The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class

By Joel Kotkin

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 seventy 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781641772853

Book preview

Cover: The Coming of Neo-Feudalism by Joel Kotkin

Praise for The Coming of Neo-Feudalism

Kotkin has written an essential and critical study of emerging class structures at the intersection of technological determinism and postindustrial capitalism.

—John Russo, Visiting Scholar, Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor

and Working Poor at Georgetown University;

co-editor of Working-Class Perspectives

A gripping cautionary tale by one of the most provocative and original thinkers of our time, this book is a must-read for all those concerned about the future of our cities and our society.

—Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

and The New Urban Crisis

The social and economic divide which Kotkin has identified is certainly real, and very easy for those who have spent all their time on one side to overlook.… Kotkin’s warning in this timely, compelling, and well-written book should be heeded.

—Quillette

Kotkin rightfully places his finger on a phalanx of attitudes, beliefs, and practices of our recently ascendant economic elite and their apologists and allies in the symbol-mongering institutions.

—Richard M. Reinsch, Law & Liberty

"The American social guru Joel Kotkin goes further, and bleaker. In a new book that is receiving much attention in the US, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, he anticipates a world dominated by the irresistible power and wealth of techno-oligarchs."

—The Times (UK)

Kotkin marshals a host of arresting economic data to demonstrate the widening gulf between the feudal lords and everyone else.

—The Russell Kirk Center

Among the books that could end up defining the times in which we find ourselves here in the United States and throughout the world—from South America to Italy to the South China Sea—Kotkin’s work is not as widely read and discussed. But it ought to be.

—John Loftus, National Review

The alarm Kotkin sounds is all the more courageous and credible coming from an old-school progressive like him, and shows that the left’s realignment around the interests of tech oligarchs and the gospel of wokeism won’t go without internal pushback.

—The American Conservative

"The US sociologist Joel Kotkin writes in his 2020 book The Coming of Neo-Feudalism that Western societies are increasingly arranged into rigid strata, not dissimilar to those of the Middle Ages."

—New Statesman

A triumph.

—Front Porch Republic

© 2020, 2023 by Joel Kotkin

Preface © 2023 by Joel Kotkin

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601, New York, New York 10003.

First American edition published in 2020 by Encounter Books, an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc., a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation. Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com

Manufactured in the United States and printed on acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

First paperback edition published in 2023.

Paperback edition ISBN: 978-1-64177-284-6

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED

THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Names: Kotkin, Joel, author.

Title: The Coming of Neo-feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin.

Description: First American edition. | New York: Encounter Books, [2020] Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019044952 (print) | LCCN 2019044953 (ebook) ISBN 9781641770941 (cloth) | ISBN 9781641770958 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Social classes—History—21st century. | Distribution (Economic theory)—History—21st century.

Social history—21st century.

Classification: LCC HT609 .K68 2020 (print) | LCC HT609 (ebook)

DDC 305.509/05—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044952

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044953

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 23

To Mandy, who means everything to me

CONTENTS

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Preface to the First Edition

PART I. HOW FEUDALISM CAME BACK

1. The Feudal Revival

2. The Enduring Allure of Feudalism

3. The Rise and Decline of Liberal Capitalism

PART II. THE OLIGARCHS

4. High-Tech Feudalism

5. The Belief System of the New Oligarchy

6. Feudalism in California, Harbinger of the Future

PART III. THE CLERISY

7. The New Legitimizers

8. The Control Tower

9. New Religions

PART IV. THE EMBATTLED YEOMANRY

10. The Rise and Decline of Upward Mobility

11. A Lost Generation?

12. Culture and Capitalism

PART V. THE NEW SERFS

13. Beyond the Ring Road

14. The Future of the Working Class

15. Peasant Rebellions

PART VI. THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF FEUDALISM

16. The New Gated City

17. The Soul of the Neo-Feudal City

18. The Totalitarian Urban Future

PART VII. A MANIFESTO FOR THE THIRD ESTATE

19. The Technological Challenge

20. The Shaping of Neo-Feudal Society

21. Can We Challenge Neo-Feudalism?

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

An author should be pleased to see his thesis bolstered by events, but it’s hard to find joy in the confirmation I have seen since completing this book in 2020. The key events of these past two years—the coronavirus pandemic, the growing disorder in our streets, and Russia’s brutal imperialistic war on Ukraine—all testify to the regression away from liberal democracy that prompted me to write the book in the first place.

