Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

Anand Giridharadas’s 2018 nonfiction book Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is an exposé of the practices by which wealthy, elite individuals from the world of business have taken charge of efforts to improve the well-being of non-elites. The book’s fundamental argument is that these practices are often self-serving and that instead of helping the less fortunate, they uphold and even increase the wealth, power, and status of elites. Giridharadas, a journalist, reveals the range of individuals connected to the elite world, whose stories provide various vantage points to critique the “charade” of elite-driven change.

Other work by this author includes the book, The True American.

This guide uses the 2018 Alfred A. Knopf edition of Winners Take All.

Summary

In the Prologue, Giridharadas summarizes the book’s main argument: that elite-led efforts to promote social change are used to uphold the status quo and to increase elites’ gains. He depicts this critique against the backdrop of data showing that despite the elites’ supposed good works, inequality is rampant in the US, wages for the average person have stagnated, and the wealth gap between the top 10% of individuals and the remaining 90% is wider than ever.