Rethinking ‘Capital’: Marx, Piketty, and the Mirage of Inequality
By Miki Tasseni
First published in Business Times, Dar es Salaam
Reviewers and seasoned analysts have recently been captivated by a new book that has stirred bourgeois discomfort in elite policy circles: Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Authored by French economist and philosopher Thomas Piketty, this modern tome attempts to reimagine Karl Marx’s Das Kapital for the 21st century. Although it may resemble Marx’s grim classic in appearance, its foundations and focus depart significantly from the original.
While Marx’s Capital (Volume I, published in 1867) is considered one of the most consequential critiques of capitalist political economy—alongside Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations—Piketty’s work is less revolutionary and more diagnostic. Where Marx investigated the inherent contradictions of capitalism and projected its eventual collapse, Piketty focuses on wealth and income inequality as endemic features of the system.
Piketty’s revival of the Capital brand gained momentum amid the 2008 financial crisis, which reignited dormant debates about capitalism’s failures. Yet that crisis, though devastating, quickly proved to be cyclical rather than systemic—one more downturn in the boom-bust rhythm of global capital.
According to reviews across multiple platforms, Piketty’s main argument is that when the rate of return on capital (r) exceeds the rate of economic growth (g), wealth inevitably accumulates at the top. His formula—r > g—purports to explain the persistent rise in inequality over the past three centuries. To prevent oligarchic concentration of wealth and political instability, he proposes a global system of progressive taxation and redistribution.
To Marx, this would sound suspiciously like utopian socialism—a moralistic, not scientific, intervention. In fact, Marx strongly critiqued early socialists for focusing on the distribution of wealth rather than the ownership of the means of production. In his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Marx bluntly stated: “All distribution is nothing but the distribution of the means of production.” In other words, discussions of inequality divorced from ownership structures are, in Marxian terms, beside the point.
Piketty’s focus on income statistics and tax policy, while illuminating, overlooks the underlying mechanisms of capital accumulation and surplus value extraction. There’s little exploration of Marx’s theory of crises—particularly the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, a key hypothesis in Das Kapital. This omission makes Piketty’s book a provocative essay, but not a sequel to Marx.
Piketty suggests that the era from 1930 to 1975 witnessed a temporary reduction in inequality due to war, depression, and state intervention. But he does not sufficiently examine the structural causes of that redistribution or how economic institutions were redesigned post-war to enable inclusive growth under capitalism. His analysis remains descriptive rather than dialectical.
Moreover, Piketty implies that we are returning to “patrimonial capitalism,” where inherited wealth dominates. But from a Marxist-Leninist lens, this is overly simplistic. The global economy is now shaped by joint-stock companies, multinational capital, and state-capital hybrid systems. Millions of people own shares, pension funds, or real estate—blurring the class lines and complicating the old binaries of capitalist versus proletarian.
More critically, Piketty offers no agency of change. If inequality is the great evil, who or what will reverse it? For Marx, the working class was the revolutionary subject. For Piketty, there is no such force—only technocratic policy solutions and elite-led reformism. His argument may resonate with young leftists hungry for fairness, but it lacks the historical rigor and revolutionary vision that animated Marx’s critique.
In contrast to Marx’s vision of immiseration leading to revolt, today’s advanced economies face a different crisis: excess capital with limited investment opportunities. Low growth and low returns, not labour unrest, define the capitalist malaise. In this context, redistribution through taxation, as proposed by Piketty, may offer temporary relief—but not transformation.
Finally, the book’s popularity—over 300,000 copies sold and a spot atop The New York Times bestseller list—proves that the language of crisis still sells, even if the solutions proposed are muddled. The global fascination with Piketty’s analysis of inequality reflects a deep yearning for answers, yet it falls short of addressing capitalism’s structural contradictions.
Piketty’s work is well-researched, timely, and elegantly argued, but it remains incompatible with Marxism’s scientific critique. His call for global wealth taxes may echo socialist ideals, but without challenging the ownership of capital, it is bound to remain within the orbit of bourgeois political economy.