From Bourdieu to Piketty: tracing the emergence of ‘un nouveau capitalisme patrimonial’

ABSTRACT

Thomas Piketty has claimed that his best-selling study of socio-economic inequality, Le Capital au XXIe siècle is significantly indebted to Pierre Bourdieu’s work on social class and distinction. This claim has not convinced a number of commentators in France who claim some allegiance to Bourdieu’s theoretical legacy. Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Didier Eribon, and Frédéric Lordon have argued that Piketty’s work represents a betrayal of Bourdieu’s legacy in its advocacy of the myths of meritocracy and liberalism. This article argues to the contrary that Piketty’s analyses of an emerging global elite can be interpreted as developing Bourdieu’s empirical findings and theoretical approach in important ways. It shows, first, that Piketty’s formula explaining the mechanism driving inequality (r > g) is directly translatable into Bourdieu’s theoretical lexicon. Second, the article argues that Bourdieu’s analyses of ‘la nouvelle bourgeoisie’ in both La Distinction and La Noblesse d’État anticipate Piketty’s later work on the global elite that has emerged under ‘un nouveau capitalisme patrimonial’. Finally, the article demonstrates that Piketty’s enquiries have led him to question both meritocracy and liberalism, in their classic forms, and ponders the possible political significance of this abandonment.

RÉSUMÉ

Dans un article paru en 2014, Thomas Piketty situe ses écrits sur l’explosion des inégalités dans la lignée de la sociologie bourdieusienne. Cette déclaration de filiation est loin d’avoir convaincu certains de ceux en France qui se réclament de l’héritage intellectuel de Pierre Bourdieu. Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, Didier Eribon, et Frédéric Lordon soutiennent tous que Piketty trahit l’héritage bourdieusien dans la mesure où l’économiste adhère aux mythes de la méritocratie et du libéralisme économique. Notre article conteste cette interprétation, en soulignant à quel point les analyses de Piketty quant à l’émergence d’une nouvelle élite mondiale pourraient représenter un prolongement et une mise à point de certaines des découvertes empiriques et théoriques de Bourdieu. Nous démontrons que la formule qui, selon de Piketty, expliquerait la montée des inégalités (r > g) se prête à une lecture en termes bourdieusiens. Nous proposons que les analyses bourdieusiennes de ce qu’il appelle, dans La Distinction et La Noblesse d’État, ‘la nouvelle bourgeoisie’ anticipent les thèses de Piketty quant à l’émergence d’une nouvelle élite mondiale sous ‘un nouveau capitalisme patrimonial’. L’article montre que ces découvertes de Piketty l’ont poussé à mettre en question et la méritocratie et le libéralisme, sous leurs formes classiques. Enfin, nous réfléchissons sur la signification politique de cette mise en question.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)

Notes

1. This claim regarding the role of modernizing elements within the French ‘second left’ in the genesis of French neo-liberalism is a leitmotif in Bourdieu’s work, having received its most complete formulation in the long article he co-authored with Luc Boltanski in 1976, ‘La Production de l’idéologie dominante’ (Bourdieu 1976).

2. For a more detailed, measured, if nonetheless critical analysis of Piketty from a Marxist perspective, see Bihr and Husson (2020). In the field of Anglophone sociology, Mike Savage has perhaps done most in exploring commonalities between Bourdieu and Piketty (Savage 2014, 2021, 29-99). However, his claims, first, that Piketty is be valued for his focus on ‘description’ rather than causal analysis and, second, that Piketty offers a ‘historical’ complement to Bourdieu’s fundamentally ‘spatial’ account of inequality seem highly questionable. It does not fall within the ambit of the current article to offer a more detailed analysis of these claims.

3. To be precise, Bourdieu’s own data in La Distinction is drawn from two surveys conducted in 1963 and 1967 (Bourdieu 1979, 587-88). This is supplemented by data from 51 supplementary surveys conducted by the likes of IFOP and SOFRES, the vast majority of which date from the 1970s (607-13). The majority of the press cuttings that illustrate the text and exemplify each class fraction’s habitus and ethos also date from the 1970s.

4. It does not fall within the ambit of this article to assess the merits of each of the wide range of competing interpretations of financialisation. For a concise critical survey of these, see Krippner (2011, 4-14).

5. La Noblesse d’État is a comparative study that draws on an initial survey carried out by Bourdieu in 1966-67 and contrasts this with official data on the changing composition of the student body in the grandes écoles up until the mid to late 1980s (Bourdieu 1989, 331-69).

6. By contrast, Piketty’s references to Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) to substantiate his criticisms imply that his rejection of meritocracy is more than simply conjunctural. See, Piketty (2013, 662n.1, 2019, 829). Our designation ‘disillusioned meritocrat’ is intended to capture this ambiguity.

7. It should be noted that Bourdieu was no advocate of Marxist revolution either. In the last decades of his career, he repeatedly defended ‘the Hegelian or Durkheimian vision’ of the State ‘in opposition to [the] Marxist vision’ (Bourdieu 1998, 20). He saw this Hegelian or Durkheimian vision, ‘of which the State of the French Third Republic was nearly an exact incarnation’ (Bourdieu 1998, 20), as a defence against ‘the withering of the State’ advocated by both Marxism and neo-liberalism, on account of their shared economism (Bourdieu 2000, 22-3). These appeals to counter-revolutionary thinkers and regimes—Hegel, Durkheim, the Third Republic—suggest Bourdieu also belongs to that broad liberal tradition identified by Geoff Mann.