Since the rise of a “scientific” historiography in the nineteenth century, the role of ideas in history versus that of material forces has been a key philosophical problem. Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology (2019), read as a work of global history, offers a provocative rehearsal of this question. On the one hand, the book is an attempt to provide a narrative historical frame for the hard data of the World Inequality Database. On the other, paradoxically, it offers a defiant conclusion that ideology is, or at least could be, the key driver in social and institutional change towards universal progress. St Simon, Comte and Spencer have found their twenty‐first century heir. How can we historicize Piketty's impetus, both understanding its provenance and making sense of its limitations? One key issue is its roots in the traditions of National Accounts, which leads to an approach to the global which is stresses comparison over connection, and to an uncritical reproduction of the portrait of an egalitarian non‐capitalist Twentieth century painted by Kuznets during the Cold War. Another is its presentism, with the historical argument driven by an attempt to understand the c.1980–2020 conjuncture and its alternatives, and a connected overdependence on the support of a few historians. A third, a consequence in part of the inequalities between the quality of data we have for different parts of the world, and of Piketty's provenance and imagined audience, is a Eurocentric, even Gallocentric approach. A fourth is a very French republican refusal to address how class is complicated by identities of race and nation so that neither egalitarian policies nor ideologies provide remedies for the populist politics of right. None of these criticisms are in contradiction with our view that Capital and Ideology is a work of social theory of world historical importance.

中文翻译：

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全球历史上的物质条件和观念

自 19 世纪“科学”史学兴起以来，思想在历史中的作用与物质力量的作用一直是一个关键的哲学问题。托马斯·皮凯蒂 (Thomas Piketty) 的《资本与意识形态》(Capital and Ideology，2019 年) 被视为一部全球历史著作，对这个问题进行了一次挑衅性的排练。一方面，本书试图为世界不平等数据库的硬数据提供一个叙述性的历史框架。另一方面，矛盾的是，它提供了一个挑衅的结论，即意识形态是或至少可能是社会和制度变革走向普遍进步的关键驱动力。圣西蒙、孔德和斯宾塞找到了他们 21 世纪的继承人。我们如何将皮凯蒂的推动力历史化，既了解其出处又了解其局限性？一个关键问题是其根源于国民核算的传统，这导致了一种强调比较而非联系的全球方法，以及对库兹涅茨在寒冷时期绘制的平等非资本主义的二十世纪肖像的不加批判的再现。战争。另一个是它的现在主义，其历史论点的驱动力是试图理解 1980-2020 年的结合及其替代方案，以及对少数历史学家的支持的过度依赖。第三，我们在世界不同地区拥有的数据质量与皮凯蒂的出处和想象的受众之间存在不平等的部分后果是一种以欧洲为中心，甚至以高卢为中心的方法。第四个是非常法国的共和党人拒绝解决阶级如何因种族和国家身份而复杂化，因此平等主义政策和意识形态都不能为民粹主义的权利政治提供补救措施。这些批评都与我们的观点相矛盾，即资本与意识形态是具有世界历史重要性的社会理论著作。