ABSTRACT
The prospects of electoral party politics serving the disinherited majority are ultimately dependent on the rise of new grassroots movements, both caste- and class-based, which can push the Democratic Party in a far more progressive direction. America has always been a land of strong grassroots movements for progressive change, as historian Howard Zinn discusses so vividly in his People's History of the United States. The prospects for a new class politics targeting the 1" depend ultimately on new social movements rising, especially those that can unite caste and class groups in the struggle against patrimonial capitalism. Piketty supports the melding of a caste and class politics that might be just the political medicine needed to liberate the nation from the grips of patrimonial capitalism. Piketty himself has offered little political analysis and strategy to suggest how such new movements could form and gain traction in the political arena.
