MAIN IDEA:

The main idea of this book is that current political development leads America to the new form of Feudalism – society based on permanent aristocracy at the top and all other population situated in hierarchical structures below. To support this idea author provides data about dynamics of ownership of land and other resources, increasing substitution of meritocracy with birth rights to places at the top, decline of liberal capitalism that used to provide more or less equal opportunity. Author also reviews emerging class structure of the Neo Feudalism, its geographical distribution with California being the most prominent example, and its potential to ignite class war similar to peasant rebellions of the Old Feudalism.

DETAILS:

PART I. HOW FEUDALISM CAME BACK

1. The Feudal Revival

In this chapter author defines current situation as comeback of Feudalism – stratified society with very limited upward mobility and strict class differentiation with privileges assigned to individuals based mainly on the class belonging. He briefly describes historic feudalism as a system, notes that history could regress and then recounts signs of such regression:

• Concentration of land ownership and overall wealth at the top
• Power nexus between Clerisy and Oligarchy
• Loss of faith in Liberal Democracy among population
• Emergence of periodic rebellions of lower strata of population against existing order

At the end of chapter author points out that course of history is never inevitable, therefore whether Feudalism will fully come back or not depends of people.

• The Enduring Allure of Feudalism

Here author discusses ideological nature of Feudalism in the Christian world where spiritual area was important and included equality of people before God, while unequal and strictly hierarchical structure of this world provided somewhat comfortable and secure society of mutual obligations when everybody know his/her place. Author then discusses multiple countries such as Russia and China where this ordered arrangement always had been and is preferrable to chaotic nature of Liberal Capitalism. Author also refers to several Western well-known intellectuals who also expressed similar preferences.

• The Rise and Decline of Liberal Capitalism

In this chapter author briefly retells the story of the raise of Liberal Capitalism and then jumps to contemporary world when Western countries fell into stagnation and China raised to the point of presenting challenge with its Antiliberal Capitalism based on totalitarian control of communist party over society. However, author points out China’s demographic problems, which are also becoming typical for other countries. At the end of chapter author suggests that rapid development of technology creates gap between high tech professionals and all others similar to Feudal gap between knights in undefeatable armor at the top and peasants and others at the bottom of society.

After discussing emerging New-feudal hierarchy of society, author moves to reviewing class structure of such society allocating one part of the book to each layer: Oligarchy, Clerisy, Yeomanry, and New Serfs.

PART II. THE OLIGARCHS

• High-Tech Feudalism

Here author identifies the new class at the top of New-Feudal Hierarchy as Oligarchs who control most of the real property, and, even more important, they control technology. Author describes birth of this New Oligarchy as similar to raise of knights only instead of superior arms it is based on superior technology that allowed creation of huge corporation such as Apple or Amazon that control technology of society. Author describes how such process merges new power with Communist party’s political control in China and how formerly “meritocratic entrepreneurs” of the Western world transform themselves into evil plutocrats. 

• The Belief system of the New Oligarchs

This chapter is about oligarch’s ideology. Author describes their understanding of themselves as purely meritocratic high achievers and relate with contempt to others as underachievers. Author describes their preferred organization of society in such way:” This model could best be described as oligarchical socialism. The redistribution of resources would meet the material needs of the working class and the declining middle class, but it would not promote upward mobility or threaten the dominance of the oligarchs.” Author then discusses methods that oligarchs use to take control over society: initially via Cultural revolution that would establish their preferable set of believes and attitudes and then via establishment of mass surveillance that would make any deviation from this believes practically impossible.

• Feudalism in California, Harbinger of the Future

In this chapter author describes the real place where oligarchs’ objectives pretty much achieved – state of California. It is one party state, which is simultaneously the richest state by amount of wealth at the top and the poorest state by the number of destitute people at the bottom: the number one state in USA for inequality. Author also refer to this type of society as “Feudalism with Better Marketing”.

PART III. THE CLERISY

• The New Legitimizers

Author begins this chapter with reference to Orwell, Atwood, and Huxley – Sci fi about future societies run by elite and links it to ideology based on the notion of cognitive elite that in American culture turned into notion of professional, non-interested, non-political experts who know how to run things to everybody’s benefit. He then describes as credentialed upper class of just a few percent of population that he calls Clerisy, which are in reality often not very knowledgeable, very political and class conscious, and run everything for their own benefit, often at the expense of others. Author also refers to similarities with communist and fascist bureaucracy that ran totalitarian states of XX century.

• The Control Tower

In this chapter author analyses how members of Clerisy developed via process of higher education in American Universities controlled by ideologues of this class, which slowly took control by demanding freedom for themselves when they were minority and then start suppressing everybody else when they become dominant. A very important part of this suppression is their so far successful attempt eliminate Western culture and especially original American ideology from educational process.

• New Religions

Here author briefly reviews ideologies that are becoming new religions in service of Clerisy:

• The Church of “Social Justice”
• The Green Faith
• Transhumanism: the search for eternal life through technology.

PART IV. THE EMBATTLED YEOMANRY

1. The Rise and Decline of Upward Mobility

The part about middle class that author calls Yeomanry starts with discussion of declining opportunities for its members after author briefly retells the story of their raise. Author measure this decline by increased gap between the middle and the top:” The wealth differential between middle-income and upper-income households had reached unprecedented levels by 2015. Data from the Census Bureau show that the share of national income going to the middle 60 percent of households has fallen to a record low. Wealth gains in recent decades have gone overwhelmingly to the top 1 percent of households, and especially the top 0.5 percent.” Author notes that such gaps were typical for feudal societies, especially those based on “meritocratic” mandarin class controlling overall wealth of society as in China, but atypical for European democracies where wealth was widely distributed. 

