Much of the interest in Piketty's case rests on his puncturing the self-image of capitalism as a system designed to reward innovation and talent. Quite simply, innovation and talent do not explain the deep inequalities that we find under capitalism. Nor does wealth trickle down in the manner portrayed by its defenders. If anything, it is trickling up as the rich enjoy a system designed around taxing income as opposed to wealth. It is an issue familiar – tediously so – in Australian political discourse, where millionaires enjoy the benefits of 'concessional caps' and tax-free retirement savings, whereas (salaried) battlers on modest wages have to stagger along under a relatively high tax burden. Everyone enjoys tax free returns on their family homes, whether that home is a modest fibro or a waterfront mansion. And on it goes.

Piketty's prescription for remedying the ills perpetrated by capitalism were eye-catching enough to be widely reported in the financial press. He calls for a global wealth tax, radically skewed to the top end in order to bring down overall levels of inequality and to provide the basis for much greater investment in public services than is possible under prevailing conditions, where the rich can get away with paying very little by organising their tax affairs to protect inherited wealth. As the left-wing commentator Slavoj Žižek pointed out, Piketty's formula was, under contemporary conditions, both radical and utopian, presupposing a degree of political leverage singularly lacking in existing institutions and processes.

Chronicles is a collection of Piketty's articles from the French left-wing daily Libération (and one from Le Monde). They are all in the order of seven to eight hundred words, which, by comparison with Capital in the Twenty-First Century, makes them feel like tweets rather than considered articles. They also cover much terrain over several years, which means that one is left with sensations, snippets, aperçus, as opposed to a consistent argument of the kind that characterised his full-length work. Nonetheless, certain arguments appear consistently through the text.

First, as one might expect, there is a deep impatience with our collective resignation in the face of trends and tend- encies that in other eras would have brought citizens to the street. Quite clearly, Piketty feels that we have let the ruling class off the hook by failing to examine the basis of its wealth. We have passively accepted the idea that somehow the extraordinary inequalities around us have some basis in rationality or that they are of some benefit to the rest of society. The opposite is the case. Society is suffering because inequality is growing.

Thomas Piketty (Wikimedia Commons)Second, Piketty is a passionate advocate for the creation of a European state with full fiscal as well as monetary responsibilities. Indeed, he attributes the present dysfunctionality of the EU in terms of the separation of these two spheres of responsibility. While Europe has the euro, each country maintains full responsibility for its own arrangements as far as taxation is concerned. This means that countries have, for example, consistently underbid each other, in turn skewing inward investment from the United States and multinational corporations towards countries such as Ireland with very generous taxation arrangements. The only answer as he sees it is to embrace federalism and to move towards a United States of Europe.

Finally, throughout these pieces there is exasperation about the feebleness of the current generation of political leaders when confronted with wealth and privilege. Piketty is a very French kind of economist. He thinks politics should trump economics, not the other way round, as is increasingly the case, not just in Europe, but around the world. He is pessimistic about democracy and about our vocation and desire to be active citizens. Indeed, if there is an underlying thematic in these pieces, it is an intent to spark awareness of the depth of the predicament that we find ourselves in as far as democratic institutions and processes are concerned. While his starting point is quite different, his perspective is essentially similar to many other pessimistic chroniclers of the state of democracy such as John Keane (The Life and Death of Democracy, 2009), Colin Hay (Why We Hate Politics, 2008) and Colin Crouch (Post-Democracy, 2004).

Is he right? As Žižek acknowledges, Piketty is undeniably radical in his analysis and prescriptions. At the same time, I feel he tends to confuse problem with cure. The problem is that politicians have become beholden to vested interests for reasons that the likes of Hay and Keane have examined in detail. If change is to come from somewhere, it is unlikely to be from the current crop of representatives and the 'cartel parties' they superintend. It has to come from outside, and from pressure exerted by wider social forces. Commentators have tended to assume that the 'outside' is necessarily populist and anti-EU as per Farage, Wilders, and their ilk. This isn't quite correct. In countries like Spain (The Indignados), France (Nuitdebout) and Italy (Five Star Movement), political forces are emerging that combine a populist appeal with a strong attachment to civil society and to the needs and interests of the least well off.

Piketty doesn't even nod in their direction; but I think if he averted his gaze from the Élysée to the Place de la République, he would see in gestation political forces that speak to his concerns, and to the concerns articulated above in terms of the loss of democratic impulses. Democracy is actually alive and well; but, as ever, it takes time for these new forces to impact the system of representation itself.

It may also be that vesting faith in the EU to be the vehicle for a progressive assault on the abundant inegalitarianism that comes with capitalism misunderstands the nature of the EU itself: a shonkily constructed inter-governmental set of bodies designed to promote the very system that produces deep inequalities.

Again, one feels Piketty might be barking up the wrong tree – nation states have proved themselves to be more reliable defenders of an egalitarian framed public good whether it be in the form of the development of sovereign funds as in Norway, the mitigation of workplace conflicts via corporatism ('Rhineland capitalism'), as in Germany, or the defence of an outstanding health service, as in France. The EU may have the scale for settling some of these issues, but its record hardly suggests it is part of – let alone the author of – the solution as opposed to being part of the problem.

So Piketty's radicalism is indeed utopian. It vests too much faith in the EU and in the élites who gain from it, and too little in the extra-institutional forces that might actually have the wherewithal to make his agenda a live political issue. But his overall argument concerning the nature of contemporary capitalism and the inability of democracy to shape it in accordance with the needs and interests of ordinary citizens is of vital importance for all of us – not just the citizens of EU states.