What would "modern day feudalism" look like?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I see “modern day feudalism” brought up in economic philosophical debate all the time: a vision of the world ending up with a very very small mega wealthy class, with everybody else being dirty poor. Sometimes the vision comes with actual feudalism (the poor working somehow to support the wealthy) or else the wealthy just being in gated communities guarded by heavily armed private police.

However, I personally have trouble imagining such a state in the modern world, if only because of how people make money these days (trying to imagine the Waltons without a majority to buy their goods or a stockbroker without a functioning stock market supported by consumers and individual investors is tough for me). That’s even ignoring how connected individuals and the world are today, in all senses.

So if the economic and political state of affairs were to conspire to bring such a thing about, what exactly would it look like? Do the people who fear this have any idea?

2

Mexico City, Manila, and a few other examples might be the working models.

A central enclave of immense wealth, surrounded by broader and broader rings of greater and greater poverty, the fringes of which are destitution of the lowest imaginable degree, with children scraping through the city dump in search of scraps of food.

I’ve seen this first-hand in Tijuana, and it is not something I would wish upon the most evil populace ever to have lived.

3

Actually, that brings up a good point: part of the reason that similar states are possible today is because of that interconnectedness I mentioned. The locals can all be dirt poor because the wealthy get their money internationally.

Though that does remind me of something I’ve always wondered: is it possible to set up an economy, either nationally or globally, that is ONLY supported by the wealthy? Because that seems to me the “ideal” condition under which what I’m asking about can happen on a worldwide scale.

4

Having rich people and poor people doesn’t make it feudalism. Feudalism is a relationship between rich and poor, in which the poor work for the rich and the rich provide the poor with security (at least in theory). The rich in Mexico City have *no *relationship with the poor; in fact, as far as the poor are concerned, I’d say that feudalism would have been a step up.

5

This is may be being overly literal, but the defining feature of feudalism is a class system that is legally enshrined, not necessarily one that is particularly unequal materially. When feudalism ended, serfs who had previously been tied to the land were unceremoniously booted and they generally did a lot worse (in a strictly material sense) having to compete as wage laborers. Material inequality became vastly higher into the early modern and industrial ages than it ever had been under feudalism.

In this literal sense, a modern equivalent to feudalism might be something similar to the situation that at least used to exist in Japan where you were pretty much expected to work at a single company your entire career. While you obviously weren’t legally obligated to stay, there was a strong social pressure to and finding a job at another company mid-career would be difficult. On the other hand, though, the company was also under strong social (and sometimes even legal) pressure not to lay anyone off, so both employee and employer expected to be tied to each other long term.

But, obviously, that’s not what people who are crying “modern day feudalism” mean. They are either speaking metaphorically or missed the day of history class where they explained what feudalism actually entailed.

6

Exactly. If there’s one good thing you can say about being a serf, it’s that at least it was guaranteed lifetime employment.

7

I agree. Also, I think you’re technically referring to *serfdom.

Feudalism*, as I understand it, is where the politico-economic system relies very heavily on personal loyalties, and land-grants from the power at the top (often a warlord) to his sycophants.

8

It could be argued that we already have a quasi-feudalism in the developed world. Millions of people live materially satisfying lives - food, housing, electronics - but do not own their homes or any part of their workplace. They are nevertheless relatively secure and provided for.

The “1%” which apparently owns much of the worlds wealth needs everyone else to calmly and happily work to keep generating further growth, which benefits both parties.

That is a dystopic scenario and I hope it isn’t true but then I have no idea how this apparent 1% function.

9

Cite? Serfs were farmers who generally continued farming after manumission (Who else was going to farm?), though they did have the right to pursue other opportunities.

Whether they prospered after manumission depended on the the terms; in some cases they were still rent-payers not much better off than before despite a change in “legal status”; in other cases they were allowed to buy the land they farmed.

10

In England during the Tudor era, and Scotland during the Stewart era, The wool industry made sheep pastures more lucrative than farm lands. So landlords turned their serfs into tenants, then evicted their tenants. British left-wingers have been complaining about it ever since.

11

As for modern-day feudalism, one thing people worry about is that the “old-boy” network may become more important than your education and skills. I am not convinced that that can happen. Forbes still has to print a new list every year, because the names change every year.

12

People “don’t own their homes”? Homeownership is a huge thing in America and many other places too, and is heavily encouraged by government and many other parts of society.

