and inherited wealth. The highest incomes and largest
fortunes ­were taxed more heavi­ly than smaller ones. In this the United States
led the way: in the Gilded Age (1865–1900) and beyond, as industrial and fi­
nancial wealth accumulated, Americans worried that their country might one
day become as inegalitarian as the socie­ties of the Old World, which they
viewed as oligarchic and therefore at odds with the demo­cratic spirit of theUnited States. The United Kingdom also turned to progressive taxation. Al­
though the United Kingdom experienced much less destruction of wealththan ­either France or Germany between 1914 and 1945, it nevertheless chose(in calmer po­liti­cal circumstances than prevailed on the continent) to reject
its highly inegalitarian past by imposing steeply progressive taxes on income
and estates.
In the period 1932–1980, the top marginal income rate averaged 81 ­percent
in the United States and 89 ­percent in the United Kingdom compared with
“only” 58 ­percent in German and 60 ­percent in France (Fig. I.7). Note that ­these
rates include only the income tax (and not other levies such as consumption
taxes). In the United States they include only the federal income tax and notstate income taxes (which can add 5–10 ­percent on top of the federal tax).
Clearly, the fact that top marginal rates remained above 80 ­percent for nearly
half a c­ entury did not destroy capitalism in the United States—­quite theopposite.
As we w
­ ill see, highly progressive taxation contributed strongly to the re­duction of in­equality in the twentieth c­ entury. We w
­ ill also analyze in detail
how progressive taxation was undone in the 1980s, especially in the UnitedStates and United Kingdom, and investigate what lessons can be drawn fromthis. The drastic reduction of top tax rates was the signature issue of the “con­servative revolution” waged by the Republican Party ­under Ronald Reagan in
the United States and the Conservative Party ­under Margaret Thatcher in
Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The ensuing po­liti­cal and ideologicalshift had a marked impact on taxes and in­equality not only in the United States
and United Kingdom but also around the world. Moreover, the turn to theright was never r­ eally challenged by the parties and governments that followed

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32 . Capital and Ideology
100%
90%
Top marginal income tax rate

80%
70%
60%
50%

United States

40%

United Kingdom

30%

Germany

20%

France

10%

20
20

10
20

00
20

90
19

80
19

70
19

60
19

50
19

40
19

30
19

20
19

10
19

19

00

0%

fig. I.7. ​Top income tax rates, 1900–2020
Interpretation: The top marginal tax rate applied to the highest incomes averaged
23 ­percent in the United States from 1900 to 1932, 81 ­percent from 1932 to 1980, and39 ­percent from 1980 to 2018. Over the same period, the top rates averaged 30, 89,
and 46 ­percent in the United Kingdom; 18, 58, and 50 ­percent in Germany; and 23,
60, and 57 ­percent in France. The tax system was most progressive in the ­middle of the­century, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. Sources and series: pik­etty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

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+1—

Reagan and Thatcher. In the United States the top marginal federal income tax
rate has fluctuated between 30 and 40 ­percent since the end of the 1980s. In
the United Kingdom it has ranged from 40 to 45 ­percent, with a slight upward
trend since the crisis of 2008. In both cases, the top rate between 1980 and2018 has remained at roughly half that of the period 1932–1980 (40 ­percent
compared with 80 p­ ercent; see Fig. I.7).
For champions of the fiscal turn, the spectacular decrease of progressivity
was justified by the idea that top marginal rates had risen to unconscionablelevels prior to 1980. Some argued that high top rates had sapped the entrepre­
neurial spirit of British and American innovators, allowing the United States
and United Kingdom to be overtaken by West Eu­ro­pean and Japa­nese com­
petitors (a prominent campaign issue in both countries in the 1970s and 1980s).
In hindsight, ­these arguments cannot withstand scrutiny. The issue deserves afresh look. Many other ­factors explain why Germany, France, Sweden, and514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 32

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Introduction . 33

Japan caught up with the United States and United Kingdom in the period
1950–1980. ­Those countries had fallen seriously ­behind the leaders, especially
the United States, and a growth spurt was all but inevitable. Growth was also
spurred by institutional f­ actors, including relatively ambitious (and egalitarian)social and educational policies ­adopted ­after World War II. ­These policies
helped rivals catch up with the United States and surge ahead of the United
Kingdom, where the educational system had been seriously neglected since thelate nineteenth ­century. And once again, it should be stressed that productivity
growth in the United States and United Kingdom was higher in the period
1950–1990 than in 1990–2020, thus casting serious doubt on the argument that
reducing top marginal tax rates spurs economic growth.
In the end, it is fair to say that the move to a less progressive tax system in
the 1980s played a large part in the unpre­ce­dented growth of in­equality in the
United States and United Kingdom between 1980 and 2018. The share of na­
tional income ­going to the bottom half of the income distribution collapsed,
contributing perhaps to the feeling on the part of the ­middle and lower classes
that they had been abandoned in addition to fueling the rise of xenophobia
and identity politics in both countries. ­These developments came to a head in
2016, with the British vote to leave the Eu­ro­pean Union (Brexit) and the elec­tion of Donald Trump. With this recent history in mind, the time has cometo rethink the wisdom of progressive taxation of both income and wealth, inrich countries as well as poor—­the latter being the first to suffer from fiscal
competition and lack of financial transparency. The ­free and unchecked circu­
lation of capital without sharing of information between national tax authori­ties has been one of the primary means by which the conservative fiscal revo­
lution of the 1980s has been protected and extended. It has adversely affected
the pro­cess of state building and the development of just tax systems every­
where. Which raises another key question: Why have the social-­democraticco­ali­tions that emerged in the postwar era proved so unable to respond to t­ hesechallenges? In par­tic­u­lar, why have social demo­crats been so inept at con­structing a progressive transnational tax system? Why have they not pro­
moted the idea of social and temporary private owner­ship? If t­ here w­ ere a suf­
ficiently progressive tax on the largest holders of private property, such an idea
would emerge naturally, b­ ecause property o­ wners would then be obliged to re­turn a significant fraction of what they owned to the community e­ very year.
This po­liti­cal, intellectual, and ideological failure of social democracy must
count among the reasons for the revival of in­equality, reversing the historic
trend ­toward ever greater equality.

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34 . Capital and Ideology

On the Ideological Freeze and New Educational Inequalities
To understand what is happening, we ­will also need to look at po­liti­cal andideological changes affecting other po­liti­cal and social institutions that havecontributed to the reduction and regulation of in­equality. I am thinking pri­marily of economic power sharing and employee involvement in business deci­sion making and strategy setting. In the 1950s, several countries, including Ger­
many and Sweden, w­ ere pioneers in this area, but u­ ntil recently their innovations­were not widely a­ dopted or improved on. The reasons for this failure surely have to
do with the specific histories of individual countries. U­ ntil the 1980s, for instance,
the British ­Labour Party and French Socialists favored programs of nationaliza­
tion, but ­after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism they
abruptly gave up on re­distribution altogether. Moreover, in no region has enoughattention been paid to transcending private property in its pre­sent form.
Every­one is familiar with the effects of the Cold War on the system of inter­national relations, but its consequences did not end t­ here. In many ways the Cold
War also created an ideological freeze, which discouraged new thinking about
ways of transcending capitalism. The anticommunist euphoria that followed thefall of the Berlin Wall similarly discouraged fresh thinking right up to the ­GreatRecession of 2008. Hence it is only recently that ­people have begun to think once
again about imposing firmer social controls on cap­it­ al­ist economic forces.
This is particularly true when it comes to the crucial issue of investment inand access to education. The most striking fact about the increase of in­equality
in the United States is the collapse of the share of total national income ­goingto the bottom 50 ­percent, which fell from about 20 ­percent in 1980 to a ­little
more than 12 in 2018. Such a dramatic collapse from an already low level canonly be explained by a multiplicity of ­factors. One such ­factor was the sharp
decrease in the federal minimum wage (in real terms) since 1980. Another was
significant in­equality of access to education. It is striking to discover the de­gree to which access to a university education in the United States depends onparental income. It has been shown that the probability of access to higher ed­
ucation (including two-­year ju­nior college degrees) was just slightly above
20 ­percent for the 10 ­percent of young adults whose parents had the lowest in­come, increasing linearly to more than 90 ­percent for ­those whose parents
had the highest income (Fig. I.8).13 Furthermore, access to higher education
does not mean the same t­ hing for ­those at the top and bottom of the distribu­
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13. This is based on the work of Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez. See the online
appendix.

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Introduction . 35

Rate of access to higher education

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Percentile of parental income

fig. I.8. ​Parental income and university access, United States, 2014
Interpretation: In 2014, the rate of access to higher education (percentage of individuals
age 19–21 enrolled in a college, university, or other institution of higher education) was
barely 30 ­percent for ­children of the poorest 10 ­percent in the United States and90 p­ ercent for the richest 10 ­percent. Sources and series: piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

tion. The concentration of educational investment in elitist institutions is par­ticularly extreme in the United States, where admissions procedures are opaqueand public regulation is almost entirely lacking.
­These results are striking b­ ecause they illustrate the wide gap that separates
official meritocratic pronouncements (which emphasize—­theoretically andrhetorically, at any rate—­equality of opportunity) from the realities facing themost disadvantaged students. In­equality of access to and financing of educa­tion is somewhat less extreme in Eu­rope and Japan, and this may account forpart of the extreme gap between top and bottom incomes in the United States.
Nevertheless, educational in­equality and absence of demo­cratic transparency
in this area are issues everywhere. And h­ ere again, as with rethinking private
property, social democracy has failed.

The Return of Multiple Elites and the Difficulty ofForging an Egalitarian Co­ali­tion
In what follows we w
­ ill try to understand the conditions ­under which egali­tarian co­ali­tions came to exist in the mid-­twentieth ­century and why, ­after aperiod of success in reducing in­equality, they ultimately stalled. We w
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36 . Capital and Ideology

try to imagine the conditions ­under which new egalitarian co­ali­tions might
emerge ­today.
We must first be clear about one ­thing. The broadly social-­democratic re­distributive co­ali­tions that arose in the mid-­twentieth ­century ­were not justelectoral or institutional or party co­ali­tions but also intellectual and ideolog­
ical. The b­ attle was fought and won above all on the battleground of ideas. It
was of course essential that t­ hose ideas found embodiment in po­liti­cal parties,­whether explic­itly social-­democratic parties such as the Swedish SAP or theGerman SPD (which both occupied key positions in the 1920s)14 or parties like­Labour (which won an absolute majority in the United Kingdom in 1945) or
the Demo­crats (who held the presidency in the United States from 1932 ­until
1952 ­under Roo­se­velt and then Truman). In France and elsewhere, moreover,
one finds alliances of one kind or another between socialists and communists(who came to power in France, for example, in 1936 and 1945). Details aside,
however, the fact remains that the real seizure of power was ideological and in­tellectual before it was po­liti­cal. In the period 1930–1980, even right-­wing
parties ­were influenced by ideas for reducing in­equality and transforming l­ egal,
fiscal, and social systems. This transformation of politics depended not only
on mobilizing (broadly) social-­democratic co­ali­tions but also on the involve­
ment of civil society (including u­ nions, activists, media, and intellectuals) andon a sweeping transformation of the dominant ideology, which throughout thelong nineteenth ­century had been ­shaped by a quasi-­religious theology of mar­kets, in­equality, and private property.
The most impor­tant ­factor in the emergence of this new co­ali­tion of ideas
and new vision of the state’s role was the discrediting of the system of private
property and f­ ree markets. This began in the late nineteenth and early twen­tieth centuries owing to the enormous concentration of industrial wealth andthe consequent sense of injustice; it picked up speed ­after World War I and the­Great Depression. The existence of a communist countermodel in the Soviet
Union also played a crucial role, not only by obliging reluctant conservatives
to embrace an ambitious redistributive agenda but also by accelerating decol­

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14. The SAP (Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti) first came to power in theearly 1920s and ruled more or less continuously ­after 1932. The SPD (Sozialde­mokratische Partei Deutschlands) was the party of Friedrich Ebert, the first presi­
dent of the Weimar Republic. The party has usually been ­either in opposition orpart of a governing co­ali­tion, especially during the long period of Christian Demo­cratic domination between 1949 and 1966.

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Introduction . 37

onization in Eu­rope’s empires and spurring the extension of civil rights in the
United States.
When we look at the evolution of (broadly) social-­democratic electorates­after 1945, it is striking to see how similar developments ­were in Eu­rope andthe United States. In view of the very dif­fer­ent histories of national party sys­tems, it is by no means obvious why this should have been the case. Between
1950 and 1970, the Demo­cratic Party’s share of the vote in the United States
was especially high among less-­educated voters with relatively low incomes and­little if any wealth, whereas the Republican vote share was higher among themore highly educated with relatively high incomes and large fortunes. We findthe same electoral structure in France, in almost identical proportions: between
1950 and 1970 the Socialist, Communist, and Radical parties attracted more
votes among less-­educated, lower-income, and less wealthy voters and conversely
for the parties of the center-­right and right. This electoral structure began tochange in the late 1960s and 1970s, and in the period 1980–2000 we find a no­ticeably dif­fer­ent structure, once again almost identical in France and theUnited States: both the Demo­crats and the Socialist-­Communist alliancebegan to attract voters who w­ ere better educated but not among the highest
earners. This pattern did not last, however. In the US presidential election of
2016, not only the best-­educated but also the highest-income voters preferred
the Demo­crats to the Republicans, thus completely reversing the social struc­ture of the vote compared with the period 1950–1970 (Fig. I.9).
In other words, the decomposition of the left-­right cleavage of the postwar
era, on which the mid-­twentieth-­century reduction of in­equality depended, hasbeen a long time coming. To see it properly, we must view it in long-­term his­
torical perspective.
We find similar transformations (at least with re­spect to education levels)in the ­Labour vote in the United Kingdom and the social-­democratic vote invari­ous places in Eu­rope.15 Between 1950 and 1980 the (broadly) social-­
democratic vote corresponded to the workers’ party; between 1990 and 2010
it mainly reflected the choice of the educated. Nevertheless, the wealthiest
voters continued to be wary of social-­democratic, workers, and socialist par­ties, including the Demo­cratic Party in the United States (though to a dimin­
15. See Chaps. 14–16. One observes similar transformations by comparing not the top
10 ­percent and the bottom 90 ­percent (as we do in Fig. I.9) but rather the top
50 ­percent and the bottom 50 ­percent or, for that m­ atter, any other division of the
distribution of educational degrees, income, or wealth.

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19

19

45

24%
20%
16%
12%
8%
4%
0%
–4%
–8%
–12%
–16%
–20%

50
19
55
19
60
19
65
19
70
19
75
19
80
19
85
19
90
19
95
20
00
20
05
20
10
20
15
20
20

38 . Capital and Ideology

United States: difference between percentage of Democratic vote of the most highly
educated 10 percent and the least-educated 90 percent (after controls)
France: difference between percentage of left-wing party vote of the most highly
educated 10 percent and the least-educated 90 percent (after controls)
United States: difference between percentage of Democratic vote of the 10 percent
with highest income and the 90 percent with lowest income (after controls)
France: difference between percentage of left-wing party vote of the 10 percent
with highest income and the 90 percent with lowest income (after controls)

fig. I.9. ​Transformation of po­liti­cal and electoral conflict, 1945–2020: Emergence of amultiple-­elites party system, or ­great reversal?
Interpretation: In the period 1950–1970 the vote for the Demo­cratic Party in the UnitedStates and for the left-­wing parties in France (Socialists, Communists, Radicals, Ecolo­gists) was associated with less-­educated and lower-income voters; in the period 1980–
2000, it became associated with more-­educated voters, and in the period 2010–2020 it
has also become associated with higher-income voters, especially in the United States.
Sources and series: piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

ishing extent). The key point is that ­these dif­fer­ent dimensions of social in­equality (education, income, and wealth) have always been imperfectly
correlated. In both periods one finds many ­people whose position in the edu­
cational hierarchy is higher than their position in the wealth hierarchy and viceversa.16 What m­ atters is the ability of a po­liti­cal party or co­ali­tion to integrate ordifferentiate the vari­ous dimensions of social in­equality.
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16. The correlation of education, income, and wealth does not appear to have changed
substantially during the period ­under study. See Chap. 14.

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Introduction . 39

Concretely, in the period 1950–1980 the vari­ous dimensions of social in­equality w­ ere po­liti­cally aligned. The p­ eople at the bottom of the social hier­archy on all three axes (education, income, and wealth) tended to vote for thesame party or co­ali­tion. Standing at a lower position along several axes had acumulative effect on a person’s vote. Po­liti­cal conflict was therefore structured
along class lines, in the sense that classes placed lower in the social hierarchy
opposed classes placed higher, no ­matter what axis one chose to define theirclass (even though class identity is in practice highly complex and multidimen­
sional, which is why forging majority co­ali­tions is so complicated).
In the period 1980–2000, however, the vari­ous dimensions of social in­equality ceased to line up with one another. The resulting division of the elitechanged the structure of po­liti­cal conflict: one party or co­ali­tion attracts thevotes of the more highly educated (the intellectual and cultural elite), while an­other draws the votes of the wealthiest and also (to some extent) of the highest
income group (the commercial and financial elite). From this came many prob­lems, including the fact that p­ eople without ­either an advanced degree, a large
fortune, or a high income began to feel entirely left out, which may explain why
voter turnout has collapsed in this group in recent de­cades in contrast to theperiod 1950–1970, when ­people in this group ­were as likely to vote as their bettero­ ff counter­parts. If one wants to explain the rise of “pop­u­lism” (a catch-­all term
frequently used by elites to discredit po­liti­cal movements they deem to be in­sufficiently ­under their control), it might not be a bad idea to begin by looking
at the rise of “elitist” po­liti­cal parties. Note, too, that the modern multiple-­
elites regime bears a certain resemblance to the old trifunctional regime, in which
the clerical elite and warrior elite counterbalanced each other, although thediscourse of legitimation was obviously dif­fer­ent in the distant past.

Rethinking Justice in Owner­ship, Education, and Immigration
We ­will attempt to delve in detail into the origins and implications of ­thesechanges in po­liti­cal cleavage structures and voting patterns a­ fter 1970. The
story is complex, and one can analyze the relevant po­liti­cal changes as e­ ither acause or a consequence of rising in­equality. To deal with this in a totally satis­
factory way would require drawing on a wider range of documents and re­search than I have been able to do in this book. On the one hand, one mightargue that in­equality increased b­ ecause of the conservative revolution of the
1980s and the social and financial deregulation that followed, with a signifi­
cant assist from the failure of social-­democratic parties to devote sufficient

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40 . Capital and Ideology

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thought to alternative ways of organ­izing the global economy and transcending
the nation-­state. As a result, the existing social-­democratic parties and co­ali­tions gradually abandoned any real ambition to reduce in­e quality andredistribute wealth. Indeed, they themselves helped to promote greater
fiscal competition and ­free movement of goods and capital in exchange forwhich they received nothing in the way of fiscal justice or greater social ben­efits. As a result, they forfeited the support of the least well-­off voters andbegan to focus more and more on the better educated, the primary beneficiaries
of globalization.
On the other hand, however, one might also argue that deep racial andethno-­religious divisions developed within the working class, first in the UnitedStates in the wake of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and l­ater in Eu­rope, as issues connected with immigration and postcolonialism gained prom­
inence in the 1980s. Ultimately, t­ hese divisions led to the breakup of the egali­tarian co­ali­tion that had prevailed from 1950 u­ ntil 1980, as the white native-­born
working class succumbed to nativist xenophobia. In short, the first argument
holds that the social-­democratic parties abandoned the working class, while thesecond holds that it was the other way around.
Both arguments are partly correct, but if we compare many dif­fer­ent na­
tional histories, we find that both can be subsumed in a more general argument,
namely that the egalitarian social-­democratic co­ali­tion of the postwar era
proved incapable of revising and renewing its program and ideology. Insteadof blaming ­either liberal globalization (which did not fall from the sky) or
working-­class racism (which is no more inevitable than elitist racism), we would
do better to explore the ideological failures of the egalitarian co­ali­tion.
Prominent among t­ hose ideological failures was the inability to conceptu­
alize or or­ga­nize progressive taxation and re­distribution at the transnational
level. During the period of successful re­distribution at the national level,social demo­crats largely avoided this issue. To date they have never ­reallygrappled with it even at the level of the Eu­ro­pean Union, much less globally.
They also failed to grapple with the issue of ethnic diversity as it relates tore­distribution—an issue that did not r­ eally arise prior to 1960, b­ ecause p­ eopleof dif­fer­ent national, racial, or ethno-­religious backgrounds seldom came into
contact within national borders except in the context of colonial rule or con­flict between states. Both ideological failures point to the same fundamental
question: What defines the bound­aries of the ­human community in terms ofwhich collective life is or­ga­nized, especially when it comes to reducing in­equality
and establishing norms of equality acceptable to a majority? As technological514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 40

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Introduction . 41

advances in transportation and communication bring formerly remote partsof the world into closer contact, the frame within which po­liti­cal action is­imagined must be permanently rethought. The context of social justice must
be explic­itly global and transnational.
Furthermore, social demo­crats never ­really reconsidered the issue of justowner­ship a­ fter the collapse of communism. The postwar social-­democraticcompromise was built in haste, and issues such as progressive taxation, tempo­
rary owner­ship, circulation of owner­ship (for example, by means of a universal
capital grant financed by a progressive tax on property and inheritances), power
sharing in firms (via co-­management or self-­management), demo­cratic bud­geting, and public owner­ship ­were never explored as fully or systematically as
they might have been.
When higher education ceased to be ­limited to a tiny elite, moreover, newissues of educational justice arose. Progressive educational policy was ­simple
when it involved nothing more than allocating the resources necessary to en­sure that all students would receive first primary and ­later secondary schooling.
Expanding access to higher education then raised new prob­lems. An ide­
ology said to be based on equal opportunity quickly emerged, but its real
purpose was to glorify the winners of the educational sweepstakes, with theresult that educational resources w­ ere allocated in a particularly unequal andhypocritical fashion (Fig. I.8). The inability of social demo­crats to persuade
the less well-­off that they cared not only about elite institutions for their own­children but also about schools for the rest helps to explain why social-­
democratic parties became parties of the educated elite. In view of the failure
to develop a just and transparent set of educational policies, none of this is
surprising.
In the final part of this book, I reflect on how we might use the lessons ofhistory to achieve greater justice in owner­ship, education, and immigration.
My conclusions should be taken for what they are: incomplete, tentative, andprovisional. Together they point ­toward a form of participatory socialism andsocial federalism. One of the most impor­tant lessons of this book is the fol­lowing: ideas and ideologies count in history, but u­ nless they are set against
the logic of events, with due attention to historical experimentation and con­crete institutional practices (to say nothing of potentially violent crises), they
are useless. One t­ hing is certain: given the profound transformation of po­liti­calcleavage structures and voting patterns since 1980, a new egalitarian co­ali­tion
is unlikely to emerge in the absence of a radical redefinition of its intellectual,ideological and programmatic basis.

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The Diversity of the World: The Indispensability of theLongue Durée

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Before returning to ­these recent changes, this book begins with a lengthy de­tour in which I delve into the history of several dif­fer­ent in­equality regimes.
Specifically, I look first at how premodern trifunctional socie­ties w­ ere trans­
formed into owner­ship socie­ties and then at how contact with Eu­ro­pean owner­ship and colonialist socie­ties influenced the development of non-­European
socie­ties. I have already explained why this detour via the longue durée is nec­
essary. It ­will allow us to explore the po­liti­cal and ideological diversity of in­equality regimes that followed numerous dif­f er­ent trajectories. ­Human beings
have demonstrated ­great creativity in devising ways to justify and or­ga­nize so­cial in­equality, and it would be wrong to view the resulting ideological andpo­liti­cal constructs as mere veils intended only to conceal the perpetual dom­
ination of ruling elites. In fact, ­these constructs reflect strug­gles between con­tending social visions, each of which is to some extent sincere and plausible.
From them we can therefore draw useful lessons. Large-­scale social organ­izationis never ­simple, and criticism of an existing regime is never enough to ensurethat something better w­ ill replace it. The ideological constructs of the past must
be taken seriously in part ­because they are not always more incoherent than
­those of the pre­sent and in part b­ ecause our distance from them offers an op­
portunity for more objective analy­sis. We w
­ ill also discover that many current
debates have roots in the remote past: during the French Revolution, for ex­
ample, ­people ­were already discussing progressive taxation and re­distribution.
We need to study this genealogy to gain a better understanding of how to deal
with f­ uture conflicts.
Above all, a long detour through history is indispensable ­because the vari­ous
regions of the world have only gradually come into contact with one another.
For centuries most socie­ties had ­little to do with foreigners. Trade in goods andideas broke down barriers, and some states conquered ­others or established col­onies on foreign soil. Only since the end of the Cold War and the era of de­colonization have the vari­ous parts of the world become intimately intertwined,
however, not only through financial and economic interactions but also to agreater degree through ­human and cultural exchange. Before 1960–1970, forexample, many Eu­ro­pean countries had l­ittle contact with p­ eople from othercontinents or dif­fer­ent religious backgrounds. The mi­grant flows of the post­colonial era changed this, and the effect on ideological and po­liti­cal conflictwithin Eu­rope has been considerable. Other parts of the world such as India,

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Introduction . 43

the United States, Brazil, and South Africa have had longer experience withthe mingling of populations that see themselves as radically dif­fer­ent for reli­gious, social, or religious reasons. To one degree or another they have dealt withthe ensuing prob­lems through compromise and intermarriage, yet hostility has
in some cases proved to be per­sis­tent and difficult to overcome. Without
studying such encounters and the in­equality regimes that developed from themin historical perspective, we have no hope of imagining the next stages of thislong shared history of interconnected ­human socie­ties.

On the Complementarity of Natu­ral Language andMathematical Language
I next want to clarify a point about method. This book ­will rely primarily onnatu­ral language (about which t­ here is nothing particularly natu­ral). To a lesser
degree I w­ ill also make use of the language of mathe­matics and statistics. For
instance, I ­will frequently refer to deciles and percentiles when discussing in­equality of income, wealth, or education. My intent is not to replace class war­fare with war between the deciles. Social identities are always flexible and mul­tidimensional. In each society vari­ous social groups use natu­ral language todesignate professions and occupations and identify the qualifications, expec­
tations, and experiences associated with each. Th­ ere is no substitute for natu­ral
language when it comes to expressing social identities or defining po­liti­cal ide­
ologies. By the same token t­ here is no substitute for natu­ral language when it
comes to d­ oing research in social science or thinking about the just society.
­Those who believe that we ­will one day be able to rely on a mathematicalformula, algorithm, or econometric model to determine the “socially op­
timal” level of in­equality are destined to be disappointed. This ­will thank­
fully never happen. Only open, demo­cratic deliberation, conducted in plainnatu­ral language (or rather in several natu­ral languages—­not a minor point),
can promise the level of nuance and subtlety necessary to make choices ofsuch magnitude.
Nevertheless, this book relies heavi­ly on the language of mathe­matics, sta­tistical series, graphs, and ­tables. ­These devices also play an impor­tant role inpo­liti­cal deliberation and historical change. Once again, however, it bears re­peating that the statistics, historical data, and other quantitative mea­sures pre­sented in this book are imperfect, provisional, tentative social constructs. I do
not contend that “truth” is found only in numbers or certainty only in “facts.”
In my view, the primary purpose of statistics is to establish o­ rders of magnitude514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 43

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and to compare dif­fer­ent and perhaps remote periods, socie­ties, and cultures
as meaningfully as pos­si­ble. Perfect comparison of socie­ties remote in space
and time is never pos­si­ble. Despite the radical uniqueness of ­every society,however, it may not be unreasonable to attempt comparisons. It may makesense, for example, to compare the concentration of wealth in the United Statesin 2018 with that of France in 1914 or Britain in 1800.
To be sure, the conditions u­ nder which property rights w­ ere exercised ­weredif­fer­ent in each case. The relevant ­legal, fiscal, and social systems differed inmany ways, as did asset categories (land, buildings, financial assets, immaterial
goods, and so on). Nevertheless, if one is aware of all t­ hese differences and neverloses sight of the social and po­liti­cal conditions u­ nder which the source docu­
ments w
­ ere constructed, comparison may still make sense. For instance, one
can estimate the share of wealth held by the wealthiest 10 ­percent and thepoorest 50 ­percent in each of t­ hese three socie­ties. Historical statistics are also
the best mea­sure of our ignorance. Citing data always reveals the need for ad­
ditional data, which usually cannot be found, and it is impor­tant to explain
why it cannot. One can then be explicit about which comparisons are pos­si­bleand which are not. In practice, some comparisons always make sense, even be­
tween socie­ties that think of themselves as exceptional or as so radically dif­fer­ent from ­others that learning from them is impossible. One of the main goalsof social science research is to identify pos­si­ble comparisons while excluding
impossible ones.
Comparison is useful ­because it can extract lessons from dif­f er­ent po­liti­cal
experiences and historical paths, analyze the effects of dif­f er­ent ­legal and fiscal
systems, establish common norms of social and economic justice, and build
institutions acceptable to the majority. Social scientists too often s­ ettle forsaying that ­every statistic is a social construct. This is of course true, but it cannot
be left at that, ­because to do so is to abandon key debates—on economic ­issues,for example—to ­others. It is fundamentally a conservative attitude or at any
rate an attitude that betrays deep skepticism about the possibility of deriving
lessons from imperfect historical sources.
Many historical pro­cesses of social and po­liti­cal emancipation have reliedon statistical and mathematical constructs of one sort or another. For instance,
it is difficult to or­ga­nize a fair system of universal suffrage without the census
data necessary to draw district bound­aries in such a way as to ensure that each
voter has identical weight. Mathe­matics can also help when it comes to defining
rules for translating votes into decisions. Fiscal justice is impossible without tax
schedules, which rely on well-­defined rules instead of the discretionary judg­

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Introduction . 45

ments of the tax collector. Th­ ose rules are derived in turn from abstract theo­
retical concepts such as income and capital. ­These are difficult to define, but
without them it is hard to get dif­f er­ent social groups to negotiate the compro­
mises needed to devise an acceptably fair fiscal system. In the f­ uture, ­people
may come to realize that educational justice is impossible without similar con­cepts for mea­sur­ing w­ hether the public resources available to less-­favored groups
are at least equivalent to ­those available to the favored (rather than markedly
inferior, as is the case ­today in most countries). When used carefully and inmoderation, the language of mathe­matics and statistics is an indispensable com­plement to natu­ral language when it comes to combating intellectual nation­
alism and overcoming elite re­sis­tance.

