Capitalism, Alone: A Reflection on Inequality, Social Fractures, and the Future of Capitalism

Another wave of reflections for capitalism is now kindled by the Covid-19 crisis. Will the fiscal stimulus uplift the average Americans or end up exacerbating inequality? How is the crisis revealing fundamental fractures of the American and Western societies? The world as we have known it for the past decades has come to a stop, and the global socio-economic system might finally be shaken up as businesses remake their supply chains and governments re-envision their globalization goals... As people reflect on those important questions, we think it’s timely to re-introduce an earlier interview with Prof. Branko Milanovic on his book Capitalism, Alone and his insightful critique on the present and future of this political-economic system.

Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World provides a detailed recount of the path through which Capitalism came to dominate our world; an overview of the different capitalistic systems now govern the world; a range of problems such as inequality that Capitalism has engendered and struggled to respond to; and a deep reflection on the urgent socio-economic challenges our societies now face and how we may address them.

As the public today grows ever more concerned with inequality, one of the most noteworthy ideas in the book is how liberal meritocratic capitalism is a system with inherent characteristics that “enhance inequality.” For instance, the fact that more educated and wealthy people tend to marry each other within their similar cohort could be a sign of freedom of choice and an improvement of our society, but this tendency in fact exacerbates inequality. How should we reconcile the tension between something that should be progressive in principle yet lead to inequality? Drawing from Thomas Piketty and a wide range of economic literature and data, Prof. Milanovic provides a refreshing view on how we may rethink radical solutions for our dire problems.

Full bio:

Branko Milanović is a visiting presidential professor at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a senior scholar at the Stone Center on Socio-economic Inequality. He served as lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department for almost 20 years, leaving to write his book on global income inequality, “Worlds Apart” (2005). His book “The Haves and the Have-nots” (2011) was selected by The Globalist as the 2011 Book of the Year. “Global Inequality” (2016) was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the best political book of 2016 and the Hans Matthöfer Prize in 2018, and was translated into 16 languages. It addresses economic and economic and political effects of globalization and introduces the concept of successive “Kuznets waves” of inequality. In March 2018, Milanovic was awarded (jointly with Mariana Mazzucato) the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Knowledge.

Branko Milanovic

Capitalism, Alone