Branko Milanovic is one of the most authoritative commentators on global inequality, globalization, and capitalism. He’s written about these topics extensively in his books Capitalism, Alone and Visions of Inequality as well as The World Under Capitalism, an anthology of his popular blogs on these subjects.

The so-called Elephant Curve — the famous graph looking at global income distribution, which he produced together with Christoph Lakner in 2013 — is perhaps the best encapsulation of globalization’s achievements, such as an overall reduction in global inequality, as well as underlying woes, such as the rise of an unaccountable global elite.

In an interview for Jacobin, Bartolomeo Sala asked Milanovic about his new book, The Great Global Transformation. They spoke about how the phenomena long observed by Milanovic have led to the crumbling of the US-led global neoliberal order, which ruled since 1989. Looking forward, Milanovic sees not so much an opening for the Left as a shoring up of capitalism’s most destructive tendencies.