Outline of the Book
The remainder of this book is divided into four parts comprising seventeen
chapters. Part One, entitled “In­equality Regimes in History,” consists of fivechapters. Chapter 1 is a general introduction to what I call ternary (or trifunc­
tional) socie­ties, that is, socie­ties comprising three functional groups (clergy,
nobility, and third estate). Chapter 2 is devoted to Eu­ro­pean “socie­ties of­orders,” based on an equilibrium between intellectual and warrior elites andon specific forms of owner­ship and power relations. Chapter 3 looks at the ad­vent of owner­ship society, especially in the symbolic rupture of the French
Revolution, which attempted to establish a radical division between property
rights (theoretically open to all) and regalian rights (henceforth the mono­polyof the state) but which came to grief over the issue of per­sis­tent in­equality of
wealth. Chapter 4 examines the development of a hyper-­inegalitarian form ofowner­ship society in nineteenth-­century France (up to the eve of World War
I). Chapter 5 studies Eu­ro­pean variants of the transition from trifunctional toproprietarian logics, focusing on the British and Swedish cases. This ­will illus­
trate the variety of pos­si­ble trajectories as well as the importance of collective
mobilizations and help us to understand the influence of po­liti­cal and ideo­
logical differences on the transformation of in­equality regimes.
Part Two, entitled “Slave and Colonial Socie­ties,” consists of four chapters.
Chapter 6 looks at slave society, the most extreme type of in­equality regime. I
focus particularly on the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth c­ entury and on
the types of compensation offered to slave­owners. This ­will help us to appre­
ciate the power of the quasi-­sacred owner­ship regime that existed in this pe­
riod, which has left its stamp on the world we live in t­ oday. Chapter 7 looks at

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46 . Capital and Ideology

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the structure of in­equality in postslavery colonial socie­ties, which, though lessextreme than the slave socie­ties they supplanted, nevertheless also profoundly
influenced the structure of t­ oday’s in­equality, both between and within coun­tries. Chapters 8 and 9 examine the way in which non-­European trifunctionalsocie­ties ­were affected by contact with Eu­ro­pean colonial and proprietarian
powers. I focus first on the case of India (where ancient status divisions proved
unusually tenacious, partly b­ ecause of their rigid codification by the British col­onizers). I then take a broader Eurasian perspective, looking at China, Japan,
and Iran.
Part Three, entitled “The ­Great Transformation of the Twentieth ­Century,”
has four chapters. Chapter 10 analyzes the collapse of owner­ship society inthe wake of two world wars, the G­ reat Depression, the communist challenge,
and decolonization, combined with popu­lar and ideological mobilizations (in­cluding the rise of trade u­ nions and social democracy) that had been brewing
since the late nineteenth c­ entury. The result was a type of society less unequal
than the owner­ship society that preceded it. Chapter 11 looks at the achieve­
ments and limitations of postwar social democracy. Among social democra­
cy’s shortcomings ­were its failure to develop a more just idea of property, its
inability to confront the challenge of in­equality in higher education, and its
lack of a theory of transnational re­distribution. Chapter 12 considers the com­munist and postcommunist socie­ties of Rus­sia, China, and Eastern Eu­rope, in­cluding the postcommunist contribution to the recent rise of in­equality andturn to identity politics. Chapter 13 views the current global hypercapitalistin­equality regime in historical perspective, with an emphasis on its inability
to respond adequately to the two crises that are undermining it: the crisis ofin­equality and the environmental crisis.
Part Four, entitled “Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­liti­cal Conflict,” con­sists of four chapters, in which I study the changing social structure of party
electorates and po­liti­cal movements since the mid-­twentieth ­century and spec­
ulate about changes yet to come. Chapter 14 looks at the historical conditions­under which an egalitarian co­ali­tion first developed and ­later fell apart. In
France the redistributive program of social democracy was convincing enoughto draw support from working-­class ­people of dif­f er­ent backgrounds. Chapter 15
considers the disaggregation, gentrification, and “Brahminization” of postwar
social democracy in the United States and United Kingdom and finds common
structural ­causes in both countries. Chapter 16 extends the analy­sis to other
Western democracies as well as to Eastern Eu­rope, India, and Brazil. I also con­sider the emergence of a social-­nativist trap in the first two de­cades of the514-81779_ch01_B1_2P.indd 46

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Introduction . 47

twenty-­first ­century. ­Today’s identity politics is fueled, I argue, by the lack of apersuasive internationalist egalitarian platform—in other words, by the absenceof a truly credible social federalism. Chapter 17 derives lessons from the his­
torical experiences recounted in the previous chapters and envisions a partici­
patory form of socialism for the pre­sent ­century. In par­tic­u­lar, I consider a pos­si­ble basis for a just property regime resting on two main pillars: first, au­then­tic
power sharing and voting rights within firms as steps beyond co-­management
and self-­management and ­toward true social owner­ship, and second, a strongly
progressive tax on property, the proceeds of which would finance capital grants
to ­every young adult, thereby instituting a system of provisional owner­ship andpermanent circulation of wealth. I also look into how educational and fiscal
justice might be guaranteed by citizen oversight. Fi­nally, I investigate what isnecessary to ensure a just democracy and a just border system. The key issue­here is how to reor­ga­nize the global economy along social federalist lines so as
to allow the emergence of new forms of fiscal, social, and environmental soli­
darity, with the ultimate goal of substituting true global governance for the trea­
ties that ­today mandate ­free movement of goods and capital.
Hurried readers might be tempted to turn directly to the final chapter andconclusion. Although I cannot stop them, I warn them that they may find it
difficult to follow the argument without at least glancing at Parts One throughFour. ­Others may feel that the material presented in Parts One and Two deals
with such ancient history that they fail to grasp its relevance and therefore
prefer to focus on Parts Three and Four. I have tried to begin each section andchapter with enough recapitulations and references to allow the book to be readin more than one way. Each reader is thus ­free to choose a path, even though
the most logical sequence is to read the chapters in the order they arepresented.
Only the principal sources and references are cited in the text and footnotes.
Readers seeking more detailed information about the historical sources, bib­
liographic references, and methods used in this book are invited to consult theonline technical appendix at http://­piketty​.p­ se​.­ens​.­fr​/­ideology​.­17

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17. All statistical series, graphs, and t­ables in this book are also available online at
http://­piketty​.­pse​.e­ ns​.­fr​/­ideology.

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{ Seventeen }Ele­ments for a Participatory Socialism
for the Twenty-­First ­Century

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In this book I have tried to pre­sent a reasoned history of in­equality regimes
from early trifunctional and slave socie­ties to modern hypercapitalist and post­colonial ones. All h­ uman socie­ties need to justify their inequalities. Their his­
tories are or­ga­nized around the ideologies they develop to regulate, by meansof complex and changing institutional arrangements, social relations, property
rights, and borders. The search for a just in­equality is of course not exempt fromhy­poc­risy on the part of dominant groups, but ­every ideology contains plau­
sible and sincere ele­ments from which we can derive useful lessons.
In the last few chapters, I have tried to highlight the significant dangers
posed by the rise of socioeconomic in­equality since 1980. In a period marked
by internationalization of trade and rapid expansion of higher education, social-­
democratic parties failed to adapt quickly enough, and the left-­right cleavage
that had made pos­si­ble the mid-­twentieth-­century reduction of in­equality grad­ually fell apart. The conservative revolution of the 1980s, the collapse of Soviet
communism, and the development of neo-­proprietarian ideology vastly in­creased the concentration of income and wealth in the first two de­cades of thetwenty-­first ­century. In­equality has in turn heightened social tensions almost
everywhere. For want of a constructive egalitarian and universal po­liti­cal outlet,­these tensions have fostered the kinds of nationalist identity cleavages that wesee ­today in practically e­ very part of the world: in the United States andEu­rope, India and Brazil, China and the ­Middle East. When ­people are told that­there is no credible alternative to the socioeconomic organ­ization and class in­equality that exist t­oday, it is not surprising that they invest their hopes in
defending their borders and identities instead.
Yet the new hyper-­inegalitarian narrative that has taken hold since the 1980s
is not ordained by fate. While it is partly a product of history and of the com­munist debacle, it is also a consequence of the failure to disseminate knowl­edge, of disciplinary barriers that are too rigid, and of insufficient citizen ap­
propriation of economic and financial issues, which are too often left to o­ thers.
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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 967

The study of history has convinced me that it is pos­si­ble to transcend ­today’s
cap­i­tal­ist system and to outline the contours of a new participatory socialism
for the twenty-­first ­century—­a new universalist egalitarian perspective basedon social owner­ship, education, and shared knowledge and power. In this final
chapter, I w­ ill attempt to gather up some of the ele­ments that I believe w­ ill help
us to pro­gress t­ oward this goal, based on the lessons of the past highlighted inprevious chapters. I w­ ill begin by looking at the conditions of just owner­ship.
New forms of social owner­ship w­ ill need to be developed, along with new waysof apportioning voting rights and decision-­making powers within firms. The
notion of permanent private owner­ship ­will need to be replaced by temporary
private owner­ship, which w­ ill require steeply progressive taxes on large con­centrations of property. The proceeds of the wealth tax w­ ill then be parceledout to ­every citizen in the form of a universal capital endowment, thus ensuringpermanent circulation of property and wealth. I ­will also consider the role ofprogressive income taxes, universal basic incomes, and educational justice. Fi­
nally, I ­will look at the issue of democracy and borders and ask how it might
be pos­si­ble to reor­g a­nize the global economy so as to f­ avor a transnationaldemo­cratic system aimed at achieving social, fiscal, and environmental justice.
To be perfectly frank, it would be absurd for anyone to claim to have per­fectly satisfactory and convincing answers to such complex questions or to pre­sent ready-­made, easily applicable solutions. That is obviously not the purposeof the pages that follow. The ­whole history of in­equality regimes shows thatwhat makes historical change pos­si­ble is above all the existence of social andpo­liti­cal mobilizations for change and concrete experimentation with alterna­
tive arrangements. History is the product of crises; it never unfolds as textbooks
might lead one to expect. Nevertheless, it seems useful to devote this final
chapter to the lessons one can draw from the available sources and to the posi­tions I would be inclined to defend if I had all the time in the world to delib­
erate. I have no idea what the crises to come might look like or what ideas w­ ill
be drawn upon to propose new paths forward. But t­ here is no doubt that ide­
ology ­will continue to play a central role, for better and for worse.

Justice as Participation and Deliberation
What is a just society? For the purposes of this book, I propose the following
imperfect definition. A just society is one that allows all of its members accessto the widest pos­si­ble range of fundamental goods. Fundamental goods include
education, health, the right to vote, and more generally to participate as fully

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968 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictas pos­si­ble in the vari­ous forms of social, cultural, economic, civic, and po­liti­cal
life. A just society organizes socioeconomic relations, property rights, and the
distribution of income and wealth in such a way as to allow its least advantaged
members to enjoy the highest pos­si­ble life conditions. A just society in no way
requires absolute uniformity or equality. To the extent that income and wealthinequalities are the result of dif­fer­ent aspirations and distinct life choices or
permit improvement of the standard of living and expansion of the opportu­
nities available to the disadvantaged, they may be considered just. But this must
be demonstrated, not assumed, and this argument cannot be invoked to jus­tify any degree of in­equality whatsoever, as it too often is.
This imprecise definition of the just society does not resolve all issues—­farfrom it. But to go further requires collective deliberation on the basis of each
citizen’s historical and individual experience with participation by all membersof society. That is why deliberation is both an end and a means. The definitionis nevertheless useful ­because it allows us to lay down certain princi­ples. In par­tic­u­lar, equality of access to fundamental goods must be absolute: one cannot
offer greater po­liti­cal participation, extended education, or higher income tocertain groups while depriving o­ thers of the right to vote, attend school, or re­ceive health care. Where do fundamental goods such as education, health,housing, culture, and so on end? That is obviously a m­ atter for debate andcannot be de­cided outside the framework of a par­tic­u­lar society in a par­tic­u­lar historical context.
To my way of thinking, the in­ter­est­ing questions arise when one begins tolook at the idea of justice in par­tic­u­lar historical socie­ties and to analyze how
conflicts over justice are embodied in discourse, institutions, and specific so­
cial, fiscal, and educational arrangements. Some readers may find that the
princi­ples of justice I set forth ­here are similar to ­those formulated by John
Rawls in 1971.1 Th­ ere is some truth to this, provided one adds that similar
princi­ples can be found in much ­earlier forms in many civilizations: for instance,in Article I of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen of 1789.2

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1. Especially his “difference princi­ple”: “Social and economic inequalities are to be to
the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.” This formula,taken from J. Rawls, Theory of Justice (1971), was repeated in J. Rawls’s Po­liti­cal Liberalism (1993). The theory is sometimes summarized as “maximin” (the ultimatesocial objective is to maximize minimum well-­being), even though it also insists on
absolute equality of fundamental rights.
2. “Men are born and remain ­free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only bebased on common social utility.” The second part of this proposition has often

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 969

Nevertheless, ­grand declarations of princi­ple like ­those formulated during the
French Revolution or in the US’s Declaration of In­de­pen­dence did nothing
to prevent the per­sis­tence and exacerbation of large social inequalities in bothcountries throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, nor did
they prevent the establishment of systems of colonial domination, slavery, andracial segregation that endured ­until the 1960s. Hence it is wise to be wary of
abstract and general princi­ples of social justice and to concentrate instead on
the way in which t­ hose princi­ples are embodied in specific socie­ties and con­crete policies and institutions.3
The ele­ments of a participatory socialism that I ­will pre­sent below are based
primarily on the historical lessons presented in this book—­especially the les­sons that can be drawn from the major transformations of in­equality regimesthat took place in the twentieth ­century. In reflecting on how to apply ­thoselessons, I have had in mind t­ oday’s socie­ties, the socie­ties of the early twenty-­
first ­century. Some of the items discussed below demand significant state, ad­ministrative, and fiscal capacities if they are to be implemented, and in thatsense they are most directly applicable to Western socie­ties and to the moredeveloped non-­Western ones. But I have tried to think about them in a uni­versal perspective, and they may gradually become applicable to poor andemerging countries as well. The proposals I examine ­here derive from the demo­
cratic socialist tradition, notably in the emphasis I place on transcending pri­vate owner­ship and involving workers and their representatives in corporate
governance (a practice that has already played an impor­tant role in German
and Nordic social democracy). I prefer to speak of “participatory socialism” toemphasize the goal of participation and decentralization and to sharply dis­tinguish this proj­ect from the hypercentralized state socialism that was triedin the twentieth c­ entury in the Soviet Union and other communist states (and is
still widely practiced in the Chinese public sector). I also envision a central role
for the educational system and emphasize the themes of temporary owner­ship
been interpreted as opening the way to just in­equality. See T. Piketty, Capital in the
Twenty-­First ­Century, trans. A. Goldhammer (Harvard University Press, 2014),
pp. 479–481.
3. The principal limitation of the Rawlsian approach is that it remains fairly abstractand says nothing precise about the levels of in­equality and fiscal progressivity theprinci­ples imply. Thus Friedrich A. von Hayek was able to write in the preface toLaw, Legislation, and Liberty (1982) that he felt close to Rawls and his “difference
princi­ple,” which in practice has often been used to justify high levels of in­equality
to act as a useful incentive (on the basis of ­little evidence).

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970 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictand progressive taxation (bearing in mind that progressive taxes played an
impor­tant role in British and American progressivism and ­were widely debatedthough never implemented during the French Revolution).
In view of the largely positive results of demo­cratic socialism and social de­mocracy in the twentieth ­century, especially in Western Eu­rope, I think thatthe word “socialism” still deserves to be used in the twenty-­first ­century to evokethat tradition even as we seek to move beyond it. And move beyond it we must
if we are to overcome the most glaring deficiencies of the social-­democratic re­sponse of the past four de­cades. In any case, the substance of the proposals we­will discuss ­matters more than any label one might attach to them. It is per­fectly comprehensible that for some readers the word “socialism” w­ ill have beenpermanently tarnished by the Soviet experience (or by the actions of more re­cent governments that w­ ere “socialist” in name only). Therefore, they would
prefer a dif­fer­ent word. Nevertheless, I hope that such readers w­ ill at least follow
my argument and the propositions that flow from it, which in fact draw on ex­
periences and traditions of many kinds.4
Note, fi­nally, that the options defended ­here reflect the following thought
experiment. Suppose that we have unlimited time for debate in an im­mense
global agora. The subject of debate is how best to or­ga­nize the property regime,
fiscal and educational systems, borders, and the demo­cratic regime itself. The
choices I make below are the ones I would defend in such a setting on the basisof the historical knowledge I acquired to write this book and in the hope of
persuading the largest pos­si­ble number of p­ eople that t­ hese are the policies thatshould be implemented. However useful such a thought experiment might be,
it is clearly artificial in several re­spects. First, no one has unlimited time for de­bate. In par­tic­u­lar, po­liti­cal movements and parties often have very l­ ittle time
to communicate their ideas and proposals to citizens, who in turn have ­limited

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4. Some of the ideas presented ­here, in par­tic­u­lar on the subject of circulation ofproperty and taxation of inheritances and wealth, are similar in spirit to the ideas
of authors in the French Solidarist Socialist tradition such as Léon Bourgeois andÉmile Durkheim (see Chap. 11). Note, too, the proximity to the notion of“property-­owning democracy” developed by James M­ eade. The prob­lem is that
this notion (like Rawls’s concepts) has at times been invoked for conservative pur­poses. See, for example, B. Jackson, “Property-­Owning Democracy: A ShortHistory,” in Property-­Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond, ed. M. O’Neill and
T. Williamson (Blackwell, 2012). By design, the options defended ­here are basedon the historical experience of many countries since the nineteenth ­century andtherefore combine a number of intellectual traditions.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 971

patience for hearing them (often for good reasons, b­ ecause ­people have otherpriorities in life besides listening to their po­liti­cal arguments).
Last but not least, if this endless deliberation w­ ere ever to take place inreal­ity, I would no doubt have reason to revise the positions I am about todefend, which inevitably reflect the ­limited range of arguments, data, and his­
torical sources to which I have been exposed to date. Each new discussion fur­ther enriches the fund of material on which I base my reflections. I havealready revised my positions profoundly as a result of the readings, encounters,
and debates in which I have been fortunate to participate, and I ­will continue
to revise my views in the f­ uture. In other words, justice must always be con­ceived as the result of ongoing collective deliberation. No book and no single­human being can ever define the ideal property regime, the perfect voting
system, or the miraculous tax schedule. Pro­gress ­toward justice can occur only
as the result of a vast collective experiment. As history unfolds, the experienceof each individual must be brought to bear in the widest pos­si­ble deliberation.
The ele­ments I w­ ill explore h­ ere are meant merely to indicate pos­si­ble paths
for experimentation, derived from analy­sis of the histories recounted in the pre­ceding chapters.

On the Transcendence of Capitalism and Private Property
What is just owner­ship? This is the most complex and central question we must
try to answer if the goal is to define participatory socialism and imagine thetranscendence of capitalism. For the purposes of this book, I have defined pro­
prietarianism as a po­liti­cal ideology based on the absolute defense of private
property; capitalism is the extension of proprietarianism to the age of large-­
scale industry, international finance, and more recently to the digital economy.
At bottom capitalism rests on the concentration of economic power in thehands of the ­owners of capital. In princi­ple, the o­ wners of real estate capitalcan decide to whom they wish to rent and at what price while the ­owners offinancial and professional capital govern corporations according to the princi­pleof “one share, one vote,” which entitles them, among other t­ hings, to decide bythemselves whom to hire and at what wage.
In practice, this strict cap­i­tal­ist model has been altered and modified invari­ous ways, and the notion of private property has therefore evolved since
the nineteenth ­century, owing to changes in the ­legal and social system and thetax system. Changes in the l­ egal and social system ­limited the power of the­owners of property: for instance, renters w­ ere given long-­term guarantees

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972 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictagainst evictions and rent increases, and some w­ ere even granted the right topurchase at a low price apartments or land that they had occupied for a suffi­
ciently long period of time—­a veritable re­distribution of wealth. Similarly, thepower of shareholders in firms was strictly ­limited by ­labor codes and social
legislation; in some countries, worker representatives w­ ere granted seats andvoting rights alongside shareholders on boards of directors, a move that if
carried to its logical conclusion would amount to a veritable redefinition ofproperty rights.
The tax system also curtailed the rights of property o­ wners. Progressive
inheritance taxes, which attained rates as high as 30–40 ­percent in most devel­
oped countries in the twentieth c­ entury (and 70–80 ­percent in the UnitedStates and United Kingdom for many de­cades) amounted in practice to trans­
forming permanent owner­ship into temporary owner­ship. In other words, eachgeneration is allowed to accumulate considerable wealth, but part of that wealthmust be returned to the community at that generation’s passing or shared withother potential heirs, who thus get a fresh start in life. Furthermore, progressive
income taxes, assessed at rates comparable to the inheritance tax (or even higher
in the United Kingdom and United States), which historically ­were directed athigh capital incomes, also made it increasingly difficult to perpetuate large for­tunes across generations (without a significant reduction in expenditure).
In order to transcend capitalism and private property and bring participa­
tory socialism into being, I propose to rely on and improve ­these two instru­
ments. Briefly, much more can be done with the ­legal and fiscal systems thanhas been done thus far: first, we can establish true social owner­ship of capitalby more extensive power sharing within firms, and second, we can make owner­ship of capital temporary by establishing progressive taxes on large fortunes
and using the proceeds to finance a universal capital endowment, thus pro­moting permanent circulation of property.

Sharing Power in Firms: An Experimentation Strategy
Begin with social owner­ship. Systems for sharing voting rights within firms haveexisted in Germanic and Nordic Eu­rope since the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Workers’ representatives hold half the seats on boards of directors in German
companies and a third of the seats in Sweden (including small business in the
Swedish case), regardless of ­whether they own any capital.5 Th­ ese so-­called
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5. See Chap. 11 for a more detailed analy­sis.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 973

co-­management (or codetermination) arrangements w­ ere the result of hard-­
fought ­battles waged by ­unions and their po­liti­cal allies. The strug­gle began in
the late nineteenth ­century. The balance of power began to shift ­after WorldWar I and changed decisively ­after World War II. Substantial changes in thelaw went hand in hand with major constitutional innovations. Specifically, theGerman constitutions of 1919 and 1949 a­ dopted a social definition of the rightsof owner­ship, which took into account the general interest and the good of
the community. Property rights ceased to be held sacred. Though shareholders
initially fought ­these changes tooth and nail, the new rules have now been inforce for more than half a c­ entury and enjoy widespread public approval.
All available evidence shows that co-­management has been a ­great success.
It has encouraged greater worker involvement in shaping the long-­term strate­
gies of employers and counterbalanced the often harmful short-­term focus ofshareholders and financial interests. It has helped the Germanic and Nordic
countries to develop an economic and social model that is more productive andless inegalitarian than other models. It should therefore be ­adopted without
delay in other countries in its maximal version, with half the board seats in allprivate firms, large or small, given to workers.6
As promising as Germano-­Nordic co-­management is, it suffers from nu­
merous limitations, starting with the fact that shareholders have the decisive
vote in case of a tie. Two pos­si­ble improvements are worth considering. First,
if wealth in­equality is reduced by way of progressive taxation, capital endow­­ ill discuss in due course, workers
ments, and circulation of property, which I w
may be able to acquire shares in their firm and thus shift the balance of powerby adding shareholder votes to the half they already hold as members of theboard. Second, the rules apportioning votes on the basis of capital invested
should also be rethought. As noted ­earlier, it would not be in the general in­terest to entirely eliminate the link between capital invested and economic
power in the firm, at least in the smallest companies. If a person invests all her
savings in a proj­ect of passionate interest, ­there is nothing wrong with her being
able to cast more votes than a worker hired the day before, who may be setting
aside his earnings to develop a proj­ect of his own.7
6. Depending on the country, the l­egal system, and the size of a firm, the body re­sponsible for setting the overall direction of the com­pany may by a ­simple over­sight committee or management council rather than a board of directors in theusual sense.
7. See Chaps. 11 and 12.

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974 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

Might it not be justifiable, however, to place a ceiling on the votes of large
shareholders in major corporations? One recent proposal along t­ hese lines
concerns “nonprofit media organ­izations”: investments beyond 10 ­percent ofa firm’s capital would obtain voting rights corresponding to one-­third of theamount invested, with the voting rights of smaller investors (including jour­nalists, readers, crowd funders, and so on) augmented accordingly.8 Initiallyconceived for nonprofit media organ­izations, this proposal could be extended
to other sectors, including profit-­making ones. A good formula might be to
apply a similar vote ceiling to investments above 10 ­percent of capital in firms
above a certain size.9 The justification for this is that ­there is no reason why alarge firm should leave power concentrated in the hands of a single individualand deprive itself of the benefits of collective deliberation.
Note in passing that many organ­izations in both the private and public
sector function perfectly well without shareholders. For instance, most private
universities are or­ga­nized as foundations. The generous donors who contributeto their capital may derive some benefit from their contributions (such as pref­
erential admission for their ­children or even a seat on the board), which inci­
dentally should be regulated more strictly. Th­ ere are other prob­lems with thismodel, which ­ought to be corrected.10 Nevertheless, donors are in a much
weaker position than shareholders. Their contributions become part of the uni­
versity’s capital, and compensation such as seats on the board can be with­drawn at any time; with shareholders and their heirs this is not pos­si­ble. Yetcontributors continue to give, and private universities continue to function. To
be sure, attempts have been made to or­ga­nize universities as profit-­making cor­porations (think of Trump University), but the results have been so disastrous

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8. See J. Cagé, Saving the Media, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Harvard University
Press, 2016). Profit taking would not be allowed (nor could shares beyond a certain
threshold be sold). In exchange, investors in the media could be granted tax deduc­tions similar to t­ hose granted to contributors to nonprofit organ­ization in educa­tion and the arts. I ­will say more ­later about taxing contributions.
9. For example, the investment threshold above which vote reductions apply could be
set at 90 ­percent for small firms (fewer than ten employees), decreasingly gradually
to 10 ­percent for larger firms (more than one hundred employees). Obviously,­these thresholds are open to debate and experimentation, and the numbers given­here should not be taken as definitive.
10. This educational model has given rise to growing inequalities in the university
system, which should be corrected. I w­ ill come back to this.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 975

that the practice has virtually dis­appeared.11 This clearly shows that it is not
only pos­si­ble to drastically limit the influence of investors but also that organ­
izations often work better when investor power is ­limited. Similar observations
could be made about the health, culture, transportation, and environmental
sectors, which ­will likely play a central role in the ­future. In general, the ideathat the “one share, one vote” model of corporate organ­ization is indisputably
the best cannot withstand close scrutiny.
Reducing wealth in­equality and capping large shareholder voting rights are
the two most natu­ral ways of extending the Germano-­Nordic co-­management
model. ­There are ­others, such as a recent British proposal to have some board
members elected by a mixed assembly of shareholders and workers.12 This
could allow novel deliberations to unfold and new co­ali­tions to emerge,
breaking out of the ste­reo­typical roles that co-­management sometimes forceson participants. But the debate does not end t­ here: concrete experimentationis the only way to develop new orga­nizational forms and social relations. Whatis certain is that ­there are many ways to improve on co-­management as it cur­rently exists so that social owner­ship and corporate power sharing can con­tribute to the goal of transcending capitalism.

Progressive Wealth Taxes and Circulation of CapitalSocial owner­ship and shared voting rights in firms are impor­tant tools for tran­
scending capitalism, but by themselves they are not enough. Once one accepts
the idea that private property ­will continue to play a role in a just society, espe­
cially in small and medium firms, it becomes essential to find institutional ar­
rangements that ­will prevent unlimited concentration of owner­ship which does
not serve the general interest, regardless of the reasons for such concentration.
In this re­spect, the lessons of history are quite clear: the extreme concentrationof wealth that we observe in nearly all socie­ties (and especially in Eu­rope) up
to the early twentieth c­ entury, when the wealthiest 10 ­percent owned 80–90
11. Why have such attempts failed? Perhaps ­because the profit motive tends to under­
mine the values of disinterestedness and intrinsic motivation that are essential to theeducational enterprise. For similar reasons, experiments with offering students mon­etary bonuses based on exam results have generally produced very negative results(with intensive cramming on frequently posed questions and accelerated loss ofcompetence in other areas). See the online appendix (piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology).
12. See Chap. 11.

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976 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictp­ ercent of all property (and the wealthiest 1 ­percent owned 60–70 ­percent), did
not serve the general interest at all. The clearest proof of this assertion is that thevery significant reduction of in­equality that followed the shocks and political-­ideological changes of the period 1914–1945 did not inhibit economic develop­
ment. The concentration of wealth was significantly lower ­after World War II(with the top decile reduced to owning around 50–60 ­percent and the top cen­tile 20–30 ­percent) than before 1914, yet growth accelerated.13 What­ever thewealthy of the Belle Époque (1880–1914) may have thought to the contrary, ex­treme in­equality was not the necessary price of prosperity and industrial devel­
opment. Indeed, all signs are that the excessive concentration of wealth exacer­bated social and nationalist tensions while blocking the social and educational
investments that made the balanced postwar development model pos­si­ble. Fur­thermore, the increased concentration of wealth that we have seen since the1980s in the United States, Rus­sia, India, and China and to a lesser extent inEu­rope shows that extreme wealth in­equality can reconstitute itself for manydif­fer­ent reasons, from profiteering on privatizations to the fact that large port­
folios earn higher returns than small ones, without necessarily yielding higher
growth for the majority of the population—­far from it.14
To prevent a return to such extreme wealth concentration, progressive taxes
on inheritances and income must again play the role that they used to play inthe twentieth c­ entury when rates in the United States and United Kingdom
ran as high as 70–90 ­percent on the highest incomes and largest fortunes for
decades—­decades in which growth ­rose to unpre­ce­dented levels.15 Historicalexperience shows, however, that inheritance and income taxes alone are notenough; they need to be complemented by a progressive annual tax on wealth,which I see as the central tool for achieving true circulation of capital.
­There are several reasons for this. First, the wealth tax is more difficult tomanipulate than the income tax, particularly for the very wealthy, whose tax­
able income is often a small fraction of their wealth, while their a­ ctual economic
income accumulates in f­ amily holdings or special-­purpose vehicles. If a pro­
gressive income tax is the only available tool, it is almost inevitable that wealthy
individuals ­will pay risibly small taxes compared to the size of their fortunes.16

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13. See Figs. 10.4–10.5 and Figs. 11.12–11.15.
14. See Figs. 13.8–13.9 and ­Table 13.1.
15. See Figs. 10.11–10.12.
16. For instance, Warren Buffett paid $1.8 million in federal income tax in 2015 on a
fortune estimated at $65 billion or a tax rate of 0.003 ­percent of his wealth. See E.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 977

Note, moreover, that wealth is in itself an indicator of capacity to contributeto common expenditures—an indicator at least as relevant and consistent as
annual income, which can vary for all sorts of reasons (some of which are ir­
relevant to deciding what a just tax should be). For example, if a person owns
impor­tant properties (such as h­ ouses, apartments, ware­houses, and factories)that for one reason or another legitimately generate no significant income, per­haps b­ ecause they have been set aside for some purpose or have not been
maintained, he should still be required to pay taxes. In fact, in all countries
where t­ here is a tax on real estate (­whether housing or offices or professional
equipment of any kind), such as the property tax in the United States or thetaxe foncière (real estate tax) in France, no one would think of exempting large­owners (­whether private individuals or firms) on the grounds that they derive
no income from their property.17 But t­ hese taxes date from the eigh­teenth or
nineteenth centuries, and for historical reasons many types of assets are exempt(such as intangible and financial assets). What is more, the tax is strictly pro­portional: the same tax rate is applied to all assets, no ­matter how large the port­
folio to which they belong. Hence the redistributive effect is much smaller
than it would be if total assets of all kinds (net of debt) ­were taxed at progres­sive rates.18
Saez and G. Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice (Norton, 2019), pp. 155–156. Publicdata on billionaires in other countries, such as Liliane Bettencourt in France in theearly 2010s, paint a similar picture: taxable income of a few million euros com­pared with a fortune of several billion. One possibility would be to apply the in­come tax schedule to an “economic income” estimated on the basis of wealth (forexample, by assuming a realistic yield), but this would require accurate declaration
and registration of wealth (and not simply of income).
17. Except where the property owned is of ­little value. But no one would think ofgiving a property tax exemption to the owner of numerous apartment buildings,
ware­houses, or offices on the grounds that she was not deriving significant income
from them when it would suffice to sell a small portion of the property to pay thetax. What is more, this would contribute to circulating wealth into the hands ofmore dynamic o­ wners. This is the classic argument in f­ avor of the property tax, in­de­pen­dent of income, and it is relevant h­ ere to a certain extent. If the w­ hole systemdepended on capital owned, then a firm making temporary losses would pay asmuch tax as another making enormous profits (on equivalent capital), which could
push the first firm into bankruptcy for the wrong reasons. That is why an ideal tax
system should always strike a balance between taxing property and taxing income.
18. On the history of property taxes in the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries anddebates surrounding them, see Chaps. 4 and 11.