I’d agree that the situation of salarymen in Japan is closest to feudalism, since the defining characteristic of it IMO is a lack of opportunity and agency over one’s future.

13

I’d imagine modern-day feudalism would be something that would be more restricted to the middle/upper classes, as the working class/peasants would be more or less without the resources to move or change their lot.

But among the middle and upper classes, I’d think you’d end up with corporations being the feudal actors above a certain level rather than individuals, with two-sided contractual obligations replacing feudal oaths between companies and also between companies and individuals. Initially, these would be competitive contracts, but over time, they’d solidify into something more feudal with the larger companies limiting competition in the interest of controlling their “vassals” more, and with the vassal companies being interested in having a steady good-paying work.

So at the top, you’d have a small cadre of extremely powerful companies that subcontract out various functions to lesser companies, complete with restrictive contracts that require use of the parent company’s services/products, but with long-term guarantees, etc… So if OmniCorp decides they want to move into nuclear power, their vassal suppliers would be contractually bound to support them at advantageous terms and on their own nickel. In exchange, they’d have a guaranteed market for these nuclear power parts after making the capital investments to produce them. Basically contractually bound cartel type stuff.

Individual workers at these companies would below a certain level, be tied via employment contracts that would be similar- you do a good job for me for 20 years, and I’ll give you raises on this schedule, company housing, etc… and not lay you off.

Above a certain level, I sort of envision it as being sort of a mini-feudalism in its own right, in that these guys would be less bound to their immediate jobs, but still bound to the company. So if Bob upper-middle manager was raised to Bob jr. executive, Bob could still bring his people along with him, and even promote one of them to upper-middle manager, much like kings and feudal lords worked. To a greater or lesser degree, this is how it works today in many places.

14

Gated communities and guarded secure office buildings. Not all that different from some that exist today.

15

Good points. Feudalism was a two-way street. Peasants weren’t “on their own”, they had the protection of local nobility who would (or at least were socially, and sometimes legally, expected to) protect them in times of danger. In exchange, the peasants were expected to work for the noble, either by paying tribute to the noble (e.g. 1/3 of the peasant’s crops), or by spending X weeks out of the year directly working for the noble (e.g. in fields, as a household servant, in the noble’s army, whatever).

16

Wasn’t the point of feudalism not so much in the peasants vs. the local lord of the manor, but rather in the oaths of fealty and service (military and otherwise) obligations of the nobility, and their consequent enrichment by the King in land and the associated peasants to work it? That’s why the Magna Carta was such a big deal- it gave the nobles protections against the King’s unfettered power.

The peasants/serfs didn’t really count other than being there to work the land, and weren’t really even a defining component of feudalism.

17

If you enjoy comics, and would like a look at one writer’s take on this question in a near-future sci-fi dystopia, you could do worse than to check out Greg Rucka’s Lazarus. In brief, wealth has become ultra-concentrated into a number of families (who headed companies prior to this state of affairs). The familes have geographical control of various areas, and operate, for all intents and purposes, as the government, with private military and so on. (I think at least some traditional countries continue to exist on paper–fairly sure there’s still a United Kingdom, and there may be a US.)

Circumstances vary by family, but for everyone else, basically you want to become a serf–a more skilled/knowledgable worker who provides services to the family in exchange for protection and pretty decent lifestyle, including whatever nifty toys the particular family specializes in–so for the Carlyle family, specializing in biomed/genetic stuff, you get that and an extended lifespan. Everybody else is “waste”, and has to survive on whatever they can scrounge up–subsistence farming, unskilled labor for the family, etc.

It’s a good series IMO, though opinions vary. Worth checking out from the library if nothing else.

18

Feudalism is exactly what we don’t have. Forget the proletarian workers, managers and skilled workers don’t have lifetime employment in exchange for loyalty. Companies have no loyalty to employees, employees have no loyalty to companies. For a company to act as if it were a government there would have to be semi-permanent association with the company. But that’s not the case today, the workforce is turning over at faster and faster rates.

Companies are becoming less and less vertically integrated. So there’s no way to start at the mailroom and work your way up, because the guys at the mailroom–or the modern day equivalent–probably don’t even work for the company. You can’t get a job with Microsoft as a janitor or landscaper, those guys are employees of companies that provide janitorial or landscaping services to Microsoft.

