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The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

A Warning to the Global Middle Class

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The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

Auteur(s): Joel Kotkin
Narrateur(s): Traber Burns
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Following a remarkable epoch of greater dispersion of wealth and opportunity, we are inexorably returning towards a more feudal era marked by greater concentration of wealth and property, reduced upward mobility, demographic stagnation, and increased dogmatism. If the last 70 years saw a massive expansion of the middle class, not only in America but in much of the developed world, today that class is declining and a new, more hierarchical society is emerging.

The new class structure resembles that of Medieval times. At the apex of the new order are two classes - a reborn clerical elite, the clerisy, which dominates the upper part of the professional ranks, universities, media, and culture, and a new aristocracy led by tech oligarchs with unprecedented wealth and growing control of information. These two classes correspond to the old French First and Second Estates.

Below these two classes lies what was once called the Third Estate. This includes the yeomanry, which is made up largely of small businesspeople, minor property owners, skilled workers, and private-sector oriented professionals. Ascendant for much of modern history, this class is in decline while those below them, the new Serfs, grow in numbers - a vast, expanding property-less population.

The trends are mounting, but we can still reverse them - if people understand what is actually occurring and have the capability to oppose them.

©2020 by Joel Kotkin (P)2020 by Blackstone Publishing Politique Sciences politiques Sociologie Économie Élections et processus politique Capitalisme Socialisme Entreprise Afrique Justice sociale Libéralisme Impérialisme Moyen Âge Fiscalité Amérique Latine Inégalités économiques
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While I didn't agree with all of the authors points or conclusions, this book expanded my thinking on some of the biggest issues facing the world today, including inequality, digitization, demographics and climate change.

Thought provoking

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The book is very pessimistic and a bit biased. It gives a sweeping overview of a lot of things going on and going wrong with our current global narrative, many of which I agree upon, however overall it takes a dire tone to fearmonger about the future and not a ton of actionable prescriptions to deal with said predicaments. The only real one is to rise up like the ordinary “yeomanry” did in the French Revolution although it doesn’t really frame this as a call to action but it’s the implied outcome for the reader with no real concept of how to get there.

The book goes from one issue to another and seems to be in some ways a giant rant with tinges of nostalgia for the “good old days” before our tech-based world order.

Literally no positives of technology are mentioned but rather it details a stripping back of everything to expose an ugly underpinning of control by the Tech Giants and authoritarian governments.

There are some reference to Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus which I read not too long ago and nicely dovetailed here. I would recommend that book instead of this one if you’re looking for a real mind expansion to consider where tech might be taking humans.

I enjoyed the references to Canadian cities, that made this book a lot more personal and relevant.

Overall it was OK but prepare for a consistent and persistent warning about how our personal autonomy, privacy, and opportunity is slowly being stripped away.






Pessimistic

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This was an excellent read/listen for me. Kotkin nails the problem thoroughly and backs it up well.

However, he comes up short on solutions. And to be fair, there are no easy or obvious paths back to a thriving middle class. Pareto’s law is relentless and fully in force as a challenge to our economy and culture.

I didn’t give five stars to the performance because I was having technical difficulties with the app - it kept skipping skipping back at first and I nearly gave up on Audible. This problem resolved itself and hasn’t reoccurred.

Insightful and disturbing

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More true now than in 2020 at it writing. Recommend to all who waking up and more so to those hitting snooze.

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

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this is some mirror world garbage. real issue obfuscated by loud-wrong understanding of history/sociology

read doppleganger instead

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The author starts out acting as a personnel independent though. And then spreads unsubstantiated accusations against higher education, some religions, atheism.
This book is full of conspiracy theories.
Don't waste your time.

Pure garbage

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I absolutely do think the middle class is disappearing but i sure as heck dont think its because of liberal academia and tolerance.

This guy seems like he'd be Bill O'Reily's "smart" friend.

Also a droning bore.

Skip.