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978 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

Compared with the progressive inheritance tax, which is also a tax on wealth(in that it depends solely on owner­ship and not on income), the advantage ofthe annual wealth tax is that it can adapt much more quickly to changes in
wealth and in the ability of each taxpayer to pay. Th­ ere is no need to wait forMark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos to turn 90 years old and pass their wealth totheir heirs in order to collect taxes. The inheritance tax is by its very nature nota good tool for taxing newly amassed fortunes. The annual wealth tax is better
suited to the task, especially in view of t­ oday’s longer life expectancy. Note,
moreover, that current wealth taxes (such as the property or real estate tax),
for all their limitations, have always generated more revenues than inheritancetaxes, yet they are less unpop­u­lar. Indeed, it is striking to see how unpop­u­larinheritance taxes are in all surveys, while property and income taxes are rela­
tively well tolerated. Progressive wealth taxes (such as the ISF in France or the“millionaire tax” mentioned in US polling on the subject) are very popu­lar.19
In other words, taxpayers would prefer to pay an annual tax on the order of
1–2 ­percent of the value of their property over a period of de­cades rather thanhaving to pay 20–30 ­percent when they pass their estate on to their heirs.
Of course, the hostility of some lower-­and middle-­class taxpayers to theinheritance tax may be due to a misperception of the ­actual incidence of thattax (a misperception that ­those hostile to progressive taxation naturally do what
they can to sustain). But it also reflects a comprehensible fear on the part of­people who have recently purchased property and who may have ­limited cash
reserves and financial assets that their ­children ­will be obliged to pay a lump­sum tax so large that they may be forced to sell the property (be it a home, avacation ­house, or a small business) in order to pay the tax.20 In fact, when one
considers all ­these aspects of the issue, it seems reasonable that the annual prop­

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19. On this subject, see A. Spire, Résistance à l’impôt, attachement à l’Etat (La Décou­verte, 2018). This survey also shows that lower-­and middle-­class taxpayers have afairly accurate understanding of the overall low progressivity of the tax system andof the regressivity at the top (given the weight of indirect taxes such as value-­added
taxes, gas taxes, and so on and of social security taxes on low and medium wages aswell as opportunities for tax avoidance and manipulation at the top of the hier­archy) as well as the in­equality of access to certain public expenditures (such as
education and health). See also M. Forse and M. Parodi, “Les Français et la justicefiscale,” Revue de l’OFCE, 2015. On the tax structure and the issue of progressivity,
see Fig. 11.19.
20. On the composition of small, medium, and large fortunes, see Fig. 11.17.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 979

erty tax should play a larger role than the inheritance tax (in terms of tax rev­enue), provided that the annual tax is made progressive.21

The Diffusion of Wealth and the Universal Capital Endowment
Last but not least, a progressive wealth tax is an indispensable tool for ensuring
a greater circulation of wealth and broader diffusion of property than in thepast. To be sure, the progressive inheritance and income taxes that w­ ere devel­
oped in the twentieth c­ entury significantly reduced income and wealthin­equality in Eu­rope, the United States, and Japan. Despite the historical im­
portance of this change, it is impor­tant not to lose sight of the fact that wealthnevertheless remained extremely concentrated. In Eu­rope, the top decile’s shareof private wealth decreased from 80–90 ­percent in 1900–1910 to 50–60 ­percent
in 2010–2020. Not only is that still a considerable share for just 10 ­percent of
the population, but the fact is that the beneficiaries of this reduction of wealthin­equality ­were almost exclusively ­people in the fiftieth to ninetieth percentile(whose share r­ ose from barely 10 ­percent to 30–40 ­percent of the total). By
contrast, the diffusion of wealth never ­really touched the bottom 50 ­percent,whose share of total private wealth has always been around 5–10 ­percent (oreven lower) in all countries and periods for which data are available.22 Since
the 1980s, moreover, the share of private wealth held by the disadvantaged
classes (the bottom 50 ­percent of the distribution) and by the patrimonial­middle class (as I call the next, or “­middle,” 40 ­percent—­the fiftieth to nine­tieth percentile of the distribution) has shrunk nearly everywhere. This is truein par­tic­u­lar in the United States, where the share of wealth owned by the well-­
to-do (the top decile) has risen above 70 ­percent in the 2010s. It is also thecase in Eu­rope, though to a lesser degree, as well as in India, China, and Rus­sia,
where the concentration of wealth is rapidly approaching that of the UnitedStates (or surpassing it, in the case of Rus­sia).23
21. In theoretical terms, when one introduces credit constraints or ­future variations inasset values and yields (unpredictable at the moment of transmission), it becomes
preferable to collect a large share of the inheritance tax in the form of an annual
wealth tax. See E. Saez and T. Piketty, “A Theory of Optimal Inheritance Taxa­tion,” Econometrica, 2013.
22. See Figs. 4.1–4.2 and Figs. 5.4–5.5. Furthermore, we find the same low share(around 5–10 ­percent) for the bottom 50 ­percent of each age cohort. See the on­line appendix, Fig. S11.18.
23. See Figs. 10.4–10.5 and Figs. 13.8–13.10.

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980 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al ConflictThis ­limited diffusion of wealth implies that the bottom 50 ­percent haveminimal opportunity to participate in economic life by creating and r­ unninga business. This is not the ideal of participation that a just society should strive
to achieve. Many attempts have been made to diffuse wealth more broadly, in­cluding agrarian reform intended to break up large farms of hundreds or
thousands of acres to allow more modest farmers to work their own land andreap the fruits thereof instead of paying rent to landlords. The French Revolu­tion witnessed a number of more or less ambitious efforts of land reform, al­though poor peasants w­ ere not always the primary beneficiaries.24 More am­bitious agrarian reforms have been carried out in other countries over the past
two centuries: in Ireland and Spain in the late nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies, in Mexico ­after the revolution of 1910, in Japan and ­Korea a­ fter WorldWar II, and in certain Indian states (such as West Bengal or Kerala) in the 1970s
and 1980s.25
Agrarian reform has thus played a significant role in diffusing wealth in avariety of contexts. Yet if ­faces a number of structural prob­lems. First, ­there isno obvious reason why wealth re­distribution should be ­limited to property inland (other than simplicity, especially in largely rural socie­ties). In practice, dif­fer­ent forms of capital are complementary, and the hyperconcentration ofother assets (such as equipment, tools, ware­houses, offices, buildings, cash, andfinancial assets of all kinds) poses similar prob­lems to the concentration oflanded wealth. In par­tic­u­lar, it leads to hyperconcentration of economic powerin the hands of a few. Furthermore, agrarian reformers tend to assume that it­will suffice to redistribute property once and for all, ­after which economic de­velopment ­will proceed harmoniously forever a­fter. Historical experience
shows, however, that extreme in­equality of wealth tends to reproduce itself inother forms as the agrarian socie­ties of the past give way to socie­ties based on
industrial and financial wealth and real estate. Wealth can become reconcen­
trated for many reasons, including economic upheavals that benefit a minority(such as profitable privatizations or technological revolutions) and vari­ous cu­
mulative mechanisms that allow the largest initial stakes to grow more rapidly

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24. See Chaps. 3 and 4.
25. See Chaps. 5 and 11. By contrast, in the United States and South Africa, no land
was redistributed to former slaves (despite their having worked for centuries
without pay and despite promises of “forty acres and a mule” made to encourage
the slaves to rise up against the confederacy at the end of the Civil War) or to vic­
tims of apartheid (about which debate continues). See Chap. 6.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 981

than smaller fortunes (by achieving higher yields, using market power, or pur­suing strategies of ­legal and fiscal optimization).
If one truly wants to diffuse wealth so as to allow the bottom 50 ­percent toacquire significant assets and participate fully in economic and social life, it istherefore essential to generalize and transform agrarian reform into a perma­
nent pro­cess affecting the ­whole panoply of private capital. The most logical
was to proceed would be to establish a capital endowment to be given to eachyoung adult (at age 25, say), financed by a progressive tax on private wealth. By
design, such a system would diffuse wealth at the base while limiting concen­
tration at the summit.

The Progressive Tax Triptych: Property, Inheritance, Income
To clarify ­these ideas, I have indicated in ­Table 17.1 what a tax system capableof financing such a universal endowment might look like. In the broadest terms,
the tax system of the just society would rest on three principal progressive taxes:
a progressive annual tax on property, a progressive tax on inheritances, and a
progressive tax on income.26 As indicated h­ ere, the annual property tax andthe inheritance tax would together yield about 5 ­percent of national income,27
all of which would be used to finance the capital endowment. The progressive
income tax, which would include social security taxes and a progressive carbon
tax, would yield about 45 ­percent of national income, which would be used tofinance all other public expenditures, including the basic income and, above
all, the welfare state (which would cover health, education, pensions, and soon).28 I w­ ill begin by discussing the wealth component—­that is, the progressive
26. Over the course of history, annual property taxes (based on property owned) havegone by a variety of names, such as property tax, wealth tax, capital tax, tax on
fortune, real estate tax, and so on. See Chap. 11. I prefer to speak of a property tax(impôt sur la propriété) b­ ecause it emphasizes the importance of property as a social
relation. The progressive property tax that I envision is based on all forms of prop­
erty (real estate, business and financial assets, net of debt). L­ ater, I ­will also say
more about the role of corporate taxes, which are included ­here ­under the head of
the progressive tax on income.
27. Of which roughly 4 ­percent would come from the annual property tax and1 ­percent from the inheritance tax.
28. In the tax system presented ­here, ­there are no indirect taxes (except when needed
to correct an externality, as with the carbon tax, which I ­will discuss l­ ater). Broadly
speaking, indirect taxes (such as the VAT) are extremely regressive, and I prefer to514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 981

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982 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict­Table 17.1
Circulation of property and progressive taxation
Progressive property tax (financing thecapital endowment to each young adult)

Progressive income tax (financing
the basic income scheme and thesocial and ecological state)

Multipleof average
wealthAnnualproperty tax(effective
rate)

Inheritancetax (effective
rate)

Multiple ofaverage income

Effective tax
rate (including
social taxes andcarbon tax)

0.5
2
5
10
100
1,000
10,000

0.1%
1%
2%
5%
10%
60%
90%

5%
20%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%

0.5
2
5
10
100
1,000
10,000

10%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%

Interpretation: The proposed tax system includes a progressive tax on property (annual tax + inheritancetax) financing a capital endowment for each young adult and a progressive income tax (including social
contributions and a progressive tax on carbon emissions) financing the basic income and the social andecological state (health, education, pensions, unemployment, energy, e­ tc.). This system of circulating
property is one of the constituent ele­ments of participatory socialism, with voting rights on corporateboards shared fifty-­fifty between workers and stockholders. Note: In the example shown h­ ere, the progressive
tax on property brings in roughly 5 ­percent of national income (allowing a capital endowment equivalent to
60 ­percent of the average wealth at age 25) while the progressive income tax brings in roughly 45 ­percent of
national income (allowing an annual basic income equivalent to 60 ­percent of average income a­ fter
taxes—5 ­percent of national income) and the social and ecological state (40 p­ ercent of national income).

taxes on property and inheritances and the universal capital endowment. I defer
discussion of the income and welfare state component ­until ­later.
Several points call for further comment. The figures given ­here are for il­lustrative purposes only. Setting precise par­ameters ­will require extensive dis­cussion and broad demo­cratic deliberation; it is not my intention to end all
debate with this book.29 Note, too, that the wealth component includes a rela­

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replace them eventually with progressive taxes on property, inheritance, andincome29. The thresholds, rates, and revenues indicated in ­Table 17.1 are calculated on thebasis of average income and wealth distributions observed in the United States andEu­rope in the 2010s. B­ ecause the thresholds are expressed in multiples of average514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 982

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 983

tively ambitious version of the capital endowment. Specifically, with revenues
on the order of 5 ­percent of national income from the property and inheritancetaxes, it is pos­si­ble to pay for an endowment of approximately 60 ­percent of
average adult wealth to be given to each young adult at age 25.30
Consider an example. In the rich countries (Western Eu­rope, United States,
Japan), average private wealth in the late 2010s was roughly 200,000 euros per
adult.31 Thus, the capital endowment would amount to 120,000 euros. In es­
sence, this system would provide ­every individual with the equivalent of an in­
heritance. ­Today, owing to the extreme concentration of wealth, the poorest
50 ­percent receive virtually nothing (barely 5–10 ­percent of average wealth); therichest 10 ­percent of young adults inherit several hundreds of thousands ofeuros, while ­others receive millions or tens of millions. With the system pro­
posed ­here, ­every young adult could begin his or her personal and professional
life with a fortune equal to 60 ­percent of the national average, which would
open up new possibilities such as purchasing a ­house or starting a business. Notethat this system of public inheritance for all would guarantee e­ very individual asum of capital at the age of 25, whereas private inheritance entails considerable
uncertainty as to the age at which ­children ­will inherit from their parents (owing
wealth and average income and ­because wealth and income distributions are fairly
similar in India, China, and Rus­sia (to a first approximation), the tax schedules
that would need to be applied in t­ hose countries to yield equivalent revenues (inproportion to national income) would also be fairly similar. The goal h­ ere is to fix­orders of magnitude, not to provided definitive results. In countries where wealthand income are more concentrated (like the United States), the highest rates could
be reduced slightly and still yield the same revenues. By contrast, they would haveto be increased slightly in countries where concentration is lower (as in Eu­rope).
See the online appendix.
30. The size of a generation (that is, the number of persons reaching age 25 e­ very year)
is approximately 1.5 ­percent of the adult population in Eu­rope, the United States,
and China and slightly higher in India (where life expectancy is lower). For ex­
ample, in France, each generation represents 750,000–800,000 individuals out ofan adult population of roughly 50 million (and a total population of 67 million in2018). Total private wealth is on the order of five to six years of national income in­these countries. A capital endowment of 60 ­percent of average wealth per adult istherefore equivalent to 3–3.5 years of average national income per adult for a total
cost on the order of 5 ­percent of national income if that sum is distributed ­every
year to 1.5 ­percent of the adult population.
31. For an average national income on the order of 35,000–40,000 euros per year per
adult (for a wealth / income ratio on the order of five to six). On the distribution
and composition of wealth by type of asset and resources, see Figs. 11.16–11.17.

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984 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictto wide variance in age of death and age at which parents have ­children). In
practice, this means that c­ hildren are inheriting l­ater and l­ater in life. Note, too,that the system proposed ­here would greatly reduce the average age of wealthholders, which could infuse new energy into society and the economy.32
The system I am proposing has a long pedigree. In 1795, Thomas Paine, in
his book Agrarian Justice, proposed an inheritance tax to finance a basic in­come.33 More recently, Anthony Atkinson proposed using the receipts froma progressive inheritance tax to finance a capital endowment for e­ very young
adult.34 The principal novelty of my proposal is to use the proceeds of both an
inheritance tax and an annual property tax to pay for the capital endowment;
this would make much larger endowments pos­si­ble and ensure permanentcirculation of wealth.35 Note that the sums I am proposing to mobilize to fi­nance the capital endowment are substantial (5 ­percent of national income)and would entail a significant increase of both the property and inheritancetaxes for the wealthiest individuals.36 Still, this is a small amount compared

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32. Currently, average wealth at age 25 is barely 30 ­percent of average wealth per adult(and very unequally distributed). See the online appendix. Note that the publicinheritance system proposed h­ ere would still be of interest in a society where
wealth was perfectly egalitarian within generations, in the sense that it would
equalize inheritance ages and the average age of wealth holders and therefore the
distribution of economic power.
33. See Chap. 3. See also the stimulating book by P. Van Parijs and Y. Vanderborght,
Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a F­ ree Society and a Sane Economy (Harvard
University Press, 2017).
34. See A. Atkinson, In­equality (Harvard University Press, 2015). The originality of
Atkinson’s proposal, which I draw on and extend ­here, is that the capital endow­
ment should be coupled to an ambitious basic income plan (rather than be seen asa substitute for one). For in­ter­est­ing proposals regarding both the basic income
and capital endowment, see Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic Income, and B.
Ackerman and A. Alstott, The Stakeholder Society (Yale University Press, 1999).
35. In Atkinson’s proposal, the capital endowment finance by the inheritance tax, even
­after that tax was increased, would amount to barely 5–10 ­percent of average wealth(10,000–20,000 euros in the United Kingdom or France), a sum close to the av­
erage inheritance received ­today by the poorest 50 ­percent, which would be a sig­
nificant boost. U­ nder my proposal, an endowment financed by both an inheri­tance tax and an annual wealth tax would come to 60 ­percent of average wealth (or120,000 euros in the United Kingdom or France ­today).
36. Currently, wealth taxes in the form of the US property tax or the French real estate
tax yield 2–3 ­percent of national income while the inheritance tax yields less than
0.5 ­percent. On average in the Eu­ro­pean Union, the vari­ous types of wealth tax

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 985

with the total tax bill (­here set at 50 ­percent of national income). In the ab­stract, ­there is nothing to prevent an even more ambitious system of capital en­
dowment than I am proposing h­ ere; for example, one might consider atransfer equal to the average wealth per adult in any given society.37
In my view, this system should be used together with the new rules for power
sharing on corporate boards and caps on the influence of large shareholders,which I discussed ­earlier. That way, the diffusion and rejuvenation of wealth­will have an even greater effect on the distribution of economic power.

On the Return to Fiscal Progressivity and Permanent Land Reform
I turn now to the progressive tax rates and schedules needed to finance all of­these innovations. I propose that the rates to be assessed on the largest inheri­tances and highest incomes should be on the order of 60–70 ­percent on for­tunes or incomes greater than ten times the average wealth or income and on
the order of 80–90 ­percent for ­those above one hundred times the average­ ese rates are consistent with ­those assessed in the twentieth(­Table 17.1).38 Th­century in a number of countries (including the United States and United
Kingdom in the period 1930–1980). In retrospect, we can see that ­those de­cades witnessed some of the strongest growth ever observed.39 It therefore(­whether collected annually or at the time of death or on transactions) yield nearly
3 ­percent of national income. See Eu­ro­pean Commission, Taxation Trends in theEU, 2018 ed. (Publications Office of the Eu­ro­pean Union, 2018), p. 41, Graph 22.
In the system proposed h­ ere, the annual property tax would yield roughly 4 ­percent
of national income and the inheritance tax 1 ­percent for a total of 5 ­percent butwith much greater progressivity than existing taxes, which would make it pos­si­ble
to reduce taxes on the lower and ­middle classes.
37. In par­tic­u­lar, even if the inheritance tax w­ ill never be as impor­tant as the annual
property tax and even if it is carefully explained and made especially transparent, it
is natu­ral to think of increasing it somewhat in the ­future in view of the growing
share of inherited wealth in total wealth in recent years. See F. Alvaredo, B. Garbiti,
and T. Piketty, “On the Share of Inheritance in Aggregate Wealth: Eu­rope and theUSA, 1900–2010,” Economica, 2017.
38. One might want to set tax brackets in terms of the median rather than the average.
The prob­lem is that the median income is often very close to zero, so this w­ ouldn’t
make much sense. Furthermore, mea­sur­ing income and wealth relative to the av­
erage gives a better idea of the amount of revenue and extent of re­distribution
involved.
39. See Figs. 11.12–11.15.

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986 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictseems reasonable to try such high rates again.40 To do so would indicate a clear
determination to reduce in­equality and break with Reaganism, which could
have an impor­tant effect on transforming the structure of electoral and po­liti­cal
conflict.
The most innovative aspect of the new taxes I am proposing, which of course
call for further discussion, relates to the annual progressive wealth tax. Looking
to the past, we find that wealth taxes tended to be rather haphazardly designed.
Taxes like the property tax in the United States or the real estate tax in France,
which originated in the nineteenth ­century, generally have effective rates ­today
of about 1 ­percent. They generally do not f­ actor in financial assets (which con­stitute the bulk of large fortunes) or debt (which is of course a heavier burden
on the less wealthy). Hence they are in fact steeply regressive wealth taxes, withmuch higher effective rates on the smallest fortunes than on the largest ones.41
As for the wealth taxes that ­were tested in the twentieth ­century, especially inGermanic and Nordic Eu­rope as well as in France in recent de­cades with the
ISF, rates have generally varied from 0 ­percent for the smallest fortunes to
2–3 ­percent for the largest.42
Where land reform was implemented, implicit tax rates on the largest
estates ­were sometimes a g­ reat deal higher. For example, if agrarian reformers
decide that all farms of 500 acres or more must be redistributed to landlesspeasants, then the effective tax rate on a 2,000-­acre property works out to75 p­ ercent.43 Hypothetically, one might imagine that all of Ireland belonged

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40. Furthermore, if one tries to model that vari­ous effects at work (on equality,
mobility, and incentives to work and save) with all the caution and rigor appro­
priate to such exercises, one can show that the ideal inheritance tax (for a Rawlsian
type of social objective) should assess very high rates (70–80 ­percent or more) on
the largest inheritances. See Saez and Piketty, “A Theory of Optimal Inheritance
Taxation.” Similarly, the optimal rate on the highest incomes is above 80 ­percent.
See T. Piketty, E. Saez, and S. Stantcheva, “Optimal Taxation of Top ­Labour In­
comes: A Tale of Three Elasticities,” American Economic Journal, 2014.
41. Note that a proportional tax of 1 ­percent on all private wealth (including financial
assets, which amounts to 500–600 ­percent of national income) would bring in
5–6 ­percent of national income in revenue, which shows that ­there is nothing ex­
travagant about the revenues I am anticipating from the progressive property tax.
42. See Figs. 11.12–11.15.
43. Note that the tax rates shown in ­Table 17.1 are expressed in terms of effective rates
directly applicable at the level of wealth or income considered (with a linear pro­
gression of the effective rate between the indicated levels). For implicit marginal
rates corresponding to each bracket, see the online appendix.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 987

to one person or that a single individual possessed a formula of infinite value
to all mankind, in which case common sense would clearly dictate a re­distribution rate close to 100 ­percent.44 When one-­time taxes ­were levied onreal estate and financial capital at the end of World War II, rates as high as
40–50 ­percent (or even higher) w­ ere applied to the largest fortunes.45
The tax schedule shown in ­Table 17.1 for the progressive property tax tries tocombine ­these previous experiments in a consistent way. The tax rate is
0.1 ­percent for wealth below the national average, rising gradually to 1 ­percent at
twice the national average, 10 ­percent at one hundred times the national av­
erage, 60 ­percent at 1,000 times the national average (or 200 million euros if theaverage wealth per adult is 200,000 euros), and 90 ­percent at 10,000 times thenational average (which would be 2 billion euros). Compared with the current
system of taxing property at a flat rate, which is in use in a number of countries,
this schedule would result in a substantial tax decrease for the 80–90 ­percent of
least wealthy ­people and would therefore make it easier for them to acquire
property. By contrast, the wealthiest ­people would face very heavy tax increases.
The 90 ­percent tax on billionaires would immediately reduce their wealth toone-­tenth of what it was and reduce the share of national wealth held by billion­
aires to a level below what it was in the period 1950–1980.46
I want to emphasize once again that the tax rates indicated h­ ere are for il­lustrative purposes only; they should be subject to collective deliberation andextensive experimentation. One of the virtues of the progressive property tax
44. See Chap. 11. The meta­phor of a trea­sure of infinite value was explored in thefilm Black Panther (dir. R. Coogler, Marvel Studios, 2018). The small Africancountry of Wakanda decides in the end to allow the planet to share in its wealth(which consists of vibranium, a substance that the nation was able to profit fromthanks to its research and wise organ­ization) in contrast to Norway with its pol­luting hydrocarbons.
45. See Chap. 11.
46. See the online appendix. In the United States, the share of top 0.001 ­percentof the wealth distribution (around 2,300 ­people out of a total adult population of
230 million) was 6 ­percent of total wealth in the late 2010s (or roughly 6,000 times
the average wealth for each member of this group), compared with about 1 ­percent
in the period 1950–1980 (roughly 1,000 times the average). The share of the top
centile (roughly 2.3 million ­people) reached 40 ­percent in the late 2010s (aroundforty times the average) compared with 20–25 ­percent in 1950–1980 (twenty totwenty-­five times the national average). The proposed tax schedule would immedi­
ately reduce the share of the top 0.001 ­percent to its previous level and would havethe same effect on the top 1 ­percent ­after ten to fifteen years.

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988 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictis to promote transparency in regard to wealth. In other words, establishingsuch a tax, possibly with lower rates than ­those indicated ­here, would yield more
information about the rate of growth of fortunes of dif­fer­ent sizes, and rates
could then be adjusted as necessary to achieve what­ever goal of wealth decon­centration society chooses to set. The evidence available at this stage shows thatthe largest fortunes have been growing at rates on the order of 6–8 ­percent a
year since the 1980s.47 This suggests that tax rates of at least 5–10 ­percent arenecessary to reduce the concentration of wealth at the top of the distribution
or at least to stabilize it.48 Note, too, that it is not strictly necessary (absent
some special emergency) to tax the largest fortunes immediately at rates of 60
to 90 ­percent: rates of 10–20 ­percent would achieve the same result within a
few years. The rates indicated in ­Table 17.1 are intended to show the range ofpossibilities and stimulate debate.
Note, fi­nally, that it is in any case essential that the progressive property andinheritance taxes proposed h­ ere apply to overall wealth—­that is, the total valueof real estate and business and financial assets (net of debt) held or received by agiven individual, without exception.49 Similarly, the progressive income tax
should apply to total income, including income from both ­labor (wages, pen­sions, nonwage income, ­etc.) and capital (dividends, interest, profits, rents, e­ tc.).50

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47. See ­Table 13.1.
48. See Saez and Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice, pp. 204–208 for simulations
analyzing how much wealth concentration in the United States would be decreasedby rates of 5 ­percent on wealth about $1 billion and 8 ­percent above $100 billion.
49. In general, inheritances can be taxed e­ ither on the basis of the amount received
by each heir or of the total value of the estate bequeathed by the deceased. I prefer
the first method, and it is the one I have chosen ­here: progressive rates are appliedon the basis of total transfers throughout an individual’s life, including both gifts
and inheritances. A person who receives during the course of his life the equivalentof 0.5 times the average wealth (100,000 euros) would pay an inheritance tax of
5 ­percent (5,000 euros) and would thus receive a total inheritance of 215,000 euros(including the capital endowment of 120,000 euros). A person receiving twice theaverage wealth (400,000 euros in France currently) would pay a tax of 20 ­percent(80,000 euros) for a total inheritance of 440,000 euros when the endowment is
added. By contrast, a person receiving five times the national average (1 million
euros) would pay a tax of 50 ­percent (500,000 euros), leaving a total inheritance of
620,000 euros when the endowment is factored in. The rates indicated in T
­ able 17.1
are for illustrative purposes only and call for extensive discussion.
50. When applying the tax schedules indicated ­here, the joint income of ­couples canbe divided in half since the brackets are defined in terms of individual income and514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 988

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 989

History shows that if dif­fer­ent types of assets and dif­fer­ent forms of income are
not treated identically by the tax code, taxpayers w­ ill respond by optimizing, cre­ating a sense of injustice that can undermine the system, not only technically but
also by making it less demo­cratically acceptable.51 In par­tic­u­lar, it would make­little sense to exempt specific types of assets from the property or inheritance tax,
­because to do so would only encourage tax avoidance.52­Toward Social and Temporary Owner­ship
To recapitulate: the model of participatory socialism proposed h­ ere rests on two
key pillars: first, social owner­ship and shared voting rights in firms, and second,
temporary owner­ship and circulation of capital. Th­ ese are the essential tools fortranscending the current system of private owner­ship. By combining them, we
can achieve a system of owner­ship that has l­ittle in common with t­ oday’s private
capitalism; indeed, it amounts to a genuine transcendence of capitalism.
­These proposals may seem radical. In fact, they are the culmination of anevolution that began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Bothpower sharing in firms and progressive taxation originated in that period. In re­cent de­cades, this evolution has come to a halt, in part b­ ecause social demo­crats
failed to innovate and internationalize their proj­ect and in part ­because the dra­
matic collapse of Soviet-­style communism plunged the world into a phase ofunlimited deregulation and abandonment of all egalitarian ambitions in the
1980s (Rus­sia and its oligarchs are no doubt the most glaring illustration of thischange).53 The skill with which the resulting political-­ideological vacuum was
wealth. In my view, compensation for c­ hildren is best handled by adopting a systemof basic income plus ­family allotments rather than by tax deductions.
51. For instance, setting lower rates on capital income than on l­abor income (asSweden did in 1991) led to totally fictitious and eco­nom­ically useless shifting ofincome between dif­fer­ent categories; for example, from salaries to dividends. On
this subject, see Saez and Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice; they propose to tax all
capital income (including undistributed corporate profits and capital gains) at thesame rates as ­labor income.
52. In par­tic­u­lar, the idea of granting exemptions to “productive” capital is undercutby the fact that capital is always productive in one way or another, just as l­abor is:
for instance, having a roof over one’s head is at least as useful as having offices orware­houses for producing goods and ser­vices. If one begins by exempting this orthat type of capital or l­abor on the grounds that it is productive, one risks ending
up very quickly with nothing left to tax.
53. See Chap. 12.

