The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century is a book published in 2017 and written by Walter Scheidel, a professor at Stanford. This book hypothesizes that so far in history, the only things that have leveled (decreased) financial inequality are the “Four Horsemen,” four extremely destructive forces—mass-mobilization warfare, transformative revolutions, state collapse, and hugely depopulating plagues—that harm many people as well as the rich. The Great Leveler is a great book to read, for Scheidel tellingly argues that inequality never dies peacefully by utilizing various historical examples and graphs.
The book begins with Scheidel detailing that in 2015, the sixty-two richest people in the world had as much money as the poorer half of humanity (3.5 billion people). Scheidel details that a recent trend has been individuals accumulating unimaginable amounts of wealth, which is also seen in how certain members of a country can have much more than the poorer members. “The wealthiest twenty Americans currently own as much as the bottom half of their country’s households taken together, and the top 1 percent of incomes account for about a fifth of the national total.” (1). Aside from America, this disturbing trend is also seen in many other areas, including those that were previously financially communist, like Russia and China. Scheidel makes it clear that inequality is a problem that has existed for all of organized civilization (as well as life in general, seeing how no two organisms are alike): “In England on the eve of the First World War, the richest tenth of households held a staggering 92 percent of all private wealth, crowding out pretty much everybody else; today their share is a little more than half. High inequality has an extremely long pedigree. Two thousand years ago, the largest Roman private fortunes equaled about 1.5 million times the average annual per capita income in the empire, roughly the same ratio as for Bill Gates and the average American today … Sometimes … inequality declined because although many became poorer, the rich simply had more to lose. In other cases, workers became better off while returns on capital fell: western Europe after the Black Death, where real wages doubled or tripled and laborers dined on meat and beer while landlords struggled to keep up appearances, is a famous example.” (4). Scheidel states that the origins of today’s inequality are seen in how society works, as people tend to prepare for the future if they can. It is also a general rule that the rich make themselves wealthier at the expense of the average person, seen in how rents could be very high and the quality of life provided very low. Furthermore, one of the main reasons inequality exists in a large form is due to parents passing down their wealth to their children: a small advantage could, over the course of long periods of time, become sizable quantities of wealth. Scheidel states that the Four Horsemen of Leveling had taken the lives of hundreds of millions, and that for something to decrease financial inequality, it has to be very severe in its intensity and implications. This is seen quite well in WWII, as tens of millions were slaughtered and millions more wounded or robbed of whatever possessions they had. One of the best examples of transformative revolutions is seen in Communism, as Communists wanted to reinvent society from the bottom up. This also applies to movements like the French Revolution. State collapse is stated by Scheidel to be the most effective leveler, as the entire structure of society falls apart. When it comes to diseases, they can do an extreme amount of damage by killing many people. While many rich died from epidemics, a major method they decreased inequality, to reiterate what had been stated before, was by decreasing the population of the labor force, basically forcing aristocrats to increase the wages and privileges of their laborers. While the Four Horsemen are very effective, their effects are usually quickly reversed, as eras of peace allow for financial inequity to thrive once more: “Yet shocks abate. When states failed, others sooner or later took their place. Demographic contractions were reversed after plagues subsided, and renewed population growth gradually returned the balance of labor and capital to previous levels. The world wars were relatively short, and their aftereffects have faded over time: top tax rates and union density are down, globalization is up, communism is gone, the Cold War is over, and the risk of World War III has receded. All of this makes the recent resurgence of inequality easier to understand. The traditional violent levelers currently lie dormant and are unlikely to return in the foreseeable future. No similarly potent alternative mechanisms of equalization have emerged.” (9). Scheidel then maintains that his book is not about the relationships between societies during times of leveling and their levelers (ex. whether society’s inequity caused the Horsemen to come) and he acknowledges that there are many forms of inequality. Scheidel clarifies that when he discusses inequality, he won’t talk about how (that is, if) they contributed to the crises that could be categorized as one of the Four Horsemen, seeing how inequality is such a staple in human history that answering such issues can be beyond his field of expertise. Scheidel maintains that when it comes to measuring inequality, he will utilize the Gini coefficient. “The Gini coefficient measures the extent to which the distribution of income or material assets deviates from perfect equality. If each member of a given population receives or holds exactly the same amount of resources, the Gini coefficient is 0; if one member controls everything and everybody else has nothing, it approximates 1. Thus the more unequal the distribution, the higher the Gini value.” (11).
Scheidel mentions the importance of measuring importance through market and gross income: “Income prior to taxes and public transfers is known as ‘market’ income, income after transfers is called ‘gross’ income, and income net of all taxes and transfers is defined as ‘disposable’ income. In the following, I refer only to market and disposable income. Whenever I use the term income inequality without further specification, I mean the former.” (12). Scheidel maintains that having a Gini coefficient of 1 is impossible, seeing how many people will starve to death if only one individual holds all the wealth. Furthermore, he says that Gini coefficients and measuring income are effective ways of measuring inequality, seeing all the data they involve and include. He calculated the Gini coefficients of previous societies by utilizing existing records that have stood the test of time. Additionally, “In fact, Gini coefficients can fruitfully be applied to evidence that is much more remote in time. Patterns of landownership in late Roman Egypt; variation in the size of houses in ancient and early medieval Greece, Britain, Italy, and North Africa and in Aztec Mexico; the distribution of inheritance shares and dowries in Babylonian society; and even the dispersion of stone tools in Catal Höyük, one of the earliest known proto-urban settlements in the world, established almost 10,000 years ago, have all been analyzed in this manner. Archaeology has enabled us to push back the boundaries of the study of material inequality into the Paleolithic at the time of the last Ice Age.” (15). A major problem directly related to inequality is the prevalence of those who may struggle with finances: lifting people out of poverty can be interpreted as a higher priority than making the rich less so, as philosophes like negative utilitarianism mandate that ridding individuals of suffering deserves first priority over increasing pleasure. When it comes to the role of inequality in today’s world, Scheidel states that people should look at history and make hypotheses for future methods of creating a more equitable society that grants compassion to its inhabitants. Scheidel discusses humanity’s evolutionary history and all its implications: “Our closest nonhuman relatives in the world today, the African great apes-gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos-are intensely hierarchical creatures. Adult gorilla males divide into a dominant few endowed with harems of females and many others having no consorts at all … Chimpanzees … expend tremendous energy on status rivalry. Bullying and aggressive dominance displays are matched by a wide range of submission behaviors by those on the lower rungs of the pecking order … the bonobos … may present a gentler image to the world but likewise feature alpha males and females. Considerably less violent and intent on bullying than chimpanzees, they nevertheless maintain clear hierarchical rankings. Although concealed ovulation and the lack of systematic domination of females by males reduce violent conflict over mating opportunities, hierarchy manifests in feeding competition among males. Across these species, inequality is expressed in unequal access to food sources-the closest approximation of human-style income disparities—and, above all, in terms of reproductive success. Dominance hierarchy, topped by the biggest, strongest, and most aggressive males, which consume the most and have sexual relations with the most females, is the standard pattern.” (25-6). Scheidel admits that talking about other species may sound somewhat unreliable, though he makes it clear that much can be learned by this method, as other species casts much light on our corresponding behavior. He then details more of humanity’s evolutionary history: Homo Sapiens, unlike certain other monkey species, has relatively little sexual dimorphism. Furthermore, “Some 2 million years ago, anatomical changes in the shoulder made it possible for the first time to throw stones and other objects in an effective manner, a skill unavailable to earlier species and to nonhuman primates today … The manufacturing of spears was the next step, and enhancements such as fire-hardened tips and, later, stone tips followed. Controlled use of fire dates back perhaps 800,000 years, and heat treatment technology is at least 160,000 years old. The appearance of darts or arrow tips made of stone, first attested about 70,000 years ago in South Africa … The evolution of cognitive skills was a vital complement necessary for more accurate throwing … Full language capabilities, which would have facilitated more elaborate alliances and reinforced notions of morality, may date back as few as 100,000 or as many as 300,000 years. Much of the chronology of these social changes remains unclear: they may have been strung out over the better part of the last 2 million years or may have been more concentrated among anatomically modern humans, our own species of Homo sapiens, which arose in Africa at least 200,000 years ago.” (27-8).
