ABSTRACT
Capitalism claims to liberate people from chains of caste and open opportunity to all, who deserved the rights to prove their merit through hard work and success on the market. A caste-based capitalism violates capitalism's own ideological or moral principles. When caste is merged with class, as in patrimonial capitalism, the crisis of democracy is heightened as the melding of caste and class inequalities increases barriers to democracy. This is one of the reasons that Piketty champions democracy so strongly and argues that it requires forceful political intervention to move markets and capitalism itself into democratic alignment. The role of caste in patrimonial societies is incompatible with democracy. Caste divisions in the Middle Ages created permanent and legalized divisions between the powerful and the powerless. Caste classes in patrimonial capitalism remove the legal obstacles to universal voting but put in place a more invisible block to democracy.
