Piketty’s call for a historically informed, global analysis of inequality is timely, as is the need for a corresponding transformation of our current politics. However, I believe there to be a fundamental flaw in his analysis which reproduces a Eurocentric approach to understanding global inequality. The key issue is that Piketty organizes his historical comparative analysis in terms of inequality within nations. Yet, the polities he is discussing were rarely just nations over the long durée. Rather, they were imperial formations constituted by a colonizing state and the territories and populations that were incorporated. His approach separates the logic of what he calls the modern proprietarian regime of inequality from enslavement and colonialism when both were integral to it. In contrast, I argue for them to be seen as necessarily interconnected with a lasting legacy in contemporary configurations of global inequality.

中文翻译：

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叙述不平等，消除帝国

皮凯蒂呼吁对不平等进行具有历史意义的全球分析，这是及时的，因为需要对我们当前的政治进行相应的转变。然而，我认为他的分析存在一个根本性的缺陷，它再现了以欧洲为中心的方法来理解全球不平等。关键问题是皮凯蒂根据国家内部的不平等组织了他的历史比较分析。然而，他所讨论的政体很少只是长期存在的国家。相反，它们是由殖民国家和被合并的领土和人口构成的帝国形式。他的方法将他所谓的现代私有制不平等制度的逻辑与奴役和殖民主义分开，因为两者都是不可或缺的。相比之下，