Pretty package, craptacular content

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Joel Kotkin's The Coming of Neo-Feudalism seeks to address many of the most pressing economic issues of the 21st century, such as rising income inequality, decreased social mobility, unaffordable housing, economic stagnation, and pervasive surveillance. He diagnoses - or rather regurgitates - many pressing issues, pulling facts and figures from a variety of sources from around the world. Kotkin's central hypothesis is that liberal capitalism - which had succeeded medieval feudalism - is now giving way to a new social order, which he terms 'neo-feudalism'. Kotkin makes several parallels between medieval- and neo-feudalism, including a small aristocratic elite ruling over a large immiserated mass of people and a governing orthodoxy that stifles innovation. Under neo-feudalism, Kotkin proposes the hereditary aristocracy has been replaced by a technocratic professional-managerial class (of which Kotkin is a member) and the governing orthodoxy, which was upheld by the Catholic church in the middle ages, is now that of social justice and environmentalism, enforced by university professors and 'woke' CEOs. His central aim is at technocracy (rule by experts) eclipsing a society democratically governed by a yeoman middle class with traditional bourgeois values. This is a fine critique to make, but Kotkin ultimately fails to make a compelling argument.

Kotkin does not make a case that the issues he is describing (wealth polarization, sky-high rents, abandoned expectations that children will have higher standards of living than their parents; low birth rates) are not just logical outcomes of (neo)liberal capitalism; he is quite adamant that liberal capitalism can only lead to equitable outcomes and prosperity, like it did in the decades following the second world war (when Kotkin grew up) - despite 50 years of evidence to the contrary (including from some of his primary sources, like Thomas Piketty). If standards of living are not going up and there isn't a strong middle class, then, Kotkin argues, it must be happening because there isn't enough capitalism. This is the extent of Kotkin's economic analysis. He makes no attempt to explain why any of these negative economic trends might be happening or what could be done to rectify them, beyond some vague allusions to universal basic income and rebuilding the middle class. He also completely ignores any history of labour or class struggle to attain things for the working class like livable wages and good working conditions in the period for which he rhapsodizes, crediting such developments as natural features of capitalism (neither does he make any connection with the decimation of organized labour and declining standards of living in the late twentieth and early twentieth centuries).

Most of the book focuses on cultural rather than economic issues. He decries the lack of participation in organized religion in favour of environmentalism and DEI initiatives, too many Democrats working in universities (where they no longer teach the classics), artistic rather than blockbuster movies winning academy awards, climate mitigation policies, and an urban planning focus on inner-city development instead of the suburbs. It reads like a laundry list of angry conservative uncle complaints at family dinner. The major failing here, though, is that Kotkin doesn't address actual power. A liberal, urban elite may influence cultural issues and products more than Kotkin would like, but 'woke' college adjuncts and blue-haired grad students are not pulling any strings in politics or the economy - which is still run by and for finance capital and super wealthy business owners. Kotkin certainly does not make a compelling case that capitalism has ended.

Ultimately, this seems like a rant from a guy with cold-war-propaganda brain poisoning who doesn't like his colleagues at Chapman University (probably mutual) and thinks the time and place of his youth was a golden age of culture and social achievement - to which he is desperately trying to return. Although he may imagine himself as such, Kotkin is no modern-day Galileo being persecuted by a Catholic-church-like orthodoxy of leftist academics; he isn't saying anything controversial or even slightly groundbreaking. If he is not getting the respect he feels he deserves in the academy it is more likely because his writing is dull and unimaginative. He doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on how either feudalism or capitalism work especially well, or socialism for that matter (he often seems to conflate Marxism with the Democratic Party with big tech companies and 'leftist' billionaires). He also conveys a very cursory knowledge of history, which he repeatedly draws on to support his conclusions. He cites many well-known sociologists, economists, and urban theorists, but demonstrates very little understanding of major ideas or deliberately misinterprets theorists to make his case. He also frequently contradicts himself, and communicates his ideas in a convoluted way. It was a blessing that this book is short.

In this reviewer's opinion, prospective readers of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism would be better suited to read something like Nancy Fraser's Cannibal Capitalism (much better historical context and more astute analysis of the same economic crises Kotkin seeks to address) or Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century (detailed economic explanation of current economic issues from which Kotkin draws much of his ideas).

The coming of it's still just capitalism

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