Slouching Towards Utopia Audiobook By J. Bradford DeLong cover art

Slouching Towards Utopia

An Economic History of the Twentieth Century

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Slouching Towards Utopia

By: J. Bradford DeLong
Narrated by: Allan Aquino
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From one of the world’s leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied

Before 1870, humanity lived in dire poverty, with a slow crawl of invention offset by a growing population. Then came a great shift: invention sprinted forward, doubling our technological capabilities each generation and utterly transforming the economy again and again. Our ancestors would have presumed we would have used such powers to build utopia. But it was not so. When 1870-2010 ended, the world instead saw global warming; economic depression, uncertainty, and inequality; and broad rejection of the status quo.

Economist Brad DeLong's Slouching Towards Utopia tells the story of how this unprecedented explosion of material wealth occurred, how it transformed the globe, and why it failed to deliver us to utopia. Of remarkable breadth and ambition, it reveals the last century to have been less a march of progress than a slouch in the right direction.

©2022 J. Bradford DeLong (P)2022 Basic Books Americas Economic History Economics Macroeconomics United States Socialism Taxation Thought-Provoking Africa Economic Inequality War United Kingdom US Economy Money Capitalism

Critic reviews

“Brad DeLong learnedly and grippingly tells the story of how all the economic growth since 1870 has created a global economy that today satisfies no one’s ideas of fairness. The long journey toward economic justice and more equal rights and opportunities for all shall and will continue.”—Thomas Piketty, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“What a joy to finally have Brad DeLong’s masterful interpretation of twentieth-century economic history down on paper. Slouching Towards Utopia is engaging, important, and awe-inspiring in its breadth and creativity.”—Christina Romer, University of California, Berkeley

“History provides the only data we have for charting a course forward in these turbulent times. I have not seen a more revealing and illuminating book about economics and what it means in a very long time. Slouching Towards Utopia should be required reading for anybody who cares about the future of the global system, and that should be everyone.”—Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University
Comprehensive Economic History • Well-researched Narrative • Persuasive Analysis • Accessible Explanations
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Some interesting facts along the way but mostly a rambling endorsement of social democracy incl the New Deal (didn’t go far enough), western European style redistribution (no mention of growth), and even China’s artificial stimulus to maintain full employment during the Great Recession. Praising Polanyi and Keynes, everyone else (Mill, Hayek, Murray, Sowell, Gilder) is “right wing” to DeLong.

Long, sweeping anti-capitalism opinion piece without sourcing or a coherent structure

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If you already follow Brad DeLong’s work, you have some idea of what you’re getting into. If you don’t, know that he is a quirky and original thinker and a bit of an eccentric. Not easy to pin down intellectually, though solidly a liberal (in both senses of the term). The book is good as history, though not great. Where it excels is in conveying the author’s singular way of organizing vast quantities of information. DeLong has a handful of heuristics he uses to interpret the world, and this book is largely an exercise in self consciously deploying those heuristics at world historical scale. It certainly has an effect on the way I think about pre-modern societies and subsistence level poverty, and what it meant for humanity to escape “the Malthusian trap.”

The weakest points — and some of the strongest points — occur during DeLong’s occasional tangents. Sometimes you get wonderful little biographical anecdotes of historical figures that delight and enlighten. Other times you get excessively detailed extensive descriptions of battlefield strategy that have seemingly no connection to the big (economic) ideas that undergird the book. These flaws are excusable though. This will probably be regarded as a classic in decades to come.

