Feudalism does not have a middle class : philosophy

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

This isn't quite accurate. I appreciate trying to call attention to Capitalism turning more and more towards rent extraction (something I consider a natural consequence of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, but that's another can of worms), but there are fundamental errors here.

Feudalism had a middle class, and it was the bourgeoisie, who are now the Capital Owners at the top. Seeing feudalism as a closed system purely of peasants and aristocracy isn't really an accurate view, and thus erases the revolutionary potential of the bourgeoisie during feudalism, who were an emerging class. In modern society, we have the revolutionary potential of the proletariat as a class that has grown alongside and much larger than the bourgeoisie, and this continues. We are not turning into peasants, the way we work is still based on commodity production, but the means of consumption is changing.

Neofeudalism is simply a term used to describe Capitalism's evolution in Imperialist countries where most real production is outsourced, it isn't a genuine form of feudalism but simply an even higher stage of Capitalism, likely signs of its death throes in the face of Socialism.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world -1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I counter that the bourgeoise and proletariat are post feudal and have a right to ownership. The proletariat may own their home, tools, and personal effects. Feudalism, in the medieval sense, was driven by the thieves and bandits in the countryside, and eventually the henchmen and private forces of the feudal lords. The relevant majority forfeited their property or sold it in order to relocate their lives in proximity to a feudal lord and their private security forces. In the beginning it was out of necessity with no nefarious potential. The peasantry were simply trying to survive. The critical issue is that they were forced to trust the feudal lords to do the right thing. Trust is always the issue. Blind trust in anyone that is incentivised should they choose to exploit another always results in exploitation in the long term.

Serfdom came about as the peasants lacked the means to produce their own tools. The feudal lords then exploited the serfs to the extreme, even seizing their right to leave the land of the feudal lord. In the neo feudal state, home ownership has effectively been seized. You are now at the mercy of the whims of your landlord. The seizure of tools through digital means in every sector of society mirrors that of the roots of feudalism. Everyone is asked to trust. Trusting those that have the ability to exploit and extort is the driving force that created feudalism in the past and is sending us into the dark age of neo feudalism now. I hate capitalism, but it is the only system that minimizes any need to trust someone to do the right thing. Autonomy and self determination are a rejection of the need to trust anyone incentivised to exploit and extort others for their own selfish gain or oversimplify complexity and create catastrophes. I wouldn't mind reversion to a nineteenth century society as much as neo feudalism is a digression of a millennia further back in social evolution. This is not a partial confiscation of property. It is aiming at full control of all. To own is to be a minor lord, but the sharks swimming above will find any that fail to rise up to ever higher levels. Trust is the only reason why. It is the linchpin of freedom, egalitarianism, and democracy. No one has a right to demand trust in any instance or democracy has failed. There is no equality in trust, only slavery through subjugation.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The bourgeoisie and proletariat emerged from within feudalism. It wasn't a switch being pulled, bourgeois production existed alongside feudal production for a time before the bourgeoise wrested control. Moreover, the proletariat doesn't own its own tools, the serfs did. The rest of your comment with respect makes little logical sense to me and depends on the idea of "trust," which isn't a very materialist view of history. Overall, Socialism remains the next phase in mode of production, ie large scale central planning and public ownership.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 0 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Large scale planning requires trust in the planners. People lack the scope to deal with the real complexity of the world. The always devolve into corruption when they are trusted instead of held directly accountable to a metric that cannot be corrupted. In every instance where a government has attempted to directly manage the entire means of production it has failed. There is no motivator of progress. It is stagnation through bureaucracy.

I think eventually it will be possible to design and build an AGI capable of governing with the required attention scope and persistence, but humans are not capable of scope or persistent altruism required to directly manage. It is an ideologue's dream utopia with too many holes in the fence. I'm actually more like minded than it may seem. However, trusting people to manage exponential complexity is a fool's folly. It will always end in corruption and authoritarianism. Preventing corruption is just as big of an operation as the government itself. You end up in a situation like with Mexico. After creating a military force to combat drug lords, they only ended up training better recruits for the drug lords and their replacements because the government cannot match what the drug traffickers can pay. Any system of authoritarian mass oversight requires massive trust. People change with age, but no bureaucratic institutions can account for the subtle changes in humans, and the incentive for blatant corruption like embezzlement, nepotism, and cronyism is insurmountable for humans.

I hate capitalism, but it is the only way to avoid the fallacy of trust. Neo feudalism is the corruption of capitalism.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Again, everything you built up is utterly idealist and anti-materialist. Planning does not require ttust, we know this because it's done regularly. Capitalism itself naturally centralizes and forms methods of planning, Socialism weilds those in favor of the people by folding them into the public sector. You really need to look at what you're saying here, it doesn't make any sense unless you assume iron faith in your false premises.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The motivations behind planning are regulated by capitalism. This mechanism is what suppresses human corruption and forces meritorious employment and regulations in all resources from individuals to comestibles. Corruption is expensive to maintain, and all humans are corruptible to various degrees. Capitalism is the lesser (but still great) evil that acknowledges all humans are corrupt. Humans are inherently tribal in psychology. We are being tribal even within the philosophical conversation here. Tribalism is a corrupt bias that hinders fair governance. The only way of success is through meritorious promotion in all respects, lest you have a leadership of children and the mentally ill. To ignore the truth of human nature is to fail, because failure must be the consequence for those that are more corrupt than others, and those that change or show ineptitude over time.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The motivations for planning under Capitalism are driven by profit, and the necessity for Capital to find new ways and areas to exploit in order to combat the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. The incentive is profit within Capitalism, but the result is development of planning infrastructure that is that this can be harnessed to pursue the fulfillment of needs and not profit. This is done with regularity all over the world, and especially so in Socialist countries.

