However, Shortt said that Capital and Ideology still “goes a long way towards framing what is happening both here and abroad in a broad historical and political context.”[10] In Kirkus Reviews, the book was billed as a "deftly argued case for a new kind of socialism that, while sure to inspire controversy, bears widespread discussion.
"[11] William Davies of The Guardian wrote that the book "is occasionally naive (it will bug the hell out of historians and anthropologists) but in a provocative fashion, as if to say: if inequality isn't justified, why not change it?"
"[12] Marshall Steinbaum of Boston Review stated that in comparison to Capital in the Twenty-First Century the work "loses much of the economic theory, but it gains a vast wealth of historical, sociological, and political detail".
However, Mann said that the book "proves conclusively that [the idea that economic growth will fix the inequality problem] was an illusion", and concluded, "Whether or not his revolution without revolutionaries can get us where we need to go, his analysis of how we got here demands our attention.
[...] on his key point of the brute necessity of a reborn international left, Piketty is inarguably correct.”[18] Keith Johnson of Foreign Policy wrote, "The reams of economic data he unearths are eye-opening; many of his proposed solutions seem eye-rolling in the current climate.
But the reviewer described the economist's account of ideology by elites throughout history as lesser than accounts by thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno and Michel Foucault because Piketty "flits between case studies" and suggests that "elites are only ever self-serving"; the reviewer also said that he insufficiently deals with concerns that "sky-high wealth taxes would play havoc with incentives, reducing investment and entrepreneurship [...] it is hard not to conclude that, deep down, Mr Piketty believes the worth of a society is measured by its Gini coefficient alone.
The journalist also argued that "Piketty's solutions [for the rise of nativism and xenophobia] are perfunctory [...] a survey of 'red wall' seats found they [...] reject attempts to take money from the modestly well-off and even from billionaires“.
Collier also said the northern working class in the U.K. would likely prefer a tax on the capital appreciation of the ABs who own London property to Piketty's recommendations, and that "it is ethically better that you should save to help your children rather than lavish consumption on yourself now".
Stangler wrote that while some might find nuanced Piketty's lack of identification of a central force and his unpacking of each major transformation "on its own terms, insisting on a multitude of alternative paths that might have been followed at any given moment [...] others may be put off by its unwillingness to dig in and take sides."
While he argued that there is a "considerable sum of useful and valuable material" and praised as "carefully done" Piketty's history of wealth and property accumulation, Cowen dismissed his commentary on recent events as "distorted and unreliable.
"[27] Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, however, wrote that the book is too tepid, stating that Piketty ignores "key Marxist insights about dynamics such as the profit motive, unequal access to and ability to develop technology, and labour-squeezing cost-cutting.
"[28] In Paul Krugman's unfavorable review, he praised the Pikettian method of using "a combination of extrapolation and guesswork to produce quantitative estimates for eras that predate modern data collection" as applied "to very good effect" in Capital and Ideology.
On top of the lack of workplace democracy on which Piketty focuses, there is also a need to democratise capital, by ensuring the true investors in pensions or mutual funds can control votes taken by asset managers or banks.
Largely agreeing with Piketty, he argued that "the legal construction of markets can go very far to pre-empt unjustified inequality, before redistributive taxation", but stressed that the meaning of a just society goes further than a fair distribution of wealth, and ensures everyone can develop their potential to the fullest.