The solution proposed by Karl Marx of overcoming inequalities should lead to the end of capitalism with the establishment of socialism and later communism which is considered utopian by many analysts in view of the failure of socialism implemented in the Soviet Union and other countries. The solution proposed by Piketty to repair the capitalist system and keep it running is also considered utopian at the power of capital because he suggests, among other measures, taxation of large fortunes, the fight against economic inequality and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. In short, both proposed solutions would be politically unfeasible and therefore utopian by many analysts.

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COMBATING THE SOCIAL INEQUALITIES IN CAPITALISM ACCORDING
TO MARX AND PIKETTY VISION
Fernando Alcoforado *
Thomas Piketty wrote a book called Capital in the Twenty-First Century published by
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2014, in
which advocates progressive taxation and the taxation of the global wealth as the only
way to stop the trend of growing inequality of wealth and income in the capitalist
system. He calls into question the vision widely accepted that the free-market capitalism
distributes wealth. Piketty shows that free-market capitalism, in the absence of a major
redistributive intervention by the state, produces undemocratic oligarchies. The book
has often been presented as a substitute for the 21st century of the 19th century of Karl
Marx work, which bears the same title.
In his book, Piketty does not explain the deeper causes of the global crisis of 2008, and
why it is taking so long for the world capitalist system recover. It does not help to
understand why economic growth is so poor today in the United States, is stagnation in
Europe and Japan and the economic slowdown in China. What Piketty shows
statistically it is that capital tended throughout history, to produce increasing levels of
inequality. This is exactly the theoretical conclusion of Marx in the first volume of his
version of the Capital. In Marx's Capital, inequality is seen not as the result of the
distribution of wealth as Capital in the XXI Century Piketty shows, but as an inevitable
result of the production of wealth under capitalism.
According to Marx, all wealth in society is the product of work, created by the physical
and mental efforts of the working class. Profits, which mean the return on capital, as
Marx explained are nothing more than the unpaid labor of the working class, ie, the
difference between the value of what is produced and the value that reverts to workers
in the form of wages. An increasing rate of profit, so only implies an increasing
exploitation of the working class, which necessarily means a greater share of wealth in
society piling up in the hands of the capitalists - a small elite of explorers.
Marx demonstrated in his three volumes of Capital (Boitempo Editorial, São Paulo,
2013) and by various means, capitalism can exploit the working class for greater profits:
1) extending the workday through an intensification of work within a given time; and 2)
increasing efficiency and worker productivity by replacing labor by machines etc. All
this is reflected in the increase in the proportion of unpaid labor in relation to the value
of what is produced by the workers.
Marx saw the capitalist economy as a system of interconnected processes, and
ultimately as a struggle between living forces - a class struggle between the capitalist
owners of the means of production and workers by the surplus produced in society.
Through the means described above, the capitalists can try to increase its profits at the
expense of the working class. However, where the working class is organized, united
and willing to fight, reform can be obtained and workers can earn a larger share of the
income generated by productive activity.
This kind of exploitation is inherent in capitalism. If workers do not get back the full
value of your product - which is not necessarily the case in a system of private
ownership and production for profit - so they cannot buy back all the commodities they
produce. This tends to create situations of overproduction that historically have resulted

