The distribution of wealth in a society of individual private owners can be studied under a very general set of premises, material and social, using the approach of statistical physics. While technically advanced works invoke large-number canonical approximations to support claims about the distribution of wealth or income in modern capitalist societies, a less formal but more general yet still rigorous argument can establish a major result, accessible to readers with no advanced training in mathematics, physics, or statistics. Two contradictory forces shape up wealth distribution: an increasing stock of wealth, which leads to a fall in the relative inequality of wealth distribution, and an expanding population, which increases it. Development of the forces of production, as embodied in a rising ratio of wealth to population, thus works against the capitalist production relations that promote wealth inequality.
BaumolWilliam J.1993. “Health Care, Education and the Cost Disease: A Looming Crisis for Public Choice.” Pp. 17–28 in The Next Twenty-Five Years of Public Choice. New York: Springer.
2.
BothmaJacobus du P., and CliveWalker. 2013. Larger Carnivores of the African Savannas. New York: Springer.
3.
CockshottPaul. 2018. “Thermodynamics of Money and Capital: Explaining Materialism.” YouTube video, 14:37, July 11, https://youtu.be/BQrEEdy_uwM
4.
CottrellAllin F., CockshottPaul, MichaelsonGregory John, WrightIan P., and VictorYakovenko. 2009. Classical Econophysics. New York: Routledge.
5.
DragulescuAdrian, and YakovenkoVictor M.2000. “Statistical Mechanics of Money.” The European Physical Journal B - Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 17:4, 723–729.
6.
DragulescuAdrian, and YakovenkoVictor M.2001a. “Exponential and Power-Law Probability Distributions of Wealth and Income in the United Kingdom and the United States.” Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 299:1–2, 213–221.
7.
DragulescuAdrian, and YakovenkoVictor M.2001b. “Evidence for the Exponential Distribution of Income in the USA.” The European Physical Journal B - Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, 20:4, 585–589.
8.
DragulescuAdrian, and YakovenkoVictor M.2002. “Statistical Mechanics of Money, Income, and Wealth: A Short Survey.” arXiv preprintcond-mat/0211175
EngelsFrederick. 2010 (1876). Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science. Pp. 5–309 in MarxKarl and FrederickEngels, Collected Works, Volume 25. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
11.
FellerWillliam. 2008. An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications. Third edition. Volume 1. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.
12.
FergusonThomas S.2017. A Course in Large Sample Theory. New York: Chapman & Hall.
13.
Landau LevDavidovich, and LifshitzEvgenii M.1968. “Statistical Physics.” In Course of Theoretical Physics, Volume 5. Oxford, England: Pergamon Press.
14.
LeninVladimir I.1964a (1894). “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats.” Pp. 129–332 in Collected Works, Volume 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
15.
LeninVladimir I.1964b (1896-1899). The Development of Capitalism in Russia. Pp. 21–608 in Collected Works, 4th edition, Volume 3. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
16.
LipschutzSeymour, and LipsonMarc Lars. 2000. Probability. Third edition. Schaum's Outline Series.New York: McGraw-Hill.
17.
MarxKarl. 2010a (1859). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Pp. 257–417 in MarxKarl and FrederickEngels, Collected Works, Volume 29. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
18.
MarxKarl. 2010b (1867). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy.VolumeI. Pp. 2–761 in MarxKarl and FrederickEngels, Collected Works, Volume 35. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
19.
MarxKarl, and FriedrichEngels. 2010a (1845-1847). The German Ideology. Pp. 19–581 in MarxKarl and FrederickEngels, Collected Works, Volume 5. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
20.
MarxKarl, and FriedrichEngels. 2010b (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party. Pp. 477–519 in MarxKarl and FrederickEngels, Collected Works, Volume 29. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
21.
PathriaR. K., and PaulD. Beale. 2011. Statistical Mechanics. Third edition. New York: Elsevier.
22.
SamuelsonPaul A.1954. “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure.” Review of Economics and Statistics, 36:4, 387–389.
23.
SamuelsonPaul A.1955. “Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure.” Review of Economics and Statistics, 37:4, 350–356.
24.
SchroederDaniel V.1999. An Introduction to Thermal Physics. Boston, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley.
25.
SilvaA. Christian, and YakovenkoVictor M.2004. “Temporal Evolution of the ‘Thermal’ and ‘Superthermal’ Income Classes in the USA During 1983-2001.”EPL (Europhysics Letters), 69:2, 304–310.
26.
SpiegelMurray R., SchillerJohn J., and SrinivasanR. Alu. 2013. Probability and Statistics. Fourth edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
27.
TiplerPaul A., and RalphLlewellyn. 2003. Modern Physics. New York: Macmillan.
28.
YakovenkoVictor M., and RosserJ. BarkleyJr.2009. “Colloquium: Statistical Mechanics of Money, Wealth, and Income.” Reviews of Modern Physics, 81:4, 1703–1725.
29.
YakovenkoVictor M., and SilvaA. Christian. 2005. “Two-Class Structure of Income Distribution in the USA: Exponential Bulk and Power-Law Tail.” Pp. 15–34 in ChatterjeeA., YarlagaddaS., and ChakrabartiB. K., eds., Econophysics of Wealth Distributions. New Economic Windows. Milano, Italy: Springer.