There is room for debate over what the right policy response to Covid-19 would have been, but as a practical matter the pandemic widened the divide between oligarchic elites and everyone else, not just in the United States but around the world. Everywhere, it was the working and middle classes who suffered the most.¹ Some industries, such as restaurants and hospitality, were hit especially hard, as were all variety of small businesses. As late as April 2022, more than two years after the pandemic began, two-thirds of small businesses in the United States were still struggling, while hundreds of thousands had closed down.² Schoolchildren, particularly from the poor and working class, suffered both from lost learning and from social isolation.³ On the other hand, people who could work remotely—mostly college-educated, in white-collar jobs—were not greatly affected.

Some groups actually profited from the pandemic. The tech giants were obvious winners as they promoted what the leftist author Naomi Klein called the Screen New Deal, an effort to create a permanent and profitable no-touch future.⁴ Apple, Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook (now Meta Platforms) enjoyed record-breaking profits, adding more than $2.5 trillion to their combined valuations by the end of July 2020.⁵ Earnings may have fallen off since then, but these companies remain among the richest and most powerful on the planet—four of them among the top five.⁶ Another clear winner is Big Pharma. In May 2021, Pfizer alone was projected to gain $26 billion in revenue from its coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year, and its revenue increases continued into the first quarter of 2022.⁷

Besides creating winners and losers within the advanced nations, Covid also sharpened differences between the richer and poorer countries of the world. The pandemic was devastating to the poorest countries— those that had not developed the industrial capacity so critical to East Asia’s rise in the past half century. In Africa and other poor regions, the already large reserve armies of the unemployed (to paraphrase Karl Marx) swelled to destabilizing levels. In addition, several countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East have defaulted on long-term loans, and more may follow.⁸

The political fallout from the pandemic has also been unsettling, even in western nations. Covid-19 certainly demanded a strong response as hospitals were overwhelmed, the death toll soared, and medical professionals succumbed to the virus. The accelerated production of vaccines was a commendable part of that response. But there was a marked tendency among officials almost everywhere to sidestep normal democratic procedures in making policy. Draconian measures were adopted, sometimes arbitrarily. As the pandemic dragged on, temporary mandates became entrenched for years without ever getting the popular approval that should be required at some point. All this undermined the principle of a self-governing population.⁹

In the crisis, rational debate became difficult if not impossible. The major media outlets generally repeated the pronouncements of federal officials. Dissident opinions about the virus, its origins, and the best ways to minimize its damage were often stifled. Hardliners both for and against Covid restrictions ascribed bad faith to the other side. Some influential voices, mainly on the right, promoted conspiracy theories or dubious remedies. To be sure, any recommendations that might pose a danger to life and health should be scrutinized, but it is troubling that government officials and social media sought to marginalize even well-conceived critiques of the reigning policy.¹⁰ As has happened in crises throughout history, the coronavirus pandemic—a truly serious public health crisis—created conditions for ever greater government control of speech and behavior. Public anger broke out not only in America but in other democratic countries such as France and Australia.¹¹

Worse yet, the tendency to bypass public approval in making policy could become a long-term reality. Some environmentalists view the unprecedented course of action taken to deal with Covid-19 as a test run for the kind of controls they believe will be necessary to save humanity and the planet.¹² Nature is sending us a message, suggests the UN’s environment chief, Inger Andersen. He linked the coronavirus pandemic and other disease outbreaks to increasing human encroachment on wildlife habitat, which results in easier transmission of viruses from animals to humans. The association of pandemics with environmental concerns feeds into what can be described as an eco-medievalist worldview, in which the lower classes will have to make sacrifices and become poorer, while the upper echelons of society—today’s equivalent of the medieval nobility and clergy—will hardly feel a difference.¹³

The Covid pandemic and the associated restrictions, as well as the shift to online work, also accelerated the decline of our major cities. Homicide rates spiked in American cities during the pandemic.¹⁴ More broadly, many of the world’s great metropolises—London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco—have become demonstrably more dangerous in recent years. Around the world, there is a worrisome level of instability, similar to what preceded the age of feudalism.

