47 pages • 1 hour read
Fareed ZakariaAge of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Revolutions Present”
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Globalization in Overdrive—Economics”
Looking beyond the revolutions of the past, Part Two examines the issues of economics, technology, and community identity from a global perspective. Starting at the end of the 19th century, rapid economic growth and industrial advances made some forms of employment obsolete. The global economic depression of the late 19th century created hardship for the working class, especially farmers, even though advances in transportation and communication were expanding opportunities for other segments of the population. Zakaria note that “the winners of this struggle tended to be the conservative nationalists who often addressed domestic unrest by unifying or distracting people with nationalism and imperialism” (177).
On the international front, America and the leading nations of Europe engaged in a competitive land grab overseas while ignoring the prospect of cooperation. These policies resulted in one military crisis after another that eventually culminated in World War I. The aftermath of the war fostered an attitude of economic protectionism that raised tariffs across the board and dried up international trading. Both Germany and Japan were vulnerable to being shut out of the marketplace, making invasion a viable way of acquiring goods that could no longer be accessed through trade. Eventually, “the German and Japanese ideologies of economic imperialism and cultural, national, and racial superiority pushed the world into total war once again” (180).
When the Allied forces won World War II, this victory spelled the end of a cycle of “nationalism, protectionism, and militarism” (180). In its place, America promoted a policy of liberalism that included government intervention rather than laissez-faire capitalism. This method resulted in a period of prosperity that lasted for decades. However, the natural cycle of growth and decay was about to affect American manufacturing. Even though China was blamed for the loss of factory jobs in the United States, Zakaria says, “The China shock would be better described as the ‘globalization shock.’ Had China not existed, most of the jobs lost to it would have been lost anyway, to machines and a combination of other low-wage countries” (195).
Those hardest hit were blue-collar white males in the Rust Belt, who felt a loss of status as their work disappeared. These same men would eventually become Donald Trump’s base. A similar trend was happening in other countries, where manufacturing job loss was just as keenly felt. It was an opportunity for populist politicians to point longingly to an idealized past and “peddle in forward-looking nostalgia—contrasting a bleak present with what they consider the good old days” (200-201). When widespread economic globalization combined with limited government oversight, the American mortgage crisis of 2008 shook the faith of the public and led to another cycle of retrenchment, giving rise to “various strains of populism” because many people “lost faith in the managers of globalization” (198).
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Information Unbound—Technology”
Zakaria contends that the information age represents a new kind of revolution that is rife with “disruption, upheaval, and dissent,” and he also asserts that “[m]any of the tensions of our times [...] are at least partly a result of these technological transformations” (203-04). For this reason, populism has sprung up at a time when the average person feels unprepared to deal with the speed of technological change. Furthermore, blue-collar workers are the most vulnerable to being replaced by technology, and as a result, Donald Trump emerged as a populist champion because he tapped into the anxiety of this group of voters while simultaneously managing to manipulate technology to his advantage. The author says of Trump:
He was able to speak directly to his followers and dominate the ever-shortening news cycle. And his simplistic policy prescriptions [...] promised a kind of instant gratification at no cost, something people have come to expect in the internet era (210).
While the internet allows for an immediate connection between the viewer and the rest of the world, it also isolates the individual. Zakaria is quick to point out that real civic engagement has eroded even as virtual engagement has accelerated. The author contends that without the touchstone of reality, it becomes easy to get lost on the internet within an enclave of like-minded individuals whose credibility cannot be easily verified. Zakaria classifies this phenomenon as “the tyranny of a passionate minority—small groups of online zealots who seek to control discourse” (222).
Likewise, the capacity for AI to create “deep fakes” allows the implausible to take the place of the credible in virtual communities. People who are baffled by rapid change seek out those who can explain the perplexing nature of reality in the post-modern world. Unfortunately, such explanations do not always reflect reality; instead, false reports are designed to feed existing suspicions and gain followers.
