Henry Phelps Brown – författare

The belief that the existing distributions of income and wealth in Western countries are unjust has come to be widely held, and has prompted the inclusion of egalitarian measures in many political programmes. This work uses the methods of reasoned history and comparative statistics to arrive at an assessment of egalitarianism. This book is intended for economists, economic historians, political historians, sociologists, and political philosophers.

The belief that existing distributions of income and wealth are unjust has come to be widely held, and has prompted the inclusion of egalitarian measures in many political programmes. This work uses the methods of reasoned history and comparative statistics to arrive at an assessment of egalitarianism. After reviewing the outlooks of the ancient and medieval worlds, it traces the rise of egalitarianism from the Renaissance and Reformation onwards.A complementary approach is provided by a wide survey of actual distributions of income and wealth: what is known of them in the past, what form they take in contemporary societies, and the economic processes that generate them. These comprehensive studies lead to an inquiry into the authority of equality as a principle of social philosophy, and the practicability of egalitarian policy.

First published in book form in 1981, this collection of essays originally written between 1955 and 1966 contains ground-breaking research and analysis on the study of wages and prices across seven centuries, with particular reference to builder’s wage rates and the price of a bundle of the commodities on which these wages might be spent. These seminal contributions to the economics of labour and economic growth did much to fuel the debate surrounding the problems of inflation, stability and changes in the purchasing power of money upon the book’s initial publication. These concerns are every bit as relevant in today’s post credit-crunch society and this reissue will be welcomed by all students of economic history and labour economics.