作者:
Walter Scheidel 出版社: Princeton University Press 副标题: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century 出版年: 2017-1-24 页数: 528 定价: USD 35.00 装帧: Hardcover 丛书:Princeton Economic History of the Western World ISBN: 9780691165028
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 generall...
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
· · · · · ·
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.
Princeton Economic History of the Western World(共57册)，
这套丛书还有
《Power to the People》《The Big Problem of Small Change》《The Rise and Fall of American Growth》《Unequal Gains》《The Corporation and the Twentieth Century》
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Walter Scheidel’s The Great Leveler is an arresting and provocative contribution to economic inequality across long-term human history. Ambitious in scope and grounded in extensive historical evidence, Scheidel’s main argument is enlightening and unsettli...
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SeizeTheDays
9 有用 Cai 2017-07-24 18:46:47
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。
4 有用 whig 2017-04-14 21:47:20
材料很好，逻辑结构搭拧了，缺少理论挖掘，人口压力的基础性作用也没有放对位置。
0 有用 Ken 2022-04-05 19:29:23
有趣的观点
0 有用 黑马 2020-03-15 11:15:17
不错，政治压迫才是不平等产生的根源，繁荣使其加重，而暴力才能化解
0 有用 小丸子 2020-02-16 17:10:51
改变能够改变的，知识就是力量