How social democrats may become reluctant radicals: Thomas Piketty's Capital and Wolfgang Streeck's Buying Time
| Author | Miriam Ronzoni |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885115601602 |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
EJPT
Review Article
How social democrats may
become reluctant radicals:
Thomas Piketty’s Capital and
Wolfgang Streeck’s Buying
Time
Miriam Ronzoni
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
Thomas Piketty, translated Arthur Goldhammer, 2014, Capital in the Twenty-First Century,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 816, ISBN 9780674430006.
Wolfgang Streeck, translated by Patrick Camiller and David Fernbach, 2014, Buying Time: The
Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, London: Verso, pp. 240, ISBN 9781781685488.
Abstract
The continuing ramifications of the financial crisis of 2007–2008 have forced social
scientists to raise fundamental questions about the relationship between capitalism,
democracy and inequality. In particular, Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Wolfgang
Streeck’s Buying Time focus on, respectively, the economic and the political contradic-
tions of capitalistic societies. Piketty argues that capitalism naturally tends towards the
exacerbation of rent-based wealth inequality, whereas Streeck suggests that capitalism
and democracy are ultimately incompatible. A striking feature of these two contribu-
tions is that their authors are social democrats, not Marxists or radical anti-capitalist
thinkers. In this review article, I illustrate how the combination of social democratic
convictions and the acknowledgment that capitalism cannot be tamed generates inter-
esting tensions between the diagnosis offered by the two monographs and the solutions
that are proposed. I end the piece by raising two remarks on the implications that this
tension might have for normative political theory. On the one hand, it is time for theory
to do more work on political action and agency. On the other, liberal egalitarian the-
orists might have to acknowledge that they are in the same predicament as Piketty and
Streeck: social democracy is their ideal, yet it is perhaps unattainable. If this is the case,
liberal egalitarians might be committed to adopt a more confrontational attitude
towards capitalism: they might have to become reluctant radicals.
European Journal of Political Theory
2018, Vol. 17(1) 118–127
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885115601602
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Corresponding author:
Miriam Ronzoni, University of Manchester, Arthur Lewis Building, School of Social Sciences, Oxford Road,
Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Email: miriam.ronzoni@manchester.ac.uk
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