Toward a Predistributive Democracy: Polanyi and Piketty on Capitalism, Moral Economy, and Democracy in Crisis

As accelerating inequality careens into plutocracy, and America tilts toward autocracy, Karl Polanyi and Thomas Piketty have become key resources for understanding the link between the social exclusions of capitalism and democracy in crisis. This and its companion article (Somers 2022a) explore each of these thinkers and put them into dialogue to generate the outlines of a democratic political economy that I dub a predistributive democracy. Deconstructing capitalism’s moral economy of market justice, building on legal and economic institutionalism, and advocating a movement of countervailing power against escalating commodification and dedemocratization are central components of the project. The first article focused on Polanyi’s contribution to a predistributive democracy. This one engages Piketty’s work as it evolves from a bent toward economic naturalism to a robust institutionalism and an agenda for a participatory democratic socialism. Neither Polanyi nor Piketty is a legal theorist, yet both thinkers are indispensable to the new Law and Political Economy (LPE) and the movement for a predistributive democracy.