Profit does not suppress human corruption. "Corruption" is merely a label for tilting the scales, and when the profit motive is dominant, then this means corruption is incentivized. Capitalism, therefore, does not minimize corruption at all, it wields it freely.

Corruption is expensive to maintain, but it is better than the alternative under Capitalism, namely a rival firm regulating you out of existence. This is inefficiency, but is required under Capitalism. In Socialism, this inefficiency does not exist to the same capacity nor the same character.

Capitalism does not acknowledge anything. Capitalism is a mode of production, it does not "think" nor does it have a voice. The closest is Capital's expansionary nature, from the aforementioned Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, but attributing an "acknowledgement of corruption" to a material process is idealism, and thus bad philosophy. Moreover, Socialists aconowledge that corruption is a process, but correctly attribute it to material causes and structures, and not some vague idealist construct.

Finally, it is only Socialism that promotes any genuine sense of meritocracy, as work is rewarded and not ownership of Capital. Capitalism's "meritocracy" is false, what it rewards most of all is accumulation, which becomes self-compounding. It's the sense of "failing upward."

I highly suggest you look at Elementary Principles of Philosophy by Georges Politzer if you want a better understanding of Socialists via understanding Historical and Dialectical Materialism. I would say that you are making Idealist mistakes (placing ideas over material reality, as though ideas create reality) and making Metaphysical mistakes (looking at systems as "whole" rather than containing elements of what came prior and what comes next, looking at items as static objects and not as changing, looking at objects without analyzing their context). Politzer's book goes through each of these quite clearly.

[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It seems that you believe corruption of the individual the is the primary weakness of socialism that requires micromanaged and unaddressed intervention as the largest compromise. Opposed to the similar issue in capitalism of the requirement for state intervention and regulation of bad actors in the open market. When either system shows its ineptitude, you suffer from an issue of rot from within, while I suffer a projection of rot onto all, or rather the most vulnerable.

Our primary juxtaposition is that I do not believe any one organization is capable of managing the true complexity of the world without oversimplification and that ultimately leads to stagnation and failures like famines and resource shortages. I also believe the authoritarian system that fails to effectively address cronyism always leads to monarchy-like strong men wearing a façade of community-ism. Stalin was wholly unable to adapt to the shift to venture capital in silicon valley and the digital age. China adapted well to a much more hybrid model with open market autonomy. The USA has adopted some socialist elements as well. Both are not perfect. Indeed the U.S. system is failing me drastically in the present.

Personally, I don't believe in either and see them both as massive oversimplifications of complexity. There are many aspects of the market that should be entirely socialist in nature, such as utilities, education, academia, fundamental housing, base infrastructure, and the setting of standards. What should not be socialist are food, consumer goods, or industrial production. These must be adaptable to open market change. At the core of this is food. No one can dominate food and manage it better than the market itself. Every farmer knows their fields better than some bureaucratic individual or institution. Oversimplification and individual corruption in this supply chain is to murder millions. Those millions are a demand, and free entrepreneurial individuals can always meet that demand so long as no one is motivated to stop them. That is not idealist, it is empirical from results not excuses. This is the trust that I will not give. Trust in the ability of bureaucratic management of food production results in famines and death of many of the sake peripheral groups that are oppressed and exploited by bad actors within capitalism.

Where you point at trust and corruption at the larger scales of business, I point at the inherent corruption of every individual. Neither system is perfect or completely addresses all of the problems. Personally, I think we should all accept our complicated realities and stop all talk of oversimplified systems in order to move forward into a world where we try to do what is best for the global community and all the way down to our neighborhood and families living under the same roof.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago

Again, nothing you claim as an "issue with Socialism" actually makes any sense, and is fundamentally idealist. If I was being mean, I would consider it solipsist, but I don't think you're going that far. Ultimately, you have a very "vibes-based" view of what you consider "rot," and that's why it's wholly useless for actual materialist analysis. Moreover, China is a Socialist country and as you said has succeeded, not due to Capitalism, but due to following Marxism, the philosophical aspect I already linked an excellent intro to.

[–] bouh@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

There's as much of a middle class than there is with our current societies. Revolution into capitalism happened because the bourgeoisie saw itself too rich to be of the lower class. They wanted the privileges. They got them.

But the thing is that liberalism is neo-feudalism. The state protect the weak. Without the state, the powerful can do whatever they want. The tech bros think they are among the powerful, that's why they want more neo-feudalism. Exactly like the bourgeois wanted access to privileges.

[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 2 points 6 days ago

Feudalism only has a hierarchy of lesser and greater lords [...] to exploit the peasantry

There are "lesser" and "greater" lords that exploit the "peasants". There's the "proletariat" and the "burgeoisie", with "petit burgeoisie" in-between. There's the "workers" and the management - "low-" and "high-". And of course, there's the classes: "high", "low" and of course, "middle".

The way I see it, pretty much whatever system one envisions, there's the "down-lows", the "high-ups" and the "in-betweens", although they may not be called that explicitly. Usually it's the high class that can be split into two, feudal lords and management alike.