Book Review: Walter Scheidel,The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century

We have all become aware of the enormous recent growth of inequality in most countries of the world. In 26 well-evidenced countries listed by Scheidel (pp. 405–8), the share of the top 1 percent of the population in total income grew by half between 1980 and 2010, and is still growing. Scheidel begins his book with the statistic that the richest 62 persons in the world in 2015 owned as much net private wealth as the poorer half of humanity, more than 3.5 billion people. Such statistics are a matter of concern, even of alarm, to most of us. Yet Scheidel says that they are perfectly normal in the history of human societies ever since human groups first managed to produce an economic surplus. In fact, he says, trends towards greater equality have only occurred in very unusual and dire circumstances, in the wake of four great disasters, what he calls ‘the four horsemen’ (of the apocalypse) – mass mobilisation wars, transformative, violent revolutions, the collapse of states and civilisations, and lethal pandemics. We have only two choices: either massive death tolls or massive inequality. There is no good news in this book, except for a few final wishful waves made at the future.

Scheidel, seeks to prove this bold, sweeping, and horrific argument with the help of extensive empirical research centred on the construction of Quasi-Gini coefficients of inequality. Note, however, that he only attempts to chronicle inequality within countries or civilisations. He does not discuss inequalities between countries. Since the Second World War Gini coefficients are real enough, even if of varying quality, calculated from government records of incomes, wealth or taxes. For the rest of human history Scheidel imputes them roughly from all kinds of data – chroniclers estimates, goods found in graves, the size of unearthed houses and palaces, and the like. Scheidel is well aware of the dubious worth of much of these data (he is a classical historian, after all), but nonetheless feels that it is better to give some such estimates, however crude, than no estimates at all, and he has a point. I will suspend disbelief in his figures, in fact I am greatly impressed by his ingenuity in constructing his data-sets, although specialists in many times and places might disagree. This is a very brave attempt to say very important things backed up by enormous empirical research.

I will comment on the four horsemen in turn. First, mass mobilisation warfare, which occupies the largest slice of the book. Scheidel takes the two 20th century World Wars as his main examples and says they produced one of the few great reductions in inequality in human history during the years 1914–1950. This is not a new argument. I made it myself in the third volume of my The Sources of Social Power, ¹ though in a much more qualified form. Some equalising tendencies of these wars are indisputable: full employment during the war, rationing enabling the poor to eat better, taxes levied on the rich. However, none of these were adopted by all the combatants. Additionally, there are two problems with attributing almost all of the reduction in the period to the wars, as Scheidel does.

First, the pre-1914 period in the West had already seen substantial growth in reformist liberalism, socialism, and feminism. In 1911–12 the Socialist Party (SPD) became the largest party in both the German and Austrian Reichstags, the Liberals won a sweeping electoral victory in Britain in 1906, egged on by the rapidly growing Labour Party on its left, the US Progressive Movement was in full swing, and labour unions grew everywhere. In 1911 came Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act, the first major Welfare State programme (after the much smaller Bismarckian reforms in Germany aimed only at skilled workers). There were substantial Feminist movements in Britain and the US, and British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith had signalled his intention to introduce a Female Suffrage Bill. The First World War actually delayed rather than produced female suffrage, contra Scheidel, and women in all countries were removed from the jobs they had held in wartime. Defeat in the war produced more radical movements in Germany and Austria and initial reforms, but very little reform in victorious Britain, France, or the US.

The peaceful inter-war period then brought bigger reforms. By 1939 there was 90 percent literacy in the advanced countries and seven or more years of compulsory schooling, both steadily rising through the inter-war period. The Great Depression of 1929 revived leftist fortunes in most countries (not Britain) and generated Keynesianism in Scandinavia and elsewhere, including the military Keynesianism of fascism. Women’s Suffrage was extended, and the radical equality of the Soviet Union was established. World War II then had more uniform reforming consequences, but because the victors imposed their blueprints on the vanquished and these were built on the whole previous 70 years of growth in labour unions, leftist parties, and the rise of Christian Democracy and conservative corporatism, all of which led to more welfare programmes and some lessening of income and wealth inequalities right up to the 1970s. The two wars, especially the second one, did reduce inequality, but so did other broader forces through the whole period. Scheidel exaggerates the contribution of the two mass mobilising wars.

