The Great Leveler

Ever since settled communities were first established, the history of human life has been one of growing economic inequality. Today, the top fraction of the economic elite controls the vast majority of wealth and enjoys disproportionate power throughout the world. This is the history that Scheidel unfolds in this riveting and compelling work. The unlikely “heroes” of his story are the four forces that counter economic inequality, the “Great Leveler” of the title: mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolution, state failure, and catastrophic plague. To be sure, this is not a light read, and the story Scheidel tells is not a happy one, but his argument provides valuable insight into ancient, premodern, and modern societies. My thinking about war, peace, and the “benefits” of plague has been forever changed.Scheidel has arranged his work topically with large sections devoted to each of the “levelers”—the “Four Horsemen” as Scheidel presents them in a metaphor that is an effective framing device for the work. Within the sections Scheidel moves backward and forward through history and spans the globe from hunter-gatherer societies to Han dynasty China up to the social democratic states of modern Europe. For the contemporary world and for a number of states in the twentieth century, rich data can be drawn upon to tell the story. Scheidel makes use of income shares (especially the share of overall income enjoyed by the top 1 percent in society) and Gini coefficients (a measure of inequality that expresses as a ratio the extent to which the distributions of wealth or income deviate from perfect equality, 0, to perfect inequality, 1). Scheidel draws together staggering amounts of data and synthesizes the results of other studies as he develops his argument. The evidence is clearly presented in charts and tables that are linked to a narrative that is lively, engaging, and free from jargon. For earlier periods, where evidence is more limited or, in some cases, entirely anecdotal, Scheidel carefully constructs a narrative that weaves together what we know. While some will no doubt take issue with specific points, the comprehensive scope of his work and the clear repetition of historical trends offer compelling support for his thesis: the only forces that have successfully intervened to reverse the trend toward ever-greater economic inequality are human catastrophes.His treatment of warfare serves as a model for his approach. Scheidel builds his arguments in the modern era, where data reveal clear trends. The period encompassing World War I and World War II saw mass military mobilization as human and material resources were drawn upon to support the war effort in extraordinary ways. Progressive tax policies were implemented and the expansion of suffrage led to increased democratization. The result was a leveling of inequality in those states that were centrally involved in the conflict. Top income shares declined and Gini coefficients fell, indicating a closing of the gap between rich and poor. The effects of these policies continued to influence the postwar period, until reforms of the second half of the twentieth century began to erode progressive economic policies. Inequality has been on the rise ever since. After establishing his argument in this data-rich period, Scheidel moves back in time to examine preindustrial warfare where the evidence is far less complete. Throughout this section, Scheidel distinguishes between mass-mobilization warfare and more traditional wars of conquest. Scheidel argues that in traditional warfare economic leveling occurred only among the leaders of the losing side. On the whole, such conflicts expanded the wealth of the victors and consolidated resources of an enlarged territory in the hands of a smaller elite. Traditional wars consolidate wealth; only total wars level.For those with a particular interest in the Mediterranean, there is much to learn from this book. Scheidel argues that ancient Athens and Sparta achieved an unusual level of economic equality thanks to the military mobilization of these city-states that were dependent upon citizen forces and almost continuously engaged in warfare. Of course, in these states the equalization applied only to citizens and excluded slaves and helots who made up significant portions of the population. In the world of the Greek polis, mass mobilization warfare served as a leveler. The Roman Empire provides a different example, where we see wars of conquest that enriched military leaders and their associates but provided limited economic benefit for the populace as a whole. As a result, the expansion of Rome in the second and first centuries BCE resulted in greater inequality among the people, and inequality continued to grow in the centuries of the Roman peace that followed. Scheidel argues that in Rome and in other states, both traditional warfare and stable peace fueled economic inequality. It was only when the Roman Empire collapsed that economic leveling began to take place. Economic leveling was also brought about throughout the Mediterranean world by plague. Scheidel explores in detail both the Antonine plague of the second century and the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Catastrophic loss of life among people of all social classes changed the ratio of property (land) to labor, and resulted in the rise of real wages and an overall economic leveling of societies.Scheidel offers a universal history of human economic inequality in this work, but because of the richness and variety of sources available from the Mediterranean region, the Mediterranean receives special attention throughout the volume. Mycenaean Greece, the Ottoman Empire, the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt, Italy in the late Middle Ages and early modern period, and the Spanish Civil War all serve as examples of his larger thesis.Human history has seen long periods of growing or sustained economic inequality within societies. In our modern age, as states continue to debate how (and whether) to address these inequalities, Scheidel's work provides an important historical context for discussions. In the past only great shocks and catastrophic loss of life have proven to be effective remedies for growing class divisions. If we do not find a new “hero” in the struggle to combat inequality, one of the “Four Horsemen” might return to play that role

Archaeology · Democracy · Development economics · Economic history · Economic inequality · Economics · Elite · Framing (construction · Inequality · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · History · Law · World Systems and Global Transformations

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