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

by Joel Kotkin

Moreover, the measures taken by Western nations are unlikely to affect climate change much when virtually all the growth in emissions comes from developing countries,

more concerned about the availability of energy than about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The current approach to reducing climate-altering emissions has succeeded in enhancing the power of the oligarchy and the clerisy, illustrating the “iron law of oligarchy.” Articulated by the sociologist Robert Michels in the early twentieth century, the law says: the more complex the issue, the greater the need for elite-driven solutions that bypass popular input.

This approach to the issue perfectly matches the Chinese authoritarian system of governance.

China’s “civilization state,” deeply rooted in thousands of years of history, represents the most profound philosophical challenge to liberal values since the end of the Cold War.

What is needed today is a new kind of politics that focuses primarily on fulfilling the aspirations of the Third Estate—on expanding opportunities for the middle and working classes. The current emphasis on social justice through redistribution and subsidies does not increase opportunities for upward mobility, but instead fosters dependency while consolidating power in a few hands.

the oligarchy could be undermining the basis of their own good fortune. Much of the oligarchic class is allied with militant progressives whose basic agenda is hostile to classical liberalism and capitalist enterprise.

But the new breed of progressives are growing bolder and coming to resemble the Jacobins of the French Revolution, or the Red Guards unleashed during the Cultural Revolution in China in the late 1960s.

To date, opposition to the neo-feudal order has all too often morphed into hatred of minorities,

A civilization can survive only if its members, especially those with the greatest influence, believe in its basic values. Today our key institutions—the academy, the media, the corporate hierarchy, and even some churches—reject many of the fundamental ideals that have long defined Western culture.

Regaining a sense of pride in Western culture and its achievements—while remaining open to newcomers and influences from elsewhere—is essential to recovering the ambition and self-confidence that drove the West’s ascent, from the Age of Exploration to the Space Age.

To slow or reverse neo-feudalism, with its constraints on upward mobility and creation of more dependency, requires awakening the political will of the Third Estate to resist it.