Progress Vs Parasites: A Brief History of the Conflict that's Shaped our World

Douglas Carswell

jun 2019 · Bloomsbury Publishing

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The change in our ancestors' behaviour was barely perceptible at first. Only a few clues in the archaeological record – sea shells, ochre and stone tools exchanged over long distances – hint at what was to come. Today, a network of interdependence and trade spans the planet – lifting most of our species out of the grinding poverty of the past.

But for much of history this engine of human progress stalled, with societies rigged in the interests of small parasitic elites. From the Greeks and Romans in antiquity, to China, India and Europe in the Middle Ages, the history of the world can be written as the constant struggle between the productive and the parasitic.

Progress Vs Parasites charts this struggle. States rise and empires fall as the balance between the two shifts. It is the idea of freedom, Carswell argues, that ultimately allows the productive to escape the parasitic – and thus decides whether a society flourishes or flounders.

A robust defence of classical liberalism, Progress Vs Parasites shows that the greatest threat to human progress today – as it has been in every age – is the idea that human affairs need to be ordered by top down design.

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Douglas Carswell grew up in Uganda. Elected to Parliament four times, for two different parties, he ended up as an independent MP. He stood down from Parliament in 2017, having accomplished what he went into politics to achieve. He is the author of The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain (with Daniel Hannan) and The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy.