Wright's work is an attempt to return to Hegel and Marx's progressive theory of history by drawing upon a dissident school of cultural anthropology and the work of evolutionary biologists, like Richard Dawkins, who have tried to extend the principles of natural selection to history. In a zero-sum game, one contestant can only succeed on the basis of another's failure. Sometimes, the impetus for such change has been war itself, which forces people to learn cooperation for their own defense. Sometimes, the impetus is the struggle for economic survival and betterment through the collective application of tools and technology. Wright's dialectic, like Marx's, pivots on an irony.
Blind struggle leads finally to enlightenment and freedom.
But where Marx and Spencer emphasized progress through the subjugation of inferior by superior peoples, Wright emphasizes the revolutionary impact of writing and the printing press on the acceleration of history and the spread of interdependence. The Internet is merely the latest chapter in this process. Wright's theory of history leads him to embrace the growing globalization of economy, which he sees not only as a disincentive to war, but an incentive to greater moral understanding. Ancient Athens is often pictured as a zenith of civilization, but the Greeks of Pericles and Sophocles saw non-Greeks as being less than human and didn't hesitate to enslave or indiscriminately slaughter foreigners. The spread of global commerce brings a growing recognition of a common humanity.