1. A Lost Generation?

This chapter is about loss of opportunity for young generation. Author specifically analyses decrease in home ownership due to overpriced housing, so the young generation increasingly dependent on inheritance in order to achieve home ownership. It leads to typical for feudalism economic stagnation.

1. Culture and Capitalism

In this chapter author looks at alliance of wealthy oligarchs and clerisy, especially the part of Clerisy in control of key areas of culture: media, education, and science. He looks at attempts to distract people from setting up economic goals and substituting them with some ideological constructs, promotion of green agenda in order to scare people into forfeiting strive to achieve high levels of material wellbeing. The massive attack of this cultural Clerisy against middle class is also directed against institution of nuclear family, which is foundation of middle-class way of life.  

PART V. THE NEW SERFS

1. Beyond the Ring Road

The ring road here is metaphor for line dividing privileged dwellers of big cities living within Ring Road surrounding these cities over others living outside, typical for totalitarian countries with dominance of bureaucracy such as Chine or former Soviet Union. After discussing these inequalities author looks at history of development of serfdom on the remnants of Roman empire, its slow conversion to capitalism and transformation of serfs into working class. Then raise of big part of working class into the Middle class in USA in the middle of XX century, and its decline by the end of this century.  

1. The Future of the Working Class

In this chapter author follows on describing loss of labor power and another transformation from proletariat to “precariat” – people with limited control over conditions of their work and low levels of compensation due to change from industrial mode of production to post-industrial with lots of contract work, individualization of working processes that limit unionization, cultural erosion of working class, and its abandonment by the Left, which moved to another promising power: combination of intellectuals at the top and underclass at the bottom, both living off government transfer of resources to them at the expense of others.

1. Peasant Rebellions

In this chapter author compares contemporary political situation with peasant rebellions of Feudalism, equating them with contemporary wave of election of populist leaders such as the Donald. Author discusses such important part of this rebellion as movement against mass migration that swells welfare dependent part of population, greatly increasing support for government transfers. Intellectuals that are dependent on such transfers support mass migration even if it brings people with strong religion believes and intolerant culture that from time to time express itself in murderous eruptions. Author end this chapter by asking if “Is There Mass Insurrection in Making?”   
PART VI. THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF FEUDALISM

1. The New Gated City

Here author looks at the new landscape of America when cities become divided into areas of gated communities, slums of non-working people, areas of rich international business and disappearing local commercial centers, densification and gentrification of city centers, all this combined with exodus of middle class to suborns and exurbs.  

1. The Soul of the Neo-feudal City

Here author discusses ideas of the Global City where elite is concentrating and develops common attitudes and approaches that are outside and even above cultural landscape of their societies, simultaneously pushing non-elite of their countries into subservient positions. Author also discusses such dramatic cultural changes as destruction of family and childless way of life. Such attitude and objective of elite are clearly on collision course with Middle class suburban way of life. Author provides a very interesting reference linking elitists hate of suburb and strive to increase density to Soviet ideas and practice of exemplary communist city where people packed into cheap small flats.     

1. The Totalitarian Urban Future

The final chapter of this part discusses in more details ideals that elite wants to implement by creating “Totalitarian Urban Future” with central control of everything, including China style surveillance and control over individual behavior. Author question whether it would be possible to resist these ideals.
PART VII A MANIFESTO FOR THE THIRD ESTATE
The Technological Challenge

Author describes here the new feudal elite, which seeks to exercise their power via experts and their control over communications and media, especially social media that allow them dumb down general population to such level that they willingly accept their status as inferiors, while using biotechnology to enhance their own intellectual and physiological abilities.

1. The Shaping of Neo-feudal Society

In this chapter author goes into details if shaping Neo-feudal society by undermining institution of family, scaring people with Global warming and other forms of environmental alarmism and so on. Author then advocates response by investing in resilience similarly to dikes in Netherlands in area of technology and resisting power of oligarchy in the area of politics.
21. Can We Challenge Neo-feudalism?

In the final chapter author asks if it is possible to challenge Neo-feudalism and suggests promotion and support of the Third estate – middle and working classes as bulwark against oligarchy. Author also expresses expectation that alliance of leftists and oligarchs is unreliable and could fall apart rather quickly. In any case author believes that solution is in reinforcement of values of Western civilization and adjustment to new landscape of automated production, probably via application of UBI, that has increasing support of people.   

MY TAKE ON IT:

I do not think that there is any need to apply old political and class structure of Feudalism to the newest incarnation of the strict hierarchical system with all important parameters such as methods of production, system of believes, norms of behavior, and technology very different from this old Feudalism. The key difference is that old Feudalism was based on need for manual production by peasants and military capabilities of aristocrats creating mutually dependent society united by religious believes in propriety of hierarchical order of things with God at the top and proper places for everybody all the way down. The current incarnation is much weaker because hardly anybody believes in God and clearly nobody believes in the proper hierarchical order. The current situation is result of increasing disappearance of need for mass of peasants toiling at the bottom of society providing food and other goods and services. Similarly disappeared the need for aristocratic warriors to provide protection of society against hostile powers, this function actually firmly resides with professional military mainly recruited from the middle and working class. The new society that existing bureaucratic hierarchy of America is trying to establish is just finalization of the process that was under way for nearly two hundred years of expansion of this hierarchy. At the end it divides population into two categories: minority of population: credentialed bureaucrats and members of establishment enjoying power and control over all resources, while majority of population deprived of traditional American freedoms of speech, ability for self-defense, and opportunity to achieve material independence from others, will meekly accept its boring lives of quiet despair in exchange for some leftovers in form of basic income or low salaries at the bottom of hierarchy. I do not think that this attempt would be successful just because boring lives of despair are not consistent with human nature that requires actions and achievements, making such society unsustainable.