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[![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQyXJZ32AA7ChFCMikNsmJosdjnZ8Z6H3tuzJTubQSdYF/image.png)](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/economy/a-dilemma-for-humanity-stark-inequality-or-total-war.html?_r=0)
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Another article with some hefty food for thought.

Ignoring the sensationalist title (and the misplaced praise for the Obama administration), this article represents a shocking admission from the centre-left that the radicals were basically correct all along about the big picture of human history: *Class societies have a natural tendency to concentrate wealth and power at the top and to produce ever-greater inequality, and gradual reforms are (on average, in the long run) powerless to stop this*. In the long run, in other words, social democracy doesn't work. So what does work? Well...

"Professor Scheidel does not offer a grand unified theory of inequality. But scouring through the historical record, he detects a pattern: From the Stone Age to the present, ever since humankind produced a surplus to hoard, economic development has almost always led to greater inequality. There is one big thing with the power to stop this dynamic, but it’s not pretty: violence.

The big equalising moments in history may not have always have the same cause, he writes, “but they shared one common root: massive and violent disruptions of the established order.”"

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Of course global war is not an acceptable "solution". But the article jumps to conclusions when it talks about "global war". It's actually reviewing a body of research that suggests that violence - violence in general, not global war in particular - is the only thing that can historically stop the trend for inequality to rise.

At the very end of the article, the author acknowledges (and unwisely dismisses) another alternative:

*"Revolution? Little chance, given the absence of any powerful ideological challenge to capitalism."*

**Maybe that challenge won't be absent forever.**