Only read the intro and conclusion

Yet another cinder-block of a book from or after Piketty (the third in my collection in fact), which I approach with trepidation. Two weeks in, I realized that the only way of approaching such a tome, which will have a fair chance of success, is to treat it as consisting of four (or more) distinct books: fortunately the author has been kind enough to mark out the parts, and in fact has given the reader the permission to read each separately. After two months' slogging on and off, I finished what is marked off as Part Two: on the slave and colonial economies, with a long chapter on India which was of great interest to me (from the subcontinent). This part is not just economics, but also a survey of history. Finally, sweet feeling of triumph: I have finished the whole book! Part Three deals with the 'Great Transformation" from social-democrat to a general capitalist-globalist ruling system in the twentyfirst century, while Part Four makes an in-depth analysis of the whole subject. The author uses a novel approach to track the changing allegiance of the people in different countries or regions over time: he uses the results of post-election opinion surveys, which record people's views and their self-declared social or income status. He correlates these with records of personal and inheritance taxes wherever available.
This is an encyclopedic work, and one cannot summarise it or do justice in a paragraph here. However, on of the most interesting for me, as a reader from the sub-continent, is his lengthy discussion of the caste-based system in medieval times, and the comparison (contrast) of current trends of allegiance of upper and lower (in terms of income/social status) segments of the Indian population. He says that in the West, after around 2008, gradually the more educated tended to support the social-democrat parties, while the lower half veered to the rightist parties, having apparently lost faith in the intentions or the competence of the left parties that they had traditionally supported; in India, in contrast, the 'forward' and better educated sections seem to have veered to the right (the BJP phenomenon).
An absorbing work, but one wonders why the author has filled so many pages: because there is so much information along the way, sometimes it is difficult to follow any thread. It would have been better to have left out some of the old history, and just discuss the contemporary situation. The author himself is well aware of this complaint, and in fact has responded by bringing out a slimmer, summary volume, which I will look into sometime to see which approach (put in everything versus stick to a tight sub-plot) is more effective ( )

The foremost theorist regarding economic inequality explores history to understand how we got here and the best way forward.

His main historical thesis considers a fourfold movement: the "trifunctional" society, which he explains in terms of pre-Revolution French estates of the monarchy/military, the clergy, and the rest of the people, with the first two rationalizing their expropriation of the resources of the third; the shift, in various ways, to a "proprietarian" society in the wake of the collapse of "trifunctional" societies, in which property rights were held most sacred; then a kind of "post-proprietarian" social democratic age from 1918 to 1980 in which societies maintained progressive taxation and sharply reduced inequality; and "neo-proprietarianism" which has reversed many of the gains in equality since the 1980s.

The author explores how this went down in societies around the world and how matters of inequality plays out in various places and domains, regarding educational opportunity, healthcare, employment and benefits, etc. The second half of the work looks in greater detail at how societies could choose to reduce inequality through participatory socialism but also looks at the prospect of more crudely nationalist or fascist possibilities.

The author's historical analysis is on point and extremely important. The Left in general should reckon with his assessment of the collapse of their strengths in the 1980s and afterward and return to a more robust progressive taxation scheme to reduce intergenerational inequality. Socialism writ large should grapple with their obsession with the means of production.

But his way forward, as "optimal" as it might be, is very French, if not at least Continental European. Without some major crises which none of us really want to experience it has no chance of being realized in the USA. It is as if the author wanted to trigger every "freedom" impulse in every red-blooded American.

Definitely worth consideration for its historical analysis and even as an exercise in imagination for the future. ( )

A big book trying to categorize human societies in very broad terms, from status-based to capitalist and communist and, he hopes ultimately, socialist. There’s too much to summarize but one point I found quite interesting was Piketty’s argument that left parties across the world have moved from representing the working class to representing the educated class, usually to everyone’s detriment but the right’s. ( )