About the author
Serbian-American economist (b. 1953), a former lead economist at the World Bank and professor at the City University of New York, and one of the world's foremost scholars of income inequality. His work on the global distribution of income (the 'elephant curve') and on the varieties of capitalism has shaped contemporary debate on globalization.
Synopsis
Milanović contends that capitalism is now the sole global system but is split between Western liberal-meritocratic capitalism — productive but generating self-perpetuating elites — and Asian political capitalism, which delivers growth under an efficient, corruptible state without the rule of law. He examines globalization, migration, and the commodification of private life, and weighs the moral and political costs of each model's path.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workMilanović argues that capitalism has triumphed globally but now exists in two rival forms — the liberal-meritocratic capitalism of the West and the state-led political capitalism of China — each with its own logic of inequality and power.
By distinguishing two victorious capitalisms rather than one, Milanović reframes the post–Cold War debate: the question is no longer capitalism versus socialism but which capitalism — and whether prosperity now comes bundled with either entrenched elites or authoritarian rule.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with defenders of liberal-democratic capitalism who deny that the authoritarian model is stable or appealing, and with socialists who insist a genuine alternative to capitalism remains both necessary and possible.
Reading note
Accessible and data-informed. Read it as the contemporary companion to Piketty on inequality and to Fukuyama and Huntington on the post–Cold War order, for a sober look at capitalism's two faces.
Best paired with
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century; Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man.