Mike Savage’s The Return of Inequality contributes to a growing number of works on inequality since the 2008 capitalist crisis. Savage is not fully satisfied with these other—usually quantitative—works (though he is quite indebted to Thomas Piketty). One particular concern is the lack of texture related to growing inequality. That includes everything from the use of cross-sectional data that abstracts from history to underappreciating the phenomenological experience of inequality. In part I of the book, he lays out this critique in the first chapter. In chapter 2, he partly rectifies this omission through engagement with Pierre Bourdieu’s “field theory.”
The second major concern for Savage is what he refers to as the “weight of the past.” Here his influence from Piketty is most clear because, like the French economist, Savage sees contemporary inequality trends as looking more similar to those of the nineteenth century—the era of “imperial modernity,” as he refers to it (e.g., p. 334). This provides his second theoretical anchor discussed in chapter 3 through the work of Karl Marx.
The important “beachhead” (p. 82) established in chapter 3 is that, because capital accumulates “over time” (p. 93; his definition of “capital” is closer to that of Piketty than of Marx), this allows us to see inequality as bearing “the weight of the past.” This theme structures the rest of the book. Part II discusses changes in national inequality metrics (chapter 4) and the “return to empire” (chapter 5), followed by two chapters on race, class, and gender (chapters 6–7), a chapter on cities and elites (chapter 8) and a chapter on information and knowledge (chapter 9). With these empirical segments established, Savage reflects on the larger consequences of duration in inequality before a brief conclusion—two chapters composing part III of the book.
Savage wants the reader to appreciate the “weight of the past.” He takes issue with the “epochalist thinking” of social science and tendencies that silo the present (e.g., p. 92). In chapter 5, he observes new trends in global inequality. He links empire and the problems of methodological nationalism to other political aspects of inequality. Armed with a loose critique of quantification and insistence that past capitalist hierarchies are reemerging, Savage makes a series of bold claims in the book.
For example, in chapter 6, Savage focuses on the “stuff” of inequality or “groupness”—race, class, and gender (p. 168). Twentieth-century inequality marked a turn away from the naturalized social positions of the previous century toward “probabilistic” inequality (i.e., odds of having certain “life chances”) (pp. 195, 190). This kind of rationalized thinking emerged, according to Savage, with the rise of the nation-state and the premium placed on expertise. However, because of the “weight of the past,” we are witnessing more salient forms of identity reemerge. His explanation for the rise of so-called identity politics is that, as relative inequality between groups decreases, identities became stronger. With an excessive amount of shallow (if not bad-faithed) analyses of identity politics circulating today, it is refreshing to see Savage make a novel and more sociologically grounded argument here. How well does it hold up? By his own admission, this dynamic only applies to gender and not race, but the politics of both race and gender have become flashpoints, so some more elaboration is needed.
The example is indicative of a larger trend in the book. Savage wants to expose the “weight of the past” through different facets of inequality. Locating contemporary inequality parallels with past ones can be helpful. Ultimately, Savage wants to challenge linear theories of progress (though who is still attached to these narratives in the twenty-first century is not always clear). However, sometimes these parallels feel a little forced. As a small but nonetheless instructive example, Savage cites a study on “data colonialism” (p. 253). But how analogous is this really to real colonialism?
As a larger example, Savage argues that, as capital accumulates and inequality grows, it is breaking up the nation-state and ostensibly returning the world to some pre-twentieth-century imperial model (chapter 10). As evidence, he discusses declining voting turnouts, lower political engagement, and elite political capture. These are, no doubt, important consequences of inequality, but to suggest they spell the end of the nation-state seems premature. The irony is these problems are still framed in methodologically nationalist ways. Savege could perhaps bolster his case had he consulted emerging work linking inequality with foreign financial flows and tax havens as well as data based on portfolio assets and multinational business ownership. Venessa Ogle’s research (e.g., “‘Funk Money’: The End of Empires, the Expansion of Tax Havens, and Decolonization as and Economic and Financial Event,” Past & Present 249, no. 1 [2020]): 213–249) shows how some of these features emerged out of the old empires during decolonization—a potentially interesting historical throughline here.
Savage notably reads across a number of literatures and impressively broadens the book’s scope. He is skilled at assembling and clearly explaining vast amounts of data. For this, the book makes a great contribution to general readers. Historically minded researchers, however, may feel his arguments are nonetheless held back by his ambitious claims. To situate his thesis about the decline of the nation-state, Savage criticizes towering historians and historical sociologists such as E.P. Thompson and Barrington Moore for “their weak conception of temporality and duration” (p. 284). Savage himself is reluctant to offer his own theory of change other than noting that capital accumulation inherently incorporates the past. That is true, but how accumulation has changed goes unmentioned. Indeed, it is striking Savage avoids the extensive research and debates about declining inequality between 1945 and 1973 and then massive rise in the neoliberal era.
By constantly invoking the “weight of the past” as an inexorable force rearing its head without explaining how and why, Savage’s book comes off teleological. In his discussion on the return to “visceral” inequality by race and gender, he notes that history is “back with a vengeance” but then immediately says, “[o] f course, history never went away” (p. 197). Why did inequality return, and in what ways is it different than before? Walling off the present from history is an issue he is right to flag. Yet, without differentiating how the present is different within history is also problematic. Put differently, for a book foregrounding Marx, the reader will not find anything about dialectical change.
Professor Soener studies political economy, inequality, and climate change.
