Seminar in ancient and world history: "The great leveller"

- violence and 5,000 years of income and wealth inequality

Presentation by Walter Scheidel (Stanford University).

Inequality of income and wealth has been with us for a very long time. Ever since the shift from foraging to farming and herding, material resources have come to be unequally distributed within societies. The formation of states has often reinforced these disparities.

Over the last five thousand years, four types of violent shocks have been the most important means of reducing economic inequality:

  • mass mobilization warfare,
  • transformative revolution,
  • state collapse and
  • severe pandemics.

This was as true of the twentieth century as it had been of the premodern world. Alternative and more peaceful mechanisms were either causally associated with violent shocks or failed to produce consistent effects on the distribution of income and wealth.

Given growing disequalizing pressures in much of the world today, the central role of violence as a leveling force throughout history raises serious questions about the prospects of current policy proposals and the future of inequality.