By Jonathan Power

May 15, 2019

Maybe,
after all, there is an argument for saying that the world needs more violence
not less if we are to make its societies more equal. This is one conclusion one
can derive from Walter Scheidel’s new book, The Great Leveler.

He
starts from what we all know by now: the richest 62 persons in the world own as
much net wealth as the poorer half of humanity. This is the number that could
fit inside a London double-decker bus.

This
inequality appears to get worse by the year, although if we go back to 1929 it
was then about the same. Two thousand years ago in Roman times the richest had
fortunes about 1.5 million times that of the average citizen, roughly the same
ratio as Bill Gates and the average American.

Plato, writing in the fourth century BC, was vexed by the fact “there were not one but two states, the one of the poor, and the other of rich men”. Later Jesus, took up similar themes, as the pope does today. There can be no justification in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Judaism for concentrated personnel wealth and the continuous ill-being of the poor.

Any member of these faiths who justifies their wealth is de facto an apostate.

Scheidel’s
case is that nothing changes without a great shock. The Black Death was one. It
wiped out so many laborers that landlords in order to attract workers had to
raise wages quite substantially.

Surprisingly, wars are no great levelers except in specific circumstances. Until the time of the First World War fighting was geographically localized. It didn’t penetrate deep into society.

On the other hand, World War 2, which involved much of British society, forced the hand of the wealthier classes and they had to go along with the social reforms, including universal health care, that a Labor government introduced as a “pay back” to the rank and file soldiers who had born the brunt of the fighting.

Going
back over the centuries, peasant revolts and civil wars contributed little to
leveling. Neither did the French Revolution.

The
Communist-led land reform in China was an exception. But Mao Zedong’s
revolution was overturned by Deng Xiaoping and a great leveling process ended.
It had only come into being because of the deep-rooted revolution. It worked
best when it was associated with violence or the threat of violence.

So what about non-violent movements? The only sure evidence of achieving leveling without violence is the path most of Latin America took in the early 2000s. But this has been fairly modest in scope. Will it be sustained?

In Brazil the legacy of President Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party is now threatened by the right wing new president, Jair Bolsonaro. In Mexico, however, the new socialist president is likely to push reform forward.

Today
in the post Cold War world we see that unions have been tamed in the US and UK,
top tax rates have been raised in some countries and globalization is hurting
ill-trained workers. Inequality is worsening. The Cold War wasn’t a war that
penetrated deep into our social institutions.

With
the end of communism, Russia, China and Eastern Europe have all become much
more unequal societies; in Russia and China, grossly so.

One
hopeful myth should be queried: By and large the introduction of democracy on
its own hasn’t produced more equal societies, although because it has
encouraged economic growth it has helped improve the wages, education, health
and welfare of the poorer classes.

Does
it matter if the world has inequality? It does. Study after study, including
those published by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have
demonstrated that inequality holds back economic growth.  

But what can be done? The era of mass mobilization is over. Very few of us want to see bloody revolutions and the likes of Robespierre, Mao or Guevara. As Thomas Piketty and Steven Pinker have proved in recent books the world is becoming a less violent place.

The probability of death from violent causes has been declining for centuries. Ageing societies- Europe, Russia, Japan and China- are likely to become less violent as older people are less tolerant of it or less drawn to it as a political solution.

The
answer to this question, writes Scheidel, is not much. In the future “It will
be a challenge for the social democracies of continental Europe to maintain and
adjust elaborate systems of high taxation and extensive redistribution or for
the richest democracies of Asia to preserve their unusually equitable
allocation of pretax incomes to stem the rising tide of inequality, which can
only grow stronger as globalization and unprecedented demographic transitions
add to the pressure”.

Throughout history most attempts to improve income equality have only brought forth sorrow. We should be careful what we wish for.

Copyright: Jonathan Power

  history of inequality, inequality, More equal, The Great Leveler