Not to mention that Piketty has a relatively soft list of proposals and research compared to the 'old guard' of critics of capital. The Economist's arguments against Piketty are only there because he's the most radical economist on capital's horizon. By presenting Piketty as radical on the issue of inequality, the arguments from modern, radical economists on every other aspect of capital are shut out. For example, beyond Piketty we have John Roemer, beyond Roemer we have Veneziani & Yoshihara, beyond them we have Fred Moseley, Andrew Kliman, Sekine, Itoh...

In other words, Piketty gets so much criticism because he's the least radical of a bunch of radical economists, and because of that, he hasn't left capital's horizon.