Piketty’s understanding of ideology and the implications of “passive revolution”

Abstract

The authors explore Piketty’s notion of ideology developed in his book Capital and Ideology (2020). They show that he considers ideology as an autonomous force in history. The main thesis of this article is that Piketty does not have a critical political theory for the “transitional period” and is, therefore, not able to convincingly explain why the 2008 crisis of the “ideology of hypercapitalism” did not lead to the political and ideological transformation he desires (so-called “participatory socialism”). The authors argue that Gramsci’s understanding of crisis and passive revolution can be helpful here. It seems that during the crisis of capitalism “transformism” (Gramsci) helps restore the basic consensus but that, at the same time, the lower and lower middle classes do not actually participate in this process of the “reorganization of the state”. In fact, today these classes seem to be more motivated to participate in the practice of “platform populism” (Morozov) rather than in Piketty’s project to create a deliberative “just democracy”. This kind of populism seemingly seeks to democratize (but actually wants to commercialize) as many areas of human life as possible. On the other hand, there are some signs that the left, even the mainstream one, may follow the direction of what Gramsci calls (progressive) Caesarism. It is a “polemical-ideological formula” that above all requires political action to regain “minimal social homogeneity” (Monod) as a precondition for a more sustainable democracy.