This article engages with Piketty’s polyhedral book Capital and Ideology. The reader is offered a reconstruction and analysis that emphasises the extent to which the volume can be read as a contribution to political philosophy which vindicates the relevance of historical arguments, sensivity to empirical considerations, and is open to engagement with other social disciplines. On the basis of the central role played by property, borders and education in the configuration of human societies, Piketty argues for the reimagining of all three institutions. In particular, the French economist makes a powerful case for transcending the individual and permanent form of property characteristic of capitalism in favour of social and temporary forms of property. Key in that regard would be the transformation of the way in which work is organised (by means of ensuring forms of workers’ participation in the management of corporations) and by reproposing forms of highly progressive (and efficient) taxation, ensuring the circulation and the sharing of wealth. While a good deal of the arguments made by the author are found to be compelling, I conclude by outlining the extent to which Piketty fails to fully internalise his own diagnosis about the deep crisis of political parties, and assumes, perhaps too optimistically, that the European Union can be transformed into an agent of social-democratic transformation without a clear-cut rupture.