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990 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

filled by the promoters of the conservative revolution of the 1980s and of thenationalist anti-­immigrant line in more recent times did the rest. Since the crisisof 2008, however, the first glimmers of a new movement have become vis­ib­ le,and many proposals for new forms of power sharing and progressive taxation
have emerged and are being debated widely.54 Of course, neo-­proprietarian ide­
ology remains tenacious, and nativist retreat remains tempting, but ­there has
been clear change. The proposals I am making ­here merely add to that move­
ment, which I have tried to set in a broad historical perspective.
In par­tic­u­lar, the notion of temporary owner­ship embodied in the progres­sive property tax described above is ultimately just an extension of forms of tem­porary owner­ship implicit in the progressive inheritance and income taxes that­were tried in the twentieth c­ entury. In general, t­ hese fiscal institutions looked atproperty as a social relation, which therefore had to be regulated as such. The ideathat strictly private property exists and that certain ­people have an inviolable
natu­ral right to it cannot withstand analy­sis. The accumulation of wealth is al­ways the fruit of a social pro­cess, which depends, among other t­ hings, on public
infrastructures (such as ­legal, fiscal, and educational systems), the social divisionof ­labor, and the knowledge accumulated by humanity over centuries. ­Under
such conditions, it is perfectly logical that ­people who have accumulated large
amounts of wealth should return a fraction of it to the community e­ very year:
owner­ship thus becomes temporary rather than permanent. Ultimately, the only
real argument against this logic is the “Pandora’s box argument” to which I havealluded several times: namely, that any challenge to private property ­will inevi­
tably unleash uncontrollable chaos so that it is better never to open the box. But
the experience of the twentieth ­century showed that this argument is bogus: notonly are steeply progressive taxes compatible with rapid growth; more than that,they are an impor­tant component of a developmental strategy based on relatively
equal access to education and an overall reduction in in­equality.
Once again, I want to stress that the purpose of citing the lessons of his­
tory is to suggest pos­si­ble ave­nues of experimentation, not ready-­made solu­
tions. On issues like power sharing in corporations, progressive taxation, andpermanent circulation of wealth, thinking w­ ill not change u­ ntil successful ex­periments show that the innovations I am proposing can work. This is the way
it has always been when it comes to changing in­equality regimes.55

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54. See Chap. 11.
55. I am thinking ­here of large-­scale experimentation to be undertaken a­ fter new gov­
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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 991

On Transparency of Wealth in One Country
Ideally, the return to social progressivity and the implementation of a progressive
property tax should take place in as broad an international setting as pos­si­ble. It
would be best to establish a public financial register that would allow govern­ments and tax authorities to exchange all pertinent information about the ulti­
mate ­owners of the financial assets issued in vari­ous countries. Such registers exist
already, but they are largely in the hands of private intermediaries. However,­there is no reason why governments in Eu­rope, the United States, and elsewhere
could not agree to change the terms of certain treaties to require the recording ofassets in a public register; ­there is no technical obstacle to d­ oing so.56
I ­will say more ­later about how one might think about transforming the­legal foundations of the global economy and rewriting the treaties that regu­
late commercial and financial exchanges to foster a form of social federalism
at the global level. At this stage, I simply want to point out that governments
have considerable freedom to maneuver. They can make pro­gress t­ oward re­ducing in­equality and establishing more just forms of owner­ship without
waiting for international cooperation to be achieved. This is obvious for verylarge states such as the United States and China (and soon for India). In the
United States ­there is no doubt whatsoever that the federal government, if it
has the w­ ill to do so, has the means to enforce any decisions it makes in regard
to taxes. I alluded e­ arlier to the threat of US sanctions on Swiss banks in 2010,
which led immediately to changes in Swiss banking laws.57 This could be donemuch more systematically.
Note, too, that much of US tax law applies to US citizens no ­matter where
they live. In other words, anyone wishing to escape the US tax authorities would
have to give up US citizenship or even in some cases give up ­doing business in
the United States (or even ­doing business in dollars, directly or indirectly, any­
where in the world). This can become very costly for an individual or busi­
ness.58 To sum up: w­ hether the United States w­ ill or ­will not move to a morementation in producing new knowledge, but my view is that only truly large-­scale
experiments can bring about decisive changes in perceptions.
56. See Chap. 13.
57. See Chap. 11.
58. The ability of the US federal government to enforce its decisions is often used onbehalf of business interests or in the geopo­liti­cal interest of the United States(sometimes in ways that come close to exacting what in the past would have beencalled military tributes). An instance of this is the use of sanctions to punish Eu­ro­514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 991

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992 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

progressive tax structure (possibly including a progressive property tax leading
to circulation of capital as described above) is a purely po­liti­cal and ideolog­
ical question; t­ here is no technical reason why it cannot be done.
It is also impor­tant to note that while smaller states, such as France, obvi­
ously have more to gain from international cooperation, they, too, have a ­great
deal of room to maneuver if they wish to pursue new policies at the national
level. Not only can they adopt new rules concerning power sharing and voting
rights in firms (as countries such as Germany and Sweden did de­cades ago,
without waiting for other countries to move); they can also adopt progressive
property taxes and take other steps to reduce in­equality of income and wealth.
This is impor­tant, especially since it runs ­counter to the fatalistic view, common
in recent de­cades, that globalization imposes one unique policy on every­one(which just happens to be the policy that proponents of this view f­ avor). Suchfatalism is largely responsible for the abandonment of ambitious economic re­forms and the retreat into nativism and nationalism. In practice, however, re­ceipts from the French wealth tax (ISF) more than qua­dru­pled between 1990
and 2018, growing more than twice as fast as gross domestic product (GDP),
which is a fairly clearly sign that it is pos­si­ble to levy such a tax in one country
and derive significant revenues from it.59 This was true, moreover, even though
enforcement of the wealth tax was always notoriously lax. Audits w­ ere woe­
fully inadequate, and successive governments chose to allow individuals to de­clare their own assets without systematic checks, although they could haveinstituted a system based on pre-­filled wealth declarations using information
about financial assets supplied by banks and other financial institutions (while
relying on the existing real estate register, with valuations updated to reflect re­cent transactions). Such pre-­filled declarations are already standard practicein the case of the income tax. Had this been done, receipts from the ISF would
have grown even more rapidly.
More generally, t­ here is no reason why a medium-­sized state (such as France)cannot move t­ oward greater wealth transparency even in the absence of inter­national cooperation. This is obviously true for real estate located inside the

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pean firms accused of circumventing US embargos on Iran and other countries.
This state capacity could easily be used on behalf of more universal objectives, suchas enforcing a steeply progressive tax on the highest incomes and largest fortunes.
59. See Chap. 14, and the online appendix, Fig. S14.20. Recall, too, that large holdingsof financial assets added value more rapidly than real estate, which itself grew fasterthan GDP.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 993

country, ­whether it is housing or business real estate (offices, factories, ware­houses, shops, restaurants, ­etc.). More generally, it is also true for all firms ­doing
business in the country or having economic interests ­there. Take the case of theFrench real estate tax (taxe foncière). Like the US property tax and similar levies
in other countries, this tax must be paid by anyone who owns real estate (resi­
dential or business) on French soil.
Note that the real estate tax must be paid by property ­owners (individuals
and firms) w­ hether they themselves are based in France or abroad (or are heldby individuals based in France or abroad). Currently, the amount of the realestate tax does not depend on the identity of the owner or the own­er’s total
wealth (since it is a strictly proportional tax) so that the tax authorities haveno need of additional information (other than the name of the owner or en­tity to whom the bill should be sent). But the authorities could easily require
corporations, holding companies, foundations, and other ­legal entities listed
as ­owners to submit the names of their shareholders and the number of shares
owned by each, failing which punitive sanctions would be applied.60 With thisinformation, coupled with information on financial assets submitted by banks
and other financial institutions, tax authorities could easily transform the realestate tax into a progressive tax on individual net wealth, automatically ac­
counting for all residential and business property in France, ­whether owned
directly or by way of stock, partnership shares, or other types of financial in­termediation. The tax authorities could also require all firms d­ oing business inFrance or having economic interests in the country to submit information
about their ­owners if such information would be useful for enforcing fiscal
legislation.61
60. The most obvious sanction to apply to a firm or other l­egal entity is the pro­
gressive rates applicable to individual o­ wners, as if the firm w­ ere owned entirely bya single individual (in the absence of further information).
61. Stockholders in publicly listed firms are recorded by (private) custodial banks andother institutions. Any com­pany that refused to take the steps necessary to transmit
adequate information about their stockholders to the fiscal authorities would be
subject to sanctions proportional to the damage done (which could be based on
available estimates of the international wealth structure or on sales and ser­vices
invoiced in France, as in the case of the corporate tax; see Chap. 16). Stockholders
in unlisted companies are generally known to the companies themselves, but otherprob­lems may arise, such as the difficulty of evaluating the share price (which could
be estimated on the basis of com­pany books or on the valuations of comparable
listed companies).

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994 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

Such wealth transparency would make it pos­si­ble to establish a uniform pro­
gressive tax on property (a direct descendant of the existing real estate tax andformer wealth tax) while sharply decreasing taxes on ­people of modest means or
without property and increasing taxes on ­those who already own large
amounts.62 For example, a person who owned a home or business valued at
300,000 euros but with a debt of 250,000 euros would be taxed on the basis of
her net wealth of only 50,000 euros, which with a progressive schedule such as
the one shown in T
­ able 17.1 would result in a tax close to zero and therefore asignificant tax cut compared with the current real estate tax. By contrast, an­other person who owned a similar property worth 300,000 euros together witha financial portfolio worth 2 million euros, who currently pays the same real es­
tate tax as the former (which says a g­ reat deal about the absurdity, injustice, andarchaic nature of the current fiscal system, which dates all the way back to theturn of the nineteenth c­ entury), would face a sharp increase in his wealth tax.63
With such a system, the only tax avoidance strategy available to the ­ownersof residential or business property in France would be to sell the assets and leave
the country. To combat that, an exit tax could be put in place.64 In any case,such a tax avoidance strategy would imply selling the property (residence or

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62. The general princi­ple could be to apply the tax to the global wealth of all ­people re­siding in France and all o­ wners of wealth part of which is situated in France (resi­
dents and businesses), who would be obliged to declare their wealth (­under penalty
of punitive sanctions). Agreements could be worked out to avoid double taxation if
it can be proven that the owner in question pays a wealth tax equal to or greaterthan the French tax in some other country (with the understanding that what wewant to avoid is the current situation where transborder wealth is not taxed at all).
63. Such a reform could be done without reducing tax revenues, given that the real es­
tate tax currently yields about 40 billion euros in France (nearly 2 ­percent of GDP),
while the ISF yielded about 5 billion euros (less than 0.3 ­percent of GDP) before it
was transformed into the IFI in 2018–2019. Given the concentration of wealth, thetop centile (which holds about 20–25 ­percent of total wealth) would yield revenues
of at least 10–15 billion euros. This reform could also be made to yield greater reve­nues if coupled with an increase in the progressivity of the inheritance tax, in order
to finance a universal capital endowment of the type I described ­earlier (­Table 17.1).
64. The justification for an exit tax is that ­there is no natu­ral right to enrich oneself
by taking advantage of a country’s ­legal and educational systems, and so on, andthen extracting the wealth without returning part of it to the community. The exit
tax system established in 2008, although much less rigorous than the one currently­under debate in the United States (­because it dealt solely with latent capital gains
and not with total wealth and allowed for numerous exemptions) was almost totally
rescinded in 2018–2019 as revenues from the wealth tax w­ ere cut by 80 ­percent.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 995

business), which would decrease the corresponding price and lead to purchaseby ­people remaining in the country (presumably much larger in number, in­cluding millions of highly competent individuals). Indeed, the pos­si­ble decreasein asset prices would be an excellent t­ hing, at least up to a point. In France andelsewhere, skyrocketing real estate prices (especially in large cities) have been
driven in part by French and foreign buyers acquiring property they have nouse for, which could usefully be purchased by less wealthy individuals. The
impor­tant point is that, even without agreement with other countries, a country
like France could easily impose new transparency rules on firms (and other“moral persons”) owning property on French soil.65

On Writing Fiscal Justice into the Constitution
Fi­nally, it is impor­tant to add that developing new forms of fiscal progressivity
in order to move from private owner­ship to social and temporary owner­ship
may require constitutional changes. This is not new. In 1913, the US Constitu­
tion had to be amended to allow the creation of a federal income tax and, l­ ater,a federal inheritance tax. The development of co-­management and the inclu­
sion of ­unions in corporate governance structures led to a new social and col­lective definition of property being written into the German constitutions of1919 and 1949.66 Similarly, to institute the power sharing in corporations andprogressive wealth and income taxes described above, it may be necessary toamend existing constitutions in some countries.
Broadly speaking, the constitutions and declarations of rights that emergedin the late eigh­teenth ­century or the following ­century w­ ere steeped in the pro­
prietarian ideology of the era. Existing property rights enjoyed veritable con­stitutional protection, which could not be challenged for any reason, no m
­ atterwhat the politics of the government in power. It was also in this climate that
the United Kingdom and France chose to compensate slaveowners when slavery
was abolished in 1833 and 1848. In the mind of the ruling class at the time, it
was simply unthinkable to deprive anyone of property without just compen­
sation. By contrast, no one considered it useful to compensate the slaves for thewrongs they had suffered.67 Re­spect for property o­ wners continues to permeate
65. Although it would obviously be preferable to move ­toward wealth transparency in
an international social-­federalist framework, as we w
­ ill see in a moment.
66. See Chap. 11 for more on this.
67. See Chap. 6.

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996 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

any number of constitutions around the world t­ oday. ­These ­will need to beamended before circulation of property and universal capital endowments canbecome a real­ity. It would also be a good idea to constitutionally enshrine an
explicit princi­ple of fiscal justice based on progressive taxation so that it ­will be
impossible for the rich to pay proportionately less in taxes than the poor (andpos­si­ble for them to pay more, if legislators so decide; no constitutional judge
should be allowed to obstruct the w­ ill of the majority in this regard).68
In the same spirit, the constitution (or other fundamental law) should re­quire the government to publish accurate annual estimates of the amounts oftax actually paid by dif­fer­ent classes of income and wealth so that citizens canparticipate in informed debates on tax issues and their representatives canhave reliable figures on which to base adjustments to the par­ameters of the tax
system. This is especially impor­tant ­because the lack of sufficiently detailed
information is one of the major ­factors preventing citizens from mobilizing
and monitoring government action on t­hese issues. This is true not only incap­i­tal­ist democracies (where the lack of fiscal transparency is manifest, forexample, in Eu­rope, the United States, and India) but also in other po­liti­cal
systems, such as Rus­sia and communist China, where official rhe­toric about
combating corruption stands in stark contrast to the paucity of published fiscal
data.69
Recall, moreover, that the US Supreme Court and other constitutional
tribunals that have the last word on constitutional issues in the vari­ous
Western countries have often shown themselves to be extremely conservativeon social and economic issues. Wherever the constitution leaves a crack
through which they can inject their partisan views, justices are quick to passtheir opinions off as law. Hence it is essential for the constitution to define
fiscal justice and the princi­ple of progressivity as precisely as pos­si­ble whileleaving it up to elected legislative bodies to determine how much progres­sivity t­ here should be, allowing no room for judges to insert themselves into
the pro­cess. Any number of episodes in constitutional history from the nine­

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68.	­Here is pos­si­ble wording: “The law sets the conditions of owner­ship and seeks toencourage the diffusion of property if need be through a system of progressive
taxation of wealth coupled with capital endowments. In general, the tax should beapportioned among all citizens in proportion to their ability to pay. If one ex­presses the amount of tax actually paid as a proportion of property owned or in­come received by each citizen, that proportion may not be smaller for wealthiercitizens than for poorer ones. It may be higher, ­under terms to be set by law.”
69. See Chaps. 12 and 13.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 997

teenth ­century to the pre­sent show the need to be cautious and wary of thepower of judges in economic and social m­ atters. In 1895, the US Supreme
Court chose to interpret the ambiguous terms of the constitution in a clearly
conservative manner when they de­cided that a federal income tax would be
unconstitutional (initiating a lengthy pro­cess that led to the Sixteenth
Amendment in 1913). The following year, the same judges held in the sinister
Plessy v. Ferguson case that it was perfectly l­ egal for the southern states to prac­
tice racial segregation.70
During the 1930s, the Supreme Court once again distinguished itself bystriking down New Deal social and fiscal legislation on the grounds that cer­tain new regulations unconstitutionally infringed on freedom of enterprise andprivate contract.71 Reelected in November 1936 with 61 ­percent of the voteand furious at having to delay implementation of his program, President
Franklin D. Roo­se­velt announced in early 1937 that he intended to submit abill that would allow him to appoint additional justices to the Supreme Court
to end the stalemate.72 Ultimately, ­under pressure from the po­liti­cal branches,
the court approved a key minimum wage law that it had previously struck down,
ending the crisis.73
70. In Plessy (1896), the Supreme Court by a seven-­to-­one vote found in f­avor of
Ferguson, a Louisiana judge, against Plessy, the plaintiff, a person of mixed race
(specifically, an “octoroon,” that is, a person whose ancestors ­were seven-­eighths
Eu­ro­pean and one-­eighth African). Plessy had challenged an 1890 Louisiana law
banning any person with black blood from entering a train car reserved for whites.
This decision had the force of law and served as the l­ egal foundation of the segrega­tionist order in the United States u­ ntil Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 andthe civil rights laws of 1964–1965.
71. Note, however, that the Supreme Court could not block the steeply progressive tax
that Roo­se­velt put in place, notably his 1935 “wealth tax” setting a 75 ­percent rateon top incomes. Since the Sixteenth Amendment of 1913 and the strong push forprogressivity in the late 1910s, it was established that the government was ­free to
set tax rates.
72. Since the US Constitution says nothing about the number of Supreme Court jus­
tices, it was only by statute and tradition that that number was set at nine, nomi­
nated for life, with no age limit (like the Pope or the Supreme Leader in Iran). The
Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937 (commonly referred to as the “court-­
packing plan”) allowed Roo­se­velt to appoint up to six new justices (for each justiceover the age of 70) and thus to change the majority in his ­favor.
73. This key 1937 decision is generally considered to mark the beginning of a new erain the history of the Supreme Court, which became more amenable to government
intervention in the economy. Note, however, that the Demo­cratic majority in the514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 997

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998 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

Since the 1970s, thanks to justices appointed by Republican presidents, theSupreme Court has taken an increasingly conservative turn, striking down all
legislation aimed at limiting the influence of private money in politics and cam­paign financing, all in the name of “­free speech” as interpreted by the jus­
tices.74 If the Demo­crats should decide in the f­uture to legislate in this area,
they ­will need to begin by amending the constitution (which is difficult, but it
has been done many times in the past and should be kept in mind as a pos­si­ble
option when needed), or e­ lse they must change the composition of the Supreme
Court, which is easier but generally viewed with suspicion.75
Examples of abuse of judicial power are unfortunately not l­imited to the
US Supreme Court. The Kirchhof affair in Germany is a particularly egregious
case in point. A tax l­awyer clearly angry about the tax system, Paul Kirchhof
was presented as the person who would be named Angela Merkel’s finance min­ister if her party won the 2005 elections. He proposed limiting the tax rate on
top earners to 25 ­percent. In politics, every­one is of course entitled to an opinion,
but German voters ­were not impressed by Kirchhof ’s ideas: his flat tax pro­posal significantly reduced the Christian Demo­cratic Union’s margin of vic­

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Congress refused to approve Roo­se­velt’s “court-­packing plan,” preventing the pres­ident from appointing new justices. The Demo­crats did this both ­because of con­stitutional conservatism and b­ ecause the Supreme Court changed its attitude in
the face of pressure.
74. Specifically, the Buckley decision of 1976 struck down the princi­ple of a ceiling on
total campaign contributions while the Citizens United decision of 2010 struck
down contribution limits on corporations and the McCutcheon decision of 2014
abolished all limits on individual gifts. See J. Cagé, The Price of Democracy (Harvard
University Press, 2020). See also T. Kuhner, Capitalism v. Democracy: Money in Politics
and the F­ ree Market Constitution (Stanford University Press, 2014); J. Attanasio,
Politics and Capital. Auctioning the American Dream (Oxford University Press, 2018).
75. As a general rule, intellectuals in the United States who are close to the Demo­crats
have become fairly conservative on constitutional issues. In regard to the Supreme
Court, many think that the best one can do is to restore the previous equilibriumby allowing each president to appoint the justices of his choosing (an equilibrium
disrupted in 2016 when the Republican Senate refused to consider President
Barack Obama’s appointment of the centrist Merrick Garland in order to allow
Trump to appoint the next justice). See, for example, S. Levitsky and D. Ziblatt,
How Democracies Die (Penguin, 2018), pp. 118–119, which delivers a very harsh
judgment of FDR’s “court-­packing plan.” Yet ­there was nothing particularly vir­
tuous or rational about the status quo prior to 2016. Depending on the health ofel­derly judges and the dates of presidential elections, the composition of the Court
can change quickly and block the po­liti­cal pro­cess for de­cades.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 999

tory so that Merkel was eventually forced to form a co­ali­tion with the Social
Demo­cratic Party and jettison her would-be adviser. But the in­ter­est­ing pointis that in 1995, when Kirchhof acted as a judge on the German constitutional
court, he was able to condemn any tax above 50 ­percent as unconstitutional.
This caused a scandal, and the decision was eventually overturned by otherjudges in 1999, who confirmed in 2006 that it was not within the power ofjudges to set quantitative limits on taxes.
In France, a former president of the Constitutional Council who served inseveral ministerial posts ­under conservative governments recently explainedthat the decision he was most proud of was a 2012 judgment declaring that amarginal tax rate of 75 ­percent on income above 1 million euros was unconsti­
tutional. The decision was justified, he argued, b­ ecause ­under the French con­stitution a tax is a “contribution” and cannot be “confiscatory.”76 But nowhere
does the constitution mention any specific figure, so this judgment rested ona purely personal interpretation by the judge.77 Like any citizen, the former
president of the Constitutional Council is obviously entitled to regard tax rates
of 70–90 ­percent, which ­were assessed for de­cades on top incomes and inheri­tances in many countries in the twentieth c­entury (including the UnitedStates and United Kingdom), as having failed to yield the desired results or as
poor policy.78 He is f­ ree to publish his arguments in the press, deliver them inspeeches, share them with his friends, or even write a book. But to use his po­
sition as a constitutional judge to enforce his opinion without the slightest ar­
gument to support it represents a clear abuse of power.
To round out this discussion, let me add that constitutional courts are in­valuable but fragile institutions. It is impor­tant to limit the ability of elected
governments to instrumentalize them for their own purposes. Yet precisely­because ­these institutions are so invaluable and fragile, it is also impor­tant toprevent judges to whom such eminent functions are entrusted from instrumen­talizing them for their own purposes. It is therefore crucial to be clear about
what belongs to the juridical realm and what to the po­liti­cal. In my view, thewisest course would be to write into the constitution a minimal princi­ple of
76. See interview with J.-­L. Debré on France Inter, February 16, 2019.
77. In this instance, ­there was an additional prob­lem: the François Hollande govern­
ment did not ­really want to enact this last-­minute campaign promise by candidate
Hollande and specifically refused to apply it to all incomes as a permanent newincome tax bracket. Ultimately, the mea­sure was applied in 2013–2014 as an excep­
tional tax on firms paying salaries above 1 million euros.
78. See Figs. 10.11–10.12.

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1000 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictfiscal justice based on nonregressivity (that is, the proportionate burden of thewealth or income tax on the wealthiest segment of the population should not
be lower than the proportionate burden on the poorest segment) and requiring
the government to publish adequate information on how the tax is apportioned
so that citizens can judge ­whether the princi­ple of nonregressivity has been re­spected. It is essential to leave it to elected parliaments to set the desirable de­gree of progressivity ­after public deliberation and on the basis of historical andpersonal experience; judges should not be allowed to intervene.

Basic Income and Just Wage: The Role of theProgressive Income Tax

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I have thus far concentrated on the question of diffusion of wealth. As impor­tant
as this is, it is far from the only goal of in­equality reduction. ­Under the tax system
shown in T
­ able 17.1, the progressive property tax (combining both the annual tax
and the inheritance tax) would yield annual revenues equivalent to 5 ­percent of
national income, compared with the 45 ­percent of national income generated by
the progressive income tax. Of course, this does not mean that the wealth tax isonly one-­ninth as impor­tant as the income tax. The wealth component of myplan, which consists of the progressive property tax plus the universal capital en­
dowment, ­will have a long-­term structural effect on the distribution of wealthand economic power, which far outweighs its purely fiscal significance. Never­theless, the progressive income tax remains, in my view, the principal source offinancing of the welfare state and of public expenses in general (education, health,pensions, ­etc.). To simplify ­matters, I have included ­under the head of income tax
not just the income tax in the strict sense but also social security and other payroll
and self-­employment taxes and compulsory social contributions that are basedon ­labor income (and in some instances on capital income).
­These social taxes are in fact a form of income tax, in the sense that theiramount depends on income, in some cases with rates that vary with income.
The key difference is that the revenues from social taxes usually flow not to thestate trea­sury but to special funds created to finance health insurance, pensions,
unemployment insurance, and so on. It is essential, I believe, that such special
funds continue as the repository for social taxes. In view of the very high level­ ere at 50 ­percent of national income, but which couldof total taxation (set h
be even higher if justified by need), it is impor­tant to ensure that citizens havea better idea of how their money is being used and in par­tic­u­lar of the social
purposes to which it is being put. Having separate funds for dif­fer­ent types of

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1001

expenditure might be one way of achieving that goal. In general, we need thegreatest pos­si­ble transparency as to the source and destination of all tax monies.
In practice, we find ­great diversity in sources of tax revenues from country
to country. In Western Eu­rope, where revenues have stabilized at 40–50 ­percent
of national income in the period 1990–2020, we find that the income tax (in­cluding the corporate income tax) brings in 10–15 ­percent of national income79
while social contributions amount to 15–20 ­percent of national income; indi­
rect taxes (such as the value-­added tax, or VAT, and other consumption taxes)
yield 10–15 ­percent of national income.80 Broadly speaking, indirect taxes (es­pecially customs duties) w­ ere dominant ­until the nineteenth ­century in all
countries but w­ ere gradually replaced by income taxes and social contributions
as the main sources of revenue. In my view, t­ here is no real justification for in­direct taxes (except when necessary to correct an externality,81 as in the caseof the carbon tax, about which I ­will say more l­ ater); they should therefore be
replaced by taxes on income or wealth. Indirect taxes such as the VAT do notallow taxes to be apportioned as a function of income or wealth, which is amajor limitation in terms of both economic and demo­cratic transparency.82
79. I am including the corporate tax in the progressive income tax system ­because it isbetter to analyze the two taxes together. Ideally, the corporate tax could be a sort ofdeduction from the income tax to be paid by stockholders on their dividends. In
practice, owing to the lack of international cooperation and transparency regarding
the ultimate owner­ship of firms, some taxpayers escape paying any taxes on theircapital income so that it is crucial to maintain a direct tax on corporations. I w­ ill
say more ­later about this issue.
80. See Chaps. 10–11 (and especially Figs. 10.15–10.15 and 11.9) for a more detailed
analy­sis of the vari­ous types of taxes and expenditures. In some countries, such as
Denmark, social contributions are formally integrated into the income tax so thatthe income tax alone yields about 35 ­percent of national income. See Eu­ro­pean
Commission, Taxation Trends in the EU, 2018 ed., pp. 76–77, ­Table DK.1.
81. An externality occurs when the consumption of a good or ser­vice by an individual
imposes undesirable costs on other individuals, typically by way of pollution or
green­house gas emission.
82. With the VAT and other indirect taxes, it is of course pos­si­ble to tax some goods at
a lower rate than o­ thers, but this is a cruder way to target specific social groups
than a direct tax on income or wealth. The other argument in ­favor of the VAT has
to do with the ability to tax imports while exempting exports, but ­there is no realreason for this, and in any case it is more a sign of lack of international fiscal coor­dination (particularly where intra-­European tax competition is concerned). I w­ ill
say more ­later about the pos­si­ble use of an import tax to compensate for the lack ofinternational cooperation. Fi­nally, note that the VAT in practice exempts many

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1002 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

Detailed analy­sis of the best way to or­ga­nize public expenditure and themany components of the social state (universal health insurance, unified pen­sion system, e­ tc.) would take us far beyond the scope of this book. I w­ ill say more­later about allocating spending on education, which plays a central role in gen­erating and perpetuating in­equality. H­ ere, I w­ ill focus on the role of the basic
income as an ele­ment of the social state and the just society. The fact that abasic (or minimum guaranteed) income exists in many countries and in par­tic­u­lar in most Western Eu­ro­pean countries is an excellent t­ hing. Basic in­come systems can and should be improved specifically by making them more
automatic and universal, especially for the homeless, many of whom face g­ reatdifficulty in obtaining access to the basic income, housing, and, more gener­
ally, the help they need to find work and secure a place for themselves in so­ciety. It is also essential to extend the basic income to ­people earning very low
wages or receiving activity bonuses (that is, welfare-­to-­work supplements);
the basic stipend should be automatically added to their wages without re­quiring them to apply for it (this can be linked to the progressive income tax,
which is already withheld on paychecks).
Consider, for example, the relatively ambitious basic income shown in­Table 17.1. We set the minimum basic income for individuals with no other re­sources at 60 ­percent of average after-­tax income; this amount would decline
as other income increased. It would apply to about 30 ­percent of the popula­tion for a total cost of about 5 ­percent of national income.83 Once again, t­ hese
figures are given for illustrative purposes only; any decision would come only
­after wide deliberation, and it is not the purpose of this book to say what theexact outcome of that debate should be.84

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goods and ser­vices (such as financial ser­vices and investment goods) for unclear
distributive reasons. A VAT that truly taxed all value added would be equivalent toa proportional tax on all income (profits and total wages) and could be seen as thefirst component of an income tax system. See Saez and Zucman, The Triumph of
Injustice and the discussion of the “national income tax.”
83. The average amount paid would be on the order of 30 ­percent of average after-­tax
income, or about 16.5 ­percent of average national income per adult (given an av­
erage income tax of 45 ­percent, counting social contributions and carbon taxes),
for a total cost of 5 ­percent of national income if that amount is paid out to30 ­percent of the population. See the online appendix.
84. For a more detailed description of such a system in the French case, including auto­
matic inclusion of the basic income on pay stubs, see for example P. A. Muet, Un impôt
juste, c’est pos­si­ble! (Seuil, 2018). In the United States, an ambitious proposal to increase
the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) (which is in effect a boost to low wages) was

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1003

The point I want to emphasize h­ ere is that even a­ fter the basic income is estab­lished, much more needs to be done to achieve social justice. In the example
shown in T
­ able 17.1, public spending on the social state represents about
40 ­percent of national income (covering health, education, pensions, unemploy­ment insurance, ­family benefits, ­etc.), compared with just 5 ­percent for the basic
income and 5 ­percent of the capital endowment. ­These ­orders of magnitude areimpor­tant. They express the fact that a just society must be based on universal ac­
cess to fundamental goods, foremost among which are health, education, em­
ployment, the wage relation, and deferred wages for the el­derly and unemployed.
The goal should be to transform the entire distribution of income and wealthand, beyond that, the distribution of power and opportunities; it goes far beyond
just setting a floor on income. The ambition must be to create a society based onjust remuneration of ­labor—in other words, a just wage. The basic income cancontribute to that goal by raising the income of individuals who are other­wise
poorly paid. More than that, however, justice also requires a thorough reconsid­
eration of a w­ hole range of mutually complementary institutional arrangements.
One of t­ hose institutions is the educational system. If e­ very individual isto have a chance of finding decently remunerated employment, we must put
an end to the hypocritical practice of investing more in elitist educational pro­grams and institutions than in institutions that cater to the disadvantaged. The­labor code and, more generally, the entire ­legal system need to be overhauled.
New systems of wage bargaining, a higher minimum wage, a fairer wage scale,and sharing of voting rights within firms between workers and shareholders
can all contribute to the establishment of a just wage, a more equal distribu­
tion of economic power, and a deeper involvement of workers in shaping thestrategy of their employers.
The other impor­tant institution I want to discuss is the fiscal system itself. In
addition to the progressive property tax and the universal capital endowment,
recently put forward by L. Kenworthy, Social Demo­cratic Capitalism (Oxford Univer­sity Press, 2019), p. 210, Fig. 7.15. One impor­tant difference is that the EITC would
continue to be paid separately. In general, the advantage of automatic payment is that
it links the basic income idea to a vision of the just society based on the wage relationand the right to work and u­ nionize. By contrast, a system based on separate paymentof the basic income (as proposed, for example, by Van Parijs and Vanderborght, Basic
Income, who envisage a payment to each adult, in­de­pen­dent of wages) risks weakeningthat link and might be instrumentalized to ­favor hyper-­flexibilization and the frag­mentation of l­abor. This could lead to an artificial inflation of the tax level, with thedanger of decreasing resources available for the social state.

