Merchant Soldier Sage

Product Description

From historian David Priestland Merchant Soldier Sage" is a remarkable book that proposes a radical new approach to how we see our world & who runs it in the vein of Francis Fukuyamas " The End of History". We live in an age ruled by merchants. Competition flexibility & profit are still the common currency even at a time when Western countries have been driven off a cliff by these very values. But will it always be this way? David Priestland argues for the predominance in any society of one of three broad value systems
- that of the merchant (commercial & competitive); the soldier (aristocratic & militaristic); & the sage (bureaucratic or creative). These castes struggle alongside the worker (egalitarian & artisanal) for power & when they achieve supremacy they can have such a strong hold over us that it is almost impossible to imagine life outside their grip. & yet there does come a point of drastic change usually because one caste becomes too dominant. The result is economic crisis war or revolution & eventually a new caste takes over. Priestland argues we are now in the midst of a period with all the classic signs of imminent change. As the history of the last century shows there is good reason to be fearful of the forces that this failure may unleash. " Merchant Soldier Sage" is both a masterful dissection of our current predicament & a brilliant piece of history. The world will not look the same again. Reviews: " We have here a gripping argument-led history efforlessly moving between New York Tokyo & Berlin from the Reformation to the 2008 economic crisis.. .dazzling.. .here at last is a work that places the current crisis in a longer history of seismic shifts in the balance of social power". (Frank Trentman "BBC History Magazine"). " Concise but extremely ambitious.. .well worth pondering & reflecting on.. .among the many contributions to the dissection of our current predicament this is surely one of the most thought-provoking". (Sir Richard J Evans " Guardian"). " Stimulating... In illustrating these larger processes of caste conflict & caste collaboration the author offers crisp portraits of entrepreneurs economists & warriors... Sparkling prose &.. .arresting comparisons". (Ramachandra Guha " Financial Times"). About the author: David Priestland has studied Communism in all its forms for many years in both Oxford & Moscow State Universities. He is University Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford & a Fellow of St. Edmund Hall & the author of " Stalinism & the Politics of Mobilization". " The Red Flag" was shortlisted for the Longman/ History Today prize."