The Political Origins of Inequality

This far-reaching study examines how political policies and paradigms have deepened global inequality, and how to reframe the debate to address it.

Inequality is the defining issue of our time—one in which the global 1% now owns half the world’s wealth. In this magisterial study, Simon Reid-Henry rewrites the story of globalization as one about the management of inequality. Reaching back to the eighteenth century, The Political Origins of Inequality foregrounds the political turning points and decisions behind the making of today’s uneven societies. As it weaves together insights from the Victorian city to the Cold War, from US economic policy to Europe’s present migration crisis, a true picture emerges of the structure of inequality itself.

Reid-Henry shows that the problem of inequality cannot be resolved by the conventional arguments of left versus right. Modern political discourse has no place for public reason or the common good. Yet, he argues, it is within our power to address this.

To forge a better world, we must meet our political responsibilities to others, rather than simply offering the selective charity of the rich. We must think beyond economics and outside our national borders. But above all, we must reinvent the language of equality for a modern, global world.