Ideologia, diseguaglianza e società giusta. Riflessioni sulle tesi di Piketty

My reading of Piketty’s Capital and Idelogy will focus, among many other possibilities, on three issues largely interconnected among themselves: ideologies and inequality; just society and power; inequality and markets. I will begin by examining the relationship highlighted by Piketty between narratives and ideologies on the one hand, and inequality on the other, focusing on the last few decades, which in his terminology are the period of the ‘proprietary and meritocratic’ ideology. Then I shall dwell on his idea of a ‘just’ society and how it could be achieved, paying particular attention to his proposal to transform the ownership of companies from private to social, in relation to which the power of managers deserves special attention. Finally, I will focus about on the mechanisms that generate inequalities in the markets and how effective Piketty’s proposals can be in defusing them, as it would be necessary in a just society that should not be content to correct inequalities a posteriori through redistribution, but should prevent them. In addressing these issues I will highlight the fruitfulness of many of Piketty’s ideas and analyses but I will also make some critical remarks whose main purpose is to strengthen his project of producing ideas that help to define and achieve a ‘just’ society or, at least, fairer than the one we have been living in for many decades now. In particular, I will put forward the thesis that in order to limit the inequalities that are created in markets, it is not enough to weaken capital’s power within firms, as Piketty suggests, but it is also necessary to ensure that sufficiently competitive conditions prevail in the markets so as to avoid that any reduced inequality within the firm is accompanied by increasing inequality between firms, which also means between the workers of different firms.