Because the information age is unprecedented, its future direction is difficult to predict. The exponential speed at which new technology develops makes it impossible to tell whether this latest revolution is benign in its influence or just the opposite. As Zakaria says, “The information revolution has radically reshaped the world, and further progress, on a potentially larger scale, will be scary” (232-233).
Part 2, Chapters 6-7 Analysis
Part One of Age of Revolutions is organized in such a way that it examines revolutions occurring in various nations, and Zakaria addresses the nuances of each in chronological order, using the triple lens of economics, innovation, and community identity. However, in the second part of the book, the author veers away from this pattern and examines contemporary revolutions while simultaneously accounting for the global nature of these widespread changes, which transcends the experience of individual nations. The author therefore suggests that humanity as a whole has now entered a world in which everyone is impacted by The Paradigm Shift of Globalization. Zakaria’s examination of the nature of the contemporary world now focuses on the matrices that contributed to revolutions in the past, and he covers the areas of economics, innovation, and community identity in separate chapters because each aspect of society constitutes a revolution in itself.
To further explore the paradigm shift of globalization, this segment of the book begins with an analysis of how national economies merged into a global economy, beginning at the point when the American Industrial Revolution ended in the late 19th century. During this period, national interest was still perceived as being more important than free trade, and European and American imperialism emphasized competition over cooperation. As the author states, “This return to the logic of zero-sum mercantilism, colonial expansion, and shifting balances of power caused crisis after crisis [and] plunged Europe into all-out war” (178). Throughout the book, the author stresses the importance of national policy that takes a broader approach rather than the narrow view of merely protecting national interests.
He implies that this lack of concern for the plight of a nation’s competitors eventually turns those competitors into outright enemies who view “conquest” as “profitable” (180). Significantly, both Germany and Japan were suffering shortages in the aftermath of World War I, and their leaders saw warfare as the only viable alternative. It wasn’t until the end of World War II that the great powers began to recognize the need for cooperation to avoid future conflict, and Zakaria champions President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as the “architect of this system,” the one who “envisioned an order [that was] rooted in great-power politics yet supportive of open markets, cooperation, and peace” (181). This system acts as a deterrent to future aggression, for although China and America are competitors, they are also participants in a global economy of interdependence.
Zakaria invokes a range of concrete examples to advance the idea that the digital revolution did even more than the economic revolution to bind individuals and nations together, claiming that the internet “has dramatically expanded access to information [and] and making it easier for ideas of all kinds, good and bad, to spread” (207-208). He therefore puts the digital age in the context of The Effects of Beneficial Versus Detrimental Revolutions, acknowledging that technology is also perceived as an even bigger threat to blue-collar jobs than outsourcing jobs to other countries. In support of this assertion, he cites the fact that “ordinary” skills are being replaced by “computers, robots, and other digital technologies [that] are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate” (217). Aside from the fact that semi-skilled workers may find themselves replaced by robots, people with limited education are far more likely to become bewildered by the complexities of the computer age. As Zakaria contends, their incomprehension and anxiety create the perfect environment for a populist leader like Donald Trump to capture their attention, and the author critiques the former president by stating:
His simplistic policy prescriptions—solve illegal immigration by building a wall (and making Mexico pay for it), restore American manufacturing by imposing tariffs (that other countries would supposedly pay for)—promised a kind of instant gratification at no cost (210).
Zakaria therefore contends that because Trump framed himself as the champion of the common person, he offered reassurance that these individuals would not be trampled by the march of progress. The author implies that another unfortunate by-product of the globalization of information is the speed with which false narratives can make their way around the planet, and he blames “the tyranny of a passionate minority” such as “online zealots and conspiracy theorists” (222) whose activities hijack dominant narratives, to the detriment of all. Thus, while Zakaria concedes that economic globalization confers great benefits, he also suggests that the free flow of information may have a distinct downside, especially when no one fact-checks the validity of the information being provided. Zakaria offers no easy answers to this dilemma, simply a dire prediction: “The information revolution has radically reshaped the world, and further progress, on a potentially larger scale, will be scary” (232-233).