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1004 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

which encourages worker participation, the progressive income tax can help toachieve a just wage by reducing the income gap to a level consistent with a justsociety. History shows that marginal rates on the order of 70–90 ­percent on thehighest incomes made it pos­si­ble to eliminate pointless high salaries, much to the­great benefit of workers lower down in the distribution, while at the same timeincreasing overall economic and social efficiency.85 Indeed, all signs are that a tax
schedule like the one shown in T
­ able 17.1 would compress the pay scale and in­crease the pay of p­ eople at the bottom and in the m­ iddle of the distribution.86
Note, moreover, that the proposed schedule rises quickly to fairly high levels,with an effective overall rate on the order of 40 ­percent (including social contri­
butions) on incomes twice the national average. Such high rates are necessary to
pay for an ambitious universal social state and especially for health care and pen­sions. Note, however, that in the absence of such public systems, workers would
have to pay large sums to private pension funds and health insurance companies,
which in practice can prove to be more costly than public equivalents.87
To sum up, one should avoid looking at the basic income as a sort of miracu­
lous solution that would make all ­these other institutions unnecessary. In thepast, the idea of a basic income was sometimes instrumentalized as a form of“payment in full” of all social obligations and invoked to justify cuts to other so­
cial programs.88 Hence it is impor­tant to think of the basic income as one com­ponent of a more ambitious package, which should include progressive taxes on
wealth and income, a universal capital endowment, and an ambitious social state.

On Progressive Taxation of Carbon Emissions
I turn now to the carbon tax. As I said ­earlier, along with rising in­equality, global
warming is the greatest challenge the planet ­faces ­today. ­There are several rea­sons to believe that ­these two challenges are intimately related and can be re­

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85. See Chap. 11.
86. Obviously, I do not mean to imply that the purely illustrative figures given in­Table 17.1 completely ­settle the question of just in­equality. How much the pay scaleneeds to be compressed for the benefit of the disadvantaged remains an open ques­tion; the only way to make pro­gress is to engage in realistic experiments.
87. In the United States, if one counts the cost of private insurance as though it w
­ eretax, the schedule of payments becomes highly regressive to the detriment of thelower and ­middle classes. See Saez and Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice, p. 213.
88. This was the spirit in which Milton Friedman proposed a basic income and nega­tive income tax in his book with R. D. Friedman, ­Free to Choose (Harcourt, 1980).

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1005

solved only if dealt with si­mul­ta­neously. First, carbon emissions are strongly
concentrated among a small group of p­ eople, primarily individuals with highincomes and large fortunes living in the wealthiest countries in the world (es­pecially in the United States).89 Second, the magnitude of the lifestyle changes
required to cope with the climate crisis is so g­ reat that it is hard to imagine how
to make ­those changes socially and po­liti­cally acceptable without establishing
stringent and verifiable norms of justice. In other words, it is hard to see why
the lower and m­ iddle classes in the rich countries would be willing to make amajor effort to curtail emissions if they feel that the upper class is f­ ree to go on
living and emitting green­house gases as before.
The in­equality reduction mea­sures I discussed e­ arlier, including a sharp in­crease in the progressivity of taxes on high incomes and large fortunes, aretherefore a necessary condition for combating climate change. They are not a
sufficient condition, however. Among the other tools that have been widely dis­cussed is a tax on carbon emissions. Several conditions have to be met, how­ever, for such a solution to become ­viable. First, the carbon tax must not beseen as the only approach to dealing with the prob­lem. Often, the most effec­
tive way to reduce emissions is to establish norms; prohibit certain practices;
and agree on strict standards for automobile emissions, heating equipment,
building insulation, and so on. In many cases ­these are more effective choices
than just placing a high tax on carbon.
Second, no carbon tax ­will be fully accepted and effective ­unless all of therevenue it generates is used to compensate lower-­and middle-­class ­house­holds
affected by the tax and to pay for the transition to renewable sources of energy.
The most natu­ral way to do this would be to integrate the carbon tax into theprogressive income tax, as I have done in T
­ able 17.1. With each increase in the
carbon tax, one has to calculate the average impact on p­ eople at dif­fer­ent in­come levels as a function of the structure of average expenditures; one can thenautomatically adjust the income tax schedule and basic income transfer system
to neutralize the effect. That way, one would preserve the price signal (­because
consuming items with high carbon content would cost more than consuming
items low in carbon, thus giving consumers incentives to change their be­hav­ior)
but without diminishing the purchasing power of ­people of modest means.90
89. See Fig. 13.7.
90. In some cases, the calculation of compensatory transfers ­will need to consider
not only income but also type and place of residence, existence of public transpor­
tation, and so on.

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1006 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

By contrast, the method used in France in 2017–2018 consists in increasing
carbon taxes on p­ eople of modest means to pay for tax cuts for the rich, leading
to the so-­called Yellow Vests uprising and the breakdown of the w­ hole Frenchcarbon tax system. This is the method to avoid at all costs.91
Fi­nally, it is legitimate to ask w­ hether it would be a good idea to implementa progressive tax on carbon emissions. To date, carbon taxes have been basi­cally proportional. All emissions are taxed at the same rate, w­ hether the person
or persons responsible emit five to ten tons of carbon (CO2 equivalent) per year,
which is roughly the world average, or 100–150 tons, which is the amountemitted by the top 1 ­percent of individual emitters globally. The prob­lem withsuch a system is that if the heaviest emitters have the means, they can avoid
making any effort to reduce their emissions, which is not necessarily the best
way to establish a norm of environmental justice acceptable to the majority. Re­
ducing overall levels of wealth and income in­equality through progressive
taxation can diminish t­ hese disparities and make them more acceptable, but
by itself that might still not be enough. One proposed solution is to issue ­every
individual a “carbon card” authorizing an annual quota of emissions (of, say,five to ten tons); each person would then be entitled to sell all or part of thisquota. The prob­lem is that anyone with modest resources or low emissions
would then have a financial interest in allowing the wealthy and heavier pol­luters to emit more, which once again would mean that t­ hose with sufficientfinancial resources would be able to emit as much carbon as they pleased. Whatis more, experience with businesses purchasing the right to pollute on the open
market suggests that if that market w­ ere extended to private individuals, itwould likely prove to be extremely volatile and easy to manipulate, giving rise
to waves of speculation and allowing some to reap enormous profits at theexpense of o­ thers; meanwhile, the price signal emanating from such a market
would be a particularly noisy one.
A better solution might be a true progressive tax on carbon emissions at
the level of individual consumers. For example, the first five tons of individual
emissions might be taxed ­little if at all, the next ten tons somewhat more, andso on up to some maximum level beyond which all emissions would be pro­hibited, with violations subject to fines (such as a confiscatory tax on income
and / or wealth).92 Like the “carbon card,” this solution assumes that one can

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91. See Chap. 14.
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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1007

mea­sure emissions at the individual level. This raises complex issues, which
could nevertheless be overcome (for example, by using credit card information)
if the issue w­ ere deemed impor­tant enough for the f­ uture of the planet.93
Carbon content is already mea­sured for certain types of consumption, such as
electricity (it is reflected in electric bills). Initially, it might be pos­si­ble to ap­
proximate a progressive carbon tax by setting higher tax rates on goods andser­vices associated with high carbon emissions, such as jet fuel or, better yet,business class airline tickets. What is certain is that the development of asustainable climate policy ­will require new norms of environmental and fiscal
justice that the majority can accept, which is definitely not the case t­ oday.94

On Constructing a Norm of Educational Justice
I turn next to the question of educational justice. Emancipation through edu­
cation and diffusion of knowledge must be at the heart of any proj­ect to build
a just society and participatory socialism. History shows that economic devel­
opment and h­ uman pro­gress depend on education and not on the sacralizationof in­equality and property.95 In previous chapters we saw how the expansion
five to six tons per person. It should be rapidly increased, however, if one wants tomeet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5–2 degrees (which according to esti­mates ­will require reducing carbon emissions to one to two tons per person by theend of the ­century).
93. In the past, ­every new tax has been accused of being impractical, impossibly com­plex, and inquisitorial. This was true, for instance, of the income tax in the nine­
teenth ­century and beyond. That said, the idea of using credit card data does raise
serious privacy issues. In my view, however, it is strange not to consider the possi­
bility of developing procedures for making use of such information in a controlledway, just as we have learned to trust private banks not to use the same information
for nefarious purposes.
94. Another question is ­whether the progressive carbon tax should apply only to indi­vidual consumption (which might seem logical given the need to make consumers
behave responsibly, especially in the rich countries) or w
­ hether one should also look
into the pos­si­ble of a progressive tax on individual production (based on individual
income—­wages and profits—­generated by the production of goods and ser­vices re­sponsible for the emission of carbon), which might be more effective in some cases.
The two types of taxes (on consumption and production) are in princi­ple equivalent
when the tax is proportional. This is no longer the case when the tax is progressive.
95. See Chaps. 11 and 12. On the central role of achieving equality through educationand knowledge in a Durkheimian (rather than Marxist) perspective, see B. Karsenti
and C. Lemieux, Socialisme et sociologie (EHESS, 2017), pp. 43–48.

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1008 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictof education and the development of higher education coincided with a com­plete reversal of po­liti­cal cleavages. In the period 1950–1980, the Demo­cratic
Party, the ­Labour Party, and vari­ous socialist and social-­democratic parties
realized their best scores among voters with the least education. Thiscleavage gradually reversed, and by the period 1990–2020, the same parties ­wereachieving their best results among voters with the most education. In sum, thepo­liti­cal forces that constituted workers’ parties in the years ­after World War
II gradually turned into parties of the highly educated in the late twentieth andearly twenty-­first centuries. The most natu­ral explanation is that less educatedvoters felt that ­these parties had abandoned them by shifting their attention
and priorities to the winners of the educational system and to some extent of
globalization. This political-­ideological transformation is crucially impor­tant
for our study. It is especially impor­tant for understanding the collapse of the
postwar left-­right system and the rise of in­equality since the 1980s.96
I have already discussed at some length the very significant in­equality ofaccess to higher education in the United States, where the likelihood of at­
tending college is linked to the parents’ standing in the income distribution
and where the system is highly stratified, with a wide gap separating the best
universities from the rest.97 If the Demo­cratic Party wants to win back thevoters it has lost, it ­will no doubt need to offer tangible proof that it is more
­ iddle classes and somewhat lessconcerned with the c­ hildren of the lower and m
focused on the c­ hildren of parents who are themselves gradu­ates of the mostelitist schools and universities. I also noted that educational in­equality and hyp­ocritical talk about meritocracy is common also in countries where the educa­
tional system is mainly public and supposedly egalitarian, such as France, even
if the mechanisms of discrimination are dif­fer­ent.98
Before delving further into this point, I want to call attention to Fig. 17.1,
which shows the current distribution of educational investment in France. If
one looks at the entire cohort of young ­people turning 20 in 2018, one can esti­
mate (using available data and trends) that each of them w­ ill have benefited on
average from about 120,000 euros in educational investment (from preschool touniversity), which corresponds to fifteen years of schooling at an average cost of
approximately 8,000 euros per year. But this average conceals enormous dispari­ties within the group related primarily to the age when schooling ends and to

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96. See Chaps. 14–16.
97. See Fig. I.8 and Chap. 15.
98. See Chap. 14.

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Total public educational investment
received per student in the courseof an educational career (frompreschool to higher education)(thousands of euros)Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1009
300
250
200
150
100
50
0

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Percentile of distribution of total investment
received over course of educational career

fig. 17.1. ​In­equality of educational investment in France, 2018
Interpretation: The total public educational investment per student over the course ofan educational ­career (preschool to university) for the generation of students turning
20 in 2018 averages out to around 120,000 euros (or about 8,000 euros per year overfifteen years). Within this generation, the 10 ­percent of students receiving the smallest
public investment received 65,000–70,000 euros, while the 10 ­percent receiving themost received 200,000–300,000 euros. Note: The average cost per track per year of
schooling in 2015–2018 works out to 5,000–6,000 euros in preschool and primaryschool, 8,000–10,000 euros in secondary school, 9,000–10,000 euros in university, and
15,000–16,000 euros in preparatory classes for the grandes écoles. Sources and series:
piketty.pse.ens.fr/ideology.

course se­lection in high school and above all in the higher education system.99
Within this cohort, the 10 ­percent of students in whom public investment was
smallest received 65,000–70,000 euros each, while the 10 ­percent in whommost was invested received 200,000–300,000 euros each. The first group
99. Variations in preschool attendance are also significant. Preschool is available to­children aged 3 to 6 but is not compulsory; in some years and some places it has
been available as early as age 2. In any case, its role in creating disparities is far lessthan the ­factors mentioned in the text. The estimates given h­ ere are based on­house­hold surveys that allow us to estimate the distribution of educational choices
in each age cohort. The method is to assign a constant cost per year depending on
the type of education (primary, m­ iddle school, lycée, e­ tc.). All details on the con­struction of the data set are available online. See also S. Zuber, L’inégalité de ladépense publique d’éducation en France: 1900–2000 (EHESS, working paper, 2003),
and C. Bonneau, The Concentration of Educational Investment in the US (1970–2018), with a Comparison to France (EHESS and PSE, working paper, 2019).

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1010 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictconsists of p­ eople who left school at age 16 (the minimum ­legal age) ­after justten years of schooling for an average cost of 6,000–7,000 euros per year. By
contrast, the second group consists of students who took advanced degrees andin some cases remained in school ­until age 25 for a total of twenty years or moreof education. Apart from the length of study, the other distinctive feature of thisgroup is that its members followed highly selective tracks, usually passing
through the preparatory classes for the grandes écoles, where students receive
much more intense instruction than in the nonselective university tracks.100
Ultimately, ­these disparities are quite substantial: the in­equality of public ex­
penditure per student is 150,000 euros if one compares students in the top decile
to ­those in the bottom decile and more than 200,000 euros if one compares
students in the top centile to ­those in the bottom decile—­the equivalent of theaverage wealth per adult in France t­ oday. It is as if some c­ hildren receive an addi­
tional inheritance compared with o­ thers, and inheritances are already very
unequally distributed.101 Furthermore, although the students who stay in schoolfor the shortest time are not systematically ­those from disadvantaged families andstudents who stay in school longest are not always the most advantaged, t­ here isof course a significant positive correlation between t­ hese two dimensions so thatin many cases the effect of public educational investment combines with the ef­
fect of private inheritance.102 Fi­nally, note that the assumptions we made to cal­culate ­these estimates prob­ably lead to seriously understating the a­ ctual size of­these spending disparities. Specifically, the official estimates of the cost of selective­ ere likely strongly understate the a­ ctual gap.103
and nonselective tracks that we use h

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100. According to official data, the cost per student in the preparatory classes is
15,000–16,000 euros per year, compared with 9,000–10,000 euros in the universi­
ties. Note, moreover, that real investment per student in higher education de­creased by about 10 ­percent between 2010 and 2018 b­ ecause bud­gets did not in­crease as rapidly as the number of students. See Ministère de l’éducation nationale,
Repères et références statistiques 2018 (2019), p. 325, section 10.5. See also the online
appendix, Fig. S14.11e.
101. Recall that the 50 ­percent of individuals inheriting the least receive virtuallynothing (barely 10,000–20,000 euros on average), while the 10 ­percent inheriting
the most receive hundreds of thousands of euros and in some cases millions oreven tens of millions of euros.
102. Available data show that the link between parental income and access tohigher education is less extreme in France than in the United States but still high.
See the online appendix.
103. Official estimates (15,000–16,000 euros per year for preparatory classes and
9,000–10,000 euros for university classes) include the cost of university research

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1011

Let me now ask what princi­ples might be invoked to define a just distribu­
tion of the educational investment. Once again, as with the question of the just
wealth and income taxes, the goal is obviously not to provide a closed solution,
which I am incapable of d­ oing, but simply to propose some pos­si­ble ave­nues
for collective deliberation. First, private educational investment clearly needs
to be considered, which would widen the educational spending gap even more.
In a country like France, where the educational system is primarily public, theeffect of this would be ­limited. But in the United States it would be hugely
impor­tant ­because investment per student t­ here can attain extremely highlevels for t­ hose who attend the richest and most expensive private universities,
whose resources greatly surpass ­those of public universities and community
colleges.104
How should one think about a just distribution of public educational in­vestment in a country like France? A relatively natu­ral norm would be that ­every
child should have the right to the same educational funding, which could be
used for e­ ither schooling or other training. In other words, a person who quit
school at age 16 or 18, who would thus have consumed only 70,000–100,000
euros during her public schooling (which is the case for 40 ­percent of each age
cohort) could then draw on educational capital worth 100,000 to 150,000 euros
before reaching the level of the best funded 10 ­percent of her cohort (Fig. 17.1).105
With this capital she could acquire additional training at age 25 or 35 or at any
laboratories, which do not necessarily benefit students, at least in the early years ofuniversity. In the preparatory classes, teachers are not engaged in research and con­centrate on the objective of training students, which seriously biases the compar­
ison. If one ­were to subtract research expenses and focus on university students inthe first two years, the cost per year of study would be less than 5,000 euros. See theonline appendix.
104. In fact, the concentration of total educational expenditure (public and pri­vate) is significantly higher in the United States than in France and has risen
sharply in recent years. Note that the available data do not allow us to mea­sure­these inequalities perfectly at the primary, secondary, or tertiary level (in the
United States, primary and secondary education is largely financed by local taxes).
See Bonneau, The Concentration of Educational Investment in the US.
105. Another solution might be to charge high tuition fees to ­those students fortu­
nate enough to continue their higher education (and who are on average sociallyadvantaged), as New ­Labour did in the United Kingdom (see Chap. 15). The
prob­lem is that this pre­sents a hardship to students of modest background, who
may be discouraged from pursuing their studies or find themselves indebted for along period of time, while students from wealthier backgrounds enjoy financial

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1012 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictpoint in her life.106 Indeed, one could also think of allowing such individuals,­under certain conditions, to use part of this sum as financial capital, which
could be added to the universal capital endowment. Nevertheless, the priority
should be to use ­these funds to improve educational opportunities for every­one,
especially young p­ eople from disadvantaged classes.107 Of course, many ­people
would prob­ably not take advantage of the opportunity to go back to school,
so more should be invested in primary and secondary education in order tofoster emancipation through education during the normal years of schooling.
The truth is that t­ here is a g­ reat deal of hy­poc­risy in this area. In France andmany other countries, extra funding is supposedly earmarked for socially disad­vantaged neighborhoods and schools. In fact, as we saw e­ arlier, it is the sociallyadvantaged schools that benefit from the most experienced, best trained, andhighest paid teachers, and this clearly counts for more than the meager extra
funds provided to the novice and contract teachers who work in the disadvan­
taged schools.108 If ­there ­were any real increase in the resources allocated to theleast advantaged primary and secondary schools, this would show up in Fig. 17.1
as an increase in educational investment at the lower end of the distribution,
signaling that educational spending had become more egalitarian and more just.

Renouncing Educational Hy­poc­risy, Promoting Transparency
If the goal is ­really to develop acceptable norms of educational justice, then
­there is no choice but to demand greater transparency in the allocation of ed­
ucational resources. In most countries ­today, the procedures for apportioning

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support from their parents. It seems preferable to require the latter to pay more forevery­one’s ­children and not just their own.
106. One might also use part of the educational capital as an allotment during
years of study, even before age 25 (the age at which basic income becomes available
in France), and not simply for f­ ree access to classes.
107. If spending on the bottom 90 ­percent of students in France t­oday ­were raised
to the level of spending on the top 10 ­percent (currently 200,000 euros a year), theadditional cost would be on the order of 2.5–3 ­percent of national income (com­pared with a total current educational bud­get of 5.5–6 ­percent of national income).
This cost would be significant but not insurmountable and justified in view of the
stakes and the dangerous stagnation of educational investment in the wealthy
countries since the 1980s. See Fig. 10.15.
108. See Chap. 14 and the research by A. Benhenda. Disadvantaged schools havefewer students per class, but this merely compensates for the effect of teacher pay,
which goes in the opposite direction.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1013

educational spending are quite opaque, and it is not easy for citizens or com­munities to understand them. We find ourselves with average teacher pay
greater in socially advantaged schools; public educational investment is fourtimes higher for certain groups (who also happen to be among the mostfavored) than for ­others in the same cohort. Yet no one has ever made a con­scious decision that t­ hings should be this way, and the results are never exam­
ined or debated or challenged. I am not saying that educational justice is easy
to define, and this book is certainly not g­ oing to end all debate. But if t­ here is
to be a real debate, data of the type I am providing h­ ere needs to be made public;
indeed, ­there should be a law (or constitutional obligation) that the facts about
educational investment should be available to every­one. Only then can goals
be set and pro­gress verified year a­ fter to see how close we come to achievingthem.
Two goals strike me as reasonable: first, average teacher pay should no longer
be an increasing function of the percentage of better off students in the schools,
and second, the amounts invested in the least advantaged primary and sec­
ondary schools should be substantially increased to make the overall distribu­
tion of educational investment by age cohort more equal (see Fig. 17.1). ­Thesechanges, which would be significant, need to be publicly verifiable. They should
noticeably increase the likelihood that students from disadvantaged back­grounds attend university. All studies show that early intervention, particu­
larly in primary and ­middle school, is the best way to correct scholastic in­equality between students of dif­fer­ent social backgrounds.
That said, the allocation of additional resources to less advantaged schools
needs to be complemented by admissions procedures at lycées and universities
that take the student’s social origins into account. This can be done in two ways:
social origins can be considered at the individual level (for example, by assigningpoints according to parental income or adopting social quotas by track, which
is prob­ably preferable), or the neighborhood in which the student resides or
the school is located can be used as a criterion (for instance, the best students
from each ­middle school or lycée in designated districts could be admitted au­
tomatically to specific programs). Again, it is not up to me to give answers tosuch delicate questions. Choices like ­these ­will require complex social and po­liti­cal compromises, which can come only a­ fter sophisticated experiments havebeen carried out and ­there has been broad debate with full citizen involvement.
Any such choices ­will need to be reviewed constantly, improved, and adapted
as the situation evolves. It is impor­tant to stress, however, that coming up
with a norm of justice acceptable to all or, more modestly, capable of inspiring a

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1014 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictminimum degree of collective confidence in the system is an extremely deli­cate and fragile pro­cess. G­ reat transparency is essential, and transparency isoften foreign to the habits of po­liti­cal officials and school administrators.
Some countries, such as India, have more experience than ­others in applying
quotas and “reservations” to university admissions for specific social categories.
In India, quotas ­were first applied in the 1950s to groups that had been discrimi­
nated against in the past; in 1990 they w­ ere extended to all socially disadvan­
taged classes, which played a major role in reshaping the contours of political-­ideological conflict in the country.109 While ­these experiences are instructive,
they obviously cannot be directly copied in dif­fer­ent context. Many countries inEu­rope have recently begun to take f­ amily background into account in admis­
sions procedures, unfortunately with very l­ittle transparency. In France, thealgorithms used for admissions to lycées (Affelnet) and higher education (first
Admission Post-­Bac and then, since 2018, Parcoursup) remain essentially statesecrets.110 Furthermore, the way f­amily background and parental income aretaken into account establish sharp social discontinuities, which make it moredifficult to reach any social consensus about the procedures.111 In the UnitedStates, the court-­ordered ban on the use of racial criteria in admissions proce­dures is coupled with a similar ban on the use of parental income (which ismuch more debatable); therefore, social quotas usually rely on neighborhood.112
Unfortunately, this criterion cannot achieve the desired level of social diversity­because the beneficiaries are often the most advantaged residents of the least
advantaged neighborhoods. Hence as a general rule it is better to rely on indi­vidual characteristics such as parental income. In the United Kingdom, t­ here isa proposal to allow students who score above a certain level on exams to draw

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109. See Chaps. 8 and 16.
110. In par­tic­u­lar, the quotas of scholarship students who must be accepted intodif­fer­ent programs (especially preparatory classes) are not made public.
111. Specifically, scholarship students (roughly the 15–20 ­percent of students withlowest parental income) receive extra points in Affelnet (or benefit from social
quotas in Parcoursup), which increases social diversity to their advantage but isunfair to groups with just slightly higher parental income. A system that adjusted
for parental income in a more continuous way would clearly be preferable. See
S. T. Ly, E. Maurin, and A. Riegert, La mixité sociale et scolaire dans les lycées d’Ile-­de-­France (Institut des Politiques Publiques, Working Paper No. 4, June 2014).
112. See, for example, the study of Chicago public schools by G. Ellison and P.
Pathak, The Efficiency of Race-­Neutral Alternatives to Race-­Based Affirmative Action: Evidence from Chicago’s Exam Schools (National Bureau of Economic Re­
search, NBER Working Paper No. 22589, 2016).

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1015

lots so as to de­moc­ra­tize access to the most elitist institutions, in effect applying
social quotas. Such randomization has the advantage of discouraging parents
from overinvesting financially and emotionally in seeking ways for their c­ hildren
to achieve ever higher test scores, such as paying for extra coaching at ­earlier and­earlier ages. This of course excludes parents who lack the necessary means to pay
for extra help and very likely would not know where to find it if they did havethe means.113 A good compromise might be to take grades into account to a­limited extent (above a certain threshold) while retaining a high level of social
mixing as a priority goal. ­There is ­little doubt that ­these kinds of debates, which
in many ways have only just begun, ­will play a central role in de­cades to come.
Their politicization is still in the early stages. Ultimately, it could once againtransform the educational cleavage structure.114
To conclude, let me mention the specific prob­lem posed by the coexistenceof public and private schools, not only at the tertiary level but also at the pri­mary and secondary levels. In practice, private schools generally benefit fromdirect or indirect public financing ­because they enjoy special ­legal and fiscal
status. They participate in the provision of an essential public ser­vice: dissemi­
nating knowledge to the young. Hence they should be subject to the same reg­ulations as public schools with re­spect to both available resources and admis­
sions procedures. Other­wise, the effort to construct acceptable norms of justicein the public sector ­will be undermined by flight to the private sector. In France,
private primary and m­ iddle schools and lycées receive substantial public funding,which is combined with additional resources provided by parents; they also
enjoy the right to select students from what­ever social background theychoose.115 It is hard to see how ­these advantages can be made compatible withthe princi­ples of educational justice. In the United States, private universities
refuse to make their admissions procedures and algorithms public and insist
on being taken at their word when they claim that preferential admissions forthe ­children of gradu­ates and impor­tant donors are used sparingly.116 Onceagain, this does not facilitate the task of elaborating a norm of justice accept­
able to all.
113. See L. E. Major and S. Machin, Social Mobility: And Its Enemies (Pelican
Books, 2018).
114. Let us hope that ­things evolve in a more peaceful way than Michael Youngenvisioned in The Rise of Meritocracy (1958). See Chap. 14.
115. See Chap. 14.
116. See Chaps. 11 and 15.

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1016 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

In recent de­cades, the dizzying increase in the capital endowments of thewealthiest private universities, especially in the United States, owing to the highreturns their portfolios have yielded on international markets, has also posed
specific prob­lems.117 To prevent ­these endowments from growing without
limit, one proposal is to raise the portion of the endowment that must be
spent annually from the current 4–5 ­percent (depending on the university)
to 10 or 15 ­percent. The prob­lem is that the wealthiest universities alreadyhave trou­ble figuring out how to spend their money while public colleges anduniversities open to the disadvantaged cruelly lack resources.118 ­Under suchconditions it would be logical to impose a progressive tax on university en­­ ere isdowments to finance an endowment fund for the poorest universities. Th
no reason why the schedule of this tax should be the same as that applied to thewealth of private individuals ­because the socioeconomic context is dif­fer­ent.
While it is not up to me to say what it should be, I do think that the question
is worth pondering. Indeed, it is very hard to imagine any scenario leading toa just educational policy in the United States if one allows the disparities be­
tween elitist and poor universities to grow without limit. The same question
could also be raised about foundations and other nonprofit entities in othersectors such as culture, health, and the media. In each case the answer should
depend on how one defines the general interest.119

Just Democracy: Demo­cratic Equality Vouchers
All the historical trajectories we have looked at in this book show how inti­
mately the structure of in­equality is related to the nature of the po­liti­cal regime.
­Whether we w
­ ere looking at premodern trifunctional socie­ties or nineteenth-­
century proprietarian socie­ties or slave socie­ties or colonial socie­ties, it was
the way po­liti­cal power was or­ga­nized that allowed a certain type of in­equality

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117. On this point, see Chap. 11, and Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-­First C­ entury,
Chap. 12, ­Table 12.2.
118. To get an idea of the prob­lem, recall that the thirty most elitist US universities
admit more students from the wealthiest 1 ­percent than from the poorest
60 ­percent of the income distribution. See Chap. 15.
119. In the case of foundations serving the interests of families or private individ­
uals, it is obvious that they should be taxed as private property. The boundary line is
not always easy to draw, however, and that is why we need precise rules concerning
the governance of foundations (which should not be controlled solely by their gen­erous donor) to determine what foundations deserve special tax treatment.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1017

regime to persist. ­People sometimes think that the po­liti­cal institutions ofWestern society achieved a kind of unsurpassable perfection in the parliamen­
tary democracy of the mid-­twentieth c­ entury. In fact, one can certainly improveon the parliamentary demo­cratic model, which is increasingly contested.
Among the most obvious limitations of the parliamentary model ­today is
its inability to stem the tide of rising in­equality. In this book I have tried toshow how t­ oday’s difficulties need to be seen in the context of a long and com­plex po­liti­cal and ideological history—­the history of in­equality regimes. Our
pre­sent prob­lems cannot be solved without major changes to existing po­liti­cal
rules. For example, I noted e­ arlier that to establish social and temporary owner­ship through corporate power sharing and progressive taxation of wealth,constitutional and ­legal changes may be needed. This was also true in the pastwhen similar questions arose: for example, the German Constitution of 1949
had to be written in such a way as to allow co-­management and social owner­ship of corporations, and the US Constitution had to be amended in 1913 toauthorize federal income and inheritance taxes, which ­were subsequently madeprogressive. Other changes of po­liti­cal rules played equally impor­tant roles in
reducing in­equality in other countries. In the United Kingdom, the House ofLords had to be stripped of its veto in the constitutional crisis of 1910–1911 inorder for progressive taxation to see the light of day. In France, the social andfiscal reforms of 1945 and 1981 would have been much harder to achieve if the
Senate had retained the veto power it enjoyed u­ nder the Third Republic—­apower that the Socialists and Communists fought hard to eliminate in 1945–
1946. It would be a ­mistake to think that ­things w­ ill be dif­fer­ent in the ­future:transformation of the structure of in­equality w­ ill continue to go hand in handwith transformation of the po­liti­cal regime. To shrink from changing the rules­because it is too complicated is to ignore the lessons of history and forgo any
possibility of real change. In Chapter 16 I discussed the EU’s una­nim­it­ y ruleon fiscal m­ atters and the need to rebuild Eu­rope on a social-­federalist founda­tion. I w
­ ill say more in a moment about the need to change the rules and trea­
ties that govern social and economic relations between states.
Another aspect of the po­liti­cal regime is also in need of urgent attention:
the financing of po­liti­cal campaigns and of po­liti­cal life more generally. In
theory, universal suffrage is based on a ­simple princi­ple: one ­woman (or man),one vote. In practice, financial and economic interests can exert an outsized
influence on the po­liti­cal pro­cess, e­ ither directly by financing parties and cam­paigns or indirectly through the media, think tanks, or universities. E­ arlier, I
discussed the case of nonprofit media organ­izations, which could become the514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 1017

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1018 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

standard for producing news, affording newspaper and other media companies
much greater in­de­pen­dence from their financiers (including major share­
holders, owing to the ceiling on voting rights within the com­pany).120 Direct
financing of po­liti­cal campaigns and parties can obviously influence the pri­orities of po­liti­cal parties and complicate the adoption of mea­sures to combatin­equality, owing for instance to the radical hostility of many wealthy donors
to more steeply progressive taxes.
The question of po­liti­cal financing has never r­ eally been considered in acomprehensive way. To be sure, many countries have passed laws limiting theinfluence of private money in politics. Some countries have engaged in timid
efforts of public financing, such as Germany in the 1950s, the United Statesand Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, and France in the 1990s. But it is striking tosee how fragmented and incomplete t­ hose efforts have been and how l­ ittle they
have built on one another. In other areas of lawmaking, governments are quick
to copy one another (as in the case of progressive taxation, for better and forworse), but when it comes to regulating the influence of money in politics, eachcountry seems to act almost completely in­de­pen­dently of the ­others. Recent
work by Julia Cagé has shown, however, that meticulous examination of thiscomplicated history can be highly instructive. In par­tic­u­lar, analy­sis of thevari­ous mea­sures that have been tried so far suggests that “demo­cratic equality
vouchers” offer an especially promising ave­nue for exploration.121
In a nutshell, the idea would be to provide ­every citizen with an annual
voucher worth, say, 5 euros, which could be assigned to the po­liti­cal party or
movement of his or her choosing. The choice would be made online, for in­
stance, when validating one’s income or wealth declaration. Only movements
supported by some minimal percentage of the population (which might be set
at, say, 1 ­percent) would be eligible. If an individual chooses not to support any
party (or if support for the chosen party falls below the threshold), the valueof his or her voucher would be allocated in proportion to the choices made by

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120. See Cagé, Saving the Media. In addition to supporting new participatory
citizen-­controlled media, the public should take control of (or at least strongly
regulate) digital platforms in quasi-­monopolistic situations and should impose
very strict rules to combat sponsored content and unlimited extension of adver­
tising (which ­today pollutes even the facades of historic monuments). Egalitariandemo­cratic deliberation should be promoted.
121. See Cagé, The Price of Democracy. Full disclosure: Julia Cagé is my partner, which
does not prevent her from writing excellent books, nor does it prevent m­ e from
reading those books in a critical spirit.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1019

other citizens.122 This last point is impor­tant ­because the absence of a rule ofthis type led to the collapse of the public financing experiment in the UnitedStates, where many citizens chose not to participate in public financing of po­liti­cal parties of any kind. But democracy is not an option: if some ­people do
not wish to participate, that should not reduce the level of public financing(which in any case is not enormous). Apart from the demo­cratic equality
vouchers, po­liti­cal contributions by firms and other “moral persons” would be
totally prohibited (as is already the case in many Eu­ro­pean countries, such as
France since 1995), and t­ here would be a strict ceiling on private individual do­nations (which Julia Cagé proposes to limit to 200 euros per year). This newpo­liti­cal financing regime would include very strict requirements for parties
and movements that want to sponsor candidates; they would be required not
only to publish their accounts but also to be totally transparent about their in­
ternal statutes and rules of governance, which at pre­sent are often extremely
opaque.

