Piketty regards the dominant economic system completely positively. All of his criticisms of conditions and their development are not intended as a principled objection to the capitalist mode of production and distribution. The ideal condition he strives for is a prosperous capitalism characterized by economic growth. Critique of growth as such is foreign to Piketty. And he only criticizes inequality to the extent that it could damage growth and the legitimacy of capitalism. In this sense, he is both progressive and conservative: he wants to change something in order to maintain social relations as they are. He wants to protect capitalism from the poor – not the other way around. That’s not anything that one has to ‘uncover’, but rather it is his openly formulated ‘programme’: ‘I admire capitalism; I admire private property, and I admire the market economy. Of course I recognize that economic growth occurs principally in capitalism. Of course I cling to private property, because it is the foundation of our freedom. There was never as much capital as today. I was 18 years old, when the Berlin Wall fell. I belong to a generation that never had sympathy for Communism.’