I have a friend who follows Prof. Richard Wolff who he says likes to point out that “feudalism never really went away, since capitalist enterprises are basically little autocracies in which the boss is the Lord, and you'd better be very careful if you get in an argument with the boss. They won't imprison you or kill you, but they will happily banish (fire) you if you challenge their authority.”
While there is truth in that view I am always surprised at the lack of depth in this analysis. His view that “capitalist enterprises are basically little autocracies” I think misses the big picture of what capitalism really is. He regards business owners as capitalists, but does that make a plumber with a truck full of tools and a hired helper a capitalist? He may be a business owner and he might be able to fire his helper if he is not much help, a very little autocracy, but a feudal lord? Hardly. One could argue that the feudal lords of today are the big banks, they own the dominant businesses, most of the real estate and control access to the raw materials and marketing but that misses the mark, we live under the rule of an oligarchy, not feudalism.
Feudalism describes a specific system of hierarchical, parceled sovereignty which existed in Europe during the high Middle Ages. (1000-1300) While the poorly educated modern view is that it was a dark time of having no rights or property the truth is that happened later. The high middle-ages were an extraordinarily prosperous time for the people, something we're not supposed to know or repeat, and the oligarchy clearly wants it that way as history is valued so little. Certainly, we would not want to examine why it was such a prosperous time, a time when the first universities were founded teaching abstract sciences such as mathematics. It was what some call "The Real Renaissance," a time when the working class enjoyed favorable working conditions and a remarkable level of economic independence. Innovations in agriculture allowed the small landowners as a group to be much more productive than the Seignorial holdings for the first time. It was a time when hydro-powered manufacturing took off and production skyrocketed. There were more than 200,000 hydro-powered mills at the beginning of the 12th century in France alone. It was the beginning of the industrial revolution, 500 years before the capitalist's industrial revolution began. It was a time when the average caloric intake was 3500-4000 per day, more than the average of 3000 in today's developed countries. Workers ate 3-4 meals per day with 3-4 courses and enjoyed 90-150 official holidays every year. The population of Europe doubled, and the average height was nearly 8 inches taller than today by the end of this 300-year period. Workers enjoyed 6-hour workdays and rebelled when the Dukes of Saxony tried to extend it to 8. It was a time when a thousand small towns across Europe built a thousand Great Cathedrals for themselves and their posterity, along with 300,000 churches, using the money issued to them by their feudal lords for an exchange medium which functioned as a demurrage currency due to its slow reduction in value that was restored annually. It was a time when women enjoyed greater freedom and position in society and the people worshiped the divine feminine represented by the Black Madonna.
It all ended when the patriarchal oligarchs, the money lenders, foreclosed on the feudal lord’s war debts and took control of their sovereignty, ending the local money systems which plunged Europe into such a deep depression that the plague took hold due to the squalor people were forced to live in. This reduced the population by more than a half.
We live in an exploitative, extractive, economy ruled by a violent oligarchy not feudal lords. Even those bosses who "own the means of production" are owned themselves by the financial dictatorship of the oligarchy and must do their bidding or lose it all. We’re supposed to hate our bosses, but that is part of the divide and conquer manipulation from the tippy-toe top. We all know the dung rolls downhill.
In the late 19th century it was widely understood that the capitalists were those who controlled the capital, the big industrialist bankers. All the populist political parties of the day had monetary reform at the top of their platforms giving government exclusive control of the creation of money. They called on the government to issue debt-free greenbacks which had already proven to reduce indebtedness and interest in the economy.
As the 1912 Pujo Committee investigation into what was called the Money Trust, (see the money trust diagram), revealed, the big banks, headed by J. P. Morgan Company, controlled (monopolized) every industry in the nation. They found that the owners of businesses were all in debt to the banks who controlled their business decisions through interlocking directorates. If a business owner did not go along with what the bankers demanded his business might not be able to get the raw materials required to produce their product. The movie about Preston Tucker and his efforts to produce a better automobile which was sabotaged by the monopolistic financial interests behind the big three automakers is illustrative.
Today the big banks control the government too as nothing was ever done about this global financial monopoly that continues to rule and abuse the world as it has for the last 400+ years. Not that there haven’t been proposals to change that, monetary reform proposals that would establish more a democratic system of governance, proposals that would reverse the artificial scarcity of money for the people while the rich roll in excess, proposals that would stabilize the economy, provide full employment and prosperity, proposals that are ignored and left in oblivion by the elected government thoroughly corrupted by those who control the creation of money.
“The problem of the modern economy is not a failure of a knowledge of economics; it's a failure of a knowledge of history. Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths. There can be few fields of human endeavor in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present. Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, economists get busy on the proof. Their conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.” ~ J. K. Galbraith
I think the root problem with the socialist’s analysis is in the definition of capitalism as “the private ownership of the means of production.” While this is true it fails to recognize the primary force of production which is money. Without money in this system there would be no production, no building of a factory, no purchasing of raw materials, no hiring of workers. One would think this was obvious but apparently not because money isn’t included in the analysis.
I knew a man who was president of a lawn mower company--the CEO. I said to him that it must be great to be the head of a company and able to make the big decisions about how it is run. He laughed and said he doesn't decide anything. He said all the decisions are made by the people with the money on Wall Street who have the financial control. He said he's just another employee.