ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the discovery of caste in capitalist economies, and of caste classes, is perhaps Piketty's most important contribution. He has shown that capitalism is destined in the current century to be organized around the inherited wealth of the 1" and the lifelong poverty of the disinherited majority, excluded from wealth and power. Piketty has properly put caste back into the heart of the analysis of capitalism, demonstrating that capitalist classes almost always have had strong caste features and seem destined to be a dominating force in the twenty-first century, without major political intervention to change it. Piketty's work shows that today, as in nineteenth-century Belle Epoque or Gilded Age capitalism, US ruling elites and the working population increasingly fit the definition of castes as well as classes. Piketty's analysis shows that white workers have long shared elements of economic caste with workers of another gender and skin color, without feeling solidarity or acting together on shared interests.
