Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

“There is still another, darker way of judging what goes on when elites put themselves in the vanguard of social change: that it not only fails to make things better, but also serves to keep things as they are.”

Giridharadas opens his book with a Prologue that wastes no time in getting to the heart of his critique of elites’ control of initiatives for social change. By noting the “darker way” that underlies elites’ campaigns, he suggests that things may not be as they appear. This implies the opportunity for his book to shed light on this nefarious “charade,” as the book’s subtitle refers to it.

“Trump is at once an exposer, an exploiter, and an embodiment of the cult of elite-led social change.”

Throughout his book, Giridharadas takes a decidedly progressive standpoint, supporting ideas like fighting inequality, government regulation of business, and democratically grounded programs to treat socioeconomic issues. However, he’s also careful to avoid partisan thinking. In the Prologue, he emphasizes that Donald Trump successfully capitalized on populist sentiments that reflected non-elites’ resentment at the increasing wealth gap and its resultant effects. Giridharadas neither blames Trump alone for the elite “charade” of social nor ignores how many liberals have contributed to this charade. Instead, he sees the situation as much more complicated.

“Accountancy, medicine, education, espionage, and seafaring all have their own tools and modes of analysis, but none of those approaches was widely promoted as the solution to virtually everything else.”

Winners Take All assembles a variety of evidence to support its argument, including statistics, citations from experts, and case studies of individuals inside and outside MarketWorld. In addition, Giridharadas uses plain-language reasoning to emphatically convince readers of his argument.