Even before the onset of pandemic anxiety and unrest, the rising rates of street violence and property crime—and the seeming unwillingness of urban authorities to do much about it—precipitated a net outmigration from big cities. Between 2010 and 2020, the urban core counties in the United States lost 2.7 million residents, while the suburbs and exurbs of the major metropolitan areas gained 2.0 million. Since 2015, the large metropolises have been losing population to smaller cities and towns. By 2022, rural areas too were gaining population at the expense of cities.¹⁵ Throughout history, cities have been the main centers of cultural and economic development, the prime incubators of innovation and upward mobility. The urban decline we’re seeing today and the flight from cities recalls the late stages of the Roman Empire and the reversion to a more fragmented, localized society, from which the feudal order would grow.

Along with urban decay, we have been seeing a global waning of democracy and a rise of authoritarianism. A report from Freedom House in 2021 found democracy to be at a generational low ebb even in Europe, while adjacent Eurasian countries for the most part are hybrid regimes combining some democratic forms, such as elections, with authoritarian controls on media and severe restrictions on public demonstrations or any open opposition to the regime.¹⁶ Instead of the continuing global progress toward liberal democracy and market capitalism that once seemed to be in train, we now face the possibility of an emerging Eurasian century dominated by autocrats—Xi Jinping in China, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Racep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and a host of lesser authoritarians. They look not to John Locke or James Madison for inspiration, but to the Chinese emperors, the tsars, and the Ottoman despots.

China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 was widely expected to promote a transition into something more like a Western democracy. As it turns out, China has ascended as an economic powerhouse without adopting the primary features of liberal civilization, such as individual political and property rights. China today is no more likely to become a constitutional democracy than it was under the Mongols or their fourteenth-century Ming successors. It has evolved into a highly nationalistic autocracy, fortified by a system of semipermanent caste privilege and technology-enhanced social control.¹⁷

Today’s Russia, with its Eurasian character, is also revanchist. The end of the Cold War once brought optimism that Russia would develop into a democracy, but under Putin it has become increasingly autocratic, moving closer to its imperial past. Putin is tightening his grip at home while endeavoring to expand his empire by replicating the territorial conquests of the tsars and of Stalin. As under the tsars, the Russian Orthodox Church blesses Putin’s autocratic reign and nationalistic aggression.¹⁸

In both Russia and China, autocracy is closely tied to a sense of national greatness and rightful preeminence. Autocrats may invoke historical grievances as justification for asserting power on the world stage, in accordance with Samuel Huntington’s perceptive analysis from a quarter century ago. He wrote that we were entering an era where resentment over past mistreatment by Western powers, with their pretensions of structuring the world community, would prompt other major states to flex their muscles and try to regain lost status.¹⁹ Beijing aims to recapture the high perch that Chinese civilization occupied for many centuries and become the world’s hegemon. Putin’s Russia aims to recover the superpower stature of the Soviet empire, wrapped in tsarist glory.

Viewing the West as weak, Putin has set out to subjugate at least parts of Ukraine, while eying other states that Russia once ruled on its periphery, from Central Asia to Belarus. Beijing has acquiesced to Putin’s ruthless assault on Ukraine, while throwing around its own weight regionally and threatening the conquest of Taiwan. This all represents a historical regression from international law that defends the sovereignty of small countries, back to a world of might-makes-right. Both Russia and China aspire to reshape the world order in their own image. China in particular is confident that its form of society is the way of the future.²⁰ As autocratic regimes increase their power and influence, this model threatens to become normative, and to replace market capitalism and democracy where they presently exist.

Meanwhile, the class divide within democratic societies continues to deepen and privilege becomes more entrenched. The reality of largely immobile classes is where our present situation most resembles the feudal era, but without the decentralized governance that characterized feudalism until the rise of strong monarchies in the later Middle Ages. One consequence of growing social stratification is that centrist parties and politicians have lost ground to the fringes. In June 2022, for example, Emmanuel Macron’s center-right alliance lost its absolute majority in the French National Assembly while the far left and the far right both increased their numbers. A polarized electorate makes democratic compromise more difficult—and particularly so in the American two-party system.