Now, to speculate about the future. I find the notion of a small class of hyper-rich people who own everything who live in fortresses while the unemployable masses outside starve doesn’t make much sense. What exactly makes a person rich? In the feudal era land ownership was the main source of wealth. Aristocrats made money by skimming off the surplus production of their lands–wool, wood, wheat, olives, wine, whatever. Yes you could make money as a merchant or artisan, but the problem was that since the aristocrats were firmly in charge you were at the mercy of whatever decisions the aristocrats made.

Now fast forward to the early modern age, when industry and finance and trade became more and more important. Now you could get rich producing vast quantities of goods for sale in the marketplace, trading goods from one side of the globe to another, and by controlling the banking system.

However, what’s happening now? It’s easier and easier to manufacture goods and transport them. There’s a flood of cheap stuff that comes out of China, but it’s not just cheap labor it’s all sorts of improvements in manufacturing and automation. And the end result are factories that churn out goods with very few human workers. And it’s not just factory jobs, whole classes of white collar jobs are evaporating. 40 years ago every office had a battalion of secretaries to type memos, answer phones, file papers, and so on. Even low level managers had secretaries. Nowadays only very senior people have “assistants”, everyone else is expected to type their own emails, keep track of their own phone messages, manage their own schedule, and on and on.

So in the future world of the future, what will make someone “rich”? Owning a factory? How can owning a mostly automated factory that can produce a flood of goods of any type make you rich, when such factories are everywhere? Even today the guys who own the factories in China that produce the mountains of manufactured goods we use every day only get a small fraction of the profits from those goods, they make goods under license. This trend is only going to accelerate. Ownership of automated systems that produce goods and services aren’t going to be the basis of wealth in the future, unless the future overlords deliberately smash factories they don’t control. As more and more products and services become commodities the profits from providing those products evaporates. When the marginal cost of churning out another TV set or another t-shirt out of your factory is almost zero, and the capital costs of building that automated factory gets lower and lower, competition drives profits out of the industry.

As well, how can you make money manufacturing cheap crap for the masses when the masses no longer have jobs, and can’t find meaningful work? It’s not just blue collar workers who are going to be out of a job, all sorts of white collar work that we consider today to be skilled is just going to evaporate in the face of automated systems.

So in this neo-feudal dystopian future, what’s the source of wealth and power for the elites? There’s a gated community, inside are the wealthy who don’t need factory workers or customers, only a few trusted human servants for swank. All their needs are provided by nearly automated systems. And outside are the unemployed and unemployable masses. And the reason the masses can’t have their needs provided for by those exact same automated systems is…?

For this system to exist, we’d have to have the elite deliberately keeping the masses poor and starving, any time the poors manage to set up their own automated factories or farms or expert systems, the elites send in their robot strike force and smash it, because without the poor the rich can’t be rich. They need to see the masses starving in misery or they won’t be able to enjoy the goods and services their automated factories provide for them. In the olden days the aristocrats needed the serfs to work the lands, the industrialists needed the proletarians to work the factories, the capitalists needed the consumers to buy their products. What do these new elites need the masses for now?

But the thing is, this sort of automated production of goods and services can’t be effectively controlled or monopolized. It’s one thing to declare that you own the air, it’s another thing to force everyone to pay an air tax, or confiscate the air from the air thieves who breathe your air without paying the fee. Owning the air seems like it would make you the richest person in the world, except it couldn’t possibly work that way. You’d have to have a totalitarian system of enforcement, and if you have that you’re the most powerful because you control the totalitarian system, not because you own the air.

19

Large law firms work somewhat as I imagine feudalism would - at least, among the professional staff.

The partners who provide access to clients are the lords, and the associates who do the work are the vassals.

Just as in medieval feudalism, there is competition both ways - lords offer their vassals protection in return for loyalty and work; the quality of protection, loyalty, and work is constantly being evaluated; a lord unable to attract loyal vassals soon runs into trouble; having too many vassals dilutes the quality of the protection.

Moreover, one again, as in real medieval feudalism, there can be layers of lord/vassal relationships; a real “rainmaker” can have several partners beholden to him.

20

Essentially what you’re saying is that with automated/robotic production and services, there wouldn’t really need to be one- everyone could be “rich” in a sense, since robots are making everything and doing everything. Kind of a permanent vacation with the robots doing all the work.

But if someone decides they want to be “rich”, someone else has to be “poor” to provide the contrast, right?