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LESSONS OF HISTORY, by Will and Ariel Durant (Smon & Shuster 1968).
I read this book some time ago. Perhaps I was not in the right mood. It was a bit disappointing. I found it to be somewhat pedestrian. Somehow I expected more from a purported distillation of what the Durants had learned from the decades they had spent researching and writing "The Story Of Civilization" series; viz. an exposition that soared and challenged. This is not that book. It does, however, make some interesting points along the way, whether or not one agrees with them.
For example, in the chapter, "Government and History," the Durants evaluate the forms of government they encountered in researching "The Story Of Civilization." They report that they concluded, on balance, that democracy "has done less harm and more good" than any other form of government, but was responsible for the debasement of the arts and was the most difficult form of government because, they say, "we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign." As result, they state, "ignorance lends itself to manipulation by forces that mold public opinion," and, "It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country."
Of particular current interest is the Durants’ discussion of recurrent wealth inequality across cultures over time. They attribute this phenomenon to inequality of ability. Their expressed view is that those with skill at managing people and money have ruled over history, that this results in a destabilization of equilibrium, and wealth either gets redistributed by legislation or revolution.
The Durants used Athens in 594 BCE as an illustration. There, "The poor, finding their status worsened each year - the government in the hands of their masters, and the corrupt courts deciding every issue against them - began to talk of revolt. The rich, angry at the challenge to their property, prepared to defend themselves by force." Instead of a revolutionary conflict, Solon, a business man of aristocratic lineage, was elected to the supreme archonship. He undertook serious measures to avoid civil war. "...[H]e devalued the currency, thereby easing the burden on all debtors (though he himself was a creditor); he reduced all personal debts, and ended imprisonment for debt; he cancelled arrests for taxes and mortgage interest; he established a graduated income tax that made the rich pay at a rate twelve times that required of the poor; he reorganized the courts on a more popular basis; and arranged that the sons of those who had died in a war for Athens should be brought up at the government’s expense." Both the rich and the poor complained, but later agreed that Solon had saved Athens from revolution.
The Durants used Rome as an example of societies that tried to avoid redistribution of wealth, and went through long periods of chaos as a result.
Recommendation
In connection with the wealth inequality issue as it applies to the United States, I suggest Christia Freeland’s article, "The Rise Of The New Global Elite" in the January-February 2011 issue of The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/
I read this book some time ago. Perhaps I was not in the right mood. It was a bit disappointing. I found it to be somewhat pedestrian. Somehow I expected more from a purported distillation of what the Durants had learned from the decades they had spent researching and writing "The Story Of Civilization" series; viz. an exposition that soared and challenged. This is not that book. It does, however, make some interesting points along the way, whether or not one agrees with them.
For example, in the chapter, "Government and History," the Durants evaluate the forms of government they encountered in researching "The Story Of Civilization." They report that they concluded, on balance, that democracy "has done less harm and more good" than any other form of government, but was responsible for the debasement of the arts and was the most difficult form of government because, they say, "we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign." As result, they state, "ignorance lends itself to manipulation by forces that mold public opinion," and, "It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country."
Of particular current interest is the Durants’ discussion of recurrent wealth inequality across cultures over time. They attribute this phenomenon to inequality of ability. Their expressed view is that those with skill at managing people and money have ruled over history, that this results in a destabilization of equilibrium, and wealth either gets redistributed by legislation or revolution.
The Durants used Athens in 594 BCE as an illustration. There, "The poor, finding their status worsened each year - the government in the hands of their masters, and the corrupt courts deciding every issue against them - began to talk of revolt. The rich, angry at the challenge to their property, prepared to defend themselves by force." Instead of a revolutionary conflict, Solon, a business man of aristocratic lineage, was elected to the supreme archonship. He undertook serious measures to avoid civil war. "...[H]e devalued the currency, thereby easing the burden on all debtors (though he himself was a creditor); he reduced all personal debts, and ended imprisonment for debt; he cancelled arrests for taxes and mortgage interest; he established a graduated income tax that made the rich pay at a rate twelve times that required of the poor; he reorganized the courts on a more popular basis; and arranged that the sons of those who had died in a war for Athens should be brought up at the government’s expense." Both the rich and the poor complained, but later agreed that Solon had saved Athens from revolution.
The Durants used Rome as an example of societies that tried to avoid redistribution of wealth, and went through long periods of chaos as a result.
Recommendation
In connection with the wealth inequality issue as it applies to the United States, I suggest Christia Freeland’s article, "The Rise Of The New Global Elite" in the January-February 2011 issue of The Atlantic.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/308343/