Take a tour of Brad DeLong’s mind palace

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It’s well known that one of the central theses in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom is that any individual who seeks the economic security by yielding the liberty will in the end lose both. If we deem the government is the entity to provide such economic security, the redistribution of social wealth is a must. The question is then if the government is capable of such endeavor. Hayek says No. Hayek’s critics, one of such is Bradford DeLong who, in his well-researched and written book Slouching Towards Utopia, points out that a social order lack of fair and just economic equality is an order not sustainable. While this is not the central thesis of his book, DeLong, on the other hand, tends to emphasize the importance of government policies in moderating the inequalities created by capitalism. He would likely argue that wealth redistribution, when done fairly and just, can prevent the destabilizing effects of extreme inequality without leading to the totalitarian outcomes Hayek feared. All good in theory. Consider the following examples I know personally. A full time college student who has a full academic course load works as EMT technician and doctor’s scribe part time was denied of medical insurance assistance from the state of California. Yet, a family illegally overstaying the tourist visas receives free medical care and food stamps while making cash income running small business without paying any income tax. Would any rational soul believe this a fair and just redistribution of social wealth? Another example, a single mother has to stay home to take care of her 2 year old daughter. With no income, she receives considerable amount of money from New York state. However, once she starts working, the state ceases the financial assistance nor offers child-care assistance. The single mother is then forced to quit the work and returns to a welfare single mother again. One can not help to ask how fair and just is the redistribution by the government, and how effective.
On the other hand, let’s see how the market resolves issues. I recalled a prolonged strike at Caterpillar’s facility at York, PA, where I lived for a number of years. As the conflict was not resolved for three years, the company eventually closed down the factory. It was a loss for both parties. No external invention, and the market took care of it. A recent example, successful one, of a labor-company conflict that was resolved by the market itself is the resolution of the 2023 conflict between the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the major Hollywood studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The market dynamics here were critical—both sides were motivated by the economic reality that the strike was costing the industry billions in lost production and wages. The resolution came not through legal compulsion but through negotiation shaped by the market's need for content creation and the writers' bargaining power, bolstered by their ability to disrupt the production pipeline. Both labor and management recognized the mutual benefit of coming to terms in a competitive media landscape. This is a good example of how market forces—such as the economic need for skilled labor and the financial cost of the strike—can lead to conflict resolution without external interventions.
The age-old conundrum of freedom versus order, both in economic and political terms, has been challenging elite politicians, economists, and philosophers, as well as layman like you and me, from the moment homo sapiens walked out of the caves. On the one end of the spectrum is the totalism, and the other anarchism. I have no answers. Humans may never have a definitive answer. But I am a firm believer of humanisms. We will progress no matter how incrementally and slowly, as the book title says, “Slouching”.

Order and Freedom, it's economic!

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First time author for me. Since the author is a professor it's no surprise this book reads like a textbook. The takes a look at the world from 1870 to 2010 and ties together all the different things going on in the world and points out why the world can hardly get out of its own way in making live better for the multitudes, which is his definition of utopia.

The author believes and communicates that the challenge of the world, countries, leaders, economics, etc goal should be to make the world a livable place for all, enough food, shelter and opportunity to that everyone has a decent life. He pulls together many of the historical happenings of this time and writes how it all moves forward for the most part but with many steps backwards along the way.

what is utopia

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This is the best book about the 20th century political economy I have ever read, or listened to. It is complete, insightful, and ties things together in a way I had not considered before.

Excellent

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Good not great but that is relative to ones existing knowledge going into
Recommend it for sure

Advanced high school economics and history

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author uses way too many generalizations to be useful. uses oversimplified history to support thesis.

oversimplified

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The book delivers a well connected history with supporting facts and interpretation. The Narrator had the perfect delivery. The assessment of the world economic path is listenable for anyone regardless of their knowledge of economic theory.

Well done

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Superbly well-informed grand narrative that tackles some big questions, like why is the global south poorer than the global north, what are the sources of economic growth, why did so much prosperity emerge after 1870 and why did the world throw so much of it away in the world wars? What’s the best way to manage a modern economy? And many more. His approach is broadly center left, but he grinds no axes and hews to no political line. He’s very critical of both Reagan’s neoliberalism and Obama’s response to the 2008 crisis, for example. I guess Keynes is his hero. But he gives every major school of thought it’s due. He believes not in ideology or historical necessity but in contingency and the influence of key thinkers and decision makers. An exciting story that makes you hope our leaders will read it and can figure out the keys to general prosperity in the future.

The big picture of political economy expertly drawn

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The books does a fantastic job taking the reader through the economic (and political) evolution of how we got here with an objective and analytical perspective.

Great economic review of where we are …

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