A brief history of equality

A brief history of equality

Thomas Piketty, 1971-

Book - 2022

The world's leading economist of inequality presents a short but sweeping and surprisingly optimistic history of human progress toward equality despite crises, disasters, and backsliding. A perfect introduction to the ideas developed in his monumental earlier books. It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the grand sweep of history gives us reasons to be optimistic. Over the centuries, he shows, we have been moving toward greater equality. Piketty guides us with elegance and concision through the g...reat movements that have made the modern world for better and worse: the growth of capitalism, revolutions, imperialism, slavery, wars, and the building of the welfare state. It's a history of violence and social struggle, punctuated by regression and disaster. But through it all, Piketty shows, human societies have moved fitfully toward a more just distribution of income and assets, a reduction of racial and gender inequalities, and greater access to health care, education, and the rights of citizenship. Our rough march forward is political and ideological, an endless fight against injustice. To keep moving, Piketty argues, we need to learn and commit to what works, to institutional, legal, social, fiscal, and educational systems that can make equality a lasting reality. At the same time, we need to resist historical amnesia and the temptations of cultural separatism and intellectual compartmentalization. At stake is the quality of life for billions of people. We know we can do better, Piketty concludes. The past shows us how. The future is up to us.

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Subjects
Equality > History.
Social classes > History.
Income distribution > History.
Published
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2022.
Language
English
French
Main Author
Thomas Piketty, 1971- (author)
Other Authors
Steven Rendall (translator)
Item Description
First published in French as Une bréve histoire de l'égalité, Éditions du Seuil, 2021.
Physical Description
viii, 274 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780674273559
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • 1. The Movement toward Equality: The First Milestones
  • 2. The Slow Deconcentration of Power and Property
  • 3. The Heritage of Slavery and Colonialism
  • 4. The Question of Reparations
  • 5. Revolution, Status, and Class
  • 6. The "Great Redistribution": 1914-1980
  • 7. Democracy, Socialism, and Progressive Taxation
  • 8. Real Equality against Discrimination
  • 9. Exiting Neocolonialism
  • 10. Toward, a Democratic, Ecological, and Multicultural Socialism
  • Contents in Detail
  • List of Tables and Illustrations
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

The objective of this book is to provide a history of equality, reflecting the long-term movements toward more economic, political, and social equality. Piketty (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, France) argues that when studying equality, jettisoning an incomplete metric, such as gross domestic product, and instead using the fraction of incomes going to a population's poorest 50 percent or its wealthiest 10 percent makes greater sense. Doing so reveals that although there has been a long-term decline in the concentration of property and therefore of economic and social power, present-day inequality is still very high and intolerable. The book also points out that although Chinese socialism has weaknesses, it possesses some advantages. To credibly counter these advantages and improve the lives of billions of people, Western powers need to promote a form of democratic, participatory socialism that pays attention to the Global South and to the West's hypocrises. This thought-provoking book is recommended to all readers who want to learn more about how the scourge of inequality might be dealt with and enhance the lives of all humans. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. --Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Rochester Institute of Technology

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

"The advance toward equality is a battle that began long ago and needs only to be continued in the twenty-first century," according to this optimistic treatise from economist Piketty (Capital and Ideology). Contending that inequality is a human construct shaped by ideology, politics, and institutions and not a by-product of natural hierarchies, Piketty details how two world wars and the Great Depression produced a "Great Redistribution" of wealth through progressive taxation and the creation of the welfare state. Tax reforms in the 1980s sparked a rise in income inequality, but Piketty believes that a "decentralized, self-managing, democratic socialism based on the continual circulation of power and property" can reverse the trend and compete more effectively than traditional free-market capitalism against China, where the state controls 30% of public capital. He calls for "democratically neutral" university admissions criteria based on "students' wishes, their grades, and their social origins" and quotas for the advancement of women in government and business. Piketty also envisions "transnational assemblies" that would replace the UN and administer global labor laws and common taxes on income and inheritance. Marked by Piketty's trademark lucidity, impressive multidisciplinary scholarship, and provocative progressivism, this is a vital introduction to his ideas. (Apr.)

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