The Great Leveler : Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century

作者：WalterScheidel

出版社：PrincetonUniversityPress

副标题：ViolenceandtheHistoryofInequalityfromtheStoneAgetotheTwenty-FirstCentury

出版年：2017-1-24

页数：528

定价：USD35.00

装帧：Hardcover

丛书： PrincetonEconomicHistoryoftheWesternWorld

ISBN：9780691165028

内容简介
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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. Periods of increased equality are usually born of carnage and disaster and are generally short-lived, disappearing with the return of peace and stability. 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.

作者简介
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Walter Scheidel is the Dickason Professor in the Humanities, professor of classics and history, and a Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford University. The author or editor of sixteen previous books, he has published widely on premodern social and economic history, demography, and comparative history. He lives in Palo Alto, California.

评论 ······

打包的全球史。写了足足500页关于「不平等如何不可避免」，也算是这个题材下的重磅作品。但这种高度抽象概括的作品如何与地方性的人或者团体的具体历史体验联系起来是我现在的疑问。书里引了兰克的「如实直说」，但史学家都明白个中的局限吧？题外话，这书的中文版是怎么出的……

博闻强记的作者 典范的全球史写作 但是malign和benign措施的区别真的有那么大吗？（degree or deed？）

得到APP每天听本书分享：贫富分化和阶层固化到底是历史的必然还是偶然？经历了两次世界大战和战后的重建，全球财富不平等曾经极大缓解。但是按照作者沙伊德尔的分析，那更像是历史上的一次偶然，相反，1980年后全球重新回到贫富差距拉大的路上，反而更像历史的必然。沙伊德尔对如何才能缩小贫富差距很悲观，根据他的分析，历史上只有大规模战争、国家崩溃和大规模瘟疫才会带来大规模平均财富的效果。最近几次经济危机和金融…

促使社会平等的四股力量：战争、革命、灭国、瘟疫。导致社会不平等加剧的力量：社会稳定。

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