For most of humanity’s history, people were hunter-gatherers. Though the society was definitely more egalitarian than a sedentary one, inequality still existed in certain forms, as some burial grounds have corpses covered with many valuable items. Overall, the Paleolithic (early phase of the Stone Age) for humans involved a wide range of inequality. Scheidel deems the time period after the Ice Age the “Great Disequalization,” as the Holocene time period involved warm weather that made things like human civilization possible (beforehand it was very hard to set up thanks to the cold weather during the Ice Age). He writes of various civilizations that existed thousands of years ago and their methods of measuring wealth (a popular form was livestock). As stated before, the concept of heritable wealth exacerbated inequality massively in the long run: “transmissibility is critical: if wealth is passed on between generations, random shocks related to health, parity, and returns on capital and labor that create inequality will be preserved and accumulate over time instead of allowing distributional outcomes to regress to the mean.” (38). Inequality quickly became the norm in societies which produced a surplus of resources (many of which got the resources from the geography, ex. fish from the ocean and gold from the ground). Those societies which struggled to produce enough necessities had little inequality, as people were concentrated on keeping themselves alive. Of course, as agriculture (especially cereals) continued to be perfected, inequality spread further. Societies soon relied on inequality to merely exist when they went from individual areas to states, as it was widely accepted for people who are born into a certain role to remain so for their entire lives to maintain the continuation of the existing order. As states absorbed even more areas, inequality spread further, as conquered peoples were frequently assimilated into the lower classes (or sold into slavery). When it comes to the wealth distribution, Voltaire’s quote that the few rich requires the many poor is shown to be correct, as agrarian societies, for much of history, included a massive number of farmers and peasants and a few authorities that included the military (to crush dissent), legislative figures (to pass laws, of course), religious authorities (to justify the poverty many were forced to experience), and the rich (who frequently did nothing to earn their wealth). As the centuries passed, societies of course fluctuated, but inequality remained a prominent part in virtually all of them seeing human nature. While it was true that egalitarianism was once prominent to some degree, it quickly vanished when owners of capital got richer and richer as others became poorer and poorer. The invention of debt also worsened inequality, as well as privatization. Empires of inequality include China and Rome. Under Han rule (206 BCE to 220 CE), landowners became very wealthy, as well as government officials. Government officials frequently bought their positions with money, as they could overtax the peasantry for the sake of profit. Scheidel describes, “High-ranking officials profited from imperial gifts and fiefs. Fiefholders were allowed to withhold a share of the poll taxes paid by the households that had been assigned to them. Great wealth accrued from favoritism and corruption: several imperial chancellors and other very senior officials were said to have accumulated wealth on a par with the largest recorded fortunes overall. In the later stages of the Eastern Han dynasty, the lucrative nature of top offices came to be reflected in the prices at which they could be purchased. Legal privilege shielded corrupt officials with growing generosity. Officials above a certain pay grade were not to be arrested without prior approval by the emperor, and similar protections extended to sentencing and punishment.” (65). The wealthy of the Han Dynasty frequently attacked each other, and the emperor sometimes would, to keep them in check, have entire families destroyed. Regardless, the wealthy kept getting richer and got themselves more privileges: “Nobles, officials, and holders of official rank were generally exempt from taxation and labor services, which further precipitated the concentration of resources in their hands.” (69). The Song Dynasty later arose, and the Mongols eventually entered China due to their military prowess. Corruption, however, continued to be prominent: “According to one estimate, average incomes of officials amounted to a dozen times their official, legal incomes in the form of salaries, rewards, and allowances, but well more than a hundred times for a governor-general and as much as 400,000 times in the case of He Shen, Grand Secretary of the Qing court in the second half of the eighteenth century. Executions and confiscations were employed as equally timeless countermeasures.” (71). The whole idea of official corruption is seen very well in China today: Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of China, was found to be guilty of a massive amount of embezzlement and theft (worth billions) and was sentenced to life in prison.
Another empire of inequality is that of Rome. Rome’s history of finance shows that inequality had multiplied by forty over the course of five generations. Rome as a society was highly inequitable, as the elite didn't hesitate to pay gangs of violent thugs to murder populist politicians (in certain cases they also slew hundreds of civilians in the process but got away with it due to their influence). Rome rose to power by invading many other areas and absorbing an unbelievable number of war prisoners and slaves. In fact, Rome relied on slavery to exist, as a sizable amount of its population was composed solely of slaves. Roman officials who oversaw foreign provinces would frequently severely tax the residents of the area, driving them to the verge of financial ruin for the sake of enriching themselves further: “at a time when annual interest rates of 6 percent were common in Rome itself, wealthy Romans imposed rates of up to 48 percent on provincial cities, which were in desperate need of money to satisfy the demands of their governors. Members of the equestrian order benefited from the widespread practice of tax farming, as the right to collect certain taxes in a particular province were auctioned off to consortia that then proceeded to do what they could to turn a profit … Roman commanders enjoyed complete authority over war booty and decided how to divide it among their soldiers … it has been estimated that in the years between 200 and 30 BCE, at least a third of the 3,000-odd senators who lived in this period had a chance to enrich themselves in this fashion.” (73-4). When the Roman Republic collapsed and the rule of the emperors came in (please note that Rome’s Republic didn't act like one, as it was the definition of an oligarchy), the emperors made exorbitant amounts of money by sometimes executing the rich and seizing their property. Overall, Rome appeared to have a Gini coefficient of income in the low 0.4s. Scheidel then states that the Ottoman Empire was similar to Rome and Han China in how the sultan sometimes had the rich executed to demonstrate his authority. When it comes to the Incan empire in Peru, some of those who cooperated with the Spaniards, led by Francisco Pizarro, were given their own land, making them richer than most. Early modern France saw those close to the king making absurd amounts of money (millions) at a time where many people struggled to feed themselves (one official, Cardinal Mazarin, left behind a fortune worth 37 million livres, which is itself equivalent to 164,000 years’ worth of unskilled labor). When it comes to the Middle Ages, the Gini coefficient of Europe was 0.79. “All this changed when the plague struck Europe and the Middle East in 1347. Returning in wave after wave for several generations, it killed tens of millions. More than a quarter of the European population is thought to have perished by 1400-maybe a third in Italy and close to half in England … real wages for unskilled urban workers had roughly doubled but had risen a little less among skilled craftsmen. English farm wages also doubled in real terms even as land rents fell and elite fortunes contracted. Commoners from England to Egypt enjoyed a better diet and grew taller bodies … tax records from Italian cities show a dramatic drop in wealth inequality as local or regional Gini coefficients fell by more than 10 points and top wealth shares by a third or more. Hundreds of years of disequalization had been undone by one of the most severe shocks humanity had ever experienced.” (91). Scheidel then elaborates on the Gini coefficient of Europe: “According to the Florentine census (catasto) of 1427, wealth inequality was positively correlated with the scale of urbanism. The capital city, Florence, boasted a Gini coefficient of wealth distribution of 0.79-probably closer to 0.85 if the unrecorded propertyless poor are included. Gini values were lower in smaller cities (0.71-0.75), lower still in the agricultural plains (0.63), and lowest in the poorest areas, the hills and mountains (0.52-0.53) … High wealth inequality of at least 0.75 was a standard feature in the major cities of late medieval and early modern western Europe. Augsburg, one of Germany’s leading economic centers in this period, provides a particularly extreme example: recovery from plague-related leveling witnessed an increase in the urban wealth Gini from 0.66 in 1498 to a stratospheric 0.89 by 1604. It is hard to imagine a more polarized community: a few percent of residents owned almost all assets, whereas between a third and two-thirds had nothing worth reporting at all … In the Netherlands, large cities experienced similarly high levels of wealth concentration (with Ginis of 0.8 to 0.9), whereas smaller towns lagged far behind (0.5-0.65). Urban income inequality was also very high in Amsterdam, where the relevant Gini coefficient reached 0.69 in 1742. English tax records from 1524 to 1525 reveal urban wealth Ginis that were generally above 0.6 and that could be as high as 0.82 to 0.85, well in excess of rural values of 0.54 to 0.62.” (93-4). Over time, as the human population increased, the wealthy charged people more money for basic necessities such as shelter, which enriched them only further.
