Back to the neo-feudal future

The fundamental error of Marxism is not its understanding of capitalism – this was spot on – but its understanding of history, which was borrowed from Hegel.  In this understanding history is viewed as a more or less linear progress, i.e. ‘higher’, more ‘advanced’ stages following the ‘lower’, more ’primitive’ ones.  This conception of linearity is well embedded in the Western thought, from Aristotle, to Thomas Aquinas, to Hegel, to Marx, and to Teilhard de Chardin, but I am digressing.  The fundamental error in this linear conception of history is conflating changes in technology with those in human relations: since changes in technology are more or less linear, so must be the changes in human relations. 

This Western conception of history, however, is not the only one possible.  An alternative conception, embedded in the Eastern thought, is cyclical.  This cyclical conception is more appropriate for understanding human relations.  Unlike technology, human relations move in cycles, or rather oscillate between two “yin and yang” – like states: concentration and diffusion of power.  Changes in technology often undermine the concentrated power, starting the diffusion semi-cycle, but at some point they enable the concentration of power, triggering the concentration of power semi-cycle. 

Industrial revolution undermined the power concentrated in the hands of landed nobility and diffused it among the nascent bourgeoisie.  Marx observed the advanced waning stage of this concentration of power semi-cycle and, interpreting it within the linear conception of history prevalent in the Western thought, he concluded that this tendency will continue on a more or less straight line leading to the total diffusion of power among the working class. 

Had Marx been born Indian or Chinese, however, he might have applied a cyclical conception of history, and view the 19^th century capitalism as a power diffusion semi-cycle, followed by the power concentration semi-cycle.  Karl Polanyi adopted such a cyclical understanding of history, but again I am digressing.  This cyclical interpretation, in my opinion, would be more accurate than the linear one.  The nadir of power concentration occurred circa 1960s-1970s with the peak of the welfare state in the West and decolonization of the Global South.  This nadir was followed by the waxing stage of power concentration, triggered by advances in information technology and “neoliberalism” in social relations that followed.  These technological advances simply provided a tool for the elites to concentrate power in their own hands. 

We still seem to be in this waxing stage of power concentration.  That is to say, we are moving back, so to speak, to an earlier stage in human history when power was even more concentrated.  Alas, “neoliberalism” is a misnomer.  We are not going back to the “liberal” stage of development, in which nascent industrialists and merchants challenged the concentrated power of the nobility.  At least not yet.  We are heading toward the “feudal” stage in which the power was concentrated in the hand of the nobility and their vassals, so the proper term if not “neoliberalism” but “neofeudalism.” 

Stated differently, we are approaching a stage in which the main social division is not that between public and private, or this or that ethnicity, but between the small group of nobility that, like their medieval predecessors, combine both public and private spheres in their own personae, a somewhat larger group of their vassals, such as the military, the police, the academia, and the media, who are instrumental in projecting the power of the nobility, and a vast number peons that have little power, little wealth, and few if any rights.  This is the foreseeable future of the “new economy” and its looks pretty much like the old dark ages.

If the cyclical conception of history is right, this zenith of concentrated oligarchic power will not last forever.  Given the fast pace of technological changes, it will end sooner rather than latter, triggered by some material change rendering the information technology increasingly useless in maintaining the concentrated power.  It could be a new technology, an environmental catastrophe, a global war, or something totally unforeseen.  But one thing is almost certain – it will get worse before it starts getting better.  We will see even greater concentration of power, before we see its diffusion.  The only relevant question, in my mind, is not whether this happens, but how fast.  Marx hoped for a radical change during his life time.  It is not unrealistic to hope for the same today, especially that the pace of technological change seems considerably faster today than during Marx’s life time.