Guido Alfani is a professor of economic history at Bocconi University, Milan. He is the author of Calamities and the Economy in Renaissance Italy: The Grand Tour of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the coauthor of The Lion’s Share: Inequality and the Rise of the Fiscal State in Preindustrial Europe.
As far back as Aristotle, Western thinkers have been deeply critical of the power that the wealthy hold over society. Historian Guido Alfani sat down with Jacobin to discuss the long history of opposition to elite power in Western politics and religion.