In the time leading to WWI, wealth inequality continued its trend: “the concentration of private wealth steadily intensified from 1700 until the early 1910s, a period during which real per capita GDP more than trebled: thus, the wealth share of the richest 1 percent rose from 39 percent in 1700 to 69 percent in the early 1910s. By 1873, the concentration coefficient of landownership had risen to 0.94, effectively making it impossible for this type of inequality to grow much further.” (104). After discussing many European areas in detail with their respective Gini coefficients, Scheidel focuses on America. That is, during the Civil War income inequality decreased in the South due to much property being destroyed and the slaves being freed, while it increased in the North, seeing how it handled the problem of inflation in a more responsible (that is, controlled) manner than the South. In Latin America, the Gini coefficient likewise increased. When WWI and WWII occurred, they leveled much wealth, seeing how they were the embodiments of total war. Scheidel provides the following statistic: “Between 1914 and 1945 … the income shares of the ‘1 percent’ shrank by two-thirds in Japan; by more than half in France, Denmark, Sweden, and probably also the United Kingdom; by half in Finland; and by more than a third in Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. Inequality also collapsed in Russia and its imperial possessions, as well as in China, Korea, and Taiwan … In western Europe, the ratio of the stock of capital to annual GDP plummeted by about two-thirds between 1910 and 1950 and perhaps by close to half worldwide, a rebalancing that greatly diminished the economic preeminence of wealthy investors.” (112). After WWII, the rapid increase in technology and the means of production increased the quality of life for many people, decreasing the Gini coefficient to levels hitherto inexperienced by sedentary civilizations for a while. Scheidel begins his discussion of the Four Horsemen by starting with the First Horseman, total war. One of the best examples of the massive effects of mass mobilization warfare is seen in Japan during WWII. Scheidel provides the following statistics: “The declared real value of the largest 1 percent of estates in Japan fell by 90 percent between 1936 and 1945 and by almost 97 percent between 1936 and 1949. The top 0.1 percent of all estates lost even more—93 percent and more than 98 percent, respectively … a drop in the national income Gini from anywhere between 0.45 and 0.65 in the late 1930s to around 0.3 in the mid-1950s … As far as elites’ incomes are concerned, Japan morphed from a society whose income distribution was as unequal as that of the United States on the eve of the stock market crash of 1929—a high-water mark of the ‘1 percent’—to one akin to Denmark today, the most equal developed country in the world today in terms of top income shares.” (115-6). The reason Japan was so affected in WWII was how it invaded other areas (China, Korea, the Philippines) and saw huge destruction of its warships, merchant fleets, and buildings when America entered the conflict and utilized aerial warfare to their advantage. As Scheidel put it, “Japan’s military had grown more than twentyfold in size, from a quarter of a million troops in the mid-1930s to more than 5 million by the summer of 1945, or one in seven Japanese males of any age. Armament production surged on the same scale. By war’s end, around 2.5 million Japanese soldiers had perished. During the last nine months of the conflict, American bombers rained death and destruction on Japan, killing almost 700,000 civilians. For all their horrors, the two atomic bombs were merely a coda to years of inordinate exertion, suffering, and devastation. As total war ended in total defeat, Japan was occupied by hundreds of thousands of American troops and subjected to invasive institutional reforms designed to snuff out future imperialist ambitions.” (117). Before WWII, Japan became highly inequitable when it reintegrated itself with the world economy following centuries of isolation. However, when WWII occurred, the Japanese government, to allocate resources towards the war effort, put multiple controls on rent and the like, decreasing the wealth of the richest citizens. The government also focused heavily on keeping food prices manageable, offering subsidies to certain professions (like farming), and even providing some degree of social security (to keep the majority of the population faithful in the government’s ability to provide for them). Inflation caused prices to rise greatly in Japan: “inflation … accelerated during the war. Consumer prices rose 235 percent between 1937 and 1944 and jumped another 360 percent from 1944 to 1945 alone. This sharply lowered the value of bonds and deposits even as rent controls ate into the real incomes of landlords.” (121). When it comes to the destruction of buildings, “By September 1945, a quarter of the country’s physical capital stock had been wiped out. Japan lost 80 percent of its merchant ships, 25 percent of all buildings, 21 percent of household furnishings and personal effects, 34 percent of factory equipment, and 24 percent of finished products. The number of factories in operation and the size of the workforce they employed nearly halved during the final year of the war … although losses in iron and steel works were minimal, 10 percent of the textile industry, 25 percent of machinery production, and 30 percent to 50 percent of the chemical industry were put out of business. The large majority of these losses were directly caused by air raids … the allies had dropped 160,800 tons of bombs on Japan, less than an eighth of the volume of the bombing of Germany but with greater success against less well defended targets. The firebombing of Tokyo during the nights of March 9-10, 1945, which even by conservative estimates killed close to 100,000 residents and destroyed more than a quarter-million buildings and homes across an area of sixteen square miles, was only one outstanding episode” (121-2). As expected, all these factors leveled wealth to an extreme degree, seeing how luxuries like amassing capital were both confiscated and discouraged during the war. Scheidel summarizes, “Thus the entire loss of income share among the top ‘1 percent’ translated to a gain in the share of the subelite 95 percent of the population, whose portion of national income rose by a fifth from 68.2 percent in 1938 to 81.5 percent in 1947. This represented a truly spectacular shift, which lifted the income share of the 95 percent from one comparable to the United States in 2009 to one equivalent to Sweden today—in the course of less than a decade.” (123).
