Tensions in Piketty’s Participatory Socialism: Reconciling Justice and Democracy
-
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
und
Andreas Albertsen
Abstract
In the final parts of Piketty’s Capital and Ideology, he presents his vision for a just and more equal society. This vision marks an alternative to contemporary societies, and differs radically both from the planned Soviet economies and from social democratic welfare states. In his sketch of this vision, Piketty provides a principled account of how such a society would look and how it would modify the current status of private property through co-managed enterprises and the creation of temporary ownership models. He also sets out two principles for when inequalities are just. The first principle permits inequalities that are beneficial to the worst-off, while the second permits inequalities that reflect differences in people’s choices and ambitions. This article identifies a tension between Piketty’s two inequality-permitting principles. It also argues that the procedural limits on how decisions are made within the enterprises of participatory socialism might create inequalities not permitted by the guiding distributive principles of participatory socialism. This tension points to the need for either further changes in firm structure and ownership, an even more progressive taxation scheme, or an egalitarian ethos reflected in citizens’ choices in their everyday lives under participatory socialism.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Title
- Contents
- Editorial
- Symposium on Capital and Ideology
- Accumulating Capital: Capital and Ideology after Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- Ideology and Institutions in the Evolution of Capital
- Is More Mittelstand the Answer? Firm Size and the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
- Tensions in Piketty’s Participatory Socialism: Reconciling Justice and Democracy
- Justice, Power, and Participatory Socialism: on Piketty’s Capital and Ideology
- More Lessons to Learn: Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and Alternative Archives of Social Experience
- About Capital, Socialism and Ideology
- General Part
- The Role of Culture in Evolutionary Theories of Human Cooperation
- Discussion: Jonathan Birch, Toolmaking and the Origin of Normative Cognition
- The Skilful Origins of Human Normative Cognition
- If Skill is Normative, Then Norms are Everywhere
- Norms Require Not Just Technical Skill and Social Learning, but Real Cooperation
- The Skill Hypothesis: A Variant
- Normative Guidance, Evaluative Guidance, and Skill
- Refining the Skill Hypothesis: Replies to Andrews/Westra, Tomasello, Sterelny, and Railton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Title
- Contents
- Editorial
- Symposium on Capital and Ideology
- Accumulating Capital: Capital and Ideology after Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- Ideology and Institutions in the Evolution of Capital
- Is More Mittelstand the Answer? Firm Size and the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
- Tensions in Piketty’s Participatory Socialism: Reconciling Justice and Democracy
- Justice, Power, and Participatory Socialism: on Piketty’s Capital and Ideology
- More Lessons to Learn: Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and Alternative Archives of Social Experience
- About Capital, Socialism and Ideology
- General Part
- The Role of Culture in Evolutionary Theories of Human Cooperation
- Discussion: Jonathan Birch, Toolmaking and the Origin of Normative Cognition
- The Skilful Origins of Human Normative Cognition
- If Skill is Normative, Then Norms are Everywhere
- Norms Require Not Just Technical Skill and Social Learning, but Real Cooperation
- The Skill Hypothesis: A Variant
- Normative Guidance, Evaluative Guidance, and Skill
- Refining the Skill Hypothesis: Replies to Andrews/Westra, Tomasello, Sterelny, and Railton
