The New Feudalism

It’s not too late to stop it from undermining our liberal republic.

There is a specter haunting America — the specter of neofeudalism. Especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, many Americans have felt considerable anxiety about the trajectory of the nation’s affairs, fearing diminished economic prospects, a heightening of social strife, and the possibility of the powerful making themselves less accountable to, and more removed from, the body politic as a whole. This anxiety can be seen on both the left and the right, fueling the rise of Elizabeth Warren and grass-roots Tea Partiers alike. Americans on both sides of the aisle worry about institutional dysfunction, an out-of-touch self-dealing elite, scorched-earth cultural controversies, the implications of the rise of post-national ideologies, the deification of tribalistic identity, and the failure of our economy to recover as threatening the civic compact of the Republic. The concept of “neofeudalism” offers one way of grouping together and understanding these major contemporary tendencies. The realization of a neofeudal vision could pose significant challenges for economic opportunity, free-market principles, and the traditional aspiration of a unified yet diverse American body politic.

In 2013, demographer Joel Kotkin warned that California was slipping into a condition of neofeudalism. According to Kotkin, the Golden State, once a citadel of the American middle class, has become splintered into four classes: the oligarchs (the super-wealthy, especially in tech and finance), the clerisy (government regulators, the media elite, and the academy), the yeomanry (the middle class and small-business owners), and the serfs (the working poor and government dependents). Kotkin claimed that the yeomanry has been eviscerated as California has moved into a neofeudal era, while the oligarchs and the clerisy have gained increasing power and the serfs have grown in number.

Kotkin’s analysis focuses on the demographic structures of California, but we can explore more broadly some of the underlying tendencies of neofeudalism. It might be helpful to contrast the neofeudal state with the traditional liberal republic. The latter is composed of individuals (and organizations of individuals) coming together to form a nation governed by laws, and it aims to be in accordance with certain foundational rights. The neofeudal state, on the other hand, is anti-national. Rather than the unified body politic of the liberal republic, the neofeudal state slices and dices its residents into discrete subsets, each with its own unique rights and responsibilities. Solid economic and social divisions were a key part of feudal society, and they also play a role in present-day neofeudalism. Moreover, the institutional dysfunction characteristic of neofeudalism undermines the efficient functioning of the republic and makes the nation more vulnerable to the whims of executive diktat.

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