When America entered Japan, it underwent great efforts to democratize it, as it realized that Japan was an expansionist country due to financial inequality; people clamored for war due to a lack of opportunities at home. Thus, this problem can be solved by encouraging domestic consumption and driving down prices. America thereby implemented a massive marginal tax in which they redistributed most of the wealth of the richest people to the government and common people. The zaibatsu, business organizations grouped together under a certain family and were very powerful, were largely shut down, seeing how they discouraged competition and had worked in league with the militarists. America dealt with the problem of landlords by offering land to the common citizens: “The concurrent decline in real land values was nothing short of dramatic: between 1939 and 1949, the real price of paddy land relative to that of rice fell by a factor of 500, and by about half as much relative to the price of cigarettes. A third of all farmland in Japan was covered by the reform and was thus transferred to half of the country’s rural households. Tenanted land, which had accounted for almost half of the land before the war, fell to 13 percent in 1949 and 9 percent in 1955, whereas the owner-cultivators’ share in the rural population more than doubled, from 31 percent to 70 percent, and landless tenants almost disappeared. The income Gini in rural towns dropped from 0.5 before the war to 0.35 after.” (128). Japan continued its newfound culture of equity even after America formally left: “Formalized from the 1950s onward, the Japanese tax system imposed a marginal rate of 60 percent to 75 percent on top incomes and an estate tax in excess of 70 percent on the largest fortunes.” (129). Scheidel then discusses Germany during WWI, making it clear that WWI did decrease inequality. Other parts of Europe also saw massive compressions in wealth, such as France: “the value of the largest 0.01 percent of estates … fell by more than three-quarters between the beginning of World War I and the mid-1920s and by another two-thirds during World War II. This represents an overall drop of close to 90 percent during the war period, whereas the wealth share of the top percentile declined by less than half of its prewar high.” (139). WWI and WWII were extremely impactful on the world due to all the soldiers who were mobilized, the tens of millions who were brutally slain, the cost of the weapons manufactured to attack other areas, and the increasingly frenetic and rabid borrowing of governments to finance their war efforts. Said borrowing led to massive inflation in varying scales: “In the United States and United Kingdom, prices rose only threefold between 1913 and 1950. Other belligerents were not as lucky: prices rose 100 times in France and 300 times in Germany during the same period and increased 200 times in Japan between 1929 and 1950 alone.” (143). In America, Roosevelt made it clear that the rich would receive no special favors from Washington and that they would be expected to give a large portion of their wealth to the government as well as refraining from war profiteering. Income taxes for the wealthy directly tied to much of the leveling, seeing how in 1943 the highest rate was 95 percent. The occupation of countries by Germany also saw much financial leveling, as the Nazis didn't hesitate to extract resources without paying for them. Although most countries saw a decrease in inequality due to WWI, those that remained neutral actually saw increasing inequality: “The Dutch top 1 percent income share [during WWI] surged by a third, from 21 percent to 28 percent, between 1914 and 1916 before falling back to 22 percent by 1918.” (155). In another instance, Sweden became a highly egalitarian country when people felt discontented that the rich exploited WWI to accumulate more wealth and demanded a progressive tax. After the Cold War ended, income inequality skyrocketed in many areas, as Communism was no longer present to cap financial growth and innovation and shamelessly large accumulations of wealth became feasible once more.
When it comes to the leveling effects of civil war, a decrease in inequality isn’t present to nearly a large degree, as a country is plundering its own resources as well as tearing itself apart thanks to the existence of various factions. In the American Civil War, the Gini coefficient was decreased due to the emancipation of slaves without compensation, though not to a degree approaching total war between different countries. Scheidel fantastically elaborates, “The wealthiest 10 percent lost ground relative to the remainder of the population: their share in all personal property fell from 73 percent to 59.4 percent even as their share of real property went up slightly, from 68.4 percent to 71.4 percent, causing their share in total wealth to decline from 71 percent to 67.4 percent … the degree of loss of personal property increased with wealth, whereas the less affluent were more heavily affected by loss of real property … [this trend was] partly offset by stronger devaluation or diminution of real estate holdings among the less affluent. This is also well brought out by the Gini coefficients of wealth distribution for Southern whites in 1860 and 1870. Although the Ginis for real property registered only a small decrease (from 0.72 to 0.7), personal property inequality fell dramatically from 0.82 to 0.68. Total wealth inequality consequently steered a middle course as the Gini for all assets dropped from 0.79 to 0.72 … Across the entire Southern population, the Gini coefficient of property income fell from 0.9 in 1860 to 0.86 in 1870. Overall, the southern ‘1 percent’ saw their share in total income dwindle by more than a third, and regional income Gini coefficients sharply contracted by between 7 and 9 points.” (177-8). In the big picture, the fate of inequality of countries involved in civil wars depends on the individual sections and their corresponding victories, losses, and stalemates. For instance, even though property inequality decreased significantly in the South, it wasn’t so for the North, as the North didn't see the emancipation of slaves (the issue was largely resolved already) or scorched-earth policies (the South was subjected to the now-infamous Sherman’s March to the Sea in which Sherman destroyed crops, buildings, and livestock). One of the earliest instances of mass mobilization warfare in modern history is France under Napoleon: “Between the 1790s and 1815, about 3 million Frenchmen served in the military, or a ninth of the country’s total population” (181). The Warring States Period was a period of great disunity and warfare of China which saw 358 wars from 535-286 BCE. Battles were extremely brutal and costly. Scheidel tellingly describes, “Battles involving 100,000 or more combatants are frequently mentioned, with an upward trend. The most infamous instance is the battle of Changping in 260 BCE, wherein a Zhao army of 400,000 was said to have been massacred by Qin troops. Total fatality numbers for the losers of twenty-six major battles in the fourth and third centuries BCE add up to 1.8 million, and another survey yields close to 1.5 million killed by Qin armies in fifteen battles during the same period. Although such figures are almost certainly considerably inflated, the widespread occurrence of mass mobilization and heavy attrition is not in doubt.” (184). Despite the horrible battles in this period, inequality was actually exacerbated in many ways, as generals and leaders gained more and more land, so much that they offered some of it to their supporters and allies. In another instance, when Rome was fighting Hannibal’s forces in 214 BCE, it was reluctant to tax the rich in the form of slaves (said slaves were needed to row naval boats) despite the danger that was clearly present to the Roman people as a whole. Before Rome there was Sparta and Athens. Although Sparta’s education system was supposedly egalitarian, it still saw much financial inequality. Athens held the wicked institution of slavery, and fought against Persia when it proved a threat. All in all, “The exceptional scale of Athenian mobilization is reflected in the final body count: 24,000 out of 60,000 adult male citizens were killed in combat, alongside perhaps another 20,000 who perished in a plague that had been exacerbated by siege conditions.” (194). As for the Gini coefficient of Athens, it is difficult to calculate, but there are some predictions: “Two independent modern estimates project a fairly equitable distribution of land, with 7.5 percent to 9 percent of Athenians owning 30 percent to 40 percent and perhaps as few as 20 percent to 30 percent owning no land at all. A middling group representing the ‘hoplite’ population—those having enough resources to afford a full panoply for phalanx warfare—would have held 35 percent to 45 percent. The implied Gini coefficient of landownership of 0.38 or 0.39 is low from a comparative historical perspective but congruent with the absence of evidence for very large estates. This does not, however, rule out a more uneven distribution of non-agrarian assets.” (196-7). Some historians state the Gini coefficient for the wealth of Athens is 0.7, though this is difficult to support. Overall, European societies became more unequal as time went on due to the organization of massive conglomerates that enabled a few to profit at the expense of the many.
