The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World)

by Walter Scheidel

Paperback, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

305.5

Collection

Publication

Princeton University Press (2018), Edition: Reprint, 528 pages

Description

"Are mass violence and catastrophes the only forces that can seriously decrease economic inequality? To judge by thousands of years of history, the answer is yes. Tracing the global history of inequality from the Stone Age to today, Walter Scheidel shows that inequality never dies peacefully. Inequality declines when carnage and disaster strike and increases when peace and stability return. The Great Leveler is the first book to chart the crucial role of violent shocks in reducing inequality over the full sweep of human history around the world. Ever since humans began to farm, herd livestock, and pass on their assets to future generations, economic inequality has been a defining feature of civilization. Over thousands of years, only violent events have significantly lessened inequality. The "Four Horsemen" of leveling--mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and catastrophic plagues--have repeatedly destroyed the fortunes of the rich. Scheidel identifies and examines these processes, from the crises of the earliest civilizations to the cataclysmic world wars and communist revolutions of the twentieth century. Today, the violence that reduced inequality in the past seems to have diminished, and that is a good thing. But it casts serious doubt on the prospects for a more equal future. An essential contribution to the debate about inequality, The Great Leveler provides important new insights about why inequality is so persistent--and why it is unlikely to decline anytime soon." -- Publisher's description… (more)

Media reviews

Only if we accept that the social dynamics of the Aztecs and Mesopotamian elites can coexist with mass access to information and human rights should we adopt the pessimism whose premise pervades this book. I refuse to.
1 more
As a supplier of momentary relief, the Great Depression seems an unlikely candidate. But when it turns up [in the book] it feels oddly welcome. For once real wages rise and the incomes of the most affluent fall to a degree that has a “powerful impact on economic inequality”.

User reviews

LibraryThing member pomonomo2003
Important and Depressing.

The Necessity of Violence

In known History, according to our author Walter Scheidel, peaceful redistribution has never succeeded in lessening inequality of wealth.
Now, the forms of violence that lessen inequality may be the result of direct human choice, such as war and
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revolution; or they may be (at least partially) unwilled, such as famine and pandemics. ...With state collapse seemingly a combination of both the willed and unwilled.
Let us grant all this for the sake of argument. Even so, none of these will _always_ produce an easing of inequality. But, according to our author, it is always through some form of violence that economic inequality is substantially lessened.
...ALWAYS.

Thoughts
This would seemingly leave us with only two choices:
either we accept ever-increasing economic inequality,
or we accept the necessity of massive violence to stop this.
Obviously, no one is maintaining that the growth of inequality can't be slowed by legislation, such as progressive taxation. But all these various progressive schemes do is slow the rate of growth of inequality. Taxes and welfare redistribution only slow the inevitable rise of inequality. Inequality must increase, however slowly, even in welfare states.

Again, there are only two choices. Violence or ever-growing Inequality.
...Now, which do you choose?
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Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2017

Physical description

528 p.; 5.3 inches

ISBN

9780691183251

Barcode

91100000176738

DDC/MDS

305.5
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