The topic of feudalism came up in the comments section of my post from yesterday.

The post was about why economic competition is a more effective means of social change than protesting. You can read it here.

Specifically, I brought up the end of European feudalism as an example of how positive social change often comes about as a result of economic developments, rather than as a result of peasants begging to be treated better by their lords. In response, another participant in the thread (the wonderful @edij, check out the awesome recipes on her new blog) pointed out that, yeah, feudalism ended, but it was replaced by capitalism.

As all of my regular readers already know, I am a pro-capitalist anarchist. I believe that markets are the best and most beneficial systems of human interaction ever devised, and therefore, I see the advent of capitalism after feudalism as a vast improvement. But I do understand that not everyone sees it that way.

Over the years, I've heard many, many people--especially folks on the left of the political spectrum--ascribe feudalistic properties to the concept of capitalism. These people think that capitalism is a logical outgrowth of feudalism, a more sophisticated, technologically enhanced version of an ancient system of oppression. I couldn't disagree more, but I always try to understand how people might have reached their conclusions, and if I had to guess the reason for this particular belief, I'd have to say it comes from confusion between coercive hierarchies and voluntary hierarchies.

See, the thing is, there are at least two similarities between feudalism and capitalism. First, that they both have hierarchies; and second, that they both have wealth inequality. I consider both hierarchical organization and wealth inequality to be ineradicable facts of life. Most people naturally gravitate to a hierarchies and get in where they fit in, and fluctuations in wealth over the course of an individual's life are a natural result of free economic choice.

In the comments of that post from yesterday, my friend @intothewild gave an awesome breakdown of the difference in between coercive and voluntary hierarchies, so I'll quote him here:

The easiest way to see the difference in my opinion is looking at how a football quarterback has to be a leader for his teammates to trust him. If he falters, the team won't have his back, so it's imperative he is a good actor.

With coercive hierarchies there is no incentive to do good. Your team can't quit regardless how shitty the QB is. You have no say in the matter.

It essentially boils down to...Do I have the option of saying, NO?

If not, then it's coercive. If so, it's voluntary.

Feudalism was a top-down, centralized system, with the king at the top of the pyramid, his barons beneath him, the lords beneath the barons, and the peasants beneath the lords. The king had absolute power over all, which is how he derived his wealth. The peasants, on the other hand, had no power at all. To be a peasant was to belong to the lord you served. Peasants had no self-ownership, no property rights, no right to emigrate or even move to another manor, and no control over how they spent their time, what their labor produced, or whether they were compensated for it. (They weren't.)

On the other hand, capitalism is a decentralized economic system in which there is no single person or entity at the top of the pyramid, directing everything that goes on beneath it. In pure capitalism, companies can gain market share by offering products and services that benefit their customers. Customers have the power to choose who to spend their money with. On the large scale, this is not really a hierarchy, since large companies cannot dictate what smaller companies do, and neither large nor small companies can dictate the lives of their customers. On the contrary, pure capitalism is a system of individual freedom of choice in which each person can be a free agent and master of his or her own destiny.

But just because capitalism isn't hierarchical on the macro scale, doesn't mean that there are no hierarchies within capitalism. Most companies are organized as hierarchies, but there is a crucial difference between these hierarchical structures and those of feudalism, and that is that no one is forced to participate in the former.

Oh, I hear all the time from hardcore socialists and communists that there's no appreciable difference between a boss and a king, but that is simply not true. In a capitalist system, you can choose not only what type of labor you will perform, but also which company you work for. Any limitations on that choice are not imposed on you from above, but come as the result of your own personal limitations, or market factors outside of anyone's control. But once you obtain employment, if you don't like the way the boss treats you, or you don't like the company's rules, or even if you just decide you'd like to try something else for awhile, you are completely free to leave at any time. Furthermore, you receive monetary compensation for your time and labor--and best of all, you can freely negotiate your rate of pay. You can even (!) quit working for bosses altogether and start your own business, either working as a solo-preneur or hiring employees to work for you. Serfs under feudalism had no such freedoms.

Capitalism is not the successor to feudal rule. That title must go to the modern state.

Statism is, in fact, the logical outgrowth of feudalism, all dressed up in sophisticated modern concepts like "democracy" and "social contracts". But at its heart, it is the same raw deal. It is top down, centralized rule by the lords (ruling elite) of the peasants (taxpayers). We are born into serfdom (citizenship) and can only switch manors (countries) by jumping through ridiculous hoops and paying a bunch of fines. Even if we go and live in another manor for awhile, we still have to pay tribute (taxes) to our old lord. Sure, we get to cast votes every few years to elect new rulers, but we are never changing the system itself; only giving it a new face.

I've made a comparison chart to help further illustrate my point:

What say you, Steemians?

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Psst.

Hey seriously, go check out @edij's blog!