Scheidel makes it clear that most wars in history didn't involve mass mobilization, seeing the sheer costs of pursuing such an action. Therefore, most wars in human history involve only leveling on the losing side, as the winning side would usually plunder and overtax the conquered area. When it comes to civil war, “A pioneering study of 128 countries from 1960 to 2004 found that civil war increased inequality, particularly during the first five years after a conflict. On average, the income Gini coefficient rose 1.6 percentage points in countries during civil war and 2.1 percent points during the recovery phase of the following ten years, peaking about five years after the end of the war if peace was maintained … farmers may lose access to markets and suffer income losses through exclusion from commercial exchange, losses that provide an incentive to downshift to subsistence practices. At the same time, war profiteers reap great profits by exploiting diminished security and the weakening or absence of state power. Profiteering tends to benefit a small minority, allowing it to accumulate resources at a time when the state’s capacity to collect taxes has abated. This retrenchment, in conjunction with increased military expenditure, also curtails social spending, which in turn harms the poor. Redistributive measures, schooling, and health care suffer, with negative effects the stronger [and] the longer the conflict lasts.” (203). Scheidel then discusses the Second Horseman, revolution, which is best encapsulated in Communism. In Russia, Czar Nicholas II, the last czar, was overthrown upon Russia’s disastrous role in WWI: “The empire of Czar Nicholas II … had mobilized some 12 million soldiers, close to 2 million of whom had perished. Another 5 million more had been wounded, and 2.5 million had been captured or were reported missing. Moreover, 1 million civilians are thought to have died as well.” (214). Nicholas II and his family were overthrown and executed by the Bolsheviks, who wanted to overthrow the reign of the rich by murdering them en masse, seeing how they would deport even suspected capitalists and well-off individuals (known as kulaks) to labor camps (Gulags) or would execute them. Lenin and Stalin focused heavily on collective farms, which leveled wealth even more, as it took all the property of countless Russians. When it came to collectivization, “Coercion carried the day: by 1937, fully 93 percent of Soviet agriculture had been forcibly collectivized, individual farms had been crushed, and the private sector had been reduced to small garden plots … more than half of the value of livestock was lost, as was a seventh of the total capital stock … After 60,000 ‘first-category’ kulaks had been arrested in a matter of days in February 1930, the tally rose to 700,000 by the end of that year and to 1.8 million by the end of the following year. An estimated 300,000 deportees died during the process owing to the horrific conditions they experienced during transport and at their destination. Maybe 6 million peasants starved to death. Kulak household heads were deported en masse, although those considered particularly dangerous were summarily executed instead.” (219). Even further leveling occurred when Stalin committed mass murder, which is demonstrated in events like the Great Terror of 1937-8 that saw the murders of millions of citizens. Overall, all these events decreased the Gini coefficient significantly: from 1968 and 1991, the Gini coefficient was around 0.27 and 0.28. However, once the Soviet Union collapsed, rapid income inequality flooded back in, reversing decades of equitization. As Scheidel put it, “the richest 10 percent currently control 85 percent of national wealth. By 2014, the country’s 111 billionaires had come to hold a fifth of its total wealth. Following the dissolution of the … Soviet Union … in late 1991, exploding poverty drove the surge in income inequality: within three years, the proportion of people living in poverty had tripled to more than a third of Russia’s population. By the time of the financial crisis of 1998, their share had grown to almost 60 percent.” (222).
The effects of Communism on financial equality is also seen in Maoist China, which was obsessed with getting rid of landlords, as they viewed them as a great evil (landlords produced nothing yet charged high rates for people to live on their land). The violence of Maoist China was well-planned ahead of time, as the majority of civilians didn't have to worry about being targeted in ceremonies denouncing the rich. In these meetings landlords would be harassed and put to death in various ways: “The condemned were buried alive, dismembered, shot, or strangled … The party had determined a priori that 10 percent of the rural population consisted of ‘landlords’ or ‘rich peasants,’ even though in some areas as many as 20 percent or 30 percent of villagers came to be persecuted; at least one person was expected to die in each village. Between half a million and a million were killed or driven to suicide. By the end of 1951, more than 10 million landlords had been expropriated and more than 40 percent of the land had been redistributed. Some 1.5 million to 2 million perished between 1947 and 1952” (225). As time passed, millions more people were tortured and/or executed for their allegedly amoral behavior; as usual, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had quotas for the minimum amount of people who were to be punished. Then there was the “Great Leap Forward,” hailed as China’s greatest catastrophe by the scholar Frank Dikötter in his book Mao’s Great Famine. Before it occurred, many businesses had already been nationalized and profit was strongly dissuaded: “the share of rural families who belonged to cooperatives rose from 14 percent to more than 90 percent, and private plots were limited to 5 percent of total land. By 1856 most industry had been nationalized. The latter was ostensibly accomplished by convincing more than 800,000 big or small business owners to ‘voluntarily’ surrender their assets to the state. From 1955 onward, an extensive rationing system for food, clothing, and assorted consumer durables helped preserve the equalization that had been achieved by violent means.” (227). The Great Leap Forward occurred from 1959 to 1961 and involved Mao trying to make China a modern industrial state by implementing mass policies. However, many of the policies were foolish, seeing how they were supposed to bring massive benefits in a very short time period, which was simply unrealistic and overly optimistic. For instance, some policies called for people to make their own steel while others encouraged the killing of sparrows, which were viewed as pests. Unfortunately, when the sparrows were largely exterminated in many area, the prevalence of insects that preyed on crops increased drastically, as they had few predators. Overall, the Great Leap Forward was a time of mass starvation that saw 20-40 million people die of starvation. “Direct state action lagged not far behind: by the end of the Maoist period, between 6 million and 10 million Chinese had been killed or driven to suicide by the state, and about 50 million others had passed through the laogai camp system, where 20 million of them died.” (227). As seen in the Soviet Union, events like this in Maoist China drastically decreased the Gini coefficient, though all of the efforts were for naught when China reopened itself to the rest of the world. Scheidel excellently elaborates, “The market income Gini coefficient … is empirically unknown but need not have been much above 0.4 in the 1930s. Whereas its evolution in the early years of communist rule remains obscure, in 1976, the year of Mao’s death, it stood at 0.31; by 1984, it had fallen to 0.23. The urban income Gini around 1980 was as low as 0.16. Economic liberalization radically reversed this trend: within the next twenty years, the national market income Gini more than doubled, from 0.23 to 0.51. Today it may even be a little higher, around 0.55. Moreover, the Gini for family net wealth rose from about 0.45 to 0.73 between about 1990 and 2012.” (227). This clearly demonstrates that revolutions do see reversals in the changes they try to enact once enough time passes, seeing that a country cannot shield itself from the outside world forever. In other areas that adopted Communism (North Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Cambodia), a decrease in the Gini coefficient was usually present, seeing how landlordship was viewed as social parasitism and many companies and businesses were forced to either close or to become the property of the state. Cambodia saw mass murder like Russia and China, as Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge didn't hesitate to target potential dissidents. Scheidel details that almost a quarter of Cambodia’s total population died under Pol Pot (2 million people), not-mentioning the existence of purges that targeted even high officials: “Attrition was disproportionately concentrated among city dwellers: some 40 percent of Phnom Penh’s inhabitants were dead four years later … the emergence of a new elite was curtailed by ever-expanding purges of party cadres. For example, 16,000 members of the Communist Party of Kampuchea were killed at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison alone, a tally all the more remarkable when considering that party membership had reached no more than 14,000 in 1975 … Hundreds of thousands [of civilians] were murdered hidden from public view, most often beaten to death with blows to the head by iron bars, ax handles, or farm tools. Some of the corpses of the killed were used as fertilizer.” (230). Scheidel states that revolutions and wars share a large degree of violence, seeing how revolutionaries frequently believe in the application of force to get certain results. Communism overall claimed around 100 million lives, around the same number of people who died due to WWI and WWII. “In its tragic brutality, transformative communist revolution is mass mobilization warfare’s equal” (231).