Second, Scheidel seems to assume that the result of the two wars was a given. But that was not so. What would have been the consequences if the Central Powers or the Axis Powers had won? Probably not a reduction of inequality. I would suggest that it needed not only mass mobilisation warfare but also victory by the reformist and Marxist Powers in order to reduce inequality. Both of my two critical points make for a more optimistic reading of modern history: modern civilisation would have generated more equality anyway, perhaps a little more slowly, and we can be thankful that the liberal democracies and state socialism won the wars.

Scheidel tries to strengthen his case by looking for other mass mobilisation wars. He concedes ruefully that they were rare in history. He does investigate the classical Greek and Roman cases, but admits that Rome does not support his argument, since its mass mobilisation wars saw no levelling. This leaves only the Greek city-states, which did see levelling during their most intense periods of warfare. However, this was not only because the citizens were mobilised en masse. The specific form of Greek infantry warfare in the shape of the highly collectivised, tightly linked hoplite phalanx also favoured relative equality. But which way round was the causality? Did this type of warfare encourage citizen equality, or did citizen equality produced by economic and political factors encourage this type of warfare? It is not clear.

There is another possible case he notes, the late Warring States period in ancient China. The most successful mass mobilising states did devise reforms which certainly undercut traditional status hierarchies to increase military efficiency, but they appear to have introduced new forms of social stratification commanded by a more powerful authoritarian state. Were these societies more equal? We do not know, and he concludes similarly. So overall I think that in cases of mass mobilisation wars, it is also the character of the war-making society and of its military formations that contribute to more equality. The first horseman does not ride very often.

I do not disagree with the second, revolutionary horseman. Scheidel discusses various revolutions but focuses especially on communist regimes, who murdered or otherwise caused the deaths of masses of peoples while substantially reducing inequality in incomes, literacy and health. Was the trade-off worth it? He says not, and I agree. Early death is after all the greatest inequality of all, as I will argue below.

This leads to his treatment of the third and fourth horsemen, state or civilisational failure and pandemics. It has long been noted that the Black Death killed so many people in Europe around 1350 CE that profound labour shortages and so higher wages resulted. Scheidel proves this more comprehensively than anyone else has, and he also extends the analysis over a longer period in Italy. It is plausible to claim that this likely occurred after other less-documented pandemics, and also after the collapse of civilisations and states. Scheidel suggests this but concludes that ultimately the data are too spotty for the argument to be proved.

Yet there is more to say about these two horsemen. Take one of his cases of collapse, that of the Tang Dynasty in the 8th century CE. He suggests this led to greater equality in income and wealth. Much more significantly, it involved the death of somewhere around 13 million people (any precise figure is bedeviled by controversies over the extent of disruption to the Tang census administration). This was a consequence of the collapse of the positive functions of the old regime, above all the provision of public order, which led to civil wars and brigandage with high military and civilian casualties. Scheidel is reluctant to credit regimes with any positive functions, seeing them as purely exploitative. I see states as embodying both collective and distributive powers, functional as well as exploitative. The Congo would be a contemporary example of state and public order collapse causing the deaths of perhaps 2.6 or 5.2 million people (the estimates of two separate international organisations).

We know that in collapse and pandemics in the modern period death disproportionately strikes the malnourished. Few die directly from starvation, most die from disease as they become malnourished. And in turn we know that this happens disproportionately to the poor, whose mortality rates shoot up more than do those of the middle or upper classes. Inequalities in age at death, and especially stillbirths, infant deaths, and the deaths of women in childbirth, are the most profound human inequalities of all, dwarfing those of mere income or wealth differences. Scheidel ignores them, yet they might add more weight to his argument. In the ride of these horsemen we see a sequence: the collapse or pandemic occurs, class inequalities in fundamental life chances shoot up, but for the survivors there is then the possibility of a little rise in material equality. This might seem a gloomier side to his story than even he suggests. Yet the last 140 years have seen major reductions in class differentials in life expectancy, especially in pregnancy, stillbirths, and infant deaths, and this is still continuing in many though not all countries. That is our biggest success story.

Scheidel finally attempts to look into the future, while admitting that this can be little more than speculation. Given what has gone before in the book, he cannot be very optimistic. But clearly, if one believes as I do that our modern civilisation, and not just the horsemen, has had levelling tendencies, the recent reversal of equalising trends in income and wealth, can be reversed. Alternatively, the horsemen might ride again, but with different aftermaths. Nuclear war and climate change might obliterate human societies altogether, but they are preventable, while the mitigation of climate change would probably have levelling implications.

Sometimes over-argued, sometimes offering more and denser data than most readers can take, sometimes too pessimistic, occasionally too optimistic, but this is a fascinating, brave and important book. I recommend that you should read it.