­Toward a Participatory and Egalitarian Democracy
The central goal of demo­cratic equality vouchers is to promote participatory
and egalitarian democracy. Currently, the prevalence of private financing sig­
nificantly biases the po­liti­cal pro­cess. This is particularly true of the UnitedStates where campaign finance laws (always inadequate) have been set aside byrecent decisions of the Supreme Court. But it is also true in emerging democ­
racies such as India and Brazil as well as in Eu­rope, where current laws areequally inadequate and in some cases totally scandalous. Take France, for ex­
ample: po­liti­cal contributions by private individuals are permitted up to 7,500
euros per year per taxpayer, two-­thirds of which may be deducting from one’s
income tax (yielding a 5,000 euro deduction for a 7,500 euro contribution). It­will come as no surprise that the contributors who come close to the ceilingare mainly quite wealthy, from the top centile of the income distribution. In
other words, the po­liti­cal preferences of the rich are directly and explic­itly sub­sidized by the rest of the population. The sums in question are far from negli­
gible: total income-­tax deductions for po­liti­cal contributions amount to 60–70
million euros per year, roughly equivalent to the total official public financing
122. To encourage the emergence of new movements, one might also imagine citi­
zens making two choices: one to apply if the chosen movement makes it above the1 ­percent threshold, the other in case it does not.

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1020 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictof French parties (which is proportionate to votes received and seats won in
the most recent legislative elections).123 Concretely, the current French system
earmarks 2–3 euros per year per citizen for official funding of parties, plus up
to 5,000 euros a year to subsidize the preferences of each rich donor. Demo­cratic equality vouchers would make it pos­si­ble to totally eliminate tax deduc­tions for po­liti­cal contributions; the increase in tax revenues could then be dis­tributed in an egalitarian fashion. Compared with the current system, which
is based on the results of the most recent legislative elections, this proposal
would also encourage more responsive citizen participation and more rapid re­newal of po­liti­cal parties and movements.
As Cagé points out, the logic of demo­cratic equality vouchers could also
be applied to issues other than po­liti­cal financing. Indeed, vouchers could re­place the existing system of tax deductions for charitable contributions, which
in real­ity is just another way of subsidizing the cultural and philanthropic pref­
erences of the rich. One could start with the sums currently lost to tax deduc­tions and benefits of vari­ous kinds and reallocate t­ hose amounts in the formof vouchers distributed to each taxpayer. What organ­izations and foundations
in which sectors would be eligible to receive ­these vouchers? Candidates might
include health, culture, the fight against poverty, education, the media, and soon. All t­ hese suggestions are worthy of further debate. A similar proceduremight also figure in thinking about the thorny issue of financing religious
activities.124

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123. See Cagé, The Price of Democracy. In general, it is striking to see how each country
has cobbled together an inconsistent set of rules for dealing with po­liti­cal contribu­
tions without seeking to learn from ­others. For example, France prohibited gifts by“moral persons” but came up with an improbable system for directly subsidizing thepo­liti­cal preferences of the wealthy (other countries also allow tax deductions for po­
liti­cal contributions but generally less extreme). By contrast, ­after World War II, Ger­
many pioneered an innovative system for public financing of parties and foundations
attached to the parties and devoted to producing po­liti­cal ideas and programs. But
Germany also failed to prohibit contributions by moral persons so that all large
German firms subsidize all the parties; this may not be without influence on German
government positions on exports and trade surpluses.
124. Currently, countries like Italy have a system in which taxpayers can indicate which
religion they would like a portion of their taxes to go to (currently 0.8 ­percent), whilein other countries, such as Germany, the tax authorities collect a religion tax (tax­payers who declare affiliation with a religious group pay a tax supplement). In con­trast to the Italian system, this raises their tax bill. Note that Islam is excluded in bothcases (and in Italy, Muslims pay de facto to subsidize other religions). Officially, the514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 1020

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1021

The question of how much money can be justly allocated this way is also
central, and I do not propose to resolve it h­ ere. If the sums involved represented
a significant fraction of total tax receipts, this would be a highly elaborate formof direct democracy, which would allow citizens to decide themselves how alarge portion of the public bud­get should be spent. This is a promising ave­nue
for promoting greater citizen participation in a demo­cratic pro­cess that often
seems unresponsive to the desires of ordinary p­ eople.125 In practice, the systemof parliamentary deliberation is nevertheless indispensable for deciding how
to allocate the vast majority of public funds. Bud­get decisions call for exten­
sive public deliberation with an opportunity for all sides to be heard and withoversight by media and ordinary citizens. The scope of direct democracy should
be expanded through participatory bud­geting, egalitarian vouchers, and ref­erenda.126 But direct democracy is unlikely to replace the deliberative setting
afforded by parliamentary democracy. The spirit of the demo­cratic equality
voucher is rather to make parliamentary democracy more dynamic and par­ticipatory by encouraging all citizens, regardless of their social background or
reason for this is that the government has not identified a proper Muslim organ­
ization to receive public funds. See F. Messner, ed., Public Funding of Religions inEu­rope (Ashgate, 2015). See also Cagé, The Price of Democracy, pp. 77–78. In France,
the system is particularly hypocritical: religions receive no official public financing
other than for religious edifices built prior to 1905 (most of which are Catholic
churches) and existing private schools and lycées (the vast majority of which are Cath­olic). Note, moreover, that the special regime for financing religion in Alsace andMoselle also excludes Islam, just like the rest of the system.
125. The current system of tax deductions for po­liti­cal and charitable gifts amounts
to granting the rich greater say in defining the public good. In this re­spect it re­sembles the censitary voting system. The transition to an egalitarian voucher would
represent a decisive improvement. Taxpaying citizens who do not wish to choose aphilanthropic cause could choose to have their voucher allocated in proportion to
the wishes of ­those who do choose, or in accordance with the average allocation of
public funds established by parliament.
126. As noted ­earlier, however, in the case of Brexit and other complex and crucial
issues such as debt cancellation, referenda are useful only if precise alternatives areformulated and presented to the voters. This calls for extensive deliberation in an
appropriate setting. In practice, the illusion of direct spontaneous democracy
without a parliament or intermediary bodies can easily lead to a usurpation of
power more extreme than the power imbalance one is seeking to remedy. Hencerules governing the financing of referendum campaigns are essential, failing which
the vote may be captured by lobbies and financial interests. All ­these issues can be
dealt with but must be carefully thought through.

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1022 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictfinancial means, to participate regularly in the renewal of po­liti­cal movements
and parties. They can thus shape new ideas and platforms, which can thenbecome the subject of deliberations and decisions by elected assemblies.127

Just Borders: Rethinking Social Federalism on a Global Scale
We come now to what is undoubtedly the most delicate question in defining
the just society: the question of just borders. We are so accustomed to the princi­
ples by which the world is currently or­ga­nized that they seem impossible tosupersede, but in real­ity they stem from a very specific type of political-­ideological regime. On the one hand, goods, ser­vices, and capital are supposed
to flow freely across borders; to reject this princi­ple is tantamount to secedingfrom the civilized world. On the other hand, po­liti­cal choices made within acountry’s borders, especially in regard to fiscal, social, and l­ egal systems, are­matters of strict national sovereignty; no other country is supposed to have a
say in them. The prob­lem is that ­these two princi­ples lead directly to contra­
dictions that have only grown worse in recent de­cades; ­these contradictions
threaten to blow up the global system as it currently exists. The solution is toor­ga­nize the system differently: existing trade agreements should be replacedwith much more ambitious treaties that seek to promote equitable and sus­
tainable development, which ­will require setting verifiable common goals inregard to ­matters such as just taxation and carbon emissions. If necessary, ap­
propriate demo­cratic deliberation procedures can be developed for us intransnational assemblies. I call this new type of international accord a “treaty
for codevelopment.” Codevelopment treaties may include mea­sures to facili­tate trade, but liberalization of commercial and financial flows should no longer
constitute the heart of the global system. Trade and finance would then become
what they always should have been: means in the ser­vice of higher ends.
One of the most obvious contradictions of the current system is that the f­ ree
circulation of goods and capital is or­ga­nized in such a way that it significantly

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127. Cagé’s proposal also includes the creation of social quotas (based on the Indianmodel) to ensure better repre­sen­ta­tion of p­ eople of dif­f er­ent social backgrounds inparliamentary assemblies. See Cagé, The Price of Democracy. Greater social diver­sity in representative bodies could also be achieved by drawing lots, which would
avoid the pos­si­ble social stigma associated with quotas. But this would mean giving
up our collective ability to choose the p­ eople we believe best qualified to represent
us (including within a given social group), which would be rather nihilistic if ap­
plied on a large scale.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1023

limits the ability of states to choose their fiscal and social policies. In otherwords, current international rules do not establish the neutral framework they
purport to create but rather compel countries to adopt certain policies and di­
rectly restrict national sovereignty. More specifically, we saw ­earlier that theagreements of the 1980s that liberalized capital flows included no mechanism
for fiscal cooperation or automatic transmission of information about cross-­border asset flows and the identity of asset ­owners.128 In this realm Eu­rope led
the world by adopting rules that de facto prevented governments from com­bating strategies of tax and regulatory avoidance involving offshore structures(or at the very least forced states to abrogate treaties if they wished to impose
adequate sanctions).129 The choice of this specific l­egal regime to some extent
reflects the conscious w­ ill of certain actors to promote fiscal competition amongEu­ro­pean states (deemed to be spendthrifts). It was also a consequence of a cer­tain improvisation around decisions whose consequences had not been fully
anticipated in the 1980s, specifically having to do with the growth of tax havens
and offshore finance. In short, t­hese agreements w­ ere signed in a dif­fer­ent era
before in­equality, the excesses of financial capitalism, and the dangers of identi­
tarian and nationalist retreat ­were as worrisome as they have become ­today.
Furthermore, the fiction of strictly national sovereignty over social and fiscal
choices has been demolished by the fact that repre­sen­ta­tions of justice are in­creasingly transnational. Why do wealthy countries aid poor ones (notwith­standing the fact that the aid supplied is insufficient and often ill a­ dapted to128. See Chaps. 11 and 13.
129. For example, the requirement I described ­earlier for ­owners of residences orbusinesses located in France to declare their owner­ship might be challenged on the
grounds that they would impinge on the ­free circulation of capital. It is neverthe­less urgent that all entities that own assets (­under any ­legal regime whatsoever) be
subject to very strict rules of transparency. It should be almost impossible to reg­ister a corporation in a territory or jurisdiction where it does virtually no ­actual
business. Currently, the rules governing “conflict of laws” (the situation that arises
when two or more jurisdictions apply to the same entity) are very favorable tocompanies that have the means to circumvent the law in the sense that countries
often allow firms to or­ga­nize their business through entities over which they haveno jurisdiction. In a number of cases, the Court of Justice of the Eu­ro­pean Union
has enforced a very strict reading of the capital mobility rules (some of which are
imprecisely codified in the Maastricht Treaty), finding, for example, that Germany
had to suspend use of the “real seat theory” ­under which it did not recognize anentity based in the Netherlands as a “moral person.” See K. Pistor, The Code ofCapital (Prince­ton University Press, 2019).

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1024 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictits purpose)? It is not solely for self-­interested reasons, such as stanching theflow of immigrants. It is also ­because residents of the wealthy countries (or atleast part of them) believe that it is unjust for p­ eople born in the poor coun­tries to have opportunities so much more ­limited than their own. They want,
to a degree at least, to correct this unjust in­equality and are willing to sacrificeto that end, provided that the cost is not too high. Exactly how much they arewilling to spend depends on complex and changing perceptions, which are­shaped by what ­limited information they possess about the volume of aid andthe success or failure of vari­ous strategies of development. ­Today, the norm isthe following: a country should devote 1 ­percent of its GDP to developmental
assistance. Although this is not an extraordinarily generous amount, it is nev­
ertheless substantial compared with other forms of international transfer.130
Furthermore, perceptions regarding transnational and global justice play anincreasing role in debates about the environment, the Anthropocene, biodiver­sity, and climate change. Of course, efforts to limit global warming have beennotoriously insufficient. But the very fact that certain countries and regions of
the world are reducing their emissions without waiting for the rest of the world
to follow would be hard to explain in a world where it was e­ very man for himself
or ­every country for itself. Nevertheless, ­there is a ­great deal of hy­poc­risy in ­thesedebates and much inconsistency. In December 2015, 196 countries met in Parisand agreed on a theoretical goal of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 de­grees above pre­industrial levels, which would require leaving in the ground a­great deal of hydrocarbon, such as that extracted from the tar sands of Alberta,
which Canada wants to resume exploiting. That did not prevent the Eu­ro­pean
Union from signing a new trade agreement with Canada in 2016—­the Com­
prehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA, which includes all sortsof binding decisions regarding the liberalization of trade and investment flows
but none concerning environmental or fiscal issues. It would have been pos­si­ble,

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130. Developmental aid is about 1 ­percent of gross national income in Sweden,
0.7 ­percent in the United Kingdom, and 0.4 ­percent in Germany and France. The
official objective set by the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Devel­
opment is 0.7 ­percent, but the Swedish figure is often taken as the implicit new
goal. Th
­ ese amounts are greater than net transfers within the Eu­ro­pean Union(roughly 0.2–0.3 ­percent of gross national income), attacks on which played a non­negligible role in the Brexit debates. See Chaps. 12 and 15. This suggests that suchflows are seen differently depending on the level of development of the receiving
country and are perhaps more readily accepted when seen as aiding countries per­ceived to be especially poor.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1025

however, to add carbon emission targets or specify minimum common rates ofcorporate taxation, together with verification mechanisms and sanctions to en­sure enforcement, as was done for trade and financial issues.131
Of course, the most con­spic­uo­ us contradiction between the way globaliza­tion is or­ga­nized ­today and ideas of transnational justice has to do with the ­free
circulation of persons. ­Under the dominant paradigm, civilized states are re­quired to allow ­free circulation of goods, ser­vices, and capital but are perfectly­free to block the ­free movement of ­people as they see fit. Hence this becomes in asense the only issue of legitimate po­liti­cal confrontation. The Eu­ro­pean Union isdefined by having achieved f­ ree circulation within its borders while maintaining
much more restrictive policies with re­spect to individuals arriving from Africa orthe ­Middle East, including ­those fleeing poverty and war. Since the refugee crisisof 2015, most Eu­ro­pean leaders have supported the idea that the mi­grant influx
must be s­ topped, no ­matter what the cost, even if it means allowing tens of thou­sands of ­people to drown in the Mediterranean to discourage anyone who might
be tempted to follow.132 Part of the Eu­ro­pean public opposes this policy, but an­other part evinces g­ reat hostility to non-­European mi­grants and supports one or
another of the nativist po­liti­cal movements that have cropped up in Eu­rope sincethe 1980s–1990s to exploit identity issues. This has greatly changed po­liti­calcleavage structures. As we saw ­earlier, however, the change began well before theimmigration issue became central. Waning support for policies that would re­distribute wealth and income and reduce in­equality was just as impor­tant as
hostility to immigrants in bringing about this change.133
In sum, ideas of justice are impor­tant at the transnational as well as thenational level in regard to developmental aid, the environment, and f­ ree cir­
culation of persons, but ­those ideas are often confused and contradictory.
The impor­tant point is that they are not set in stone: they are historically andpo­liti­cally constructed.
131. The very name “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement” signifies that
this is not a standard trade agreement but an accord that includes mea­sures aimed at“comprehensive” transformation of the economy, which in practice means additionalmea­sures of “investor protection” (which allow investors to avoid ordinary courts oflaw and rely on private arbitrators to s­ ettle their disputes with governments). Clearly,­there are dif­fer­ent conceptions of how treaties should be understood.
132. The International Organ­
ization for Migration officially counts 19,000 mi­
grants as having drowned in the Mediterranean between 2014 and 2018 (see theirwebsite at www​.­iom​.­int).
133. See Chaps. 14–15.

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1026 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict­Toward a Transnational JusticeWith ­these preliminaries in mind, how should transnational justice be defined?
It is easiest to begin by discussing countries at approximately the same level ofdevelopment, such as the countries of Eu­rope. In the previous chapter, we saw
how social federalism might work at the Eu­ro­pean level.134 The general princi­ple
was to delegate to a transnational assembly (in this instance the Eu­ro­pean As­
sembly) responsibility for decisions concerning global public goods, such asprotecting the environment and promoting research, and for global fiscal
justice, including the possibility of imposing common taxes on income andproperty, large firms, and carbon emissions (­Table 17.2). This transnational
assembly could be composed of members of the national parliaments of member
states or of transnational deputies expressly elected to serve in this capacity, orof a mixture of the two. In the Eu­ro­pean case I stressed the importance of de­veloping a Eu­ro­pean parliamentary sovereignty that would rest primarily on
the sovereignty of national parliaments so as to involve national deputies in thepo­liti­cal pro­cess and prevent them from shifting blame for unpop­u­lar policies
to the federal level, which could doom the w­ hole proj­ect. But clearly t­ here aremany ways to or­ga­nize a transnational assembly, and it is reasonable to experi­
ment with dif­fer­ent solutions in dif­fer­ent contexts.
We also saw that the question of transfer payments was highly sensitive in
the Eu­ro­pean context, even between countries with virtually identical average­ ill take time, andincomes, such as Germany and France. Establishing trust w
meanwhile it makes sense to impose strict limits on transfers for as long as nec­
essary. The hope is that the importance of joint proj­ects and shared goals, es­
pecially in the areas of environmental protection, basic research, justice, andin­equality reduction, ­will ultimately overshadow petty bookkeeping concerns.
In general, t­ here is no essential reason why ­there should be more solidarity be­
tween Bavarians and Lower Saxons or between Greater Pa­ri­sians and Bretons
than between all four and Piedmontese or Catalans. None of t­ hese solidarities
exist spontaneously: they are historically and po­liti­cally constructed and comeinto being when p­ eople see that the advantages of belonging to the same com­munity outweigh the advantages of maintaining borders.135

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134. See Chap. 16.
135. On the construction of common images as the basis of nation-­states linked tothe diffusion of printing, see the classic work by B. Anderson, ­Imagined Communities. Reflection on the Origins and Spread of Modern Nationalism (Verso, 1983; new514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 1026

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1027

­Table 17.2
A new organ­ization of globalization: transnational democracy
Transnational Assembly
In charge of global public goods (climate, research, e­ tc.) and global fiscal justice(common taxes on the largest fortunes and highest incomes, largest firms, carbon taxes)
National
Assembly
Country A

National
Assembly
Country B

National
Assembly
Country C

National
Assembly
Country D...

Interpretation: ­Under the proposed organ­ization, the treaties regulating globalization (circulation of
goods, capital, and ­people) ­will henceforth provide for the states and regional ­unions concerned to create atransnational assembly in charge of global public goods (climate, research, ­etc.) and global fiscal justice(common taxes on the largest fortunes, highest incomes, largest firms, and carbon taxes). Note: Countries A,
B, C, and D may be states like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and so on, in which case the transnational
assembly would be the Eu­ro­pean Assembly, or they could be regional ­unions like the Eu­ro­pean Union, theAfrican Union, and so on, in which case the transnational assembly would be the Euro-­African Assembly.
The transnational assembly may consist of deputies of national assemblies and / or transnational deputies
specially elected for the purpose, as the case may be.

This model of transnational democracy on a Eu­ro­pean scale could also be
extended more broadly. Owing to bonds of proximity stemming from more
intense h­ uman and economic exchanges, the most logical next step would be
to foster collaboration between regional entities: for example, between theEu­ro­pean Union and the African Union,136 between the Eu­ro­pean Union andthe United States, and so on. When decisions can be taken directly within theframework of an intergovernmental treaty, ­there is no reason to delegate themed., 2006). Despite the success of the ideology of the national state, more or lessdecentralized imperial or federal polities have actually never ceased to play a central
role. See J. Burbank and F. Cooper, Empires in World History (Prince­ton University
Press, 2010); “Un monde d’empires,” in P. Boucheron and N. Delalande, Pour une
histoire-­monde (Presses Universitaires de France, 2013), pp. 37–48. See also Chap. 7
on the work of F. Cooper on federalist debates in the French empire and Africa in
1945–1960 and Chap. 11 on H. Arendt’s analy­sis of imperial and federal ideologies.
See also U. Beck and E. Grande, Das kosmopolitische Europa (Suhrkamp, 2004).
136. In 2002 the African Union (AU) replaced the Organ­
ization for African
Unity. During the AU summit meeting in Addis Ababa in 2018, the princi­ples of a
trade ­union and pos­si­ble common taxes ­were approved along with a protocol on­free circulation of persons within the AU.

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1028 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictto a transnational assembly. But the fact is t­ here are many decisions that standin need of constant revision and updating and should be subject to open publicdeliberation in a parliamentary setting where all points of view can be heard.
Legislators need to hear the diversity of opinions within each member state.
This would totally change the nature of the debate compared with the pre­sent
procedure u­ nder which decisions are taken in closed-­door meetings of headsof state, where discussion is defined by the clash of national interests (or what
the heads of state take their national interests to be). For instance, a Euro-­
African Assembly might be responsible for deciding how to tax Eu­ro­pean
multinationals investing in Africa (or, someday, African companies operatingin Eu­rope), how to combat global warming with compensatory mea­sures, or
how to regulate the flow of mi­grants.
As for transfers, it is impor­tant to set limits on their size at the outset
without precluding modifications to ­those limits in the ­future. Compared withpresent-­day developmental aid, much of which goes to paying Western con­sul­tants, the general princi­ple might be that transfers should go directly to thetrea­suries of the states concerned once certain conditions are met, includingre­spect for individual rights and fair voting procedures (which should be spelled
out in detail). Circumvention of state institutions in Africa (and, more gener­
ally, in poor countries) by both governmental and nongovernmental organ­
izations has been a ­factor slowing the pro­cess of state formation in recent
de­cades. So has the loss of revenue due to the very rapid elimination of tariffs by
the rich countries, which have not generally assisted the poor countries indeveloping more just taxes to replace them—­namely, taxes on profits, income,and wealth.137 If developmental aid money ­were paid directly to African gov­
ernments, t­ hose governments would have significantly greater resources to pay
for better schools and health ser­vices. No one can say in advance where suchtransnational demo­cratic deliberations and procedures would lead, but it is
not out of the question that a norm of educational equality (according towhich all ­children, w­ hether born in Eu­rope or Africa, would be entitled toequal investment in their education) might gradually take hold, along withultimately an equal capital endowment for every­one as well.138

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137. See Fig. 13.12.
138. This norm of transnational justice should take price differences into account(that is, the universal capital endowment should be expressed in terms of pur­chasing power parity). Nevertheless, such a norm at the Euro-­African or global
level would clearly result in a significant decrease in the capital endowment for

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1029

Hypothetically, transnational assemblies could decide to approve rules
to move ­toward f­ ree circulation of p­ eople. On this point, it is worth notingthat ­there are some impor­tant restrictions on ­free circulation even within
the Eu­ro­pean Union. In practice, citizens of member states have the right totravel and work in other members states without special authorization,
which is a significant right, especially when compared with the prob­lemsthat citizens of other countries (and their prospective employers) face inobtaining work visas. Nevertheless, if they do not find employment, theirresidency in another member state is generally l­imited to three months.
Furthermore, they must wait up to five years before becoming eligible forsocial assistance or permanent resident status.139 In the abstract, ­there is no
reason why Eu­ro­pean treaties could not be amended to eliminate thewaiting period for social assistance. But in that case, ­there would have to beagreement on mutualizing the corresponding social costs. This example
shows why it is impor­tant to treat fundamental rights (such as ­free circula­tion of ­people) together with fiscal and bud­g etary questions. ­Unless simul­
taneous pro­gress is made on both fronts, the result w­ ill be un­balanced andfragile.140
University tuition fees are another case in point. In 2019, the French gov­
ernment de­cided that only students from the Eu­ro­pean Union would con­tinue paying the current fees, which are fairly modest (170 euros per year forthe licence, 240 euros for the master). Non-­European students would becharged much higher amounts (2,800 euros and 3,800 euros, respectively). The
government’s order does allow for exceptions but on the express condition
young adults in the rich countries (which would be cut roughly in half ). Such anorm would be much more satisfactory than the international and intergenera­
tional reparations discussed in the case of relations between France and Haiti (seeChap. 6). But if ­there ­were no such norm and reparations would have a similar ef­
fect, it would be difficult to oppose them.
139. See D. Chal­mers, G. Davies, and G. Monti, Eu­ro­pean Union Law: Text andMaterials, 3rd ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 475–491.
140. The development of ­free circulation in Britain in the eigh­teenth and nine­
teenth centuries, which Karl Polanyi analyzed, illustrates this danger. For Polanyi,
the ­limited mobility of the poorest En­glish workers prior to the late eigh­teenth­century was linked to local financing of benefits available ­under the so-­called Poor
Laws. Polanyi, who has no intention of idealizing this authoritarian and stingy
system, shows how the constitution of a unified national ­labor market in the nine­
teenth ­century coincided with a social disembedding of economic forces and ag­
gravation of in­equality.

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1030 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictthat they apply to no more than 10 ­percent of all students. In other words, inthe vast majority of cases, students from Mali or Sudan w­ ill have to pay ten to
twenty times as much as students from Luxembourg or Norway, even if theparents of the latter earn ten to twenty times as much as the parents of theformer.141 Quite understandably, many French students and academics have a
hard time understanding the logic of this new standard—­one more brain­child of the current government.
The case is in­ter­est­ing ­because it shows once again the need to link thequestion of f­ ree circulation to that of mutualized financing of public ser­vices
and therefore common taxes. In this case, the princi­ple that all Eu­ro­pean stu­
dents should be allowed to study in the country of their choosing and pay thesame fees as nationals is an excellent t­ hing. But the princi­ple would be makemore sense if t­ here w­ ere common financing, which could come from a federal
tax levied at the Eu­ro­pean level on the highest earners, with progressive rates
and a schedule that would be subject to debate and approval by the Eu­ro­pean
Assembly. Creating rights without worrying about their financing is not agood idea, and the prob­lem becomes even more difficult when common taxes
are excluded and fiscal competition is intensified. ­Under t­ hese conditions it
becomes more difficult to pay for higher education and for public educationin general. Furthermore, if common financing existed, at least among t­hoseEu­ro­pean states willing to agree to it, it would be pos­si­ble to find a solution
for non-­European students as well. Specifically, if Germany and France fi­nanced their universities with a common progressive tax based on parental
income, it would make sense to propose a similar arrangement for Malian stu­
dents. Germany, France, and Mali could sign a codevelopment treaty u­ nder
which Malian students would pay the same tuition as German and French
students, provided that the wealthiest Malian parents pay the same progres­sive tax into a common fund for university financing.142 This would be onepos­si­ble standard of justice. Open public demo­cratic deliberation seems to me
the logical way to get ­there.

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141. Eu­ro­pean tuition rates also apply to citizens of states associated with the Eu­ro­pean Union, such as Norway and Switzerland.
142.	­Because Malian incomes are low (even ­after adjusting the tax schedule to re­flect purchasing power parity), it is likely that the Malian contribution to thecommon fund would be quite low and no doubt significantly lower than develop­
mental funds paid to Mali.