Aside from Communism, there is the French Revolution. French revolutionaries were vastly focused on getting rid of the aristocracy (the ancien régime) and did so by making ample use of the guillotine. Beforehand, the wealthy forced the vast majority of the population to support their dissolute living (by paying the vast majority of taxes), causing them to be greatly abhorred. The National Assembly (institution that represented the common people before the Reign of Terror and the creation of the Committee of Public Safety) eventually took the land from the Church, informing it that it didn't need the land while many poor peasants did. Because France was in an armed conflict at the time, money was printed in large amounts, causing inflation that further hurt the finances of the wealthy. As a whole, the French Revolution decreased inequality and benefited the regular person, seeing a rise of a third in the wages of male rural labourers between 1789 and 1795. For all that the French Revolution did, its effects were insignificant compared to more radical revolutions belonging to Communism. Another example of revolution is the Taiping Rebellion, which, at the time of its occurrence, was the deadliest conflict in human history, as it saw the loss of 20 million lives. The Taiping Rebels were made of the poor and those desiring financial justice while their opponents, the Qing, served the emperor and wished to maintain the status quo. The Taiping Rebels explicitly stated that the god they worshipped (the Christian Abrahamic god) desired for people to share the land and to cooperate, a notion seen in how they planned to give each family an equal amount of land and livestock for them to survive on. Before these policies were put into action, however, the Taiping Rebels were defeated and the Qing continued to reign for decades before it finally collapsed. In Mexico, smallholders and commoners desired a greater quantity of land. While much land was redistributed in the revolution, it was of poor quality, which didn't help those that relied on it. Fortunately for the commoners, the situation eventually improved for them: “Forty percent of arable land was expropriated between 1934 and 1940, and peons now also qualified for assignments. Land was handed over to tenants, workers, and land-poor peasants, organized in collectives (ejidos), but was farmed in parcels … by 1940, half of all land had been covered by land reform, and half of the rural poor had benefited. Ten years later, the share of landowners had increased to more than half of the population, up from 3 percent in 1910, and by 1968, two-thirds of all farmland had been transferred.” (242). In Bolivia, the peasants also tried to better their situation, though with less success (their efforts were put down and they were slaughtered by the army). During the Middle Ages, numerous peasant rebellions were crushed and those involved were massacred by the wealthy, who viewed themselves as having the right (given by their imaginary god) to exploit others and to deprive them of well-being and even their lives. These peasant rebellions, as stated before, didn't have much of an impact on financial inequality, though a few were quite successful. When it comes to the violence involved in such actions, most of it was committed by the rich against the poor, as they were desperate to keep their wealth by continuing to harm others. As Scheidel put it, “During the 1932 uprising in El Salvador, communist rebels killed at most three dozen people, whereas the military slaughtered thousands during the repression that followed, including women and children: estimates range from 8,000 to 40,000.” (252-3). As a whole, revolutions are only successful in decreasing inequality so long as mass violence is maintained, as peacetime causes people to think and invest in the future, thereby inevitably raising financial disparities. “Russia’s market income Gini coefficient from 0.26-0.27 in the 1980s [rose] to 0.51 in 2011 and the Chinese rose from 0.23 in 1984 to 0.55 in 2014. Vietnam’s market income Gini may have reached 0.45 by 2010, although lower values are also being cited, and Cambodia’s was estimated as 0.51 in 2009. Development in Cuba has followed the same pattern: after the market income Gini dropped from 0.55 or 0.57 in 1959, the year of the communist revolution, to 0.22 in 1986, it appears to have risen to 0.41 in 1999 and 0.42 in 2004, although one estimate put it already as high as 0.55 by 1995 … Whether communism’s sacrifice of a hundred million lives bought anything of value is well beyond the scope of this study to contemplate. But one thing is certain—that whatever it so bloodily bought in terms of greater material equality is now well and truly gone.” (254).
The Third Horseman of leveling, collapse, is potentially the most effective one of them all. Although it’s rare, when it does occur, it sees the complete ruination of the system that allowed the rich to be so and for the poor to be poor, directly leading to chaos and no security for wealth disparities. An excellent example of this in history is the collapse of the Tang dynasty in China. The Tang dynasty, which lasted for centuries, eventually collapsed due to corruption and massive income inequality. The latter caused peasants to be so dissatisfied that they openly rebelled and formed a rebel group that was led by Huang Chao, who, in 881 CE, invaded the capital city of Chang’an. His soldiers, upon seeing the hoarded wealth of the elite, went on a rampage and slaughtered all the aristocrats they could find. After the pillaging, the Tang dynasty quickly collapsed, as outside pressure and internal fighting caused the elite’s number to shrivel up. “Over the course of these recurrent crises, nobles who lost their lives probably numbered in the thousands, and those who survived were deprived of their urban residences and suburban estates. Purges continued until little was left of the old elite. In 886, after a failed coup, hundreds of officials who had backed the contender were executed. In the year 900, the court eunuchs killed almost everyone close to the emperor in response to a plot to eradicate them, and in retaliation they and their allies were all eliminated the following year. In a single incident in 905, seven of the most influential ministers still alive were killed and tossed into the Yellow River. Perpetrated in rapid succession, these serial atrocities effectively wiped out the metropolitan elite.” (262-3). The Song dynasty followed the Tang, which in turn created a new set of elite families. Another example of state collapse is how the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century CE. Rome’s collapse began with it losing its overseas possession in the Mediterranean, which continued with further losses, made all the worse by invasions of foreign tribes. Disease only exacerbated the severity of the situation, and straits became so dire that even some of the wealthy sank into poverty (many of them lost their investments that were in foreign areas). When Rome finally sunk, many aristocratic families went along with them as Europe entered the Middle Ages. Another instance of state collapse was in Mycenae, another area in the Mediterranean. Scheidel writes, “The dismantling of Mycenaean civilization was a drawn-out process. Signs of destruction, possibly related to earthquakes, first appear at some major sites in the mid-thirteenth century BCE. Further damage is recorded later that century, followed by the construction of new fortifications—a telling indicator of military threats. A wave of destructive events followed around 1200 BCE … the causes remain a matter of conjecture: seismic activity, droughts, and epidemics have been invoked alongside invasions, rebellions, and shifts in the pattern of trade and the movement of people … Most regions … ‘returned to small-scale, tribal existence.’ High-quality building styles were gone, and writing disappeared entirely. The tenth century BCE was a nadir of overall development and complexity … most of the population resided in small villages and hamlets and adopted a more itinerant lifestyle … International trade ties had been severed, housing was for the most part very basic—featuring one-room dwellings—and graves were poor. Individual burials became the norm, a marked change from the previous Mycenaean emphasis on lineage.” (272-3). As expected, the elite was completely extinct by that point in time. This pattern was repeated in Yucatan, home of the famous Mayan ruins (including Chichen Itza). When the Mayan system fell apart, it is possible that up to 85 percent of the population perished due to violence, starvation, and other causes, clearly illustrating the volatility of the very existence of human civilization. Scheidel tellingly describes, “Ozymandian collapse may well have been the single most potent and reliable leveler in all of history. Though more common than one might think—many lesser-known cases could have been added—it was nonetheless relatively rare and mercifully so, considering the sheer amount of violence and suffering that accompanied such dramatic changes. By contrast, swift regeneration of state structures, often as the result of outside takeovers, has been a common outcome. The smoother the transition, the more readily inequalities would have been maintained or restored.” (279). A modern instance of state collapse is Somalia. Somalia collapsed due to massive poverty and an extreme extent of corruption (officials and the wealthy would directly steal from the banks of the region). Scheidel states that states like Somalia clearly demonstrate the importance of practicing fairness and justice, seeing how a class of rich people who make a habit of preying on the poor is only hurting itself in the long haul. Overall, while state collapse makes everyone worse off, the rich simply have more to lose considering the potentially vast amount of property and money they may own.