Historically, as we have seen just recently, crisis may offer a pretext for tighter governmental control and centralization of power. But even the worst tragedies can also stimulate creative experimentation, open up new opportunities, and foster a rebirth of freedom. The most familiar example is the Black Death of the fourteenth century—the devastating plague that wiped out so much of the European population. It’s hardly surprising that many people believed they were living in the End Times. Apocalypse was in the air, as Barbara Tuchman put it. But since that civilizational catastrophe led to a shortage of workers, the value of labor increased, which undermined the feudal order and enabled the rise of the Third Estate. It also sparked innovation and helped push Europe into the Age of Exploration and the maritime conquest of the world.²¹ Perhaps there is a rainbow among the clouds of our present troubles—an opportunity for a revival of enterprise and democratic ideals. In fact, there are some promising signs of a grassroots renewal.

Like the great plague and other disruptions in late medieval times, the coronavirus pandemic forced people to adapt to challenging circumstances and find new ways to work and sustain their businesses. This was easier in some industries than others, but the self-employed in general were better able to weather the storm, and to recover rapidly, than people in conventional wage or salary jobs. During the pandemic, many Americans reinvented themselves as entrepreneurs, launching a whole crop of new startups, many embodying the shift to online work. In 2021, after years of decline, new business formation increased dramatically.²²

The upsurge of entrepreneurship offers a counterpoint to the specter of neo-feudalism. The flight from the big cities, too, has an upside when more people are able to work remotely or start businesses wherever they choose to live. It is true that cities through the centuries have been engines of dynamism and cultural creativity, but they have also been breeding grounds for crime and disease. Remember that Covid-19 spread first in large urban centers.²³ The current urban orthodoxy pushes for ever greater population density, with more use of public transit, against health reason and the preferences of many Americans. Rather than force people to live tightly packed together, we could cultivate a more decentralized economy that allows room for family homes and sociable communities, while promoting better health and even nurturing democracy. The flight from big cities in the twenty-first century won’t lead to a hereditary nobility lording it over the peasants. When people can live and work where they prefer, they have a stronger sense of independence and agency, and are more invested in their local communities.²⁴

Another hopeful sign is the growing readiness of people to question the priorities of their betters. Recent surveys have shown a historically low level of confidence in U.S. institutions—from Congress and the courts, to large corporations and Wall Street.²⁵ The CDC achieved almost mythical authority early in the Covid pandemic, but it has since lost the trust of a wide majority of Americans and is now undergoing a large-scale reappraisal of its public messaging.²⁶ Protests over Covid lockdowns sprang up across the world, with particular vehemence in Canada of all places, as well as in the United States. Questionable anti-vax ideologies have also generated conflict and defiance. It is true that rampant distrust of institutions and authorities can be corrosive to a society—particularly when it leads to violence, as in the riots that followed the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, and perhaps most shockingly the assault on the Capitol by deranged Trump supporters on the day the election was being certified in January 2021. But a healthy measure of skepticism and a willingness to speak out are important if people do not want to be mere subjects who docilely submit to the powerful.

Perhaps the big question may be whether the West will produce leaders who can capture this defiant spirit and channel it, to turn back the autocratic tide without lapsing into anarchy. In recent years, we have not been gifted with leaders who are both sensible and inspiring, but rather a parade of narcissists and dodderers. It won’t be the upper classes who drive the resistance to autocracy and neo-feudalism because they benefit from the current economic structure. The initiative must come from the grassroots, in organized or ad hoc groups that challenge the domination of betters. This does not mean rejecting reasonable government policies, but rather demanding that citizens be part of the discussion and that responsibility be lodged in the people’s elected representatives, not an unelected clerisy. The future does not have to be the diminished one that has recently appeared all too likely, if ordinary Americans resolve to seek better for themselves and their families.

This need to preserve democracy also makes it imperative to confront aggressive, expansionist autocracy abroad. On the global stage, we are seeing the greatest assault on liberal values since the end of the Cold War—in China’s ambition to subjugate Taiwan and to become the dominant civilization on earth, and in Russia’s savage attack on Ukraine as part of an ambition to reconstitute the Soviet empire, with tightening control over the Russian population. To a surprising extent, the West, in alliance with Japan and India, seems ready to meet the China challenge. Most European nations, with varying degrees of commitment, have joined the United States in opposing the Russian war on Ukraine. Russia’s aggression has clearly made not just Ukrainians but also many of their neighbors acutely aware of what they have to lose if autocracy gains the upper hand in the region.