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1031

Between Cooperation and Retreat: The Evolution of theTransnational In­equality Regime
What I have just described is a cooperative and ideal (not to say idyllic) scenariothat would lead via concentric circles to a vast transnational democracy, ulti­
mately resulting in just common taxes, a universal right to education and a cap­
ital endowment, f­ ree circulation of p­ eople, and de facto virtual abolition of bor­ders.143 I am aware that other scenarios are pos­si­ble. As we saw in Chapter 16,­there is no assurance that EU member states (or any subset of them) ­will be able
to agree anytime soon on a demo­cratic procedure for levying common taxes.
Meanwhile, the Indian Union with its 1.3 billion ­people has a­ dopted a progres­sive income tax on all its citizens together with common rules that give the dis­advantaged classes access to universities. The Indian model has other prob­lems,
however. Still, it shows that demo­cratic federalism can take forms that p­ eople inFrance, Switzerland, or Luxembourg might never imagine. Establishing mutual
confidence and norms of transnational justice is a delicate, highly fragile exer­
cise, and no one can predict how cooperative arrangements might evolve,
Between the ideal path to global federalism and the path of generalized na­
tionalist and identitarian retreat, many trajectories are of course pos­si­ble, withmultiple switch points. To make pro­gress ­toward a more just globalization, two
princi­ples should be kept in mind. First, although it is clear that many of therules and treaties that currently govern international trade and finance must
be profoundly reformed, it is impor­tant to propose a new international l­egal
framework before dismantling the old one. As we saw in the discussion of Eu­ro­pean institutional reforms in Chapter 16, po­liti­cal leaders may be tempted
to renounce existing treaties without specifying what new ones they would liketo put in their place. This is what happened with Brexit. British Conservatives
chose to ask voters to decide by referendum w­ hether or not they wished to exit
the Eu­ro­pean Union but did not indicate how they planned to or­ga­nize their­future relations with the Eu­ro­pean Union in case of exit. Without returning
to autarky (which no one wants), t­ here are many ways of regulating t­ hese
143. To be clear, u­ nder the scenario described h­ ere, most decisions would continue
to be taken and administered by national, regional, or local assemblies, which
would also approve most financing. In many cases it is better to or­ga­nize delibera­tion at this level (for example, on curricula in dif­fer­ent languages, local infrastruc­ture and transportation, health systems, e­ tc.), within the logic of the decentralized
participatory socialism I am advocating. Only global public goods and taxing oftransnational economic actors are to be regulated directly at the transnational level.

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1032 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflict

relations; the postreferendum debate has shown how difficult it is to agree on
any of them.144
Second, while it is essential to propose a new framework for cooperation
before abandoning the old one, it is impossible to wait for the entire world toagree before moving ahead. It is therefore crucial to think of solutions that w­ ill
allow a few countries to move t­ oward social federalism by signing codevelop­
ment treaties among themselves while remaining open to ­others who might
eventually wish to join them. This is true not only at the Eu­ro­pean level but at
the international level more generally. For example, if one or more countries
abrogate one of the treaties that currently mandate the f­ ree flow of capital, theymust first create a new arrangement that would still allow for international in­vestment and cross-­border owner­ship; then they must invite ­others to join
them, but only on condition that any country joining the agreement abide by
the rules for transmitting information about asset owner­ship. This is necessary
to allow proper assessment of taxes based on each person’s ability to contribute(as mea­sured by wealth and income).
Similarly, sanctions imposed on noncooperating states must be reversible;
it should be made clear that the goal is to establish a cooperative, egalitarian,and inclusive system and not to heighten international tensions. Ideally, allstates, in Eu­rope and elsewhere, would end harmful competition and establish
new forms of cooperation. Profits earned by large multinational corporations
should be apportioned among states in a transparent manner, with minimaltax rates compatible with the general level of taxation and financing consistent
with the social state. In practice, if agreement on apportionment cannot bereached, any group of countries (or even a single country) could act on its own,
imposing its share of the global tax on a com­pany in proportion to that com­pany’s sales of goods and ser­vices on its territory.145 Some may denounce this

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144. Among the solutions considered was the possibility that the United Kingdom
would continue to abide by the same trade rules that applied before Brexit despite
having relinquished the right to participate in the elaboration of t­hose rules.
What­ever solution is fi­nally ­adopted, it is likely that relations between the British
Isles and the continent ­will continue to be the subject of debate for de­cades tocome, depending on what new forms of fiscal, social, and environment ­union EU
member states establish (or not) and on their ability to impose new rules of co-­development linked to ­free circulation of goods and capital.
145. See Chap. 16 and Saez and Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice. In other words,
if a com­pany earns $100 billion in profits throughout the world and 10 ­percent of
its sales occur in a given country, and that country levies a 30 ­percent tax on corpo­

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Ele­m ents for a Participatory Socialism . 1033

system as a return to protectionism, but in real­ity it is something quite dif­fer­ent:
corporate profits are the target, not trade, which simply serves as a verifiable
index for apportioning profits (in the absence of adequate cooperation). Once
adequate cooperation is achieved, the transitional system can be replaced by abetter one.
Corporate taxes are especially impor­tant b­ ecause the current race to thebottom, which could end in exempting corporate profits from all taxation, isundoubtedly the biggest risk currently facing the global fiscal system. Ulti­mately, if nothing is done to stop it, the very possibility of a progressive in­come tax ­will be in jeopardy.146 The same logic can be applied to other taxes.
­Earlier I discussed the progressive property tax. Companies that refuse to co­
operate by supplying information about their stockholders may have to pay theforgone property tax revenues, again in proportion to their sales of goods andser­vices in a given country. The same goes for the carbon tax. In the absence ofan adequate coordinated policy for reduction of emissions, it w
­ ill be impera­
tive to impose a carbon tax based on sales of goods and ser­vices in each country.
Once again, it is impor­tant to be clear that the desired cooperative solution isdif­fer­ent (for instance, it could take the form of coordinated progressive taxa­
tion of individual emissions) and to indicate a route for reaching that goal.
To recapitulate: The current ideology of globalization, which first devel­
oped in the 1980s, is in crisis and entering a transitional phase. The frustrations
rate profits, then that com­pany would have to pay $3 billion to the country in ques­tion. A com­pany’s global profits can be estimated from vari­ous sources, and eachcountry can impose sanctions on companies that fail to provide required informa­tion. Recall that this is how taxable profits are allocated among the several states of
the United States.
146. In a perfectly cooperative and transparent system, the tax on corporate profits
would play only a l­ imited role: it would simply amount to a prepayment of the in­come tax due by the stockholder receiving dividends and other income from thecom­pany. But in a noncooperative and nontransparent environment, the corpo­
rate tax plays a much more impor­tant role ­because this prepayment is often the
only tax that the ultimate o­ wners of the com­pany ­will pay u­ nless the individuals towhom the profits are ultimately distributed can be identified. Furthermore, it iseasy to disguise any kind of income as corporate profits. Income from consulting
or author royalties can be sheltered in a corporate structure with the active assis­
tance of financial advisers, who take such strategies for granted, or by payment oftaxes in another country. That is why it is essential to develop a strategy to end therace to the bottom, which ­will end in avoidance of all taxes by t­hose with themeans to pay for such tax avoidance strategies.

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1034 . Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­l iti­c al Conflictcreated by rising in­equality have ­little by l­ ittle made the lower and ­middle classesof the rich countries wary of international integration and unlimited economic
liberalism. The resulting tensions have contributed to the emergence of nation­
alist and identitarian movements, which could unleash unpredictable chal­lenges to the current trade regime. Nationalist ideology could (and prob­ably­will) intensify competition between states, leading to further fiscal and social
dumping at the expense of rival states while encouraging authoritarian and anti-­
immigrant policies at home so as to unite the native-­born population against
its supposed foreign enemies. This has already begun to happen not only in Eu­
rope and the United States but also in India and Brazil and in some ways in
China (in its attitude t­ oward dissidents). In view of the impending collapse ofboth liberal and nationalist ideologies, the only way to overcome ­these con­tradictions is to move ­toward a true participatory and internationalist socialism
based on social-­federalist po­liti­cal structures and a new cooperative organ­
ization of the world economy. Given the magnitude of the challenges, I have
tried to outline solutions that could gradually make pro­gress ­toward that goalpos­si­ble. ­These proposals are not intended to answer ­every question. Their only
purpose is to show that h­ uman socie­ties have yet to exhaust their capacity toimagine new ideological and institutional solutions. As the histories of thevari­ous in­equality regimes we have studied in this book show, the political-­ideological repertoire is vast. Change comes when the short-­term logic ofevents intersects with the long-­term evolution of ideas. ­Every ideology has its
weaknesses, but no ­human society can live without an ideology to make senseof its inequalities. The f­ uture ­will be no dif­fer­ent, but from now on the scale­will be transnational.

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Conclusion
In this book I have tried to offer an economic, social, intellectual, and po­liti­cal
history of in­equality regimes; that is, a history of the systems by which in­equality is justified and structured, from premodern trifunctional and slave
socie­ties to modern postcolonial and hypercapitalist ones. Obviously, such aproj­ect is never-­ending. No book can exhaust so vast a subject. All my conclu­
sions are tentative and fragile by their very nature. They are based on researchthat needs to be supplemented and extended in the ­future. I hope nevertheless­ ill have helped readers clarify their own ideas and their own
that this book w
ideologies of social equality and in­equality and w­ ill stimulate further reflec­tion on t­ hese issues.

History as a Strug­gle of Ideologies and Quest for Justice“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class strug­g les,”wrote Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto (1848).
Their assertion remains pertinent, but now that this book is done, I am tempted
to reformulate it as follows: The history of all hitherto existing socie­ties is thehistory of the strug­gle of ideologies and the quest for justice. In other words,
ideas and ideologies count in history. Social position, as impor­tant as it is, is
not enough to forge a theory of the just society, a theory of property, a theoryof borders, a theory of taxes, of education, wages, or democracy. Without pre­cise answers to t­ hese complex questions, without a clear strategy of po­liti­cal
experimentation and social learning, strug­gle does not know where to turn po­liti­cally. Once power is seized, this lacuna may well be filled by political-­ideological constructs more oppressive than ­those that ­were overthrown.
With the history of the twentieth ­century and of the communist disasterin mind, it is imperative that we carefully scrutinize ­today’s in­equality regimes
and the way they are justified. Above all, we need to understand what institu­
tional arrangements and what types of socioeconomic organ­ization can truly
contribute to ­human and social emancipation. The history of in­equality cannot
be reduced to an eternal clash between oppressors of the p­ eople and proud de­fenders. On both sides one finds sophisticated intellectual and institutional
constructs. To be sure, on the side of the dominant groups, ­these constructs
are not always devoid of hy­poc­risy and reflect a determination to remain in

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1036 . Conclusion

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power, but they still need to be studied closely. Unlike the class strug­gle, thestrug­gle of ideologies involves shared knowledge and experiences, re­spect for­others, deliberation, and democracy. No one ­will ever possess the absolute truth
about just owner­ship, just borders, just democracy, just taxes and education.
The history of ­human socie­ties can be seen as a quest for justice. Pro­gress is pos­si­ble only through detailed comparison of personal and historical experiences
and the widest pos­si­ble deliberation.
Nevertheless, the strug­gle of ideologies and the quest for justice also entails
the expression of clearly defined positions and clearly designated antagonists.
Based on the experiences analyzed in this book, I am convinced that capitalism
and private property can be superseded and that a just society can be estab­lished on the basis of participatory socialism and social federalism. The firststep is to establish a regime of social and temporary owner­ship. This w­ ill re­quire power sharing between workers and shareholders and a ceiling on thenumber of votes that can be cast by any one shareholder. It w
­ ill also require asteeply progressive tax on property, a universal capital endowment, and per­manent circulation of wealth. In addition, it implies a progressive income tax
and collective regulation of carbon emissions, the proceeds from which ­will
go to pay for social insurance and a basic income, the ecological transition, andtrue educational equality. Fi­nally, the global economy ­will need to be reor­ga­
nized by means of codevelopment treaties incorporating quantified objectivesof social, fiscal, and environmental justice; liberalization of trade and financial
flows must be conditioned on pro­gress t­ oward meeting t­ hose primary goals.
This redefinition of the global ­legal framework ­will require abandonment ofsome existing treaties, most notably ­those concerning the ­free circulation ofcapital that came into effect in the 1980s–1990s b­ ecause t­ hese stand in the wayof meeting the above-­mentioned goals. ­Those treaties ­will need to be replacedby new rules based on the princi­ples of financial transparency, fiscal coopera­tion, and transnational democracy.
Some of ­these conclusions may seem radical. In real­ity, they stand in the
tradition of demo­cratic socialism, which since the late nineteenth c­ entury has
been working t­ oward profound transformations of the l­ egal, social, and fiscal
system. The significant reduction of in­equality that took place in the mid-­twentieth ­century was made pos­si­ble by the construction of a social statebased on relative educational equality and a number of radical innovations, suchas co-­management in the Germanic and Nordic countries and progressive tax­
ation in the United States and United Kingdom. The conservative revolutionof the 1980s and the fall of communism interrupted this movement; the world

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Conclusion . 1037

entered a new era of self-­regulated markets and quasi-­sacralization of property.
The inability of the social-­democratic co­ali­tion to move beyond the confinesof the nation-­state and renew its program in an era of globalized trade and ex­
panded higher education contributed to the collapse of the left-­right po­liti­cal
system that made the postwar reduction of in­equality pos­si­ble. However, inthe face of challenges raised by the historic resumption of in­equality, the re­jection of globalization, and the development of new forms of identitarian re­treat, awareness of the limits of deregulated capitalism has grown rapidly since
the financial crisis of 2008. ­People have once again begun thinking about a new,more equitable, more sustainable economic model. My discussion h­ ere of par­ticipatory socialism and social federalism draw largely on developments taking
place in vari­ous parts of the world; my contribution ­here is simply to place themin a broader historical perspective.
The history of the in­equality regimes studied in this book shows that such
political-­ideological transformations should not be seen as deterministic. Mul­
tiple trajectories are always pos­si­ble. The balance of power at any moment
depends on the interaction of the short-­term logic of events with long-­term
intellectual evolutions from which come a wide range of ideas that can be drawn
on in moments of crisis. Unfortunately, ­there is a very real danger that coun­tries ­will try to avoid fundamental change by intensifying the competition of
all against all and engaging in a new round of fiscal and social dumping. This
could in turn intensify nationalist and identitarian conflict, which is alreadycon­spic­u­ous in Eu­rope, the United States, India, Brazil, and China.

On the Limits of “De-­Westernizing” Our Gaze
In this book I have tried to decenter our way of looking at the history of in­equality regimes. The case of India turns out to be particularly instructive. The
Indian Union is an example of very large-­scale demo­cratic federalism. Morethan that, it shows how the state can use l­egal tools to overcome the heavy
inegalitarian legacy of an ancient society of castes made more rigid by theencounter with British colonial power. The institutional tools that India de­veloped to deal with this legacy took the form of quotas and “reservations”
of places in universities, public employment, and elective office: places ­werereserved for individuals born into disadvantaged social classes that had suf­
fered historically from discrimination. This system has not resolved all of India’s
prob­lems—­far from it. But such experiences are highly instructive for the restof the world and in par­tic­u­lar for Western democracies, which are also dealing

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1038 . Conclusion

with enormous educational inequalities (which have long been studied) andare just beginning to deal with multiconfessionalism (which India has known
for ten centuries). More generally, I have tried to show that, to understand theworld ­today, it is indispensable to study the long history of in­equality regimes,
and especially the way Eu­ro­pean proprietarian and colonial powers affected thedevelopment of non-­European trifunctional socie­ties. The traces of that lengthy
history remain quite vis­ib­ le in the structure of con­temporary in­equality. Be­
yond that, the study of the sophisticated inegalitarian ideologies of the past
helps place ­today’s ideologies in perspective. One sees that they are not always
wiser than the ideologies that preceded them and that they, too, ­will someday
be replaced.
Despite my efforts to decenter our gaze, I have to say that this book remainsun­balanced—­somewhat less so than my previous book but still quite un­balanced on the ­whole. The French Revolution comes up repeatedly, and theexperiences of Eu­rope and the United States are constantly cited, much moreso than their demographic weight warrants. Jack Goody, in his book The Theftof History, rightly denounced the often-­irresistible temptation to write history
from a Western-­centric point of view, which afflicts even well-­intentioned so­cial scientists. Writers attribute to Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca inventions they did notinvent or even cultural practices such as courtly love, the love of liberty, filial
affection, the nuclear f­ amily, humanism, and democracy.1 I have tried to avoid
this bias in this book, but I am not sure I succeeded. The reason is ­simple: mygaze is profoundly influenced by my cultural roots, the limits of my knowledge,
and above all by the serious weakness of my linguistic competence. This bookis the work of an author who reads fluently only in French and En­glish and
who is familiar with only a l­ imited range of primary sources. Yet this study
ranges widely—­perhaps too widely—­and I beg the ­pardon of specialists in otherfields for the approximations and condensations they ­will find ­here. I hope that
this work w­ ill soon be complemented and superseded by many o­ thers, which­will add to our understanding of specific in­equality regimes, especially t­ hosein the many geo­graph­i­cal and cultural regions poorly covered by this work.
No doubt my gaze has also been s­ haped by my personal history, perhaps
even more than I imagine. I could describe the diversity of the social milieus
and po­liti­cal ideas to which I was exposed by my f­ amily background. My two
grand­mothers suffered from the patriarchal model imposed by their genera­tion. One was unhappy in her bourgeois life and died prematurely in Paris in
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1. See J. Goody, The Theft of History (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

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Conclusion . 1039

1987. The other became a servant on a farm at age 13 during World War II anddied in 2018 in Indre-­et-­Loire. From one of my great-­grandmothers, who wasborn in 1897 and died in 2001, I heard stories of France before 1914, when the
country was preparing its revenge against Germany. Born in 1971, I obtained
from my parents the freedom I needed to become an adult. As a student in
1989, I listened to the collapse of the communist dictatorships on the radio. In
1991 I listened to reports of the Gulf War. When I look at how my vision ofhistory and economics has evolved since I was 18, I think that it was the studyof history—­the sources I discovered and the books I read—­that led me to change
my views significantly (I was initially more liberal and less socialist than I amnow). In par­tic­u­lar, writing Top Incomes in France in the Twentieth ­Century:In­equality and Re­distribution, 1901–1998 made me realize in 2001 how muchvio­lence accompanied the reduction of in­equality in the twentieth ­century. The
crisis of 2008 led me to take a greater interest in the fragilities of global capitalism
and the history of capital and its accumulation, subjects at the heart of Capitalin the Twenty-­First C­ entury (2013). The pre­sent book is based on new sources—­
most prominently, colonial histories and postelection surveys—­which led me
to develop a new political-­ideological approach to in­equality regimes. It is pos­si­ble that this reconstruction is too rational; I may neglect the hidden effectsof my early and more recent experiences in shaping this or that argument. Nev­
ertheless, I have tried to make the reader aware of at least the conscious part ofmy pro­gress by citing the historical sources, books, and other readings that led­ ere, insofar as I am aware of them.
me to the positions I take h

On the Civic and Po­liti­cal Role of the Social Sciences
Social scientists are very lucky. Society pays them to write books, explore
sources, synthesize what can be learned from archives and surveys, and thentry to pay back the ­people who make their work pos­si­ble—­namely, the rest ofsociety. Now and then researchers in the social sciences waste too much timein sterile disciplinary quarrels and status disputes. Nevertheless, the social sci­
ences play an indispensable role in public debate and demo­cratic dialogue. In
this book I have tried to show how the sources and methods of the vari­ous so­cial science could be used to analyze the history of in­equality regimes in theirsocial, economic, po­liti­cal, and intellectual dimensions.
I am convinced that some of t­ oday’s demo­cratic disarray stems from the fact
that, insofar as the civic and po­liti­cal sphere is concerned, economics has cut
itself ­free from the other social sciences. This “autonomization” of economics

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1040 . Conclusion

is partly a result of the technical nature and increasing complexity of the eco­nomic sphere. But it is also the result of a recurrent temptation on the part ofprofessional economists, ­whether in the university or the marketplace, to claim
a mono­poly of expertise and analytic capacity they do not possess. In real­ity, it
is only by combining economic, historical, so­cio­log­ic­ al, cultural, and po­liti­calapproaches that pro­gress in our understanding of socioeconomic phenomena
becomes pos­si­ble. This is true, of course, for the study of inequalities betweensocial classes and their transformations throughout history, but the lesson seems
to me far more general. This book draws on the work of many social scientists
in many disciplines, without whom it would not exist.2 I have also tried toshow how lit­er­a­ture and film can also shed light on our subject in a way thatcomplements the light shed by the social sciences.
Another consequence of the excessive autonomization of economics is that
historians, sociologists, po­liti­cal scientists, and phi­los­o­phers too often abandon
the study of economic questions to economists. But po­liti­cal economy and eco­nomic history involve all the social sciences, as I have tried to show in thisbook. All social scientists should try to include socioeconomic trends in theiranaly­sis and gather quantitative and historical data whenever useful and should
rely on other methods and sources when necessary. The neglect of quantita­
tive and statistical sources by many social scientists is unfortunate, particularly
since critical examination of the sources and the conditions ­under which they
are socially, historically, and po­liti­cally constructed is necessary to make properuse of them. This neglect has contributed not only to the autonomization of
economics but also to its impoverishment. I hope that this book ­will help toremedy that.
Beyond the realm of research, the autonomization of economic knowledge
has also been bad for the civic and po­liti­cal sphere ­because it encourages fa­
talism and fosters feelings of helplessness. In par­tic­u­lar, journalists and citizens
all too often bow to the expertise of economists, l­ imited though it is, and hesi­tate to express opinions about wages and profits, taxes and debts, trade and cap­
ital. But if the ­people are to be sovereign—as democracy says they should

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2. Among the researchers whose recent and not-­so-­recent work I have relied on mostheavi­ly, I would like to mention Mathieu Arnoux, Rafe Blaufarb, Erik Bengtsson,
Denis Cogneau, Fredrick Cooper, Nicolas Barreyre, Julia Cagé, Noam Maggor,
Katrina Pistor, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Serge Gruzinski, Susan Bayly, Ken
Pomeranz, Hannah Arendt, Karl Polanyi, Or Rosenboim, Barbara Wooton, Chris­tophe Jaffrelot, ­etc. Dozens of other authors are cited in the footnotes to eachchapter.

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Conclusion . 1041

be—­these subjects are not optional. Their complexity is such that it is unjusti­
fiable to abandon them to a small caste of experts. The contrary is true. Pre­cisely b­ ecause they are so complex, only broad collective deliberation, basedon reason and on the past history and experience of ­every citizen, can lead topro­gress ­toward resolving ­these issues. Ultimately, this book has only one goal:
to enable citizens to reclaim possession of economic and historical knowledge.
­Whether or not the reader agrees with my specific conclusions basically does
not m
­ atter b­ ecause my purpose is to begin debate, not to end it. If this bookhas been able to awaken the reader’s interest in new questions and enlighten
her with knowledge she did not previously possess, my goal ­will have been fully
achieved.

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Glossary­Here is a brief list of terms that may be unfamiliar to the reader. ­These
are marked with an asterisk at the point of first occurrence in the text.
Censitary: A censitary regime (from the French censitaire) was a regime inwhich the right to vote was subject to a property qualification, generally met
by paying above a certain amount of property tax. For instance, during the Res­
toration in France (1815–1830), the right to vote was reserved to men over theage of 30 who paid at least 300 francs in direct taxes (which in practice granted
eligibility to vote to about 100,000 p­ eople or roughly 1 ­percent of adult males).
The precise requirement varied over time.
Gini coefficient: A statistical mea­sure of distribution which was devel­
oped by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini in 1912. It is used as a gauge of
economic in­equality, mea­sur­ing income distribution among a population. The
coefficient ranges from zero to one, with zero representing perfect equality and
one representing perfect in­equality.
Great Demarcation: A term introduced by the historian Rafe Blaufarb
to describe a shift in the property owner­ship regime that occurred during the
French Revolution, which resulted in a strict separation between regalian func­
tions (henceforth the mono­poly of the centralized state) and property rights(henceforth to be granted solely to private individuals), whereas trifunctionalsociety was based on an inextricable imbrication of both.
Identitarian (Fr. identitaire): An identitarian ideology is an ideology
structured around identification with a specific social group, often based on an
ethnic, racial, or religious identity.
Inequality regime: A set of discourses and institutional arrangements
intended to justify and structure the economic, social, and po­liti­cal inequali­
ties of a given society.
Livre tournois: Monetary unit of account used in France during the­ iddle Ages and early modern period.
M

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1044 . Glossary

Ownership society (sometimes called proprietarian society): A social
order based on a quasi-­religious defense of property rights as the sine qua nonof social and po­liti­cal stability. Owner­ship socie­ties flourished in Eu­rope andthe United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Patrimonial ­m iddle class: That portion of the wealth distribution ex­
tending from the fiftieth to the ninetieth percentile. In other words, the “­middle
40 ­percent” of the wealth distribution standing between the bottom 50 ­percent
and the top 10 p­ ercent.
Premodern: As used in this book, “premodern” means prior to the eigh­teenth ­century.
Proprietarian: See Owner­ship society, also called proprietarian society.
Proprietarian ideology is the ideology of owner­ship society, based on the sa­
cralization of property rights.
Regalian rights or powers: The powers of security, justice, and legiti­
mate use of vio­lence.
Society of ­o rders: A type of society based on an equilibrium between
intellectual and warrior elites and on specific forms of owner­ship and power
relations. See also Trifunctional society.
Successoral: Pertaining to inheritance.
Ternary society: See Trifunctional society.
Trajectories and switch points: The French text refers to trajectoires et bifurcations to describe the paths taken by dif­fer­ent socie­ties in their
historical evolutions. H­ ere, bifurcations has been translated as “switch points”
to refer to points in time where a crucial turn was taken.

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Trifunctional society: A trifunctional society is one whose structure
comprises three functional groups: clergy, nobility, and workers (the third es­tate). The ternary or trifunctional pattern can be found in nearly all premodern
socie­ties throughout the world, including China and Japan.

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Contents in DetailPreface and Acknowl­edgments

vii

Introduction
1
3
What Is an Ideology?
Borders and Property
5
7
Taking Ideology SeriouslyCollective Learning and the Social Sciences
10
The Sources Used in This Book: Inequalities and Ideologies
12­Human Pro­gress, the Revival of In­equality, and Global Diversity
16
The Return of In­equality: Initial Bearings
20
The Elephant Curve: A Sober Debate about Globalization
23
On the Justification of Extreme In­equality
27
Learning from History: The Lessons of the Twentieth ­Century
29
On the Ideological Freeze and New Educational Inequalities
34
The Return of Multiple Elites and the Difficulty of Forging an
Egalitarian Co­ali­tion
35
Rethinking Justice in Owner­ship, Education, and Immigration
39
The Diversity of the World: The Indispensability of the Longue Durée42
On the Complementarity of Natu­ral Language and Mathematical
Language43
Outline of the Book
45

Part One: In­equality Regimes in History ​. ​49
1. Ternary Socie­ties: Trifunctional In­equality
The Trifunctional Logic: Clergy, Nobility, Third Estate
Ternary Socie­ties and the Formation of the Modern StateThe Delegitimation of Ternary Socie­ties: Between Revolutions
and Colonizations
On Ternary Socie­ties T­ odayOn the Justification of In­equality in Ternary Socie­ties
Divided Elites, United ­People?
Ternary Socie­ties and State Formation: Eu­rope, India, China, Iran

51
51
53
55
57
59
61
63

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1046 . Contents in Detail

2. Eu­ro­pean Socie­ties of ­Orders: Power and Property
65
Socie­ties of O
­ rders: A Balance of Powers?
65
Trifunctional Order, the Promotion of F
­ ree L­ abor, and the69
Fate of Eu­rope
The Size and Resources of the Clergy and Nobility: The Caseof France
72
The Shrinking Nobility and Clergy in the Late Ancien Régime
77
82
How to Explain the Decline in the Number of Nobles?
The Nobility: A Propertied Class between the Revolution
85
and the Restoration
The Christian Church as a Property-­Owning Organ­ization
89
The Wealthy Church versus Wealthy Families and Inheritance
Practices93
Ecclesiastical Property—­The Basis of Economic Law and95
Capitalism?
99
3. The Invention of Owner­ship Socie­ties
The “­Great Demarcation” of 1789 and the Invention of Modern
Property100
Corvées, Banalités, Loyers: From Feudalism to Proprietarianism
102
Lods and the Superposition of Perpetual Rights ­under the Ancien
Régime105
Can Property Be Placed on a New Footing without Mea­sur­ing
Its Extent?
109
Knowledge, Power, and Emancipation: The Transformation of
Ternary Socie­ties
112
The Revolution, the Centralized State, and Learning about Justice116
120
Proprietarian Ideology: Between Emancipation and Sacralization
On the Justification of In­equality in Owner­ship Socie­ties
123
4. Owner­ship Socie­ties: The Case of France
126
The French Revolution and the Development of an Owner­ship
Society126
Reducing In­equality: The Invention of a “Patrimonial ­Middle
Class”129
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Contents in Detail . 1047

Paris, Capital of In­equality: From Lit­er­a­ture to InheritanceArchives130
Portfolio Diversification and Forms of Property
133
The Belle Époque (1880–1914): A Proprietarian andInegalitarian Modernity
137
The Tax System in France from 1880 to 1914: Tranquil
Accumulation
139
143
The “Quatre Vieilles,” the Tax on Capital, and the Income Tax
Universal Suffrage, New Knowledge, War
147
150
The Revolution, France, and Equality
Capitalism: A Proprietarianism for the Industrial Age
153
156
5. Owner­ship Socie­ties: Eu­ro­pean Trajectories
The Size of the Clergy and Nobility: Eu­ro­pean Diversity
156
160
Warrior Nobilities, Owner Nobilities
The United Kingdom and Ternary-­Proprietarian Gradualism
163
The British Aristocracy, a Proprietarian Nobility
167
Owner­ship Socie­ties in Classic Novels
169
Burke’s Peerage: From Baronets to Petro-­Billionaires
173
The House of Lords, Protector of the Proprietarian Order
175
The B
­ attle for Progressive Taxation and the Fall of the Houseof Lords
176
Ireland between Trifunctional, Proprietarian, and Colonialist
Ideology181
Sweden and the Constitutionalization of a Society of FourO
­ rders
185
One Man, One Hundred Votes: Hyper-­Censitary Democracy in
188
Sweden (1865–1911)
Shareholder Society, Censitary Suffrage: What Limits to thePower of Money?
189
The Inegalitarian Tendencies of Nineteenth-­Century Owner­ship
Socie­ties
194
The Three Challenges of Owner­ship Society
199

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1048 . Contents in DetailPart Two: Slave and Colonial Socie­ties ​. ​201
6. Slave Socie­ties: Extreme In­equality
Socie­ties with Slaves; Slave Socie­ties
The United Kingdom: The Abolition Compensationof 1833–1843
On the Proprietarian Justification for Compensating Slaveholders
France: The Double Abolition of 1794–1848
Haiti: When Slave Property Becomes Public Debt
Abolition of 1848: Compensation, Disciplinary Workshops, andIndentured Workers
Forced L­ abor, Proprietarian Sacralization, and the Question of
Reparations
United States: Abolition by War, 1860–1865
On the Impossibility of Gradual Abolition and Compensationin the United States
On the Proprietarian and Social Justification of Slavery“Reconstruction” and the Birth of Social Nativism in the
United States
Brazil: Imperial and Mixed-­Race Abolition, 1888
Rus­sia: The Abolition of Serfdom with a Weak State, 1861