The Fourth Horseman of leveling is plague/disease. Thomas Malthus, an economist, believed that populations expand too quickly, thereby outstripping resources, in turn causing the population to drastically decrease due to factors such as disease, war, famine, and natural disasters. Malthusian thought had much historical backing, as for most of the past, large populations made the transmissibility of disease much easier, to the detriment of those involved. When the Black Death (caused by Yersinia pestis) occurred in the late 1320s, tens of millions perished, causing most people to believe that the world was actually ending (or, at the very least, human civilization). Scheidel describes the lethality of the plague as follows: “Plague occurs in three varieties, among which bubonic plague has been the most common. It is best known for the conspicuous enlargement of lymph nodes in the groin, armpits, or neck—common locations of flea bites—but is named for the blood-filled buboes that are caused by subcutaneous hemorrhaging. Cell necrosis and intoxication of the nervous system are the consequences, killing within a few days some 50 percent or 60 percent of those infected. A second and even more pernicious version, pneumonic plague, is transmitted directly between persons via airborne droplets emanating from infected lungs. Fatality rates approach 100 percent. Very rarely, the pathogen travels in insects, causing what is known as septicemic plague, which unfolds very rapidly and is invariably fatal.” (293). The plague spread due to trade and maritime travel, reaching not only Asia but Europe. So many died in Europe that mass graves had to be dug to handle the bodies; the pope also made it clear that bodies can be counted as having received a proper burial if they’re thrown into rivers. When the Black Death (a single wave of what would be multiple sequences of epidemics) ended, Europe had lost 26 million people - “Europe’s population fell from 94 million in 1300 to 68 million in 1400 … Attrition was most severe in England and Wales, which may have lost almost half of their preplague population of close to 6 million and which did not reach preplague levels until the early eighteenth century, and in Italy, where at least a third of the people perished.” (296-7). Following the Black Death, the wealthy had to pay laborers a lot more money, seeing the decrease of laborers. Thus, the common person (those who survived, at least) benefited quite a bit financially. Humorously and hypocritically, governments tried to limit the increase in wages by attempting to force laborers to accept jobs that paid them the same wage as before the plague struck, stating that they were greedy, lazy, and arrogant (as stated before, this is quite hypocritical, seeing how the wealthy embodied these traits to an infinitely greater degree than the common person). For all their efforts, many governments conceded to much higher wages, as there was little alternative. This trend wouldn’t last long, however, seeing how the population would usually recover. On the other hand, there were multiple waves of plagues: “To count only national epidemics in England alone, they were reported for 1375, 1390, 1399-1400, 1405-1406, 1411-1412, 1420, 1423, 1428-1429, 1433-1435, 1438-1439, 1463-1465, 1467, 1471, and 1479-1480. The final decades of this period witnessed particularly massive attrition, culminating in the 1479-1480 epidemic, reportedly the worst event since 1361 … other countries fared equally poorly: we know of fifteen epidemics in the Netherlands between 1360 and 1494 and of fourteen in Spain between 1391 and 1457. Across Europe, the plague struck two or three times per generation, keeping population numbers down. As a result, by the 1430s, Europe’s population may have been half or less than what it had been near the end of the thirteenth century. Varying by region, demographic recovery finally resumed in the 1450s, the 1480s, or as late as the sixteen century. The observed improvement in the living standards of the laboring population was rooted in the suffering and premature death of tens of millions over the course of several generations.” (304). To be more specific when it comes to the effects of the Black Death, it helped end serfdom, an institution that had farmers legally tied to their land (they could be severely punished if they are caught off it), as it forced the wealthy to make concessions to the poor. This is best seen in how peasants moved to other manors to work if they so desired, leading to a reduction in the price of rent and a more interconnected economy that paved the road to a more scientific age.
Another example of a devastating epidemic is America and other areas during the Columbian exchange. When European settlers crossed the ocean and found themselves on land unknown to them, they carried many germs and viruses that they had genetic resistance to (these germs and diseases were acquired by how Europeans exploited animals, as they were so close to them physically they acquired some bacteria which later turned into deadly diseases). Thus, populations of various areas were completely devastated, with the vast majority perishing of disease. Some of the diseases that ravaged native populations include measles and smallpox. In just one instance, “Within a year of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage, infections began to ravage the first European foothold, the island of Hispaniola. Its indigenous population dwindled from possibly hundreds of thousands to 60,000 by 1508, 33,000 by 1510, 18,000 by 1519, and fewer than 2,000 by 1542.” (315). As stated before, the original human populations of America were completely destroyed by disease, as many sources testified that entire towns would be filled with rotting corpses. In fact, the mortality levels were so high that the mortality rate of the Black Death in Europe wasn’t as severe as them. Expectedly, this decreased inequality by killing off most people. Yet another horrific instance of disease is the Justinian Plague, which struck Europe and the Middle East from 541-750 CE. The Justinian Plague claimed a massive number of victims: in Constantinople, it is reported as many as 10,000 died every single day. Ultimately, if this is true, more than half of the city was wiped out. Emperor Justinian, like many leaders in the past and the present, tried to prevent the wages of workers from rising, though with little success. Overall, the Justinian Plague is possible to have killed tens of millions, up to half of the world’s population at the time, devastating entire countries. The Antonine Plague is believed to have centered around smallpox (Variola major) that is airborne: “If the Antonine Plague was indeed smallpox attacking a virgin population, anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent of those infected could have died, with infection rates reaching 60 percent to 80 percent of the total population. The only customized epidemiological model for this event predicts aggregate losses of around 25 percent, which is as good a guesstimate as we are ever likely to get.” (326). Similar to other epidemics, as huge swathes of people died quickly and in agony, wages increased significantly while rents became more affordable. When it comes to famine, its effect is nowhere near as great as that of pandemics, even if they are severe. Scheidel recollects, “Pandemics … makes good company for the other effective leveling processes reviewed so far: the sacrifices of mass mobilization warfare, the atrocities of transformative revolution, and the ravages of wholesale state collapse. All these events flattened material inequality by inflicting enormous bloodshed and human suffering. Our quartet of horsemen is now complete.” (335). An instance of horsemen occurring in the same area is seen in Augsburg during the Thirty Years War of the seventeenth century, as it suffered from both war and plague. Overall, “Augsburg’s population fell by some 50 percent or 60 percent between 1616 and 1646, similar to what happened in other badly affected cities, such as Munich, Nuremberg, and Mainz … The number of poor residents fell disproportionately: four-fifths of the households of weavers disappeared … Formerly super-rich households were now merely rich, whereas the number of those that were merely rich declined by five-sixths. The number of those comfortable or moderately well-off had been halved but roughly held steady as a proportion of the (much diminished) total population. The share of those in the income tiers right above bare subsistence ballooned even as the proportionate of the poor and destitute fell. The overall leveling effect was massive … The city that survived was but a shadow of its former self …. Very large fortunes had disappeared, and lesser ones had been much reduced in number. Real estate had lost value, loans had become worthless, and safe investment opportunities had dwindled: in short, capital had been greatly eroded. In the end, the severe population losses increased demand for labor among the survivors, improving the circumstances of the laboring classes beyond the abject poverty many of them had previously suffered. By the end of the war, the Gini coefficient of (proxied) taxable wealth had fallen from more than 0.9 to about 0.75 … not nearly as extreme as before. This leveling effect, bought at a painfully high price, persisted for the remainder of the seventeenth century.” (339-41).
