It can be jarring to jump from the often abstract realms of political philosophy and political sociology to the seemingly more pragmatic realm of political economy – the economic and political realms that surround the lives of people living in real societies. But it is only by doing this that we can ground such abstractions in ways that contain suggestions for ameliorating the challenges of inequality outlined in Chapter 1. Recalling figures cited about the concentration of wealth and capital in the 1% (this group owning approximately 30% of all private wealth, 40% of financial wealth, 50% of stocks and 60% of business equity), while there is some disagreement about precisely how this prosperity was produced, capitalism, at least the kind regulated and presided over by liberal democracy, has raised standards of living, as well as types of human opportunities, to previously inconceivable levels, and broadened them to the population at large, albeit at extreme environmental and human costs. As Robert Skidelsky (2011) notes, ‘capitalism is a superb system for overcoming scarcity. By organising production efficiently, and directing it to the pursuit of welfare rather than power, it has lifted a large part of the world out of poverty’. Judged post hoc, one is likely to miss the significance of how this development has altered human practice and ethical considerations.

Still, as Marx (1987) also understood, capitalism is also rife with endemic inequalities, exploitation and alienation, plus it is a system marked by a recurrent tendency towards crises. As Paul Samuelson has said, ‘the whole history of capitalism has had up-bubbles in real estate and down-bubbles after something different’ (Okonogi, Shimbun and Samuelson 2009). These bubbles have caused significant harm to people. Nor, despite Simon Kuznet's argument that ‘income inequality would automatically decrease in advanced phases of capitalist development, regardless of economic policy choices or other differences between countries, until eventually it stabilized at an acceptable level’, has higher economic growth automatically reduced poverty or inequality (Piketty 2014, 11). Despite the rewards of capitalism, the dividends of this system are unfairly acquired, uneven and causally connected to economic contractions that disproportionately hurt those that laboured for that growth, to put it mildly. Contrary to the 1950s mantra, growth has not been a tide that lifts all boats. This is a point now made routinely by people other than Marxists.