Communism or Neo-Feudalism?

ABSTRACT

This lecture looks at the neo-feudalizing tendencies in contemporary capitalism. Expropriation, domination, and force have intensified to such an extent that it no longer makes sense to posit free and equal actors meeting in the labor market even as a governing fiction. Rent and debt feature as or more heavily in accumulation than profit, and work increasingly exceeds the wage relation. The alternative to neo-feudalism is communism.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Richard Westra, Periodizing Capitalism and Capitalist Extinction (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 221.

² Ibid.

³ Ellen Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords (London, UK: Verso, 2008), p. 166.

⁴ Chris Wickam, “The ‘Feudal Revolution’ and the Origins of Italian City Communes,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 24 (2014), pp. 29–55.

⁵ Manuel Perez-Rocha and Jen Moore, “Mining Companies Use Excessive Legal Powers to Gamble With Latin American Lives,” Truthout (May 14, 2019), available online at: https://truthout.org/articles/mining-companies-use-excessive-legal-powers-to-gamble-with-latin-american-lives/.

⁶ Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment without Crime (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2018), p. 133.

⁷ Ibid.,134.

⁸ George C. Comninel, “English Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism,” Journal of Peasant Studies 27:4 (2000), p. 14.

⁹ Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords, p. 168.

¹⁰ Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism (London, UK: Verso, [1974] 2013), p. 183. Anderson is quoting Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3.

¹¹ Evgeny Morozov, “Tech Titans are Busy Privatizing Our Data,” Guardian (April 24, 2016), available online at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/24/the-new-feudalism-silicon-valley-overlords-advertising-necessary-evil.

¹² Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2017), p. 43.

¹³ Ibid., 43–44.

¹⁴ Ibid., 45.

¹⁵ Ibid., 76.

¹⁶ Brett Christophers, The New Enclosures (London, UK: Verso, 2018), p. 329.

¹⁷ Ibid., 4.

¹⁸ Capital, Vol. 3, p. 754.

¹⁹ Westra, Periodizing Capital and Capitalist Extinction, p. 239.

²⁰ Meiksins Wood, Citizens to Lords, p. 172.

²¹ Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, p. 146.

²² Emily Guendelsberger, On the Clock (New York, NY: Little Brown and Company, 2019), p. 166.

²³ Philip G. Cerny, “Neomedievalism, Civil War and the New Security Dilemma: Globalisation as Durable Disorder,” Civil Wars 1:1 (1998), p. 45.

²⁴ Ibid., 55.

²⁵ I owe this point to papers given by Keti Chukhrov and Maria Chehonadskih at the 2019 meeting of the Radical Critical Theory Circle in Nisyros, Greece.

²⁶ See Klint Finley, “Geeks for Monarchy: The Rise of the Neoreactionaries,” Tech Crunch (November 23, 2013), available online at: https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/; and Peter Thiel, “The Education of a Liberation,” Cato Unbound (April 13, 2009), available online at: https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian. I am indebted to Tomislav Medak for bringing Thiel’s piece and position to my attention.

²⁷ Keith A. Spencer, “Revenge of the Nerd-kings: Why Some in Silicon Valley are Advocating for Monarchy,” Salon (April 13, 2019), available online at: https://www.salon.com/2019/04/13/why-some-in-silicon-valley-are-advocating-for-monarchy.

²⁸ Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 99−100.

²⁹ Guendelsberger, On the Clock, p. 125.

³⁰ Derek Thompson, “Why Nerds and Nurses are Taking Over the US Economy,” Atlantic (October 26, 2017), available online at: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/the-future-of-jobs-polarized-unequal-and-health-care/543915/.

³¹ Karen Orren, Belated Feudalism (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 40–41.

³² Ibid., 74.

³³ Robin, The Reactionary Mind, p. 15.

³⁴ See also Vladimir Shlapentokh and Joshua Woods, Feudal America: Elements of the Middle Ages in Contemporary Society (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011). Shlapentokh and Woods argue for a segmented approach to political analysis. They combine three models – liberal capitalism, feudalism, and authoritarianism – and use this combination to consider complex organizations as well as different states and societies.

³⁵ Andrew Gunder Frank, “Not Feudalism, Capitalism,” Monthly Review (December 1963), p. 470.

³⁶ bne IntelliNews, “Russian Watchdog Warns State’s Role in Economy is Growing,” The Moscow Times (May 6, 2019), available online at: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/05/06/russian-watchdog-warns-states-role-in-economy-is-growing-a65497.

³⁷ Joel Kotkin, The New Class Conflict (Candor, NY: Telos Press, 2014), p. 11.

³⁸ Ibid.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jodi Dean

Jodi Dean is the author of nine books, most recently Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging (Verso 2019).