We have seen autocratic empires and regimes brought down in the past—fascist, National Socialist, and Soviet Communist. People who harbor a desire for freedom, opportunity, and self-governance have rallied to turn back autocracy in their own countries, often at enormous human cost. As long as the idea of self-government thrives anywhere, autocrats have reason to worry. And as long as people aspire to self-determination and believe it is their natural right, there will be challenges to entrenched privilege and power in any form.

Ultimately, human beings do not readily submit to arbitrary control from above. The potential for a renewal of democratic self-government is not yet extinguished. Just as feudalism gave way to the Renaissance and then the growth of democracy, and just as the fall of the Soviet empire birthed free and prosperous nations on its periphery, a democratic renewal is possible today. We just need the courage to insist on more responsive governance and the will to develop a more open, entrepreneurial society, rather than meekly genuflect to political and economic overlords.

Joel Kotkin

Orange, California

June, 2022

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

This is a book neither of the right nor of the left. It is an attempt to diagnose trends that are leading to a more hierarchical and more stagnant society. It also stands as a warning to the global middle class. Although this die may be cast, I hope the book will stir discussion and spark action to halt the current trajectory toward neo-feudalism across much of the world.

As a lifetime Democrat, now Independent, I do not see this as an ideological or partisan issue. I believe that the vast majority of people, conservative as well as progressive, do not look forward to a future defined by class immobility and immense concentrations of both wealth and power. This is a global phenomenon that includes not just the United States but also the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, most of continental Europe, and the rapidly advancing countries of East Asia.

Reporting from the ground—particularly in the United States, Australia, the UK, Singapore, India, and China—has done much to shape this book. But I have taken inspiration also from thinking about what the great analysts of the past—Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Daniel Bell, Taichi Sakaiya, Alvin Toffler—would have made of the current situation.

The future that appears on the horizon is not one that I desire for any country, or for my own children. This book is meant to rally those who cherish the independence, freedom, and possibilities for upward mobility that have been the hallmarks of liberal democracy over the past few centuries.

PART I

How Feudalism Came Back

History never repeats itself. Man always does.

—Voltaire

CHAPTER 1

The Feudal Revival

Feudalism is making a comeback, long after it was believed to have been deposited into the historical dustbin. Of course it will look different this time around: we won’t see knights in shining armor, or vassals doing homage to their lords, or a powerful Catholic Church enforcing the reigning orthodoxy. What we are seeing is a new form of aristocracy developing in the United States and beyond, as wealth in our postindustrial economy tends to be ever more concentrated in fewer hands. Societies are becoming more stratified, with decreasing chances of upward mobility for most of the population. A class of thought leaders and opinion makers, which I call the clerisy, provide intellectual support for the emerging hierarchy. As avenues for upward mobility are diminishing, the model of liberal capitalism is losing appeal around the globe, and new doctrines are arising in its place, including ones that lend support to a kind of neo-feudalism.

Historically, feudalism was hardly a monolithic system, and it lasted much longer in some places than others. But certain salient features can be seen in feudal structures across medieval Europe: a strongly hierarchical ordering of society, a web of personal obligations tying subordinates to superiors, the persistence of closed classes or castes, and a permanent serflike status for the vast majority of the population.¹ The few dominated the many as by natural right. Feudal governance was far more decentralized than either the Roman Empire that preceded it or the nation-states that followed, and it depended more on personal relationships than does liberal capitalism or statist socialism. But in the feudal era a static ideal of an ordered society, supported by a mandatory orthodoxy, prevailed over dynamism and mobility, in a condition of economic and demographic stagnation.

The clearest parallel in our own time is the concentration of wealth in fewer hands, following upon an era of robust social mobility. In the second half of the twentieth century, growing prosperity was widely shared in the developed world, with an expanding middle class and an upwardly mobile working class—something seen in many developing countries as well. Today, the benefits of economic growth in most countries are going mainly to the wealthiest segment of the population. One widely cited estimate suggests that the share of global wealth held by the top 0.1 percent of the global population increased from 7 percent in 1978 to 22 percent in 2012.² A recent British parliamentary study indicates that this global trend will continue: by 2030, the top 1 percent is expected to control two-thirds of the world’s wealth.³