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in falling production and rising unemployment that inevitably leads to crises tending to
depression as we experienced in 1929 and currently, in which are worsening all the
contradictions accumulated in the world capitalist system.
For these reasons, Piketty is not the new Marx. While Marx shows the true causes of
social inequalities that are related to the expropriation of the income of workers by the
holders of the means of production, Piketty points out the consequences of this
expropriation, that is, the resulting inequalities. While Karl Marx defends the end of
capitalism with the establishment of socialism and afterwards of communism to end
social inequality, Piketty proposes measures to repair the capitalist system and keep it
running. The problem for Piketty is not inequality per se but the fact that this creates
injustice in society that threatens the existence of the capitalist system itself. Piketty
says it is very difficult to make the system work when you have an inequality so
extreme as that comes to recording.
To reduce social inequalities, Thomas Piketty proposes an action which is considered
utopian that is taxing large fortunes. Capital in the XXI Century suggests, among other
things, the taxation of large fortunes, the fight against economic inequality and
concentration of wealth in a few hands. With about 500 pages, Capital in the XXI
Century is divided into four parts in which addresses the issue of income, production,
capital and its transformations throughout history, especially since the Industrial
Revolution and is a true genealogy of income issue especially with an extensive survey
of wage policies with outbreaks in France, the United Kingdom and the United States
which were very useful for a reading of the history of global capitalism and its
problems.
Thomas Piketty analyzes, too, inequality, concentration of income, rentier while enemy
of democracy, the world of wealth inequality in the twenty-first century, the issue of
families hold of global wealth and, finally, taxation and regulation of global wealth.
Piketty addresses the "Marxist apocalypse" of endless accumulation of capital which,
for him, did not materialize. However, it states that, although we have not an endless
accumulation of capital, we have increasingly few families holding almost half of global
wealth.
Piketty explains that there is a tendency to increase in inequality due to the continuous
increase in the accumulation of wealth resulting from the fact that the rate of return on
capital (r) always exceeds the growth rate of income (g). This, says Piketty, is and
always has been "the central contradiction" of the capital. But this kind of statistical
regularity hardly founded an adequate explanation, the more a law. So what are the
forces that produce and sustain such a contradiction? Piketty not say. Marx says in his
work Das Kapital that the existence of this law results from the imbalance of power
between capital and labor. And this explanation is still valid today. The steady decline
in labor share of national income since the 1970s, is due to the decline of the political
power of workers as the capital mobilized technology, increased unemployment,
performed the relocation of companies and adopted anti-labor policies (such as
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan) to destroy any opposition.
The anti-inflation 1980s policies increased unemployment that was an extremely
desirable way to reduce the political power of the working classes. The crisis of
capitalism that followed recreated a reserve labor army enabling the capitalists to profit
more than ever. The gap between the average pay of employees and chief executives
was about thirty to one in 1970. It is now well over three hundred to one, and in the case

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of MacDonalds, about 1,200 for a (OUTRAS PALAVRAS. David Harvey: leia Piketty,
mas não se esqueça de Marx (David Harvey: Read Piketty, but be sure to Marx).
Available on the website <http://outraspalavras.net/posts/david-harvey-leia-piketty-mas-
nao-se-esqueca-de-marx/>). Piketty packs a lot data to support his argument. Her
description of the differences between income and wealth is very useful and makes a
careful defense of the tax on inheritance, the progressive tax and a tax on global wealth
as possible (although almost certainly not politically feasible) antidotes against the
advance of the concentration of wealth and power.
The solution proposed by Karl Marx of overcoming inequalities should lead to the end
of capitalism with the establishment of socialism and later communism which is
considered utopian by many analysts in view of the failure of socialism implemented in
the Soviet Union and other countries. The solution proposed by Piketty to repair the
capitalist system and keep it running is also considered utopian at the power of capital
because he suggests, among other measures, taxation of large fortunes, the fight against
economic inequality and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. In short, both
proposed solutions would be politically unfeasible and therefore utopian by many
analysts.
Eric Hobsbawm offered an answer to this dilemma in an article in the British newspaper
The Guardian on 16/04/2009, under the title Pressupostos teóricos da "economia mista"
(Theoretical assumptions of "mixed economy"), when he said we met two practical
attempts to realize both systems, socialist and neoliberal in its pure form: on the one
hand, economies of state planning, centralized, Soviet-type; on the other, the capitalist
free market economy free from any restriction and control. The first came down in the
1980s, and with them the European communist political systems; the second is breaking
down before our eyes in the biggest crisis of global capitalism occurred in 2008.
Hobsbawm said that the future belongs to mixed economies in which public and private
are mutually linked in one way or another. This means that the Social Democracy with
the State of Well Being social, the most successful system already deployed in the
world that incorporates elements of both socialism and capitalism, especially in the
Scandinavian countries, could be the solution to the problem of inequality that
overwhelms the planet we live on. The social democracy of the future, which should
result from the improvement of the current model implemented in the Scandinavian
countries, would operate with a structured tripod-based civil society organizations
active, productive sector (state and private) efficient and effective and a neutral state,
which would exercise the coordination of planning and system regulation and mediate
conflicts between civil society and the productive sector.
*Fernando Alcoforado , member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011)

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and Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
among others.