Scheidel discusses potential ways to make societies more equitable without relying on the Four Horsemen. One of the chief measures is through land reform (and reform in general). Although land reform varies greatly in scale, it has the potential to be very successful, seen in how inequality in South Korea decreased drastically following WWII. Scheidel details, “In the early 1950s, private property was capped at three hectares of good cropland, excess land was transferred to peasants by seizure or sale for minimal compensation (one and half times annual rent), and rents were fixed at low levels for those who continued to work others’ land. A little more than half of all land changed hands … landlords lost 80 percent of their income whereas the bottom 80 percent of rural households gained 20 percent to 30 percent. By 1956, the richest 6 percent of landowners held merely 18 percent of all land, and the share of tenants had fallen from 49 percent to 7 percent. The Gini coefficient of landownership, which had been as high as 0.72 or 0.73 in 1945, fell to the 0.30s by the 1960s. The leveling effect of land reform was amplified by the consequences of the Korean War: as most industrial and commercial properties were destroyed and hyperinflation rendered compensation worthless, the landed elite disappeared completely and a highly egalitarian society emerged that was later sustained by broad access to education.” (350-1). Although land reform could be successful, it is mostly resisted by the upper class, leading to further conflict and division. Reforms that require violence are unfortunately frequently met with counterviolence, causing nothing to happen. This was seen in Sparta where rulers like Cleomenes and Nabis tried to encourage equality by freeing slaves and redistributing wealth, only for their efforts to be reversed, as many of the newly freed slaves were sold back into slavery or exiled. When it comes to debt relief and the release of slaves, they could be quite impactful, though they are usually discouraged by the rich. Economic crises like recessions and depressions do decrease inequality, but their effects are short-lived, for the business cycle will eventually enter into an expansion or even a boom period given enough time. Democracies generally see more equitable societies and are a very favorable form of government regarding the issue, seeing how they supposedly espouse equal rights, cooperation, and little abuse of power. Education is a fantastic way to manage the Gini coefficient, though it should be warned that the majority of a population should be informed and up-to-date with technological advances in order to safeguard against becoming obsolete. When it comes to income inequality in the present, it has fallen in some countries before the end of the twentieth century but began rising at the turn of the new millennium, especially in America (the country with the highest income inequality among Western nations). An important concept to take into account is the Kuznets Curve, which mandates that when economies expand, inequality rises and then falls. Scheidel tellingly writes, “It is true that as modern economic development has caused the importance of human capital to rise relative to that of physical capital and as inequality in the distribution of human capital is primarily a function of the provision of education, equalizing policies regarding the latter may seem particularly promising … although investment in education, though its effects on wage differentials, may indeed serve as a viable mechanism of nonviolent leveling, it has historically been enmeshed in less peaceful processes: the documented swings in American skill premiums during the twentieth century once again underscore the importance of warfare in shaping social policies and economic payoffs … much the same applies to unionization. Redistributive fiscal and welfare policies do reduce disposable income inequality, but their scale and structure likewise tends to be tied to the legacy of violent shocks and its longer-term repercussions: the contrast between Western and East Asian inequality … and conditions in Latin America … reminds us of this fundamental association. Even after reviewing alternative causes of inequality compression, there is no escaping the fact that violence, actual or latent, has long been a critical catalyst for equalizing policy measures.” (388).
History makes it clear that the move from an agrarian, localized economy to a massive, unified, globalized one will have monumental implications for the future. One such effect echoes how the Industrial Revolution has exacerbated wealth inequality. Scheidel hypothesizes that if the Great Compression didn't occur alongside deadly revolutions, income inequality would be much higher. However, he still offers hope, as he details that the modern era can disqualify many of our expectations, to the benefit of many. “First of all, we have to allow for the feasibility of gradual peaceful leveling under conditions of modernity, even though there is little empirical evidence to support this notion. Second, we have to posit an additional century of relatively peaceful conditions: any counterfactual shocks of comparable severity, regardless of their timing and specifics, would take us back to a close approximation of the real world and simply reinforce the preeminence of violent leveling. Third, we need to assume that the concentration of capital that existed in the early years of the twentieth century could somehow have been undone even without recourse to massive violent dislocations, which arguably entails an ever greater stretch of the imagination. And fourth, we have to believe that any such leveling would not have been reversed by the disequalizing forces we have observed over the last generation.” (400). Scheidel provides a very detailed graph that shows the rising of the Gini coefficient (encapsulated in how the top 1% have continued to make more and more money). He states that globalization has contributed to this trend, but this doesn’t have to be a bad thing if policies are put into place that maintain the quality of life people live. Regardless, the problem of inequality is massive and needs to be addressed. Today hundreds of millions of people are living in dire poverty while a few CEOs are making ever-increasing amounts of money: “Although up to the 1990s American finance workers earned the same education-adjusted wages as those in other sectors, by 2006 they enjoyed a 50 percent premium that rose as high as 250 percent or 300 percent for executives. A substantial portion of this dispersion remains unexplained. Such disproportionate gains for finance professionals as well as corporate executives point to rent-taking, defined as income in excess of what is required to secure services in competitive markets. Between 1978 and 2012, American CEO compensation rose 876 percent in 2012 constant dollars” (419). Many top CEOs focus on social skills (or, to put it more realistically, manipulation and flattery) more than education to succeed, which presents a problem to the idea of benefiting oneself through strenuous study. In America the problem of inequality is especially espoused: “between 2001 and 2010, the Gini coefficient of the distribution of net worth rose from 0.81 to 0.85 and that for financial assets from 0.85 to 0.87.” (421). Scheidel states that many measures that hope to decrease inequality in the future are overly optimistic, as inequality is showing no signs at all of stopping, seeing the effect of the compounding effect. Furthermore, the Four Horsemen have greatly decreased in frequency and severity, as there are very few revolutions today, relatively few mass epidemics, a large absence of mass war, and few state collapses. Scheidel takes care to mention the importance of technology, as when humans merge themselves with machines (seen right now with the massive potential of Neuralink), those who can afford them will be more capable on many magnitudes than those who lack the money to afford the technology, which can lead to a permanent gap of inequality. However, Scheidel makes it clear that predicting the future is virtually impossible, making it important for people to continue to be curious and open-minded. He ends his book with the following words: “History does not determine the future. Maybe modernity really is different. In the very long run, it may well turn out to be. It may put us on a trajectory toward singularity, a point at which all human beings merge into a globally interconnected hybrid body-machine super-organism and no longer have to worry about inequality. Or perhaps technological advances will instead take inequalities to new extremes by separating a biomechatronically and genetically enhanced elite from ordinary mortals … Or, just as likely, none of the above—we may be moving toward outcomes we cannot even yet conceive. But science fiction takes us only so far. For the time being, we are stuck with the minds and bodies we have and with the institutions they have created. This suggests that the prospects of future leveling are poor … For thousands of years, history has alternated between long stretches of rising or high and stable inequality interspersed with violent compressions. For six or seven decades from 1914 to the 1970s or 1980s, both the world’s rich economies and those countries that had fallen to communist regimes experienced some of [the] most intense leveling in recorded history. Since then, much of the world has entered what could become the next long stretch—a return to persistent capital accumulation and income concentration. If history is anything to go by, peaceful policy reform may well prove unequal to the growing challenges ahead. But what of the alternatives? All of us who prize greater economic equality would do well to remember that with the rarest of exceptions, it was only ever brought forth in sorrow. Be careful what you wish for.” (443-4).
Personal thoughts:
The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century by Walter Scheidel is an informative, descriptive, and illustrative book that utilizes a huge amount of statistics, graphs, and historical examples to support Scheidel’s powerful claim that inequality has only gone down as of yet due to the Four Horsemen. The issue this book discusses is of monumental importance, as it affects every human being on Earth, seeing the importance of economics and income distribution. Scheidel’s attention to detail is to be greatly appreciated, as it superbly fleshes out the situation in all its complexity, making it one of my favorite books. Although some may view this book as overly pessimistic, its realism cannot be denied, giving credence to Voltaire’s notion that this is not the best of all possible worlds. I highly recommend The Great Leveler to anyone interested in income inequality, economics, history, interesting claims, and hypotheses and projections concerning the future.
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