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7. Colonial Socie­ties: Diversity and Domination
The Two Ages of Eu­ro­pean Colonialism
Settler Colonies, Colonies Without Settlement
Slave and Colonial Socie­ties: Extreme In­equality
Maximal In­equality of Property, Maximal In­equality of Income
Colonization for the Colonizers: Colonial Bud­gets
Slave and Colonial Extraction in Historical Perspective
From the Brutality of Colonial Appropriation to the Illusion of“Gentle Commerce”
On the Difficulty of Being Owned by Other Countries
Metropolitan Legality, Colonial Legality­Legal Forced ­Labor in the French Colonies, 1912–1946
Late Colonialism: South African Apartheid, 1948–1994
The End of Colonialism and the Question of Demo­cratic
Federalism
From the Franco-­African Union to the Mali Federation

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203
204
208
210
213
217
220
224
228
235
238
241
246
249
252
253
255
258
265
270
276
280
283
288
291
295
298
301

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Contents in Detail . 1049

8. Ternary Socie­ties and Colonialism: The Case of India
304
The Invention of India: Preliminary Remarks
305
India and the Quaternary Order: Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas,
Shudras311
Brahminic Order, Vegetarian Diet, and Patriarchy
315
The Multicultural Abundance of the Jatis, the Quaternary Orderof the Varnas
317
Hindu Feudalism, State Construction, and the Transformationof Castes
318
322
On the Peculiarity of State Construction in India
The Discovery of India and Iberian Encirclement of Islam
325
328
Domination by Arms, Domination by Knowledge
British Colonial Censuses in India, 1871–1941
330
Enumerating Social Groups in Indian and Eu­ro­pean Trifunctional
Society335
338
Literate Landowners, Administrators, and Social Control
Colonial India and the Rigidification of Castes
342
347
In­de­pen­dent India ­Faces Status Inequalities from the Past
Successes and Limits of Affirmative Action in India
352
Property Inequalities and Status Inequalities
357
Social and Gender Quotas and the Conditions of Their
Transformation359
9. Ternary Socie­ties and Colonialism: Eurasian Trajectories
362
Colonialism, Military Domination, and Western Prosperity
363
When the State Was Too Small to Be the Night Watchman
367
Interstate Competition and Joint Innovation: The Invention
371
of Eu­rope
On Smithian Chinese and Eu­ro­pean Opium Traffickers
375
Protectionism and Mercantilism: The Origins of the “­Great
378
Divergence”
Japan: Accelerated Modernization of a Ternary Society381
On the Social Integration of Burakumin, Untouchables, andRoma385
Trifunctional Society and the Construction of the Chinese State
389
Chinese Imperial Examinations: Literati, Landowners, andWarriors393

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1050 . Contents in Detail

Chinese Revolts and Missed Opportunities
An Example of a Constitutional Clerical Republic: IranOn the Anticolonialist Legitimacy of the Shiite Clergy
Egalitarian Shiite Republic, Sunni Oil Monarchies: Discourses
and Realities
Equality, In­equality, and Zakat in Muslim Countries
Proprietarianism and Colonialism: The Globalization ofIn­equality

396
400
402
405
407
410

Part Three: The ­Great Transformation of the Twentieth ­Century ​. ​413

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10. The Crisis of Owner­ship Socie­ties
Rethinking the “­Great Transformation” of the First Half of theTwentieth ­Century
The Collapse of In­equality and Private Property (1914–1945)
From Eu­ro­pean Proprietarianism to American
Neo-­Proprietarianism
The End of Owner­ship Society; the Stability of Wage
Inequalities
Decomposing the Decline of Private Property (1914–1950)
Expropriations, Nationalizations-­Sanctions, and the “Mixed
Economy”
Private Saving, Public Debt, and Inflation
Liquidating the Past, Building Justice: Exceptional Taxes on
Private Capital
From Declining Wealth to Durable Deconcentration: The Roleof Progressive Taxation
On the Anglo-­American Origins of Modern Fiscal Progressivity
The Rise of the Fiscal and Social StateOn the Diversity of Tax Payments and the Role of Fiscal
Progressivity
Owner­ship Socie­ties, Progressive Taxation, and World War I
On the Role of Social and Ideological Strug­gles in the Fall of
Proprietarianism
On the Need for Socially Embedded Markets
Imperial Competition and the Collapse of Eu­ro­pean Equilibrium
From Abnormal Military Tribute to a New Military Order514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 1050

415
416
418
420
424
429
433
437
441
445
451
456
460
462
466
469
471
475

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Contents in Detail . 1051

The Fall of Owner­ship Society and the Transcendence of the
Nation-­State
479
Federal Union between Demo­cratic Socialism and Ordoliberalism 482
486
11. Social-­Democratic Socie­ties: Incomplete Equality
On the Diversity of Eu­ro­pean Social Democracies
487
The New Deal in the United States: A Bargain-­Basement Social
Democracy
490
491
On the Limits of Social-­Democratic Socie­ties
Public Property, Social Property, Temporary Property
493
Sharing Powers, Instituting Social Owner­ship: An Unfinished
History495
498
Successes and Limitations of German Co-­Management
On the Slow Diffusion of German and Nordic Co-­Management
501
Socialists, Labourites, Social Demo­crats: Intersecting Trajectories 504
From a Eu­ro­pean Directive on Co-­Management to Proposition“2x + y”506
Beyond Co-­Management: Rethinking Social Owner­ship and Power
Sharing508
Cooperatives and Self-­Management: Capital, Power, and Voting
Rights510
Social Democracy, Education, and the End of US Primacy
513
The United States: An Early Leader in Primary and Secondary
Education
517
US Lower Classes Left B­ ehind since 1980
522
On the Impact of the ­Legal, Fiscal, and Educational System on
Primary Inequalities
528
Higher Education and the New Educational and Social
534
Stratification
Can One Buy a Place in a University?
538
On In­equality of Access to Education in Eu­rope and theUnited States
540
Educational Equality, the Root of Modern Growth543
Social Democracy and Just Taxation: A Missed Opportunity
547
Social Democracy and the Transcendence of Capitalism and the
Nation-­State
548

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1052 . Contents in Detail

Rethinking Globalization and the Liberalization of Capital Flows551
The United States, Eu­rope, and the Property Tax: An Unfinished
Debate558
560
The Progressive Wealth Tax, or Permanent Agrarian ReformOn the Inertia of Wealth Taxes Stemming from the Eigh­teenth ­Century565
Collective Learning and ­Future Prospects for Taxing Wealth570
573Intersecting Trajectories and the Wealth Tax

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12. Communist and Postcommunist Socie­ties
Is It Pos­si­ble to Take Power Without a Theory of Property?
On the Survival of “Marxism-­Leninism” in PowerThe Highs and Lows of Communist and Anticolonialist
Emancipation
Communism and the Question of Legitimate Differences
On the Role of Private Property in a Decentralized Social
Organ­ization
Postcommunist Rus­sia: An Oligarchic and Kleptocratic Turn
When Offshore Assets Exceed Total Lawful Financial Assets
The Origins of “Shock Therapy” and Rus­sian Kleptocracy
On China as an Authoritarian Mixed Economy
Negative Public Wealth, Omnipotence of Private Property
Embracing Debt and Renouncing Fiscal JusticeOn the Limits of Chinese Tolerance of In­equality
On the Opacity of In­equality in China
China: Between Communism and Plutocracy
On the Effect of the Cultural Revolution on the Perception ofIn­equality
On the Chinese Model and the Transcendence of Parliamentary
Democracy
Electoral Democracy, Borders, and Property
On the Single-­Party State and the Reformability ofParty-­Managed Democracy
Eastern Eu­rope: A Laboratory of Postcommunist Disillusionment
On the “Naturalization” of Market Forces in the Eu­ro­pean Union
Postcommunism and the Social-­Nativist Trap

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578
579
583
588
591
594
595
599
601
606
611
615
617
619
622
625
627
630
633
636
641
645

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Contents in Detail . 1053

13. Hypercapitalism: Between Modernity and Archaism
648
Forms of In­equality in the Twenty-­First C­ entury649
The M­ iddle East: Pinnacle of Global In­equality653
Mea­sur­ing In­equality and the Question of Demo­cratic
Transparency
656
On the Absence of Fiscal Transparency
660
Social Justice, Climate Justice661
On In­equality of Carbon Emissions between Countries andIndividuals
666
On the Mea­sure­ment of In­equality and the Abdication ofGovernments
670
674
Overcoming Opacity: A Public Financial Register
On the Impoverishment of Public Statistics in the Information
Age677
Neo-­Proprietarianism, Opacity of Wealth, and Fiscal
Competition
679
On the Per­sis­tence of Hyperconcentrated Wealth683
687
On the Per­sis­tence of Patriarchy in the Twenty-­First C­ enturyOn the Pauperization of Poor States and the Liberalization ofTrade693­Will Monetary Creation Save Us?
696
Neo-­Proprietarianism and the New Monetary Regime
700
Neo-­Proprietarianism and Ordoliberalism: From Hayek tothe EU
705
The Invention of Meritocracy and Neo-­Proprietarianism
709
From the Philanthropic Illusion to the Sacralization of713
Billionaires

Part Four: Rethinking the Dimensions of Po­liti­cal Conflict ​. ​717
14. Borders and Property: The Construction of Equality
719
Deconstructing Left and Right: The Dimensions of Sociopo­liti­cal
Conflict721
The Left-­Wing Vote Since 1945: From the Workers’ Party to theParty of the Educated725­Toward a Global Study of Electoral and Political-­Ideological
Cleavages
727

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1054 . Contents in DetailInternationalizing the Study of Ethno-­Racial Cleavages andSocial Nativism
731
734
Renewal of Po­liti­cal Parties, Declining Electoral Participation
741
On the Declining Turnout of the Less Advantaged Classes
On the Reversal of the Educational Cleavage: The Inventionof the Party of the Educated744
On the Robustness of the Reversal of the Educational Cleavage
747
Reversal of the Educational Cleavage; Redefinition of
Occupational Cleavages
751
The Electoral Left and the Less Advantaged Classes: Anatomy
of a Divorce
753
The “Brahmin Left” and the Question of Social and Educational
Justice754759
On the Need for New Norms of Educational Justice
On Property, from Left and Right
764
The Left and the Self-­Employed: A Twentieth-­Century Chronicleof Suspicion
769
Strengths and Weaknesses of the “Brahmin Left” and “Merchant
Right”772
On the Return of Identitarian and Religious Cleavages in France
774
The Rise of Nativism and the ­Great Political-­Religious Upheaval
779
Religious Cleavages, Cleavages Over Origins: The Discrimination
Trap784
Borders and Property: An Electorate Divided Four Ways
788
On the Instability of the Four-­Way Division of the Electorate
795
Yellow Vests, Carbon, and the Wealth Tax: The Social-­Nativist
797
Trap in FranceEu­rope and the Disadvantaged Classes: The Grounds for a Divorce 799
On the Neo-­Proprietarian Instrumentalization of Eu­rope
802

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15. Brahmin Left: New Euro-­American Cleavages
807
807
The Transformation of the US Party System­Will the Demo­cratic Party Become the Party of the Winners of
Globalization?
812
On the Po­liti­cal Exploitation of the Racial Divide in the UnitedStates818

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Contents in Detail . 1055

“Welfare Queens” and “Racial Quotas”: The Republicans’Southern Strategy
822Electoral Cleavages and Identity Conflicts: Transatlantic Views
825
828
On the Fluidity of Identities and the Danger of Fixed Categories
The Demo­cratic Party, the “Brahmin Left,” and the Issue of Race
831
Lost Opportunities and Incomplete Turns: From Reagan to
Sanders834
839
The Transformation of the British Party System
On the “Brahmin Left” and the “Merchant Right” in the United
Kingdom
844
The Rise of Identity Cleavages in the Postcolonial United
Kingdom
849
The Politicization of Immigration in the United Kingdom from
854
Powell to UKIP
The Divorce Between the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Disadvantaged
Classes857
16. Social Nativism: The Postcolonial Identitarian Trap
From the Workers’ Party to the Party of the Highly Educated:
Similarities and Variants
Rethinking the Collapse of the Left-­Right Party System of the
Postwar Era
The Emergence of Social Nativism in Postcommunist EasternEu­rope
The Emergence of Social Nativism: The Italian CaseOn the Social-­Nativist Trap and Eu­ro­pean Disillusionment
The Demo­cratic Party: A Case of Successful Social Nativism?
Interstate Competition and the Rise of Market-­Nativist Ideology
On Market-­Nativist Ideology and Its Diffusion
On the Possibility of Social Federalism in Eu­rope
On the Construction of a Transnational Demo­cratic Space
Building Eu­ro­pean Parliamentary Sovereignty on National
Parliamentary Sovereignty
Rebuilding Trust and Developing Common Norms of JusticeEnding the Permanent Eu­ro­pean Public Debt Crisis
Relying on the History of the Debt; Finding New Solutions

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862
863
868
871
877
880
884
886
888
892
894
898
902
904
910

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1056 . Contents in DetailOn the Po­liti­cal Conditions for a Social-­Federalist Transformationof Eu­rope913
The Separatist Trap and the Catalan Syndrome918
Ideological Dissonance, Fiscal Dumping, and the Small-­Country
Syndrome
923
The Social-­Localist Trap and the Construction of the Transnational
State926
929
The Construction of Indian Po­liti­cal Parties and Cleavages
Indian Po­liti­cal Cleavages: Between Class, Caste, and Religion
934
939
The Difficult Emergence of Classist Cleavages in India
On the Perception of a Common Fate Among the Disadvantaged
Classes942
Classist Cleavages, Identitarian Cleavages: The Social-­Nativist
944
Trap in India
The ­Future of the Classist Cleavage and of Re­distribution in India:
948
Intersecting Influences
The Incomplete Politicization of In­equality in Brazil
953
958
Identity and Class Cleavages: Borders and Property
The Dead Ends and Pitfalls of the Pop­u­lism Debate
962

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17. Ele­ments for a Participatory Socialism for the Twenty-­First ­Century 966
Justice as Participation and Deliberation
967
On the Transcendence of Capitalism and Private Property
971
Sharing Power in Firms: An Experimentation Strategy
972
Progressive Wealth Taxes and Circulation of Capital
975
The Diffusion of Wealth and the Universal Capital Endowment
979
The Progressive Tax Triptych: Property, Inheritance, Income981
On the Return to Fiscal Progressivity and Permanent Land
Reform985­Toward Social and Temporary Owner­ship989
On Transparency of Wealth in One Country
991
On Writing Fiscal Justice into the Constitution
995
Basic Income and Just Wage: The Role of the Progressive
Income Tax
1000
On Progressive Taxation of Carbon Emissions
1004
On Constructing a Norm of Educational Justice1007
Renouncing Educational Hy­poc­risy, Promoting Transparency
1012

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Contents in Detail . 1057

Just Democracy: Demo­cratic Equality Vouchers­Toward a Participatory and Egalitarian Democracy
Just Borders: Rethinking Social Federalism on a Global Scale­Toward a Transnational Justice
Between Cooperation and Retreat: The Evolution of theTransnational In­equality Regime

1016
1019
1022
1026

Conclusion
History as a Strug­gle of Ideologies and Quest for JusticeOn the Limits of “De-­Westernizing” Our Gaze
On the Civic and Po­liti­cal Role of the Social Sciences

1035
1035
1037
1039

Glossary
Contents in Detail
List of ­Tables and Illustrations
Index

1043
1045
1059
1067

1031

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514-81779_ch01_B4_2P.indd 1058

11/13/19 8:56 PM­Tables and Illustrations­Tables­Table 2.1. Clergy and nobility in France, 1380–1780 (as ­percent of total
population) ​. ​80­Table 2.2. Clergy and nobility in France, 1380–1780 (as ­percent of total
adult male population) ​. ​81­Table 3.1. Progressive tax proposals in eighteenth-­century France ​. ​
111
­Table 4.1. Composition of Pa­ri­sian wealth in the period 1872–1912(in ­percent) ​. ​134
­Table 6.1. The structure of the slave and f­ ree population in the. ​
United States, 1800–1860 ​230­Table 8.1. The structure of the population in Indian censuses,
1871–2011 ​. ​
310
­Table 8.2. The structure of high castes in India, 1871–2014 (percentage
of population) ​. ​
344
­Table 13.1. The rise of top global wealth holders, 1987–2017 ​. ​
686
­Table 14.1. Political-­ideological conflict in France in 2017: An electorate. ​
divided into four quarters ​794­Table 17.1. Circulation of property and progressive taxation ​. ​
982
­Table 17.2. A new organ­ization of globalization: transnational
democracy ​. ​
1027

Illustrations

Figure I.1. Health and education in the world, 1820–2020 ​. ​
17
 ​
.
 ​
Figure I.2. World population and income, 1700–2020 18
Figure I.3. The rise of in­equality around the world, 1980–2018 ​. ​
21
Figure I.4. In­equality in dif­fer­ent regions of the world in 2018 ​. ​23
Figure I.5. The elephant curve of global in­equality, 1980–2018 ​. ​
25
. ​
30
Figure I.6. In­equality, 1900–2020: Eu­rope, United States, and Japan ​. ​Figure I.7. Top income tax rates, 1900–2020 ​32
Figure I.8. Parental income and university access, United States, 2014 ​. ​35
Figure I.9. Transformation of po­liti­cal and electoral conflict, 1945–2020:
38
Emergence of a multiple-­elites party system, or ­great reversal? ​. ​

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1060 . List of ­T ables and Illustrations

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Figure 1.1. The structure of ternary socie­ties: Europe-­India,
1660–1880 ​. ​
58
Figure 2.1. Population shares in French ternary society, 1380–1780. ​
78(as percentage of total population) ​Figure 2.2. Share of nobility in Paris inheritances, 1780–1910 ​. ​87. ​92
Figure 2.3. The Church as property-­owning organ­ization, 1750–1780 ​Figure 4.1. The failure of the French Revolution: The rise of proprietarian128
in­equality in nineteenth-­century France ​. ​
Figure 4.2. The distribution of property in France, 1780–2015 ​. ​
130
Figure 4.3. The distribution of income in France, 1780–2015 ​. ​131
Figure 5.1. The weight of the clergy in Eu­rope, 1530–1930 ​. ​
158 ​
Figure 5.2. The weight of the nobility in Eu­rope, 1660–1880 . ​161
Figure 5.3. Evolution of male suffrage in Eu­rope, 1820–1920 ​. ​178
Figure 5.4. Distribution of property in the United Kingdom,
1780–2015 ​. ​
195
196
Figure 5.5. Distribution of property in Sweden, 1780–2015 ​. ​
Figure 5.6. Extreme wealth in­equality: Eu­ro­pean owner­ship socie­ties in the. ​
198Belle Époque, 1880–1914 ​Figure 5.7. Income in­equality in Eu­ro­pean owner­ship socie­ties in the Belle198
Époque, 1880–1914 ​. ​
Figure 6.1. Atlantic slave socie­ties, eigh­teenth and nineteenth
215
centuries ​. ​
Figure 6.2. A slave island in expansion: Saint-­Domingue, 1700–1790 ​. ​
216. ​231Figure 6.3. Proportion of slaves in the United States, 1790–1860 ​Figure 6.4. The rise and fall of Euro-­American slavery, 1700–1890 ​. ​232
Figure 7.1. The proportion of Eu­ro­pe­ans in colonial socie­ties ​. ​
257. ​260Figure 7.2. In­equality in colonial and slave socie­ties ​Figure 7.3. Extreme in­equality in historical perspective ​. ​261
Figure 7.4. The top centile in historical and colonial perspective ​. ​
262
Figure 7.5. Extreme in­equality: Colonial and postcolonial trajectories ​. ​264
Figure 7.6. Subsistence income and maximal in­equality ​. ​
267
Figure 7.7. The top centile in historical perspective (with Haiti) ​. ​270
Figure 7.8. Colonies for the colonizers: In­equality of educational investment. ​274in historical perspective ​Figure 7.9. Foreign assets in historical perspective: The Franco-­Britishcolonial apex ​. ​
278

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List of T­ ables and Illustrations . 1061

Figure 8.1. Population of India, China, and Eu­rope, 1700–2050 ​. ​
306
Figure 8.2. The religious structure of India, 1871–2011 ​. ​
309
Figure 8.3. The evolution of ternary socie­ties: Europe-­India 1530–1930 ​. ​
337
 ​
.
 ​
Figure 8.4. The rigidification of upper castes in India, 1871–2014 343
Figure 8.5. Affirmative action in India, 1950–2015 ​. ​
351
Figure 8.6. Discrimination and in­equality in comparative perspective ​. ​
353
Figure 9.1. State fiscal capacity, 1500–1780 (tons of silver) ​. ​365
366
Figure 9.2. State fiscal capacity, 1500–1850 (days of wages) ​. ​
Figure 9.3. The evolution of ternary socie­ties: Europe-­Japan
384
1530–1870 ​. ​
Figure 10.1. Income in­equality in Eu­rope and the United States,
419
1900–2015 ​. ​
Figure 10.2. Income in­equality, 1900–2015: The diversity of Eu­rope ​. ​
420
421
Figure 10.3. Income in­equality, 1900–2015: The top centile ​. ​
Figure 10.4. Wealth in­equality in Eu­rope and the United States,
423
1900–2015 ​. ​
Figure 10.5. Wealth in­equality, 1900–2015: The top centile ​. ​423. ​
427
Figure 10.6. Income vs. wealth in­equality in France, 1900–2015 ​Figure 10.7. Income versus wealth in the top centile in France,
1900–2015 ​. ​
428. ​
Figure 10.8. Private property in Eu­rope, 1870–2020 ​430
Figure 10.9. The vicissitudes of public debt, 1850–2020 ​. ​438
Figure 10.10. Inflation in Eu­rope and the United States, 1700–2020 ​. ​
439
Figure 10.11. The invention of progressive taxation, 1900–2018: The top
income tax rate ​. ​
448
Figure 10.12. The invention of progressive taxation, 1900–2018: The top
inheritance tax rate ​. ​
449
Figure 10.13. Effective rates and progressivity in the United States,. ​453
1910–2020 ​Figure 10.14. The rise of the fiscal state in the rich countries,
1870–2015 ​. ​
457
Figure 10.15. The rise of the social state in Eu­rope, 1870–2015 ​. ​
459 ​
Figure 10.16. Demography and the balance of power in Eu­rope . ​472
Figure 11.1. Divergence of top and bottom incomes, 1980–2018 ​. ​
492
Figure 11.2. Bottom and top incomes in France and the United States,
1910–2015 ​. ​493

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1062 . List of ­T ables and Illustrations

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Figure 11.3. ­Labor productivity, 1950–2015 (2015 euros) ​. ​
514
Figure 11.4. ­Labor productivity in Eu­rope and the United States ​. ​
515
Figure 11.5. The fall of the bottom 50 p­ ercent share in the United States,524
1960–2015 ​. ​
Figure 11.6. Low and high incomes in Eu­rope, 1980–2016 ​. ​525
Figure 11.7. Low and high incomes in the United States, 1960–2015 ​. ​
526
Figure 11.8. Low incomes and transfers in the United States,
527
1960–2015 ​. ​
Figure 11.9. Primary in­equality and re­distribution in the United States and530
France ​. ​
Figure 11.10. Minimum wage in the United States and France,
531
1950–2019 ​. ​
Figure 11.11. Share of private financing in education: Diversity of Eu­ro­pean. ​537and American models ​Figure 11.12. Growth and in­equality in the United States, 1870–2020 ​. ​
544
Figure 11.13. Growth and progressive taxation in the United States,
1870–2020 ​. ​544
545
Figure 11.14. Growth and in­equality in Eu­rope, 1870–2020 ​. ​
Figure 11.15. Growth and progressive tax in Eu­rope, 1870–2020 ​. 545
Figure 11.16. Composition of income in France, 2015 ​. ​
555
556
Figure 11.17. Composition of property in France, 2015 ​. ​
Figure 11.18. Inequalities with re­spect to capital and ­labor in France,
2015 ​. ​
556
Figure 11.19. Profile of tax structure in France, 2018 ​. ​
558
 ​
 ​
.
Figure 12.1. Income in­equality in Rus­sia, 1900–2015 584
Figure 12.2. The top centile in Rus­sia, 1900–2015 ​. ​
585
Figure 12.3. The income gap between Rus­sia and Eu­rope, 1870–2015 ​. ​586
Figure 12.4. Capital flight from Rus­sia to tax havens ​. ​600. ​
602
Figure 12.5. Financial assets held in tax havens ​Figure 12.6. The fall of public property, 1978–2018 ​. ​607. ​
Figure 12.7. Owner­ship of Chinese firms, 1978–2018 ​609
Figure 12.8. In­equality in China, Eu­rope, and the United States,
1980–2018 ​. ​618
Figure 12.9. Regional in­equality in the United States and Eu­rope ​. ​637
Figure 12.10. Inflows and outflows in Eastern Eu­rope, 2010–2016 ​. ​
639
 ​
.
 ​
Figure 13.1. Population by continents, 1700–2050 650

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List of T­ ables and Illustrations . 1063. ​
Figure 13.2. Global in­equality regimes, 2018 ​650
Figure 13.3. In­equality in Eu­rope, the United States, and the ­Middle East,. ​6512018 ​
Figure 13.4. Global in­equality regimes, 2018: The bottom 50 ­percent versus
the top 1 p­ ercent ​. ​
651
Figure 13.5. In­equality between the top 10 p­ ercent and the bottom
50 ­percent, 2018 ​. ​658
Figure 13.6. In­equality between the top 1 ­percent and the bottom 50 p­ ercent,. ​6582018 ​
Figure 13.7. The global distribution of carbon emissions, 2010–2018 ​. ​667. ​
Figure 13.8. Top decile wealth share: Rich and emerging countries ​
671
 ​
 ​
.
Figure 13.9. Top centile wealth share: Rich and emerging countries 671
Figure 13.10. The per­sis­tence of hyperconcentrated wealth ​. ​687
Figure 13.11. The per­sis­tence of patriarchy in France in the twenty-­first­century ​. ​689
694
Figure 13.12. Tax revenues and trade liberalization ​. ​. ​697
Figure 13.13. The size of central bank balance sheets, 1900–2018 ​701
Figure 13.14. Central banks and financial globalization ​. ​
Figure 14.1. Social cleavages and po­liti­cal conflict in France,. ​722
1955–2020 ​Figure 14.2. Electoral left in Eu­rope and the United States, 1945–2020:
723
From the party of workers to the party of the educated ​. ​ ​ ​.
Figure 14.3. Legislative elections in France, 1945–2017 735
Figure 14.4. The electoral left in France: Legislatives, 1945–2017 ​. ​
736
 ​
 ​
.
Figure 14.5. The electoral right in France: Legislatives, 1945–2017 737
Figure 14.6. Presidential elections in France, 1965–2012 ​. ​
739. ​740Figure 14.7. The evolution of voter turnout, 1945–2020 ​Figure 14.8. Voter turnout and social cleavages, 1945–2020 ​. ​741
Figure 14.9. Left vote by level of education in France, 1956–2012 ​. ​745
Figure 14.10. The reversal of the educational cleavage in France,
1956–2017 ​. ​746
Figure 14.11. The left and education in France, 1955–2020 ​. ​
749
Figure 14.12. Po­liti­cal conflict and income in France, 1958–2012 ​. ​765
Figure 14.13. Po­liti­cal conflict and property in France, 1974–2012 ​. ​767
Figure 14.14. The religious structure of the French electorate,
1967–2017 ​. ​
776

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Figure 14.15. Po­liti­cal conflict and Catholicism in France,. ​7791967–2017 ​Figure 14.16. Po­liti­cal conflict and religious diversity in France,780
1967–1997 ​. ​
Figure 14.17. Po­liti­cal conflict and religious diversity in France,
2002–2017 ​. ​781
Figure 14.18. Po­liti­cal attitudes and origins in France, 2007–2012 ​. ​785
Figure 14.19. Borders and property: The four-­way ideological divide
in France ​. ​
791
Figure 14.20. The Eu­ro­pean cleavage in France: The 1992 and 2005
referenda ​. ​
801
808
Figure 15.1. Presidential elections in the United States, 1948–2016 ​. ​. ​809Figure 15.2. Demo­cratic vote by diploma, 1948–2016 ​Figure 15.3. The Demo­cratic Party and education: United States,
1948–2016 ​. ​
810
Figure 15.4. The Demo­cratic vote in the United States, 1948–2016:
From the workers’ party to the party of the highly educated ​. ​811
Figure 15.5. Po­liti­cal conflict and income in the United States,
1948–2016 ​. ​
813
Figure 15.6. Social cleavages and po­liti­cal conflict: United States,
1948–2016 ​. ​
814
Figure 15.7. Po­liti­cal conflict and ethnic identity: United States,
1948–2016 ​. ​
820
Figure 15.8. Po­liti­cal conflict and racial cleavage in the United States,
1948–2016 ​. ​
821
Figure 15.9. Po­liti­cal conflict and origins: France and United States ​. ​
827
839
Figure 15.10. Legislative elections in the United Kingdom, 1945–2017 ​. ​ ​.
 ​Figure 15.11. L­ abour Party and education, 1955–2017 841
Figure 15.12. From the workers’ party to the party of the highly educated:. ​842
The L­ abour vote, 1955–2017 ​Figure 15.13. The electoral left in Eu­rope and the United States, 1945–2020:
From the workers’ party to the party of the highly educated ​. ​843
Figure 15.14. Po­liti­cal conflict and income in the United Kingdom,
1955–2017 ​. ​
845
Figure 15.15. Social cleavages and po­liti­cal conflict: United Kingdom,
1955–2017 ​. ​
847

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Figure 15.16. Po­liti­cal conflict and religious diversity in the United Kingdom,. ​852
1964–2017 ​Figure 15.17. Po­liti­cal conflict and ethnic categories in the United Kingdom,
1979–2017 ​. ​853
Figure 15.18. The Eu­ro­pean cleavage in the United Kingdom: The 2016
Brexit referendum ​. ​859
Figure 16.1. The reversal of the educational cleavage, 1950–2020: United
864
States, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, and Norway ​. ​
Figure 16.2. Po­liti­cal cleavage and education, 1960–2020: Italy, the867
Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand ​. ​
Figure 16.3. Po­liti­cal conflict and income in Poland, 2001–2015 ​. ​
873
 ​
874
Figure 16.4. Po­liti­cal conflict and education in Poland, 2001–2015 . ​Figure 16.5. Catalan regionalism and income, 2008–2016 ​. ​
920
Figure 16.6. Catalan regionalism and education, 2008–2016 ​. ​920
Figure 16.7. Legislative elections in India (Lok Sabha), 1962–2014 ​. ​
932
935
Figure 16.8. The BJP vote by caste and religion in India, 1962–2014 ​. ​
Figure 16.9. Congress party vote by caste and religion in India,
1962–2014 ​. ​937. ​
Figure 16.10. The left vote by caste and religion in India, 1962–2014 ​
937
 ​
 ​
.
Figure 16.11. The BJP vote among the high castes, 1962–2014 940
Figure 16.12. The BJP vote among the lower castes, 1962–2014 ​. ​
941. ​
Figure 16.13. The BJP and the religious cleavage in India, 1962–2014 ​941
Figure 16.14. The BJP vote by caste, religion, and state in India,
1996–2016 ​. ​
945
Figure 16.15. The politicization of in­equality in Brazil, 1989–2018 ​. ​955
Figure 17.1. In­equality of educational investment in France, 2018 ​. ​1009

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