[비즈한국] Water bombs are pouring down across the Korean Peninsula. No one can say anymore that this rain is not caused by climate change. And this crisis has its roots in the 20th century, the 'century of abundance.'
The 20th century was an astonishing era in many ways. Technological development and the resulting economic growth were spectacular. 'Slouching Towards Utopia' by J. Bradford DeLong provides an overview of 20th-century history, centering on economic history. He captures the vast and complex era that is the 20th century within a single 700-page volume.
The author, DeLong, is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and played a significant role in establishing the Berkeley economics department as a mecca for Great Depression research. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton administration.
Slouching Towards Utopia
: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
Written by J. Bradford DeLong, Translated by Hong Ki-been, Supervised by Kim Doo-eol, Saenggakuim
726 pages, 37,800 won
The author defines the 140 years from 1870 to 2010 as the 'long 20th century.' With the emergence of globalization, corporate research labs, and modern large-scale corporations around 1870, humanity escaped from grinding poverty for the first time since the dawn of agriculture. The author notes that this period was the most impactful century in human history. It ended humanity's material poverty, and for the first time, economic aspects became the most important subject of history.
Globalization began much earlier than we think; between 1870 and 1914, one out of every fourteen people on Earth, or 100 million people, moved their residence to another continent. The advancement of communication and transportation was the backdrop for this. World War II hero and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, India's non-violent pacifist Gandhi, and China's pragmatic leader Deng Xiaoping were also people who changed the world through their experiences of migration. The country that benefited most significantly from the trend of globalization in the long term was the United States, which remained the superpower of the 20th century.
In this way, the author connects individual figures and events to massive transformations. He discusses the influence of corporate research labs on technological development through Nikola Tesla and Edison, and explains the process by which market systems adopted social democracy and transformed through figures like Hayek, Polanyi, and Keynes.
By using a microscope at times and a telescope at others, he skillfully weaves together the microscopic and the macroscopic, the accidental and the inevitable. This is why the substantial length of 700 pages reads so smoothly.
In 2010, the world's average per capita income reached 8.8 times that of 1870. The 'extremely poor' living on roughly 2 dollars or less a day accounted for as much as 70% of the world's population in 1870, but today that number is less than 9%. Even among that 9%, the majority enjoy the benefits of public healthcare and mobile communication technology. In some countries, per capita income has increased more than 20-fold compared to 1870. This prosperity will likely continue for centuries to come. If so, has humanity reached utopia, or at least its vicinity?
"The author presents an original and insightful analysis of the 'long 20th century,' a period of phenomenal economic development that began in 1870 and ended in 2010. Unprecedented material wealth arrived, and previous generations would have thought such abundance would guarantee a utopia. However, the era of material progress ended not in utopia, but in division and discord. You cannot find another book that explains the successes and failures of this extraordinary period with this level of insight."
As Financial Times chief economic commentator Martin Wolf, who recommended this book, said, we experienced unprecedented abundance in the last century, but we never reached utopia. What have we learned from the 20th century? Can we reach utopia in the 21st century?
The author titled this book 'Slouching Towards Utopia,' meaning moving toward utopia while stooped or slouching. It contains the 'hope' that moving forward, even if slouching, is better than moving backward or standing still. For that hope to be realized, a serious reflection on the last century must come first. If we forget that, the place we might reach could be a 'dystopia.'